Daily Archives: April 29, 2014

    The Button Boat is a Depression-era tale …a sort of Bonnie and Clyde — an exhuberant story set in 1934 involving two poor, smelly kids, their drunken stepfather, bank robbers, a peace officer, a beer-swilling dog, and a clamming … Continue reading →

 “Bungelosen Strasse!” reminds me of Captain Haddock’s favorite epithet, “Blistering Barnacles.” I’m onto something here. A vaguely fishy, watery pull is strong in the blood that flows through my veins–a tenuous connection to the shores of the Baltic Sea, a vague ancestral memory of the lap of … Continue reading →

Of about 100,000 Anti-Semitic children’s books printed during the Third Reich, a few copies remain. Elvira Bauer, an 18-year-old art student, illustrated “Trust No Fox on his Green Heath And No Jew on his Oath” — a sad, shocking example of propaganda from someone … Continue reading →

Here’s a cautionary tale: pay a guy for his services, as promised, or he might come back and get revenge on you. Taking all a town’s children may seem a little harsh, but this was medieval Germany. The Middle Ages, … Continue reading →

Here is one of the best insults in all of novels or movies: In another time and another place, you could have been great. But you never get out of your own way. You have all these ideas brewing in … Continue reading →