Adam Aston singing Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino

One of the first times I played in public as a kid was at the local Polish club, and I remember trying to figure out what all these old folks were doing in this neighbourhood, amid numerous refugees from newer tyrannies in Asia and Africa and Latin America. After that it was a short conceptual…

5500 whistles?

We do not aim to follow in the tangled path of “the Evangelical-Lutheran town church pc. Jakob in Rothenburg whether that deaf ones” (via Transblawg) Further news: an advisory panel is being formed. Apparently the next Archbishop of Canterbury is too busy, but there will be big names in there. And we are getting closer…

El ropavejero y la belleza

–Hola, buenos días, ¿tienes ex-votos? –Yo nada de botos señor, pero la suegra se ha dejado hacer las domingas y están bastante bien. // Later, someone is getting on the bus driver’s nerves. So: –¡No me toques los botones!

“Islamic bridge of civilisation to the West over-rated”

Sylvain Gouguenheim’s ‘“Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel” (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of “Islam” but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs,…