I don’t know much about Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay.  He was, apparently, a familiar figure in Greenwich Village in the ’50s and ’60s; he claimed a number of grandiose titles, and was said to live in a cheap residential hotel around Times Square.  His name shows up in accounts of parties and funerals (he […]

[Read more →]

On July 28th, members of the Ullage Group took a field trip to Bannerman Castle, organized by Dr. Mamie Caton.           For train passengers, a partial and too-brief view of Bannerman Castle can be had just south of Beacon, NY.  The castle is situated on a small island once called Pollepel […]

[Read more →]

To most of us, the name “Tiny Tim” recalls the late Herbert Khaury, he of the uke and falsetto. We may also think of the plaintive tot in Dickens, or — if smitten with old comic strips — Stanley Link’s minuscule hero of the ’30s. But there was another, now forgotten, yet once a familiar […]

[Read more →]

People lie for different reasons: cowardice (the truth can hurt), cupidity (falsehood can be more profitable), arrogance (the truth can be improved), or ignorance (the truth is unknown). I don’t know what motivated Jeanne des Armoises.  True, she got attention and cash, but she must have known it couldn’t last.  In fact, I don’t know […]

[Read more →]

The Star Lodge, or Summer Palace, outside Prague, is another of those curious buildings that dot the Czech Republic.  The Letohradek Hvezda was designed and built in 1555 by Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol; it was supposedly a hunting lodge, but the fact that it’s shaped like a six-pointed star, with four stories, each keyed to a […]

[Read more →]

I made this sketch of that curious old building, the Faust House, on a trip to Prague a few years ago.  I post it here for whatever pleasure it may trigger. The Faust House, for those unfamiliar with it, sits on Charles Square; it houses the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, and is not open […]

[Read more →]

[The flurry of activity that went into our event, “Medi-Vaudeville,” delayed the last installment of this talk on Darwinism.  Please do read the earlier parts; it’s all connected.] If “BC” could introduce the Bible into the caveman cartoon, then, obviously, the next step is to introduce the caveman cartoon into the Bible. So, busy theologians […]

[Read more →]

November 16 marked the beginning of National Geography Awareness Week.  Whether “national” indicates an emphasis on native geographical awareness, or is meant to suggest that we as a nation need to brush up on world geography, is unclear.   Without getting too theoretical, I’d like to point out that geography is a social construct.  Unlike […]

[Read more →]

The computer is a useful tool.  We all use it regularly.  The fact that I post here should make it clear to the impartial that I have no beef with these gizmos. But this is a puritanical culture; and many of our fellow citizens view the non-digital with the same dogmatic intolerance with which the Pilgrims […]

[Read more →]

An article in this Sunday’s New York Times celebrates an organization  dedicated to the historical documentation of local ullage (in this case, “local” meaning the 1/3 of the nation comprising the West). ByJESSE McKINLEY TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of […]

[Read more →]