notanotherbookreview

How 3 wealthy American patriots financed a 16 million dollar loan for the War of 1812 , initiating investment banking. Then came a whistleblower... "Parish, Girard and Astor jointly pledged to take more than ten million, but not at the 6% Gallatin (U.S. Treasury) had offered. Rather, they agreed to pay in 88.00 a share and in return to receive an annuity that would yield them 13 years of annual payments that would eventually total the full one hundred dollars per share. The pledged amounts were more than the trio's current combined private fortunes, a considerable risk. Nonetheless, they put up 10 million dollars' worth of the certificates apiece, and resold the rest. The big purchasers were insurers in Philadelphia, and banks and brokers in new York, and merchants in Baltimore, who all resold the certificates in smaller batches to hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals. A list of the occupations of some of the individuals to whom Girard's bank sold the b...

THE DOG SEATED NEXT TO ME by Meg Pokrass (Pelekinesis, September 15, 2019.) Pokrass' flash fiction has the magic of loved and lost, humans and creatures. Imagine Flannery O'Connor would enjoy the dark wit of  Meg Pokrass ' THE DOG SEATED NEXT TO ME (Pelekinesis, September 2019) . Here the usual mysteries; love, youth, age, the games people play with themselves and others, the texture of time and our bodies, are given strange life. Pokrass often writes about us as creatures. The wilds we are and inhabit may refer to "familiars." Canine, avian, insect qualities are guides of sorts for the women relating stories. One shelters under her lover's wing. Another disappoints her husband when she falls for a blue tongued squink instead of the idea of a new baby.  Some samples below. The Rescue He told her how his parakeet died, all at once, in the middle of a regular day. A bird holocaust. She could see, behind his words, such gorgeous, frantic color that...

Quiet Enjoyment by Richard Curtis Directed by Marcus Gualberto October 18 to November 3rd, Playroom Theater If real estate is God in New York, it rules few neighborhoods as ostentatiously as the Upper East Side, the zipcode of landed wealth; bejeweled wives, hipster mistresses, and much real Chanel. Perhaps less fashionable these days than Downtown's arty tech money but for durable property value--no contest. In Quiet Enjoyment Richard Curtis takes on a ritual of this God, a "closing" on a 5 million dollar penthouse, which goes farcically wrong. Directed with sly humor by Marcus Gualberto, the transfer of a co-op between husband and wife becomes a contest of "Karma", also the name of the husband's mistress with a mission to disrupt.. As played by Megan Simard, Karma's a cosmic goldigger, whose sexual power, divinely derived from Kundalini yoga, makes real sparks. Her foil is not the betrayed wife Juliana (Jamie Lee Kearns) being compensate...

T.M. Givens, like his favorite poet Rilke, enjoys experiencing nature directly and making art from his impressions. Rilke's query; how do humans reconcile existence--beauty, suffering, life and death was answered in lyrical poems that begin in nature. Below, he  deals with the end of summer. (The last part reverberated with me, a city-dweller.) Day In Autumn--Rainer Maria Rilke After the summer's yield, Lord it is time to let your shadow lengthen on the sundial and in the pastures let the rough winds fly. As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness Direct on them two days of winter light to hale them golden toward their term, and harry the last few drops of sweetness through the wine. Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter who lives alone will live infinitely so, waking up to read a little, draft long letters, and, along the city's avenues, fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen. I paint in my spare time and was fortunate this summer...

The Cold War was first an earsplitting siren, my first grade teacher urging us to crawl under our worktables and cover our heads. Hiding from "Nukes" was only a drill but real to me. Our teacher standing tall was very brave, as she waited--for what? The end of the world, wasn't a concept but many of us had seen mushroom clouds on TV, unsure what the images meant. We learned the BOMB brought peace, that our government protected us. But it was scary, threatening, a weird weapon in some global Western--bad guys behave or else?   Ideas are powerful after the unthinkable. COLD WARRIORS: Writers Who Waged The Literary Cold War by Duncan White (Aug. 27, 2019, Custom House/William Morrow) is an  exciting read of huge scope, showing how literature was  weaponized by both sides in an ideological conflict (western capitalist vs.eastern communist). Establishing "spheres of influence" meant survival for competing systems of government. The information battlefield: ...