WITH a dramatic reading of Henry VIII, Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Frances Kemble Butler until her divorce was finalized later in the same year) closed a series of one-woman performances from the stage of New York’s Stuyvesant Institute. After solo renditions before audiences in Boston, New York City and Brooklyn through the winter and spring of … More 084–Thy book doth live
RECENTLY, there were reports that the Oxford English Dictionary had identified the earliest use of the term “climate change.” In the context in which they appeared–an American scientific magazine of 1854–and even in their inflection, the words differed somewhat from how we read and understand them today. But it’s evident from the brief article where they were … More 058–Climate of Newark
BETWEEN the day on which William A. Whitehead, at age 13, left Newark with his family for Perth Amboy and the day that he returned, at age 33, to live there once more with a new family, the place, like Whitehead, had come of age. The Newark he returned to was a far cry from … More 057–The Daily
MORE ancient and enduring than New Jersey’s status as a Revolutionary battleground has been its contest for self-definition. The state is often coarsely cast as suffering a kind of bipolar disorder, forever torn between the megacities it faces across its two frontier rivers. The nature of that struggle is of course far more complex, variously … More 049–Try, try again
SEA DRIFT, Blakely, Majestic, Pizarro, lost. Gil Blas, Mary Ann, Miami, also lost. Hero, Noble, La Fayette, all lost. The fishing vessels Felix and Eden, not heard from. The roll call was numbing. The Pizarro’s crew were at work on the wreck of the Sea Drift, when the storm surge swept both onto land. The … More 040–No enemy but winter and rough weather
An attractive presence 