I was online all morning yesterday and didn’t get to open the paper version of the New York Times till early afternoon. I was flipping past the obituary pages because I’d already seen the story about the death of Playboy-Bunny-turned-cop-turned-murderer-turned-fugitive Laurie “Bambi” Bembenek all over the web, but then I glimpsed another story made me…
books
Feathers, Water, Looking Glass and an Imaginary Pig
When I was in first grade, I read Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and was confused by the passage where Alice was rowing a boat with a sheep in it. I wasn’t disturbed by the fact that she was in the boat with the sheep, or that the sheep spoke and knitted….
Jewel of the Month: Xenobia Ring
While on my way to Washington, D.C., last month for an interview with the hometown paper, I was browsing the vampire section of the airport bookstore when another book jumped out at me. Not literally, of course. It wasn’t an evil zombie book that was trying to kill me. I just noticed it because the…
Book Club: A Distant Mirror, the Finale
For this post, the fourth and final one on my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitious 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman, I wish I had a deep-voiced television announcer to say, “Previously on Wendy Brandes Jewelry …” and give a summary of the three preceding posts. Since I don’t have that guy, I’ll…
Book Club: A Distant Mirror, Part III
Welcome to Part III of my report on A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. Read Part I and Part II to get yourselves oriented. On Saturday, in my second of a series of posts on the book A Distant Mirror, I listed the disasters of the 1300s. Those included what Tuchman…
Book Club: A Distant Mirror, Part II
Today is a day for celebration: it is the one-year-and-one-day procrastination-versary of my introduction to my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. On March 26, 2009, I posted about A Distant Mirror and told you to come back the next week for more. I wrote a long and…
Jane Austen Is All Like, “That Dress? Bitch, Please!”
I went to the Morgan Library & Museum with a gorgeous and exceptionally nice friend* earlier this year. How nice is my friend? After I told her there was no need to apologize for a statement that didn’t offend me in the slightest, she apologized for the apology. She is the only person I know…
Oh, the Shame!
Yesterday I neglected to celebrate the 500-year anniversary of the day that my dear friend, Henry VIII (also known on the internets as Henry teh 8), acceded to the English throne. Handsome! I doubt I would have remembered at all if gorgeous blogger Princess Poochie hadn’t sent me a story about one of Henry’s love…
Book Club: Introduction to A Distant Mirror
It’s become de rigueur for newspaper columnists, bloggers and people standing around the water cooler to bemoan the decline of civilization as evidenced by what one historian called “economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration,…
Classic Carly Simon
People have been asking Carly Simon to tell them who inspired “You’re So Vain” since the song was a No. 1 hit in 1973. “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” I’ve always loved Carly’s sexy-hippy ’70s style. The cover of her 1971 Anticipation album From the cover of her…