The Eastside View

I T’S NOT QUITE THE WORD I want, of course. Devotion, etymologically, has to do with vows: it’s the attitude accompanying the carrying-out ...

A MBLED, YESTERDAY , with a friend, in search of chocolate gelato in our little town, and found it in four shops on the sides of our central...

Jin : (Japanese kana) “benevolence.” The two strokes on the left are the combining form of the character that means “man”; the two strokes o...

Our town, Healdsburg, is discussing the adoption of a new General Plan, to be adopted next year. A N IMPORTANT PURPOSE of a General Plan i...

Recent travels having reminded me once again of the obscene good luck I have, compared with the tragic bad luck of billions of other people ...

Bandstand, Old plaza, Olvera Street O N THE ROAD again last weekend, this time a quick trip south to see two plays at A Noise Within in Gle...

Ruprechtskirche, Vienna TRUMPETS AND DRUMS in the bright, certain, open key of C major; violins and organ scrubbing away at their passagewor...

BELLS ANNOUNCE THE TIME throughout the day here; I’m not sure about the night. I sleep pretty soundly, after a day packed with sensory input...

The new MOMUK in the Museum Quarter Y OU TAKE THE BUS 48A here at the Dr. Karl Renner Ring, said the helpful lady at the Information office...

Beans in the Nachmarkt H UNDREDS OF PHOTOS have littered iPhoto in the last four weeks as we’ve travelled from Friesland to Piemonte to Bud...

Wipplingerstrasse, Vienna B EFORE ANYTHING ELSE , a couple of additions to yesterday’s notes about A Flowering Tree , John Adams’s opera w...

Vienna Vienna 1 A CROSS THE STREET from our kitchen window is another five-storey building, an older one than ours, brick I suppose but stu...

The Hungarian countryside T HE TRAIN OUT OF B UDAPEST , like any train leaving any metropolis, goes past railroad yards, playing fields, fac...

Picking our way through repaving on the Kossuth L. T HE DAY FELL INTO FOUR PARTS : Getting to the Opera; The Opera; After the Opera to the P...