My Articles About Raif Badawi
The following pieces have appeared in The Gad About Town concerning Raif Badawi:
Read More
No Magic
I wanted the ultimate magic kit when I was a kid, but as with so many things in life, disappointment lay in the fact that the magic kits grew more complex, more “magical,” only with higher prices.
Each of them included a “magic wand,” which was just a wooden dowel painted black, or, in the more expensive kits, painted black with a white tip, because a white tip equals classy. The photo of the kid on the magic box with the white tipped wand often showed the kid in tails and with a top hat. (I am sure that because of kids like me, or because of just me, the toy companies needed to add the disclaimer, “Hat and tails not in package.”)
Read More
Today in History: March 28
Saint Teresa of Avila was born on this date in 1515. A mystic, she experienced religious visions and what she called “divine joy” while painfully ill; she is the patron saint of those who suffer headaches and physical pain and those who are ridiculed for their piety. St. Teresa is depicted in many works of art, music, and literature, including Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s masterwork “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” in the Santa Maria della Vittoria church, carved 1647–52, pictured above.
* * * *
“Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again.” Virginia Woolf wrote her last letter to her husband, wrote her last anything, and drowned herself in the River Ouse 75 years ago today. She was 59 and this was her third suicide attempt and letter. She was most likely bipolar and it had been an exhausting existence. “Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness,” she wrote Leonard Woolf. It is a stunning and simply heart-breaking statement that she hand-wrote (after the fold):
Read More
The Gad About Town 