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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
The best show everMay 1st, 2007 BY WILLIAM BOGERT
Considering how well I remember details of that performance, it’s perhaps surprising that I can’t think of the year, but this is being written from Los Angeles and I don’t have access to my records in New York: suffice it to say that it was comfortably over half a century ago. A few years later there was another production, also a musical, with Mary Martin. It was very well received, and later done on television, and quite a lot of people remember it, and it suffered greatly (in my opinion) by comparison with the Arthur version.
Posted by: The Editors In and out of God’s earMay 1st, 2007 BY LORENTZ LOSSIUS St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne on a warm Sunday evening in Lent: the setting sun pours through the yellow-paned clerestory windows and along the tall stone transept. The aureal glow trickles over the heads of a few dozen faithful attendants, tiny motionless figures far down in the dark valley of the nave. Up here on the choir platform twelve of us are singing the offertory motet, Ecce quomodo, moritur justus. It reverberates and swells down the building and eddies back toward us heavily. Gesualdo’s music is a dark sky through which opposing armies of moist air, one warmed by grace, the other chilled in mortal fear, meet above the field. The collision drags the cold under. A spiral of cloud plunges earthward, as, though inverted on different scales of time and weight, the edge of one continent is said to plunge under the other, melting into the black heat of the earth as the other rears up to form ice-catching mountains above it. Et erit in pace, memoria ejus. A chord of light spears Gesualdo’s turbulent, imploring gloom. The hell-heaven of that murdering, penitent prince is made still for as long as the twelve of us can sustain our slow, controlled exhalation.
Posted by: The Editors How hot was it?May 1st, 2007 BY ROD FERRANDINO Setting for tragedy: And the question is when, oh when, will this bleeping show ever end? Is that possibly a speck of light at the end of this almost forever tunnel? It has been a demoralizing seventeen-day eternity, an energy-sapping, bankroll-depleting, brain-sucking disaster. Not just a garden variety, never-to-repeat, “rear-view-mirror” weekend show, a plentiful type in any forty-four-show year, but, like a hundred-year storm, one for the ages. The “Flood of Ought-seven,” or “Plague,” or “Famine,” maybe a “Drought.” Pick your curse.
Posted by: The Editors Invitation to strayMay 1st, 2007 BY GILLIAN WILCE
Posted by: The Editors PlagiarismMay 1st, 2007 BY TOBY TOMPKINS “plagiarize vt: to steal and pass off as one’s own (the ideas or words of another) ~ vi: to present as one’s own an idea or product derived from an existing source” The battered old dictionary was my wife’s when she was in high school, and I still consult it when I want quick definitions, rather than the windy ones in my Shorter OED. But its blunt, unequivocal definition of “plagiarize” certainly belongs to a simpler, perhaps more innocent era, before stealing became “attribution” and the lawyers began to fatten their wallets on copyright cases involving the Internet.
Posted by: The Editors Carpe diemMay 1st, 2007 BY DAVID MACLAINE
Posted by: The Editors Dumb jocks?May 1st, 2007
The “dumb jock” stereotype has existed for as long as I can remember and I’m seventy-one and started coaching basketball at age fifteen. Are there some dumb jocks? Of course. But I think the subject has to be examined from several points of view and only after setting down some premises. Blanket statements or percentages or numbers are not going to do the trick. Where to start? Let’s take American women. I live in Italy, and when Italian (and European) women go to the USA, they are amazed at what they perceive as a lack of true femininity in American women. They will say, “Your women have physical beauty in many cases but they lack sophistication.” Just another way of saying someone has athletic talent but does not have intellectual training. Staying with women for a moment, there is a place in New York City that teaches a course called The French Woman, to teach American women this charm and sophistication. Its ads say, “The French woman doesn’t walk, she glides.” So, the U.S. women in NYC go to study this. My wife is half-French, so I tell her, “Hey, are you going to stop gliding around or what?” She loves this.
Posted by: The Editors Life goes onMay 1st, 2007 BY ELIZABETH HART
Posted by: The Editors Study in scarletMay 1st, 2007
I have been working for some time on the outline of a novella, a study in scarlet as it were, of the dismal lives of people fascinated by, surrounded by, intrigued by, even bound by the actions of inmates in the prison system and those released, now living as ex-cons. What in God’s name makes “normal” people, whose self-preservation instincts should be shrieking “Run away! Run away!” seek out cons, insinuate themselves into their lives, accept substantial damage at their hands and through their machinations, and further ingratiate themselves in most humiliating and co-dependent ways — what makes these “normal” people tick?
Posted by: The Editors Chaper Eighteen: JJ helps with the fire drillMay 1st, 2007 BY CATE GARRISON Despite the drama occasioned by our dog JJ’s consumption of our Mercedes’ innards, it wasn’t long before most of my nearest and dearest settled back into their old ways. That is to say, my husband began to spend most of his time away from home again, apparently at work. My sons continued their lives of school, friends, homework, and video games, and, increasingly, inhaled the contents of the fridge, which due to JJ’s unwillingness to remain alone were increasingly difficult to replace. Handy Jack, therefore, continued to provide his regular services of odd-job man, dog sitter and walker, and general family companion. True, after falling into his arms over the car-eating fiasco (an experience that had provoked the odd dormant emotion), I had wondered about sacking him. But he was literally our meal ticket. Though my husband’s salary provided the funds, Handy Jack’s presence enabled me to go out and buy groceries. All in all, he was too useful, too affable, too necessary to us all for me to make the break.
Posted by: The Editors |
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