17 April 2024

“Outside the Box” Opening Reception in Jamaica Plain, 21 April

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With friends from the Boston Comics Roundtable, I’m helping to organize an exhibit of comics art in the gallery of the Footlight Club, Amer...
20 March 2024

The Characters of Oz “a real treat”

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In the latest Baum Bugle from the International Wizard of Oz Club, Scott Cummings calls The Characters of Oz “a real treat and a fresh add...
19 March 2024

On the Road to CharlOz, Sept. 26–29

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On September 26-29, 2024, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina; the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and other local and national...
16 March 2024

“Historic Children’s Voices” Coming from American Antiquarian Society

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The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester will launch a website on “Historic Children’s Voices, 1799-1899.” Its introductory page exp...
19 January 2024

Detecting Style

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“Red Eye” is a short story by Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane. It was published in Face Off and then in The Best American Mystery Stori...
27 November 2023

The Man with a Butler Did It

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This month I read two British murder mysteries, published twenty years apart, in which the culprit turned out to be the local bigwig killing...
25 November 2023

“A society of men here called high-binders”

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The California Gold Rush made San Francisco a boom town. It attracted Americans from the East Coast, of course, and also people from souther...
24 November 2023

“High-binders” Escape from New York

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As I recounted here , the term “High-binder” or “hide-binder” appeared in the New York press in late 1806 and early 1807 after disturbances ...
22 November 2023

The First High-Binders

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I’ve been reading about San Francisco before the big earthquake of 1906, and one word that comes up a lot is “highbinder.” Merriam-Webster...
17 November 2023

The Return of “The Fuzzy Ghost”

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This week I received my contributor’s copy of The Big Book of Things That Go Bump in the Night: A Collection of Utah Horror . This antholo...