Author Archives: John Mark Ockerbloom

Christmas Eve is a good time to revisit Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”.  In the public domain since the mid-19th century, it’s been adapted many times, and I’ve already featured a chorale adaptation by Frances McCollin … Continue reading →

My wife once went to a folk festival in Canada where a French-Canadian  singer talked about a folk song she’d recently discovered that she wanted to sing for the audience. She then launched into “The Water is Wide“, doing a … Continue reading →

In 1915 Edith Wharton published Fighting France, a collection of reports from her work aiding the French in the early days of the first World War, and a plea for Americans to intervene on France’s behalf. Wharton continued to publish … Continue reading →

The winter solstice arrives today in the US, the day when the sun is down and out of sight for the longest time all year. It’s a good day to break out a song with a similar theme that also … Continue reading →

The American West has long been a cherished place of myth in American imagination. Frederick Jackson Turner may have pronounced the western frontier “closed” in 1893, but in the decades that followed, stories set in the frontier-era Western US, with … Continue reading →

“Art when really understood is the province of every human being.” That’s the opening sentence of The Art Spirit, a book of articles, notes, and addresses by Robert Henri, an American painter and art teacher.   One of the key figures … Continue reading →

Prolific humorist P. G. Wodehouse has many fans, both in his native Britain and in his adopted home in the United States.  Due to our differing copyright laws, we in the US get his early work in the public domain … Continue reading →

“For one glorious, supreme moment, came ‘the flash.’ … It couldn’t be described–not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else. It had always seemed to Emily, ever … Continue reading →

“Weep him dead and mourn as you may, Me, I sing as I must: Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust! ” The poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay made frequent appearances in print … Continue reading →