Holiday Hodgepodge

December 13, 2014

It’s holiday hodgepodge time! TBT, this is very much a free-association post, and for careful readers there might be brain mapping—watching my brain bounce arounds—and baking opportunities.

Let’s start with Hanukkah aka Chanukah, etc. (Joe Maller offers Sixteen Ways to Spell Hanukkah.) It starts at Sundown on Tuesday. The holiday has limited significance in the Jewish religion. It’s a historical holiday, coming after the Torah was written, and definitely matters in the USA because of Christmas.

Robert Siegel offered up a report on Hanukkah on Friday, December 12. Hanukkah’s Real (And Imagined) History features Simon Schama, author of The Story of the Jews, with important reporting on the Hanukkah story. Say it ain’t so, Simon!

The holiday season

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Casablanca, Meet The New Republic!

December 6, 2014

Getting ready to leave Casablanca (one way or another, and with a companion to be named later), Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) makes a deal with Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet) to sell Rick’s Café Américain. Sam the piano player (Dooley Wilson) and others have to keep their jobs, however. The deal gets done, with Ferrari noting to Mr. Blaine that “Rick’s wouldn’t be Rick’s without them.”

I thought about that scene when I read Facebook Prince Purges The New Republic:  Inside the Destruction of a 100-Year-Old Magazine by Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast. I also heard about the changes from my friend Sam Kleiner, who writes wrote for the magazine, and read Huge Shakeup at The New Republic: What

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