Short Poem Verbophobia: fear of words. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: fear of long words. Joe Dolce  

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'The Saboteurs' is a beautifully filmed period piece that focuses on one of the most crucial, but little known, missions of the Second World War, the destruction of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant. To the Allies and resistance fighters who scuttled Hitler's bid for an atomic bomb, the physics were as mysterious as the danger and difficulty of the raid were obvious

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Cavafy Bath He has been indulgent too much wine too much reverie staggering down the hall in the dark toward the bath lit in candlelight salts and oil steaming the glass. The old poet removes his clothes, slips into hot water, uttering soft sounds as heat relaxes vexed muscles, sliding beneath candlelit water, ecstasy consumes […]

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The Mug with No Ear Oh come all you poets and painters alike, lay down your pencils and palettes tonight, fill up your glasses and raise up a beer, I’ll tell you the tale of The Mug with No Ear. Well, you’ve all seen his name on the museum wall, his work is admired by […]

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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.  —Herman Melville, Billy Budd The science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury once said, “Shakespeare wrote […]

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'The Courier' dramatises what John le Carré called the greatest coup of the Cold war -- the story of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky and British businessman Greville Wynne, who between them provided the intelligence that enabled President Kennedy to prevail during the Cuban Missile Crisis

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Many slaves who made the dangerous journey to Canada would return, at great risk, to help others find their precarious ways out of bondage. These heroic souls became known as 'conductors' and their stories are inspirational. Amazon's 'The Underground Railroad' is a work of fiction. Remember this and it will help keep your balance when the train goes off the tracks

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Constellation Victoria’s Secret Dylan. Las Vegas Elvis. Toupéed Sinatra. Nose-lifted Jackson. Door-hung Hutchence. Five Emperors repose indolently, in Elysium, or Hell, or Nowhere, attended, foot and hand, by tattooed cherubim roadies. Four have nodded off, the fifth releases Sacred Wind. The gallery genuflects. Meanwhile, Somewhere, five children gaze out windows of midnight schoolrooms, lesson-bored, staring […]

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Clearly Not Fourth Street With your fish hook mouth in the bottom-feeder times, and your eyes like marbles and your skin like rind, and your silver scales and your sermon that whines, Oh, who among the fishermen could fry you? With your pockets full of correct tokens at last, but the streetcar departing that you […]

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Mankind never gains anything without cost. There never has been a bloodless victory over nature.                                                    —Yuri Gagarin, first cosmonaut in outer space Many Quadrant readers will remember the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Through films like The Right Stuff (1983), about Chuck Yeager’s first sound barrier breakthrough in 1947 […]

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