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‘I was a kid off the boat, adrift in the New World’: Remembering NH poet Charlie Simic
Charlie Simic was an adopted son of New Hampshire, having arrived here 50 years ago, but as a poet, literary critic, and commentator, he remained a citizen of the world. He lived in a blue saltbox near Bow Lake in Strafford with his wife, Helen Lubin, while sharing his world view and faith in the […]
Say it ain’t so, Joe
One afternoon soon after I came to Concord to run the Monitor newsroom in 1978, Tom Gerber, the affable editorial page editor, stopped by my office to ask if I wanted to meet John Glenn. Who would say no to that? On the way to the Holiday Inn, Tom told me that Glenn, the first […]
‘The past echoes in the present’: A review of ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’
This story was updated on Oct. 2 at 8:30 a.m. The three two-hour episodes of “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, debut on PBS beginning Sept. 18. Toward the end of “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” the new documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah […]
‘The number 6 million is impenetrable’: Burns discusses new film, ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’
“The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a three-episode film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, will debut on Sept. 18 on PBS. Burns and his partners and staff at Florentine Films work out of a production studio in Walpole, N.H. After watching the film, I interviewed Burns. Our discussion has been shortened and lightly […]
Muhammad Ali and us: A conversation with Ken Burns
Ken Burns was never a boxing fan, yet when the idea of making “Muhammad Ali” was first suggested, he knew immediately that he had to make it. This was not the norm for Burns, who always has several film projects going at once and often takes months or even years to say yes to a […]
Commentary: Burns’s ‘Muhammad Ali’ tells a story that teems with relevance
Although Ken Burns’s “Muhammad Ali” opens during the age of black-and-white television, Ali’s spirit remains so alive today that it is jarring to see him dancing about in colorless footage as Sonny Liston stalks the ring seeking to land the blow that will shut the kid’s mouth. That is what much of the crowd and […]