Jazz-fusion, jazz-funk, jazz-rock…we’ve never been quite sure how to define the music that plugged in around 1969 with Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way and burned out some five years later when “jazz” pretty much left the hyphenate and all the other components—the things that hybridized it—began to short-circuit in…

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Reading William Faulkner’s The Bear on a five-day backpacking trip into the Montana high country reveals what we fear, what we love and what we’ve lost of wild country.

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A Montreal Gazette blog review of Maria Schneider focuses on Schneider’s arms and hair color while comparing her orchestra to “your run-of-the-mill high school jazz band.” The review has set off a small brush-fire of web comment on the status of jazz criticism. The Rabbit puts up his ears and wiggles his nose…

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The author of The Mystery Guest explains his strange conception, his twisted upbringing and how a glimpse of a friend’s naked mother, followed by a street riot, seems to repeat itself every time he falls in love.

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Said of the 1960s, it’s also true of the 1980s: If you remember them you weren’t there. Reasons to forget? You worked and partied too long and hard and did too many drugs to maintain the rigorous schedule. You’ve repressed the embarrassing struggle to appear above your socio-economic status. And…

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Not so long ago—if 40 years is not so long—a group of friends and I would gather for a solemn once-or-twice-a-year ritual. There was no given date for the event. Instead it was spurred by unusual circumstances, say the bombing of Cambodia or the acquisition of really good drugs. Duly…

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The Rabbit is fresh back from four days wandering through the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in northern Yellowstone National Park. Trips like these present unforgettable images and along the way everything turns to metaphor. The path, the descent, the climb—though there were no real mountains involved, just a short…

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