Lawrance M. Bernabo's profile

Fans of "Castle" get to engage in a little "what if" fun with Castle and Beckett, January 31, 2010

Instead of Christmas cards I give books, because they take more than a minute to read and have a greater chance of not being thrown away, and "Heat Wave" was what I gave my wife last Christmas as her card because we watch "Castle" and while she had seen Richard Castle's faux novel on the television show I was pretty sure she had not seen it was available in the real world, which meant I had the element of surprise. Clearly, "Heat Wave" is intended for fans of the series, which means by definition it will probably have limited appeal to fans of mystery novels who do not watch the show. Certainly I would never have… Read more

Be the first in your neck of the woods to discover Rachael Kilgour, September 7, 2009

I discovered local singer-songwriter Rachael Kilgour when I went to see a dance in Duluth round and she played a couple of songs from her self-titled debut album between dances. This is "discovered," not in the sense that Columbus "discovered" the Americas and was credited with discovering continents and people who had been around for millennia, but "discovered" as when you learn that you really, really like the taste of blueberries or the paintings of Johannes Vermeer.

Kilgour is the youngest daughter of a family as whole-heartedly committed to social and political issues as they are to each other. Consequently it is not surprising that Kilgour, in the grand tradition of… Read more

The first public speaking action figure, but I want that 6th inch back, June 6, 2009

I was really looking forward to getting this action figure of Lou Gehrig, not just because I collect all McFarlane's New York Yankees figures but because I am a rhetorician and could show this one to my students in rhetorical criticism as the first (to my knowledge) action figure of a public speaker. That is because Gehrig is depicted giving his famous speech on July 4, 1939, when they held "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" at Yankee Stadium, and declared: "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth" (Note: the… Read more