Word: heydays
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...rich history. Evolving from 19th century military bands, typically known for their performances of sharp, fast-paced marches, the first modern wind ensembles took form in the 1950s. These groups possessed a musical repertoire that, while originating as a uniquely American style, quickly spread worldwide. Indeed, in their heyday, wind bands proved to be a powerful attraction, drawing wide audiences...
...most remarkable thing about the Settha Palace Hotel is that it still exists. Built by the French in the 1930s, it was a mainstay of colonial Vientiane and in its heyday was managed by Frenchman Michel Theodas and his Chinese wife Yusin. Their tenure, and an era, ended in 1975 when the communists came to power, seized the property as worker housing and sent the Theodas family packing...
...fitting that as I was writing my previous book, an historical novel called Heyday published in 2007, I turned 50. Once your life has lasted a full historical unit of time - half a century! - and assuming you've been paying reasonably close attention, "history" becomes less of a bookish abstraction about treaties and battles and bills and dates, and begins to acquire a more palpable reality. Around age 50, I started to feel, in ways I really hadn't when I was younger, as if I could see and feel the rhythms of history. The year of my birth...
...wonder that as I became middle-aged, I decided to write an historical novel. And then, by plunging deeply into research for a couple of years in order to invent my fictional version of 1848 - the year Heyday begins - I became even more attuned to the arcs and patterns of history. Indeed, I became hopelessly addicted to the Long View. Last fall, as Wall Street crashed and a very grim New York City future looked very plausible, my historian's tic kicked in again. In my New York magazine column I compulsively imagined the present from the future...
...thing both men refused to admit was that, back in the heyday of these affairs, they must have been having a blast. These were two middle-aged, conservative Republican men who had said, To hell with being part of the Cialis generation (midlife sexuality depicted as an aging husband and wife reclining in ... side-by-side bathtubs? What is the drugmaker worried about - that randy Pa might jump in Ma's bath and break her hip?). Their actions were so willful and blatantly self-centered that the two of them could have credibly fashioned themselves as rebels, possibly even...