Richard Selden

Jan 16, 2025 | georgetowner.com | Richard Selden

Hey Boomer, were you born in 1953? If so — or if you’re a Gen X-er born in 1965 or 1977, a Millennial born in 1989 or a Gen Z-er born in 2001 or 2013 — this is your year: the Year of the Snake. (Any Silent Gen readers out there? If you were born in 1941, this applies to you too.)The Snake is the sixth animal sign in the Chinese zodiac. The other 11: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig (that’s me, though I prefer “Boar”).

Jan 13, 2025 | georgetowner.com | Richard Selden

Edward Gorey’s work, distinctly Edwardian, was never gory. True, he populated his curious tales with stoic victims of misfortune — among the childhood fatalities alphabetized in 1963’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” Ernest “choked on a peach” and Fanny was “sucked dry by a leech” — but his pen-and-ink illustrations are bloodless, adding to their surrealistic aura. It seems that the campaign for a 2025 Gorey postage stamp, to be issued on Feb. 22, the centennial of his birth, was unsuccessful.

Jan 9, 2025 | georgetowner.com | Richard Selden

Sometimes it takes a while for a rare treasure to be uncovered. In 2000, Harvard University’s Houghton Library acquired a group of opera scores from a Paris collection. A remarkable discovery occurred seven years later, when one of those 19th-century manuscripts was identified as the sole surviving copy of the earliest opera score by a Black American: Edmond Dédé’s “Morgiane, ou Le Sultan d’Ispahan,” written in 1887 and never performed.

Dec 23, 2024 | georgetowner.com | Richard Selden

At age 70, Ricky Skaggs is a spring chicken compared to Willie Nelson, who’s 91. Though Willie (pardon the first-name basis) has never played the Birchmere — he did a 1995 show at Wolf Trap instead — Skaggs has appeared many times at “America’s Legendary Music Hall.” On Friday, Jan. 3, and Saturday, Jan. 4, he’ll be back, joined by his band of genuinely young bluegrass whizzes, Kentucky Thunder.

Dec 23, 2024 | georgetowner.com | Richard Selden

Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade, the city’s New Year’s Day version of Mardi Gras, will step off at 17th and Market Streets at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, looping to the right at City Hall to head south along Broad Street, more or less with abandon. Organized into string bands and flamboyantly costumed “brigades,” some 10,000 adults and children participate in the annual all-day spectacle.