Sign up for our daily newsletter of the top stories in Courier country
Thank you for signing up to The Courier daily newsletter
Something went wrong - please try again later. Sign Up
With Burns Night on January 25,
Michael Alexander hears about the remarkable night in 1834 when a surgeon robbed Robert Burns’ grave and stole his skull in the name of science.
While the poetry of Robert Burns is mainly moving, melancholic and thoughtful, studies of his works suggest that the spectre of death was never far from his thoughts with references to epitaphs, reflections and musings on the dead.
You need a break, right?
I know I do. We’re cooped up and locked down, and when we turn on the TV news, it’s politics and the pandemic all the time, nonstop.
So here’s something a little different, and I offer it up as a short vacation from your cares and woes. It’s about two stars from different constellations who met here in Los Angeles, crossroads of artistic invention, and struck up a bond.
John Densmore, who grew up in L.A. and played drums for the Doors, has a new book out called “The Seekers.” It’s a collection of stories and musings about Densmore’s musical heroes, people who sought and found truth and reason in art, and also found what the drummer calls “the thread that tugs on our humanity.”