{"id":1597,"date":"2007-07-24T06:46:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T11:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/good-night-sweet-baba\/"},"modified":"2007-07-24T06:46:04","modified_gmt":"2007-07-24T11:46:04","slug":"good-night-sweet-baba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/good-night-sweet-baba","title":{"rendered":"Good Night, Sweet Baba"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, died yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The deposed king took up residence in a villa on Via Cassia, a main thoroughfare leading north out of Rome. He played chess and took walks. He was sometimes seen sitting in a caf\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9 sipping a cappuccino or browsing through titles in a second-hand bookstore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can only imagine the baristas and bookstore clerks muttering to one another: “Psst! It’s that guy again! The one who keeps saying he’s the king of the Afghans!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, died yesterday: The deposed king took up residence in a villa on Via Cassia, a main thoroughfare leading north out of Rome. He played chess and took walks. He was sometimes seen sitting in a caf\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9 sipping a cappuccino or browsing through titles in a second-hand bookstore. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Good Night, Sweet Baba”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-pL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9480,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-157-dan-cafaro","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":0},"title":"Episode 157 – Dan Cafaro","author":"Gil","date":"February 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #157: Dan Cafaro \"The reality of this marketplace is that true professional writers aren't being recognized.\" Dan Cafaro, publisher of Atticus Books and the Atticus Review, joins the show to talk about indy publishing, building a writers' community, taking on the diversity challenge, making the transition from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"dan-cafaro1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dan-cafaro1-330x440.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10001,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-194-bob-eckstein","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":1},"title":"Episode 194 – Bob Eckstein","author":"Gil","date":"November 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #194: Bob Eckstein \"This book has three things I love: bookstores, painting and name-dropping.\" Artist, writer, humorist and cartoonist Bob Eckstein joins the show to talk about his wonderful new book, Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"9780553459272","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5720,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-5-2010","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 5, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's kick off with a whole bunch of articles and posts about books and bookstores! (then back to the other craziness for which I'm renowned) Do today's book editors suck? Pretty much, yeah. Is \"the book\" in crisis? I just re-re-re-read a 3,000-year-old poem of 15,000+ lines, so I'm not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1823,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bookseller-bookmaker-whatever","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":3},"title":"Bookseller, bookmaker: whatever!","author":"Gil","date":"December 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The most amazing thing to me about this news item isn't that Michael Jackson's face is covered with bandages, nor even that he has custody of three children. No, what amazes me is that there's a Barnes & Noble in Las Vegas. Seriously, I've been to Vegas 4-5 times now,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6960,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-importance-of-being-out","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":4},"title":"Podcast: The Importance of Being Out","author":"Gil","date":"March 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories - season 3 episode 7 - The Importance of Being Out It's time for the first double-episode of the season! \"To me, there are two types of YA: one is fiction written with the kid in mind, and the other is where the characters happen to be that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B002SQJL9U","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6596,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-musicalized-heat-filled-dream-of-possessing-his-beloved","url_meta":{"origin":1597,"position":5},"title":"The musicalized, heat-filled dream of possessing his beloved","author":"Gil","date":"September 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I went to Homecoming at St. John's College this weekend. I got my master's degree there, but I consider it my alma mater much more than I do my undergrad institution. I had a good time; it wasn't as transformative as the Piraeus seminar I attended this past May\/June, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}