Here’s a thing I’ve noticed. It has to do with accents, but the theory can be applied to a lot of other things, as well: The farther away we are from a place, the more everything seems to look and sound the same. I’ll give you an example, because so far you have no idea what […]
May 25, 2014
The twenty-fifth of May is meaningful, because a lot of memorable things in history took place on that date. There’s nothing unusual about that, of course. Important situations can develop quickly, and without warning. This fact is well-documented on many television stations, which provide a continual stream of breaking news, even if that news is […]
May 17, 2011
I hesitate to tamper with an already-fragile economy, but let’s face it: We have enough gadgets that chop vegetables. A new one appears about every six months, and the infomercials always make it sound as though we’ve all been subsisting on potato chips and jelly beans because no one can manage to cut up a […]
March 20, 2011
I used to tie a bath towel around my neck and pretend to be Superman. I would climb onto the kitchen table and jump, then run around on the floor with outstretched arms, flying off to save the world. We didn’t have a movie camera, so I’m left with only dim memories of how ridiculous […]
November 10, 2010
In a recent post, shoreacres wrote about her father and the long-ago influence he had on her views about rights, responsibilities, and what it means to be a citizen in a democratic society. Her wonderful essay got me thinking, again, about my own father. For many years, I had been unfair in my memories of […]
June 30, 2010
I have never been to war. I don’t know how to write about it, other than to say I hope my son never goes. My thoughts and feelings are simplistic in most areas, and especially so when it comes to this topic. I can’t get much past the level of a young child who asks […]
August 1, 2014
90