Today I’ve been going through my mother’s papers (you may recall she died in April) and I found an interesting poem, the kind she liked to tape to the refrigerator door: Handwriting on the Wall A weary mother returned from the store, Lugging groceries through the kitchen door. Awaiting her arrival was her 8-year-old
I have some of my best ideas while running. (Something to do with more oxygen to the brain, I suppose.) This weekend I remembered a story from one of my first marathons, although this time it was in the aftermath of a race. I was in the 1984 Honolulu Marathon. Two nights before, there was
If you really want to learn about the 4th of July, I would recommend “Fun Facts for July 4” at the Washington Post website. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/03/fun-facts-for-july-4/ For example, three of the first five U.S. presidents died on July 4. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, the 50th anniversary of the country’s birth. (Adams’ last words were
This is an essay I wrote several years ago, and now is as good a time as any to drag it out. Have you ever heard of me? No? Actually, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’m not very famous and few people do know who I am. So far in my life I just haven’t
Yesterday I received an email from The Planetary Society about Asteroid Day. Beginning at the beginning, The Planetary Society is an organization for people interested in anything involving space — “We create. We educate. We advocate.” One of their latest activities has been to support the LightSail experiment — using the solar wind for
I’ve been very fortunate in my life to have been able to do quite a bit of foreign travel. So much of history never makes it into your average history book, and you don’t appreciate this until you actually visit some of the places you read about to see for yourself. Foreign travel also exposes
From The Writer’s Almanac, June 23, 2015: “The typewriter was patented on this date in 1868, by Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sholes was a newspaperman, and he was driven to invention out of necessity: His printers went on strike. He and two colleagues set out to invent a machine to print letters on
I think there is a technical term for everything. I’m sure you’re familiar with this symbol: ¶ If (unlike me) you’ve ever wondered what it is, it’s a pilcrow and it has a long history. According to Wikipedia, it can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one
Cavalry was still the glamorous branch of the army during the American Civil War. In the first half of this tragic conflict, the most dashing, most charismatic — and most successful — cavalry commanders were on the Confederate side. You probably have already heard of General James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart, the eyes and ears
We as a species don’t like mysteries. We’re always trying to explain what we see, even when we don’t have enough information to understand. For example, have you ever seen an elephant skull? An elephant doesn’t have a bone between its eyes; there’s just one huge hole in the upper middle of the skull where