As an Air Force veteran, I always like to keep up on aviation milestones, and September 8, 1920, was when transcontinental airmail service began. From The Writer’s Almanac: The Wright Brothers had made their first flight in 1903, but it took a while for them to convince the U.S. government that airplanes were a technology worth
I have always been reasonably athletic, but in kind of an awkward way. I could make teams, and usually play, but I was never good enough to get any real recognition. Then I found a sport which seems to fit my personality — running. It’s honest — you get out exactly what you put in, and
LIGHTNING STRIKES AGAIN! The nice folks at Bewildering Stories have again published something I wrote. “One Last Chance” — A man falls in love with a woman, but she doesn’t return his affection. Then he learns she is desperately ill. http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue635/last_chance.html (I had to rewrite this three times before they’d accept it.)
Tomorrow we celebrate Labor Day. This is a holiday with a generic sound, unlike Memorial Day, or President’s Day, where the purpose is clearer from the title. So how did we get here? Labor Day was actually first celebrated on September 5th, 1882 in New York City. According to The Writer’s Almanac — “Organizers were
I was perusing my copy of An Uncommon History of Common Things and I stumbled upon the entry for honeymoons. As usual for these topics, it has quite a history. The term goes back to 1546, when “getting away from it all” had an entirely different connotation. In ancient Norse, a hjunottsmanathr was when a
Walt [Disney] assigned Robert and Richard Sherman to write the songs for Mary Poppins. They returned in two weeks with sketchy versions of five songs that could fit into the script, including “Feed the Birds” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Walt liked them, especially “Feed the Birds.” “That song’ll replace Brahams’ Lullaby,” he declared, and he cried every
What is that Chinese curse about “May you live in interesting times”? It does take time to establish yourself in a new field, especially something like writing. You think you have a good idea; the problem is getting the rest of the world to agree with you. It takes time and a lot of work.
Today, as I’m putting the finishing touches on this year’s marathon training, I’m sharing one of my running stories. This is true, and was published in Runner’s World magazine in the December 1981 issue. The county had just finished widening the principal highway near my house. It also put in a bicycle path,
Thus starts another year of substitute teaching. This should be my ninth if I can still count. Last year I decided to slow down and I only taught in one district. I’m doing the same this year. The weather is too nice and there’s a lot of yardwork to catch up on. And yet… I’ve
I should know better than to discuss mathematics, but I thought this was going to be easy. I have always thought that algebra originated in the Middle East, algebra being an Arabic-derived word (al-gabr). Recently I was listening to a Science Friday podcast from July 2nd (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/scifri201507031p.mp3) that corroborated that viewpoint. According to the podcast, the