As a Disney fan, I know all about Richard and Robert Sherman, the Academy Award-winning songwriters with credits like Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book. I’ve read all about their lives in the autobiographical Walt’s Time (Camphor Tree Publishers, 1998). In this book they relate how they longed to follow in the footsteps of their
The coronavirus pandemic is causing a serious reexamination of our lives, including our priorities. At times the need for medical supplies has become so acute we’ve been forced to deal with some very uncomfortable questions. For example, if the curve isn’t flattened and the hospitals are overwhelmed, who gets priority treatment? Should it be the
It’s not unusual to regret one’s actions; in my life, it’s a semi-regular occurrence. But how many people actually come to regret their inventions? You might be surprised. One invention we’d all be better off without is the atomic bomb. Two of the principal figures in its creation were Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Recently I found an article with the provocative title of “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” by Julio Vincent Gambuto (https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0). I realize English is a flexible language with many manufactured words and slang terms, but I’ve never heard of this before. What is gaslighting? It’s actually a relatively old expression. Wikipedia defines it as “a
One part of our language we all take for granted is numbers, beginning with Sesame Street’s Count von Count. Numbers play a critical role in virtually every aspect of our civilization. But what if there were no words for numbers in English? Believe it or not, some languages do lack words for numbers. When you
We can’t ignore this one. This is thought to be Shakespeare’s birthday, although no one know for sure. The Writer’s Almanac for today (April 23, 2020, https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac?) has an excellent summary of his life, better than anything I could write, so I’m just going to copy it here. “It’s the assumed birthday of William Shakespeare (books by this
There is a term for everything. For example, that little plastic sleeve on the end of your shoelace is an aglet, probably invented by Harvey Kennedy in 1790 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglet). So yesterday when I was reading about astronomy, I found a word that piqued my interest — gnomon. According to Miriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gnomon), it’s “an object that
Are you getting tired of staring at your walls and need something to cheer you up? Me, too. So I did an Internet search for ‘silver-lining sayings’ and stumbled upon Wise Old Sayings: Words To Live By (https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/silver-lining-quotes/). Here are the quotes I especially like from the list of 30 that popped up — “Every
What have I been doing at home the past four weeks? I realized I’ve written 19 short stories over the past several years, seven of which have been published on the Bewildering Stories website (http://bewilderingstories.com/). So I put them all together into a book that’s now available on Amazon.com. The book comes in two flavors
April 14, 1828 saw publication of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. According to The Writer’s Almanac of April 14, 2020 (https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac? ) — “Webster put together the dictionary because he wanted Americans to have a national identity that wasn’t based on the language and ideas of England. And the problem wasn’t just
