You may not remember Tom Lehrer, who performed his own satirical songs, very successfully, in the 1960s – but his offerings included a song satirizing the whole idea of National Brotherhood Week. The last stanza began: “It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise.” The foil for this frivolity was a genuine decades-long effort to […]
For many of us, this little prayer was the first – and possibly the only – one we ever learned: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. There were several lessons contained therein: […]
Have you ever asked yourself “Who Am I?” Probably not – or at least, not very often. Identity is one of the few things we are all pretty sure of. We may wonder WHAT we are, and WHY we are – but WHO we are is a question that hardly troubles us. After all, we […]
Here is a riddle for you: Everybody knows that Albert Einstein was one of the world’s greatest physicists – but nobody knows his last words, even though they were clearly heard by somebody who was with him at the time. How can this be? (The other person present was an intelligent adult.) Speaking of words […]
Out of a party game called “Truth or Dare” (which is still being played), there somehow evolved, way back in the 1940s, a very popular radio program called Truth or Consequences. This weekly feature was heard nationwide. I myself – then a child – listened to it regularly. The program used various gimmicks to increase […]
Assuming I understand it correctly – a very big assumption – if anything certain can be derived from the intellectual achievements of the past century, it is that nothing is certain. In fact, there is even a “Law of Uncertainty” – which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but which is apparently now accepted by […]
We have all been informed that it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. But that image troubles me. As a proverb and metaphor, of course, it is very powerful. Another one, “The Tipping Point,” conveys almost the same idea, but less negatively. The image now is of a balance, by which everything […]
In 1953, a woman named Polly Adler published a book which became a best seller and also gave new dimensions to two familiar words, “house” and “home.” Her book was called A House Is Not a Home, and, in this context, the “House” was a New York house of prostitution, which she had owned and […]
You are a stranger on the road, passing within sight of a dwelling. The people who live there invite you to come and share their meal. It doesn’t sound that remarkable. It might almost be Biblical. And in a way, it was – because this happened in the Land of the Bible. But it was […]
To most of us, Civilization is where it’s at and – as a general rule – any alternative is less preferable. The alternatives can be categorized either favorably under the heading of “Nature,” or unfavorable ones beneath the label of “Wilderness” – or “Desert.” From childhood I have known that the ancient Hebrews, after escaping […]
Two women greatly affected my life in the world of business: my mother and my wife. From age five to seven, I lived in my mother’s hometown of Toronto, Canada. There, her father and several other of my relatives were in what was called the “second-hand” business. Their merchandise was mostly used goods. They had […]
Crossing oceans has been a feature of my family background. My mother’s parents, a poor English couple, started the trend by moving from London to Toronto, where my mother was born (one of five) and grew up as Amelia Adler (quite a good-looking girl, if the photos are any indication). Ocean travel was then still […]
Freedom of Speech – and of the Press – are in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But of course, they are not defined in detail. That has been a task for the following two centuries – and the debating goes on. A major complication has been the development of new media, which are […]
Our lives are largely determined by encounters, whether in arranged meetings, or by the whims of chance. I wrote this little poem many years ago, when I was still unhappily single: All my life I’ll cherishSo much I can’t forget –The things that didn’t happen,And the girls I never met. There have, of course, been […]
One of the many wise old sayings which my father was fond of quoting was itself about age and wisdom, and indeed reeks of both of them. It says: Experience keeps a dear school – but fools will learn in no other. And what exactly does keeping a dear school mean? Here, “dear” means the […]
How big is it? Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it matters a lot more than it should. I’m sorry to say that in most cases, bigger means better. That’s why bigger houses, cars, and diamonds generally cost more. But there has lately been a trend in the opposite direction. Now that so many devices are […]
One piece of medical advice we’re often given is to “listen to your body.” It is also one of the most confusing and misleading. My body does not know who I am or where I live. It was designed by a proverbial “blind watchmaker” named Evolution over the course of untold eons. My body has […]
One way to learn about people is to find out what they are most proud of. If it’s not their own achievements, it will sometimes be those of their children or grandchildren. And just what counts as an “achievement?” For better or worse, it is often a matter of excelling over others, in which case, […]
One of the ways we celebrate important occasions is by eating. Festivals, whether religious or secular, are times for joyful observance of something worth remembering, and tend to be annual, since the regular solar cycle makes a good periodic reminder. I grew up in a Jewish family, but also in a Christian community, and each […]
In our universe, things that are up are generally positive, and the reverse is true of the downs. Heaven is somewhere above, together with everything that’s at the top of the charts (except your temperature and blood pressure). But I’m sorry to say that “our universe” reaches no farther than our little planet and its […]
Judging from the number of words in our language containing “press” in some form (at least 545), it appears that we’re all, very often, experiencing some form of pressure, from the air pressure in our tires to the blood being pressed through our circulatory systems. To start at the bottom, there’s “Depression,” which nearly always […]
Some people are said to be born leaders. But we don’t hear so much about born followers. However, born or not, the followers are the vast majority of any population, and they need good leaders – although, in a time of crisis, a leader may emerge who will lead everybody in the wrong direction. The […]
As most of us learned in school, the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. And a point is something which has a location but has no dimensions. Many of us also learned that light travels in straight lines. Amazing as it seems (to me, anyway) light has a certain speed, which […]
As we all know only too well, nothing lasts forever, especially the good things. I somehow find this illustrated by a supposedly true anecdote, about W.S. Gilbert, of “Gilbert and Sullivan.” He is said to have been at a concert, seated next to a gushing woman, of the kind he hated. One of the names […]
Most of us are familiar with the proverbs telling us that we live and learn, and that we’re never too old to learn. Nevertheless, that particular activity is primarily associated with the young, and indeed it begins with the very young, perhaps going back to the moment of birth, if not before. In those early […]
Most of us have two of them. We once had four, but Evolution specified that we would do better with just two and relegated the others to transportation, making a big distinction between hands and feet. These upper extremities are fringed with independently movable digits called fingers, but one, called a “thumb” on each hand […]
Until recently, the only way for most people to get to most places was on foot. Horses were too expensive, and trains, planes, and cars didn’t yet exist. “Shanks’ Pony” was a jocular way of referring to walking. But with the development of modern street-traffic, among the automobiles, trucks, buses, motorcycles, and regular bicycles, there […]
In the days when I was leading a local crusade to ban the noisiest kind of so-called leaf-blowers (a cause which, at least here in California, has only recently found fruition in actions by the State), I had an unfortunate run-in with a gardener, who was using one of these devices on the property next […]
Our society is obsessed with popularity contests of various kinds. There are competitions for being the most beautiful, making the most money, and having a best-selling product. But the most prevalent type of such contention is called an “election,” which, in effect, means being chosen by the most people, usually for an office or position […]
Getting lost is nowadays becoming increasingly harder to do – even if you want to – because we now have electronic devices of all kinds to guide and direct us, and make it easier for other people to find us. Not surprisingly, the people who were most likely to get lost in times past were […]
A counsellor I once had habitually used the concept of enfolding in your arms metaphorically, to mean “accept” and “deal with.” If I told her “I’m having trouble,” she might say “Embrace trouble!” But she never said, “Hug trouble!” You’ll have a hard job finding the word “hug” either in the Bible or in Shakespeare – […]
Most traffic signals have lights in red and green, signifying “Stop,” and “Go.” And there’s also usually another one, variously called yellow, amber, or even orange, which supposedly means “Caution” – although some drivers apparently interpret it as saying “Hurry! There’s still time!” Of course, you can’t stop and go at the same time. But […]
“Sir, you are a liar, a thief, and a coward!” “What! You called him ‘Sir’?” “Why not? Courtesy costs nothing.” That old joke can probably be blamed for my first encounter with the concept of courtesy – a word which has many shades of meaning, involving politeness, respect, consideration, propriety, and making people feel relaxed […]
No doubt you have often received invitations which say at the bottom “R.S.V.P.” – and you probably know that this means that you are being asked to respond. I’m not a great linguist, but I know enough French to be able to tell you that these letters stand for “Répondez S’il Vous Plaît.” The first […]
Just about the last regular job I ever had, before my current career as a self-employed creator of illustrated epigrams, was way back in the 1960s, in connection with a “floating university” – an actual institution of learning on board a converted cruise ship (a program still functioning, on various vessels, under the name of […]
The U.S. Marines have as their “Hymn” a song which at first celebrates their history, going back to the early 19th Century, with a reference to American military force being used (for the first time abroad) to subdue the piratical behavior of certain North African governments known collectively as the Barbary States (“The shores of […]
There’s a saying in the Real Estate business that, in considering the value of a property, only three things really matter: Location, Location, and Location. But, if that means where a place actually is, many factors enter into play – such as what it’s near, and not near. We are often reminded that “it’s a […]
Some people (it is often said) have all the luck – implying that not much is left over for the rest of us. The British, with their love of ironical humor, have an expression wishing someone “the best of British luck,” suggesting that the recipient of the wish has not much chance. But, in the […]
I have been asked to write something about Jealousy. For me, this was a difficult but challenging assignment, because I have rarely felt jealous of anybody else, and, as far as I know, I myself have not generated that emotion in other people – although I suppose it isn’t the kind of feeling you readily […]
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!” My mother would often quote those lines – although, ironically, I am not sure now just which “native land” she could have been referring to. The lines are part of a much longer poem by Sir […]