One idea that keeps cropping up in literature is the notion that our land – whichever land it happens to be – is at least in some way as holy as those far-off Biblical places we have been taught about since childhood.  Here are two fine examples: First, we have the mystical William Blake, whose […]

On April 4 1940, during an early stage of World War II, which American journalists dubbed “The Phoney War,” because not much actual fighting was going on, prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who had led Britain into the war, addressed his Conservative Party with a speech in which he used a common metaphor in a rather […]

I went through much of my life without being aware of this simple fact: One major problem faced by people all over the world is that of getting bitten in the night. And among the chief culprits, besides insects, or even vampires, are ordinary humans. And the humans are ourselves. Biting and grinding our teeth […]

Here’s a quiz question for you: What one famous piece of literature celebrates (1) a musical feline? (2) an athletic bovine? (3) an amused canine? (4) some amorous tableware? Stumped? Then I’ll have to remind you: Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,The Cow jumped over the Moon.The little Dog laughed to see such […]

What is peace? Two millennia ago, the Roman historian Tacitus quoted an enemy leader as saying of the Romans, “They make a desert and call it peace.” But total destruction is not the preferred method of peacemaking, and various alternatives continue to be tried – one of which is mediation, whose success depends in part […]

No doubt you’ve heard of the usher who said, “May I sew you to your sheets?” And you probably know that such slips of the tongue are called Spoonerisms. William Archibald Spooner, the honoree of this eponym, lived much of his long life (1844-1930) at Oxford University, where he was for many years a loved […]

My mother had a favorite joke on the subject of superstition: “Well, I’m not superstitious,” she‘d say. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I would never sleep thirteen in a bed.” Nevertheless, it’s a fact that for several people to share a bed was once much more common in our culture than it has since […]

Despite FDR’s famous dictum, that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” we do have plenty of other things to be afraid of. But what matters is how we deal with them. The ones really worth fearing are those we can’t prevent and can’t adequately insure against.  Crossing a street is a […]

In 1972 – about half our lifetimes ago – Dorothy and I traveled to Australia, our first of many visits, but the only one by sea. The Australian Aborigines call their distant past the “Dream-Time.” On this journey, I carried my own enduring dream. Since school-days, I’d retained in my mind a map showing the […]

I don’t want to alarm you, but this is going to be about alarms, and ways of giving them. Let’s start with our culture’s most famous false alarm: The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” The moral is clear: If you make false alarms, people may not believe it when you have a real one.  But notice […]