This story might be a miniature version of a braided essay, there being at least three major strands to it. First, let us establish what I mean by Bobcat. I refer not to the 30-odd pound wild feline, but instead to the small-by-comparison piece of heavy equipment. Like this guy, which picture I found on […]
Category: Musings about Language and Life
My version of “what’s it all about anyway?”
The proof is in the reading
Imagine my chagrin. I am leafing through a collection of my essays, which I plan to publish, looking casually for typos and points of style and grammar. Suddenly, an error leaps off the page and grabs me by the brain stem. I have written “it’s” where I should have written “its”! This egregious bit of […]
The great peanut butter paradox
The other day I read a meme that made me truly LOL (laugh out loud) as opposed to SALTS (smiled a little, then stopped). This meme said that if you ever wonder just how out of touch with reality you are, then try measuring out an actual serving size of peanut butter. I laughed because […]
Will you by my Muse?
I always did love Greek mythology, and as a creative writer I find myself especially attracted to the Muses. These nine sisters are daughters of Zeus (who isn’t?) and the Titan goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Note that the “m” is silent, and the final “e” is pronounced as a separate syllable. Neh-MAH-sih-ne. Knowing the rules […]
The lemon pies and the dusting
Whenever I iron an item of clothing, which is exactly and only when I feel like it, I think about Cookie. No, not cookies. I think of a girl from my high school class who was nicknamed Cookie and who became a homecoming princess in our senior year. One time before class started, I was […]
Of Shakespeare and King James
Ok, I give. Not that I have a vote anymore, but I concede that if we are going to continue teaching Shakespeare’s plays to high school kids, we need to provide them with modern English translations. Please understand, though, that this capitulation pierces my heart. I used to get a huge buzz whenever a high […]
Shades of Beatrix Potter
I pause suddenly while watering my flowers and ponder whether I have become my mother. But no, the situation has gone way beyond that: I have become Peter Rabbit’s mother. I am at this moment tending to pansies and alyssum that I have planted in a defunct wheelbarrow, and I am wearing a straw hat […]
Forces of nature
(Blogger’s note: this one is from me! More installments from my Dad are coming soon.) Yesterday was the summer solstice; that is, the days are now getting shorter in the northern hemisphere. (Somehow, myopic little troll that I am, I cannot take seriously the concept that elsewhere in the world it is the beginning of […]
The fine art of doing nothing
I have no delusions of monarchy, I promise, but I do relate to a conversation that the young Elizabeth II may or may not have had early in her reign. This conversation was dramatized on the series “The Crown,” and went as follows: Elizabeth’s grandmother was telling her about the trials and challenges of ruling […]
Subsistence in the time of the zombies
I admit it: I spend far too much time thinking about zombies. Here’s what happened: I was working on building a row of garden boxes near the property line fence, when I was stopped by a sudden mental image, one that I confess was a little bit unsettling in its clarity and detail. I imagined […]