Mark Twain once said of fellow author Rudyard Kipling, “Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest.” There’s great wisdom in that. Like Twain, I, too, am pretty handy with things that can’t be known. Why do I focus on what can’t be ...
It’s the last weekend before Christmas, which has me thinking — I’m thinking that it’s almost time to round up a bunch of thoughtful gifts to give. The best part is I don’t even have to put on pants. I can recline here in my easy chair, tap a few keys, scroll through a few ...
What is it about detail people? If I tell you I’ll get back to you later, that’s precisely when you’ll hear back from me — later. I don’t see how I can be any more exact than that. Yet some persnickety people insist on knowing the time, down to the minute. My late wife — and the word “late” applies a couple of different ways — was gifted a watch commemorating something that her family called “Terry Time.” For Terry, time was relative. She’d get there when she got there. The face of the watch features Mr. Relativity himself, Albert Einstein. And the ...
I don’t mean to brag, but I drove somewhere without my GPS. And arrived where I meant to be. Without getting lost once. Seriously. This would be ho-hum news a few decades ago. Then technology began erasing our memories. Not erasing, exactly. More like replacing. When I was a teen, I carried a Rolodex of telephone numbers in my head. Then I gained a smartphone and lost my smarts. Since the phone remembers all the phone numbers I need, I can’t recall more than a couple of digits on my own. The GPS did in our brains a similar disservice. In the old days, if I didn’t ...
For many of us, tears accompany this joyful season of giving thanks and giving gifts. We’re missing hearts that used to beat alongside ours. I used to think that it would be a blessing that if once, just once, I wouldn’t be told that I had arranged the Thanksgiving table the wrong way ...
Whenever life has me stumped and I don’t know what to do next, I sit back and ponder, “What would HE do?” He, of course, refers to that bear whose head is stuffed with fluff, Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh Bear himself once said, “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and other people are looking at it.” Generally, I doze off in the middle of contemplating that bit of wisdom, and by the time I stir awake, things don’t look quite as ...
