Not long ago I was in the company of a small group, meeting for the first time to discuss “fringe science.” They hadn’t defined “fringe” in relation to science yet, so to get the ball rolling they went around the room, each person (there were five or six) giving his or her favorite example of …
This is off topic, but as you’ll see in a few days, not wildly so as we’ll be running into Pindar again soon. I’d like to introduce Gilbert, the old hippy dog with an honorary graduate degree in Philosophy. He is a student of Aristotle, and ancient Greek history. He is a senior member of …
Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate.Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered.Roofs are in ruin, towers destroyed,Broken the barred gate, rime on the plaster, walls gape, torn up, destroyed,consumed by age. Earth-grip holdsthe proud builders, departed, long lost,and the hard grasp of the grave, until a hundred generationsof people have passed. Often this wall outlasted, hoary …
The first typewriter patent was given to Christopher Lathom Sholes in 1868. However, it was an expensive acquisition for a business and required training and expertise to be a viable asset to an office or company. So, necessity being the mother of invention, sometime in the 1880,s The American Typewriter Company produced the Typewriter No. …
When evening has arrived, I return home, and go into my study. … For hours together, the miseries of life no longer annoy me; I forget every vexation; I do not fear poverty; for I have altogether transferred myself to those with whom I hold converse. –Machiavelli I’ve turned the page on a new week …
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS was in his “library,” which was his “drawing-room,” and was also his “picture gallery,” and likewise his “workshop.” Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy, and was apparently very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man now…
“It’s and old house, and old houses are gentle thing; this one particularly so, built to beauty in 1812. It stands high on a knoll far back from the road, a stream between. The far side faces east into pine-covered mountains, soft green against the sky.”
Books are so much more interesting than the internet. Lunchtime, so I’m working ahead on the Daily Readings and on December 1st I ran into Pindar. That’s not quite right. I bumped into Thomas Gray’s Pindaric Ode, “The Progress of Posey,” which isn’t quite the same as running into Pindar himself, but close. So I …
For twelve years–beginning 1948–Clementine Paddleford traveled around the country collecting material for her now classic book, How America Eats (1960). Each set of recipes she gathered from farm wives, diner cooks, restaurant chefs, or just the lady in town famous for her caramels is prefaced by an introduction to the person and place.
My mind and most of my heart are with the young, and with the strange new world that is being born in agony. But something of my heart stays yonder, for in the year of my singing about a time and a country that I loved, I note, without regret, that I have become an old-timer myself!
