November 2006
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about my violent nightmares. And now I shall unclasp a secret book and write about real-life violence in my life — to be exact, about a murder and an attempted murder. In the middle-1970s, I exchanged jobs, homes and automobiles with a faculty member of a university in England. …
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Life has certainly changed since I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. Here are some of the key inventions that have made life better for me and for all sentient Americans. 1) the retractable vacuum cleaner cord. Truly one heck of an improvement. Just step on the little lever, and the cord comes…
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On November 22, 1963, we were living in a small third-floor walkup on Irving Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was in the afternoon. Some high schools students (Cambridge High and Latin was just around the corner) were walking by. One of them shouted to another, "Kennedy’s been shot. In Dallas." I immediately thought "this is…
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On September 6, 1664, Sam Pepys purchased for his young wife a pair of gloves trimmed with yellow ribbon. At 20 shillings, he knew that he overpaid but he was not at all sorry, because Doll, the 'Change woman from whom he made the purchase was "so pretty, that, God forgive me! I could not think…
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Once upon a time I had a foolproof system for clearing a bedroom of mosquitoes. Close the door, turn on a light, stick the left arm out of the bedclothes, keep track of the mosquitoes by their whine, and then, as soon as one lands on the exposed skin, smack it with the right hand. …
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Sexnews from the mosquitosphere: "if larvae of Aedes stimulans are raised at 75F, about half become males and half become females. But if they are raised at 84F, only 9F higher, they all become almost complete females." Almost complete females? What's the meaning of "almost complete?" Either they're male, or they're female. Doesn't the good…
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I've now re-read Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men (1946), a novel that I hadn't looked at since the early 1950s. Once again memory has played its tricks. My fifty-year-old afterimage does not correspond to reality. The book that I thought I remembered focused on Willie Stark (Huey Long) — his ascent to power,…
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Yesterday, we dug out our grand old American flag and flew it from the holder that I had improvised after 9/11. We flew it to celebrate two great changes: a) the Democratic triumph in Tuesday's election, which restored a bit of our faith in representative government, and b) the end of the arrogant reign of…
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Regular readers (and even stray internet pilgrims) know that Dr. M. has composed a series of entries called What We Read in the Fifties, in which he's revisited books that were noteworthy or notorious during the days of his youth. It's been a rewarding exercise, at least for him. Some of the books have been…
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In a recent post, I casually mentioned that William Shakespeare was not fond of dogs and I offered as evidence the fact that the two villainous sisters in King Lear are called "dog-hearted daughters." Not convincing, says one of my readers. Is that so? Well, let me offer further evidence of dog-heartedness. Shakespeare's first true…