History
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Dear Talia, Oliver, Ella, Lola, Luke, Caleb, and Asher: Here's a picture of your great grandmother, Anne Krull Goss (1912-2009) with her siblings. Anne is the pretty young blonde woman, second from the left. She's the oldest. The picture was taken during the World War II years, '42 or '43. On great grandma's right is…
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I've been reading about the death of Alexander at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. It's all new to me, and much of it is fascinating, especially about cultural matters, but there's also page after page of difficult-to-retain accounts of warfare and of particular battles. Here's an example of the kind of material that takes…
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The universal condiment in the ancient world, a staple of Roman, Greek and Byzantine cuisines, was garum. Garum was manufactured in enormous quantities and shipped in special amphorae all over the civilized, colonized universe. What is garum? It's a fishy sauce that any sensible modern apple-pie-loving American would avoid at all costs. Trust me, you would…
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The ol' dreamatorium was working overtime last night. The protagonist, who was and who was not me was a mature, bearded gentleman, a prosperous landowner in what seemed like the antebellum South. He, or he/I, was the target of a plot by a younger cousin in league with a scuzzy lawyer to have him/me declared…
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Donald Trump has taken credit for the rise in the stock market. "The stock market hit yet another record high yesterday. There is great confidence in the moves that my Administration is making.” If he is responsible for the rise, then surely he is also responsible for the fall. It can be no accident, and can…
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Dear grandchildren: I once asked my father, your great-grandfather Emanuel Pearlman, where in the Ukraine we originated. He said that he was told that it was a village called (and here he used a very deep guttural initial consonant) Xhosantin-gebernya – an answer that left me not much enlightened. If he knew more — and…
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In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, it is reported that the woman who is eventually revealed to be Estella's mother was married "over the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man." Dickens offers no explanation for "over the broomstick," apparently assuming that it was a concept with which his readers were familiar. There is in…
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One of the most joyful of nursery rhymes, and a personal favorite, is this brilliant piece of poetry: Crosspatch, Draw the latch. …
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I asked some friends how they understood Senator Marco Rubio's very blunt statement that "Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers." I received a variety of answers. My linguistically conservative friends asserted that we obviously need grammarians more than either philosophers or welders, because Rubio doesn't respect the difference between…