Wisdom
-
I would not want to be reincarnated as a turtle. Not at all. Should it happen that I were to be reincarnated, I would prefer to return as one of those great sea birds — the Wandering Albatross or the Great Frigatebird or the Northern Fulmar — that cruise for hundreds of miles over the…
-
You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the boy. (Traditional) The more you hold a baby in the first year, the less you have to hold it later on. (Dr. Catherine Lodyjenski, pediatrician.) Don't skate to where the puck is; skate to where it's going to…
-
Young 'uns, I don't know that you entirely grasp the glamor and mystery of maturity (which in some jaded circles is called "old age.") Let me tell you, the golden years are just chockablock full of sensual romance of a kind that you might not now appreciate. Just the other day, for example, we were…
-
It's been six years since Dr. Metablog (aka Vivian de St. Vrain, aka The Modern Nostradamus) issued a set of predictions. His last collection, from 2016, earned a score of 100% correct, when every single one of his dazzling glimpses into futurity proved to be exactly accurate. An astonishing performance!! Which is why The Modern…
-
A few weeks ago, I found myself absentmindedly working in the perennial garden. I had wandered nearby and noted some weeds that needed emergency extirpation. I had therefore arrived without my usual trine of implements — the dandelion puller, the hand shovel, and the Felco #2. Too lazy to fetch them, I began to tend…
-
Among my circle of friends, it is a shameful thing to be called "house proud." It's a term to be avoided, even shunned. It's competitive and flaunts the wrong values. Conspicuous consumption. Vanity. "I own a bigger house than you, and therefore I'm a better person than you." "House pride" is a very badddd feeling…
-
It may not be immediately obvious or dramatic, but the large tree in the middle of the picture is a white birch. It towers over the red maple and the beeches that are to its left. White birches do not often attain such size, nor are they long-lived, at least in our part of the…
-
I don't know much about economics and never did –it's an area of knowledge that has lived up to its reputation as a dismal, arcane science. It's not only economics — I don't even understand money, which has become more ethereal and symbolic during the course of my lifetime. In my first real job, at…
-
Dear T, O, E, L, L, C, and A: A friend told us that when she entered Pomona College in 1961, it was the custom that all the newly arriving women ("co-eds" they were called in those dark days) were "measured" by the sophomore men. She said that the women were lined up and their…
-
I have the hardest time remembering the number of stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Is it 300 million or 300 billion? Either number is so far out of my ken, so far beyond my ability to grasp, that it won't stick in my head. Moreover, it doesn't seem to make much…