From the monthly archives:

February 2010

RHINOCEROS to LION KING

February 18, 2010

In 1969 I experienced a major change in theatrical mind-set when I attended a performance of Ianesco’s Rhinoceros at a theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. It was my first exposure to the genre of drama which explored the absurd as a medium of expression. My theatrical repertoire was shaken and enhanced at the same time. [...]

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DRUG: to have dragged something across the floor

February 17, 2010

It must be a huge, complex enterprise to try to learn American English as a second language. We, for whom American English is our natural tongue, take for granted the complexities of the language, overlooking the myriad of exceptions and mis-conceptions which lace themselves through everyday speech. I stumbled across this thought yesterday when I [...]

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AMERICA'S CUP: back page news?

February 16, 2010

I may well be the only person in Rhode Island who doesn’t know how to sail. It wasn’t part of my childhood, and prior to my mid-adulthood I didn’t know a single person who talked about sailing. Looking back on it, I suspect there were some friends who sailed, but, as I have said, they [...]

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VIRTUOUS IGNORANCE: another way of saying "anti-intellectual"

February 15, 2010

David Akin, in a recent posting on his On the Hill blog, referred to Jonathan Raban’s book review of Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue in New York Review of Books. (Isn’t that just about the most hyperlinked sentence ever?) In that blog postinghe identified the words virtuous ignorance, a phrase coming to mean the intentional [...]

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SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY

February 14, 2010

The origin of this holiday is murky, but its contemporary observance is clear. This is a day when love is celebrated. While it has become a very commercial observance, it remains a day on which we take a breath, step away from difficult issues and reach out and touch those we love. I’m one of [...]

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BATHYMETRY: plumbing the depths to get to the bottom

February 13, 2010

I stumbled onto this word recently and found it interesting. The idea of mapping the bottom of a lake the size of one of the Great Lakes or the bottom of the ocean caught my imagination, so I investigated it further. There is amazing technology available these days to do this with great accuracy. My [...]

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OVERABUNDANCE: too much!

February 12, 2010

We wanted to say “Thank You” to our hosts. Thanks for hospitality is something for which there is no real easy way to show gratitude. People have disrupted their lives, opened their privacy to invasion, and above all…have worked hard to make sure our comfort needs have been met. This was an exceptionally good experience [...]

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FANATIC: a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause.

February 11, 2010

Yes, it is true that the word fan is derived from shortening the word fanatic. I can attest to the connect between the two words. More than 24,000 crazed, otherwise healthy people packed themselves into the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University last night to watch Syracuse sneak away with a basketball victory over The University [...]

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PRE-DAWN: that welcome period before the sun rises and the world awakens

February 10, 2010

Several years ago we made our first visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the middle of the night we climbed into a car with young friends and drove to Socoro, where the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is located. If you’ve never been there, it should be on your “bucket list.” The secret is [...]

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MAELSTROM: a restless, disordered, or tumultuous state of affairs

February 9, 2010

Searching for the right word to describe a situation is not always an easy task. A dictionary, thesaurus, or online resource can be of help if I know where I’m going and have a vague idea of the concept I’m trying to describe. But by far the richest resource for discovering words like maelstrom is [...]

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