From the monthly archives:

May 2010

KENNY HOFFMAN: Vietnam Hero

May 31, 2010

It would be dishonest and overly-dramatic for me to say that I think of Kenny Hoffman every day.  The truth is that it takes something like a Memorial Day or a college alumni/ae mailing for me to remember.  But there was a time when I remembered him daily.  It was shortly after July 25, 1968, [...]

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BOOKSTORE SIGNING: a writer’s lament

May 30, 2010

My author friend, Nicole Galland,  included a great little video on Facebook yesterday. The video she posted is a hilarious folk song by mystery writer Parnell Hall who sings Signing in the Waldenbooks. If you’ve ever published anything and then set out to sell it with book signings in small town bookstores, you will resonate [...]

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ANESTHESIA: loss of sensation or consciousness

May 29, 2010

Yesterday I had a medical procedure which required anesthesia.  It is a repeatable offense, so I’m used to it by now.  But each time it occurs I find myself thinking about the sensation of it…or, to be honest, the lack of sensation. An invention of the nineteenth century, anesthesia is the creation of artificial unconsciousness.  [...]

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BINDLESTIFFS: hobos

May 28, 2010

Like every disaster in history, the Great Depression produced sidebar experiences which were colorful and memorable.   One which I will never forget is that of the men who used to arrive at our back door seeking a meal.   It was a decade or more after the primary years of the Depression, but the results were [...]

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MELANGE: a mixture

May 27, 2010

I chose the word melange from my “waiting list” today for the wrong reason.  Oh, it is a good word, and one which should be included in someone’s lexicon.   It means a mixture of things.  The example Dictionary.com uses is “a melange of antennae on top of a building.” That’s pretty descriptive and gives you [...]

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CHIMERICAL: imaginary, unreal, elusive

May 26, 2010

An article in the New York Times yesterday (May 25) referred to the chimerical constitution of the British government.  The point of the article was to reveal that, in reality, there is no constitution for the British government; it is imaginary.  However, Parliament continues to function as if a real constitution was in existence. The [...]

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OMERTÀ: code of silence

May 25, 2010

This one is for writers!  Mario Puzo has used the term omertà already as a title for a novel, but that’s no reason not to know about the word and to use it in other pieces.  It’s too good a word to get sidebarred because of his third book in his Mafia trilogy. Omertà is [...]

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PRIVACY: a basic human need?

May 24, 2010

“Remarkably enough…there remains to this day considerable confusion concerning the nature of the interest which the right to privacy is designed to protect….”(Edward J. Bloustein) I had to sort through  the resources for this piece to eliminate the paranoid ramblings of those who believe the CIA is planting chips in newborn babies and aliens are [...]

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ZOO: a place to practice one’s existence as a fellow traveler on this planet

May 23, 2010

Yesterday was a long, long day.  Up before dawn to get to the Roger Williams Zoo before 7:15 a.m.  Our purpose: to meet the buses (3 of them) to take us to the Bronx Zoo in New York City for a day’s excursion.    The other end of the story was 9:00 p.m. when the same [...]

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PERQUISITE: a benefit given in addition to a contracted wage

May 22, 2010

We know the word mostly by its shortened, Americanized version, perks. But its origin is the word perquisite, meaning a benefit received above and beyond one’s salary or wage.  In political slang, another word for it is lulu.  That use is based upon a bastardization of the French word lieu, which means “instead of.“  When [...]

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