This week’s prompt credits John Billington with the dubious historical honor of being the defendant in the first jury trial held in the American colonies. It didn’t end well for him
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This week’s prompt credits John Billington with the dubious historical honor of being the defendant in the first jury trial held in the American colonies. It didn’t end well for him
Read More
This ole house is afraid of thunder This ole house is afraid of storms This ole house just groans and trembles When the night wind flings its arms Lightning (and thunder) figure in two of my earliest memories — one that formed the foundation of my respect for the tough nature of my grandmother; the…
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Until I was a teenager, I thought a “Sampler” was a box of chocolates. Then my grandmother died and many of her items found their way to us in California. Included in this trove was a sampler — a framed textile and another framed object which I will describe below. A “sampler”, loosely defined, is…
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All the males in my family changed their names. That is, everyone had a nickname and none of us liked the ones we were given. So: My father, known as Buddy, until he went to college, became John, which matched his birth certificate.. In the next generation, Burr (short for Burgess, his middle name) became…
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How and why my [grand]mother was cooking on a ranch in Montana in the summer of 1918 is one of the stories I shall never know...
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My second advantage , I am certain, was that they had concluded I had gone completely crazy ...
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Example 1: High School, 1968. Trigonometry test. I walked by the desk of a girl I liked – not romantically, but a nice friend. I looked at her test sheet, and quietly said words to the effect: “problem 12 – divide by two.” She did, thereby earning 5 more points. My rationale: She obviously understood…
Read More
The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is reputed to have written words to the effect that “This letter would have been shorter if I’d had more time to write it.” Perhaps if he’d had a reliable watch, a relatively modern invention, what short time he had wouldn’t have gotten away from him. For years,…
Read More
The problem is not the assembly. It’s the document purporting to be assembly instructions that makes the process maddening. Originally written in an obscure language, it’s been clumsily translated into English, rendering it completely opaque. The consumer vents her frustration by throwing the directions away and pursuing an intuitive approach, based on a no-doubt misleading…
Read More
Scouting was a big part of my younger years. I enjoyed the camaraderie with other Scouts, had a great time camping, and learned a number of skills that I carry to this day.
Read More
What was the first British song to be number one on the American charts? Hint: It predates the Beatles by two years.
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Mean, malicious, or mendacious? Just plain fun? To advance a personal agenda? What qualifies? Some rumors serve a noble end. In an unnamed presidential administration, White House staffers discovered to their dismay that only truly important people were invited to the annual Christas party, with invitees limited to high level, close to the Oval Office…
Read More
Two children’s books — one from the middle of the 19th Century, the other from the end of the 20th, have a special place in my heart, for different reasons. One was a gift to my grandmother from her mother; the other I read to my daughter almost a hundred years later. My favorite children’s…
Read More
My first serious hobby was philately . . . I didn't know it as "philately" until Tom Lehrer rhymed it with Lady Chatterley.
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A picture, a mirror, and a copper plate attest to my grandparents’ anniversary. They were married 101 years ago June 2. I know this because I have a picture of my grandmother in her wedding dress. There’s a mirror behind her, now hanging in our bedroom, although a bit worse for wear. The copper plate,…
Read More
Guns were always around our family while I was growing up. My father, having grown up in Wyoming, would go hunting rabbits and snakes in his youth, and when his father died, several rifles and shotguns came with the estate. My grandfather had a rifle from his service in WW I that he’d outfitted with…
Read More
… indirectly, of course. In 1872, the Northern Pacific Railroad located its terminus at the “Crossing of the Missouri” in the Dakota Territory which later became the state of North Dakota. The Railroad, as it and other railroads were wont to do, named the town “Edwinton” after its Chief Civil Engineer, Edwin Ferry Johnson. Retrospect…
Read More
My pet peeves center on grammar and word-usage. I feel uncomfortable about them, yet I revel in them. Many years ago I was chastened when criticized for laughing at someone’s mispronunciation of a particular word. I’ve long since forgotten the word, but it was pointed out that those who mispronounce words often do so because…
Read More
Misspelled words always jump off the page for me. How lucky I am. Spelling problems are primarily peculiar to English language, based on its strength of incorporating foreign words. My Russian instructors said that spelling bees would make no sense for Russian speakers, but that indicating where the accent goes on a particular word is…
Read More
Buttons and badges are a way of preserving memories. They may not be the most important memories, for who knows why we kept them. But memories they contain, and through these buttons, and otherwise useless objects, we revisit them. It helps us remember and reconstruct our past, although in a discontinuous and incomplete manner. For…
Read More
You would think that with the name Mr. Ed, I wouldn’t have much to say about shoes. What is there to say about U-shaped pieces of iron nailed to my feet? There’s not a lot of variety in horseshoes, insofar as I can tell. But having grown up in the shadow of Cal Poly –…
Read More
Calling it a garden gives it (or me) far more credit than is due. Rather, we have a few spots bordering a swimming pool where my lazy inner farmer takes over. When we moved into the house in 1992, the eastern edge of the back yard had overgrown rose bushes that hadn’t been pruned for…
Read More
For as long as I remember, I have always been blasé about fame. Or other people’s fame. Not possessing it myself, who knows how I’d feel, although we read often enough that the truly famous pay grievously for their fame in the loss of privacy. Others, I know, can think of nothing more exhilarating than…
Read More
I am the second born of a set of identical twins. Does our birth order – he (Twin A) older, I (Twin B) younger – make a difference? Did it ever? If I recall, it made a difference with Cain and Abel. And my father always said that the ancient Romans considered the second born…
Read More
Close calls can be close only because of a chance occurrence, thought, or action. Like the so-called “Butterfly Effect” they often yield their own legacy, and in my father’s case, raise questions in my mind as to luck, responsibility, and personal values. When I was a young teen, my father related, as best I…
Read More
John Billington in the Family Tree
Prompted By Jury Duty
/ Stories
This week’s prompt credits John Billington with the dubious historical honor of being the defendant in the first jury trial held in the American colonies. It didn’t end well for him
Read More
Thunder and Lightning
Prompted By Lightning
/ Stories
This ole house is afraid of thunder This ole house is afraid of storms This ole house just groans and trembles When the night wind flings its arms Lightning (and thunder) figure in two of my earliest memories — one that formed the foundation of my respect for the tough nature of my grandmother; the…
Read More
But generations yet unborn …
Prompted By What I Own That's Older Than I Am
/ Stories
Until I was a teenager, I thought a “Sampler” was a box of chocolates. Then my grandmother died and many of her items found their way to us in California. Included in this trove was a sampler — a framed textile and another framed object which I will describe below. A “sampler”, loosely defined, is…
Read More
None of Us Liked Our Nicknames
Prompted By What's in a Name
/ Stories
All the males in my family changed their names. That is, everyone had a nickname and none of us liked the ones we were given. So: My father, known as Buddy, until he went to college, became John, which matched his birth certificate.. In the next generation, Burr (short for Burgess, his middle name) became…
Read More
What My Father Wrote for Me
Prompted By What My Father Told Me
/ Stories
How and why my [grand]mother was cooking on a ranch in Montana in the summer of 1918 is one of the stories I shall never know...
Read More
Prague, 2003
Prompted By Lost in Translation
/ Stories
My second advantage , I am certain, was that they had concluded I had gone completely crazy ...
Read More
Four Morally Ambiguous Cheating Vignettes
Prompted By Cheating
/ Stories
Example 1: High School, 1968. Trigonometry test. I walked by the desk of a girl I liked – not romantically, but a nice friend. I looked at her test sheet, and quietly said words to the effect: “problem 12 – divide by two.” She did, thereby earning 5 more points. My rationale: She obviously understood…
Read More
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Prompted By Time
/ Stories
The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is reputed to have written words to the effect that “This letter would have been shorter if I’d had more time to write it.” Perhaps if he’d had a reliable watch, a relatively modern invention, what short time he had wouldn’t have gotten away from him. For years,…
Read More
Assembly Isn’t the Problem
Prompted By Some Assembly Required
/ Stories
The problem is not the assembly. It’s the document purporting to be assembly instructions that makes the process maddening. Originally written in an obscure language, it’s been clumsily translated into English, rendering it completely opaque. The consumer vents her frustration by throwing the directions away and pursuing an intuitive approach, based on a no-doubt misleading…
Read More
Be Prepared
Prompted By Scouting
/ Stories
Scouting was a big part of my younger years. I enjoyed the camaraderie with other Scouts, had a great time camping, and learned a number of skills that I carry to this day.
Read More
Stranger from the British Isles
Prompted By One Song That Moves Me
/ Stories
What was the first British song to be number one on the American charts? Hint: It predates the Beatles by two years.
Read More
From the Horse’s Mouth
Prompted By Gossip
/ Stories
Mean, malicious, or mendacious? Just plain fun? To advance a personal agenda? What qualifies? Some rumors serve a noble end. In an unnamed presidential administration, White House staffers discovered to their dismay that only truly important people were invited to the annual Christas party, with invitees limited to high level, close to the Oval Office…
Read More
About Amphibians and Small People
Prompted By Children's Books
/ Stories
Two children’s books — one from the middle of the 19th Century, the other from the end of the 20th, have a special place in my heart, for different reasons. One was a gift to my grandmother from her mother; the other I read to my daughter almost a hundred years later. My favorite children’s…
Read More
Of Stamps and Notes
Prompted By Hobbies
/ Stories
My first serious hobby was philately . . . I didn't know it as "philately" until Tom Lehrer rhymed it with Lady Chatterley.
Read More
A picture, a mirror, and a copper plate
Prompted By Anniversaries
/ Stories
A picture, a mirror, and a copper plate attest to my grandparents’ anniversary. They were married 101 years ago June 2. I know this because I have a picture of my grandmother in her wedding dress. There’s a mirror behind her, now hanging in our bedroom, although a bit worse for wear. The copper plate,…
Read More
The Rifleman
Prompted By Guns Then and Now
/ Stories
Guns were always around our family while I was growing up. My father, having grown up in Wyoming, would go hunting rabbits and snakes in his youth, and when his father died, several rifles and shotguns came with the estate. My grandfather had a rifle from his service in WW I that he’d outfitted with…
Read More
We Named Our Dog After the Iron Chancellor
Prompted By Naming Pets
/ Stories
… indirectly, of course. In 1872, the Northern Pacific Railroad located its terminus at the “Crossing of the Missouri” in the Dakota Territory which later became the state of North Dakota. The Railroad, as it and other railroads were wont to do, named the town “Edwinton” after its Chief Civil Engineer, Edwin Ferry Johnson. Retrospect…
Read More
Peevish Pets
Prompted By Pet Peeves
/ Stories
My pet peeves center on grammar and word-usage. I feel uncomfortable about them, yet I revel in them. Many years ago I was chastened when criticized for laughing at someone’s mispronunciation of a particular word. I’ve long since forgotten the word, but it was pointed out that those who mispronounce words often do so because…
Read More
Peculiar to the English Language
Prompted By Spelling
/ Stories
Misspelled words always jump off the page for me. How lucky I am. Spelling problems are primarily peculiar to English language, based on its strength of incorporating foreign words. My Russian instructors said that spelling bees would make no sense for Russian speakers, but that indicating where the accent goes on a particular word is…
Read More
Badges and Buttons in the Drawers and on the Shelves of an Addled Mind
Prompted By Buttons, Pins, and Badges
/ Stories
Buttons and badges are a way of preserving memories. They may not be the most important memories, for who knows why we kept them. But memories they contain, and through these buttons, and otherwise useless objects, we revisit them. It helps us remember and reconstruct our past, although in a discontinuous and incomplete manner. For…
Read More
More than Horseshoes
Prompted By Shoes
/ Stories
You would think that with the name Mr. Ed, I wouldn’t have much to say about shoes. What is there to say about U-shaped pieces of iron nailed to my feet? There’s not a lot of variety in horseshoes, insofar as I can tell. But having grown up in the shadow of Cal Poly –…
Read More
Not So Beautiful, But Oh So Tasty
Prompted By The Garden
/ Stories
Calling it a garden gives it (or me) far more credit than is due. Rather, we have a few spots bordering a swimming pool where my lazy inner farmer takes over. When we moved into the house in 1992, the eastern edge of the back yard had overgrown rose bushes that hadn’t been pruned for…
Read More
What Do We Take From Meeting the Famous?
Prompted By Fame
/ Stories
For as long as I remember, I have always been blasé about fame. Or other people’s fame. Not possessing it myself, who knows how I’d feel, although we read often enough that the truly famous pay grievously for their fame in the loss of privacy. Others, I know, can think of nothing more exhilarating than…
Read More
Who Took the First Breath? Does Nine Minutes Matter?
Prompted By Birth Order
/ Stories
I am the second born of a set of identical twins. Does our birth order – he (Twin A) older, I (Twin B) younger – make a difference? Did it ever? If I recall, it made a difference with Cain and Abel. And my father always said that the ancient Romans considered the second born…
Read More
Close analysis of a close call
Prompted By Close Calls
/ Stories
Close calls can be close only because of a chance occurrence, thought, or action. Like the so-called “Butterfly Effect” they often yield their own legacy, and in my father’s case, raise questions in my mind as to luck, responsibility, and personal values. When I was a young teen, my father related, as best I…
Read More