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03 Jan 2013

In her memoirs, Catherine the Great wrote that people at court, intent on furthering their interests, impressing others, and staying ahead of, or at least in, the action, did so by talking a lot. They posed and plotted and whispered and held forth, all the...

10 Dec 2012

Rudolph attended a two hour lecture on holiday travel. He is familiar with the subject so he found his attention wandering, and the speaker, while knowledgeable about the subject, was not knowledgeable about speaking to others, and was given to repetition of material that was...

05 Dec 2012

So, the Tension Season is here. The emotional surges of holidays create lovely bursts of good will and well-being, but they can also lift some ordinary distresses into orbit. We have barely dug out the wrapping paper and already several people have presented Difficult Situations...

07 Nov 2012

Voting is a happy event all by itself, but voting in the post-hurricane environment of New York this year was an exceptionally exhilarating experience. Many of our usual voting locations (schools) have been serving other functions (homeless shelters), so a lot of voters were compressed into...

29 Oct 2012

Halloween approaches and scary things appear, not the least of which is scary holiday language. By scary I mean language that intends to frighten. Altho The Language Grinch is not opposed to holiday customs, and, in fact, goes forth in fine witch regalia on a faux...

22 Oct 2012

The phrase “October’s bright blue weather” is used in one my favorite children’s books, The Hundred Dresses, by Eleanor Estes. This is a book about a poor little girl named Wanda who tries to fit in with her cruel and bullying classmates by telling them...