Tag archives: Brilliant Thoughts

In the London school I attended during my teenage years, the most shameful act any student could commit was one that incurred personal punishment by the Headmaster. This befell me only once, when I was still fairly new to the British Education system, after spending my childhood on this side of the Atlantic. It was […]

I used to call myself a sort of minor-league celebrity. Different people, I have found, have different standards for what they consider fame or notoriety. To some, in the old days of print media, it was a matter of how widely you or your photographed image  appeared – nationally or internationally – in newspapers, magazines, […]

Judging by the unsolicited emails I receive, there seems to be quite an industry based on putting people in contact with others they knew years ago but have completely lost touch with – particularly people they may have known at school.  The sentimental interest in one’s own irrecoverable past has a very pretty name: NOSTALGIA. […]

In case you’ve wondered, our word “royal” stems from “Roi,” the French word for “King.” I was born in 1933, and in my childhood, the British Royal Family consisted of a King and Queen and two little Princesses. But there were, and are, many other things and people called Royal, including the Royal Air Force, […]

You may know that one of the first characters to appear, in what is generally considered to be Shakespeare’s greatest play, is the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father. He has not been dead for long, and Hamlet is still fuming at the callousness of his mother for having remarried (and to his Father’s brother!) so soon […]

If you’ve ever played Monopoly – you know there is something almost addictive about it. As is the case with life itself, it combines a certain amount of skill with a great deal of chance. The skill derives from decisions you make about the acquisition and development of real estate and utilities. The luck depends […]

In the time between the invention of printing and the advent of the Internet, many types of periodicals have come and gone. In our own era, we have seen the birth and demise of magazines of news, humor, commentary, housekeeping, and many other more specialized subjects. A key element in the survival or failure of […]

In the evolution of our language, “good enough for government work,” is an expression which has come to mean almost exactly the opposite of what it once did. It began as a way of describing work of high quality, but somehow came to refer to what was just barely adequate. It was probably American in […]

If anybody asks you, “What Is the Southernmost point of Africa?” you would probably say “The Cape of Good Hope.” And you probably identify that location with the City of Cape Town, South Africa. But you would be a little off. Cape Town is located at a point which the earliest Portuguese explorers called the […]

How do things end? I made a whole career out of writing very short “Thoughts.” But where does a thought end? For years, I’d been jotting down various ideas. They could be a new form of literature. But every such form must have some structure, and a crucial dimension would be its length. Looking through […]

In our society, the word “Rest,” and most of its connotations, have a generally positive resonance. Even when it comes to the matter of being dead, it has a somewhat soothing aura. But watch your Latin grammar and spelling here. The expression “Requiescat in Pace” means “may he – or she – rest in peace.” […]

Among the songs that Frank Sinatra made famous was one called “The Way You Look Tonight.” I have always thought that such an expression was sickeningly sentimental. Personal attraction, besides being the essence of species perpetuation, is a highly solipsistic matter. Of course it relates to gender. But it also hinges upon all five of […]

As you probably know, the words in our language have a tendency to change over time; in spelling, in pronunciation, or even in meaning. But there is at least one case in which the word has come to mean the exact opposite of what it once did. To make matters even more confusing, both meanings […]

When I was in my teens and still living in England, both that country and the U.S. still had what was called a “Draft.” It applied only to men within a certain age range. But there were stiff legal penalties for failing to register. You might be exempted for medical reasons, but for healthy young […]

Most of us these days, by the time we may be considered grown up, have lived in more than one place – sometimes in several different places, even in different countries. In a way, this can give a different meaning to what we call “Home” – despite the once popular notion that there is no […]

It shouldn’t be necessary to do this, but I feel the time has come when somebody needs to say something against grief and grieving. Lately these topics have been getting a very positive consideration in the relevant journals. The word has gone out far and wide from highly qualified experts that, at least in certain […]

Allow me to share with you some thoughts and memories about a place called Dover, a town on the south coast of England. As you may know, it’s the closest land to France, across the English Channel which, at that geographical point, has the name of the Strait of Dover. The Channel between the two […]

Until the era of electronic communication, getting word of happenings in other places (to say nothing of instantaneous moving pictures in color) used to be a long, slow process. News could travel on land only as fast as the fastest runner or rider. A man living in California might get a letter from his brother, […]

One of my favorite stories is about an antiques expert who, one day, while driving down a country road, stops at junky-looking store. Before going in, he notices, in the entrance-way, a cat drinking from a saucer. The cat doesn’t interest him – but what does is the saucer, which, he can tell immediately is […]