Tag archives: epigrams

The Way it Was
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   October 3, 2023

In the now-almost-forgotten days when many of us regularly watched an early evening network newscast, Walter Cronkite, who was then recognized as the Dean of American Newsmen (there were very few newswomen), used to sign off his report with the words, “And that’s the way it is…” To me, and perhaps to many other members […]

Falling in Like
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   September 12, 2023

Yes, let’s leave Love out of it. The word is too loaded. Saying “Like” is, in most cases, much easier and safer, and probably more accurate. There are too many songs about Love, and too few about Like. But aren’t we really talking about Friendship? True, there aren’t many songs about that either. But it […]

Mental Health
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   September 5, 2023

What is Mind? No matter. What is Matter? Never mind. There’s nothing original about that. But I have been asked to write about “Mental Health,” and it was the first matter that came to my mind. Actually, mental health is harder to contemplate than mental illness. Psychiatrists and other specialists no doubt have their own […]

Home Groan
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   August 29, 2023

Despite all the sentimental claptrap about “Home,” still in circulation, there are many good reasons why that word is virtually meaningless, if not actually offensive, to many people, in various situations. I personally can remember a time (in the prosperous years after World War II, when the “American Empire” seemed to be about to replace […]

Desire
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   August 22, 2023

The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, was first performed in 1947, and has become a classic. But how many of the people who hear about it for the first time know what that title means? For one thing, streetcars (“trolleys”), which used to be the major urban provider of public transportation, are […]

Brotherhood
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   August 8, 2023

You may not remember Tom Lehrer, who performed his own satirical songs, very successfully, in the 1960s – but his offerings included a song satirizing the whole idea of National Brotherhood Week. The last stanza began:  “It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise.” The foil for this frivolity was a genuine decades-long effort to […]

Before I Wake
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   August 1, 2023

For many of us, this little prayer was the first – and possibly the only – one we ever learned: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. There were several lessons contained therein: […]

The Crowded Self
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   July 25, 2023

Have you ever asked yourself “Who Am I?” Probably not – or at least, not very often. Identity is one of the few things we are all pretty sure of. We may wonder WHAT we are, and WHY we are – but WHO we are is a question that hardly troubles us. After all, we […]

My Business Career
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   May 30, 2023

Two women greatly affected my life in the world of business: my mother and my wife. From age five to seven, I lived in my mother’s hometown of Toronto, Canada. There, her father and several other of my relatives were in what was called the “second-hand” business. Their merchandise was mostly used goods. They had […]

Big Moves
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   May 23, 2023

Crossing oceans has been a feature of my family background. My mother’s parents, a poor English couple, started the trend by moving from London to Toronto, where my mother was born (one of five) and grew up as Amelia Adler (quite a good-looking girl, if the photos are any indication). Ocean travel was then still […]

Unfree Speech
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   May 16, 2023

Freedom of Speech – and of the Press – are in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But of course, they are not defined in detail. That has been a task for the following two centuries – and the debating goes on. A major complication has been the development of new media, which are […]

Getting Together
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   May 9, 2023

Our lives are largely determined by encounters, whether in arranged meetings, or by the whims of chance. I wrote this little poem many years ago, when I was still unhappily single: All my life I’ll cherishSo much I can’t forget –The things that didn’t happen,And the girls I never met. There have, of course, been […]

Been There Done That
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   May 2, 2023

One of the many wise old sayings which my father was fond of quoting was itself about age and wisdom, and indeed reeks of both of them. It says:  Experience keeps a dear school – but fools will learn in no other. And what exactly does keeping a dear school mean? Here, “dear” means the […]

Size and Sighs
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   April 25, 2023

How big is it? Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it matters a lot more than it should. I’m sorry to say that in most cases, bigger means better. That’s why bigger houses, cars, and diamonds generally cost more. But there has lately been a trend in the opposite direction. Now that so many devices are […]

Body Talk
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   April 18, 2023

One piece of medical advice we’re often given is to “listen to your body.” It is also one of the most confusing and misleading. My body does not know who I am or where I live. It was designed by a proverbial “blind watchmaker” named Evolution over the course of untold eons. My body has […]

Pride
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   April 11, 2023

One way to learn about people is to find out what they are most proud of. If it’s not their own achievements, it will sometimes be those of their children or grandchildren. And just what counts as an “achievement?” For better or worse, it is often a matter of excelling over others, in which case, […]

Eaters and Eaten
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   April 4, 2023

One of the ways we celebrate important occasions is by eating. Festivals, whether religious or secular, are times for joyful observance of something worth remembering, and tend to be annual, since the regular solar cycle makes a good periodic reminder.  I grew up in a Jewish family, but also in a Christian community, and each […]

Pressure
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   March 21, 2023

Judging from the number of words in our language containing “press” in some form (at least 545), it appears that we’re all, very often, experiencing some form of pressure, from the air pressure in our tires to the blood being pressed through our circulatory systems. To start at the bottom, there’s “Depression,” which nearly always […]

Follow
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   March 14, 2023

Some people are said to be born leaders. But we don’t hear so much about born followers. However, born or not, the followers are the vast majority of any population, and they need good leaders – although, in a time of crisis, a leader may emerge who will lead everybody in the wrong direction. The […]

Give It to Me Straight
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   March 7, 2023

As most of us learned in school, the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. And a point is something which has a location but has no dimensions. Many of us also learned that light travels in straight lines. Amazing as it seems (to me, anyway) light has a certain speed, which […]