Tag archives: word play
Many countries – and many families – have some tradition of territory, or property, which used to be theirs, and is now someone else’s. The memory, even though it may relate to events far in the past, is sometimes still charged with bitterness. A classic example is the region known as Alsace-Lorraine, sandwiched between France […]
There are good reasons for giving names to hurricanes and tropical storms. It helps the weather-watchers avoid confusion in referring to them. But it was a bad idea to use the first names of people, because, if you happen to have that name – and especially if the event turns out to be a bad […]
One of the things I remember from my days as a summer-camp counselor was a skit in one of our campfire entertainments, in which someone runs onto the “stage” shouting “The Viper! The Viper is coming!” Then someone else comes screaming, “The Viper! Oh, No! It’s The Viper!” followed by a third, echoing “The Viper! […]
About a century ago, a man named Apsley Cherry-Garrard wrote a book called The Worst Journey In The World. (The title was suggested by his friend George Bernard Shaw.) It was a true account of the author’s participation in the second Scott expedition to Antarctica, in which its leader, Robert Falcon Scott, lost his life, […]
My favorite Famous Last Words seem special to me not only because of the speaker (a President of the United States) but also because of the circumstances in which they were uttered. Here we might pause, and ask ourselves if we can recall the last words of ANY US President, whether or not still President. […]
It has always seemed puzzling to me that in some situations we have great respect for the dead, while in others we couldn’t care less. In general, the determining factor seems to be time. The more recently dead you are, the more you can expect to be handled with care, and referred to with some […]
Here and there in your life, you may have come across the expression “A Message to Garcia.” It’s one of those phrases useful in such a wide variety of situations that the original meaning has largely been forgotten. Those words became a cultural icon after appearing as the title of an essay, published in 1899, […]
Maybe you’ve seen this bit of sagacity somewhere before: “YYUR YYUB ICUR YY 4ME” The “translation” is: “Too wise you are. Too wise you be. I see you are too wise for me.” Very clever – but so what? For one thing, if true wisdom is really all it’s cracked up to be, how can […]
One of the most hallowed of all Hollywood clichés is that of being saved at the last moment. This was the basic appeal of such ongoing series of narrow escapes, as The Perils of Pauline, or the weekly serials which many of us fondly remember, in which the hero was left in some precarious position, […]
Life seems full of the ritualized events we call “ceremonies.” Some people like them, others try to be elsewhere. I myself generally avoid weddings and funerals. They are so much alike – flowers, prayers, processions – sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. This can be embarrassing if you forget which one you’re at and, […]
As an aesthetic object, the human ear hasn’t yet received its due. Poems and songs celebrating eyes, lips, even chins and noses, abound. Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages of Man, even depicted a lover “with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” But nobody writes ballads, woeful or otherwise, to anybody’s ear. Can it […]
In 1972 – about half our lifetimes ago – Dorothy and I traveled to Australia, our first of many visits, but the only one by sea. The Australian Aborigines call their distant past the “Dream-Time.” On this journey, I carried my own enduring dream. Since school-days, I’d retained in my mind a map showing the […]
