Isn’t it remarkable that the vast majority of all the games we play involving physical activity are focused upon an object, usually round, which we call a “ball.” It can be small as a marble, or large as a bowling ball, light as a ping-pong ball, or heavy as a “medicine ball,” a sphere, as […]
One of my favorite proverbs says, “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.” I take this to mean that, if you’re in an unfortunate position (like the poor lamb who’s just had his protective fleece removed), the chances are that things will now get a little better for you, rather than worse (so the […]
Recently Trending
More from Montecito
One of the questions children are most commonly asked is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It was once mainly boys who were asked, because all good little girls, people assumed, would naturally want to be wives and mothers. Being a shy little boy, I myself didn’t often get asked, but […]
When Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” he was thinking of the difficulty of maintaining barriers. Nature builds much more successful ones, in the form of mountain ranges, oceans, and deserts, which need very little maintenance. Nevertheless, humanity sees every barrier as a challenge. Still, we need borders, to separate […]
I’m sure you’ve come across the expression, “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” It makes a lot of sense. It sums up the whole idea of neatness and order. You can’t put things away properly, if you don’t know where they go. And you can’t find anything very easily, unless you know […]
I’m sure you’ve come across the expression, “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” It makes a lot of sense. It sums up the whole idea of neatness and order. You can’t put things away properly, if you don’t know where they go. And you can’t find anything very easily, unless you know […]
My closest experience to living a dream come true was being hired to teach on board a cruise ship converted into a “floating university,” and sailing with it twice around the world. I had long fantasized that, one day, travel and education would be combined in ways like this – but to become part of […]
We fall in love. So why don’t we fall in hate? But we all know that “falling” is much more complicated than that. There is, for instance, a big difference between a “fallen soldier,” and a “fallen woman.” Slipping and Falling too is acknowledged to be a major cause of death and injury, especially among […]
It was Edward Gibbon – himself one of the world’s great historians – who said that History was little more than a record of “the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” I don’t know about crimes, but you might put my own academic career, which included two degrees in History, among my personal follies and […]
Read more...
One of the most famous pieces of literature in the English language is about a talking bird. No, it’s not a parrot or a mynah – and I don’t mean Edward Lear’s accomplished Owl who eloped with a Pussy-Cat, and could sing and play the guitar while operating a sailboat. The particular bird I am […]
One of the most famous pieces of literature in the English language is about a talking bird. No, it’s not a parrot or a mynah – and I don’t mean Edward Lear’s accomplished Owl who eloped with a Pussy-Cat, and could sing and play the guitar while operating a sailboat. The particular bird I am […]
You have to wear clothes, at least enough to cover your private parts. It’s generally the law, in most civilized places. In fact, such laws almost define civilization. “Naked savages” populate the lowest level of the social pyramid. But the garb of those on the upper levels, especially (for some reason) the female of the […]
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, […]
