When I was studying to be a California school teacher – an incredibly long time ago (actually in the 1950s), one of the required courses was about Learning. The only important thing I seem to have retained from those lessons was something which may seem pretty obvious – the physical comfort of the student. The […]
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 […]
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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, […]
The only reason I studied Latin more intensively than most of my English schoolfellows was that, in those days, (thankfully no longer) one of the requirements for a student wishing to be admitted to either of the two prestigious British Universities – Oxford or Cambridge – was an ability to pass an examination in Latin. […]
No doubt you’ve heard the proverb, “It’s the early bird that catches the worm.” Those words of wisdom would have a different meaning to you, depending on whether you were a bird or a worm. Not being either, I can nevertheless vouch for the fact that it’s not always easy to get up early, especially […]
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 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 […]
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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 […]
There are people (you may be one of them) who believe that there must always be a reason. By their standards, God has his own reasons for everything that happens, even if they are not obvious to us. It is comforting to believe in such a reasonable God. Alfred Lord Tennyson, who had been Poet […]
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 […]
