Where You Live
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   June 20, 2023

In 1953, a woman named Polly Adler published a book which became a best seller and also gave new dimensions to two familiar words, “house” and “home.” Her book was called A House Is Not a Home, and, in this context, the “House” was a New York house of prostitution, which she had owned and […]

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 […]

 

Recently Trending

More from Montecito

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 […]

Advertisement
  • Woman holding phone

    Support the
    Santa Barbara non-profit transforming global healthcare through telehealth technology

  • 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, […]

    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 […]

    Read more...

    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 […]

    Destruction
    By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   February 28, 2023

    As we all know only too well, nothing lasts forever, especially the good things. I somehow find this illustrated by a supposedly true anecdote, about W.S. Gilbert, of “Gilbert and Sullivan.” He is said to have been at a concert, seated next to a gushing woman, of the kind he hated. One of the names […]

    Concerning Learning
    By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   February 21, 2023

    Most of us are familiar with the proverbs telling us that we live and learn, and that we’re never too old to learn. Nevertheless, that particular activity is primarily associated with the young, and indeed it begins with the very young, perhaps going back to the moment of birth, if not before. In those early […]

    All Hands
    By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   February 14, 2023

    Most of us have two of them. We once had four, but Evolution specified that we would do better with just two and relegated the others to transportation, making a big distinction between hands and feet. These upper extremities are fringed with independently movable digits called fingers, but one, called a “thumb” on each hand […]

    How To Be a Pedestrian
    By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   February 7, 2023

    Until recently, the only way for most people to get to most places was on foot. Horses were too expensive, and trains, planes, and cars didn’t yet exist. “Shanks’ Pony” was a jocular way of referring to walking. But with the development of modern street-traffic, among the automobiles, trucks, buses, motorcycles, and regular bicycles, there […]

    Advertisement