It turns out that it's all in my head. The ringing in my ears, that is.For several years now, I've been hearing a persistent tone, 3,950 Hz to be precise, the highest B on a piano keyboard. Tinnitus is usually caused by damage to the ears from loud noises or music. Maybe I listened to Pink Floyd ... Continue reading
First impressions
February 16, 2008 By 4 Comments
When Jane Austen's father submitted her first novel to a publisher, she had named it "First Impressions." The publisher rejected it, but she continued to write — thankfully — and some seventeen years later found a publisher for the book we now know as Pride and Prejudice.The excellent BBC ... Continue reading
Time for change?
January 9, 2008 By 3 Comments
Can a presidential candidate get through a speech without promising Change? ... Change to what or from what or instead of what - all that goes unspecified. ... We the People are simply expected to react favorably to any mention of Change. Call it the political version of a Pavlovian response. The ... Continue reading
It was like that
December 20, 2007 By 3 Comments
On May 29, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay fought through ice and snow, exhaustion and bitter cold, to stand together on the summit of Mt. Everest. I remember seeing their photos in National Geographic. They were dressed in heavy parkas, their eyes protected by dark ... Continue reading
Healing hearts
June 2, 2007 By 3 Comments
She was 17 when she heard the voice of God in a garden, a voice telling her she should devote herself to serving others. 17 years later, she headed up a corps of British nurses who went to Turkey to aid British soldiers wounded in the Crimean war.She discovered those hurting young men packed ... Continue reading
I see your true colors
May 10, 2007 By 3 Comments
There is a group of people who frustrate me to no end. No, not stinky cab drivers. I'm talking about those well-meaning folk who proudly proclaim (in their best we-shall-overcome-one-day voices), I don't see color. ... What they are attesting to is their "inability" ever to notice anyone's racial ... Continue reading
Uncomfortable with evil
April 19, 2007 By 13 Comments
"I know that there's a tendency to think that everybody can get counseling or can have a bowl of tomato soup and everything is going to be all right," she said. "But I think that evil exists, and I think that he was a mean person." — VT poetry professor Nikki Giovanni, on her former student Cho ... Continue reading
Electronic graffiti
April 12, 2007 By
Don Imus has been fired for using a racial slur to insult the Rutgers womens' basketball team on his radio program.JV and Elvis, WFNY radio personalities, think Imus has gotten a bad deal. "You're going 100 miles an hour on radio. You want to have fun, you're just making observations — how ... Continue reading
