by admin | May 26, 2008 |
I was on a summer reading binge in my 12th summer (I was determined to win first place in the Bookworm Club at the local library) when I ran across a short book about a boy who’s father was a time and motion expert. “How keen is that”, I thought. A father who studied time. Unfortunately the father had difficulty separating his work life from his home life, as many of us do. He insisted on applying his expertise to achieving time efficiency in all individual and family tasks. For example, he was convinced that one of the great time wasters was inefficiently toweling off after the daily bath or shower. You probably have had those thoughts too. So he made...
by admin | Feb 16, 2008 |
OK. I’ve finally had it. I could go along with being ecologically friendly. I could even go along with sitting in a darkened theatre while Al Gore intoned on man’s quest to destroy the environment. But when D Magazine devoted an entire issue (and no telling how many trees to create the pulp required for the 112 pages of seven color glossy “green” tips), I finally crossed over. My conclusion followed my normal contrarian philosophical bent. Anything getting this much press, becoming this politically correct, requiring this much ink and other media attention must have a dark, or at least suspicious, underbelly. So where did the notion of “green” come from...
by admin | Jan 16, 2008 |
I don’t imagine that many of you have had the occasion to want or need to catch a skunk (carnivora mephitidae), and if so, you are indeed fortunate. For catching a skunk isn’t all that easy and is only done at some great personal peril. Not peril to life and limb, although one hears of the odd rabid skunk snapping at some unsuspecting sole, usually in the city, but peril to ones olfactory process. More to the point, you can smell really bad for a long time if you get in the way of a skunk at the wrong time. Of all the human senses, the sense of smell is perhaps the least understood from a physiological sense. We all, or most of us, have noses through which...
by admin | Oct 31, 2007 |
I can’t pinpoint the time or place when or where truffles (genus tubar, sub genus hypogecous ascomycetes) first came into my consciousness, but I know it wasn’t in San Angelo. I suspect it was in the mid 80’s and in Paris…..France that is. S. and I were wandering the streets and found ourselves in Place de l’Opera. On the one hand, the edifice of Palais Garnier, home of the inestimable Paris Ballet de l”Opera and on the other, Fouchon, the pinnacle of French gourmet foods. Of course, I opted for the food instead of culture. It was there, I think, that I first saw a blackish, golf ball sized orb that resembled a desiccated monkey brain. I remember...
by admin | Sep 26, 2007 |
I normally react negatively to a group name with a number appended. Except in the case of the Little Cyclone five (my high school basketball team), this naming convention normally connotes a number of individuals who have done something illegal or socially unacceptable but are being treated as a group so as to avoid individual accountability, often at the behest of third parties with a separate agenda. Not so the Little Rock Nine. This group of nine young black Americans, who played such an important role in changing the face of public education in America had dropped from my consciousness due to the passage of time, events and, I guess, apathy. Jim Lehrer...
