Category Archives: Commentary
The Staff of Life. And Caviar.
[Photo by JMN — Reus, Catalonia] You need to start with good white toast; Pepperidge Farm “Very Thin” is our preferred. It isn’t sweet like so many shelf-stabilized loaves, and it has excellent structure to stand up to the ingredients … Continue reading
An Interesting Painting
This painting by Frida Kahlo appears in the article by Rebecca Kleinman, “Frida Kahlo Was a Painter, a Brand Builder, a Survivor. And So Much More,” NYTimes, 1-31-19. It’s interesting on many levels, not least for its depiction of the … Continue reading
Planck’s Comment (from Reddit)
TIL Max Planck was told by his professor not to go into physics because “almost everything is already discovered.” Planck said he didn’t want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals. (r/todayilearned) Me. Ditto. Music. That guitar. (c) 2019 JMN.
Fixing To
[Drawing by Tom Jones] I’m fixing to get back into the swing of things blogwise. Since November I’ve been immersed in a Mediterranean voyage of discovery and recovery in the family nature of things. “Fixing to” (the “g” is silent) … Continue reading
Draw It, Remember It
In other words, drawing out the things we want to remember can be a powerful technique to combat our natural declines in memory, better even than repeatedly writing them down or listing characteristics and descriptors. (Tim Herrera, “A Simple Way … Continue reading
Expressions
My Spanish grandson, a computer science student, reads novels in English by authors such as Ken Follett to sharpen his skills in that language. He wrestles with colloquialisms and slang expressions that he encounters. The one he mentioned specifically was … Continue reading
A Quaint Plaint Spoken to the Wind
Sombrerismo is a spurious derivative coinage hatched by a cheeky blogger from the Spanish word for “hat” (sombrero). This etiquette-challenged perversion may be a sub-attribute of machismo, a term more familiar to the anglophone community. A man commits sombrerismo when … Continue reading →