One Man’s Guide for Men Shopping for Women’s Gifts Okay, Men.  You have decided to man up and shop for your wife’s holiday gift.  This is a daunting task---no doubt about it.  But with this guide, the mission will be easier and, hopefully, successful.  First of all, congratulations!  You have eschewed our fathers’ cowardly tactic of giving their daughters some cash and commanding them to...

The Parkinson’s Whack-a-Mole So I turned 70 years old.   In social gatherings, when an old timer announces his advanced age, people applaud.  I really don’t know why people do that.  I mean, I really haven’t done anything to help me orbit the sun seventy times. When I was teaching, I tried to emphasize the dangers of illiteracy and innumeracy.  In one class I was aware of the unhealthful habits...

Most Memorable Meals Polley and I were driving home the other day, when one of our favorite DJ’s shared some trivia involving fast food.  His claim was that a fast food chain featuring Mexican food produced the first crisp taco. Polley’s reaction was swift and forceful.  “I know that is not true.  In the early sixties my family stopped in a small café in Colorado Springs which served free nachos...

My Body of Thanks I was feeling rather sad the other day.  No, not because of him.  We survived Harding and Coolidge. We will survive him as well. We probably will not thrive, but we will survive. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and I am really looking forward to it because all my children and grandchildren will convene at my oldest daughter Christie’s home, and that is enough to make me...

Ignorance is Bliss…..And Dangerous In ninth grade I learned that Washington Irving was the Father of American Fiction.  Classrooms are fond of making kids memorize fathers of things—Father of Modern Astronomy (Nicholas Copernicus), Father of Quantum Mechanics (Max Planck), Father of the French Sailing Navy (Jean-Baptiste Colbert----remember, you learned it here).  I think it is gender-ironic...