Tag: Optimism

• December 26, 2025

  On Dealing with a World Gone Crazy

  ​There’s a story, which may or may not be true, that an old Chinese curse was “May your children be born in interesting times.” The curse was because, goes the story, the yearly chronicles included things like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, peasant rebellions, invasions, plagues and so on. So it meant that may your children suffer disaster.  ​We live in…
• July 22, 2021

  The Dutch in the Hudson River Valley

  Most people think that the United States is a daughter of Great Britain. That’s largely true, because the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule were all English-speaking colonies on the Atlantic coast. It’s true that what became the United States derives its language, legal structure, and much of its culture from Britain. In addition,…
• December 29, 2020

  Lesson for the Teach.Episode 2

  I have 20 years of experience in college teaching, at two community colleges and two campuses of the same Florida university. In my experience, most students make the effort to do the assigned work. Cheating is uncommon, at least in my classes. That may just mean the best cheaters get away with it. I have…
• September 14, 2020

  General and Mrs. Tom Thumb

  Charles Stratton (1838-1883) was a midget, given the show name General Tom Thumb by that remarkable American huckster, P.T. Barnum.  The story goes that Barnum was marooned by weather in Stratton’s home town of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Barnum heard of the small, very small boy, then four years old. His father released him into Barnum’s…