Tag: Polities

• 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…
• August 16, 2021

  Batching It

  Batching It When I was a small boy, I spent a couple of months every summer with my mother’s parents, in rural Bath County, Virginia. My grandfather was editor of the county’s weekly newspaper, the Bath County Enterprise. My grandmother was a teacher, and had summers off. She had dropped out of college many years…
• July 26, 2020

  Mocha, Java, Joe

  Coffee is a predominant feature of American culture, regardless of ethnicity, income level or region. There are tens of thousands of coffee houses and other spaces devoted to the caffeine-laden drink (or to decaffeinated).  Millions of people buy expensive coffees every day at upscale coffee outlets. Millions more grind their own beans. Coffee is almost…
• July 22, 2020

  Gullah

  Gullah is the best known name associated with the language and culture of people living on the Sea Island and Low Country areas of South Carolina and Georgia. Gullah refers both to the people and to the language. Gullah the people descend from enslaved people working in the rice plantations common in the antebellum era.…
• July 21, 2020

  Gung Ho!

  Possible ads: US Marine interests, World War 2, dictionaries, etc. Gung Ho! Is a term associated with the U.S. Marines. The word has come to mean someone who has a strong attitude and dedication to some cause. It still has an association with the Marines, although it’s mostly historic, centering on World War 2. Gung…
• July 21, 2020

  She Sat on a Tuffet

  Almost everyone is familiar with the children’s verse, first printed in 1805, about Little Miss Muffet who sat on a Tuffet, eating her curds and whey.  Then there’s the spider that sat down beside her. Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet. So what’s a tuffet? And why would she be sitting on one eating her…