by Kevin Burton My fifth grade teacher Mrs. Groves is the first one I can remember asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. She asked the whole class. We took turns peering into the future with ten-year-old eyes. If memory serves I said I wanted to be a news moderator …
Facts To Mull Over With Your Morning Coffee
by Dictionary Scoop We all love a good cup of coffee, but how much do you really know about it? If you're sipping your morning brew right now, hold on tight because these fun, crazy facts might just surprise you. 1-Goats were the first coffee drinkers Long before baristas and espresso …
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My Friend, “Prepaid” Is The Only Way To Go
by Kevin Burton I called the cemetery where my mother will be buried next week and told the clerk that the time had come. The clerk was actually en route to work. She said she would look up our family’s records once she got there, and call me back. “Everything is paid …
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Make Time For Mom, You’ll Be Glad You Did
by Kevin Burton One day my mother received a letter. The people who owned the house she was renting were going to sell it, and she had 30 days to get out. It was ridiculous to expect her to move that quickly, and my brother successfully negotiated an additional six weeks. But we …
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Bye For Now, Evelyn Marie, Bye For Now
by Kevin Burton Mom started it. I followed suit right away. We both understood though we never discussed it. Somewhere, maybe six or seven years ago, we began ending a phone conversation or one of my visits to her at assisted living or in the nursing home with “bye for now!” We’ll …
MIT Study Finds Seeds Can “Hear” Rain
by Good News Network Seeds may come alive to the soothing sound of rainfall, sensing the drops while they are still beneath the surface, suggests a new study. A series of experiments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated that rice seeds sprouted faster to the sound of rainfall. The sound of …
Pleasures And Benefits Of Soaking In The Rain
by Ally Hirschlag BBC It was the sixth straight day of the heat index topping 100F (38C) in New Milford, Connecticut, when the sky turned a sickening shade of puce. I was leading an outdoor theatre workshop, and noticed campers gawking at an ominous, miles-long shelf cloud advancing overhead. Then a thunderclap shook …
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Ten English Words Borrowed From Dutch
by Merriam-Webster Dictionary Caboodle: all of a group of things So, you’ve gone and got yourself a kit. Very nice, very nice. Looks like a sewing kit, or maybe a first aid kit. Okay, now we see it’s a model airplane kit. Congratulations. But do you have the caboodle that, we presume from the phrase …
What A Joy To Have Breakfast With Jesus!
by Kevin Burton “Come and dine,” said the resurrected Jesus to his disciples. It was early in the morning and the table was set. I use the term table loosely. The setting was the shore by the Sea of Tiberius. Most of the remaining 11 disciples had gone fishing with Simon Peter the …
Ten Bizarre Inventions That Never Caught On
by Dictionary Scoop Budding inventors take note. Some ideas from the past were just too weird, too early, or too wonderfully impractical to survive. Let's take a nostalgic trip through the patent office's hall of shame. Very hard to believe this first one! 1-The baby cage (1930s) Back when fresh air was considered a …
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Baby On Board! Woman Gives Birth On Flight
by Kevin Burton Chances are you’ve heard this story by now, of a baby being born mid-air on a Portland, Oregon-bound flight April 24. Page 7 is hardly a breaking news outlet, so I’m guessing you’ve read about it somewhere. But here’s my question: Did Delta Airlines try to charge the mother …
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