Old-school news, just in time
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 …
Continue reading "Make Time For Mom, You’ll Be Glad You Did"
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 …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading "Pleasures And Benefits Of Soaking In The Rain"
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 …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading "Ten Bizarre Inventions That Never Caught On"
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 …
Continue reading "Baby On Board! Woman Gives Birth On Flight"
by Dictionary Scoop Need a few tricks up your sleeve for playing Scrabble? It’s not always the long words that will impress the other players: Sometimes it’s the surprisingly short combination of letters that none of them knew. Let’s explore some of the most obscure –yet perfectly valid– three-letter words. 1-Cwm Before …
Continue reading "Three-Letter Words For You Scrabble Nerds"
by Kevin Burton There was just one song that brought Dave Mason into my top-40-based musical awareness in the 70s, but that was enough to keep him there. Mason died April 19, and tributes began to pour in from people who knew him as I didn’t, as a co-founder of the British rock …
