Month: April 2014

  • THE THIRD RAIL SQUARED

    When someone speaking to me works the phrase “critical mass” into a sentence, this illiterate mangler of words tends to believe that there is a degree of condescension in the conversation. It is much like a former AT&T colleague using the phrase “pro-active.” My impulse was to say, “What the hell does that mean?” But…

  • RANDOM ENGLISH LANGUAGE MUSINGS

    This morning I managed to cut my leg in a minor manner. When I assured all concerned that the leg would not have to be amputated, I simply said, “It is all right. It just smarts.” I suspect that the use of “smarts” in that sense must have reappeared in my vocabulary after an absence…

  • THE HOT STOVE LEAGUE BLUES

    Hundreds of years before I became an essayist, there was a grand summit meeting held on the grounds of what would eventually become the Buckingham Palace in London. It was attended by all of the reigning gods, kings, archangels, head rabbis and prophets, as well as by the leading preachers and politicians of the day.…

  • NUNCE: A NEW NEOLOGISM

    When the British post office delivers copies of this essay to the former Camille Parker-Bowles and her mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, both of them will pounce on the title as a redundancy or as a tautology. That it is a redundancy and a tautology, I fully agree. But it seems to me that the new word…

  • HUNG AROUND TOO LONG

    At the end of time when historians finally record all of the philosophical thoughts produced by American scholars, it is likely that the contribution of Miss Kay McCormick will be excluded. It may be that her thoughts are excluded simply because she is a woman. On the other hand, it may be that her thoughts…

  • “….AS A CHRISTMAS GOOSE”

    Richard Cheney is the rotund and sparsely beloved Vice President of the United States. The civilized world regards him with no affection whatsoever. During the last week of November, Mr. Cheney had a bout with atrial fibrillation. This is a cardiac condition that, if left untreated, could result in grave damage to the heart muscle…

  • BASS ACKWARD-LY-NESS

    My mother spoke no foreign tongues. The grammar of English, her native language, gave her enough trouble. Yet she was a master of “country speak.” She was the one who said, when she was full of food and drink, that she was “full as a tick” or “tighter than a June bug.” It was also…

  • LONELY TOWNS

    Donald E. Wass was a fellow that you should not have known. Mr. Wass was humorless in the extreme. He was a low-level supervisor in AT&T’s Engineering Department in St. Louis. His responsibility caused him to have frequent conversations with other engineers in New York. Those conversations were so loud that work in the rest…

  • DEBORAH JEAN’S ACE IN THE HOLE

    The United States government has its hands full in dealing with the war in Iraq. There is also the problem of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gasoline prices going through the ceiling, the bust in real estate prices, and the failure of the Attorney General and his chief assistant to answer questions put to…

  • ON LONESOMENESS

    Some years ago, Frank Mullin and Pat Downey found themselves in the lobby of a plush hotel in Kuwait City on a Thursday evening. Frank Mullin was an old hand in dealing with Arab nations. This was Pat Downey’s first trip with Frank as his assistant. Those who travel in the Middle East know that…