Most fools think they are only ignorant. Benjamin Franklin, 1748 He that makes an Ass of himself must not take it ill if Men ride him. Thomas Fuller, 1732 None is a fool always, everyone sometimes. George Herbert, 1640 Anybody who feels at ease in the world today is a fool. Robert Hitchens, 1959 Heh.
You, the homemaker, are the backbone of the world. If it weren’t for you there would be no home, no family, or world fit to live in. You are a homemaker: chef (and many famous chefs couldn’t please your family as well as you do!), nurse (ever kiss a child’s skinned knee and he stopped
It’s Drudge Work Monday. BUT. The internet is awful. The internet can be awesome. There are some really dumb people out there in the world. There are some really smart people out there. Here’s the story. I had picked up a couple of books from the FOL freebie table. I finally retrieved them from the
“But there is another sort of traveling and another sort of reading. You can eat the local food and drink the local wines, you can share the foreign life, you can begin to see the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants. … So with the old literature. “…
Those of a certain age will remember James J. Kilpatrick (1920-2010), a true political pundit (“learned man”) before the term came into popular use. He and Shana Alexandra were sparing partners on 60 Minutes, and that’s how he’s remembered. For years, though he wrote a syndicated column on English and English usage. I remember reading
There is no more faulty method of discipline than that of severely punishing a child for some outbreak against moral or school law before a hearing has been given him… . Practical School Discipline–Applied Methods Part 2 , Beery, Ray C., 1917. That’s from one of the projects I’m working on at Distributed Proofreaders (DP).
Human virtues are plants which never strike a deep root unless shaken by misfortune. Virtue consists in the directing of our intellectual and physical energies to a praiseworthy end; but if our energies be naturally feeble, or dwindle and wither away through lack of exercise, our virtue, by a necessary consequence, must become dwarfish and
I picked up The Literature of American History: A Bibliographical Guide (1902, reprinted 1966) and was skimming through the section on “Educational History,” and came across these two titles (grabbed screen shots at Archive dot org). Here’s the blurb in The Literature of American History: Together these two works, which are really companions, present a
June 6, 1944– Tonight’s communiqué just in from D-Day invasion headquarters summarizes the news. “Allied forces,” it says, “have succeeded in their initial landings in France; and fighting continues.” Lowell Thomas was the Walter Cronkite of radio. Beginning in 1930, he broadcast twice each evening on CBS radio. It was said that his voice had
Let the fragrant summer breeze,And the leaves of locust trees, And the apple-buds and -blossoms, and the wings of honey bees,All palpitate with glee,Till the happy harmonyBrings back each childish joy to you and me from “A Song of Long Ago,” in Riley Farm-Rhymes with Country Pictures by James Whitcomb Riley (1883)
Oh. It’s become silly alright! Well beyond silly if you ask me.
The Crisco Kitchen is a practical sort of kitchen. Our team of Home Economists are more than scientific. They themselves keep house and understand the problems of preparing home-cooked meals. All of these recipes were tested in the Crisco Kitchen. Practically all were tested at home, as well. Forward to New Recipes for Good Eating
Back in the crappy olden days, making a home for your family was not considered drudge work. At least that’s the belief Meredith Publishing, publishers of BH&G books, were selling to women. I am of two minds about this. Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book, Meredith Publishing Company, Des Moines, Iowa, 1961. As person who
Swearing, of course, is not the prerogative of all men. Many lack the natural gift for it, and others are too timorous. For such toters of inferiority complexes there is a repertory of what may be called denaturalized profanity. H.L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States
Charles Beard: Punished for Seeking Peace His reputation was savaged because he had the temerity to question the ‘Good War’ narrative. [Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative, March 21, 2019] Bacevich’s review of Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism (Richard Drake, Cornell University Press, 2018) caught my attention because
A period of unfavorable weather set in. He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward. It rained every day for a week. He grinned as he pocketed the coin. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., With Revisions, an Introduction, and New Chapter on Writing by E.B. White (1959)
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects
They cared so little for plain fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon.
That’s what I said. I said, “I’ll do Harbrace, Little-Brown, and Strunk & White, but not Google.” Some background is in order. Mr. Big Food and I had a terrible row this morning. We are in full agreement on noun-pronoun agreement (e.g., “Every child has their his or her favorite toy”; alt. “All children have
The McChoakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and salable in the