Living with Language

        "Pay your bills online."  Easier and faster than checks and snail mail.  And then you get emails about it, bills upcomi...

       How such dire warnings stick with one.   I learned it from Miss Swihart in Groveland Park grade school, who taught gym, but also hea...

                 I told Connie my " Life's Little Instruction Calendar " today said, "Get to know a woman who baits her...

        The latest Hammacher Schlemmer catalog has arrived.  It's the "Mid-Spring Supplement 2020."  Not enough to come out...

        Son David texted me today that he "braved the outside [of his apartment] to get a fancy donut down the block" (referencin...

        In the midst of our wonders and worries about coronavirus, things like this keep happening.         I gave Connie a kiss or three...

        A few blog posts back, I said a clever bit of public interest ad language won me over for wittiness and the value of its point, but...

        I attended my first "Zoom" class on this, my home computer.         I was nervous.  I got there...here...40 minutes ear...

        March 21st was World Poetry Day, just the other day.  It was established by UNESCO twenty one years ago, thus bringing it "of ...

        That is the informed observation of one Dan Roche on the op-ed page of Thursday's L.A. Times.         As a life-long (since h...

        Son David insists either he or our helper Sonia, who is here part of weekdays,  get my two-week grocery shopping list instead of me...

        The Automobile Club of Southern California produced a public service announcement.           The video showed a woman driving wit...

        The word "coronavirus" has been bothering me for days, ever since the "Rise of the Planet of the Coronavirus" a...

        Hello, Blog!!!!  We meet again, and I am humbled by you.  Plenty of fun and juicy entries I have planted here, but not for a long t...

       Sometimes a music review doesn't quite add up.        Three worthy artists were playing a program of trios for violin, piano a...

       For too long, I was without the map on my iPhone home page.  I needed it and somehow got it again--pulled it down, uploaded, downloa...

       I was wondering about the word "dashboard."        You may not be surprised to know it comes from the days before "...

       I found  Krazy Glue does more than just put together balsa wood parts on a model airplane, which I learned years go; it manages to h...

       Tongue-twisters come from many different places, including a random newspaper story.  A baseball player is making his first entry to...

       One of the least likely to be successful telemarketing campaigns:         A phone call came.  There was no sound, no voice        ...

       This title appeared among the voice memos on my iPhone, dated 10/2/18.  In looking back recently, I asked myself, "What the hec...

 I would have knocked, but I was afraid it might frighten them. And who am I to upset a household...

   I told my daughter Elizabeth, who is standing by the poetry peddler bicycle (Elizabeth started and leads the community org...

       In November, 2017, there was news about Canada wanting to carry coal they'd dug at home over U.S. soil to reach a port on our We...

       Rough Roads                    Loose Gravel                              Uneven Lanes  --three signs right next to each other a...

       I pulled up to a red light behind a car with a license plate that caught my eye.  It said IMUSICI.          A vanity license plate...

        Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the newly elected Members of the House in Congress and is having an impact with her probing ques...

       After grudgingly pouring Connie a refill for her already consumed 16 ounce glass of morning orange juice, I was moved to remark:  ...

       "Shout out" and "Call out" sound alike, but they're just about the opposite of each other..  If you "sh...

       We have a friend who recommends things that she loves and believes that we will love too:  TV programs, documentaries, movies, etc. ...

I don't like seeing the phrase "100 percent Recycled" on toilet paper! Somehow it gives me the creeps. My imagery gets w...

       On the "Reliable Sources" program Sunday, March 24th, over CNN,  I heard the redoubtable journalist Carl Bernstein of Wate...