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What I've Learned
Mar 07, 2013 12:00 amOne autumn I was bicycling on the Greenwood Road, when a moose trotted out of the woods and stopped in the road ahead of me.
I squeezed both brake handles as hard as I dared, bringing the bike to a sliding sideways stop a mere 10 feet from a thousand pounds of snorting wildlife.
The moose turned its head and looked at me.
What I've Learned
Feb 28, 2013 12:00 amWhen Emily Hagins was 10, she wrote a zombie movie. When she was 12, her parents helped her film it.
The movie, called Pathogen, is low budget – more like no budget – and took two years to complete. The actors were mostly kids from her elementary school. Fake blood was whipped up in the kitchen. Other props, such as a plaster head for a decapitation scene, were also homemade.
The result, though far below Hollywood or even independent film standards, was, nonetheless, watchable and debuted at a theater in Austin, Texas to a full house.
What I've Learned
Feb 21, 2013 12:00 amThere is a horrid little beast called the compound prepositional phrase.
Regular prepositional phrases are a good thing. If nouns and verbs are the bones and muscles of English, prepositional phrases are the veins and arteries. They run through our language, providing a life blood of understanding.
What I've Learned
Feb 14, 2013 12:00 amIn a column last year, I mentioned that, contrary to what has been commonly believed, Eskimos do not have 50 words for snow. So, exactly how many words for snow do they have?
Anthony C. Woodbury, at the University of Texas, Austin, tried to find out. In 1991, he published a paper called "Counting Eskimo words for snow: A citizen's guide."
What I've Learned
Feb 07, 2013 12:00 amA song called I Put You There, written and performed by the wonderful female a cappella group, Mary Schmary, is a classic example of a self-referential song--that is, a song that refers to itself in the lyric.
In this song by Mary Schmary (I really like saying their name), self referencing begins with the opening words, "This is a song about me and this is a song about you."
The singer (okay, singers, but you know what I mean) is addressing the man of her dreams, who doesn't notice she exists.
What I've Learned
Jan 31, 2013 12:00 amI had a phone conversation that began pleasantly, then went south.
"Mr. Governale," the caller said, "I want to tell you how much I enjoy reading your column."
How nice that someone would phone me at home and express satisfaction with my weekly efforts. I thanked her.
"Particularly the ones" she continued, "you did about disasters. About how people make money scaring people by predicting disasters."
Those columns were satisfying to write, especially the ones about the Mayan calendar nonsense.
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