As a kid, I was scared of lots of things. Sometimes, my older brother “worked with me” to overcome my fearfulness by scaring me at unexpected times. He might creep up on me while I slept, grab me by the throat and growl. He might sneak up on me during our Saturday night “Midnight Monster […]
Category Archives: superstition
“A somewhat converse and counter-intuitive development has taken place in some northern countries. Typically, cold and arid, these areas have seen significant improvement in agricultural growing conditions as global temperatures continue to rise … These regions are becoming popular destinations for populations that have lost their habitable homeland to climate change.” ~ Lloyd Alter We […]
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” — Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), Apocalypse Now It seems that everything is apocalyptic these days. Certainly, politics are out of control, with our vast chasms of differences between political parties and even among liberals and conservatives. It’s easy to envision an immigrant apocalypse, […]
“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.” ― Albert Camus, The Plague Given the plague of zombies we’re seeing this Halloween, I thought I’d remind everyone that zombies are brought back […]
“The message is clear and so is the pathway. But time is running out. We need to take a bold stand and act upon it now.” ~ Nicole Schwab and Kristin Rechberger Long ago, when I was working on the Navajo Reservation, there was a winter flood. Although few homes were directly impacted, the heavy […]
“I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt As the story is told by comedian Stephen Fry, the early Persian Shah wanted someone to give him a game that relied on intellect, not chance. That […]
What do St. Nicolaus and St. Patrick have in common? They’re both Catholic saints and have Holy Days named in their honor. However, their Holy Days are also holidays that are not observed solely as religious, but assume huge cultural significance, as well. St. Nick is a fat, white-haired, jolly old man in a red […]
In 1735, when Carl Linnaeus organized all the species in the world into one vast taxonomy, he included a section on “Animalia Paradoxa”: creatures, common in folklore and myth or attested to by far-flung explorers, that he felt compelled to itemize yet deemed unlikely to exist. ~ Kathryn Schulz “I hate that noise,” she said, […]
“Bwahahaha, I vant to bite your neck!” he exclaimed as he leaned over the pretty young girl mesmerized by his crazy eyes. Scrunched down in the theater seat, I had to hide my eyes behind my hands, so I missed the next part except for the wretched scream — but my imagination filled in the […]
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke As I stepped off the team bus before the game, I noticed a shiny penny balanced on the curb. Next to me, Mike noticed my hesitation. “Pick it up,” he said, “You saw it first. Maybe it’s good luck.” I shook him off and […]
Writes of Nature 