You will be reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation. Someone said that if you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the
Today, our kids think about cobblers as perhaps cherry of peach. I tend to think of shoe repair, perhaps it’s my age. The story below ended up in my email inbox the other day and smiling happened. Some of you will remember Klonsky’s Shoe Repair Shop or one like it just down the road from
Perhaps the Ten Commandments are a little out of date. As an atheist, I really don’t give a hoot about having more than one god, as I don’t have one in the first place. The graven image thing and the lord’s name in vain mean little to me. I am a big believer in thou
Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit (1750s – 1810s). The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, but primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke into the rectum. The warmth of