I am alive today, and you probably are as well, because of antibiotics, vaccines, and an infrastructure that is unparalleled in history. As a percentage, fewer people die from communicable disease and starvation than at any time in history. And many of those contemporary deaths are due to lack of proper water and sewage treatment. In other words, they are preventable. This gift of life is due to the work
It was the last day of school and most of the students had left. Hans, the janitor, motioned for me to follow him. He had a smile on his face and was very animated in his gestures. One of the few survivors of the Wehrmacht’s ill fated drive into Russia as well as the Korean War, Hans was a fellow who was not easily excited. “I’ve got to show somebody
Let’s have a little spelling lesson in the form of a math equation. The word “definitely,” by far the most frequently misspelled word I see in my students’ writing, can be easily broken down by simple math. Let’s start with the word’s root, “FIN.” Fin means final, or if you’re into French films, “the end.” Adding a suffix, “-ITE,” results in the word “FINITE,” meaning “a limited number of something.”
Human beings have expended so much energy filling the world with thoughts and ideas that have reverberated down through time in both equal parts profane and profound—talking, talking, and talking while all along we’ve been accompanied on this journey through the ages by the silence of the animals. They’ve been swept into the current of this swift and magnificent human storyline for better or for worse. It would be a
there’s a late night louisiana caw in the corner a humid grey night gurgle, glogging its treble birdy nightsong between folds of wet air. focus on that, I say. see the way this night does not contrast much with the tree right there, that reaching night tree, ripe in shadow and heavy with day gone dark? look at it full. the air tonight does not hop around my skin but
