My younger brother's daughter was doing her research for her Doctorate degree. Her subject area was and is the rehabilitation of the brain after trauma to one or other areas of the brain. As part of that study she invited ...

Each day lately I have read one fairytale from the brothers Grimm. There have been the usual more familiar stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel. There are many others less known, but almost all are violent. ...

There is a polite form for casually greeting people. I say "Hello" and you might say, "How are you?" I would say "Fine" and you would say something in response such as "That's good". As a different kind of person, when ...

I have met some rather important people. Some made me feel unimportant by their shaking my hand, but their looking toward the next person whose hand they would shake after mine. In my perversity I have held on to their ...

A few weeks ago I was offering a presentation at a Catholic parish and at the end of one of the evenings a woman asked, "How do you know when you know yourself?" Now that did stop me in my verbal tracks. So I stopped her ...

There are places to which we must go; important offices, social encounters, even gyms. I know it is valuable for me to go running as often as my schedule allows. I enjoy the shower afterward, but not the getting up from ...

Everything about which I am going to relate to you is absolutely true, without varnish, garnish or exaggerations. Picture this please. I have just finished passing through the security check machine at the local airport. ...

Did you ever wonder if you were a good sharpener of pencils or reader of thermometers? Probably not. There is a measurement in the field of statistics known as "Standard deviations". I did not do very well in that course, ...

Gee-wizz, golly-gee, gee-willakers, are quite common expressions of amazement. The letter g has a quite important place in our language, at least it used to. Place your thumb and index fingers astride your Adam 's apple ...

During the recent Christmas-holiday time, I experienced several minor indiscretions in the various areas of cookie containers, cake plates, candy boxes, and even the much-maligned fruitcake tin. They were minor, because I ...