The edge of the Grand Canyon. A remote mountaintop. A medieval cathedral. Some places are so mystical you feel like you’re close to another dimension of space and time. There’s a term for such locales: thin places. And: did you ever go...
Barb in Boston, Massachusetts, once worked on Wall Street for a British bank that had an office that handled tizzy-hunting, devoted to uncovering scams and fraud. In A Dictionary of the Underworld (Bookshop|Amazon), slang lexicographer Eric...
Eric from Scranton, Pennsylvania, shares a funny story about having his hopes dashed as a five-year-old when his teacher told the class they were going down the hall to the laboratory. This is part of a complete episode.
There are places in the world where the walls of reality seem weak and another dimension seems nearer and clearer than usual, leaving you without words. Perhaps you’ve had that experience on top of a mountain, or at the edge of the Grand...
Eric in Fairbanks, Alaska, notes the use of the phrase “I’m just saying” as a way to soften one’s comment or avoid responsibility for an observation. Some linguists call such a statement a rhetorical backoff. Other examples...
If you’re serious about writing a memoir, what topics should you include, and what can you leave out? And how honest can you really be about the other people in your life? Some of America’s leading memoirists wrote things they lived to...