A MOMENT LASTS AS LONG as it needs to — be it seconds, hours, years, or lifetimes.
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
First Graf(s): The New Hacker’s Dictionary
THE DEFINITION OF “HACKER” HEREIN is “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.” In 2019, we have all…
Minute Mitzvah: Put It Back
Today: Return lost items. Explanation: The Talmud tells us that an item is only and truly “lost” when its owner despairs of its return. Your job is to not let that happen. Granted, this is one of those mitzvot which…
365 Names of God: “The Light of Eternal Mind”
THE LIGHT OF ETERNAL MIND is how Moses (Charlton Heston) described G?d to Zipporah (Yvonne DeCarlo) and Joshua (John Derek) after seeing the Burning Bush in Cecil B. DeMille’s at-times unintentionally amusing but classic The Ten Commandments. It’s a potent…
Why I Love: Books
IT’S THEIR SMELL. IT’S THE way they feel in my hand(s). It’s the inner voices of different fonts. It’s that they’re a direct link from somebody else’s mind to mine. It’s the varied and variegated subject matter. It’s the endless…
Words To Bring Back: “Redolent”
– Definition: adj. 1. strongly reminiscent or suggestive of 2. fragrant or sweet-smelling – Used in a sentence: This halvah is redolent of faded rose-petals. – Why: One can never have too many adjectives for describing the senses.
Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”
— Robert Frost
Mentors — An Appreciation
BECAUSE OF DARRYL CURTIS, I still say “deh-TAILS” instead of “DEE-tails.” Darryl was my boss at Santa Rosa news-talk radio station KSRO more than 20 years ago. To say I learned from him everything I know about radio reporting would…
First Graf: The Physiology of Taste
THE FIRST BOOK THAT ACTUALLY got me thinking about food as something other than tasty fuel with which to stuff my face was Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 work, The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Part travelogue, part…
Aside
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Minute Mitzvah: Stuff & Nonsense
Today: Don’t crave someone else’s stuff. Explanation: One of modern life’s biggest distractions is feeling materially inadequate, especially in a gotta-have-it society like our own. Why dwell on your deficiencies? As Pirkei Avot says, “Who is rich? One who is…
Of Tone-Outs, Turnouts and a Press Badge
IT’S HARD TO WATCH LIVES literally going up in smoke in order to tell other people about it. But on a professional level, it’s thrilling to see firefighters bringing order to chaos. When I worked for the Sonoma Index-Tribune between…