One morning, I emailed Colleen Joyce, Publishing Solutions Group’s senior project manager, a list of nearly a dozen puns. I hoped that they would make her laugh, but sadly, no pun in ten did. I can already picture her reaction as she reads the opening lines of this blog post: eyes rolling, head shaking and groan internal, because she knows that any reaction, negative or [...]
One sweltering Monday in the third week of July, I stood in a parking lot with a hundred other students in lines exactly five yards apart—the outline of a football field had been painted in white over the yellow parking lines. One of my band directors stood on the scaffolding built at the side of the parking lot on the top of the [...]
When I took my first yoga class, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew it would be a fairly quiet experience. Or so I had heard. If my instructor had told the class to lie on the floor and laugh for 20 minutes, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. (To be honest, I probably would’ve left the room.) However, when [...]
Have you ever tried “astronaut” ice cream? It’s a freeze-dried treat most commonly found in museum gift shops. However, the name is something of a misnomer. Astronaut ice cream has only flown to space once since its creation, aboard Apollo 7. According to NASA, the foil-wrapped snack is too crumbly to enjoy in zero gravity, so the astronauts never request it! Us earthlings [...]
After a lively discussion in the office about how the sounds of certain words make us cringe (moist anyone?) and others are music to our ears (my personal favorite: tabernacle; other office suggestions: mellifluous, resplendent and epiphany), I decided to investigate more examples. In doing so, I hit the jackpot: a word about words! As a language lover, I’ve always delighted in discovering new terms. But there’s something extra [...]
When I was in kindergarten, I was one of New Hampshire’s winners of an annual EPA award. It was an award given to students between kindergarten and sixth grade who demonstrated concern about the environment and used their creative skills to express their concern. My environmental efforts continued throughout my youth, with varying effectiveness. I vaguely recall crouching behind a rusty swing set after [...]
I was introduced to gothic literature late in life, but it wasn’t until I read Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla that I really fell in love with the genre. Published about 25 years before Dracula, Carmilla is the story of Laura, a young girl who lives in an ancient castle in Styria. After Laura learns an expected visitor, Bertha Rheinfeldt, has fallen mysteriously ill and died, she and her [...]
When I was in elementary school, I was one of those kids who got overly excited for the annual book fair. The night before, I’d spend a lot of time perusing the fair’s flier, looking at all the books that were going to be offered. Being the age that I was, I figured every school had a book fair each year. I didn’t [...]
Google Glass seems like something out of a Star Trek episode, but, amazingly, this example of augmented reality exists today. Merriam–Webster defines augmented reality as “an enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device (such as a smartphone camera).” Although Google Glass may have seemed like the only technology of its [...]
Sometime over 30 thousand years ago, prehistoric humans found their way to a limestone cave in the Ardèche region of southern France. Here they drew more than one thousand images in what is believed to be the oldest cave art in the world. Around 20 thousand years ago, a rockfall covered the entrance and the cave remained undisturbed until December of 1994, when Eliette Brunel [...]