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Yesterday, I was looking up a word from my reading notes of Carl Sagan’s final book, Billions and Billions: adumbration. When I looked it up, I was given the verb ‘adumbrate,’ which seems to mean one of three things, according to Merriam Webster: The online editors also offer some helpful context: “Don’t throw shade our…
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For many years, the darkness truly was my best friend. In the light, I was often judged unfairly. But, in the late hours obscured by darkness, I felt much freer. With many sleepless nights powered on little more than junk food, I made the most of my insomnia. I used this time to figure out…
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In high school I became obsessed with the concept of the definition essay. Blame the SAT prep we were constantly doing in English class, I suppose. Between begrudgingly scribbling out five-paragraph essays with absolutely no effort put into them, I started taking some word that I wanted to vibe with and just tried to not…
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Growing up I mostly listened to country music as that’s what my parents mostly listen to, even to this day. But, thanks to some old vinyl records, I was introduced to a lot of classic rock including the famous band from Boston, called, um, Boston. Around the time I was introduced to Boston and James…
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For two nights in a row, it became too chilly in the back bedroom for my damaged lungs to cope. As I lay in bed, I could feel the chill creeping in. At first, it was just a gentle caress of cool air against my skin. But as the night wore on, the cold grew…
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“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting John Swift’s aphorism about the Confederacy of Dunces is more than just a quote from a great 18th century essayist. It…
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We live in an era characterized by unprecedented connectivity and yet, paradoxically, also burgeoning divisiveness. This is why, for me, E.B. White’s call in his essay ‘Intimations’ to find individuals “big enough to love the whole planet” reverberates with a profound urgency. White’s words from December 1941 beckon us to envision a society nurtured by…
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When I was younger, I had a vintage typewriter that formerly belonged to a family member. It was painted pale green. I can’t recall the brand, but it still worked. In the late 90’s, though, it was impossible to acquire a new ribbon for it. Nowadays, they do produce universal typewriter ribbons for vintage manual…
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Once Upon a Truth… In the beginning, there was Truth. No questions asked, carved into stone tablets and shouted from mountaintops by bearded men with suspiciously confident eyebrows. You knew where you stood. Reality was what the guy with the staff and the fire-belching bush said it was. These were the good old days, back…
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Let’s not pretend we live in a rational world. We reside, often too comfortably I might add, in a full-throttle, glitter-drenched Charlatans’ Paradise. Our modern world has become a kingdom ruled by confidence artists in limited-edition sneakers and bespoke suits, armed with buzzwords, ring lights, and disturbingly bright teeth. Our national pastime isn’t baseball anymore;…