One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 54

#54 – “Put a soft cloth on the arms of your chairs.  It will keep them from getting so worn.”

 This saying brings to mind doilies, ruffles, faded upholstery and chipped furniture.  Because of my mom’s sense of decorating, our family home took on the style of shabby chic when shabby chic wasn’t so cool (Mom would roll over in her grave if she heard me say this!).  You’d have thought that doilies were a status symbol as we had them on practically every surface.  But with mom, I actually think it was about preserving the integrity of the furniture.  In fact she seemed to measure our wealth in furniture.  I wish I had $100 (accounting for inflation) for every time she said, “Those coffee tables are mahogany!  Just feel how heavy they are!”  Then she would always add, “They came from the furniture store in San Angelo!”  Our furniture was pedigreed.

Mom bought furniture to last a lifetime and, sure enough, some of her furniture is still with us.  It’s been divvied out amongst the five of us kids like treasures.  I always wanted mom’s desk, but I ended up with the “girls” bedroom furniture that bedded and clothed four sisters spread over some 60 years.  This furniture now resides in my guest bedroom.  My son Colt has already staked a claim on it “someday.” I was so pleased when he said he wanted it.

Some things should just never go away, like the very distinct fragrance of my childhood home.  It’s a fragrance that lingers like a spirit in that old bedroom suit.  Not always, but often, when I first walk in the door of our house, I get just a fleeting whiff of our old home and am transported back to my childhood.  It is as if the memories have a fragrance that seeps into the wood and, alas, also into the mattress and box springs.  Yes, I know they both need to be replaced and I know it sounds silly, but some of all of us live in that old mattress.  Perhaps I’ll request that mattress be the kindling on my funeral pyre. Click on Read More Below...

The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2010

Every year I look forward to the release of The Best American Science and Nature Writing like a kid waiting for Christmas – well, actually, that and The Best American Medical Writing and The Best American Sports Writing. The only explanation I can give for this seemly incongruous attraction to science, medicine and sports is that I love to learn. The really ridiculous and pitiful thing is that because I retain almost zero of what I read, I am in a constant state of amazement.  Although I’m only on page 225 of The Best American Science and Nature Writing, I couldn’t wait to share with you the things that commanded my attention and stuff I’ve learned (and re-learned) so far.

“The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Geneticist, Oxford and Cambridge (and pretty dapper dude too - photo to right). I love this quote and think that it so elegantly states a fundamental of a Universe that never ceases to astound.

 “The fate of the planet, from an ecological point of view, is being decided by India and China and not by the United States,” Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus, Princeton. It is indeed a strange feeling to be raised in a country of “world dominance,” and then to wake up one day and realize that America has become just another country.

       Meet Elon Musk, raised in a rather average family in South Africa, but who by the age of 10 was reading 8-10 hours a day, and retaining everything he read. Elon dropped out of the Stanford Physics Ph.D. program at the age of 24 to start and then sell a software company for $307 million, then some weeks later started PayPal, which he eventually sold for $1.5 billion, so he could build rockets at his company, SpaceX. Elon wants to go to Mars because he’s fairly certain that humans are going to destroy earth, and he wants to be ready to hop off when necessary. It gets even better - Click on Read More Below...