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October 27
Dylan Thomas, who was born on October 27 in 1914, would have found it dramatic and moody that the Boston Red Sox won their first world series since 1918 on this day in 2004. Do not go gentle into that doomed championship series, he might have said. When the Red Sox committed four errors in Continue reading
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October 26
October 26 is notable for several things, but in the US in the early 1800s the most notable might have been the completion of the Erie Canal in 1821. It was a very big deal back in the day; a 363-mile-long waterway connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. It meant that you could Continue reading
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October 25
Today is the birthday of John Francis Dodge, one of the founders of the Dodge Brothers Company — you can still see their name on cars today. But their first efforts in the automobile industry weren’t in building cars. When they started the company in Detroit in 1900, they only made parts. They were pretty Continue reading
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Annie Edson Taylor
It was October 24, 1838 that Annie Edson Taylor was born in Auburn, New York in the US. She grew up to become a schoolteacher. She married, but her husband died fairly soon afterward, and she never remarried. As a widow, she moved around the US for years, working in various cities. In Bay City, Continue reading
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Things are not as they were
Family is a word that’s often invoked in service of things like tradition and stability. At least in recent years. But it’s not as old a word as you might think, and it hasn’t always meant what it means now. “Family” showed up in English in the 1400s, adopted from French. What it meant at Continue reading
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The dog network
On my walks,the news I getcomes fromcanine internet. My pals and Ihave virtual talkswith a sniffymessage box. Humans thinkwe sniff and pee’cause that is allthey ever see I, though, knowexact locationsto learn a tonof information. That’s why I stopand go no further.It’s not a hydrant;It’s a server. -Chocolate Continue reading
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October 24
In 1929, October 24 was Black Thursday, the day the New York Stock Exchange crashed by 11 percent. Then on October 24, 2008, it was Black Friday, the day most of the stock exchanges around the world crashed by 10 percent or more. You might say the value of stocks those days dropped like a Continue reading
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Psst! You’ll never guess…
Whether you’ve heard Heard it Through the Grapevine or not, you’ve probably heard of hearing through the grapevine, and you’ve probably heard things through the grapevine. But have you ever heard why you’d hear things through a grapevine in the first place? The grapevine, as a metaphor for people passing information individually, one-by-one, dates back Continue reading
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October 23
If the weather is accommodating wherever you happen to be today, it’s a good day to venture outside, find a patch of grass or forest, lean down, and say loudly, directly into the ground, “CONGRATULATIONS!” The sound will carry through the earth and with luck, will be appreciated by some tiny, burrowing mammals. Because today Continue reading
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A very Nobel day
October 22 should win the Nobel Prize for Coincidences, because not two, not three, not four, but five Nobel Prize winners share today as a birthday. To take them in chronological order: Ivan Bunin was born in 1870 in Voronezh in the Russian Empire. He became a writer and was called the “heir to the Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
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peterharbeson@me.com