For Italian mothers, Christmas is the social event of the season—it’s their raison d’être. They clean.  They cook.  They bake.  They orchestrate the day.  In essence, Christmas is what Italian women live for.  So it was that during junior year college Christmas-break...

Our sense of smell has a powerful influence on memory, and early childhood memories seem to be especially susceptible to olfactory triggers.  Several weeks ago I was rummaging through some boxes that haven’t seen the light of day in years; one of which contained my...

Have you ever had your home or vehicle broken into?  If you have, you know first-hand what it feels like to be violated.  But domestic break-ins pale in comparison to the violation America is currently experiencing as a nation. I recently came across a letter written...

Skiers understand that chairlift conversations can be interesting, informative and…arcane.  One day while riding up on Chair 11, a mother and her daughter from West Virginia, joined me.  Almost immediately after lowering the safety bar and exchanging the usual...

The other night I watched one of my favorite Christmas movies —Miracle on 34th Street, starring Edmund Gwenn (who won an Academy Award for his role as Santa Claus), Maureen O’Hara, and a very young and precocious Natalie Wood. With all the hubbub on FOX News, and in...

A metaphor is a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects, a subset of analogy and closely related to other rhetorical concepts such as comparison, simile, allegory and parable.  But the reason most of us enjoy using metaphors, is because they...

Have you ever wondered where some of our lexicon’s more unusual terms and expressions originated?  Recently I overheard someone use a word my Mother (God rest her soul) uttered just about every day while I was growing up.  The word was whatchamacallit, as in “Butch,...

Well, here we are in the midst of another holiday season, which means families will be spending more time together.  Normally such proximity is a good thing, but families being what they are when teens are involved; there always seem to be issues.  And one of the more...

Well, it’s Thanksgiving Day and another holiday season is upon us.  Today our festivities will center on family, friends, a turkey dinner and football (if we haven’t gone skiing.) As I sat down to type this commentary I couldn’t help thinking about the milieu that...

Have you ever wondered about the origin of old sayings or how they worked their way into the lexicon?  Just for fun I thought I’d take the time to examine a few that are in common use today. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Meaning—Hang on to valuable...