One consequential change is that people used to get most of their calories at breakfast and midday, with only the evening top-up at suppertime. Now those intakes are almost exactly reversed. Most of us consume the bulk--a sadly appropriate word here-...
Portability also explains why many old chests and trunks had domed lids- to throw off water during travel. The great drawback of trunks, of course, is that everything has to be lifted at to get things at the bottom. It took a remarkably long time- ti...
I left the library. Crossing the street, I was hit head-on by a brutal loneliness. I felt dark and hollow. Abandoned, unnoticed, forgotten, I stood on the sidewalk, a nothing, a gatherer of dust. People hurried past me. and everyone who walked by was...
Mom?" I said. She turned. "Can I talk to you about something?" "Of course, darling. Come here." I took a few steps into the room. There was so much I wanted to say. "I need you to be --" I said, and then I started to cry. "Be what?" she said, opening...
The resurrection cannot be tamed or tethered by any utilitarian test. It is a vast watershed in history, or it is nothing. It cannot be tested for truth; it is the test of lesser truths. No light can be thrown on it; its own light blinds the investig...
Experience teaches is such a lovely saying. However, when people try not to make the mistakes of what history and experience has taught, they are criticized for it. They are told that because they have not experienced it, they cannot appreciate it, a...
Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, th...
The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victim...
The small stuff matters. The company that became the largest and most powerful in history isn't a military contractor or a car company. It isn't the result of savvy lobbyists in Washington, or the happenstance of controlling the supply of petroleum, ...
Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime." Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment. Tengo went on, “Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The t...
For over a century, an evolving microcosm of Anthropology’s turbulent history has hidden behind the staid façade of the American Museum of Natural History. From an insider’s perspective, the well-known ethnologist Stan Freed engagingly introduce...
If there is, to be sure, something more terrifying than the history of the fall of great empires, it is the history of the death of religions. Volney himself was overcome by this feeling as he visited the innumerable ruins of once-sacred buildings. T...
You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never ...
Religion isn't best understood primarily as a collection of beliefs held by backward people with fear and trembling for most of human history (religion as brainwash). It is rather, among other things, a scriptorium of beleaguered witness, a record of...
He did recall that the summer after graduating from college before he joined the state police he had read Shakespeare. It was the pure language that stupefied him. He would be in a diner reading and his acquaintances were confident he was studying fo...
Edie Stall: What is it? Tom Stall: I remember the moment I knew you were in love with me. I saw it in your eyes. I can still see it. Edie Stall: 'Course you can, I still love you. Tom Stall: I'm the luckiest son-of-a-bitch alive. Edie Stall: You are ...
Richie Cusack: So you like that farm life? Milking cows and shit? Tom Stall: I don't have a farm. Richie Cusack: [chuckling] No? Fogarty thought you lived on some kind of farm. Said you could smell pig. How that old fart would know what a pig smells ...
[Tom is awakened in the middle of the night by his phone ringing] Tom Stall: [sleepily] Hello? Richie Cusack: Hey, Bro-him. You're still pretty good with the killing. That's exciting. Tom Stall: [quickly waking up] Richie? Richie Cusack: [chuckles] Y...
Ruben: Got to frisk you. Tom Stall: Nah, I'll save you the trouble. I'm not packing. Ruben: I got to frisk you. Tom Stall: All right. I don't smell very good... I've been driving pretty much non-stop fifteen to sixteen hours. Ruben: I'll hold my nose...
[Raymond blows their ruse to get into a farmhouse to watch The People's Court] Charlie: That's it. You blew it. You don't get to see your program. Finished. Raymond: One minute to Wapner. Charlie: Yes, one minute to Wapner. I had you in there, Ray! Y...
Derek Vinyard: We're so hung up on this notion that we have some obligation to help the struggling black man, you know. Cut him some slack until he can overcome these historical injustices. It's crap. I mean, Christ, Lincoln freed the slaves, like, w...
