When a slot machine pays out ten thousand dollars, sirens blare, lights flash, and young women in bathing suits crowd around to help pick up the explosion of spewing quarters. The joyful winner bathes in admiration and coins up to his ankles as joyful music plays and the crowd cheers.
Even Isaac Newton, reputed to be a bright boy by any measure, believed in the transmutation of elements. Turn lead into gold? Sure, why not? Lead into gold. How hard could it be? Turns out the process of switching from this element to that element involves the number of protons
Look, if there was any chance that you actually could effect positive change by micromanaging your child, then I wouldn’t say a word against your way of doing things. Honest. If, by swooping in, you could help your daughter in any way, I’d give you the thumbs up and leave
By the time I met Louise 20 years ago, her children were grown and gone, but I got to know her pretty well toward the end of her life. We agreed that it was tough to grow vegetables in the rocky soil of our neighborhood. We agreed that folks drove
Teachers from across the country appeared to me last night in a dream. With one voice they spoke: “Here’s why teachers feel that we can’t tell parents the truth about their children.” “Because the parents aren’t nice to us never mind respectful.They treat us like coke machines. When they see
A loving mother joined our running group a year ago. Alexa only wants what is best for her children, aged three, five, and seven. “My oldest is brilliant and accomplished,” she began as we headed out into the early morning mist. “He excels at everything.” The older members of our
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. That’s as may be, but the issue of who gets educated where remains unresolved 200 years after Jefferson wrote about our fledgling democracy. It is not news that those
Of all the gloriously exuberant excesses of the “Idiot-athon”, surely the shuttle run was the silliest and the most fun. After running 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards out picking up and putting down blocks of wood, competitors were required to remove a plastic bone-the femur if memory serves-in
“What if the impressionists had been dentists?” queried a droll essay in 1978. A more intriguing question considers what might have ensued had Wayne Gretsky been born in South Miami. In baseball, pundits argue about the greatest player of all time. Ted Williams or Willie Mays. Barflies pontificate about Walter
Before Matthew Broderick was Ferris Bueller and Ally Sheedy was the weird girl in “Breakfast Club,” the kids starred in “War Games,” an uplifting film about global thermonuclear war and the end of all life on the planet, that sort of thing. Spoiler alert: the world does not come to
Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2024 | Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC | (305) 978-8917 | [email protected]
