Don from San Mateo, Florida, recalls that when he asked his mother what he was getting for Christmas, she’d reply with: I got you a fastareus. It’s bigger than a breadbox and smaller than an elephant. His father also used fastareus as a placeholder...
How could you stop reading after a novel that begins like this? I had this story from one who had no business to tell me, or to any other. That’s the first line of Tarzan of the Apes (Bookshop|Amazon) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is part of a...
After our conversation about various names for a television remote control, a listener emailed to say that early remote controls produced an audible tone that activated the TV channel changer and volume, and whenever his dogs Lupe and Bubba stood up...
Jameela in Charlotte, North Carolina, says her family refers to their television’s remote control as the clicker, but her friends insist on calling it the remote. These devices go by other names as well, including doofer, flicker, zapper, and...
In his delightful memoir Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World (Bookshop|Amazon), Christian Cooper introduces the vocabulary of birding, including the term warbler neck, an affliction among fellow birders. Cooper...
In The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (Bookshop|Amazon), the great scientist writes, “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” This is part of a complete...
