Notes From A Bear's Journey

     The word is aphorism, a word I didn't know.  And I wasn't alone.  Here's how television host Hoda Kotb put it in her book of quotations: I'd never heard of it until I started doing some digging into why so many of us --including me-- love inspirational quotes.  Sociologist Murray Davis describes aphorisms as "the finest thoughts in the fewest words." ...Media psychology expert and communications consultant Scott Sobel says that "inspirational quotes affect us on a primal level."  Describing human nature as "aspirational" performance psychologist Jonathan Fader says quotes can be powerful in changing our thinking and helping us see something in ourselves that we want to change or overcome.   As I read through her book, I somehow couldn't help but think of the many times I had said or heard the expression "thank God," as in "luckily no one was hurt, thank God."  Which made me also wonder when we use that phrase -...

      The Fox News panelist and author Kat Timpf brought this up, that of topics we don't discuss because they make people uncomfortable.   Here's one such segment from her book, You Can't Joke About That: ...the next time you're at a party, just try breaking a small-talk silence with the question "So who here do you think is gonna die first?  It's gonna be someone.   Who do you think it's gonna be?  Such is her book, although it brings up a good point because as she later notes: ...I really wish that it could be acceptable to talk about dying and death more often, more honestly, and more casually than we do.  Not just for my sake, but for everyone's.  Our fear of talking about dying and death --our paralyzing ourselves out of our fear of saying something "wrong"-- not only hurts the people experiencing grief by making them worry about making other people uncomfortable, but also hurts anyone who is ever going to go through it, because i...

Photo:  Adobe Stock       While at the dentist the other week, I commented to him that it was nice to see a sweep-second clock in his office, the old continuously moving second hand quietly circling the clock face instead of just appearing as digital numbers.  Which is when his daughter walked in. She's helping me today, he told me, explaining that a few workers had called in sick.  She was young, likely early 20s or so, and very friendly, enough so that I felt I could ask her the question almost every Medicare patient receives when having an annual physical at the doc's, that of drawing a clock face and time on a plain piece of paper.  Begin..   My graduation watch placed against a new model...      One of the old sweep-second watches I have is a Seiko which my parents got me for my high school graduation.  It was totally unexpected because back in those days, parents at our income level just said congratulations.  In fac...

     Lisbon is a city not unlike San Francisco or DC, as the hectic yet cosmopolitan feel of visitors and tourists mixes in easily with business workers and local residents (Lisbon also shares a similar latitude as those two US cities).  It is here at Lisbon that the 600-mile-long Tejo river spills into the Atlantic, although more than a few local residents may inwardly harbor thoughts of seeing tourists also flowing out into that ocean.  That push-pull of wanting and yet  not  wanting ever more tourists and elderly expats arriving to their city hides the fact that (as with so many other tourist-dependent cities in the world) nearly 70% of the jobs here in Lisbon are in the service industry (for a few of the Canary Islands, that number can climb to over 80%).  But there is another love-hate clash at work in this part Portugal, and that is one happening right next door in Spain.  As the Rick Steves guidebook wrote: The Portuguese seem humbler ...

      There's still something magical about being at a window seat and watching your plane take off.  That rounding of the corner after a slow taxi out, the feel of the plane straightening itself along the runway, and then that sudden surge of power.  And no matter the size of the plane, I still have to wonder how such a massive chunk of metal and fuel, much less its heavy loads of passengers and their ever-larger pieces of checked luggage, gets off the ground with such ease.  Even when driving in my car, I am baffled that a simple push of my foot somehow causes a mist of gasoline to enter a chamber and ignite flames thst wll then power pistons and valves not much different from the stream trains of old.  How is that it is all so controlled, and controlled in such a manner that most of us can just take all of it for granted, never even considering a simple crack in the line may cause the entire thing to burst into flames as easily as when our Cub scout...