Barack Obama was a president who could think. His memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” explains how Obama got so smart. Read more.
Barbara’s Riffs on Life
The Rhetorician in the White House — Or, How I Learned to Love the Passive Voice
The passive sentence gets a bad rap — it’s weak, it’s vague, it’s passive. But sometimes a neatly turned passive sentence is just what our ever-shrinking world needs. Obama’s Cairo speech is an example. Read more.
In the Garden With the Grammar Geek: Is It Ever OK to Use the Passive Voice?
Passive sentences can be wordy and vague — or useful. For me, a passive sentence is one that, like it or not, obscures the doer of the action. Read more.
Why Meditate — When I Could Be Sweeping the Garage?
I’ve tried meditating a few times – a very few times. Why would I want to sit inside my mind when I could be out in the front yard, snapping dead blossoms off the rhododendron, or in the garage, sweeping away the cobwebs?
GodsBigBlog: What Non-Believers Think of Obama
For the time being, at least, non-believers are okay with Obama’s stance vis-a-vis religion and spirituality. Check out this story on Politico.com.
Early Late Youth Gives Way to Middle Middle Age
When I was twenty, I didn’t want to be thirty. When I was forty, I considered fifty a disaster. And now that I’m sixty-seven I don’t want to even think about sixty-seven, let alone sixty-eight.