"The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying." - Francois De La Rochefoucauld In Middle English, the word "conversation" denoted "living among, familiarity, intimacy". I love these shades of meaning because even the most mundane conversation can …

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Yesterday morning my youngest son told me that he was hungry no more than 5 minutes after eating a big breakfast. I told him that it might be a good idea to wait a few minutes so that his stomach could report on its new contents and he exclaimed: "Daddy, I know how that works: …

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Watch the first step: it's a doozy! I am training a young Harris's Hawk for falconry at the moment and one of the most significant steps in manning (training) a hawk is getting it to hop from a perch to the glove for food. My new bird, Oya, did that last night! For the bird, …

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I recently read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which was written in response to a written statement of public concern issued by a group of white religious leaders of the South. In it King described his rationale for non-violent demonstration in relation to the unjust segregation ordinances in place at the …

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