Monthly Archives: December 2020

The Geometry of Dessert–figs and cake, a story problem

This one is for you, Mr. Frank, my high school algebra and geometry teacher from Freeland High School, 1966-67, 1967-68.  I think you’re out there… Shown in these photos, pan de higo, a fig and almond cake from Spain. This exotic confection dates back to Muslim rule of Spain (711-1492), when, seeing the plentiful fig…More

Yick–wine and cheesse, maybe

A Yahoo headline greets me this morning: “Study says cheese and red wine could boost brain health.” That’s good news.  Two things I like, and I’m all in favor of brain health.  The ten-year study, published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, involved 1787 people who participated in a Fluid Intelligence Test, “which provides a…More

Spectrum of Flight, a review

Spectrum of Flight, David Hanlon’s new collection of poems, invites the reader to occupy an interior world—of pain, of struggle, of a search for a way to rise. These poems are intensely personal, some of them raw, many of them agonizing, as the speaker turns himself inside out, asking how a gay man can live…More

Last Word, Good Word–spatulas and swords

So I’m standing at the sink the other night washing pots and pans. And I think “spatula” is such a strange word.  Who thought of that? In a novel I was reading a while back, I recall the description of a character’s fingers as “spatulate.”  That sounds Latinate, as in “of or pertaining to Latin…More