Posts by Christine A. Lindberg
Play ball!
In spring, as the saying goes, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love.” Who first penned that immortal mush, anyway? You well-read literary types probably know it was Alfred Lord Tennyson, in his poem “Locksley Hall,” and I suppose that was romantic of him, but the way I see it, when love becomes a [...]
The wearin’ (and speakin’) o’ the green
Every month evokes a certain characteristic (January is cold, May brings flowers), but no month is more connected to a single color than March. The color, of course, is green. The onset of spring obviously plays into that, but as anyone in upstate New York could point out, the “spring greenness” of March is often [...]
The language of courtship
Both my parents have been gone for many years now, but I sometimes have to jolt myself into remembering just how long it has been. Today is one of those times because it’s soon after the turn of the new year that I used to be making anniversary plans with my siblings. As what would [...]
Automotive nostalgia
A few weeks ago, when a character on TV mentioned his DeSoto, my daughter asked, “What’s a DeSoto?” “A car,” I answered, choking on my realization that there was no reason for a 25-year-old to have heard of a DeSoto. But I had actually ridden in a DeSoto—and not in an antique car parade. The [...]
Ye Gods! Praise the Days
In this last week of December 2012, I am gazing at the calendar above my desk and wondering how it is possible that in a few days I will have to hang up a new calendar for a new year (as my past gets longer, are the years getting shorter??). My mind wanders as I [...]
Collecting my thoughts on collecting
While enjoying a recent browse at one of my favorite antique stores, I stopped to admire a display of thimbles. I have no personal interest in thimbles, but I was for several minutes entranced by them. Arranged on a velvet-lined shelf and locked inside a glass case, they left me a tad breathless. Not quite [...]
From warring rutabagas to human beef: the wonderful world of typos
Years ago I learned a valuable twofold editorial lesson: respect the precision of a good keyboarder, and don’t get cute in the margins. The project was an encyclopedia of Japan, and it was back in the era of editing only on paper. One morning, I sat down with the freshly typed arts entries and my [...]
The lexicon of consumerism and America’s Christmas season
For those of us immersed in preparations for Christmas, the time remaining feels insufficiently brief, and the few weeks since Thanksgiving seem more like a few days. As fleeting as time is between Turkey Day and December 25, we in the US possess a peculiarly American interpretation of when the Christmas season “begins.” My British [...]
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