A Sesquicentennial Celebration of poet Robert Frost’s birth is coming to San Diego on Wednesday, March 20, through Sunday, March 24 at our San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Blvd, downtown and at UCSD Park and Market in East Village. Dozens of America’s most acclaimed poets will attend, and so can you, free of […]
I’m 84 ½ years of age, which means that over the course of my life, I have taken more than a billion breaths and have lived more than one-third the number of years that America has officially been a nation and a republic. I write “84 ½” because when we’re little, we say, “I’m […]
On a recent episode of the popular quiz show “Jeopardy!,” contestants were challenged to identify plural nouns that don’t end with the letter “s.” When asked to provide the plural of the singular noun moose, San Diego contestant Jack Weller, shot back, meese. The correct answer is moose — one moose, two moose — […]
Recently, KPBS TV has been sharing Ken Burns’s three-part series “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” Among the victims of the Nazi atrocities was Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who grew up in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of Holland. In July of 1942, Anne’s family was forced into hiding in the upper story […]
Books live. Books endure and prevail. Books are humanity in print. Books are the diary of the human race. As we grow older, we become all the ages we once were. And by exploring books, we become all that we have read. “Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay […]
For 10 years now, I’ve had the luminous privilege of sharing “Lederer on Language” with you, my verbivorous readers. I am unstintingly grateful to the Union-Tribune for expanding my life-long mission of teachership. The decade has whizzed by because, as one frog said to the other, “Time’s fun when you’re having flies!” This tenth […]
The fifth annual Feastival of Books will take place virtually on Saturday, August 21, 10 am-5 pm. For information about this bibliophilic event, click sdfestivalofbooks.com. Honoring this great cultural event, I share with you a quiz of “Perfect Matches,” from my bouncing baby book, Richard Lederer’s Ultimate Book of Literary Trivia. Match each real […]
Tomorrow, April 4, kicks off National Library Week, this year’s theme being “Welcome to Your Library.” “Write dramatic, button-holing leads to your stories,” James Thurber’s editor commanded him during his early days as a newspaper reporter. In response, Thurber turned in a murder story that began, “Dead. That’s what the man was when they […]
Ulysses S. Grant claimed to smoke 7 to 10 cigars a day. When word got out of the president’s love of stogies, people sent him more than ten thousand boxes of cigars. Grant finished his 200,000- word Personal Memoirs only a few days before his death from throat cancer, so he never saw the work […]
Late in the last century I was several times a speaker at the Dutch Treat Club, a group of New York writers and artists who met each Tuesday at Sardi’s restaurant. Those convivial gatherings were punctuated with laughter, music and bright conversation. Each time I visited the Dutch Treaters I watched Isaac Asimov, with […]