Life's rearview mirror ought to have the same kind of warning as cars'. "Caution: Objects may look (insert your choice: bigger; rosier; more fun; tastier) than they really were."
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"Give that man a Dewey button!" A common saying in the 1950s, you never hear it anymore. Background: Thomas Dewey was the Republican candidate for president in 1948. Most polls had him coasting to victory over incumbent President Harry Truman. The voters said different... Keep this bit of history in mind until all t…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on October 16, 2008 at 4:13pm —
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A recent column about jump rope, jacks and the jingles we sang while playing these games brought in a couple of notes worth sharing. Here goes: “When I was a kid growing up in Rockland in the 1940s, every girl in my neighborhood would play “Donkey” up against the Madden kids’ house,” recal…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on August 15, 2008 at 6:00pm —
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Added by Mark Flanagan on August 15, 2008 at 5:29pm —
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So, we learned during the opening ceremony for the Olympics, the four great Chinese inventions are paper, gunpowder, movable type, and the compass.
So what's so great about that stuff?
You want a great invention, the greatest ever -- in my opinion, anyway? It's the automatic dishwasher.
Wheels and pulleys are great, don't get me wrong. But the most significant thing about their invention is that they laid the way for the ultimate invention of the dishwasher. And yeah, I know movable type is grea…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on August 12, 2008 at 7:06pm —
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If, as I read in one of Rusty D’Arconte’s recent columns, the word “pescatarian” has been coined to describe “a vegetarian who eats fish”:
* Were my children “seminarians” back in the days when they would eat no more than half their vegetables?
* Is a meat lover who requires that his steak be cut into equal-sized pieces a “sectarian.”
* Conversely, if you eat an orange or tangerine whole, rather than divide it into pieces, are you a “non-sectarian?”
8 And is my daughter, who has grown up to eat…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 30, 2008 at 6:09pm —
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When I saw Monday’s Page 3 picture and story on double dutch jump rope jumping -- it’s been designated a varsity sport in New York City high schools -- my first thought was, hey, we used to do that.
But to be accurate, I should have thought “they” used to do that. Oh, I jumped rope a time or two. Played a few games of jacks, as well. Tried my hand at a bouncing ball game, too -- can’t remember the name of it, but you bounced a small rubber ball, sang some kind of a jingle and periodically swung…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 29, 2008 at 5:15pm —
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Of course we knew the Boston Celtics’ winning of their 17th NBA championship on June 17 was impressive and that the team’s glory is widespread. But just how widespread was underlined in a recent note from former South Attleboro resident Don Leedham.
Leedham, who was a Sun Chronicle photographer many moons ago, has been living in Colorado of late and working in the video field. He happened to be wearing a Celtics championship T-shirt while visiting a Sundance ceremony at the Pine Ridge Lakota Sio…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 29, 2008 at 3:56pm —
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If you need a cold hard statistic to prove that Dr. Simon Coren made his place in history, here’s one: 3187751. That, Googling tells me, is the patent number for the Coren ear-piercing gun, which he invented while he was a physician in general practice in Attleboro (and was apparentl…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 21, 2008 at 5:30pm —
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"Fee grabbers" was the word my father used to apply to about anyone running for office in Knott County, Kentucky, and to quite a few of the people who worked around the county courthouse without benefit of election.
I never had any doubt about what the term meant, but the definition was heavily underlined by the incident of my latest excise tax payments.
Since the poll tax was abolished years ago -- once upon a time you had to pay a tax to vote in Attleboro, and a whole lot of other places; you…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 14, 2008 at 2:30pm —
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“That,” colleague Rebecca Keister was saying the other day, “is a lot of malarkey.”
I had to laugh. I love that word, which can also be spelled malarky. But I hardly ever hear it anymore.
Should I blame the late George Carlin for that? Following his recent death, the comic has been widely celebrated as a trailblazer for free speech. Most of the tributes I read highlighted his “seven words you can’t say on television.” Now good old malarky is generally employed as a substitute for Word No. 1 on h…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 3, 2008 at 5:50pm —
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Does anybody out there remember swinging a bull roarer to celebrate the 4th of July?
Maybe I’ve got the name wrong. When I plug in “bull roarer,” Google coughs up information about an Australian aboriginal instrument. What I’ve got in mind is a noisemaker that came from Densmore’s.
As they’d say in Woonsocket, though, they’re the same thing only different. The one from Densmore’s was a cheap metal frame with a couple of rubber bands, a string and a strip of crepe paper attached to it. The aborig…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on July 1, 2008 at 5:44pm —
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One of the things sorely missing here is a punchboard. Alas, your friendly counterman at Flanagan's Hangout and Memory Gym does not know where to find one. And if I did, I wouldn't know how it worked.
The corner spas and hangouts of yore always seemed to have one about the place. It was a board about 9 inches square and maybe an inch deep. A key -- sort of like the one that comes with a can of corned beef hash -- would be sticking out of it. The player would take the key, punch it into one of th…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on June 30, 2008 at 5:32pm —
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BY Vincent LeVine In 1932 Stella Walsh won Olympic gold representing her native Poland in the 100 meters. Born in Poland in 1911 as Stanlislawa Walasiewiczowna, Walsh's name was changed shortly after immigrating to Cleveland at 2 years old. Walsh's career included 20 women's track and f…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 23, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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FOLLOWING IS the narrative I prepared for a workshop in June 2006 at the Hindman Settlement School on the history of the mountain dulcimer.
Welcome to Va Va Voom at the Headwaters: The Hindman outlet’s shapely gift to American music.
The idea of this workshop is to explore the role that the Hindman outlet has played in the history of the Appalachian dulcimer. To make a long story short, the Hindman area is the main portal through which the dulcimer, after morphing from European fretted zithers…
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 18, 2008 at 12:22am —
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The fundamentalist poet
Had no outwardly identifying characteristics
I didn't know what he was
Until he had already launched the suicide mission
Against the smile
Of someone on the path
Who had trod upon a sacred notion
From the Quarterly Review of Quarterly Reviews.
Eager he was
For place in Paradise,
Where virgins administer
Dailhy suppositories
Full of all the laws and fashions of poetry.
Judging from his work,
Could be he
Has already received
His heavenly reward.
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:29pm —
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He wondered, he wandered
He potted enchantment
From orn’ry clay
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:27pm —
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Mashed graffitoes with graffy?
Nah
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:26pm —
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Homegrown graffitoes are the tastiest.
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:25pm —
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Graffitoes tickle nositoes.
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:25pm —
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Graffitoes never get ingrown nails.
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Added by Mark Flanagan on April 16, 2008 at 10:24pm —
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