I was teaching a history lesson yesterday to a bunch of ten year olds.  The lesson involved then President Andrew Jackson and the Cheyenne Indians.  For those of you who have forgotten your American history, here is a thumbnail version of what happened. The American government, as usual, wanted to …ahem…”acquire” the native Americans’ land.  Now we had a treaty with the Cheyenne that said they got to keep their land.  But now we wanted the land, so Jackson told them to vacate.  Instead of killing us, which is probably what the Indians should have done, they decided to play by our...

Paris would have to be my favorite city in the entire world. There are a lot of reasons for this. There’s the food of course, and the atmosphere. There are the small street cafes and the wonderful little neighborhoods, each with its own charm. There are the fabulous museums. And of course, there are the people. Paris was tailor made for a people watcher like me. But most of all, there is the architecture. Everywhere you look there are these amazing buildings. It almost doesn’t seem fair that so many wonderful buildings could all be in one city. I marvel at the Pantheon and the Le Opera. The...

I remember very clearly the first time I ever encountered a trick question. It was in the seventh grade. My history teacher was Mr. Byrd. I couldn’t stand him, really. He was an ultra conservative and often let us know his political opinions. I was, of course, a radical liberal (it being the 60s, but then I’m still pretty radical when you come to think of it). But being a thirteen-year-old, I couldn’t say anything because he was my teacher. So I had to sit there and listen to his right-wing claptrap and keep my mount shut. It was good training for the day I would have stupid bosses. Anyway,...

Back in 1980, I went back to college. Like a lot of folks, I went to college right after high school, took a bunch of classes, dropped a lot more, and then dropped out of school for a time. I had been offered a good job at more money than my father made, so I took it. But in 1980, after being asked to leave my home, and having been injured at work and fired, I decided I needed to acquire some new skills, so I went back to school. There was another reason I went back to school. I was trying to make time with a girl I had gone to high school with and reconnected with at the telephone store. Yes,...

At least once a year, one of the boys in my class gets in a fight with another boy. And when I set about to solve the problem, I usually ask the boys what happened. One boy accuses the other of hitting him, and so, fool that I am, ask the kid, “So, did you hit him?” And the young man will almost always answer that he did not. Then, usually, a chorus of voices from the class announces that the boy in question did, in fact, hit the other child. They saw it. And then the boy who at first denied hitting at all offers, “He hit me first!” And then I usually say something glib like, “Oh, I see....