Sam Barry is the author of the humor-inspiration book How to Play the Harmonica (Gibbs Smith Publisher, 2009) and co-author of a forthcoming book about writing and publishing (Summer 2010).
In Armonk, New York, where I was raised, we celebrated the Fourth of July in the most traditional of ways: standing alongside Route 128, the road to Mount Kisco and Main Street all rolled into one, waving little American flags and watching the veterans, the baton twirlers, the volunteer fire department, and all the other town worthies march or drive past as we cheered. If I wished to, today I ...
Don’t get me wrong—some of my best friends are Yorkies, but I never really thought of them as real dogs. You know what I mean. A dog rides in the back of your pickup truck, tongue hanging out as they sniff the air. You throw a stick for them and they bound after it. They wrestle and play and bark with a deep “woof!” They can keep up with you while you ride your bicycle. They warn you of ...
You just can’t be in two places at once. It’s a tough life lesson, and I have had to learn it again and again (which, come to think of it, suggests I have never learned it at all). It is also one of life’s greatest injustices: an electron can be in two places at once, but we can’t: see Discover, June 2005 (although if string theory is correct, it is not only possible, it is likely that ...
