Author Archives: Sterling Eisiminger

“Camille Paglia once argued that the female stake in the middle ground helps to explain their superiority. Just as there have been no female Jack the Rippers, she claimed, so have there never been any female Mozarts.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Dr. Skip Eisiminger “Man may be the sail, but woman’s the rudder,/not the […]

“Elephants have been known to remain standing after death until the herd’s matriarch gently tips them over for waiting scavengers. When the bones are chalk white, the herd returns to conclude its rites and purge its storied memories. Unlike humans, elephants do not mummify their dead; they respectfully roll the bones under their feet and […]

“For reasons of my own, when I think of the Swedes, when I put aside the fact that they gave the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan, I think of meatballs, nightingales, massages, smorgasbords, and Volvos.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Dr. Skip Eisiminger I. “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.”—Nordic proverb CLEMSON […]

“After the Japanese national soccer team lost in the 2018 World Cup in Moscow, they left their locker room spotless with a note thanking the Russians for their hospitality. After all, the players had been educated in schools where they spent 15 minutes each day doing custodial work.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Dr. Skip […]

“First Lady Nancy Reagan said, ‘I’m against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman’s choice.’ In 1992, Time reported that while 75 percent of Americans ‘approve of a woman’s right to an abortion,’ 60 percent say, ‘It’s murder.’ Something doesn’t add up here, but one thing is clear: ever since prenatal screening […]

“Should Colony Collapse Disorder worsen, and we lose the bees, an engineering lab at Harvard is perfecting tiny drones, neither male nor female, that will pollinate our crops. Lamentably, the drones will gather no pollen, nor produce any beeswax or honey. Or in Aesop’s words, no ‘sweetness or light.’”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip […]

“Life is a river of incalculable length, width, depth, and direction. Like the Biblical Jordan which rises in the Syrian hills before crossing the Sea of Galilee, life ultimately dribbles into the Dead Sea, which has no outlet being the lowest point on Earth. But like all rivers, at some point, the ripples flatten out […]

“So, exactly how do humans reproduce if we don’t bifurcate, pupate, or molt? I’m glad the answer to the overwhelming question of my adolescence was not left entirely to my parents.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “The mad, white fish of the oval realm/often led me to ask, ‘Who’s at the helm?’” “The […]

“In Italy, Gaetano Donizetti scored the mad scene in his opera Lucia di Lammermoor for a glass harmonica, but a flutist had to be hired when no ‘ghost fiddler’ could be found.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “This Mozart quintet/and the voice of God/are frail and unseen,/yet we feel their prod.”—The Wordspinner CLEMSON […]

“While Emily Dickinson found ‘a little madness in spring,’ I used to find this lunacy in the fall. Faced with a half-acre of wet leaves, many of which slid between the tines of my rake, and which no leaf blower would budge more than a few feet, I have been frustrated as hell. Now, in […]