“Once during an in-class writing assignment, a bright freshman asked me if ‘anal retentive’ was hyphenated or two words. I suspected she was joking, but I answered seriously, ‘The way I stuff my…

“Having learned from the studies of stressed humans in isolation, NASA has built cupolas into the International Space Station. When tensions mount, astronauts are advised to seek refuge in these snug, windowed spaces…

“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…

“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…

“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,…

“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…

“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…

“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…

“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…

“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…