I love reading, listening to and telling stories; I always have. I think we all do. From the time I was a small child I loved hearing bedtime stories. Even before I understood the symbols on the pages as letters of the alphabet, I tried to link together the drawings and pictures in my Little Golden […]
Author Archives: Dave Franzetta
What’s a Hookah?
If It’s Sauce for the Goose, Is it Gravy for the Gander?
At the end of the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, along with seven other 19- and 20-year old, testosterone-overloaded running mates from the Pittsburgh suburb where I grew up, I headed for the Jersey Shore. We piled into two cars and, armed with swim trunks, sandals, a couple of t-shirts, a few […]
Can We Take Two Minutes?
Doing What Comes “Naturally”
I’m guessing you never heard of J.J. Cale. When he died this past summer at the age of 74, renowned guitarist Eric Clapton wrote on his Facebook page, “We’ve lost a great artist and a great person.” From 1971 to 2009, singer-songwriter J.J. Cale, known as one of the originators of “the Tulsa sound”–a loose amalgam […]
The Making of a Golf Professional
Lots of people find themselves in jobs or professions that, admittedly, they don’t like. The work simply doesn’t excite them. Maybe they do it because they feel that their job is where the money is. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As the noted professor and lecturer Joseph Campbell, wrote: “If you do follow […]
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar
A few years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a copy of a little book, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, an introduction to philosophical ideas using jokes as a means to make the ideas come to life for the reader. Now, I’ve never considered philosophy to be a particularly amusing subject–in fact, […]
The Word for Today: Paraprosdokian
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit: wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. This sentence is an example of a paraprosdokian. Look the word up in your dictionary: “p-a-r-a-p-r-o-s-d-o-k-i-a-n.” If you can find it, let me know where you found it. I tried, and I can’t find it in any traditional […]
Ode to Doughnuts, in Infinite Variety
What is it that is so appealing about doughnuts? At their essence, doughnuts are lumps of sweet yeast dough, sometimes with holes cut into the middle [more on the doughnut hole later], usually deep fried, then rolled in sugar. They go great with coffee, but they’re also great with a cup of tea or a […]