Daily Prompt

Rain, Rain

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A 1964 article in Nature with the euphonious title, “Nature of argillaceous odour,” gave the world the not-as euphonious-sounding word, “petrichor.” In it, two researchers attempted to scientifically describe what it is we smell when we smell the world after a rain shower and to give it a name.

The two authors coined the word, “petrichor,” which I have been mispronouncing in my head since I first encountered it last year, when an article on the Huffington Post started making its social media rounds. It has a long “I,” so say it like this: “petra,” then “eye-core,” which is not how I hear it in my head, with a short “i.”
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Why Ask Why?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

From 1995 till 1997, I wrote a humor column, “The Gad About Town,” for a great weekly newspaper in Sullivan County, New York. (I still read it online.) It held the distinction of being the only column in the newspaper that did not generate even one letter from readers. Another editorial columnist, a genial elderly man, wrote the most innocuous weekly pieces and received the most vituperative letters disagreeing with everything he wrote. I admired that this only amused him.

I did create one controversy, once: our music columnist used his own space one week to disagree with me and take me to task about something I had written the week before. Since he could have written a letter to the editor complaining about me and also submitted his usual column, but chose to sacrifice his space to rebut me, I became skeptical about his music suggestions. (I believe he is still writing for the paper and I am here, writing for no pay two decades later, so I think we can safely say that he won in the long run.)
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Trick and Treat

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Two years ago, the Martin Prosperity Institute released what it called its “annual survey” of Halloween in America. It was its third annual such survey and it has not produced a sequel to this seminal study of all things Halloween since. My hometown broke it, I guess.

The Institute’s work in the field of Halloween enjoyment, a study not seriously undertaken by most people older than eight, led in 2013 to many national news articles that expressed shock at its conclusion: that the best place for Halloween in the United States of America is Poughkeepsie, New York.
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