Fulfilling Promise

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Did William James ever say, write, or think anything about human beings using only 10% of our brains? No, nope, and no. An investigation:

* * * *
Blame Lowell Thomas. He’s as good a person to blame as anyone.

lowell thomas

Lowell Thomas

Because if you are going to make a claim—about anything at all—in the forward of a book that goes on to sell tens of millions of copies and remain continuously in print for nearly 80 years, you are going to be responsible for authoring a claim that will stick in the communal mind, that will become a part of how we as a culture think we understand ourselves. And as Lowell Thomas might have put it himself in his folksy manner of speaking, it was a doozy.
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Today in History: Oct. 12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For King John, the last two years of his reign (and life) must have felt like a long losing streak: he failed in his attempt to retake Normandy by force, in part because his own barons refused to serve in his military; later, he was made to sign the Magna Carta with many of those same barons, and even though the pope took John’s side and declared the Magna Carta null and void, the barons and he still fell into war against each other.

And then came October 12, 1216. John spent much of his reign traveling; even when he was home in England he traveled from friendly manor house to the next friendly house, allowing his allies to play host to the king, and he did not travel light: his entourage carried everything that he owned personally and in the name of the crown everywhere it went. John collected jewels and gold and silver, and he inherited the Crown Jewels of Germany from his grandmother. His traveling court included several horse-drawn carts full of jewels and precious metals.
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The Original of Me

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

[In 1997, the following column, “The New Wave,” won the New York Press Association’s “Best Column: Humorous Subjects” award in its “Best Newspaper” contest. I was the assistant editor and sports editor for a small-circulation weekly in Sullivan County, New York, The River Reporter, which means that I acquired a lot of experience for very little pay. It was mostly worth it.

It is one of the very first columns I wrote, which is something that I hated for years after—inwardly I complained, “It was only ‘beginner’s luck,’ that I won.” (For years, I lived my life as someone who could think of an award or reward as a denial or a subtraction. And then ruefully rue my rueful rueing.) I was 27 at the time, and I think I also secretly and not-at-all-secretly assumed that more awards were coming my way. They weren’t. The date of June 1996 is a bit of a guess from me as to its publication date. It might have been earlier that year. My family found a copy of the clip recently, so I have included it here, back-dated and with some 2016 interjections, because I can not help myself.] Here is the column, fresh from 1996, when I was me in print for the first time, the original me:
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