Thanksgiving’s Mother

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In most of her portraits, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving, looks stern. Gentle, but stern. She was an editor, but befitting a woman of her era, she employed the term, “editress.” From age 33 until her death at age 90, she wore black, which designated her as a widow in mourning from the day her husband died until the day she was to join him.
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Saudi Arabia’s Next Terrible Move

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Two reports in local Saudi Arabian media reveal that a mass execution is planned to take place in that nation in a few days. The prisoners are not named, but one report states that more than 50 individuals are to be executed and that all of them are from the eastern part of the country, and another explains that all of the prisoners have been charged with terrorism.

Both of these statements describe Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the young man who was arrested when he was a teen; his uncle, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr; and Ali Saed Al-rebeh, Mohammed Faisal al-shyookh, Dawood al-Marhoon, Abed allahhassan al-Zaher, Ali Mohammad al-Nimr, and Mohammad Suwaymil. Each was charged with terrorism and they all are from the east.
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Resentments

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender.” That’s in a book somewhere. Resentments are a form of schadenfreude, one of its many flavors.

The term schadenfreude literally means damage-joy. When one enjoys the news that a rival is encountering trouble, one is experiencing a sense of schadenfreude. Most of us have experienced this feeling at some point in our lives, but most of us also have been jerks at some point in our lives, and the two sometimes come at the same time.

There is no real-world term for its opposite, so some people have begun to use a made-up word, freudenschade, to describe the distress one feels when a friend or rival is doing well or has had a success.
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