Big Hand and Little Hand?

When I was young (back when 'analog clocks' were known simply as ... 'clocks') I had a tough time learning how to tell time on them. The adults around me kept saying "big hand" this and "little hand" that. Sorry: one of them was long but thin. Is that big or little? The other one was short but thick. Is that little or big? I didn't really get over this until I started narrating it to myself in more explicit terms. "The fat short one tells the hour, the long thin one tells the minute." That is still my rule as a writer -- explicitness and clarity even at the expense of concision.

So everyone can understand that the photo I've included here indicate that ten minutes have passed since 10 o'clock not that fifty minutes have passed since it was 2 o'clock!

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A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

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Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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