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I had read several of the books about time recommended on themarginalian.org and now I came across a post there about another book, Claudia Hammond's Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception. In that book, she posits that our experience of time is created by our own minds in what neuroscientists and psychologists call “mind time.” She writes: …

Mapmakers sometimes insert fake streets to catch plagiarists. Cartography is a meticulous and time-consuming process, so it’s only logical that mapmakers would want to protect their intellectual property. Many cartographers have included fictitious streets (and sometimes entire towns) in their maps as a way to trick copycats. These are known broadly as “trap streets” and "paper towns." If another map copies your fake street, you’ve “trapped” them with copyright infringement.

Blog companion to PoetsOnline.org - a site of inspiration for poets since 1998.

This month, I will cross the point of 1,000 ronka poems on this site. They don't exist in print form now, though I have pitched a manuscript to several publishers. Actually, I'm happy with them existing online and that some have also been done as podcasts. Those audiences are larger than any print version would probably ever reach. I have been writing these poems and posting them here…

The three dry months meant no floods. We made our own rain each evening for flowers and vegetables, top-coating the soil with a wet darker brown, but never deep-soaking enough to really change the …

As I wrote previously about King Arthur, as depicted in The Once and Future King, the novel does not explicitly depict Arthur’s death. Arthur's story ends with the Battle of Camlann, where he fights his traitorous nephew or son Mordred. He kills Mordred, but Mordred mortally wounds Arthur in return. Most of Arthur's knights are dead, and the kingdom of Camelot collapses.

Early Native Americans didn't use months like we do today with the Julian or Gregorian calendars. Instead, they kept track of time by watching the seasons and the phases of the Moon. Full Moon names date back to Native American tribes who lived in what is now the northern and eastern United States. Those tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full moon.

Walk through an art museum, browse a vintage poster collection, or visit a coffee shop decorated with retro prints, and chances are you've seen the work of Alphonse Mucha. Yet unlike artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, or Picasso, Mucha's name is often less familiar to the general public. His images, however, have become some of the most recognizable in the history of art.

The ten contenders for the National Book Award for Poetry Find the New Yorker announcement here. The National Book Foundation today announced the Longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Poetry…

Death is a small part of life.A doorway, not the dwelling, the hushafter the poet's dark reading about it,shadows following you on a sunny day,when your ship's gone over the bar. I was working on a revision on an incomplete version of my poem when I took a break. I picked up a poetry anthology in the hope of being inspired and the page that fell open by chance (or was it by chance?) was Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar." Tennyson requested that it be included as the last poem in all editions of his works.

Photo by Stijn Dijkstra on Pexels.com It's fall - or it's spring - depending on where you are when you read this today. The Autumnal Equinox for 2026 will occur today, The Autumnal Equinox in 2026 arrives on Tuesday, September 22, at 8:04 P.M. EDT (5:04 P.M. PDT) in the Northern Hemisphere. To scientists, an equinox is either of two points on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect.

Poet and writer Annie Dillard has died at age 81. She is a writer I admired. Her non-fiction book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) had a profound impact on my views about observing nature and I have read it multiple times. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Her books are lyrical, philosophical, and blend nature, spirituality, memoir, and reflections on how to live and pay attention to the world.

Monet, Gare St Lazare, 1877 Artists like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley were classified as the early "Impressionists." They used looser brushwork to capture fleeting moments, depicting the effects of light and movement. As a group, they were frustrated by the exclusivity of the art establishment in Paris and decided to stage their own exhibition, calling themselves the Anonymous Cooperative Society of Artists.

The science channel Space Explainer explained ways that physics suggests time travel could work. That's not to say that any of the ways will ever work, but perhaps one will work one day. Their list includes: relativistic time dilationgravitational time dilation near-light-speed travelwormholesblack holes closed timelike curves. If you want to travel into the future…

Unexplored, uncharted, as all rivers once were, we travel down it carried by currentsthat seem to run faster in darkness. The overgrowth is thick. No visible horizon. Uncertainty keeps us afloat fo…

Twice a year, our planet hits a celestial sweet spot. On the day of the autumn equinox - next September 22 this year - Earth’s axial tilt of 23.5 degrees is positioned neither toward nor away from the sun. The terminator line—the border between day and night—cuts directly through the poles, giving nearly equal parts daylight and darkness across the globe.

In Japan, ken (間)  has many meanings depending on kanji (剣) (券) (権) (県).I prefer “intelligent” to “dog” or even sword, strength, clarity. Architecturally, I would …

This year I have been leading the monthly daytime discussions for a popular Montclair Film Matinee Club that meets in person to discuss a film showing at one of the Montclair Film Cinemas. That venture has prompted some people to ask whether we would offer a similar one in the evening. We will be trying that this fall in a new class I am calling…

The new biopic, Tony, about Anthony Bourdain at age 19 being first introduced to the world of a kitchen behind a restaurant, was my September film feature for Montclair Film. It is 1973, and he is a student at Vassar College planning to be a novelist. During summer break, he follows a high school crush who doesn't seem interested in him at all to Provincetown.

Death mask of the poet Dante Alighieri who wrote The Divine Comedy. He died September 13, 1320 from malaria.  Wax or plaster cast of a face. A primitive, accurate photo without a camera. Memento, o…

On my high school class’ Facebook page, we post birthdays and there seem to be an awful lot of them in the month of September. It’s not just my imagination because it turns out that September is the most common birth month of the whole year. And the top day of the month for birthdays is September 9. In 2016, statistics organization FiveThirtyEight and data journalist Matt Styles analyzed data on the average number of births per year from 1994 to 2014.

The day came and went without poetry. The pencil wrote “365 reasons to live” on paper, but they never made it to the computer. They weren’t uploaded to a cloud of poems drifting b…

Unexplored, uncharted, as all rivers once were, we travel down it carried by currentsthat seem to run faster in darkness. The overgrowth is thick. No visible horizon. Uncertainty keeps us afloat for another day.  The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey is a book about an actual river in Brazil, now known as the Roosevelt River.

The day came and went without poetry. The pencil wrote "365 reasons to live" on paper, but they never made it to the computer. They weren't uploaded to a cloud of poems drifting by. 

My mother was no Buddhist. She was a devout Catholic, in the Rosary Society and later a Deacon in her church. She was not thrilled when I took religion courses in college and started to explore other religions and drift away from Catholicism. The usual, everyday meaning of “there is no time like the present” is what my mother probably meant: If something is worth doing, you should do it now rather than delay.

The ones who could be here but are not here. They make me wonder about their reasons for not appearing.At the in-laws' seder, a wine glass for Elijah, I learn he is always a no show. And so is God.