Sentenced to Harvard

photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

I forgot to finish college. No matter! I just stumbled upon a PhD’s worth of info (and saved myself $400k), via a little-known interweb gem called The Harvard Sentences! Oh, sure, the website SAYS the sentences are a collection of 720 phonetically balanced sentences used for telecommunications, speech and acoustics. But that’s just an attempt to make "The 720" sound boring and un-relatable, so that we’ll never discover the amazing intellectual secrets contained therein. Those ivy-covered elites love to mislead the poorly educated! I’m on to them, though! The wisdom of these phrases is all in their "interpretation."

So, in the spirit of the generous Harvard postgrad that I now am, I’m sharing some of these actual sentences with you, faithful readers (italicized comments are mine). Read and learn!

It’s easy to tell the depth of a well. Jump in, and if you drown, it’s deep. 

The juice of lemons makes fine punch. Harvard has such a way with words!

The hogs were fed chopped corn and garbage. Thus the quote “Discerning as a hog.”

Read verse out loud for pleasure. Do it! Right now! It will be a pleasure!

Wipe the grease off his dirty face. Do it! Right now! It will be a pleasure!

What joy there is in living. Ah yes, life is like the juice of lemons punch, and garbage.

The friendly gang left the drug store. With pockets full of stolen drugs.

He ran half way to the hardware store. Before he remembered he needed SOFTware.

A tame squirrel makes a nice pet. Oh, no, it doesn’t.

The horn of the car woke the sleeping cop. It was the getaway car of the friendly gang.

The fruit peel was cut in thick slices. And the fruit was thrown away.

The lawyer tried to lose his case. But the case found him anyway.

Oak is strong and also gives shade. Oak is strong, like a hog full of garbage.

Thieves who rob friends deserve jail. The friendly gang robbed each other? Oh dear!

A cramp is no small danger on a swim. Cramp is BIG danger. Why are we talking like this?

Bring your problems to the wise chief. Not to the sleeping cop.

A salt pickle tastes fine with ham. Yup. Have some sodium with that sodium!

The office paint was a dull, sad tan. But the POST office paint was a dull, sad red, white & blue.

Fairy tales should be fun to write. Of course. That’s why the “Grimm” brothers wrote them.

She has a smart way of wearing clothes. She wears them…wait for it…on her body!

The fruit of a fig tree is apple-shaped. I guess so, but should be FIG-shaped?

Find the twin who stole the pearl necklace. Don’t go back to sleep, cop! You have a Twin with a Pearl Necklace to find.

The prince ordered his head chopped off. Cheer up, Your Majesty. No need to lose hope!

Feel free to sprinkle these into all your convos, you smarties!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School's Out for Summer

Aiden's fifth grade graduation, June 2025

Tra-la! Joy abounds in the Seyfried household! Aiden and Peter are sprung from Sandy Run Middle School and Jarrettown Elementary until Labor Day. Almost three whole months to sleep in, to play, to swim, and to forget 90% of what they learned during the past school year! 

 

Or maybe that was just my experience as a kid.

 

I recall my grim return to the hallowed halls of whatever fine institute of learning I was attending (there were seven between first and twelfth grades, in three different states—we moved whenever my dad took a new job). Oh, the longing to daydream and lollygag and fritter away the days again! The first several weeks back at school were always recaps, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who needed the reminders BADLY. Gerunds? Linear coefficients? Sumerian cuneiforms? None of it rang any bell anymore—it was all too, too far in the past! In place of memorizing state capitals and creating baking soda volcanos, my summer brain busily amassed (and retained) the entire plot of Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster, (very inappropriate for 12-year-olds) novel Hotel; exactly how many hours I could stay on the beach without any sunscreen before my skin began to blister; and ALL of the songs, EVERY week, on Cousin Brucie’s All American Music Countdown on WABC.

 

It took until at least mid-October before I kicked into “education” gear again. 

 

Over the decades, I’ve heard arguments for shorter, but more frequent, breaks from school. I know it works well in many other countries, and I think it makes a lot of sense—always something to look forward to, not enough time for total academic amnesia. Parents wouldn’t have to shell out big bucks for various camps and swim clubs and other ways to keep the little darlings occupied during the endless hot days. Children could spend more time enjoying the outdoors in every season, not just the sweltering one. 

 

But, like other common-sense changes (such as an earlier school start time for the littles, a later for the bigs), this idea isn’t getting much traction here in the USA. We’re a loyal country all right, never abandoning our current, totally screwed up healthcare system for the evils of universal coverage! We LIKE paying thousands for one small hospital bandaid, and we enjoy fighting with insurance reps over the phone to get ANYTHING covered! And don’t get us started on the metric system either! Inches and quarts forever! Stubborn Americans? Not us!!

 

Climbing down from my soapbox, I grant that it does take time to fully decompress after the ever-increasing demands of school. Incoming kindergarteners these days are expected to be already reading independently, and not Goodnight Moon, either-weighty tomes, such as Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster, (even more inappropriate for 6-year-olds) novel Hotel. Too much, too soon!

 

Anyway, Aiden and Peter truly love the long summer breaks. They never seem bored, and they always find something fun to do. 

 

Like it or not, Elise, school’s out for the summer.

 

 

 

 

 

Un-henged

The Roving Sheep of Avebury!

Planning our trip to the U.K. in 2024, Stonehenge was on our must-see list. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by those massive stones, set ages ago in a mysterious pattern on a plain?  As someone who finds hoisting my 19-month-old grandson Dimitri a heavy lift (and he’s NOT a big baby), I am so impressed by these prehistoric folks, locating those huge boulders (from God knows where) transporting them (God knows how) to this little corner of Southwest England, and aligning them with the sun, as part of some religious ritual. Wow! 

But apparently every tourist on earth has the same idea. After we read about the endless parade of tour buses, we realized that Stonehenge would NOT be a mystical spiritual experience--not with a jillion people, plus their iPhones, jostling for space. So, we focused instead on a lesser-known “henge,” Avebury.

 

 “A-henge” (my affectionate, made-up nickname for it), is an equally baffling collection of equally large stones, but spread out over more acreage. Another plus—it was much closer to where we were staying (Bibury).

 

Still, when the time came to drive over and check it out, I hesitated. For one thing, it was a dreary, drizzly afternoon. For another thing, while Steve had done an amazing job navigating the very narrow, winding country roads in a rented car, on the left side of the road to boot, I was weary of being the wind beside his driver’s seat. He’d never admit it, but it was ME who kept us from crashing into stone walls and running over random sheep.  My method was simple but ingenious—I constantly leaned my body waaay over, indicating where the car needed to be. While I didn’t actually SEE our vehicle obey my body-language commands, the results spoke for themselves!

 

Anyhoo, we arrived at the site, only to discover that we were virtually alone. Sure, the misty rain probably dampened (get it?) visitor enthusiasm that day, but still--it was just me, my hubby, and some random sheep (most likely the EXACT same sheep whose lives I had saved earlier!) We moved slowly among the stones, silently, reverently. We were enchanted, and felt a strange but genuine connection to the ancient Aveburians (Aveburites?) and this, their sacred place of worship. 

 

I would highly recommend A-henge, but of course if you ALL went there, it’d soon be ruined like S-henge! So, just forget I wrote about it!

 

Good news though, there’s another henge of note, much closer to home! It’s Manhattanhenge, a remarkable annual phenomenon when the setting sun perfectly aligns with the east-west street grid, creating a glowing canyon of light running through midtown Manhattan. 

 

Some future day, our descendants will move, silently, reverently, past the vast empty skyscrapers lining the streets of what used to be NYC. They will marvel at Manhattanhenge, and they will guess that the ancient peoples worshipped Saks Fifth Avenue and Grand Central Station, and brought offerings from Ess-a-Bagel to appease their gods. 

 

And they won’t be wrong.

Hats Off!

 

ready for my dentist appointment!

I pride myself as being “fashion forward.” If you want to be in the vanguard of The Next Big Thing, just get a load of the clothes I’m sporting, and go ye then and dress likewise. Why, I was among the very first to wear band tee shirts (never mind that the band was The Glenn Miller Orchestra), and I was a flip flop fan long before the flip flop fad (I believe they used to be called “thongs,” which term was later co-opted by the lingerie industry for a completely different item).  And I always mark the biennial return of high waisted jeans by just wearing them all the time. 

 

But one area I have sadly neglected, is the top of my head. You see, no matter the length or style of my hair, it instantly becomes both flat and frizzy on contact with any kind of hat whatsoever. So, when all around me folks are snug in their knitted winter chapeaux, I pretend that I’m not cold at all (even as my ears freeze solid and are in danger of snapping off). In summer, I eschew a sunhat, and swear that SPF 8 sunscreen is more than enough to protect me from a burn. 

 

Steve is a wise one, with a hat for every occasion (usually the SAME hat, a jaunty plaid flat cap). Sure, he looks a little weird wearing it on the beach, but he’s easy to spot if he wanders off!

Even our offspring (and now grand-offspring) see the value of donning a baseball cap from time to time. But not Wifey/Mom/Nana! I used to read the delightful old children’s book Caps for Sale to my kiddos--you know, the story where the guy piles a jillion caps on his head and goes around selling them, only to have some mischievous monkeys swipe them all. My sympathy was always with the monkeys, because they were merely staging a hat intervention, to spare the ridiculous-looking salesperson some embarrassment. 

 

But I’ve just had a “change of hat.”  

 

My sister Carolyn is a huge straw hat proponent. She also slathers on SPF 400, and wears very modest beach coverups. When at the shore with her, I am reminded of the gals of the 1910's, who put on more clothes (“bathing costumes”) than they took off, when by the sea. But here’s the thing—she looks cute, and is surely adding years to her life to boot, by avoiding sun exposure.

 

In Honolulu last month, C convinced me to try a floppy straw hat myself. Lo and behold! I actually liked it! And the hat head was minimal! I have since bought the same style hat, and plan to wear it to church, the supermarket, in the office and on the ski slopes. Why should beach goers have all the floppy fun? 

 

Now then, enough hat chat! Being “fashion forward” as ever, I’m already anticipating The Next Big Thing: 

 

Tap shoes and tutus.

 

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