On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"Here we were heading for unknown southern lands and barely three miles out of hometown, poor homely old hometown of childhood, a strange feverish exotic bug rose from secret corruptions and sent fear in our hearts." - Jack Kerouac (On The Road - The Original Scroll) In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness of its own to the delicate face where thoughtful care already mingled with the winning grace and loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spiritual head, the lips that pressed each other with such high resolve and courage of the heart, the slight figure firm in its bearing and yet so very weak, told their silent tale; but told it only to the wind that rustled by, which, taking up its burden, carried, perhaps to some mother's pillow, faint dreams of childhood fading in its bloom, and resting in the sleep that knows no waking. - Charles Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop) One of the things that young children like to do is form clubs or groupings that can blur the l...

Just as many writers about 1930 had discovered that you cannot really be detached from contemporary events, so many writers about 1939 were discovering that you cannot really sacrifice your intellectual integrity for the sake of a political creed — or at least you cannot do so and remain a writer.  - George Orwell (The Frontiers Of Art and Propaganda) "...the Indian lovers, like the Indian haters, were satisfied with their own image of the red man". - Stephen E. Ambrose (Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives Of Two American Warriors) Childhood is described as a time of innocence, but kids often spend it lying, cheating, stealing and inflicting pain on each other; while parents try their best to contain such impulses, at least until adulthood where there's a time and place for everything.  It's a time for learning your place in the world. Look at any children's toy section and it's obvious that sexual roles are defined early on, and as our perception of t...

"The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice." -William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair) "All that I shall repeat after her, must be true, without any intermixture of falsehood, but where I may happen, without intending it, to introduce my own conceits."  - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind, 1762) I heard the term, "OK boomer" for the first time last year, when reading about an exchange between a young woman and an older male, both of whom were politicians. The latter had begun to interrupt her speech, and she replied with the phrase. I hadn't realized it had been around for a while, though it wasn't a surprise that it was. There's always been "generation gaps," a...