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After reading the thread about how to pronounce the word "millésime" in French, I wrote a reply in which I mentioned that the word refers to a date, as on a monument or a coin.

Well, I began to think about this... Why would Creed use this term to name a perfume? So I did a little investigating. I've been looking at a book by Annick le Guérer, Le Parfum: des origines à nos jours (Odile Jacob: Paris, 2005, ISBN 2-7381-1670-1) and I decided to look up Creed in the chapter on ...

My birthday was Thursday, October 9, but I didn't do much to celebrate it that day because I taught all day into the evening, capping the day off by giving an oral midterm exam to my evening class.

The following day, however, my spouse and I escaped San Francisco, and drove up to Mendocino, about a 150-mile drive inland and then up the coast of California. The town is quite picturesque, with water towers behind many of the older houses and a general late-Victorian atmosphere. It was ...

You might as well admit it. You have a guilty pleasure. Maybe it's the Big Mac. Maybe it's the Whopper. If you're a vegetarian, maybe it's those straight-to-the-hips seasoned fries. It's something you're not proud of liking, and it's probably mass-market stuff.

Well, my guilty pleasure is a designer fragrance - Givenchy Pi Neo.

What? Why on Earth would I feel ...

It's astonishing. I've spent 50 years focused on how things sound and forfeiting the intoxication of how things smell.

Not that I haven't noticed fragrance. No memory is complete without a fragrance. Time has depth and weight, and with that comes texture, color and fragrance.

My childhood smells like the ocean, my mother's Coppertone tanning lotion slathered in every pore of all bodies within range. It smells like rain and bullfrogs and cheap art supplies and ...

The "Scent of Peace" - Methyl Nonyl Ketone

Those who loose the Dogs of War
Shall rue the day for evermore.
But bearing rue, the Herb of Grace,
The Scent of Peace doth war erase.

Today we ponder the Scent of Peace and the Dogs of War. But not necessarily in that order.

One of the joys of marriage is playing Cassandra. Spouses have a nasty habit of not believing warnings, no matter how ...