When We First Hear [a] Word, We

Woodworking Requires A Completely Different Kind Of Thinking And Problem-solving Ability Than Writing. With Writing, You Take A Set Of Facts And Ideas, And You Reason Your Way Forward To A Story That Pulls Them Together. With Woodworking, You Start With An End Product In Mind, And Reason Your Way Backward To The Raw Wood.

Memory Training Is Not Just For The Sake Of Performing Party Tricks; It's About Nurturing Something Profoundly And Essentially Human.

I Have Never Been Particularly Good With Languages. Despite A Dozen Years Of Hebrew School And A Lifetime Of Praying In The Language, I'm Ashamed To Admit That I Still Can't Read An Israeli Newspaper. Besides English, The Only Language I Speak With Any Degree Of Fluency Is Spanish.

With Our Blogs And Tweets, Digital Cameras, And Unlimited-gigabyte E-mail Archives, Participation In The Online Culture Now Means Creating A Trail Of Always Present, Ever Searchable, Unforgetting External Memories That Only Grows As One Ages.

Over The Last Few Millennia We've Invented A Series Of Technologies - From The Alphabet To The Scroll To The Codex, The Printing Press, Photography, The Computer, The Smartphone - That Have Made It Progressively Easier And Easier For Us To Externalize Our Memories, For Us To Essentially Outsource This Fundamental Human Capacity.