In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When "Somebody Up There" - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.