David Bouchier

1 week ago | wshu.org | David Bouchier

Imagine this: We are in the remote Roman province of Britannia, in a small town called Camulodunum, later named Colchester. It is raining, of course, and the soldiers of the Roman garrison are sheltering in their fort beside the river. You can still see the ruins of the fort. The year is AD60, and, in the town, tax collectors are at work because it is the 14th of April, or Aprilis as the Romans called it in their whimsical way.

2 weeks ago | wshu.org | David Bouchier

New techniques of identity theft pop up almost every day, and identity snatchers are becoming more prolific and smarter. They can copy your voice from a few brief words on the phone or recording, clone your whole appearance using AI, change your checks, change your address and phone number, and probably steal your health records and income tax returns in order to laugh about them.

3 weeks ago | wshu.org | David Bouchier

Tomorrow is the first day of April, April Fools’ Day, when traditionally, we are expected to play practical jokes and be the good-natured victims of jokes played by others. We used to creep around warily on April 1, expecting a trap of some kind. Everybody got into the act. I remember that once, BBC television in London broadcasted a program about the Italian spaghetti harvest, showing diligent peasants cutting long strings of spaghetti hanging from trees.

1 month ago | wshu.org | David Bouchier

I’ve been wondering about humor and whether a robust sense of humor can help us to survive anything. As teenagers, I think most of us go through a phase when we wonder about the seriousness of the world around us, whether everything is just a joke or whether nothing is. Later in life, it becomes obvious that everything is. But even so, it is sometimes hard to maintain a detached and light-hearted attitude when the world seems so very determined to make us gloomy and depressed.

1 month ago | wshu.org | David Bouchier

Every nation has a national day, but not many celebrate it with a grand parade on the streets of New York. We don’t see the Scots celebrating Saint Andrew the golfer or the Welsh parading in honor of my namesake, Saint David. Even the English have a national day, Saint George’s Day, April 23, but are too modest to tell anybody about it. Those dates are not in the calendar, and you won’t find them in the greeting card shop. St. Patrick’s Day is virtually unique.