Chill Mark

Who uses it: Glassblowers
What it means: An area on a piece of blown or fire-shaped glass that is cracked on the surface, as a result of over-exposure to steel
How you can use it: To describe an unexpected edge or brittleness in an otherwise kind, gentle person. Handy when discussing Southern women.

Glassblowing is something else I'd like to try one of these days, although it's probably best that I stay away from something that combines open flames with extreme fragility.

I am deep in several projects today and have nothing interesting to say about anything that's not work-related, but I want to acknowledge the passing of Simon Wiesenthal. Our attention span is so short, these days -- the death of the last Holocaust survivors cannot be the end of our collective memories of those horrors, even as new horrors demand our response.

People are capable of really terrible things. Ordinary people become monsters when they turn away, when they separate themselves from the suffering and pretend that the disadvantaged are something other, or less valuable. It happens every day in countless, subtle ways, when we walk past a homeless person or we ignore a mother shoving her crying toddler or we tell ourselves that people deserve what happens to them.

Speaking only for myself, it would be a damn scary world if we got what we deserved.