In recent days, I’ve been talking about Vanessa Redgrave, who starred in her one-woman show here in Salzburg: The Year of Magical Thinking. The piece was written by Joan Didion, late of NR (very late). There is one line in the show I thought I’d share with you. Redgrave/Didion is talking about a woman who “needed an abortion.” The line is, “. . . and she needed an abortion” (uttered very matter-of-factly).

A fascinating way to phrase it, I thought: “She had a headache, and she needed an aspirin.” “She was under a lot of stress, and needed a cigarette.” “She’d been on the golf course all day, and needed something cold to drink.”

It’s fascinating what language reveals – what our thinking can do to our language. I have told you nothing new, of course. But there are always fresh occasions to consider the old.