Paulette gave me a swanky antique cane recently (I'm still recuperating from toe tendon reattachment surgery). In learning to use it I've discovered a delightful new mnemonic: Up with the good & down with the bad. It's a rule for how to navigate stairs on crutches or with a walking-stick. Lead with the good leg when heading upstairs, and with the bad leg going downstairs. That keeps stress off the weaker limb.

Considerable enjoyment has also come to me from web pages devoted to La Canne de Combat, the French art of cane-fighting, plus English-language sites on related themes—many of which candidly note that the walking-stick is the only martial-arts weapon you can legally carry in controlled environments such as airplanes. I particularly love the reprints (in the online Journal of Non-lethal Combatives http://ejmas.com/, contributed by Ralph Grasso) of articles by E. W. Barton-Wright (1860-1951) from Pearson's Magazine in 1901. A typical illustration:

Now if I only had a hat and a tin of moustache-wax ...

(see also BodyMnemonic (4 Dec 2004), BumpInTheNight (31 Mar 2005), ToeTransplantProjectZeta (1 Apr 2005), ...)

TopicPersonalHistory - TopicLanguage - TopicHumor - TopicRecreation - 2005-04-18

(correlates: Comments on AsIfSoManyMinutes, CozyZone, IdeaGardening, ...)