Messages by the Numbers

Remember favorite numbers? Mine was seven. I liked how it combined the magic numbers three and four; how it was prime; how it looked, especially when my first-grade teacher executed it in Palmer script; how there were five sevens in our family’s seven-digit phone number; and how, when doubled, it became the date of my birthday.

Numbers have always worked, like words, as symbols. Think of the nine muses, the seven deadly sins, the 10 commandments, the Trinity, the four directions. I remember a ca...