I found the missing R! Remember my recent post about my neighborhood barber shop with the missing R? (In case you missed it, here is the photo again of the storefront, showing that it’s a Baber Shop, not a Barber… Read More ›
Month: February 2019
The Punishment She Deserves
Elizabeth George writes literature, not genre fiction. That’s the sensibility of her novels, even though they are technically mysteries, which should make them genre fiction. The Punishment She Deserves is the 20th of her Lynley/Havers books, and I think I’ve read all… Read More ›
“Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office”
Gender-based generalizations are almost always wrong. When they aren’t wrong, they are at least misleading, because nobody listens when you explain that you are speaking in statistics, not in absolutes. Nevertheless, generalizations can be useful aids to thinking about the… Read More ›
Crime & Punctuation (and a cat)
Crime & Punctuation. No, not the novel by Dostoevsky that just happens to have a somewhat similar title — that one that only English majors and Russian lit students have actually read, although everyone else claims to. (Confession: at least… Read More ›
Wide William
William in his wide-body pose:
Baber?
Never noticed this Baber Shop before (near where I live). I wonder how much that nice sign cost them.
Douglas says he’s on vacation
Douglas says he’s on vacation, so it’s time to lie back and relax:
Here in the Northeast it’s not Virginia — or is it?
Virginia was the home of the capital of the Confederacy, so the recent events in Virginia might not have surprised you, but could they happen here in the Northeast? What follows is a lightly edited version of a true account… Read More ›
Teaching and coaching
One of my former colleagues gave up teaching — at least for a while — to become a “math coach.” “What does that mean?” you may well ask. That’s what I asked, at any rate. We all know what an… Read More ›
The Temptation of Forgiveness
Looking closely, you will notice that the image here is a scene from Venice. I’ve read all 19 — can it really be 19? — of Donna Leon’s novels, all of which center on Venice. I’ve reviewed four of them before,… Read More ›
The Colors of All the Cattle
Review #8 here about Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana series! I’ve been writing about these 19 charming books for a long time, most recently three years ago but going back to April of 2006 for the first post — almost 13… Read More ›
“Does verbing impact the language?” he asks.
I’m just starting to scenic my model railroad. Yeah, I know, using the adjective “scenic” as a verb is startling at first. I still don’t like it, though it has become standard. But let’s look at it in context. My… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 