Author Archives

In 2018 I semi-retired by retiring from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In 2023 I retired fully, adding in my 18 years at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer. For 21 years I had taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our varying number of cats (once up to six, but now sadly down to one).

Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com

• Vance and Moore… back when both of them were younger

  By ljd42 on March 11, 2026

  

  Every day, it seems, I read something by or about two of our distinguished politicians: J.D. Vance and Wes Moore. Well, one of them is distinguished; the other is, well… what are the appropriate adjectives to describe someone who has… Read More ›

• The Dry

  By ljd42 on March 8, 2026

  

  This is not a review. More of a warning, I suppose. The reason it’s not a review is that I can’t write one for a book that I didn’t finish, and I didn’t even come close to finishing Jane Harper’s… Read More ›

• Picard: Welcome to the Sticks!

  By ljd42 on March 6, 2026

  

  No, no — not that Picard! Not Jean-Luc. I’m talking about the language called Picard, not the Star Trek character. You say you’ve never heard of that language? Well, read on… First, take a good look at the map below…. Read More ›

• Taunton vs. Colmar?

  By ljd42 on March 4, 2026

  

  Several decades ago — at this point I don’t remember exactly how many — I was traveling in France and happened to stop in Strasbourg and Colmar because of recommendations in a guidebook. These two are not by a long… Read More ›

• The Little Altar Boy

  By ljd42 on March 2, 2026

  

  No, not the song by that name, nor the TV series. What I’m reviewing here is the 2020 crime novel of that name, written by John Guzlowski. (Why, you ask, am I so late to read and review it? It’s… Read More ›

• A special brunch at Tavolo

  By ljd42 on March 1, 2026

  

  As I enter my 80th year of life — and no, that does not mean that I’m 80; do the math again! — Barbara and I celebrated with a delicious brunch at our favorite local restaurant, Tavolo. Barbara had a… Read More ›

• Time to snuggle

  By ljd42 on February 23, 2026

  

  Cassie and Barnaby say it’s time to snuggle together during the blizzard:

• Death of the Party

  By ljd42 on February 22, 2026

  

  Take one part gothic thriller, two parts cozy mystery clichés, and three parts Agatha Christie, stir them all up and you get Carolyn Hart’s Death of the Party. It’s a serviceable combination of those components, but what stands out is… Read More ›

• Everything you wanted to know about the Great Vowel Shift but were afraid to ask

  By ljd42 on February 8, 2026

  

  Odds are that you studied a European language back in high school — most likely Spanish or French, possibly German or Italian — and you quickly realized that the vowels in those languages are not pronounced as they are in… Read More ›

• Streets of Minneapolis

  By ljd42 on January 28, 2026

• Definitely a bonded pair

  By ljd42 on January 25, 2026

  

• Who’s better at understanding written English — you or some random teen in South Korea?

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2026

  

  Statistically speaking, as a reader of this blog, you are most likely a native speaker of English, so surely you must understand written English better than a random South Korean teen. Right? Well, maybe so. Or maybe not. A recent… Read More ›

• Cassie being Cute on Purpose

  By ljd42 on January 20, 2026

  

• Will the real John McWhorter please stand up? (No, no, that’s not the real one; that’s the AI John McWhorter!)

  By ljd42 on January 18, 2026

  

  John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who is both a professional linguist and a popular linguist. In other words, he writes both for his colleagues and for the general public. He also podcasts for the latter… Read More ›

• Milkweed

  By ljd42 on January 16, 2026

  

  After getting haircuts at SuperCuts, Barbara and I walked to the storefront right next door to it and ate brunch at Milkweed. What excellent geography we have here in Dorchester! Barbara had the traditional homemade house-made corned beef hash, which… Read More ›

• They understand us across the pond.

  By ljd42 on January 11, 2026

  Trump claims that the USA has regained the respect of everyone across the globe, but the Marsh Family knows the truth:

• A note from Langston Hughes to my dad

  By ljd42 on January 10, 2026

  

  Seventy years ago the great Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes penned this inscription in the front of my dad’s copy of Hughes’s A Pictorial History of the Negro in America. (Note that Hughes’s co-author, Milton Meltzer, added his own autograph… Read More ›

• Enough is enuf.

  By ljd42 on January 8, 2026

  

  This book would have made an excellent New Yorker article. But a whole book? Not so much. All right, I suppose many a New Yorker article does feel like an entire book — but Enough is Enuf by Gabe Henry… Read More ›

• Is Modern Hebrew a conlang?

  By ljd42 on January 6, 2026

  

  So I keep seeing references to posts on Reddit…and I always ignore them. But then I said to myself, “Why not give Reddit a chance? What’s there to lose?” That led me to sign up for a few subreddits in… Read More ›

• Friends with words

  By ljd42 on January 4, 2026

  

  Yes, you read that correctly: the title really is Friends with Words, not the more familiar phrase Words with Friends. And even the correct phrase, Friends with Words, has at least two meanings (think about it). If you yourself are… Read More ›