Welcome to my first post. I expect that this blog will evolve as I become more accustomed to this form of communication, and perhaps receive some feedback. I thought I would begin the experience by posting to the website some brief essays on curiosities of language that I had written some years ago for an organizational newsletter. I hope they will bring a chuckle as well as spark a desire to delve more deeply into this uniquely human faculty called language–something we use every moment of our lives, spontaneously, but seldom pause to consider as the marvelous phenomenon that it is.

From time to time I will reflect on issues large and small, current affairs, social change, history, myth, ideology, and religious faith. Like all of us, I have my personal views and biases, but I hope to approach all topics with humility, an open mind, and sincere willingness to listen to and understand another’s point of view. I hope to do so in the spirit of a line from a play by the Roman playwright Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), “homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,” “I am human, nothing pertaining to humanity is foreign to me.”

Language, in my experience, plays an inseparable part in nearly all of human behavior,” so it should come as no surprise that my thoughts, concepts, social, and political ideas involve an appreciation of language and its use in various circumstances. If any visitor to my site or future interlocutor obtains some value from what I post here, that will truly be an added reward for me.