Vermont Almanac: Stories From & For the Land, Volume IV, contains another wonderful collection of stories, information, artwork, recipes, odd corners of Vermont history, and a chronicle of last year’s weather. With fifty-nine contributing writers, the book sings in different voices, includes poems, essays, information about Vermont wild’s flora and fauna, and all the […]
Vandalizing Public “Trust”
This vandal defaced the library book at least four times, each time “correcting” the author’s style, as if there’s only one way to write, inserting the word “increasing” as an adjective, editing “a myriad of” to simply “myriad” (twice), and commenting—in ink—“? It doesn’t add up.” The irony, of course, is that these intrusions on […]
Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
“Language is one of the few common experiences humanity has.” So begins the Preface to Kory Stamper’s wonderful memoir, Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Hanging on Stamper’s personal narrative about how she came to be a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster and what that work is like is the entertaining history of the English […]
Learning to Fish (and Write)
I’m learning to fish as part of a current writing project. The allure is two-fold: First, I’m exploring new ways to be in nature. Fishing – fly-casting, in particular – appeals to me for both its contemplative quality and for its required knowledge of entomology. I used to keep bees, but they attracted bears. The […]