smarthotoldlady: 5/27/12

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I'm b-a-c-k

My iPhone now has a place for iMessages, and two people have invited us to parties with eInvites. I guess usage now allows capitals to go on the second character of a word (whatever a word is, that is.)

After 7 months away from house and study, I'm back and getting organized--slowly. I should be getting back to posting by next week. What I want from you are suggestions about topics you want me to tackle.

I also suggest a blog by John Cowan, http://thewldc.blogspot.com
I'm trying to add it to my Profile, but so far, no luck.

If you like opiniated, unorthodox --but reasonable and reasoned -- ideas, read on

My passion is language, how it evolved, how it is used, how it is related to thought and its effects on all human behavior. This naturally led to a deep interest in all cultures, including the U.S. and its effect on the world at large. In turn, this has made me a close observer on literacy and its fate. As a college professor for 37 years, I have seen drastic changes in the culture of the young.

Books have been my life since I was 3 and taught myself to read by deciphering the words naming pictures on a roll attached to a child's blackboard. Once I cracked that code, I became voracious for print.

Besides being a linguistics scholar and writer of both books and articles, I also do developmental editing. That is, I take manuscripts, both fiction and nonfiction, and whip them into publishable books. I work on continuity, narrative structure, plt development, character presentation, and the like. I can't guarantee publication in these unsettling times for print books, but my clients tell me that I stimulate them to produce coherent and effective narratives. As a Linguist whose specialty was--and is--discourse analysis and narrative structure, I was a natural for editing. If you have a manuscript that needs work, feel free to contact to me about it. I'll give it my intense analyses.

Dogs and their co-evolution with humankind deeply interest me as well, both as a scholar and as a lifelong observer of dogs, those I've been in relations with and those I just know.

Once I saw my first movie, I became hooked on film as well, and love to discuss them, what they mean, how they tell us what to believe and how to behave. The movies, of course, are part of my beliefs about culture. Would Hitler have done so well without Leni Riefenstahl and other German filmmakers? Would we have won World War II without Hollywood?

In the late 50's, I became an ardent follower of Pete Seeger, antiwar, antiracism, and pro-environment. Then, too, I started to learn about The Holocaust and became an ardent student of anti-Jewishness through the ages.

I am outspoken, but can be convinced to change my stances, but only by logical argument argument and convincing data. One of my pet peeves is the idiocy of scholars who follow blindly unproven theory and take it as God's word, interpreting everything in their purview by twisting facts to fit their theories. Think Freud, Lacan, and Noam Chomsky.

So, welcome to my blog. Feel free to comment, but be polite. No namecalling, please. I love spirited, but civil, arguing. I'm a tough old lady, but nobody has ever accused me of being boring.

smarthotoldlady

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I'm b-a-c-k

smarthotoldlady

If you like opiniated, unorthodox --but reasonable and reasoned -- ideas, read on

Blog Archive

Followers

Popular Posts

Points to Ponder

Elaine's favorite quotes

About Me

Links

Some of thel Books I Own, Including eBooks

Search This Blog