In Plain Engel-ish

Are there any of you reading this who traveled with me between 1982 and 2008? This was an exciting time when I would lead travel-learning trips abroad under the supervision first of Carol McMillan (1982-1996) and then Dr. LeRoy King (1997-2008). We called ourselves “Dickens Disciples” and then later “Dickens Destinations.” I would lecture on site at least five times during our ten-day sojourns, and a grand time was had by all.  Because Dickens was front and center in our travel name — and, let’s face it, in my life — I came up with the gimmick of publicizing that...

This last day of February brings to mind my Great Third Grade Comeuppance. I was certainly the most over-eager student in Mrs. Goode’s classroom. Somehow, I had single-handedly captured the title of “Class Smarty-pants, Know-it-all Weisenheimer.” Granted, I was of the “If You Know It, Flaunt It” school of knowledge (graduating summa cum loudly, of course). Small wonder, huh, that at age eight I was already on my way to a career as a university professor? My class nemesis was a girl as demure as I was obtrusive, as unassuming as I was always assuming that I was Teacher’s Pet. But was she...

Has there ever been a holiday more misnamed than Valentine’s Day? That is not a legitimate question, of course. It is a Rhetorical Question. I asked it only for dramatic effect and expect you, dear readers, to reply with an emphatic “NO!”   Actually, yes, Saint Valentine was a Roman priest martyred on February 14, 270 AD. And yes, he might have defied the Roman emperor by secretly marrying couples to spare the husbands from dying in Roman foreign wars. But, NO, his name had absolutely no connection with romantic love until 1,112 years later in 1382, during the Middle Ages, when...

Perhaps a few of you — as I did — fell under the spell of Jim Fixx's bestselling The Complete Book of Running, which was published in 1977, and so you too began jogging for regular exercise. Having been an exceptionally unathletic child, I was not a natural runner. A former friend once observed me jogging past his house in my coral-colored running shorts and described my unique ungainly style as that of an "arthritic flamingo." Yes, it was at that very moment that he became "former."  When poor Mr. Fixx was found dead seven years later of a massive heart attack by the...

Here I sit at my iPad in late December, ready to begin my January 17 essay for you. For some reason, no topic has come to mind during these last few days, so I figured that my lying here on my comfy den couch, iPad poised on my holiday-inflated stomach, would inspire me. I figured wrong.   Am I, for the first time, in the deadly throes of… Writer’s Block? No! My topic has just arrived on the wings of desperation. I shall write on that most elusive of topics: writer’s block itself. And I can definitely trace my knowledge...