James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 25, 2011
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REFERENCE:
This is to alert you to the fact that I will be writing a series of short missives, from time to time, on subjects that cross my mind on my peripatetic daily four-mile walks.
There will be an attempt to make them brief and to control my solecisms and malapropisms, as well as my quantitative calculations.
I must confess that many of my readers read me differently than I read others. My interest is always in the germ of the thought presented not whether the author crosses all the t's and dot all the i's, indeed, always manages to add the appropriate "ed," or avoids inevitable split infinitive.
It is no mystery that I love words. I write the way I do because I think in such words. As my sister can tell you when I was a boy not yet nine I had completely read the dictionary. Add to this the fact that I was born into an Irish-Catholic culture in which Latin was the language (then) of the Church, and have studied Greek and Latin at university, and you have something of the basis of my propensity for language and provocative thought.
Do I misuse words (malapropism)? I'm sure I do, but I would wager far less than readers can call to mind. Do I misuse grammar (solecism)? I'm sure I do, but sometimes more the novelist than the essayist comes out, and novelists like to stretch the mechanics of the discipline, and they are able to do that because they know the rules. I know the rules thanks to the good Sisters of St. Francis.
I have chosen INVEIGHING AS I GO, as the marquee of this series, inveighing being a Greek word to "rail against something in words," because there is not much that I see reassuring at the micro or macro level. I mention these two levels because I often look at the same issue from both a personal and general perspective.
My motivation is to generate thought in a thoughtless age. I have the liberty of doing this because I represent no special group or have no special constituency to make look good. Stay tuned.
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