My mailbox overfloweth

Some might say I have a newsletter problem. I suggest that it's a great way to keep informed about a wide variety of topics, with curated (I'm using the term deliberately) information all in one tidy email. You may (or, more likely, may not) be interested in the same things but just in case, here's…

Language matters

I've been interested in how language changes for years, in part because when I was younger I went from having a mailman to a postal carrier, from stewardesses to flight attendants, and actresses to actors. It was also in part to my uncle being one of the founders of sociolinguistics, specifically language planning. As an…

Modeling good habits

This is one of those times I wish there was a 24-hour surveillance camera on me. Not because what I'm doing is so fantastically interesting, but because I'm trying to do what we tell our students to do when they're working on homework and large projects. What that? First, it's chunking large tasks into smaller…

Happy New Year?

What does "new year" mean to you? And when is it? Obviously, there's the Big New Year when the calendar year flips over. And then there's you're birthday, a great time to start new thinking (or having an age-related crisis). There's also the Jewish (or Chinese or Muslim) New Year, times of celebration and thinking…

And now, time to relax!

The end of June is never really the start to the summer vacation, is it? Yes, the pace is slower and students are gone, but there's usually Stuff To Do before real relaxation stats. For me, that meant a number of things. First was the AISL Summer Institute on Incubating Creativity in the Library. This…