Americans carry beneath their Hail Fellow Well Met exterior a lot of anger. You can see it when you are out driving. But where does (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Pick up Ladder anew Feb. 4
02/07/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs I picked up my Reading Ladder after neglecting it since January 2, I noted that each page I read contained a gem. Here are (Continue Reading)
What there is pattern, there is intention
02/01/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen artists bypass rules and structures, their work can sound chaotic to anyone expecting the traditional patterns of rhyme, harmony, rhythm, tone, pitch, scale, mode, (Continue Reading)
How are those leeches workin’ for ya?
01/29/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe need to revamp our concepts of just desserts. For example, when Todd Aikens said, “Doctors tell me that women have a way of shutting (Continue Reading)
Calling the moves
01/26/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSquare dancing is directed by a “caller,” a person who calls out the next move: do-si-do, swing your partner, etc. I thought of that when (Continue Reading)
Anne Applebaum hits a new note
01/25/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis never occurred to me, that we might just change the subject. That is Anne Applebaum’s suggestion. Why change the subject? Because we will never (Continue Reading)
Common expressions I don’t use
01/23/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe first one is ‘come with,’ as in ‘are you going to come with?’ or ‘decide whether you want to come with or not’. I (Continue Reading)
A dirty grammar story
01/23/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThere is a simple dirty joke that work in Spanish but not in English based on differences in grammar. The story goes like this: a (Continue Reading)
Back to school……?
01/18/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentOur district has voted – the Board – to go back to a choice between in class an on-line program or classroom program. It sounds (Continue Reading)
Another What if….?
01/17/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhat if we had hanged the leaders of the Confederacy? Would Reconstruction have continued? Would Blacks in the South continue living under “slavery by another (Continue Reading)
Up to here
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett 6 CommentsMaybe we felt bad about Trump supporters and Trump voters being ridiculed by the leading-lights of the major culture, esp for thinking they are the (Continue Reading)
Pink
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett Add Comment“What I’ve been going toward is this idea that pink is the inverse of black, or kind of the flip side—it’s part of it. Black (Continue Reading)
Bring your bullhorn to Trader Joe’s
01/14/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAnti-maskers showed up at a Trader Joe’s to demand entry sans mask. The manager said no. They argued, saying they were there just to shop, (Continue Reading)
As we escape armageddon, just barely…….
01/10/2021 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsA recap of what hit us last week, Jan. 4 to now. The Democrats took the Senate, sending a Jew and a Black from the (Continue Reading)
Shithole countries are us
01/09/2021 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsI’ll bet everyone is wondering where are Pat Barrett’s comments on the events of January 2021. 🙂 To be honest, I don’t know who these (Continue Reading)
In Their Bosom
01/01/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe Old South (there is no new South) kept in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction. Fifty-five percent of African-Americans live in the (Continue Reading)
One Student’s Reaction to Acquisition
12/30/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy student in Spanish introduced me (via Zoom) to her former student, an impressive young man majoring in linguistics. Talking about our lessons, she mention (Continue Reading)
His niece nailed it
12/29/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMary Trump said Trump will bypass the inauguration of Biden not because he hates he lost or because he hates Biden or because he wants (Continue Reading)
Is diversity all it’s cracked up to be?
12/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter about four decades of hearing people declare diversity to be our greatest strength, I have to ask how that works out. What are the (Continue Reading)
Thought Experiment
12/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter four centuries, most Americans can identify a piece of music as African-American. Not necessarily performed by African-Americans but in the African-American tradition. Why is (Continue Reading)
The Trumper in 1950s America
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis is the day after Christmas (went well incl. one grandson on leave from USMC with boot camp behind him) and it has been a (Continue Reading)
How Mass Media Affects Mass Man
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis from Meacham’s Soul of America quoting Richard Hofstadter: “…. growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics (Continue Reading)
Question for linguists
12/20/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just read in Medieval and Modern Greek by Robert Browning that Medieval Greek, while borrowing lots of words from Romance languages, could not borrow (Continue Reading)