Pat’s Polemics

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Cultural Condescension

  06/03/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

In interviews with Eliot Cohen, the authors, Saldin and Teles (terrific book so far) quote him referring to Obama’s “cultural condescension” and to how furious (Continue Reading)

Pat's World View
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Why do they have to keep talking about it?

  06/01/2021       Pat Barrett      5 Comments

Listening to and watching the coverage of the commemoration of the Tulsa 1921 massacre, I recalled the number of times I’ve heard people express impatience (Continue Reading)

African Diaspora

Cultural holdovers

  05/25/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Customs remain embedded with us after the initial raison-d’etre is gone. The other day my wife said she did not like to sit out on (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Why Do Certain Things?

  05/23/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Over several decades on foreign language teacher listservs, a debate could be found over whether teaching the language should focus just on the language, not (Continue Reading)

Foreign language teaching & learning

What I’m proud of

  05/23/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A number of things plus some I’m not so proud of. But one thing these days that stands out is the way I insisted my (Continue Reading)

Basics

Current Health of Me

  05/22/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Since my last post to this topic I have been on a very steady exercise program, actually two programs, one CORE I do at home (Continue Reading)

Health and exercise, Uncategorized

Double consciousness – we all possess it now

  05/11/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

For decades, going back to W.E.B. Dubois, African-Americans have told of the double consciousness they carry within: who they are and who they really are. (Continue Reading)

Music of the African Diaspora

(Re)Starting Harry Potter

  05/11/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

So I’ve started. I’ve read the first page of Harry Potter book the first first in English, then in Spanish, then in Russian, then in (Continue Reading)

Personal language learning

1619, Roadmap to Democracy, teaching history

  05/09/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

No doubt this is well-trod ground, going by the name no doubt of the inquiry method or some such. It is frequently used by teachers (Continue Reading)

Basics

Tapping Into the Sacred Force

  05/02/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The title of a 2013 blog item here dealt with that sense that musicians may be “plugging in” to a force field for the energy (Continue Reading)

Music of the African Diaspora

The role of morphology

  04/29/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Reading Matthew’s Morphology inspires observations such as the following: The -s of 3rd p. sg. present is deleted or not present in the subjunctive. However, (Continue Reading)

Linguistics, What I'm Reading Now

Whence the anger?

  02/21/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

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 World View

Pick up Ladder anew Feb. 4

  02/07/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

As 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 I'm Reading Now

What there is pattern, there is intention

  02/01/2021       Pat Barrett      1 Comment

When 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)

Music of the African Diaspora, Pat's World View

How are those leeches workin’ for ya?

  01/29/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

We 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)

Complete nonsense

Calling the moves

  01/26/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Square 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)

Music of the African Diaspora

Anne Applebaum hits a new note

  01/25/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This 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)

Politics 2016/2022 running blog Corona Delta/Omicron & whatever's next edition

Common expressions I don’t use

  01/23/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The 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)

grammar & language change, Word of the Day

A dirty grammar story

  01/23/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

There 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)

grammar & language change

Back to school……?

  01/18/2021       Pat Barrett      1 Comment

Our 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)

Politics 2016/2022 running blog Corona Delta/Omicron & whatever's next edition

Another What if….?

  01/17/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

What 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)

Politics 2016/2022 running blog Corona Delta/Omicron & whatever's next edition

Up to here

  01/16/2021       Pat Barrett      8 Comments

Maybe 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)

Pat's World View, Politics, Uncategorized

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)

African Diaspora, Personal
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