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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
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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

Bring your bullhorn to Trader Joe’s

  01/14/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Anti-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)

Complete nonsense, Culture

As we escape armageddon, just barely…….

  01/10/2021       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

A 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)

Running commentary

Shithole countries are us

  01/09/2021       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

I’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)

Running commentary

In Their Bosom

  01/01/2021       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The 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)

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

One Student’s Reaction to Acquisition

  12/30/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My 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)

Foreign language teaching & learning, TPRS

His niece nailed it

  12/29/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Mary 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)

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

Is diversity all it’s cracked up to be?

  12/27/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

After 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)

Basics

Thought Experiment

  12/27/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

After 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)

Music of the African Diaspora

The Trumper in 1950s America

  12/26/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This 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)

Politics

How Mass Media Affects Mass Man

  12/26/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This 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)

Uncategorized

Question for linguists

  12/20/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I 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)

Linguistics
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