Crossing Borders

Crossing Borders

Your mindset, on arriving in a foreign country for a two- or three-week vacation, is lighthearted, happy, expectant of adventures. Your brush with the culture will just skim the top, with a few awkward, tourist-type gaffes. If you attempt the language, it is...
Just Words?

Just Words?

Raise your hand if you read all the way through the 50 pages of conditions and excuses before clicking the little boxed ‘x’ on the screen. Ditto, if you understand the pharmaceutical ad on TV when the announcer rattles off the 600-word essay in a blistering 8 seconds....
Could you define that for me?

Could you define that for me?

I love dictionaries! In grade school, we had a dark wooden lectern at the front of our classrooms with an enormously thick tome laying open; an invitation to the curious to come up to be educated. One teacher, her name, Mrs. Hazel Carnahan, was thrilled when one of...