Breaking ground.

I've created this blog to cultivate and display my writing "in-progress," particularly pieces I have written but have not published. Entries will consist chiefly in essays relating to language and culture, though as gardening remains my cherished non-verbal outlet (never mind part of my name), I may from time to time show off my latest garden favorites as well -- you know, to spruce up the place. In fact, as I am soon moving to Kingston, Ontario, to take up a much coveted, and much appreciated, faculty appointment at Queen's University (in the English department), I am especially cherishing my Japanese dogwood this spring, which I raised from a meager slip of a thing and managed to establish in the clay soil of the American midwest. You can see it above, beside Ollie (just 4) and Blythe (nearly 6), whom I am also cultivating to the best of my (meager) ability. I couldn't be prouder of any of them. In my academic work, I specialize in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English language reform, or when English only started to become a prestige language, and when English humanists published the first English dictionaries, grammars, rhetorics, and textbooks (to accompany those familiar bulwarks of English literary prestige, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, et. al.). This work was inspired by my greater interest in depictions of language, its form and its education, and (especially) its representation in contemporary culture. Visitors who happen upon this shabby grove are welcome and encouraged to get a shovel and drop some seed of their own . . . And if you like what you see, by all means please spread the word. Bienvenue.