Is the Ocracoke Brogue, a dialect spoken on the outer banks of South Carolina, related to the English of Shakespeare? Source: More on the Ocracoke Brogue I’m very excited to have found your blog. My WordPress profile “About” will explain why. I would like your opinion of my effort
Hiragana
One Morning’s Internet Offerings ©2018 Vernon Miles Kerr For the (self-syled) scholar, learning never ends. Or, one should hope so. Today’s surfing-of-the-web (what an archaic term, eh?) yielded these two gems: Adapting indigenous people’s “illiterate” memory methods to modern scholarship: http://bigthink.com/aeon-ideas/this-ancient-mnemonic-technique-builds-a-palace-of-memory Following the
Body Art
Are Tattoos Just “Fashionable”? © 2018 Vernon Miles Kerr Today, my friend, former writing professor, and sometimes collaborator, Manfred Wolf retweeted: To which I replied: This little Twitter-exchange sparked a whole series of other thoughts about fashion itself and the subject of “tattooing the body,” including my limited knowledge of its
Apathy in the Electorate
An Open Letter to our California Senators The Hon. Dianne Feinstein The Hon. Kamala Harris Dear Senators, Feinstein and Harris: I’m writing to urge you to join a rapidly growing movement in our State and Federal Legislatures to remedy the unconscionable and inequitable results of the U.S, Supreme
A.E.Stallings
Hiding Light Under a Bushel Basket © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr Luke 11:33 | “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.” Even for an agnostic, a lot
Academia
Beware of Mandated Kindness © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr San Francisco West Portal Monthly columnist, Manfred Wolf, in this month’s “This Time, This Place” column, examines the many facets of the current trans-atlantic trend to coerce kindness and “sensitivity” out of the populace, not only by public shaming, but—more
Government
More on Morality © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr A regular reader of this blog has probably figured me out by now; near three-quarters of a century on this planet and still agonizing over the big questions: Is there a God (with a capital “g”)? Are the “Holy” books of the world
Alexander the Great
What Makes a ‘Great Man?’ © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr You Too, Can Be a Great Man My memories of the curriculum in the California Public School System during the very early 1950s include a grade-level-spanning—almost obsessive—focus on creating “Great Men” (or Great Women.) It seems like this obsession
English Grammar
How a Thin, Little Volume Fixed a Lifetime of Lazy Scholarship © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr I didn’t learn about The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. While until twenty years after my brief sojourn in the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University (then
Health
Can Morality Exist Without Religion? ©2017 Vernon Miles Kerr In the late 19th Century, “Liberal” teaching threw out religion, along with religion’s moral guidelines, replacing those guidelines with moral relativism and situation-based ethics. Since then, the world’s diminishing moral conscience has been claimed and dominated by its religious
Creativity
A Lesson in Story-telling My friend and fellow blogger Mitch Teemley http://mitchteemley.com had this excellent advice for aspiring writers. I include it here with his permission. Check out, also the links to earlier tutorial articles. VMK Tips for Writers: Trust the Story Posted on September 29, 2017 by
Economics
The Granule That Broke My Tooth © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr You, granule that broke my tooth, You grain of wheat the miller missed, You minuscule monster of dental destruction, You are more than just my own tormentor: You are scion to granules who tormented nations, Who were packed into granaries
Conceit
Fluidics © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr Energy, Spirit, Love, Flow outward, Ever expanding. Power, Influence, Conceit, Flow inward, Only compacting.
Cultural Assimilation
Having read both of Manfred Wolf’s previous books of recent years, I’m a fan. While “Survival in Paradise” was deeply personal and at times, surprisingly emotional, this new book, more like his earlier “Almost a Foreign Country,” is shrewdly logical and (typically) deeply analytical. Wolf seems to always
Agnosticism
© 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr This is an email I recently sent to a longtime friend and mentor who is ethnically Jewish but religiously atheistic. I don’t know if you remember how — on the old PCs — the hard disk would get all fragmented over time? The computer would just store
Humanity
Internecine © 2017 Vernon Miles Kerr Are all families dysfunctional? Are any not? Thanksgiving beckons. Love draws, but fear impedes. We go anyway, Putting away ancient hurts And hoping for the best — Hugs and howdies. The mashed-potatoes go ’round, Cranberries and turkey too. We hold our tongues Until alcohol loosens them