1. Tolerance, Trousers, and Egyptian Bar Jokes

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    June 18, 2022 by libroshombre

                International Tolerance Day won’t roll around until November 16, but it’s increasingly obvious we ought to celebrate “sympathy or …
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    Category: blogs, books, communication, demagoguery, democracy, humor, jokes, language, politicians, politics, profanity, words | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  2. Peeves, Persiflage, and Portmanteaux

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    June 18, 2022 by libroshombre

                “Foist,” “to introduce surreptitiously,” is a word I like, perhaps because librarians enjoy  foisting books and information, albeit overtly, …
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    Category: libraries, railroads, trains, words, writing, writing well | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  3. Ashurbanipal’s Library, Queen Readers, and the Intolerably Stupid

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    May 23, 2022 by libroshombre

                Once upon a time, back when literacy was really rare, no one ever read silently to themselves, and all …
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    Category: archeology, books, librarians, library history, library school, literacy, public libraries, reading, royalty, science | Tags: , , , , ,

  4. Nanoparticles, Hamdogs, and Freaking Out

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    May 13, 2022 by libroshombre

                Our family’s Kentucky Derby brunch turned out to be fertile ground for intellectual speculation, ranging from sandwiches to parasocial …
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    Category: animals, food, polution, psychology, relationships, social science, sports | Tags: , , , , ,

  5. Paw-Paws, the Klan, and Good Taste

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    May 9, 2022 by libroshombre

    LIBRARY COLUMN Contact Greg Hill, 479-4344                                                                          May 5, 2022             The Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende and I must smell …
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    Category: authoritarianism, demagoguery, democracy, racism, taste | Tags: , ,

  6. Interrobangs, Pedantry, and Rascism

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    April 23, 2022 by libroshombre

                American writer H.L. Mencken’s word-smithing, the courage of his convictions, and his pioneering work on our version of English, …
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    Category: eugenics, intelligence, Intelligence Quotiant, librarians, library school, pedantry, punctuation, reading, reference books, reference librarians | Tags: , , , , ,

  7. Stout, Seuss, and the Bible

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    April 23, 2022 by libroshombre

                In “A History of Reading,” Alberto Manguel wrote, “At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of …
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    Category: Bible, book banning, censorship, e-reader, etymology, language, reading, word origins, words, writers, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

  8. Inventors, Scientists, and WorldCat

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    April 23, 2022 by libroshombre

                You won’t find me arguing with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s claim that “One must be an inventor to read well. …
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    Category: interlibrary loan, inventors, language, languages, librarians, libraries, libraries and librarians, library history, linguistics, scientists | Tags: , , , , ,

  9. Band Names, Numbers and Elephants

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    March 19, 2022 by libroshombre

                The Lone Tones is the name of the acapella doowop group in Austin that I’ve sung with for forty-plus …
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    Category: autobiography, libraries, libraries and librarians, musicians, numbers, public libraries | Tags: , , , ,

  10. Banana Peels, White Wings, and Moby Dick

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    March 12, 2022 by libroshombre

                Eric Hoffer, the American longshoreman philosopher, noticed that “Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which …
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    Category: art, books, classics, fruit, illustrations, illustrators, librarians, libraries, plants, public libraries, reference librarians, trash | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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