Author D. (Donna) MacNeill Parker has retired from a long career in the Alaska fishing industry in Lakewood, WA. Now she gets to use “all the color of commercial fishing and Alaska to paint an authentic backdrop” where her fictional characters thrive. Donna belongs to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Author’s Guild. When […]
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Let’s Talk – Driving Rain
Screens off? Settled in your favorite nook? Or at the dining table? Then, when was the last time you remember driving rain? I’m not talking the incessant drizzle here in the Pacific Northwest that can drive you crazy if it lasts for days on end – maybe that is some different kind of driving rain. […]
Across the Fence: Dummkopf
My list of Germanisms in the (American) English language keeps surprising me with words I have never encountered over here. Although there is the possibility that Americans have encountered this one over in Germany after WW II and simply adopted it. Because a foreign cussword sometimes sounds less offending than one in one’s own mother […]
Let’s Talk! – To Waken this Long-Cherished Morn (Tonna)
The more I learn the less, I realize, I know. Today’s prompt from Tyrean Martinson’s book is another such case. I had never heard the line before nor had I heard of English Victorian writer Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna. You might like to read up on this brilliant woman who was before her times in so […]
Across the Fence: Rucksack
With the calendar advancing towards summer, those of us who are into it are approaching hiking times. And that means, it’s time for an inventory. Are our shoes still good enough for what we intend to tackle? Do we need special shoe accessories for icy areas in the mountains? Are our working sticks still working […]
Let’s Talk! – Wishing the Earth Would Swallow Me Up
Have you switched off your screens, and are you ready to ponder the above prompt? Wait – didn’t we already ponder something very similar at the very beginning of this column, “Let’s Talk!”? Something about a moment that defines awkwardness? Let’s recapitulate that I defined it as the moment when we get caught at something […]
Across the Fence: Loanword
What a fun word today, taken from the German language and adapted/translated into English – because “loanword” is the equivalent of the German “Lehnwort” (pronounce: ‘lane-vort). Which linguistically makes it a calque, NOT a loanword! Because a calque is the literal translation of a word from another language. Hah, I know this will be a […]
Let’s Talk! – In the Wide, Waiting Land
Are all your screens switched off? Are you ready for another pondering prompt by Tyrean Martinson? Then, what do you come up with when reading “In the Wide, Waiting Land?” First of all, I thought this might be a line from another poem. I found the Arizona March Song with the line “Where the wide, […]
Across the Fence: Jawohl, Nein, Ja
My first encounters with Americans as an adult usually started with them trying out the few German words they knew on me. All of these guys were military, and to run into them when going out was a given, as my native town, Stuttgart, Germany, stationed over 20,000 members of the U.S. Forces back then. […]