ON CIVIL DISCOURSE.

      I hope to provide links to current short, interesting, and often overlooked pieces from print media, both mainstream and obscure. I will offer occasional word-crafting of my own, usually book reviews, local histories, photo essays, and a few short rants. In all cases, comment will be offered and is solicited. Though we now have many forums for intelligent and reasonably civil discourse, my purpose is to offer yet another.

I hope to attract comment that argues ideas--not vicious personal attacks, and not strewn with unnecessary obscenity. On the matter of obscenity, bear in mind that I know all the words. I spent forty years as a skilled construction worker. I’m the only person I know who might use “mother****ing” as a gerund, rather than in its more usual adjectival form. And I have always thought of grammar as descriptive—not prescriptive or proscriptive.

But not all levels of usage are equally suitable for all situations. Prose displayed in public is more effective if written in usage that does not pre-emptively alienate vast sections of the public, including people who might easily agree with the ideas expressed. Those reading this blog are mostly unknown to me and have done me no harm; therefore it hardly behooves me to insult them gratuitously. So when offering comment, please keep a civil tongue in your head—or keep one in a jar of formaldehyde—whatever. ………….The Runcible Cat.