by Jamie Chavez | Feb 18, 2017 | Miscellany
A little over two years ago I wrote a blog post about a college football star who got a lot of media attention when he was invited to join a book group. It’s a lovely human interest story that I won’t repeat here because you can read it from the link. Additionally, I...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 26, 2016 | Words & Language
I have said this more than once: I learned a lot from reading books. It led directly to my current vocation, for one thing. But before that, for example, it led to my acquisition of an excellent vocabulary and, I believe, my ability to put that vocabulary to work in a...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 18, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
You will continually be taking chances. There will be readers who want you to kill that ape with the oboe, get the diamonds out of the roast beef, cut ‘myrmecoid’ and ‘sharded.’ (“Don’t say ‘myrmecoid,’ say what it means: ‘antlike.’” I’m not interested in...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 26, 2015 | Miscellany
I’ve experienced my share of online confrontation, some of it mean, some of it downright nasty. And I’ve commented on those experiences too (“Two Kinds of People,” “Prescriptivist or Descriptivist,” and “Haters, Gotta Love ’Em”). This old world is full of blamers,...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 19, 2015 | The Writing Craft
In a recent review of the movie about physicist Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything), I read a line about his first wife, Jane Wilde, who “eventually earned a PhD in medieval Spanish poetry,” and I thought, Whoa. Medieval. Spanish. Poetry? And then I reminded...