Once upon a time, this blog became a tiny magnet for attention from folks whose attention I did not want to draw. I closed it down & hid the archives.
I wager that time’s passed.

Peggy Appiah, British-Ghanaian folklorist and philanthropist, has passed away. She had been a tireless collector of Asante folktales (Anansesɛm) and published the largest collection of Akan proverbs (mmɛbusɛm) to date. Her father, Sir Stafford Cripps, was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1947-1950. Her husband, Joe Appiah, was deeply involved in the Ghanaian independence [...]

Anyone out there know — or know someone who knows — how to read ‘滇’ in Cantonese? I know that in Mandarin it’s diān. Apple’s Chinese Text Converter indicates that 婊 should be the traditional version, but I’ve no way, at the moment, of verifying that, and on-line dictionaries don’t give the same definition.
滇紅茶 is [...]

I love TS Eliot. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘ is one of my favourite English-language poems… perhaps my very favourite. (Those who think they know me won’t be surprised. Those who do might be.)
But I don’t fully get The Waste Land. I’ve read the poem a couple dozen times, and my current slow [...]

To: “Bob Offer-Westort”
From: —–
Reply-To: —–
Subject: Re: Hey.
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the problem with having a blog is that your friends that write you and don’t get a response KNOW that you are not hospitalized, and therefore can write them back…
one love

We used always to have a January thaw in upstate New York. After two weeks when temperatures were -40 or below every morning and school was often cancelled because the buses couldn’t start, the Sun would show us a little love. The snow piles would recede and long-silenced birds would reanimate a cryogenically frozen earth. [...]

I created two Akan keyboard layouts for Mac OS X the day before yesterday, corresponding to the layouts from kasahorow and Nyalasi for Windows. I should probably write up documentation for these, but the Keyboard Viewer should be good enough for most people’s purposes. These are open source: Do with them what you will. This [...]

I saw Brokeback Mountain, the other night, with housemates Shauna and Dax. It wasn’t the film I wanted it to be at any point. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t touching (there’s only one seen between Jack Twist [Jake Gyllenhaal] and Ennis Del Mar [Heath Ledger] where any affection came through), and after the first twenty [...]

Hope you’re having fun at the AAA Annual Meeting!

Whew.