March is National March into Literacy Month and worthy of our support.

But let’s also celebrate children’s literacy by remembering those books that delighted us when we were kids. What was your favorite? Perhaps it was a classic such as Charlotte’s Web or Huck Finn, or one the many books by Maurice Sendak or Madeleine L’Engle. Or did you enjoy reading about the Hardy Boys or the Little House on the Prairie? Whatever you read then (or read now), reading developed your use of spoken and written language.

Maybe your favorite “children’s” book is of more recent vintage! I recall riding …

Want to know what a blog really spends time talking about?  Wordle.net provides a fun, visually appealing, and easy to understand way to do just that.

Just type the URL for a blog into the appropriate field and Wordle will create a “Word Cloud” just for you.  Wordle looks through the most recent blog posts, and the more often a word is used, the larger it appears in the cloud.

Here’s what the recent Gold Mine posts look like:

I’m enjoying watching the Olympics. For me, it’s not just the action that’s entertaining—I also enjoy the words used to describe the action. Let’s look at some:
Hat Tricks in Hockey

I know that a hockey player makes a hat trick if he or she scores three goals in one game. By why is it called a hat trick? Apparently the term began among cricket teams, where it was the sporting thing to buy a new hat for any bowler who dismissed three batsmen with consecutive deliveries. Sort of like three strikes, you’re out except to three different batters. …

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”

There is a lot we can take away from the first Fundamental Principle of Olympism found within the Olympic Charter.

Yes, the Olympics are the world’s premiere athletic tournament – but they are also an invitation to reflect on the joy of effort and excellence in all endeavors.

What do …

At a marketing workshop I attended recently, the subject of web sites naturally came up. One attendee was feeling the pressure to create a web site for his insurance business. Although he knew he “ought” to have one, he was obviously reluctant (indeed, suspicious) about the need, the cost and the benefit.

His reasons for not getting a site boiled down to:

Today, I’m going to examine reason #1. I’ll address reason #2 next week.  So let’s …

Barely a month into the New Year and I’m sticking with my resolutions: I just read Patricia O’Connor’s Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.

I recommend it to you, be you grammarphobe or grammarphile.

Ms O’Connor, as a former editor of The New York Times Book Review, has probably seen some truly wretched writing over the years. With Woe is I she firmly, kindly and wittily sets us straight.

Woe is I is easy to read. I know that it’s the grammarphiles among us who actually read, page by page, books …

The American Dialect Society selected tweet as the 2009 Word of the Year. (Google was their Word of the Decade.) I consider tweet to be a surprising choice, mostly because it wasn’t one of the 27 words on the ballot.

To consider why tweet became WoTY—and if it will remain part of our vocabulary—I looked at past winners to see what factors nudge a word up, up , up on the list all the way to Word of The Year.  What I noticed was that the Big Award goes, each year, to a “vocabulary item” that:

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The American Dialect Society chooses the Word of the Year each January for the year previous.

But this year, 2010, they’ll also pick the Word of the Decade. Let’s consider the candidates! It’s remarkable to consider that these words, which we use every day, did not exist or existed with a different meaning, only ten years ago.

Drum roll, please! Here are the candidates for Word of the Decade (and my opinion of them):

9/11 Two words packed with immense meaning:  “The terrorist attacks on the United States, specifically in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington with horrendous suffering …

Be it resolved in the year 2010, I will:

Some times I sit down to write these articles and nothing comes to me; no spark of genius nor pang of outrage.

But sometimes, when I’m sitting in this void of letters - images start to come into my mind.  Rube-Goldberg contraptions of creativity.  Literal idea mills.  I have yet to test any of these mental machines, but I thought it high time that a put them to page.

The Tzolk’in of Craft

The Tzolk’in consists of a pair of large interlocking gears, one with 13 tines, the other with 20.  It is one of two well-known Mayan calendars.  Each day the gears …