Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam” (1508-1512)
Although I care deeply about language and am passionately interested in its origins and characteristics, I have no claims as a linguist. Therefore, what follows comes more from my heart than my head–mostly emotion tempered with a bit of knowledge cobbled together from lifelong interest, a graduate-school class on modern English grammar, and a few quick searches on Google. And I suppose it includes a smattering of faith as well.
Let’s start with nouns. No matter what our level of linguistic expertise, we all have a strong sense of what it is to be a noun. We learned in the third grade that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. Then we expanded our understanding of “thing” to include abstract ideas like . . . well, interest and grammar and faith, and even metaphors like heart and head. And we pretty instinctively know how nouns behave, so we are willing to accept the existence of gerunds and infinitives–i.e., that verb forms can actually act in a sentences as nouns. Linguistically, a noun can be the subject of a verb, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Syntactically (in English), nouns can occur with definite and indefinite articles and with adjectives. Continue reading
Despite the apparent obscurity of this World War I-era postcard, the charm of its rough sketch of doughboys at the front and the accompanying doggerel prompted me to buy it from eBay along with others more charming still–and of much more historical interest. However, I was even more enchanted by the cryptic message on the reverse: 
Midway through the World War I centenary, I decided that I would use that largely unacknowledged anniversary as the theme for my freshman composition class on writing across the curriculum. The students write a literature review about shell shock for the social sciences, a popular-science paper about chemical warfare for the natural sciences, and a literary or film analysis for the humanities. In the process, they learn about trench warfare and trench foot, maconichie stew and rum rations, Kitchener’s Mob and Craiglockhart War Hospital–just a few of the endless bits of trivia about that forgotten war that I myself have learned during my preparations for the course. The smell of lice infesting one’s body and of rotting flesh underfoot. The blazing fields of poppies in Flanders, nourished by the nitrogen and lime of war technology and the blood and bones of the boys who died there. The lines that Wilfred Owen wrote as a preface to the book of poems that remained unpublished until after his death in battle exactly a week before the Armistice: “My subject is War, and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” 
