Scribbles
Articles
Children still need to master handwriting skills
Legible writing is considered crucial for success in school exams.
Crafty ambiguity is an artful art
How to write flattering letters of recommendation that also alert prospective employers.
India's special relationship to English
English as a lingua franca — from British colonial rule to recent Americanization
Newfangled genderless job titles engender discord
While English speakers are urged to reject female job titles, Germany embraces them!
My own little piece of London history
In 1898, my great-grandfather reportedly ran the largest fish, game and poultry firm in London.
Preserving 1,500 languages for 10,000 years
The Rosetta Project — an ambitious effort to save languages doomed to disappear.
Suicidal poets 'leave behind clues in their writing'
Conclusions of a 2001 U.S. study comparing word usage among suicidal and non-suicidal poets.
Tashi Tsering's escape from Tibet
A first-hand account of what happened in the aftermath of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.
The long-held perception that right is 'right'
Old words for LEFT with negative meaning might explain our historical preference for right-handedness.
Literary topics
Coming to grips with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw
This critical essay seeks plausible
explanations for disturbing events in the classic ghost story.
Notes on Andrew Brown's Fishing in Utopia
— Sweden and the Future that Disappeared
Prize-winning author/journalist Andrew Brown's relationship to Sweden, from love affair to estrangement
Notes on William Golding's Lord of the Flies
The 1983 Nobel Literature Prize winner's novel about man's latent evil in the absence of organized society
Notes on William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar — Why kill Caesar?
Analysis of the motives behind the decision of Brutus and Cassius to assassinate Caesar
The treatment of evil and sin in three American literary
classics:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
Billy Budd, Sailor
by Herman Melville;
and Daisy Miller by Henry James
A comparison of what consitutes evil and sin in these very different widely-read
tales
Short stories
Two's company, three's a crowd
In 1970s Sweden a man wants to rent out his apartment but plans
to stick around. Humor.
Poetry
Atlantic Sunset
Might be off the west coast of Ireland,
which I reached on a 14-day cycle tour in August 1969.
Émigré
An old man living in exile takes stock
of his past, wonders if he willl ever see his homeland again..
Leaving Amsterdam, spring 1940
Germany was to launch an invasion of France and the
Low Countries on May 10th, 1940.
Mary Anne
All is not fair in love and war...
"U" Essay
Love letter
Vietnam '68
Original version, The Real War (May 1972), came 7th in an international poetry contest.
Non-English texts
Eine himmlische Reise
Eine absurde Erzählung von einer imaginären Flugreise auf allerhöchstem Niveau
Republikflucht
„Wenn ich einige Minuten Ihre Aufmerksamkeit in Anspruch nehmen durfte, so möchte
ich Ihnen etwas über das abwechslungsreiche Leben von Georg Dettmann erzählen...“
Inlåst på varuhus
Vad den här galna historien egentligen handlar om är kaffe!
Positivt, neutralt och negativt om våren i Sverige
Detta var en enkel övning i att skriva positivt, neutralt och negativt om ett valfritt ämne.
Alltså valde jag ett synnerligen kärt ämne för svenskarna.
