25 years ago, my friends and I were doing vanity searches on our names to see what the Internet knew about us. Not much back then. AI is a much stronger search, but it still doesn't know a lot about me. I like that. I have a fairly low profile and prefer it that way. I tried that vanity search again this past week using copilot.microsoft.com.

On this day at the edge of the new year, I'm thinking about when I started this blog at the end of 2020. The five years have sometimes gone fast but in some ways have moved slowly. 2020 was a year of COVID-19 Pandemic and the coronavirus outbreak which became the defining event of the year. Worldwide lockdowns, millions of deaths, a global recession, social distancing, and masks were part of our everyday life and language.

Photo by Carolina Basi on Pexels.com I'm on winter break, which for me is a time to visit friends, get outdoors (cold as it is), read, write and try to recharge before the very cold "spring" semester begins. As an English major and professor in an English department, it should not surprise you that I have an interest words and in the origins of words.

I've written before about writers on writing. Today I'm looking at two very different writers - Maya Angelou and Anthony Trollope - who probably have very little in common when it comes to their lives and their books, but they are both disciplined writers. That's a topic that interests me because I consider myself a rather undisciplined writer - and I'd like to improve my discipline.

NPR has a page with its best books of the year, but the page is just a collage of covers. So, the cover has to grab you in order for you to click a few times to get real information about the book. That led me to think about this idea of judging a book by its cover. Of course, the idiom “don’t judge a book by its cover” applies to more than books.

I have mentioned that I have a colleague at the university who teaches philosophy but has been working on a novel for the past year. He will drop by my office bearing the latte he knows I like and drop a new chapter on my desk and say, "Put on your literary hat and tell me what you think." I bought him…

Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year is "parasocial." It comes from the rise in “unhealthy” and “one-sided” relationships with celebrities, influencers and even AI chatbots. It describes a relationship (or Parasocial Relationship - “PSR”) in which a person feels like they know a celebrity on a personal level, even though they have never met them. This definitely describes an unhealthy relationship.

Pamela (@pam4bear) / X