Em Turner Chitty teaches English as a Second Language at the University of Tennessee's English Language Institute. She is the author of How We Really Talk: Using Phrasal Verbs in English, and Spelling and Sound: Spelling Common English Words. She also appears on the Irish/Appalachian album Mountain Laurel, available from etchitty@gmail.com
Just remarkable. The Republican House caucus is so divided that they can’t find a Speaker. They’re looking for “Somebody, anybody,” according to the National Review. Members are in tears. I’d like to say that Congressional Republicans have done this to themselves, but really it is the Republican base that has torched the Republican Party. With … More Seriously? Crying?
[Update} And there’s more: more So today, after a withering shower of acid criticism for telling the truth about the Benghazi witch-hunt, whose target appears always to have been Hillary 2016, Kevin McCarthy acknowledged today that he doesn’t have the votes to become the speaker of the House. The only candidates that are now in … More Mainline GOPers in the House must be shivering in their boots…
Originally posted on Marjorie Turner Hollman:
Wild Cranberries Many years ago my friend Ellen Chagnon walked with me in the sandpits behind Silver Lake in Bellingham, MA and said, “It feels like there should be cranberries…right here,” as she bent down and picked a wild cranberry. Thus began my love affair with wild cranberries. I have…
I don’t know why, but this picture of the Riverside Church in Manhattan is particularly beautiful to me; I wish I had been able to crop the car out, but I was taking the photo from my bicycle seat, so perhaps my perspective was not the best. It is somehow more like an etching than … More Traveling forward into the past
Originally posted on Marjorie Turner Hollman:
My friend Sue suggested we do some exploring along the Charles River, so we set out early thing morning, with only a vague plan in mind. By the time we finished, we had visited trails in three surrounding towns, all of which access portions of the Charles River and/or tributaries…
Here’s Chapter 6 of How We Really Talk: Using Phrasal Verbs in English Chapter 6 “Across” is like a bridge. We cross something so we can get to the other side. Information moves across space from one person to another. If I can make you understand my idea, I can “get it across” to you. Come … More Phrasal Verbs 1/44
There is a lot more green space in Manhattan than I would have guessed. As I stood on the George Washington Bridge looking southwest, I realized that when I lived in Manhattan as a child, I was not really aware of its physical orientation on the East Coast. I didn’t really know, for example, that … More Looking Down the Length of Manhattan
Places do matter. They are different from each other. People in those places are different and the thoughts and experiences you can have in one place bear no resemblance to the thoughts and experiences you can have in another place. I assert this only because there are people in my world who believe that place … More Biking into the Maw of the Metropolis
Earlier in the day, before Martin and I sang at the open mic, I rode south along the Potomac to Mount Vernon along the Mount Vernon Trail. Strangely, I had never visited Mount Vernon before. I’ve been to Jefferson’s Monticello twice, and in general I love old houses, but somehow Mount Vernon had always seemed … More Visiting the President
In 2003, President George W. Bush delivered a State of the Union speech in which he described the US’ campaign against Iraq. It was a little bit of a “Mission Accomplished” moment, as you can see, but the interesting thing about it to me is the color-coding. Bush, a far less intelligent man than Clinton … More Levels of Language in George W. Bush rhetoric
Em Turner Chitty 