Modern American Sign Language has French origins. Two priests, Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee and the Abbe Sicard were the proximate cause. Abbe de l’Epee had founded a school for the deaf in Paris in the late 1700’s. Abbe Sicard ran it after he died. When Thomas Gallaudet, an American who was trying to found [...]
Interesting quotations…
For reasons, by which I mean, someone asked me to find something and in the process I found other things, I found a bunch of quotations that I had written on scraps of paper and then tried to lose. To have beautiful and holy thoughts, to write books on the lives of the saints, all [...]
Iowa attractions
I wrote earlier about the driftless area in Iowa and Wisconsin. Drift is an older word for the stuff that glaciers move around, and then leave behind as they melt. I’m more familiar with ‘moraines’ and the hills they create. Seattle is an example. Those hills are steep but unstratified (unlayered) junk. The hills around [...]
Making bottle caps fly
When I visit my grandchildren I like to bring activities that I think will amuse them. One of the things I brought last summer was clear old-fashioned film canisters and some AlkaSeltzer tablets. We take a glass of water outside and sit on the steps. Add water to the canister, drop in a half tablet [...]
New Germany, New Switzerland, …
I wrote about going camping over Memorial Day weekend at New Germany State Park in Maryland. The area was settled by Germans moving south from a trail that ran through Pennsylvania and Maryland. That trail was later used by General Braddock in the French and Indian War (the Seven Years War?) and then probably by [...]
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