Barbara Gregorich's Blog, page 16

A New Web Site

Way back in the “aughts,” around 2005, I knew that I would have a book coming out the following year. That book was Waltur Buys a Pig in a Poke and Other Stories (Houghton, 2006). I also knew that I did not yet have a web site — and that I should have one.

So I hired Lisa Dwyer to build my web site. She and I met and I sketched out what I wanted and we discussed pages and subpages and sub-sub pages and what links I wanted, background colors, fonts, photographs, and a lot of other stuff. Lisa...

The Stolen Horse and Me

Sometimes there’s a thread running through your life and it takes you decades to notice it. That’s the case with idioms and me. We’ve had a life-long relationship, but I came to notice this only a few years ago. Well, fifteen or so years ago, but that’s a short time compared to how long idioms have been part of my life.

I remember quite vividly the first time I encountered an idiom. I was maybe five years old, and my grandfather said to me, “There’s no sense in locking the barn door after the...

Mountain Passes: Raton Pass

Like the Cumberland Gap, Raton Pass played an important role in U.S. history: it allowed travel between Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe, which was part of Spanish territory in North America. Santa Fe was, in fact, the single most important town in the northern part of the Spanish empire. Because Spain feared that France, Great Britain, or the United States might try to take over the southwest territories, they forbid residents of Santa Fe to trade with these nations.

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But in 1821 Mexican...

Pigs in Mystery Novels

Sometimes what is obvious to fans isn’t necessarily obvious to the writers. I speak of pigs.

Yes, pigs: one of the most populous large mammals in the world, with more than one billion of them rooting around at any given time.

I grew up with pigs. Sort of. My uncle owned a dairy farm on which he also raised pigs. Along with my cousins, I slopped the hogs each day, carrying heavy buckets of food scraps (Phew!) and dumping them over the rail and into the hog troughs. So, yes, I know about swine....

Royal Blood

I often hear people use the expression “royal blood,” as in “she has royal blood in her veins.” They say this in all seriousness — as if there is such a thing as royal blood,  identifiable under the microscope. I’d like to think they use this expression unthinkingly, but I suspect otherwise. 

Here’s a poem I wrote during an irate moment when I read in a serious book on genealogy that somebody had “royal blood.”

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Royal Blood

Royal blood
my ass.

Myth — poison
strewn about
by the ruling class,
like...

Mountain Passes: Smugglers Notch

During Thomas Jefferson’s second term, Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807, forbidding Americans to trade with Great Britain or its dominions such as Canada. This meant that citizens would have to buy products manufactured in the United States rather than less expensive ones made abroad. 

The passage and enforcement of the Embargo Act caused economic hardship for many Vermonters, who had an established route of trade with Canada and had been trading with Montreal merchants for several gen...

Walt Whitman – labourer, journalist, poet, social radical

by Barbara Gregorich

I wrote the following piece for Redline: Contemporary Marxist Analysis, and it was published on their site May 1, 2019. I am reprinting the piece as it appeared, with standard English (i.e., not American) spelling.

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This month marks the bicentennial of the birth of the great US poet Walt Whitman.  The author of the essay below is a Chicago-based historian, novelist, essayist, poet and public speaker – and regular reader of Redline.

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Walt Whitman was born in West...

Sharing My Research Notes

From 1988-1992 I spent every day of the year researching the story of women who had played baseball in the 19th and 20th centuries, and as part of that research I ended up with 8,000 or so sheets of paper that I stored in files, which I stored in file-pockets, which I stored in my file cabinets. In 2016 I donated all of this material to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library: you can read about it here.

But before I donated the research materials, I published some of them (the public-doma...

Color-Coding Your Manuscript

Although I had heard about color-coding a manuscript before rewriting it, I had never employed this technique until last year. In addition to writing books, I weave baskets, so it seems natural for me to draw an analogy between what one does when weaving a basket and what one does in a color-coded rewrite.

I first started weaving baskets in 2003. And the first ones I wove were simple weaving: 01/U1. That stands for Over 1, Under 1, and that’s what you do with the weaver: you weave it over one...

Mountain Passes: Yellow Mountain Gap

In 1776 the American colonists delivered their Declaration of Independence to King George who, refusing to let them leave the British Empire, ordered the British Army to conquer them. The British had the support of perhaps one-third of all colonists. These supporters of Britain were called Loyalists because they were loyal to what had been their government. Those who rebelled were called Patriots.

From 1775 onward, the invading British Army and the defending Patriots engaged in battles from M...