> (Hal Bush was born perusing the Oxford English
Dictionary. . . .

Terrell;

For your information, I cut my teeth, like any decent
Americanist should, on AMERICAN dictionaries:  specifically,
two of them, one by Noah Webster, the other Ambrose Bierce.

And now, for the record, I would like to send my apologies
for whatever heartache my little posts have caused anyone on
the LIST.  I admit to being a little taken aback by some of
the responses I got; hopefully, however, I am not scarred
for life.  And, just to be perfectly clear to one and all, I
think I am fairly angry about certain things, too--maybe as
angry as anyone, maybe not.

For example, I write these posts from southern Japan, where
I have been reading whatever I want to, hiking in the
mountains, watching world cup soccer, sipping tea, eating
lots of fish, and generally avoiding almost everything about
the entire western hemisphere.  It is food for the soul to
leave America occasionally and pretend to be an
expatriate--at least for brief periods of time.  Really one
of the best things about our profession.

I guess I should know better,  but one American vice that
keeps sneaking insistently into my Japanese sojourn is the
internet and e-mail.  I also should know better about the
way things can come across on e-mail LISTS, most of which
are far less civilized than the dear old Twain LIST, by the
way.

Anyway, again--my apologies for boring you with my glib
political observations.  Keep it real over there until my
return.

For now, signing off from Nippon.

Sumi massen, Otsukare sama deshita (bowing), matta-ne?
--Hal Bush