Monday January 13, 2014  The American Name Society's personal name of the year is "Francis."

***Got my contribution off to LinkOnline (email writing workshop) two days before the deadline.  

***Comments of comment:

Carol Kennedy, 1/13/14:  "Did [Annie] Dillard not think that a nonfiction writer might have 'lying eyes'? I would sooner trust my own lying eyes than someone else's."

Note that this was someone's years-old recollection of what Annie Dillard said.  Not a fresh direct quotation.

Lee Gold, 1/12/14:  "We went to Japan for four months with only a little prep (enough to read katakana, having seen Chushingura) and continued reading up on Japanese culture and studying the language while we were there (and Barry was working as a programmer).  We were sure we didn't understand as much as we could have but that we understood a lot more than tourists (or Barry's co-workers) who didn't know Japanese and hadn't read about Japanese history.

"We were based in Tokyo.  I don't know where Don Fitch stayed.

"We'd eaten Japanese food in LA.  It was a surprise to find donburi only available at a stadium, sort of like corn dogs in the US.  We found sushi at many price levels (cheap at department store restaurants, more expensive at nice restaurants, yet more expensive at fancier restaurants) August through November.  It was a surprise to find that sukiyaki was a very fancy food, cooked bite by bite by someone who knelt beside you -- at a fancy restaurant (and we didn't find it at a cheap restaurant).  We got used to surprises.

"Barry got $35/day per diem (because previous employees had eaten steak and drunk Scotch) plus a free hotel room, laundry, and subway pass, and we lived on that, not depositing his salary checks till we got home.  The per diem even paid for a week's vacation trip to Kyoto."