My essay, about life and leaving Texas, appears in the books issue of The Texas Observer. It's also the last issue for my friend and editor, Jake Bernstein, who moves on from the Observer, where he did great things, to ProPublica, where he'll do great things, I'm sure.

I've been a contributing writer for the Observer since 1999 through four waves of editors and massive changes in my own life; it's one of the constants, a rock. How fitting that a publication, less so a place, would be a pivot point for me.

My essay on the future of English in China is in the July issue of Wired. What if examples of Chinglish ("please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can") aren't really bad English? What if they are evidence that the English language is happily leading a secret life without us? (For some reason Wired editors changed "secret life" to "alternative lifestyle" -- maybe a California thing?)

And the erotic photo (to a bibliophile, anyway) that accompanied the essay:

(snapped by my friend Deb)

I recently purchased a copy of "Ultimate Language Secrets," an e-book published by a guy named Owen Lee (whose real name is Owen Xia Yin) who lives in Singapore. I hesitate to write anything about this, but I don't see any other credible reviews on the web. DO NOT buy this book. Most of the content is ripped off from Wikipedia, in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy -- this means that you can find it for FREE on the web. Lee also ripped off some of my sentences about Giuseppe Mezzofanti and a discussion of hyperpolyglots, and has probably ripped off stuff from other writers as well. I'll say it again: don't give Lee any of your money, because what he's selling isn't his.

UPDATE: Here is Wikipedia's intellectual property policy, and the reusers' guide is here. To copy material verbatim,

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.

Owen Lee has put his own copyright on his book, including the material from Wikipedia, which is clearly a violation.

Here's the other problem with fixing the text from Wikipedia and calling it authoritative: Wikipedia pages change. One appendix of "Ultimate Language Secrets" is lifted from the Wikipedia entry on memory, an area in which there's a lot of research being done. Those advances may or may not ever make it to Wikipedia, but if they did, wouldn't you want to know about it?

From Romenesko:

"Fresh Air" host Terry Gross tells Columbia students: "Before we start taping, I tell my guests that if they figure out what they really mean to say in the middle of saying it -- that is, if they figure out a clearer, more concise way of making their point -- they can go back to an earlier part of the answer and do it over. This sounds like sacrilege, I know -- it risks giving an interviewee an opportunity not only to rephrase a point but possibly retract it. But I really do want to give my guests a chance to say what they have to say as clearly as possible. Sometimes Im even the one suggesting they try it again."

From my experience doing radio interviews for Um... last year, this never happens. If anyone gets to stop and start over, it's the host, not the guest. I tried to stop and start over with one show -- it was my first interview, I'd quickly learn doing a number of live shows that forward, forward, forward was the direction of choice, which was something of a challenge for me, as I'm a reviser and a planner, an ummer, not a sentence restarter -- and my assuming the host's prerogative didn't go over well. That, and it made for some hell for the guy who edited it.

The press release.

On Saturday we went for a hike:

With our dog:

In the mountains:

On the way home, we stopped at the World's Tallest Snowwoman, in Bethel, Maine:

Where I made a call on my phone:

And found out that from September to December Misty and I are going to live here:

I'm the recipient of the Ralph A. Johnston Writing Fellowship, given by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.

I need an emoticon that means, I bow respectfully to you. Blogger friend says his mother's just died. I don't want to send words. Oh, words. Words, you words. I need gestures, postures.

The pressing question is, what did people sing on birthdays before the Happy Birthday song was written? The answer: nothing.

According to scholar Elizabeth Pleck, birthday parties did not become common even among wealthy Americans until the late 1830s; modern birthday cakes emerged after 1850; and peer-culture birthday parties, involving children of the same age as the child whose birthday was being celebrated, emerged between 1870 and 1920, after American urban public schools became age-graded. Thus, the prerequisites for the development of a standard birthday song – the proliferation of birthday celebrations that involved a dramatic moment at which a group of invitees, often children, addressed the honoree -- may not have been in place until shortly before “Happy Birthday to You” started to become popular.

From an interesting article about the copyright history of the Happy Birthday song.