Live Realgoodwords video

Listen to a conversation with Bill Holm

You can click HERE to listen to Bill Holm on Realgoodwords last fall.

I hope you get the chance to listen to my conversation with Bill Holm, and that most of all, it will cause you to take a look at his award winning writings. Published works include:

The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland
The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth
Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of Chinese Essays
Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary
Playing the Black Piano: Poems

Words for a new year

I was listening to KAXE's Morning Show today with Scott Hall and Kathy Dodge. They talked about having a Monday morning word of the day. A way to get yourself jump started on your week. Today I'm working on interviews I have coming up in the next week, and as always, I've stumbled across a word that I don't know - and definitely don't know the definition of....I thought I'd admit my lack of worldly word-knowing and get to the bottom of things. Here they are:

miscellarian - I'm reading about a scientist named Joseph Priestly*. You probably were like me and assumed that he was some long lost relative of Canadian actor Jason Priestly. So far I haven't found the connection. Anyway, he is described like this: a miscellarian who relied on conversational networks to feed his fascination with technology

I went to Dictionary.com where I often find the answers to my questions.... and oddly, this word was not found there. It asked me if I meant MISCELLANARIAN. Since I didn't know exactly what I meant, I decided to check out the meaning of THAT word.

Mis`cel*la*na"ri*an\, a. [See Miscellany.] Of or pertaining to miscellanies. --Shaftesbury. -- n. A writer of miscellanies.

I did a google search on the word Miscellarian - and found that an author named Russell Ash called himself a miscellarian - or a 'writer of this and that'. Good to know!

Has anyone out there used this word casually in conversation? Let us know! If you are a wordy person, check out Merriam Webster's Word of the Day, online.

*The book I'm reading is called "The Invention of Air - A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America" by Steven Johnson.