I am here again. I thank my good friend Ali for saving some older posts from another blog where I was an active participant along with him. He was clever enough to save some of my blogs from there on Emily Dickinson's poetry, as well as some blogs about the use of English and some of the difficulties that people encounter when they are learning the language. I know about such difficulties, because I had experienced them myself. So, here is a bit about me:
I was born in Hungary. My mother and I left a few days short of my 16th birthday, after the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - which was an uprising against the Soviet Union and its domination of Eastern Europe. After spending a few years in refugee camps and schools in Austria, I came (with my mother) to the United States early in 1959, when I was 18 years old, going on 19. I began to learn English in earnest as soon as we arrived in New York City. In less then a year's time - and by then we were living in Cleveland, Ohio - I took my first class in English Composition at the Western Reserve University (today it's called Case Western Reserve University). From then on the history of my higher education took a dip and then went on with flying colors until in the year of 1974 I finally received my Ph.D. in English from the Johns Hopkins University. By then I was an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college in Southern Indiana. I am still living in Southwestern Indiana, even today, after my retirement from teaching.
These are the external facts of my life. The internal story is much more interesting. I became an avid reader early in my life. And never stopped. Once I acquired English, I began to read more and more books in English, until at last I began to teach courses in English and American literature. But saying this is still saying something about the external facts of my life. What lies beneath is an extraordinary love of literature - of poems and plays and stories and novels. And, of course, of all that relates to this life-long study, such as philosophy and theology and history and psychology - and/or whatever else can be related to stories and ideas. I have never ceased to have an undying curiosity about life and letters - much of which is about love, too. Love stories are still among my favorite kinds of stories.
So in my future contributions to this blog site, I shall come back with some brief essays that I hope those of you who are learning English in Iran, for example, will find both useful and enjoyable. I thank my friend Ali for having created this blog site, and I am looking forward to hearing from you, too, after this and/or my future postings.
