Beginnings

My son, Thorn (3 months old), is sitting on my lap. And since he chooses to remain relatively quiescent, I am permitted to write this entry.

Rose and I have decided to begin a new blog. We've had blogs in the past. We use Livejournal, though I haven't posted anything significant there in ages. I've used Blogger before, but the blog I made didn't make it past seventeen entries. Recently, however, we had the lovely idea to write a blog together. Our individual writing lives have condensed, apart from work-related scribblings, to the flashes of Facebook and the tweets of Twitter, neither of which satisfies the craving to write. Independently we have failed to craft a stable outlet for our thoughts and musings, but we imagine that collectively we'll have more success.

The blog's title comes from a long series of discussions concerning totem animals. Rose's (called Fox here) animal is a fox. Mine is a sparrow. We'll sign our entries Fox or Sparrow. While many of our readers will come from Facebook, and thus will know exactly who we are and what we do, we've decided to use pseudonyms, maintaining, we hope, some anonymity. To this end I will refer to my wife as Rose or Fox, and to my son as Thorn whenever I write about them here. I don't know yet how Rose will talk about me, but I'll leave that in her hands.

I intend to use this blog to talk about books, the Classics, Roman and Greek history, Latin, anthropology, 19th century romantic literature, science fiction, fantasy fiction, the trials and triumphs of fatherhood, being a husband, the life of a graduate student in the humanities, poetry, and whatever other trifling amusements I happen to fancy. I will rarely, if ever, speak about politics, though World Events might make an appearance from time to time. I shall leave political discussions to Rose and others. My motto is the same as the musically inclined Benjamin Franklin's of 1776, who sang "I won't put politics on paper; it's a mania. So I refuse to use the pen in Pennsylvania." I agree, but I'll extend Mr. Franklin's verse to cover Maryland, New York, or any other state that I call home.

Now and then I'll include a bit of fiction, or poetry, or neo-Latin that I've written. We mean this blog, after all, to be a creative outlet as well as an informative one.

I always accept comments, and I'm looking forward to yours.

I think that's enough of an introduction. Time to get things rolling.