Meet David
It seems that David has always been involved in messing about with words.
One of his earliest memories is about wanting to be six years old, so he could start school. There, he believed, some magic would transform him into someone who could read and write, like his older brother and sisters.
It didn’t work out quite that fast, but it did happen. And he was soon writing what he calls some “moderately awful” stuff. He still remembers one poem, from about the third grade:
I went for a motorcycle ride
Just my girlfriend Ruth and me
I took a bump at sixty-five
And kept on riding, Ruthlessly
Yeah, pretty groanworthy. But it was fun, and one of the main payoffs of messing with words is the simple pleasure of doing it. He even enjoyed diagramming sentences—it seemed like an interesting game.
And, although he didn’t plan it, he found that many of the things he became interested in doing became material for his later writing.
Take pool, for example. Attracted to the game in high school, he misspent many hours in the local poolroom. Years later, several of his articles about tournaments and top players were printed in the National Bowlers Journal and Billiard Review. Fun to write (and it paid a little).
Later came sailing. Although he never saw a sailboat up close until he was an adult teaching high school in the Washington D.C. area, he fell in love with it on his first outing, on the Potomac. He went on to get a Coast Guard license, and became editor of the Sailing Club of Washington (Yeah, SCOW) newsletter. He also wrote a handbook for beginning sailors.
And there was tennis. Never a top-notch player, he enjoyed the exercise and social contacts. He started an employee tennis club while working in one of his government jobs, and wrote about the sport in the employee newsletter.
Even his boyhood days fishing in the creeks and ponds of East Tennessee led to an article, “Baiting with Whales,” now scheduled for publication in Smoky Mountain Living magazine.
He had grown up listening to bluegrass and country music, and that interest—plus some strictly amateur playing of his own—led to an
article in The Washington Post, and one or two in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.
And of course there were books and training manuals, mostly related to grammar, usage and vocabulary, that came from his teaching.
So, he has found that messing about with words, writing and teaching about usage, can be rewarding, often fun. But over the years, he also learned about two things that were definitely not fun.
One was that a lot of the rules about grammar were just plain wrong—more likely to hinder than to help.
The other was that some people could be downright mean to those who failed to follow the rules. Even if the rule made no sense, they treated violators like criminals, or maybe mentally deficients.
These dismal facts led him to become a contrarian grammarian—refusing to be ruled by dumb rules, and encouraging others to reconsider some of the rules, and when a rule made no sense, to ignore it.
Like the rule about never ending a sentence with a preposition. There’s no logical reason for it, but many people still believe it, and consider
those who “violate” it to be somehow inferior. This needs to change.
So, want to help out? Like to sign on? We’d welcome you in. The world needs more contrarian grammarians, so come on over and
hang out.
Note: We can’t put all the blame on the blamers, though. They have been taught, through lessons and examples, to disparage
“rule-violators.” We can hope they change, and can help those who want to.
Professional Summary
- Teacher—two universities, two high schools, tutoring agency in D.C. area, about twenty government agencies
- Trainer—International Association of Quality Circles ~ highest
participant evaluations of any trainer - Clinician—Reading clinician and diagnostician
- Writer—Federal government and freelance
- Education specialist—USMC correspondence school
- Senior management analyst—Federal government
- Director of Public and Congressional Affairs—Federal government
- Founding partner—Landa Associates~training
Affiliations & Awards
- Toastmasters International—Cub president, area governor
- Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity—two offices
- Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities
- Teaching assistantship (earned MA in English)
- Fellowship, National Institute of Public Affairs (MA in government)
- Editor-in-Chief, college newspaper
- Mensa member
Publications
- “The Picking Party,” article in The Washington Post.
- “The Track Dog,” short story in an anthology, In Good Company.
- “The Shiny Penny,” short story in Smoky Mountain Living magazine.
- “Voices Worth the Listening,” review of book by Thomas Burton, in the Lincoln Memorial University Law Review.
- Frente a Frente/Face to Face, a dual-language reader, with English/Spanish translations on facing pages, with Francisco Cámara-Riess.
- “Keeping Both Ends of the Seesaw Up,” article (co-written with Ambrose Klotz) in a U.S. Navy management journal.
- Books on vocabulary-building, writing, editing, grammar, proofreading, punctuation, etc. (Some were co-written with Lane Goddard, some with Jane Mallison).
- A few articles in National Bowlers Journal and Billiard Review.
- An article on jam-sessions in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.