First Blog

I named my blog "The River Alph" because it is a symbol of inspiration and creativity used by my literary and intellectual hero, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Although he's not a household name, Coleridge has has a profound impact on Western culture. He was an intellectual and literary pioneer, who had a major influence on the development of society, literature, and religion. He and William Wordsworth founded English Romanticism with their work, Lyrical Ballads. Terms such as "the birds and the bees," "a willing suspension of disbelief, "an albatross around his neck," and words like "visualize," "psychoanalysis," and others were coined by STC. In a review of a The Road to Xanadu, a work on Coleridge's amazing imagination, one critic said what literary scholars, philosophers, theologians, and intellectual historians already know: "Coleridge had one of the most extraordinary minds the world has ever seen." So I may touch on some of his ideas in blog posts, but I'll mostly be writing about my views on culture and society, history, literature, film, travel, and maybe a few other things close to my heart, such as Houston Cougar athletics.