I have spent a tiring day finally going through the piles of paper on my Paper Desk. Not finished yet but great inroads. I’m reading everything, of course, and making decisions. And then there will be the follow-ups to my decisions: sending stuff to like-minded friends, filing things for me or for my university, more for me and my friends these days, I’m afraid. My professional life is not of much interest to an academic public. I’m not very academic, nor am I commercial. I’m a mugwump.

I did find words among my papers—pages of them—to look up or re-look up, and words I’ve read before but never used, or very seldom. Recondite is one of them.

rec·on·dite| adjective (of a subject or knowledge) little known; abstruse: the book is full of recondite information. DERIVATIVES. reconditely adverb reconditeness noun ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Latin reconditus ‘hidden, put away’, past participle of recondere, from re- ‘back’ + condere ‘put together, secrete’.

I understand why I have seldom used the word; I have no secrets. My ilfe is an open blog.

More to come.