Orin Hargraves: the Cyberhome
One-stop shopping for everything you might want to do to, for, or with him.
Business before pleasure:
My online resume (or CV if you call it that)
is the place to go for information about my working life in lexicography,
lexical research, NLP, teaching, writing, and other stuff I do for money. You might also enjoy a friendlier overview of what I do here, in a profile about me in my alumni magazine.
I'm a student of Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Ajaan Geoff), abbot of
Metta Forest Monastery. His hundreds of Dhamma talks online are for the good and gain of all. Check 'em out! If you are interested in joining a weekly meditation group in Niwot, CO, please email me (see bottom of this page). Put 'Meditation' in the subject line. The group has gone into hibernation during the pandemic but I hope to revive it again soon.
Statistics from Google reveal that most people get to the page you're
on by searching the phrase "who owns english".
Here's why! An essay I wrote a few years ago:
Who Owns English?
Man does not live by lexicography and alone, and for that, there is my other writing: some of it not available anywhere but on this link:
Orin's Oeuvre Groove
You can buy books that I've written (thereby contributing to my modest royalty income stream and perhaps helping to obviate an undignified descent into geriatric poverty) on Amazon.com. Most of them are on this link.
Medium.com is where I publish essays that I think might be of interest to a general audience. If you read them and "clap", it may result in little droplets of money coming my way. I will love you for this.
I run the Twitter account @SeamstressSLV, which tweets the diary (1936-1939, with some gaps) of my great-grandmother Ethel Watson Wyley. You can learn more about Ethel and her world here. She's in her 80s in the picture above, which was taken in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I'm a card-carrying member, and also past-president of the
Dictionary Society of North America. Currently (starting 2021) I am also the DSNA's representative at GlobaLex.
You, too, can become a card-carrying member of the Dictionary Society, which is the One True Way to show your love of dictionaries, by visiting its blog.
If you want to check out pictures I've taken
(using a smarter-than-me digital camera)
you can go to Orin's (a.k.a. Oculator's) page at Flickr.com
You can read my monthly column on words and language if you take out a very modestly priced subscription to The Visual Thesaurus. Thousands do! If you're on a budget, most of my older columns are archived there for free.
I sing with various Boulder choirs: at present, Cantabile and Boulder Bach Festival chorus. They both make the audience weep. Usually in a good way. Check out their concert schedules (sure to resume, post-pandemic) on the links provided.
Do you like pictures of cats? Of course you do, this is the Internet. If you follow me on Instagram, all you will ever see is my two darlings, Sergio (the bobtail) and Charlotte (the high-maintenance Siamese).
Are we related? If your name is Hargraves and you live in or have ancestors in the swampy places of SE Texas or SW Louisiana, there's a pretty good chance of it (because, you know, Cajuns).
Other names I research, with intermittent success and several frustrating brick walls, are Garrison, Haner, Huff, Ragland, Taylor, Watson, Wyley. I have a public profile on the personal genomic service 23andMe where, if you are a member, you will be able to see immediately if we share a (no doubt, obscure) common ancestor. My GEDMatch kit no. is M352409. I manage kit nos. M043835, M096795, and M301591, which belong to relatives.
You can also explore my family tree on WikiTree. Or start your own tree there, because it's the best place to do it. I've written a couple of biographical sketches of illustrious (to my mind) women in my family tree. You might enjoy them! Here are links:
Teenage Mom and Plantation Mistress, an account of my second-great grandmother Sarah Elizabeth Huff
The Fabulous Life of Angeline Louisiana Munn, my great aunt, a mine operator and hotelier
Are we professionally connected? If we should be, here's my LinkedIn profile. Former students are especially welcome, it's always wonderful to see how wildly successful you have become. I'm flattered by invitations to connect from people I do not know, but I don't usually accept them—especially if they just say "please add me to your LinkedIn network" (because, why?). Just email me directly (see below) if you want to get in touch.
Facebook? Yeah, what a great place to squander minutes! I'm happy to connect there with old friends (high school, college, London, Morocco, Peace Corps, CU after you have left my classroom, etc.) and new friends. If you don't already know me, please don't try to start our acquaintance by sending me a friend invitation on Facebook. Send me an email instead (see below).
I used to answer questions frequently on Quora, before it became a Potemkin Village of low-quality information. But I stand by the answers I have provided on topics including lexicography, dictionaries, meditation, Colorado, NLP, and a few others.
If you want to talk to me or propose something unusual, start here!
I have had to remove the direct email link because of the unconscionable amount of spam it brings in. I'm at orin dot hargraves at colorado dot edu. Thanks!
