PatrickMead.net

[NOTE: this will be the last post until at least March 1st when I return from a place where there are no cell phones and no internet. The comments were slowing a bit anyway so it could be that I've been posting too often! I know you have other things to do. Let me know [...]

[Chapter three of Tribes is up at www.tribes.patrickmead.net.I will try to get chapter four up tomorrow before I leave for nine days to a place where there is no email or cell phone coverage. My mother is back in the hospital; in pain but not-- they assure us -- in danger. My brother in law, [...]

For reasons — some of which are obvious and some which will become so later in this series — the Travellers developed their own language. This enabled them to communicate only amongst themselves in crowded areas. Their tongues have been called several names, the most common being Shelta, Gammon, or Cant. 
Linguistically, these are cryptolects, private [...]

Please go ahead and read the last blog so you’ll be ready for the next one… but I have put the first chapter of an unpublished novel at www.tribes.patrickmead.net.I will post at least one more chapter before I leave on vacation next Monday. This has never been printed anywhere before. It was written seven years [...]

Over five hundred years ago, my family took to the road.
We weren’t alone.
There are large groups of people who have not had a permanent home for hundreds of years. Some of them are well known such as the Gypsies, or Romany, but others aren’t known at all unless you are one of them or a [...]

[NOTE: My mother has internal bruising. More tests will be done this week. I'll keep you informed. I am considering starting another blog and publishing there, chapter by chapter, an unpublished (and unshopped) mystery I wrote as a one-off years ago. Stay tuned. I will try to publish two or three more in this series [...]

What if everything you know is wrong? Once a society has accepted something as truth, or agreed to a common myth, it builds high walls around it to protect it, to repel all boarders. Think of those professors who have recently said that universities should refuse to give anyone a Ph.D. in science — any [...]

Little known fact: I write mysteries under a different name. No, I won’t tell you what it is. One of these days I want to write a novel about some of the people and events I’ll detail in these columns. I thought about creating a different domain name for these columns but decided to use [...]

This isn’t the promised "Hidden People" blog. That will come later. I am in the Lafayette, LA airport waiting for my mailing tube… er… flight to Memphis and then on to Detroit. 
I am requesting prayers for Catherine Mead, my mother. She was driving to her home from a friend’s house when she had to dodge [...]

Greetings from central Louisiana. I am in DeRidder for two more nights before I get to fly back to my beloved wife, son, daughter, and Rochester Church. I hope that when my plane arrives at Detroit on Friday night and the shuttle gets me to my car, that it will start. After a week outside [...]