No Word for Welcome leads to Many Words for Welcome

On June 1, 2011 University of Nebraska Press will publish a book I wrote called No Word for Welcome. It's about three villages in southern Mexico, and how the people who live in those villages have dealt with the global economy. They have not had an easy time of it, hence the book's title. When I started No Word for Welcome -- a very long time ago, in the late 1990s -- I worked as a grassroots organizer. (Thanks to President Obama, I no longer have to explain what that is.) When I finished writing that book, more than decade later, I'd become a full-time writer and editor. A word worker. A story smith. I have always been a book binger. Since long before kindergarten. In spite of my book's title, I love words. Here, at "Many Words for Welcome," I will share some of the words that fascinate, agitate, or just plain stop me  in my tracks.