Along Came Mary

I remember the first time I met Mary Wendt. Sara and I had managed, although she was a year ahead of me at Alma, to land ourselves in the same Sociology 101 class. I say managed like it wasn't purposeful, but it was; our making friends with Mary, however, was purely by accident. She sat next to us the first day of class, and after that first day, we returned to the same seats, delighted to find Mary had returned to the same seat as well. Although Mary was a non-traditional student whose life experience was far greater than our own, we thought of her as no different than us, and we soon fell in love with her pleasant smile and witty charm, quick to call her friend.

Throughout my time at Alma College, Mary and I had a number of English and Composition classes together—my favorite, perhaps, being our shared poetry class with Ms. Catherine Swender, which gave us the opportunity to work with distinguished poets such as Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez. Our love of literature and our shared views on life soon sealed our fates as life-long friends.


Though we lost touch for some time, only for geographical reasons, our paths crossed once again in the technological enigma that is social media. It was through Facebook that I learned of Mary's academic success, her hard-earned title of “Doctor,” and her continuing frustrations with her students' writing assignments and their unfortunate ignorance of simple grammar rules.

In one of our many brainstorming textathons, Elizabeth and I had tossed around the idea of adding a grammar section to the blog—a fun, but helpful resource which writers could access for a plethora of style and grammar tips, such as the common grammatical errors with which Mary's students were plagued.

I am excited to announce that Mary jumped at the invitation to join The Bearded Scribe's team. Her posts will be a part of a new special feature on the blog, called The Skillful Quill, which will discuss grammar, style, syntax, and semantics.

Please help me to welcome Dr. Mary Wendt to The Bearded Scribe; be sure to check out her bio page, and also to follow her new feature, The Skillful Quill.



Écrire souvent, bien écrire, et écrire avec bonheur,