LANGUAGE THAT 'BRINGS UNDERSTANDING' LEADS TO INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS

Last week, Phil Dorcas of Midlothian, Texas, saw that I'd mentioned one of his passions in my column about Tazewell County.

I said that in Tazewell, agriculture dominates the area south of the Clinch River, but north of it, coal is king. Coal, I indicated, has a jargon all its own.

"To city dwellers like us," I said, "the language of mining might as well be Esperanto."

Dorcas, a senior engineer for Omega Airline Software, quickly tapped out a response.

"A reporter should do research before implying something negative about a culture," he wrote. "Esperanto is a…