Did she say it?

Did Abigail Adams really say, "You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition?" That was a line in the new HBO biopic about John Adams, the second president of the U.S.A. and father of its sixth president. I can't find any historical record of her saying that, but it sounds like her. In a 1774 letter to her husband, she wrote, "We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."

I like words, and I am often in danger of ostentatious erudition that is more show than blow, one might say. No doubt there are people who would say I've crossed that line. I'm capable of coarse, colorful language, but I enjoy finding a fancy, precise word that just nails it. And it looks like showing off, but it isn't really. It's more for myself than for an audience.

So as I write this, I may overburden my own arguments, which is probably fine in a soliloquy as most blogs turn out to be. I would, however, welcome any comments from any person, as long as they are on point and not a personal attack. Know that I will challenge any unverifiable assertion.

Not long ago I decided that "blogging" on message boards is not for me. There may be nothing wrong with the specific venue or the format, but I find that the discussions are often disappointing in that they consist of people coming to the venue with an agenda that they don't know how to support with words. Sometimes the discourse becomes a thinly veiled volley of "You're an idiot!" "No, you are." The worst "discussions" IMO are the ones about religion, where minds are so often closed to new interpretations and ideas." But topics around ethnicity, immigration, global warming and evolution are not far behind. In my perfect debate world, participants would not rely on their own possibly distorted experience or the gossip of an acquaintance to make their main point.