Dear Friend,

...................... I write you to let you know what the site is, and why it is called pinniped.com. My explanation however, must begin with a story:

When I was six and my twin older brothers were seven, daylight led us teasingly around a southern Illinois farm too large for us to completely explore. But more than exploring the quiet forest of southern Illinois we were creating worlds of our own to explore. We invented professions: pioneer, student, and—without the loss of originality one might expect considering our residence—farmer. We were at our best though, when we appointed ourselves ambassadors between the nations of animals. We negotiated land settlement between the sheep and the cats, mediated conflict between the cats and the dogs, kept the dogs occupied so as to keep them from the chickens and further. Our positions expanded. We translated from one animal language to another, traded currency, and kept local animal nations in contact with emissaries from distant lands (emissaries in the form of stuffed animals and other toys). The power of six-year-olds, to immerse themselves is idyllic.

...................... Thus, the still-clear memory of how we dropped our ambassadorial airs and descended into argument over the issue of what to call the wings of penguins. Though I don’t remember the end of the argument or even my position in it, I do remember coming out of the argument entirely sure that they were called pinnipeds, an error left uncorrected for years. Thankfully I was corrected in my own home and not in front of a class of merciless elementary school students. But even from my own family I couldn’t take their word for it; I looked it up. Penguins’ wings are called flippers, though wings suffices. I looked up pinniped. Pinniped is the name of the Superfamily including seals, sea lions and walruses, and means winged or finned foot. So the flippers on seals, sea lions and walruses are what make them members of the family ‘pinniped’—a word that one of us six and seven year olds made up when pressed with the need to describe a flipper. We created almost the same word, on our own, three children under eight.

This, a beginning step my slow climb to the idea that, despite the apparently eternal institutions of modern society—current governmental bodies, insurance systems, institutions of language such as grammar, and even mechanical systems and computers—essentially all of the things around us were created by people. One might respond to that “herp derp; but of course”. But considering the Huxlian heaps of objects and information, it has been at times legitimately surprising to me to think that all this stuff was made by some one or some ones not unlike myself.

...................... So this site is both a creation of mine and a place for me to put other creations, in an attempt to contribute. I will try only to contribute valuable things. I will try out of love for creativity, metaphor, and art; out of love for Bouba and Kiki; and out of love for you.

please enjoy,

gregory.dylan.brown@gmail.com