(E)MOTIVE POWER

boustrophedon /ˌbuːstrəˈfiːdən/:  a style of writing in which alternate lines of text are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style.

A handful of orthographies can do this quite handily. Chinese or Japanese, for example, can be written top-to-bottom or left-to-right and possibly even right-to-left. The ancient Greeks, however, are the folks who gave this system its name: its meaning is “as the ox ploughs”. Which came to mind when I saw this photograph to two yoked oxen doing what oxen do: beasts of burden. I’ve named them Lloyd and Boyd and we’ll fit them into the story somewhere and make certain that their golden years were filled with leasurely grazing in fields of tender grass.

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