I'm George Maschke, and I recently created Paremiology.org. Earlier this year, I completed a proverb-related doctoral dissertation, Proverbial and Idiomatic Language in a Modern Persian Novel: A Contetual Analysis Based on Iraj Pezeshkzad's Da'i Jan Napel'on (UCLA, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, 2006). In addition to Persian, I also have working knowledge of Arabic and French, and can more or less read German and Dutch with the aid of a dictionary. I currently reside in The Netherlands, where I work as a translator.
 
Now that the dissertation is behind me, and I have more time for other interests, it occurred to me that it might be useful to have a public forum for scholarly discussion of proverb studies. To the best of my knowledge, no such forum existed before this one. Thus, I registered the domain name "paremiology.org" and created this message board, using free, open-source software. (I would have liked to have used the name "proverbs.org," but it is already taken.)
 
Like the proverbial "stone soup," the success of this message board will very much depend on the participation of others. The stone is in the pot, so to speak, and your contributions are most welcome! (And no, I'm "not passing the hat!" The anticipated expense of keeping this board on-line are minimal, and I'll cover them out of pocket.)