In re the last line of the previous post (“Amazing what sticks with you, no?”):
Although I have long had difficulty remembering numbers—a cashier can tell me how much I owe, and I will have to look at the cash-register screen before writing the check—I have long been amazed at how well certain numbers stick in my head…and how poorly others do.
For instance, I recall instantly my family’s phone number from my boyhood in Omaha—though you might say that 393-1393 is a pretty easy number to remember, even forty years on. How, then, that I still remember my grandfather’s number—393-1632—some twenty years after his death? Or my best friend, Joe’s, number, 393-1395?
Time seems to have little to do with it. I remember those numbers from forty years ago, but can’t recall my college phone numbers from thirty years ago. I only remember that the numbers in Swanson Hall were whatever the campus prefix was plus 4 and the room number—4747 my freshman year and 4743 my sophomore year. But I have no recollection at all what our number was when a couple of friends and I moved off-campus our junior and senior years. I can’t even think what it may have started with.
I can remember the number I had in St. Paul—698-1276—but I can’t remember if I had that same number in my first apartment, on Cretin Avenue South, or just in the apartment Peg and I took on St. Paul Avenue when we were first married. My office number at the Webb Company started out as 698-7450, I think, and later switched to 690-7450 as the neighborhood outgrew the 698 prefix.
We moved to Sioux Falls in 1984, but I have no idea what the phone number was for the year we lived on Louise Avenue. I do recall that, like all the phones on that end of town in those days, it began with 361. This was the cause of some confusion, for it had not been too many years since every blessed telephone number in town began with 33. Indeed, when my family first moved here in the late 1960s, the town was small enough that it could exist on not only that single EDison exchange, but also that only the odd numbers needed to be attached to it: 332, 334, 336, 338. This led to the annoying habit of many locals to give only five-digit phone numbers:
What’s your number?
It’s two seven nine three five.
Um…two sev— that’s not enough numbers, is it?
Which of course made you look like the idiot. More idiotic, though, is that too many people in my community still insist on giving you only five digits if the first two are both threes, even though the town’s population explosion coupled with the breakup of the Bell System means it’s been over twenty years since every number in town was on the EDison exchange.
You might say that duration would cause a number to stick, and that would make some sense, I suppose. But I had the same number at Stafford Advertising for three years or so, and today haven’t the vaguest idea what it might have been. Wouldn’t three years be enough for a number to stick?
You might say that the number’s relative importance would cause it to stick—but wouldn’t a work number be pretty important? And if nothing else, wouldn’t the sheer number of times you give out your work number cause it to lodge pretty solidly? Anyhow, what would you make of the fact that I can remember not only my Omaha friend, Joe’s, phone number so clearly but also my Sioux Falls childhood friend, Dave’s number, and yet can’t remember that of the girl I dated pretty steadily through high school, nor my wife’s from before we were married?
Maybe it has to do with age—not that I’m getting old and forgetting things, since the odd stuff I obviously do remember seems to negate that idea. I mean, the age I was when I learned things. When you’re a kid, knowing your family’s phone number is a big deal. It’s important. Perhaps my parents worked with me to ensure that I knew it in case I got lost. Maybe that’s why I remember my grandfather’s number…but why, then, don’t I remember my other grandfather’s number, since he was alive until I was 10 or 11? Unless it’s precisely because he died when I was a kid, while my other grandfather lived until I was in my thirties.
But of course all the numbers of all the lockers I ever had in school are long gone, as are their combinations. Most room numbers vanished only a couple of weeks into the school year: once I learned where they were it was no longer necessary to remember what they were. Except our old Debate Room at Washington High School was 419.
Street addresses stick a little longer, apparently. 7433 Hascall Street. 4527 Decatur Street. 1533 St Paul Avenue. And so on. Do we utilize a house number more than a phone number?
I am reminded (for a few things stick, you know) of a Blondie comic from years ago, a Sunday strip, in which a fellow appears on the Bumsteds’ doorstep telling them that he grew up in that house and was wondering if he could look around. They invite him in, and he sentimentally recalls sliding down that old banister, sitting in the kitchen as his mother cooked, playing in his old room, etc. Tearfully, as he’s leaving, he thanks them for their trouble and avers that he will never forget those wonderful days at good old 123 Elm Street or whatever the address was.
And of course the Bumsteds have to inform him that this is Maple Street, and Elm is two blocks over.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Found in a Wallet
Whilst cleaning out an old wallet today, I came upon a scrap of paper (well, several, in fact, but one in particular) on which I had scribbled two quotations.
The first is from my old friend Monsignor James Michael Doyle. It does not originate with him, for I had and have heard a similar sentiment expressed elsewhere although I am unable to find attribution for it. What Doyle said, as jotted by me on March 6, 2005, was:
I have seen “irresponsible” for “unlasting.” Either way, the sentiment holds.
The second quotation also was presented by Doyle (who was speaking at an “adult forum” hosted by my wife’s Lutheran church: Doyle and I share a keen interest in ecumenism), who correctly credited Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Ain’t that the truth.
I am, incidentally, always amused by the way certain artists and writers are almost invariably credited in a particular, and particularly stilted way. Ralph Waldo Emerson. So we don’t confuse him with all the other Ralph Emersons writing out there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—not to be confused with Henry Throckmorton Longfellow, the taxidermist. Of course, we all get caught up in it, to such an extent that it seems very odd to be confronted—as you sometimes will see on books published in the first half of the twentieth century—with Ralph W. Emerson or H.W. Longfellow. It just doesn’t look right—sort of like Lee H. Oswald or R.M. Nixon. It takes you a moment to figure out who’s being talked about.
Speaking of Longfellow (the writer, not the taxidermist, though it hardly matters), I am further reminded of a line from something I read in my adolescence, though Google fails to yield a single hit. The reference was to the great department-store Henry Wadsworth Woolworth, who refused to open a store in Alaska because his motto was “keep the Nome buyers yearning.”
Amazing what sticks with you, no?
The first is from my old friend Monsignor James Michael Doyle. It does not originate with him, for I had and have heard a similar sentiment expressed elsewhere although I am unable to find attribution for it. What Doyle said, as jotted by me on March 6, 2005, was:
Love without truth is unlasting. Truth without love is intolerable.
I have seen “irresponsible” for “unlasting.” Either way, the sentiment holds.
The second quotation also was presented by Doyle (who was speaking at an “adult forum” hosted by my wife’s Lutheran church: Doyle and I share a keen interest in ecumenism), who correctly credited Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The years tell much that the days never knew.
Ain’t that the truth.
I am, incidentally, always amused by the way certain artists and writers are almost invariably credited in a particular, and particularly stilted way. Ralph Waldo Emerson. So we don’t confuse him with all the other Ralph Emersons writing out there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—not to be confused with Henry Throckmorton Longfellow, the taxidermist. Of course, we all get caught up in it, to such an extent that it seems very odd to be confronted—as you sometimes will see on books published in the first half of the twentieth century—with Ralph W. Emerson or H.W. Longfellow. It just doesn’t look right—sort of like Lee H. Oswald or R.M. Nixon. It takes you a moment to figure out who’s being talked about.
Speaking of Longfellow (the writer, not the taxidermist, though it hardly matters), I am further reminded of a line from something I read in my adolescence, though Google fails to yield a single hit. The reference was to the great department-store Henry Wadsworth Woolworth, who refused to open a store in Alaska because his motto was “keep the Nome buyers yearning.”
Amazing what sticks with you, no?
Friday, June 22, 2007
How Tough Can it Be?
Experienced couple to lead Salvation Army
By Jill Callison
jcalliso@argusleader.com
Published: June 21, 2007
A couple with long ties to the Salvation Army have been chosen to lead the local church.
Majors Michael and Judith Mills have been ordained ministers for more than 30 years, but their ties to the Salvation Army go back longer than that.
"We're really products of what the Salvation Army can do to help individuals," Major Michael Mills said.
"My father was a recovering alcoholic. The Salvation Army helped him change his life, and we started going to church as a family. My wife was in a foster home out in
Judith Mills was raised in
The Mills will replace Majors Paul and Mary Duskin, who have been assigned to the Eastern Michigan and Divisional Headquarters in
Okay—catch that? The family name is apparently Mills, with an S, not Mill. And yet in that last paragraph, when they are being referred to in the plural, they are called “the Mills.”
No, no no. The Millses. One Mills; two Millses.
I’m sorry if that “sounds wrong.” No one said this was going to be pretty.
But it is straightforward. It’s every bit as straightforward as our Smith example. One Reynolds, two Reynoldses. Reynolds’s house; the Reynoldses’ house.
Several years ago I was a panelist at a writer’s convention. A woman in the audience asked a question about this very subject—how to properly for the possessive and/or plural form of names ending in S. One of my co-panelists—a well-regarded writer whose name you would recognize were I to provide it (a name that does not end in S, by the way, which is telling), and a woman who was and perhaps still is teaching English at a U.S. college, which also is telling—in all seriousness advised the questioner to avoid using names that end in S, since she herself couldn’t figure out how to keep it straight.
Ow.
I had a similar unsettling incident a few weeks ago, teaching a writing class at a local college. In that instance, I was commenting to my class on the gender-sensitive case, which they pretty much all seemed to have trouble with. I shared my (correct) opinion that, although it’s awkward, the proper form is to write Everyone must bring his or her book (rather than Everyone must bring their book, which is how my students were crafting such sentences), upon which one of the better students (in a group of really good students, it must be said) informed me that she had once raised the issue with another instructor in the English department (a member of the permanent staff, who had advanced degrees and letters after his or her name and everything), whose sage advice was to just go ahead and use their.
Ow, again.
I am reminded of my third-grade teacher, Sister Hildegund, a lovely old woman…but, alas, a very old woman, and one who should have been retired some years earlier (she literally would fall asleep at her desk during class, the poor thing). At a parent conference, she informed my folks that she didn’t understand “the new math” (as it was known in the 1960s)…and so simply did not teach it.
Ow, ow, ow.
The benefit of learning how to do something the proper way, as opposed to throwing up one’s hands in defeat and announcing that he or she “doesn’t get it,” is that once you do get it…you’ve got it, for good! Nothing is gained—no one progresses—by taking the attitude that, well, since everyone is doing it wrong we’ll just do it wrong, and sooner or later it will be right. (Obviously, that’s where we’re going with who and whom, and I have felt for some years that by the middle of this century, at the latest, all but the most hidebound of grammarians will be insisting upon the distinction. That’s fine—the language is, after all, a living and always-evolving thing—but until that time, there is a difference, and it does matter.)
And don’t even get me started on those signs people have on or in front of their houses—or, sometimes, on their RVs—telling one and all that they are The
Thursday, June 14, 2007
So They Say
The latest installment of collected quotations, mostly (actually, this time, all of 'em, I think) from the excellent A Word a Day newsletter:
Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back. -John Ross
Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give away things you want to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things you don't mind doing. -Myrtle Reed, author (1874-1911)
The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock. -Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)
The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself. -Emily Bronte, novelist (1818-1848)
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)
How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten? -
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)
Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. -Letitia E. Landon, author (1802-1838)
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Dumb, or Just Annoying?
Some years ago, when I was experiencing technical difficulties with my then-provider of e-mail, I opened up a Hotmail account. Today it's primarily a spam-magnet, but I keep it alive with a couple-three newsletter subscriptions and generally check it every week or ten days.
There are many reasons that Hotmail is the least favorite of my freebie e-mail accounts (it's slow, it's clunky, it fills up with Microsoft junk mail, etc.), but at the top of this list is this: It has a stupid sign-in procedure.
Yeah, yeah, I can have my Mac, or Firefox, or Hotmail itself remember some of the sign-in stuff, at least for awhile. But I prefer not to do that. Which means that whenever I sign into Hotmail I have to let them know I'm signing into Hotmail!
Here's what I mean: When I sign in to my Yahoo! Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. When I sign into my Gmail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. Heck, when I check my ancient Netscape Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other even though it's now AIM Mail or something else these days.
Get the pic? Then riddle me this:
How's come when I sign into Hotmail, I have to add @hotmail.com to my username?
I mean, at the top of the page it says MSN Hotmail. Below that it says MSN® Hotmail® is changing... to Windows Live™ Hotmail®. (I'm thinking some of those proper nouns might be trademarked or registered with the U.S. Patent Office. But it's just a guess.) At the side of the page it says WindowsLive Hotmail. Above the sign-in fields it says Sign in to Hotmail.
In short, it seems to know that it's Hotmail.
But if I foolishly type my username instead of the whole address, it says Please type your e-mail address in the following format: yourname@example.com. Need help signing in?
Um, no, I don't need any help...but it seems the folks at MSN/Windows/Live/Hotmail do, for yourname@example.com implies that they have suddenly and inexplicably forgotten who they are.
This surpasses what I had some years ago considered to be The Dumbest Thing in E-mail, when AOL swallowed up Netscape. One fine day I received notice that I would have to change my username, which I had had for years and years, because it "conflicted" with a username at AOL. That piqued my interest, since my Netscape username was the same as my old and long abandoned AOL username. So I sent e-mail to that AOL address...and it came back with a no-such-user notification.
So that was dumb. But the Hotmail deal is dumber.
And while I'm at it, here's some similar but unrelated cyber-dumbness:
I have long since lost track of the number of times, in filling out this or that form, survey, etc., I am asked to input my date of birth. Fine, but ever since the turn of the century, the request--nay, demand--is always that it be in the form "mm/dd/yyyy." Now, stop me if I've said this before, but the yyyy part is silly. See, there is no one alive today who was born in 1856, nor is there anyone alive today who was born in 2056, so if I were to fill in, say, "56," would it not be pretty safe to assume I mean the 20th century version? I realize that now we do have among us people who were born in the 2000s...but, in the first place, I'm not sure too many five-year-olds are entering the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes online; and in the second place, I'm not sure too many 95- or 100-year-olds are either, so I think it would be safe to assume that someone who filled in "02" as date of birth was not born in 1902 and probably not born in 2102 either.
I'm sure there's a perfectly swell computer-y explanation for having to indicate which century I was born in. That doesn't make it less silly, however.
There are many reasons that Hotmail is the least favorite of my freebie e-mail accounts (it's slow, it's clunky, it fills up with Microsoft junk mail, etc.), but at the top of this list is this: It has a stupid sign-in procedure.
Yeah, yeah, I can have my Mac, or Firefox, or Hotmail itself remember some of the sign-in stuff, at least for awhile. But I prefer not to do that. Which means that whenever I sign into Hotmail I have to let them know I'm signing into Hotmail!
Here's what I mean: When I sign in to my Yahoo! Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. When I sign into my Gmail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other. Heck, when I check my ancient Netscape Mail account, I type my username in one box and my password in the other even though it's now AIM Mail or something else these days.
Get the pic? Then riddle me this:
How's come when I sign into Hotmail, I have to add @hotmail.com to my username?
I mean, at the top of the page it says MSN Hotmail. Below that it says MSN® Hotmail® is changing... to Windows Live™ Hotmail®. (I'm thinking some of those proper nouns might be trademarked or registered with the U.S. Patent Office. But it's just a guess.) At the side of the page it says WindowsLive Hotmail. Above the sign-in fields it says Sign in to Hotmail.
In short, it seems to know that it's Hotmail.
But if I foolishly type my username instead of the whole address, it says Please type your e-mail address in the following format: yourname@example.com. Need help signing in?
Um, no, I don't need any help...but it seems the folks at MSN/Windows/Live/Hotmail do, for yourname@example.com implies that they have suddenly and inexplicably forgotten who they are.
This surpasses what I had some years ago considered to be The Dumbest Thing in E-mail, when AOL swallowed up Netscape. One fine day I received notice that I would have to change my username, which I had had for years and years, because it "conflicted" with a username at AOL. That piqued my interest, since my Netscape username was the same as my old and long abandoned AOL username. So I sent e-mail to that AOL address...and it came back with a no-such-user notification.
So that was dumb. But the Hotmail deal is dumber.
And while I'm at it, here's some similar but unrelated cyber-dumbness:
I have long since lost track of the number of times, in filling out this or that form, survey, etc., I am asked to input my date of birth. Fine, but ever since the turn of the century, the request--nay, demand--is always that it be in the form "mm/dd/yyyy." Now, stop me if I've said this before, but the yyyy part is silly. See, there is no one alive today who was born in 1856, nor is there anyone alive today who was born in 2056, so if I were to fill in, say, "56," would it not be pretty safe to assume I mean the 20th century version? I realize that now we do have among us people who were born in the 2000s...but, in the first place, I'm not sure too many five-year-olds are entering the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes online; and in the second place, I'm not sure too many 95- or 100-year-olds are either, so I think it would be safe to assume that someone who filled in "02" as date of birth was not born in 1902 and probably not born in 2102 either.
I'm sure there's a perfectly swell computer-y explanation for having to indicate which century I was born in. That doesn't make it less silly, however.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Where Credit Isn't Due
In conjunction with my employer's big convention, aka assembly, of weekend last (I may or may not write about it in detail later: stay tuned) , it fell upon me as the Communications Department (yes, I am the department--editor, writer, art director, media manager, photographer, photo editor, publisher, and copyboy, all rolled into one) to send out gobs of what I still like to call press releases knowing full well that non-print media prefers to have them called media releases. Whatever. Since this year's assembly involved a big election, I sent lots of releases and got lots of ink and pixels in return.
It's interesting, and amusing, to track the permutations of these releases via Google and Google News. (Oddly, I get slightly different hits using the same search terms on Google and Google News. Go figure.) This led me to send e-mail to a couple-three far-flung correspondents regarding the propriety of my now claiming all of these various sources that used my release verbatim or nearly so as places where "my work" has "been published."
Unfortunately, one or two of the far-flungeds seemed to think I was serious, and replied seriously. This leaves me with the dilemma of how now to look like an idiot while at the same time not making them look like idiots. There are those who will tsk-tsk and say it's the because e-mail is an inferior communications medium, rife with the possibility of misunderstandings such as this. To which, after much thought, I reply: hooey! The written language has been around for a little while now, and with scant reliance on "emoticons" or "smileys" abbreviations or any other crap to indicate the placement of tongue-in-cheek.
Anyhow, I as usual digress. The point is that now my CV is crammed to bulging with all of these new places where "my work" has "appeared." No idea how I will keep up with it all.
It then occurred to me that I have been short-changing myself for years now, for I can in complete honesty say that "my writing" has appeared in Newsweek, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Macworld...since at one point or another they have all printed letters from me! (Hey, I wrote the letters and they published them--how much clearer could I be?)
The I got to thinking about the likes of, an expression I found odious during my magazine-editing days: By the likes of do you mean these? Then why not say so? Well, here's why: you can fudge like made with the likes of...and with just a little ingenuity I can pad the old vitae even more by pointing out that I have written for the likes of Esquire--since there was certainly an interval back in the 1980s when the editor and art director of the magazine on which I worked seemed intent on making it look and read an awful lot like Esquire, Jr. ("No I never said I wrote for Esquire; I said I wrote for the likes of Esquire!"
It also occurs to me that I can claim to have "contributed" to several sources, including the Associated Press--sources that did not use my releases verbatim but which adapted them or otherwise built on them for their own reports. It's a shame I didn't think to send releases to Reuters. Oh, well, there's always next year. As it is, it's going to take me several days just to update my CV.
He said jokingly!!
It's interesting, and amusing, to track the permutations of these releases via Google and Google News. (Oddly, I get slightly different hits using the same search terms on Google and Google News. Go figure.) This led me to send e-mail to a couple-three far-flung correspondents regarding the propriety of my now claiming all of these various sources that used my release verbatim or nearly so as places where "my work" has "been published."
Unfortunately, one or two of the far-flungeds seemed to think I was serious, and replied seriously. This leaves me with the dilemma of how now to look like an idiot while at the same time not making them look like idiots. There are those who will tsk-tsk and say it's the because e-mail is an inferior communications medium, rife with the possibility of misunderstandings such as this. To which, after much thought, I reply: hooey! The written language has been around for a little while now, and with scant reliance on "emoticons" or "smileys" abbreviations or any other crap to indicate the placement of tongue-in-cheek.
Anyhow, I as usual digress. The point is that now my CV is crammed to bulging with all of these new places where "my work" has "appeared." No idea how I will keep up with it all.
It then occurred to me that I have been short-changing myself for years now, for I can in complete honesty say that "my writing" has appeared in Newsweek, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Macworld...since at one point or another they have all printed letters from me! (Hey, I wrote the letters and they published them--how much clearer could I be?)
The I got to thinking about the likes of, an expression I found odious during my magazine-editing days: By the likes of do you mean these? Then why not say so? Well, here's why: you can fudge like made with the likes of...and with just a little ingenuity I can pad the old vitae even more by pointing out that I have written for the likes of Esquire--since there was certainly an interval back in the 1980s when the editor and art director of the magazine on which I worked seemed intent on making it look and read an awful lot like Esquire, Jr. ("No I never said I wrote for Esquire; I said I wrote for the likes of Esquire!"
It also occurs to me that I can claim to have "contributed" to several sources, including the Associated Press--sources that did not use my releases verbatim but which adapted them or otherwise built on them for their own reports. It's a shame I didn't think to send releases to Reuters. Oh, well, there's always next year. As it is, it's going to take me several days just to update my CV.
He said jokingly!!
Delancey Place
Awhile back I came upon and immediately signed up for e-mail offerings from Delancey Place, whose editor, Richard Wade Vague, describes as "a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy." And so it is. Here's one from a few days ago in re a favorite subject of mine (no, really!), prepositions.
"[O]ne of the all-time great grammatical shibboleths [is] that when writing a sentence or a clause, you must not ... make a preposition the last word you put in. This notion apparently originated with the poet John Dryden, who in a 1672 work quoted Ben Jonson's line 'The bodies that these souls were frighted from' and commented 'The Preposition at the end of a sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observ'd in my own writings.' Probably, Dryden based his stand on two foundations. First, prepositions in Latin never appear at the end of a sentence, not surprising since praepositio is Latin for something that 'comes before.' Second, a principle of composition that's as valid in the twenty-first century as it was in the seventeenth holds that, whenever possible, sentences should end strongly--and prepositions, as necessary as they undeniably are, are usually more of a whimper than a bang.
"Whatever its origin, the ban found favor with prescriptivists through the centuries, including Edward Gibbon; John Ruskin, who in an entire book (Seven Lamps) concluded a sentence with a preposition precisely one time; Lily Tomlin's officious Ernestine the telephone operator, who asked, 'Is this the party to whom I am speaking?'; and my mother-in-law, Marge Simeone, who is prone to saying things like 'In which car are we going?'... [B]ut [this rule] was always a bit suspect. It was blown out of the water by [Henry] Fowler, who wrote in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 'Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards.' Fowler then gave twenty-four examples of the 'rule' being broken by such writers as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pepys, Swift, Defoe, Burke, Kipling, and the authors of the King James Bible. ... When the preposition occurs in a phrasal verb, the transposition task can be close to impossible. To 'fix' a phrasal-verb-concluding sentence like 'I'm turning in,' you'd have to come up with something like 'Turning in I am,' which not even Yoda from Star Wars could say with a straight face.
"To anyone still unconvinced, I offer two small anecdotes, in reverse order of familiarity.
"1. Winston Churchill, when corrected for violating this rule, supposedly replied, 'That is the sort of nonsense up with I will not put.'
"2. A guy from South Philadelphia, on vacation in London, asks a bowler-hatted gent, 'Where's the subway at?' The Londoner replies, 'Don't you Yanks realize that it's poor English to end a sentence with a preposition?' To which the South Philly guy says, 'Okay, where's the subway at, asshole?' "
Ben Yagoda, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It, Broadway Books, 2007, pp. 163-165.
"[O]ne of the all-time great grammatical shibboleths [is] that when writing a sentence or a clause, you must not ... make a preposition the last word you put in. This notion apparently originated with the poet John Dryden, who in a 1672 work quoted Ben Jonson's line 'The bodies that these souls were frighted from' and commented 'The Preposition at the end of a sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observ'd in my own writings.' Probably, Dryden based his stand on two foundations. First, prepositions in Latin never appear at the end of a sentence, not surprising since praepositio is Latin for something that 'comes before.' Second, a principle of composition that's as valid in the twenty-first century as it was in the seventeenth holds that, whenever possible, sentences should end strongly--and prepositions, as necessary as they undeniably are, are usually more of a whimper than a bang.
"Whatever its origin, the ban found favor with prescriptivists through the centuries, including Edward Gibbon; John Ruskin, who in an entire book (Seven Lamps) concluded a sentence with a preposition precisely one time; Lily Tomlin's officious Ernestine the telephone operator, who asked, 'Is this the party to whom I am speaking?'; and my mother-in-law, Marge Simeone, who is prone to saying things like 'In which car are we going?'... [B]ut [this rule] was always a bit suspect. It was blown out of the water by [Henry] Fowler, who wrote in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 'Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards.' Fowler then gave twenty-four examples of the 'rule' being broken by such writers as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pepys, Swift, Defoe, Burke, Kipling, and the authors of the King James Bible. ... When the preposition occurs in a phrasal verb, the transposition task can be close to impossible. To 'fix' a phrasal-verb-concluding sentence like 'I'm turning in,' you'd have to come up with something like 'Turning in I am,' which not even Yoda from Star Wars could say with a straight face.
"To anyone still unconvinced, I offer two small anecdotes, in reverse order of familiarity.
"1. Winston Churchill, when corrected for violating this rule, supposedly replied, 'That is the sort of nonsense up with I will not put.'
"2. A guy from South Philadelphia, on vacation in London, asks a bowler-hatted gent, 'Where's the subway at?' The Londoner replies, 'Don't you Yanks realize that it's poor English to end a sentence with a preposition?' To which the South Philly guy says, 'Okay, where's the subway at, asshole?' "
Ben Yagoda, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It, Broadway Books, 2007, pp. 163-165.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
"Honor and Dignity" in the White House
This appeared last week in the New York Times. I have all kinds of stuff piled up in my multiple inboxes, thanks to having been almost completely distracted by my employer's annual convention (officially, "assembly," but nearly everyone outside of the hierarchy calls it "convention"). More on that later, perhaps, but for now suffice to say that it's rather unusual in my experience to have one's boss elected by a convention.
Anyhow, here's this thought-provoking piece by Mark Buchanan:
Anyhow, here's this thought-provoking piece by Mark Buchanan:
May 29, 2007, 6:32 pm
Chain Reactions
The political party that claimed it would restore “honor and dignity to the White House” has done nothing of the sort. Having on false pretenses led us into the disaster of Iraq, the administration and its supporters are now beginning – cravenly and shamefully – to shift blame onto the Iraqi people. The administration continues to hold hundreds of people without charges in secret prisons around the world, while arguing that torture is O.K. and that President Bush can disregard the laws he doesn’t like. I haven’t even mentioned illegal spying or efforts to keep scientists quiet if they’re saying the wrong thing.
Where’s the honor and dignity?
In her testimony last week before a House panel, Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, admitted that she had “crossed the line” in using political considerations to judge potential Justice Department employees. She may well have broken laws that forbid political influence over civil service positions. But “crossing the line” has been business as usual for the past six years. Goodling’s behavior follows a pattern established across almost all federal agencies, where the administration has sought loyalty over competence at every turn.
Another word for it, of course, is corruption – and it’s natural to wonder how we got so deeply mired in it. If the gathering storm of investigations forces Karl Rove and other White House officials one day to testify under oath, we may have some chance of finding out. And I suspect, if we do, that we’ll discover that honor and dignity were sacrificed at the very top. It will be a familiar story – of a few power-hungry and largely amoral political operatives, the real drivers, whose actions encouraged and directed a small army of fairly ordinary people, the Monica Goodlings of this world, many of whom were hardly aware they were doing something wrong.
People who engage in corrupt acts often do not see them as such. This much has emerged from studies of corporate scandals and fraud at places like Enron or WorldCom. In a study two years ago, for example, business professors Vikas Anand, Blake Ashforth and Mahendra Joshi concluded that most fraud within institutions takes place through the willing cooperation of many otherwise upstanding individuals with no psychological predisposition to be criminals.
Whether embezzling money, undermining product safety regulations, or even selling completely fake products, the perpetrators rationalize away their responsibility. They deny that they actually had any choice, saying that “everyone was doing it.” Or they deny that anyone really got hurt, so there really was no crime: “They’re a big company, they can afford to overpay us.”
Then there’s the popular appeal to higher authority, a mechanism with special relevance, perhaps, to the loyalty-rewarding Bush administration: “I had to do it out of loyalty to my boss.”
All of this isn’t so surprising, actually, when you realize that we like to feel good about ourselves and about those with whom we work, and that our brains have immense talent for producing reasons why we should. People engaged in corruption, the academic researchers suggest, create a kind of psychological atmosphere in which what they’re doing seems normal or even honorable. So if congressional oversight does ultimately expose the machinations behind anything from secret prisons to the United States prosecutor purge, brace yourself for a litany of the usual excuses – “We didn’t know it was wrong” and “We were told to do it.”
But the psychology of rationalization is only part of the story. The other element in all such cases seems to be a chain-like linking together of individual actions that can undermine social norms with surprising speed – or keep them safe, sometimes if just a single person remains strong.
In the late 1970s, Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter pointed out that the differences among people – in their willingness to engage in certain kinds of acts – can lead to surprises. Think of the dance floor at a party. Some people are more than happy to be the first out there, dancing alone, but lots of the rest of us would like some others out there first. You might be willing to go out if five or six went before you, while others might require 20 or 30. Some might not go out unless everyone at the party was out there.
The point is that each of us has a threshold for joining in, which depends on personality, the music being played and so on, but also – and this is the really important part – on how many others have already joined in. As Granovetter argued, this can make a group’s behavior extremely difficult to predict.
Just imagine, for example, that 100 people at the party have thresholds ranging from 0 to 99. In this case, everyone will soon be dancing, you can be sure of it. The natural extrovert with threshold 0 will kick it off, soon to be joined by the person with threshold 1, and the dancing will grow, eventually involving even the reluctant people.
But notice how delicately the outcome depends on the precise interlocking of these thresholds. If the person with threshold 1 goes home, then after the first person starts dancing the rest will simply stand by watching. With no one willing to be the second person onto the floor, there’s no chain reaction. So just one person can have a dramatic effect on the overall group.
This is just a toy model, but it illustrates something about the logic of people joining not only dance floors, but riots or protests, trips to the pub in the evening, getting in with others to skim cash from the restaurant till – or violating well-known rules against taking political affiliation into account when hiring. Tiny differences in the group makeup, the presence or absence or a few people of the right type, might be the difference between a few renegade violators and division-wide corruption.
I can’t help thinking of the bizarre attempt by then-White House officials Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, drugged and in the hospital, to sign off on a secret National Security Agency wiretapping program. Ashcroft – who back then I would have thought would rubber-stamp anything Bush wanted – was clearly made of sterner stuff and refused, as did Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey. Again, we won’t know how much effect these refusals had – and just how extreme the program was that Bush wanted to authorize – until someone manages to get past White House stonewalling and digs up the real information.
But the fragility of social outcome, its potential sensitivity to the actions of just one person, brings home the profound importance of individual responsibility. Everyone’s actions count. The laws and institutional traditions we have were put in place precisely to help us avoid these social meltdowns, and to give people the incentive not to step over the line, especially when lots of others are doing so already. In particular, the laws of the civil service prevent hiring on the basis of political affiliation (at least for many positions), and the routine violation of those laws puts our democracy at risk. Many people went along with it, and so might have many more, had the creeping corruption not been exposed when it was.
Restoring honesty and dignity. One might say of it what Gandhi said when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”
Monday, May 28, 2007
Memorial Day Ramble
This Memorial Day (or, as the TV folks have it, "Memorial Day weekend") finds a bunch of quasi-related and, as usual, semi-ambivalent thoughts bouncing around my head. Let's see what sort of shape we might give some of them...
There has been much in my earshot about the "meaning" of Memorial Day...a goodly portion of it just a little bit off-target. In particular, I seem to be hearing/seeing a fair number of "thank a veteran/thank a soldier" type exhortations...which is okay in general but seems to scream ignorance of the fact that Memorial Day is intended to honor the dead. We have Veterans Day to to honor those others who served in the military.
More than in other years, I'm hearing that Memorial Day is "supposed" to be about honoring military dead, not civilians. (Indeed, some of these comments have been downright militaristic! Hah--I make zee joke!) I'm always a little, let's say, curious when people start telling me what something is "supposed" to be. Case in point:
My son was playing at a local church's Memorial Day service yesterday--a nice service, although somewhat disturbingly secular and, of course completely pro-military. Now, as they say, don't get me wrong: I have a lot of respect for military people--especially now that we have a nephew in the Marine Corps and another working his way through Army ROTC; and my own brief flirtation with ROTC back in the day showed me two things: the military was not for me; and a lot of really great people enter that life because they want to do something good. But I maintain what I believe to be a healthy skepticism toward The Military, writ large. Military people, by and large, are worthy of high regard; The Military, like any other large and powerful institution, needs to be watched closely and critically. In much the same fashion, I have known at lot of good and great priests...but I keep a close eye on the institutional church!
Anyhow, the pastor at this church made a point--both during the service and during the previous day's run-through for same--that Memorial Day is not All Saints Day, and seemed to stop just short of suggesting that it was somehow wrong to be visiting the graves of non-military people on this occasion. (Despite which, I will be visiting my mother's grave in a little while.)
This got me to pondering on what Memorial Day is "supposed" to be, and I did a little research to refresh the little gray cells. As I thought I had remembered, Memorial Day's origins were "to honor Union soldiers who gave their lives to battle slavery." [See "What the History of Memorial Day Teaches About Honoring the War Dead."] So if someone really wanted to be a strict constructionist, he could say that Memorial Day is supposed to be about honoring fallen Union soldiers, and that all of the uniforms from other wars that were prominent at the church service I attended yesterday, including the Korean War-era Army uniform my son wore, disrespected the fallen Union soldiers whom the day is supposed to honor.
But of course Memorial Day has changed, and expanded, over the decades. And that's my point. While I certainly have no objection to the focus of the day being on fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, I object strenuously to the suggestion that our memories should not also turn toward those who may never have worn a uniform, or who did but did not die in battle, and honor them as well. That to me is as foolish as saying we must never lay flowers on a dead soldier's grave except on Memorial Day. The idea that only those in uniform make sacrifices in defense of this country is narrow, self-serving, and wrong.
Along those lines, the guest preacher at this service, a retired military chaplain, naturally devoted much of his time to the sacrifice made by military people. No argument there, certainly: Even though he has so far been stateside, there's no question that my nephew has had to make sacrifices in order to serve in the Marine Corps. Anyone can see that. However, I think it important to keep in mind that he is in the military voluntarily; that is, he knew going in that he was going to make sacrifices, and he did so and continues to do so willingly. More significantly, he doesn't complain about it or otherwise make an issue of it, at least not in my earshot. If you're doing something because you want to do it, because you have a sense of duty or a desire to do good or it seems like "an adventure," as the Army ads used to say, then you accept the hardships and sacrifices that go with it.
(Ditto for someone who decides to go to medical school, or to become a priest or pastor: Yes, it's hard. Yes, you make sacrifices. Buck up, matey--this was your idea, and it's unseemly to whine about it.)
Anyhow, the guest preacher. He quoted something that stuck in my head, and I have spent some time this morning trying to track it down. He attributed it to a general of whom I'd never heard and, based on my Google experience of late date, seems not to have existed. I have found a similar quotation attributed to a Father Dennis O'Brien, USMC, as well as to Senator Zell Miller. So who knows who the real author is. But here's a version of the quotation that I found online, similar though not identical to the one I heard yesterday:
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
Well, yes. And no. My objection to the above lies in the repeated use of the word not. The whole sentiment implies that only military people are defenders of freedom, only military people are patriots, only military people honor the flag and the country it represents. And that is patently untrue.
Further, it is untrue to assert that "the soldier" has "given" us our rights. Yes, through the decades, soldiers have fought for and defended these rights, but they are not the gifts of a benevolent military. Our rights and freedoms are "inalienable" and, in our secular theology, come from the Creator, not the soldier.
Nor are soldiers the only ones who work, sacrifice, and, yes, die, to defend these rights. A moment's reflection brings to mind any number of journalists who have been killed for their efforts to expose crime and corruption, to bring the truth to light; is it not fair to say that they have died in defense of freedom of the press? Is it not fair to say that the "campus organizers" who were shot dead at Kent State in 1970 died defending the "freedom to demonstrate"?
The point is this: We are all partners, civilians and military people, in defending these freedoms. Or should be. To consign that job solely to the military is wrong, insulting, and dangerous. It leads to a laziness from which no good can come--the idea that I don't have to be vigilant about my rights, because that's "the soldier's job." I don't have to do anything about crime in my neighborhood because that's "the cop's job." I don't have to do anything about the smoke coming from the house across the street because that's "the firefighter's job."
Not so. It's a shared responsibility. You don't need a uniform.
So, on this Memorial Day, let's honor not just the Union soldiers who died fighting slavery; let's not honor just those who have fallen while wearing a uniform; let's memorialize everyone everywhere who has lived and died defending liberty. That would be the highest honor.
There has been much in my earshot about the "meaning" of Memorial Day...a goodly portion of it just a little bit off-target. In particular, I seem to be hearing/seeing a fair number of "thank a veteran/thank a soldier" type exhortations...which is okay in general but seems to scream ignorance of the fact that Memorial Day is intended to honor the dead. We have Veterans Day to to honor those others who served in the military.
More than in other years, I'm hearing that Memorial Day is "supposed" to be about honoring military dead, not civilians. (Indeed, some of these comments have been downright militaristic! Hah--I make zee joke!) I'm always a little, let's say, curious when people start telling me what something is "supposed" to be. Case in point:
My son was playing at a local church's Memorial Day service yesterday--a nice service, although somewhat disturbingly secular and, of course completely pro-military. Now, as they say, don't get me wrong: I have a lot of respect for military people--especially now that we have a nephew in the Marine Corps and another working his way through Army ROTC; and my own brief flirtation with ROTC back in the day showed me two things: the military was not for me; and a lot of really great people enter that life because they want to do something good. But I maintain what I believe to be a healthy skepticism toward The Military, writ large. Military people, by and large, are worthy of high regard; The Military, like any other large and powerful institution, needs to be watched closely and critically. In much the same fashion, I have known at lot of good and great priests...but I keep a close eye on the institutional church!
Anyhow, the pastor at this church made a point--both during the service and during the previous day's run-through for same--that Memorial Day is not All Saints Day, and seemed to stop just short of suggesting that it was somehow wrong to be visiting the graves of non-military people on this occasion. (Despite which, I will be visiting my mother's grave in a little while.)
This got me to pondering on what Memorial Day is "supposed" to be, and I did a little research to refresh the little gray cells. As I thought I had remembered, Memorial Day's origins were "to honor Union soldiers who gave their lives to battle slavery." [See "What the History of Memorial Day Teaches About Honoring the War Dead."] So if someone really wanted to be a strict constructionist, he could say that Memorial Day is supposed to be about honoring fallen Union soldiers, and that all of the uniforms from other wars that were prominent at the church service I attended yesterday, including the Korean War-era Army uniform my son wore, disrespected the fallen Union soldiers whom the day is supposed to honor.
But of course Memorial Day has changed, and expanded, over the decades. And that's my point. While I certainly have no objection to the focus of the day being on fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, I object strenuously to the suggestion that our memories should not also turn toward those who may never have worn a uniform, or who did but did not die in battle, and honor them as well. That to me is as foolish as saying we must never lay flowers on a dead soldier's grave except on Memorial Day. The idea that only those in uniform make sacrifices in defense of this country is narrow, self-serving, and wrong.
Along those lines, the guest preacher at this service, a retired military chaplain, naturally devoted much of his time to the sacrifice made by military people. No argument there, certainly: Even though he has so far been stateside, there's no question that my nephew has had to make sacrifices in order to serve in the Marine Corps. Anyone can see that. However, I think it important to keep in mind that he is in the military voluntarily; that is, he knew going in that he was going to make sacrifices, and he did so and continues to do so willingly. More significantly, he doesn't complain about it or otherwise make an issue of it, at least not in my earshot. If you're doing something because you want to do it, because you have a sense of duty or a desire to do good or it seems like "an adventure," as the Army ads used to say, then you accept the hardships and sacrifices that go with it.
(Ditto for someone who decides to go to medical school, or to become a priest or pastor: Yes, it's hard. Yes, you make sacrifices. Buck up, matey--this was your idea, and it's unseemly to whine about it.)
Anyhow, the guest preacher. He quoted something that stuck in my head, and I have spent some time this morning trying to track it down. He attributed it to a general of whom I'd never heard and, based on my Google experience of late date, seems not to have existed. I have found a similar quotation attributed to a Father Dennis O'Brien, USMC, as well as to Senator Zell Miller. So who knows who the real author is. But here's a version of the quotation that I found online, similar though not identical to the one I heard yesterday:
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
Well, yes. And no. My objection to the above lies in the repeated use of the word not. The whole sentiment implies that only military people are defenders of freedom, only military people are patriots, only military people honor the flag and the country it represents. And that is patently untrue.
Further, it is untrue to assert that "the soldier" has "given" us our rights. Yes, through the decades, soldiers have fought for and defended these rights, but they are not the gifts of a benevolent military. Our rights and freedoms are "inalienable" and, in our secular theology, come from the Creator, not the soldier.
Nor are soldiers the only ones who work, sacrifice, and, yes, die, to defend these rights. A moment's reflection brings to mind any number of journalists who have been killed for their efforts to expose crime and corruption, to bring the truth to light; is it not fair to say that they have died in defense of freedom of the press? Is it not fair to say that the "campus organizers" who were shot dead at Kent State in 1970 died defending the "freedom to demonstrate"?
The point is this: We are all partners, civilians and military people, in defending these freedoms. Or should be. To consign that job solely to the military is wrong, insulting, and dangerous. It leads to a laziness from which no good can come--the idea that I don't have to be vigilant about my rights, because that's "the soldier's job." I don't have to do anything about crime in my neighborhood because that's "the cop's job." I don't have to do anything about the smoke coming from the house across the street because that's "the firefighter's job."
Not so. It's a shared responsibility. You don't need a uniform.
So, on this Memorial Day, let's honor not just the Union soldiers who died fighting slavery; let's not honor just those who have fallen while wearing a uniform; let's memorialize everyone everywhere who has lived and died defending liberty. That would be the highest honor.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Thomas Wolfe Was Right
A friend sent pictures of his mother's house--his own boyhood home--destroyed by the tornadoes that ripped through Kansas earlier this month. His aged mother rode out the storm in a closet, and is now safely ensconced with relatives in another state.
I can't even begin to imagine.
Homes are a funny thing. I have another friend who has made a career of flipping houses. He buys them, renovates them (invariably leaving them much, much nicer than he found them), lives in them...but with the expressed idea that as soon as someone offers him X dollars, he's out of there. Some of these places were so gorgeous that I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to live anywhere else. But as soon as he gets his price, poof! he's gone, with no seeming attachment to the place at all.
Not me. Nearly 40 years later, I still can't quite get my head around the fact that someone else--by now, probably several someones--live in my childhood home in Omaha. I still often dream of that house, of living in it even now, as an adult.
To have one's childhood home destroyed is, as mentioned, almost unimaginable to me. I tend to think of such things often, as I see older neighborhoods knocked down to make room for office or retail space. I was wondering as recently as this week, as I happened to notice a small office building tucked in the middle of a block that had been all residential when I was a kid riding my bike through that neighborhood. Obviously a couple of houses had been razed to make room for the office building. How strange it would be to come back to your old neighborhood and find your house...gone. Replaced by another structure.
I think that would be especially odd in a case like this, where the other houses along the block--on either side, in fact--are still standing.
And still houses: That would be another strange thing, I think--to revisit your childhood home and find that it, though still standing and perhaps outwardly house-like, is in fact a place of business. I noted that many years ago with what had 30 years ago been the home of a friend from junior high and high school: the house is still there, it still looks like a house, but it's a business. How weird.
So what would be stranger: (a) You go home again and find your old house is gone, razed to make room for an office building, a freeway, a parking lot; (b) You go home and find your old house is still there but is now a barber shop or a dental clinic; (c) You go home and find strangers living there--little kids running in the yard where you as a little kid ran...your yard! (This in fact happened to me on a trip to Omaha some years ago. I had of course been back to the old neighborhood many times in the intervening years, but apparently no one had been visible at the ancestral estate on those occasions, else I think I wouldn't have been as jarred by the experience as I was.)
It is funny the impression these places make on you. Or me, at least. I've mentioned the dreams I have yet today of "my" house in Omaha. It is not at all unusual for me to dream that, in adulthood, I have bought that house and moved my family into it. (Not a farfetched notion, had events gone differently: There's little doubt in my mind but that, had my dad not been offered or had not accepted a job transfer to Sioux Falls, my parents--or my dad, had their lives gone along a similar route in that scenario--would be living in that house yet today.) But I seldom if ever dream of my childhood home in Sioux Falls, the house where my dad still lives. Whenever I think of the early days of my marriage, I invariably picture our apartment in St. Paul--almost never our apartment in Sioux Falls, which I suppose makes some sense since the former was our first home. But even more often than that I conjure up images of our first house, which we have not lived in for nearly 12 years. Indeed, we have lived in this house longer than any of our previous addresses, yet I never dream about this house.
As I said, weird.
But I think I was wrong in titling this ramble. Wolfe was not quite right. You sometimes can go home again. But it probably won't be very satisfying.
I can't even begin to imagine.
Homes are a funny thing. I have another friend who has made a career of flipping houses. He buys them, renovates them (invariably leaving them much, much nicer than he found them), lives in them...but with the expressed idea that as soon as someone offers him X dollars, he's out of there. Some of these places were so gorgeous that I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to live anywhere else. But as soon as he gets his price, poof! he's gone, with no seeming attachment to the place at all.
Not me. Nearly 40 years later, I still can't quite get my head around the fact that someone else--by now, probably several someones--live in my childhood home in Omaha. I still often dream of that house, of living in it even now, as an adult.
To have one's childhood home destroyed is, as mentioned, almost unimaginable to me. I tend to think of such things often, as I see older neighborhoods knocked down to make room for office or retail space. I was wondering as recently as this week, as I happened to notice a small office building tucked in the middle of a block that had been all residential when I was a kid riding my bike through that neighborhood. Obviously a couple of houses had been razed to make room for the office building. How strange it would be to come back to your old neighborhood and find your house...gone. Replaced by another structure.
I think that would be especially odd in a case like this, where the other houses along the block--on either side, in fact--are still standing.
And still houses: That would be another strange thing, I think--to revisit your childhood home and find that it, though still standing and perhaps outwardly house-like, is in fact a place of business. I noted that many years ago with what had 30 years ago been the home of a friend from junior high and high school: the house is still there, it still looks like a house, but it's a business. How weird.
So what would be stranger: (a) You go home again and find your old house is gone, razed to make room for an office building, a freeway, a parking lot; (b) You go home and find your old house is still there but is now a barber shop or a dental clinic; (c) You go home and find strangers living there--little kids running in the yard where you as a little kid ran...your yard! (This in fact happened to me on a trip to Omaha some years ago. I had of course been back to the old neighborhood many times in the intervening years, but apparently no one had been visible at the ancestral estate on those occasions, else I think I wouldn't have been as jarred by the experience as I was.)
It is funny the impression these places make on you. Or me, at least. I've mentioned the dreams I have yet today of "my" house in Omaha. It is not at all unusual for me to dream that, in adulthood, I have bought that house and moved my family into it. (Not a farfetched notion, had events gone differently: There's little doubt in my mind but that, had my dad not been offered or had not accepted a job transfer to Sioux Falls, my parents--or my dad, had their lives gone along a similar route in that scenario--would be living in that house yet today.) But I seldom if ever dream of my childhood home in Sioux Falls, the house where my dad still lives. Whenever I think of the early days of my marriage, I invariably picture our apartment in St. Paul--almost never our apartment in Sioux Falls, which I suppose makes some sense since the former was our first home. But even more often than that I conjure up images of our first house, which we have not lived in for nearly 12 years. Indeed, we have lived in this house longer than any of our previous addresses, yet I never dream about this house.
As I said, weird.
But I think I was wrong in titling this ramble. Wolfe was not quite right. You sometimes can go home again. But it probably won't be very satisfying.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Summer Pants
Summer seems to have arrived, albeit in fits and starts, and with it comes an age-old problem: Pants.
As God is my witness, I will never understand clothing manufacturers. That much is a given. But swirling amidst the chaos of confusion is the impenetrable mystery that is Men's Summer-weight Pants. In general, I have three questions for manufacturers thereof:
1. What the hell is it with you people and drawstrings? What would cause you to think that, now that summer has arrived, I will want to wear pants/shorts with a drawstring instead of a belt, as God clearly intended? The drawstring concept is fine as long as my pockets are empty, but as soon as I have to load up with cell phone, keys, wallet, etc., it is physically impossible to tighten your @#!$% drawstring enough to keep the pants up and still be able to breathe.
2. The advent of summer does not, as you seem to think, mean I have less to carry with me; therefore your odd penchant for reducing the number of pockets in summer pants/shorts makes no sense. I still need both back pockets, thank you very much. Indeed, if I am not wearing a coat or jacket, I need my pants pockets even more. There is absolutely nothing that I carry on my person during the cold months that I do not need to carry on my person during the hot months. Nothing. So quit being so chintzy with the pockets, already!
3. In re the above, the items that I carry with me are not smaller now that the temperature is in the eighties. Indeed, in warm weather, it could be argued that these things are infinitesimally larger, since heat expands. That being the case, why are you trying to sell me pants/shorts with these ridiculously shallow front and back pockets? (And fewer of them: see above.) My checkbook is no shorter during the summer months; my wallet is no thinner; my keys are not "summer weight"--it's all the same. I need the same size of pockets as well as the same number. Why would you think otherwise?
Why, indeed? Am I to conclude that the designers and manufacturers of these items somehow do have less to carry with them between now and Labor Day? That the items are not only fewer in number but also smaller in size? And that they weigh less than in the winter months, therefore the idiotic drawstring is sufficient to keep the britches at a decent height?
Of course, you may say that I, the consumer, have the option of not purchasing these offensive items. Very true...assuming I can find otherwise, which in the case of pockets seems not that easy. I have already decided that the single pair of drawstring shorts, which I am currently wearing, will be the last I ever purchase. Not only because of the suspension problem mentioned above, but also for the more prosaic reason that the $!#@& string invariably decides to knot up when a guy really, really has to go to the bathroom!
Oh yeah--another thing for the manufacturers: What makes you think my britches don't need a fly just because they have a drawstring??
As God is my witness, I will never understand clothing manufacturers. That much is a given. But swirling amidst the chaos of confusion is the impenetrable mystery that is Men's Summer-weight Pants. In general, I have three questions for manufacturers thereof:
1. What the hell is it with you people and drawstrings? What would cause you to think that, now that summer has arrived, I will want to wear pants/shorts with a drawstring instead of a belt, as God clearly intended? The drawstring concept is fine as long as my pockets are empty, but as soon as I have to load up with cell phone, keys, wallet, etc., it is physically impossible to tighten your @#!$% drawstring enough to keep the pants up and still be able to breathe.
2. The advent of summer does not, as you seem to think, mean I have less to carry with me; therefore your odd penchant for reducing the number of pockets in summer pants/shorts makes no sense. I still need both back pockets, thank you very much. Indeed, if I am not wearing a coat or jacket, I need my pants pockets even more. There is absolutely nothing that I carry on my person during the cold months that I do not need to carry on my person during the hot months. Nothing. So quit being so chintzy with the pockets, already!
3. In re the above, the items that I carry with me are not smaller now that the temperature is in the eighties. Indeed, in warm weather, it could be argued that these things are infinitesimally larger, since heat expands. That being the case, why are you trying to sell me pants/shorts with these ridiculously shallow front and back pockets? (And fewer of them: see above.) My checkbook is no shorter during the summer months; my wallet is no thinner; my keys are not "summer weight"--it's all the same. I need the same size of pockets as well as the same number. Why would you think otherwise?
Why, indeed? Am I to conclude that the designers and manufacturers of these items somehow do have less to carry with them between now and Labor Day? That the items are not only fewer in number but also smaller in size? And that they weigh less than in the winter months, therefore the idiotic drawstring is sufficient to keep the britches at a decent height?
Of course, you may say that I, the consumer, have the option of not purchasing these offensive items. Very true...assuming I can find otherwise, which in the case of pockets seems not that easy. I have already decided that the single pair of drawstring shorts, which I am currently wearing, will be the last I ever purchase. Not only because of the suspension problem mentioned above, but also for the more prosaic reason that the $!#@& string invariably decides to knot up when a guy really, really has to go to the bathroom!
Oh yeah--another thing for the manufacturers: What makes you think my britches don't need a fly just because they have a drawstring??
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Good Taste Be Damned!
Upon receiving this afternoon's "breaking news" that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had, first, been found unconscious in his office; then was in "seriously grave" (or perhaps it was "gravely serious") condition; then had expired, two things came to my impious mind:
First, how can they call it "breaking news" when it has nothing to do with Anna Nicole's baby, David Hasselhoff, or Dancing with the Stars?
Second, inasmuch as the Rev. Falwell was wont to blame the occurrence of Bad Things on the Wrath of God (for instance, 9/11 happened because God, or at least Falwell, was mad that we're not being mean enough toward gay people), what do you suppose Falwell did to tick off the Almighty so much that He smote him down in his own office? Must've been something real bad.
Perhaps God likes the Teletubbies after all.
Here's an oddity from this afternoon's "breaking news": Upon the first report (unconscious), I went to Google News and saw several hits all indicating the same thing. Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia to see how old a man Falwell was, and was surprised to see that he was already listed as being deceased, as of today's date. Back to Google News (and the refresj button), which by now was indicating he was "seriously grave" and "unresponsive." It was at least another 10 minutes before the e-mail news alerts arrived indicating that he had died. I tried Google News again, and of course the news sources had updated.
But one does wonder about Wikipedia. Is it their somewhat notorious reputation for lacking veracity? Or had God shared his plans with them earlier?
First, how can they call it "breaking news" when it has nothing to do with Anna Nicole's baby, David Hasselhoff, or Dancing with the Stars?
Second, inasmuch as the Rev. Falwell was wont to blame the occurrence of Bad Things on the Wrath of God (for instance, 9/11 happened because God, or at least Falwell, was mad that we're not being mean enough toward gay people), what do you suppose Falwell did to tick off the Almighty so much that He smote him down in his own office? Must've been something real bad.
Perhaps God likes the Teletubbies after all.
Here's an oddity from this afternoon's "breaking news": Upon the first report (unconscious), I went to Google News and saw several hits all indicating the same thing. Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia to see how old a man Falwell was, and was surprised to see that he was already listed as being deceased, as of today's date. Back to Google News (and the refresj button), which by now was indicating he was "seriously grave" and "unresponsive." It was at least another 10 minutes before the e-mail news alerts arrived indicating that he had died. I tried Google News again, and of course the news sources had updated.
But one does wonder about Wikipedia. Is it their somewhat notorious reputation for lacking veracity? Or had God shared his plans with them earlier?
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
On Getting Kicked Out
This item was picked up by several sources today; I happened to see it at VOA News:
Pope Supports Excommunication for Lawmakers Who Legalize Abortion
By VOA News
09 May 2007
Pope Benedict XVI says he supports the excommunication of politicians who legalize abortion.
He spoke to reporters aboard his plane Wednesday on his way to Brazil for his first South American visit.
The pope was discussing a recent vote by lawmakers to legalize abortion in Mexico City. Pope Benedict said the local Catholic leaders' response, that lawmakers who approved the measure should be excommunicated, is supported by church doctrine.
And so on.
Those who know me know that I joke frequently--morbidly, even--about "when the boys in Rome get around to kicking me out." For, truth be told, though I identify myself as a Catholic and, I suspect, always will, there are plenty of points of departure between me and the One True Faith.
Abortion--more correctly, abortion rights--is one of them.
I suppose there will be those who think my position is untenable, even contraditory; certainly there will be the inevitable chorus of "Youcants" ("You can't be a Catholic and think/vote/speak/feel that way"). But I think it's pretty straightforward: I'm against abortion, but I support a woman's right to seek one, in keeping with her own conscience, health, and economic circumstances.
Whenever I'm at Mass and we're supposed to pray for all the aborted fetuses (or "babies," as they insist), I pray instead for a world in which no woman would feel so cornered that abortion is her only, or least-worst, option. Somehow, I can't make myself believe that the draconian under-no-circumstances approach favored by the right-wingnuts (especially those dark forces that have overthrown the South Dakota legislature in recent times) is going to "fix" this problem. Certainly cramming "abstinence only" programs down schools' throats isn't going to take care of it (and hasn't been). And the strange idea that NOT teaching kids about sex will prevent them from engaging in same (and making babies, and possibly pursuing abortions) is just so outre' that it's barely possible to comment on in any intelligent fashion.
No, the "solution," if there is one, is undoubtedly a combination of education and a cultural and religious acceptance of, even approval of, birth control. (Not just "natural family planning" but the whole nine yards.)
Anyhow, the above is one of the reasons I fully expect the aforementioned boys in Rome to eventually punch my ticket; others include my insisting on being a Democrat, and voting for Democratic candidates including those who--gasp!--sometimes disagree with Rome; and because I believe that conscience trumps the guy in the pulpit every time ("Man has the right to act according to his conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1782). I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting right now.
But that does bring me back to the question of excommunication.
This is a saber that too many bishops--and now the pope himself--seem happy to rattle whenever they're confronted with someone who won't toe the line. I suppose they're within their rights to do so (indeed, one of my cornerstones is respecting the right of churches to make their own rules and policies). But I have to wonder how effective a weapon it really is.
No doubt I would feel bad if I were to be kicked out of my church; despite my having the temerity to think my own thoughts about things, the fact is that I do love my church and hold its leaders' pronouncements in high regard. Note that that does not mean I always or even frequently agree; it means that what priests, bishops, and popes have to say is definitely worth listening to and considering.
But beyond having my feelings hurt, what would excommunication in the 21st century mean--to me or to anybody else?
My reference above to the One True Faith is, of course, comical--although I have a prejudice toward Christianity, and toward Catholicism, I don't believe there is one true faith. I certainly don't believe that only Catholics have a passkey for the pearly gates, and indeed I know a number of people who consider themselves "good Catholics" but whom I think are definitely south-bound in the Hereafter. The idea that priests, bishops, and popes hold "the keys to Heaven" and that you go against them at peril of your immortal soul is pretty quaint. I'm pretty sure--indeed, I'm counting on--those decisions being made by God and not any of his human emissaries, no matter how well-meaning or well-placed they may be.
So kicking me out is not tantamount to sending me to hell. What does it do?
I guess there would be certain social avenues that would close to me. I couldn't, for instance, join the Knights of Columbus. But I've never so much as looked into membership, so I don't consider that much of a punishment. I also couldn't buy financial services from their insurance agents, but, again, that's something I've never considered. Probably some "good" Catholics would cease to associate with me, but if that's their attitude I don't imagine I would consider it an insurmountable loss.
Come right down to it, the worst part would probably be having to find a new church. Of course, I already hang out at my wife's Lutheran church, so as far as the "weekly dose" is concerned, no problem. But the fact is, even after 25 years, Lutheran churches to me still feel like the in-laws' house: I am welcomed there, and it is a home but not my home. Catholic church--specifically, the Mass--feels like home.
(There are also some significant theological issues for me, but that's another subject.)
So maybe the logical step would the the Episcopal Church--the middle way. And I must say, I find much to admire there--their nice, open, liberal point of view...at least, in some dioceses, and I'm not sure if the local one is one of them. The seismic activity within that denomination gives me pause--specifically, since I live in such a conservative part of the world. I can't shake the notion that I would decide to sign up with the Episcopalians...and then immediately the local diocese would cut ties with the US church--because of all the things I find admirable in Episcopalianism--and hook up with some uber-conservative bishop in Africa or someplace. No thanks. If I want hidebound, I can stick with Rome.
Of the three Episcopal churches in my current locale, one was until fairly recently affiliated with the American Catholic Church. I had always meant to pop over there one Sunday to see what was what, but I never did. And I noticed three or four years ago that the sign now indicated they were a church of the Episcopal Church. From what I've read of the American Catholic Church, however, it seems like it might be up my street--think Roman Catholic Church without Rome, if you can imagine that. Same sacraments, same traditions, same liturgy (I think)...but a different hierarchy. I especially like the ACC's expressed commitment to the ideals of Vatican II, ideals that I feel my church has been turning its back on these past 20 or 25 years. But this is an extremely small denomination--I count only 13 parishes listed on their web page, and I suspect that might be part of the reason the local parish gave up and threw in with the ECUSA--the nearest of which to me is in Wisconsin. So, not a practical choice.
The careful reader will have noted in all of the above that I never allude to my packing my kit and striking out, but only to my getting the bum's rush. I can envision a couple of scenarios that might impel me toward the exits, but to date I have not encountered that "last straw" where the OTF is concerned. Naturally, there are things about my church that annoy me, disappoint me, anger me. I have no reason to suspect I would feel any different anyplace else. (Quite the contrary, in fact: I have experienced these same emotions at the Lutheran churches to which my wife has belonged, and so I conclude that there is no Perfect Place until such time as I decide to build my own...which sounds like more work than it's worth!) I have often made this analogy: There are times when our families disappoint us, anger us, hurt us. Do we abandon them? Generally not. Well, I consider my church as much a part of my family as my "real" relatives by blood or marriage. (I think that's why anti-Catholic slurs bother me so much. I may be mad at my brother, but your slandering him is likely to earn you a poke in the eye.)
And so, for the foreseeable future, I anticipate staying more or less put. (I do tend to bound from parish to parish, which is also frowned upon in Catholic circles. Whatever. Add it to the list.)
But I do wonder still, what precisely is the weapon these ecclesiastic types think they're wielding when they call for the excommunication of those who disagree with them?
Mostly, to me, it seems to come down to a big inconvenience and not much more.
Pope Supports Excommunication for Lawmakers Who Legalize Abortion
By VOA News
09 May 2007
Pope Benedict XVI says he supports the excommunication of politicians who legalize abortion.
He spoke to reporters aboard his plane Wednesday on his way to Brazil for his first South American visit.
The pope was discussing a recent vote by lawmakers to legalize abortion in Mexico City. Pope Benedict said the local Catholic leaders' response, that lawmakers who approved the measure should be excommunicated, is supported by church doctrine.
And so on.
Those who know me know that I joke frequently--morbidly, even--about "when the boys in Rome get around to kicking me out." For, truth be told, though I identify myself as a Catholic and, I suspect, always will, there are plenty of points of departure between me and the One True Faith.
Abortion--more correctly, abortion rights--is one of them.
I suppose there will be those who think my position is untenable, even contraditory; certainly there will be the inevitable chorus of "Youcants" ("You can't be a Catholic and think/vote/speak/feel that way"). But I think it's pretty straightforward: I'm against abortion, but I support a woman's right to seek one, in keeping with her own conscience, health, and economic circumstances.
Whenever I'm at Mass and we're supposed to pray for all the aborted fetuses (or "babies," as they insist), I pray instead for a world in which no woman would feel so cornered that abortion is her only, or least-worst, option. Somehow, I can't make myself believe that the draconian under-no-circumstances approach favored by the right-wingnuts (especially those dark forces that have overthrown the South Dakota legislature in recent times) is going to "fix" this problem. Certainly cramming "abstinence only" programs down schools' throats isn't going to take care of it (and hasn't been). And the strange idea that NOT teaching kids about sex will prevent them from engaging in same (and making babies, and possibly pursuing abortions) is just so outre' that it's barely possible to comment on in any intelligent fashion.
No, the "solution," if there is one, is undoubtedly a combination of education and a cultural and religious acceptance of, even approval of, birth control. (Not just "natural family planning" but the whole nine yards.)
Anyhow, the above is one of the reasons I fully expect the aforementioned boys in Rome to eventually punch my ticket; others include my insisting on being a Democrat, and voting for Democratic candidates including those who--gasp!--sometimes disagree with Rome; and because I believe that conscience trumps the guy in the pulpit every time ("Man has the right to act according to his conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1782). I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting right now.
But that does bring me back to the question of excommunication.
This is a saber that too many bishops--and now the pope himself--seem happy to rattle whenever they're confronted with someone who won't toe the line. I suppose they're within their rights to do so (indeed, one of my cornerstones is respecting the right of churches to make their own rules and policies). But I have to wonder how effective a weapon it really is.
No doubt I would feel bad if I were to be kicked out of my church; despite my having the temerity to think my own thoughts about things, the fact is that I do love my church and hold its leaders' pronouncements in high regard. Note that that does not mean I always or even frequently agree; it means that what priests, bishops, and popes have to say is definitely worth listening to and considering.
But beyond having my feelings hurt, what would excommunication in the 21st century mean--to me or to anybody else?
My reference above to the One True Faith is, of course, comical--although I have a prejudice toward Christianity, and toward Catholicism, I don't believe there is one true faith. I certainly don't believe that only Catholics have a passkey for the pearly gates, and indeed I know a number of people who consider themselves "good Catholics" but whom I think are definitely south-bound in the Hereafter. The idea that priests, bishops, and popes hold "the keys to Heaven" and that you go against them at peril of your immortal soul is pretty quaint. I'm pretty sure--indeed, I'm counting on--those decisions being made by God and not any of his human emissaries, no matter how well-meaning or well-placed they may be.
So kicking me out is not tantamount to sending me to hell. What does it do?
I guess there would be certain social avenues that would close to me. I couldn't, for instance, join the Knights of Columbus. But I've never so much as looked into membership, so I don't consider that much of a punishment. I also couldn't buy financial services from their insurance agents, but, again, that's something I've never considered. Probably some "good" Catholics would cease to associate with me, but if that's their attitude I don't imagine I would consider it an insurmountable loss.
Come right down to it, the worst part would probably be having to find a new church. Of course, I already hang out at my wife's Lutheran church, so as far as the "weekly dose" is concerned, no problem. But the fact is, even after 25 years, Lutheran churches to me still feel like the in-laws' house: I am welcomed there, and it is a home but not my home. Catholic church--specifically, the Mass--feels like home.
(There are also some significant theological issues for me, but that's another subject.)
So maybe the logical step would the the Episcopal Church--the middle way. And I must say, I find much to admire there--their nice, open, liberal point of view...at least, in some dioceses, and I'm not sure if the local one is one of them. The seismic activity within that denomination gives me pause--specifically, since I live in such a conservative part of the world. I can't shake the notion that I would decide to sign up with the Episcopalians...and then immediately the local diocese would cut ties with the US church--because of all the things I find admirable in Episcopalianism--and hook up with some uber-conservative bishop in Africa or someplace. No thanks. If I want hidebound, I can stick with Rome.
Of the three Episcopal churches in my current locale, one was until fairly recently affiliated with the American Catholic Church. I had always meant to pop over there one Sunday to see what was what, but I never did. And I noticed three or four years ago that the sign now indicated they were a church of the Episcopal Church. From what I've read of the American Catholic Church, however, it seems like it might be up my street--think Roman Catholic Church without Rome, if you can imagine that. Same sacraments, same traditions, same liturgy (I think)...but a different hierarchy. I especially like the ACC's expressed commitment to the ideals of Vatican II, ideals that I feel my church has been turning its back on these past 20 or 25 years. But this is an extremely small denomination--I count only 13 parishes listed on their web page, and I suspect that might be part of the reason the local parish gave up and threw in with the ECUSA--the nearest of which to me is in Wisconsin. So, not a practical choice.
The careful reader will have noted in all of the above that I never allude to my packing my kit and striking out, but only to my getting the bum's rush. I can envision a couple of scenarios that might impel me toward the exits, but to date I have not encountered that "last straw" where the OTF is concerned. Naturally, there are things about my church that annoy me, disappoint me, anger me. I have no reason to suspect I would feel any different anyplace else. (Quite the contrary, in fact: I have experienced these same emotions at the Lutheran churches to which my wife has belonged, and so I conclude that there is no Perfect Place until such time as I decide to build my own...which sounds like more work than it's worth!) I have often made this analogy: There are times when our families disappoint us, anger us, hurt us. Do we abandon them? Generally not. Well, I consider my church as much a part of my family as my "real" relatives by blood or marriage. (I think that's why anti-Catholic slurs bother me so much. I may be mad at my brother, but your slandering him is likely to earn you a poke in the eye.)
And so, for the foreseeable future, I anticipate staying more or less put. (I do tend to bound from parish to parish, which is also frowned upon in Catholic circles. Whatever. Add it to the list.)
But I do wonder still, what precisely is the weapon these ecclesiastic types think they're wielding when they call for the excommunication of those who disagree with them?
Mostly, to me, it seems to come down to a big inconvenience and not much more.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Free Speech Isn't Dead in South Dakota!
...but it's certainly on the critical list.
One of my Far-Flung Correspondents, Jerry, sent me a copy of an article by Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal, "State looks to pull anti-Bush license plate." I've pasted the article below, in case the link disappears after a few days (as is newspapers' wont), but the gist is this:
A woman out on the western edge of the state has a vanity plate that reads MPEACHW. Impeach W...get it? Okay, someone, naturally, took offense at the idea of someone expressing an opinion contrary to his or her own, and whined about it to the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Naturally, the folks at the DMV told the anonymous whiner to grow up and...oh. Sorry. I must have dozed off for a second there and had a dream, for of course the DMV did nothing so sensible but rather is now wasting my tax dollars in a hard-hitting attempt to get this woman to surrender the offensive license plates. Yep, that's right--a single anonymous complaint is all it takes for the guts-free bureaucrats of the state I currently call home to jump into action and wrestle that hunk of sheet metal--which, incidentally, they sold her in the first place--off the the bumper of her Prius before anyone else can be offended!
Good to know these intrepid souls are on the case.
Only a cynic would wonder if there would be all the fuss if this were happening 10 years ago and the license plate in question read MPEACHBILL. (Too many letters for a South Dakota vanity plate--it would have to be something like MPCHBIL--but you get the drift.) Being a cynic, I certainly do so wonder. No, actually, I don't wonder at all.
If there is a comedic angle to the brouhaha, it is this: Conservatives often enjoy portraying progressives as crybabies who rush to the government whenever they're "offended" by something. Political correctness, they call this, sneeringly. The bloke behind the resolutely unfunny comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" frequently references the "perpetually offended" or "permanently offended" or whatever term he might use to belittle people who think that a degree of civility, even kindness is not uncalled for.
And yet what do we have here? Someone presumably on the right end of the political spectrum who is deeply offended because someone else thinks we should impeach Dubya, and has the temerity to actually express her thoughts, where people can read them, or have them read to them, and everything! (On her tree-hugging Japanese hybrid car, no less; could this be any more perfect?)
And so this person anonymously complains to the government to make sure that this and similar instances of free-speech-that-I-don't-agree-with are nipped in the bud.
And the government of this Republican stronghold gleefully complies.
My friend Jerry writes, "This reminds me of the imbroglio when a gay rights group wanted to clean up a section of the one of the interstates. At the time, such organizations were entitled to a sign informing passers-by who was responsible. The governor canceled the program."
The governor in office back then was a Republican too, of course.
Interestingly, the DMV is hiding behind a section of state law which gives it, according to the Journal article, "the right to refuse to issue 'any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.'"
But the DMV already issued the plates! Where were these watchdogs of public safety at the time?
In defending the department's stand, the DMV director is quoted thus: “I’m following the letter of the law. It’s offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency."
Really? How so? Offensive, obviously...but "not in good taste and decency"? An interesting statement, coming from the top dog of a department that approved the vanity plates I saw on a car on my street a couple of years ago: GO TOPLS--Go Topless.
That, apparently, met the DMV's high standards for "good taste and decency"...whatever they may be!
State looks to pull anti-Bush license plate
By Kevin Woster,
Rapid City Journal
4 May 2007
RAPID CITY -- Heather Moriah loves the personalized license plates on her silver Prius encouraging the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
But somebody doesn’t agree. And that somebody complained to the state. Now, the South Dakota Division of Motor Vehicles is trying to recall the plates -- which read MPEACHW. And if Moriah doesn’t turn them in voluntarily, the state might send law-enforcement officers to pick them up.
Even so, she’s not immediately inclined to cooperate.
“I don’t think I’m going to play,” Moriah said Thursday afternoon. “The plate isn’t in poor taste. It‘s not sexual in nature or pornographic. To me, a political message should not be considered offensive.”
But Division of Motor Vehicles director Deb Hillmer said Thursday that the law clearly gives the state authority to recall the plates and have them forcibly removed if necessary. And although only one person complained about Moriah’s political statement, that’s all it takes to recall a set of vanity plates, Hillmer said.
“I’m following the letter of the law,” she said. “It’s offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency. And the plates are the property of the state of South Dakota.”
State law declares motor vehicle licenses plates to be the property of the state as long as the plates are valid. The law also allows personalized plates with as many as seven letters for an extra $25 fee. But it gives DMV officials the right to refuse to issue “any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.”
Hillmer said MPEACHW meets that criterion. The plates never would have been issued if DMV officials had caught their meaning at the time Moriah applied, Hillmer said.
“This was one that we apparently missed when it came through originally, and we received a complaint from an individual that found it offensive,” she said, declining to identify the individual or provide the contents of the complaint. “I don’t think we ever would have issued it if we’d have picked up on what it was inferring.”
Moriah said she bought the 2005 Prius late last summer and fitted it with personalized plates similar to those her partner, Curt Finnegan, had on his blue 2004 Prius. His plates actually read: IMPCH-W.
Moriah said has received plenty of positive reactions in public to her plates and that negative responses have been rare. So she was surprised to receive the April 18 letter from the DMV announcing the recall and giving her 10 days to turn in the plates at the Pennington County Treasurer’s Office or the DMV office in Pierre.
The letter said DMV would issue a refund on the months remaining on Moriah’s license.
She is hesitant to give up the plates, however, because she believes her free-speech rights are being unnecessarily limited.
“It’s kind of sad to me,” she said. “For one person to be able to say they’re offended because it’s different from their political beliefs seems really arbitrary. And I don’t think the law is very clear about what ‘offensive’ means.”
Hillmer said the law gives the state great latitude in making that determination. Moriah is free to exercise her free-speech rights in ways that don’t involve state property or implied state sanction of a given message, Hillemr said.
“They have every right to use that free speech, but they need to do it with a bumper sticker,” she said. “That plate is property of South Dakota. And that (message) is not something the state should advocate.”
It wouldn’t matter if the political message or the president were different, it would be inappropriate on a state plate, Hillmer said.
Moriah has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which intends to protest the recall in a letter to the state. Moriah said it’s unlikely the ACLU will pursue legal action, in part because she is planning a move to Pennsylvanian in the next couple of months.
Finnegan already has moved there and replaced his South Dakota plates for Pennsylvania plates, Moriah said. Moriah hopes to leave in June or July, with her plates still intact. Hillmer said it might not work out that way.
“We may have law enforcement go pick them up if we receive more complaints about it,” she said. “If she returns them, we’ll make her new plates. If we have to go pick them up, we probably won’t.”
Hillmer has been with DMV for more than 20 years. She remembers five or six instances when so-called vanity plates were recalled. One of them said “SNIPER” and another “OLDFART.”
Moriah is the only person to complain about a recall, Hillmer said.
Rapid City lawyer Patrick Duffy said there’s plenty of reason to complain. Duffy, who has worked on key civil rights cases involving American Indian voting issues, said action by the state means that any personalized plate must be recalled because of a single complaint, no matter what the message.
“What this means is that every atheist can now wipe out anything that seems to refer to God,” Duffy said. “Will vanity plates for members of the armed forces suddenly be declared offensive if they offend a single pacifist? It’s absolutely preposterous.”
Even obscenity must be judged by the mores and standards of a community, not just one offended individual, Duffy said.
“Here, all we need is one lone citizen who is apparently invested with the complete authority to determine what is good taste and decency for all the rest of us,” he said. “It seems a little tyrannical to me.”
One of my Far-Flung Correspondents, Jerry, sent me a copy of an article by Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal, "State looks to pull anti-Bush license plate." I've pasted the article below, in case the link disappears after a few days (as is newspapers' wont), but the gist is this:
A woman out on the western edge of the state has a vanity plate that reads MPEACHW. Impeach W...get it? Okay, someone, naturally, took offense at the idea of someone expressing an opinion contrary to his or her own, and whined about it to the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Naturally, the folks at the DMV told the anonymous whiner to grow up and...oh. Sorry. I must have dozed off for a second there and had a dream, for of course the DMV did nothing so sensible but rather is now wasting my tax dollars in a hard-hitting attempt to get this woman to surrender the offensive license plates. Yep, that's right--a single anonymous complaint is all it takes for the guts-free bureaucrats of the state I currently call home to jump into action and wrestle that hunk of sheet metal--which, incidentally, they sold her in the first place--off the the bumper of her Prius before anyone else can be offended!
Good to know these intrepid souls are on the case.
Only a cynic would wonder if there would be all the fuss if this were happening 10 years ago and the license plate in question read MPEACHBILL. (Too many letters for a South Dakota vanity plate--it would have to be something like MPCHBIL--but you get the drift.) Being a cynic, I certainly do so wonder. No, actually, I don't wonder at all.
If there is a comedic angle to the brouhaha, it is this: Conservatives often enjoy portraying progressives as crybabies who rush to the government whenever they're "offended" by something. Political correctness, they call this, sneeringly. The bloke behind the resolutely unfunny comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" frequently references the "perpetually offended" or "permanently offended" or whatever term he might use to belittle people who think that a degree of civility, even kindness is not uncalled for.
And yet what do we have here? Someone presumably on the right end of the political spectrum who is deeply offended because someone else thinks we should impeach Dubya, and has the temerity to actually express her thoughts, where people can read them, or have them read to them, and everything! (On her tree-hugging Japanese hybrid car, no less; could this be any more perfect?)
And so this person anonymously complains to the government to make sure that this and similar instances of free-speech-that-I-don't-agree-with are nipped in the bud.
And the government of this Republican stronghold gleefully complies.
My friend Jerry writes, "This reminds me of the imbroglio when a gay rights group wanted to clean up a section of the one of the interstates. At the time, such organizations were entitled to a sign informing passers-by who was responsible. The governor canceled the program."
The governor in office back then was a Republican too, of course.
Interestingly, the DMV is hiding behind a section of state law which gives it, according to the Journal article, "the right to refuse to issue 'any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.'"
But the DMV already issued the plates! Where were these watchdogs of public safety at the time?
In defending the department's stand, the DMV director is quoted thus: “I’m following the letter of the law. It’s offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency."
Really? How so? Offensive, obviously...but "not in good taste and decency"? An interesting statement, coming from the top dog of a department that approved the vanity plates I saw on a car on my street a couple of years ago: GO TOPLS--Go Topless.
That, apparently, met the DMV's high standards for "good taste and decency"...whatever they may be!
State looks to pull anti-Bush license plate
By Kevin Woster,
Rapid City Journal
4 May 2007
RAPID CITY -- Heather Moriah loves the personalized license plates on her silver Prius encouraging the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
But somebody doesn’t agree. And that somebody complained to the state. Now, the South Dakota Division of Motor Vehicles is trying to recall the plates -- which read MPEACHW. And if Moriah doesn’t turn them in voluntarily, the state might send law-enforcement officers to pick them up.
Even so, she’s not immediately inclined to cooperate.
“I don’t think I’m going to play,” Moriah said Thursday afternoon. “The plate isn’t in poor taste. It‘s not sexual in nature or pornographic. To me, a political message should not be considered offensive.”
But Division of Motor Vehicles director Deb Hillmer said Thursday that the law clearly gives the state authority to recall the plates and have them forcibly removed if necessary. And although only one person complained about Moriah’s political statement, that’s all it takes to recall a set of vanity plates, Hillmer said.
“I’m following the letter of the law,” she said. “It’s offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency. And the plates are the property of the state of South Dakota.”
State law declares motor vehicle licenses plates to be the property of the state as long as the plates are valid. The law also allows personalized plates with as many as seven letters for an extra $25 fee. But it gives DMV officials the right to refuse to issue “any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.”
Hillmer said MPEACHW meets that criterion. The plates never would have been issued if DMV officials had caught their meaning at the time Moriah applied, Hillmer said.
“This was one that we apparently missed when it came through originally, and we received a complaint from an individual that found it offensive,” she said, declining to identify the individual or provide the contents of the complaint. “I don’t think we ever would have issued it if we’d have picked up on what it was inferring.”
Moriah said she bought the 2005 Prius late last summer and fitted it with personalized plates similar to those her partner, Curt Finnegan, had on his blue 2004 Prius. His plates actually read: IMPCH-W.
Moriah said has received plenty of positive reactions in public to her plates and that negative responses have been rare. So she was surprised to receive the April 18 letter from the DMV announcing the recall and giving her 10 days to turn in the plates at the Pennington County Treasurer’s Office or the DMV office in Pierre.
The letter said DMV would issue a refund on the months remaining on Moriah’s license.
She is hesitant to give up the plates, however, because she believes her free-speech rights are being unnecessarily limited.
“It’s kind of sad to me,” she said. “For one person to be able to say they’re offended because it’s different from their political beliefs seems really arbitrary. And I don’t think the law is very clear about what ‘offensive’ means.”
Hillmer said the law gives the state great latitude in making that determination. Moriah is free to exercise her free-speech rights in ways that don’t involve state property or implied state sanction of a given message, Hillemr said.
“They have every right to use that free speech, but they need to do it with a bumper sticker,” she said. “That plate is property of South Dakota. And that (message) is not something the state should advocate.”
It wouldn’t matter if the political message or the president were different, it would be inappropriate on a state plate, Hillmer said.
Moriah has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which intends to protest the recall in a letter to the state. Moriah said it’s unlikely the ACLU will pursue legal action, in part because she is planning a move to Pennsylvanian in the next couple of months.
Finnegan already has moved there and replaced his South Dakota plates for Pennsylvania plates, Moriah said. Moriah hopes to leave in June or July, with her plates still intact. Hillmer said it might not work out that way.
“We may have law enforcement go pick them up if we receive more complaints about it,” she said. “If she returns them, we’ll make her new plates. If we have to go pick them up, we probably won’t.”
Hillmer has been with DMV for more than 20 years. She remembers five or six instances when so-called vanity plates were recalled. One of them said “SNIPER” and another “OLDFART.”
Moriah is the only person to complain about a recall, Hillmer said.
Rapid City lawyer Patrick Duffy said there’s plenty of reason to complain. Duffy, who has worked on key civil rights cases involving American Indian voting issues, said action by the state means that any personalized plate must be recalled because of a single complaint, no matter what the message.
“What this means is that every atheist can now wipe out anything that seems to refer to God,” Duffy said. “Will vanity plates for members of the armed forces suddenly be declared offensive if they offend a single pacifist? It’s absolutely preposterous.”
Even obscenity must be judged by the mores and standards of a community, not just one offended individual, Duffy said.
“Here, all we need is one lone citizen who is apparently invested with the complete authority to determine what is good taste and decency for all the rest of us,” he said. “It seems a little tyrannical to me.”
Haplography
Speaking of A Word a Day (as I was below), it's worth mentioning that the newsletter usually focuses on a week-long theme to which the daily words relate. Last week, the theme was words about words, and here's a swell one that I had never come across before: haplography.
haplography (hap-LOG-ruh-fee) noun
Accidental omission of a letter or letter group that should
be repeated in writing, for example, "mispell" for "misspell".
[From Greek haplo- (single) + -graphy (writing).]
The description, by AWAD proprietor Anu Garg, says this:
Search the Web for 'Missippi' and you'd find thousands of hits showing pages where the authors clearly meant Mississippi. With the advent of modern computers and spell-checkers you'd think this illustration of haplography would not occur so often.
If you feel this is bad, imagine the time before the printing press came along, when the only way to make copies of a book was with a quill and parchment. There were no photocopying machines to crank out double-sided copies.
Biblical translations and copies of other books from olden times are replete with haplography and its cousins. Many scholars spend their lifetime identifying these 'bugs' in ancient books and other scripts.
A counterpart of haplography is haplology. Haplology occurs when one 'eats' a few letters while pronouncing a word. Latin nutrix (nurse) came from an earlier word, nutritrix. Chancery, a contraction of chancellery, is now an acceptable part of the English language. Perhaps some day 'probly' will be considered standard and 'probably' obsolete!
If there are some words that economize on letters, there are others which splurge. The word for this phenomenon is called dittography.
Okay, make that two words I had never heard before, since dittography was a new one on me, too.
I shared haplography with the students in the Writing for Magazines class I have been teaching this almost-ended semester at Augustana College. They were not too impressed, nor did I observe any of them jotting down the URL for A Word a Day. Oh well...all I can do is lead 'em to the water.
haplography (hap-LOG-ruh-fee) noun
Accidental omission of a letter or letter group that should
be repeated in writing, for example, "mispell" for "misspell".
[From Greek haplo- (single) + -graphy (writing).]
The description, by AWAD proprietor Anu Garg, says this:
Search the Web for 'Missippi' and you'd find thousands of hits showing pages where the authors clearly meant Mississippi. With the advent of modern computers and spell-checkers you'd think this illustration of haplography would not occur so often.
If you feel this is bad, imagine the time before the printing press came along, when the only way to make copies of a book was with a quill and parchment. There were no photocopying machines to crank out double-sided copies.
Biblical translations and copies of other books from olden times are replete with haplography and its cousins. Many scholars spend their lifetime identifying these 'bugs' in ancient books and other scripts.
A counterpart of haplography is haplology. Haplology occurs when one 'eats' a few letters while pronouncing a word. Latin nutrix (nurse) came from an earlier word, nutritrix. Chancery, a contraction of chancellery, is now an acceptable part of the English language. Perhaps some day 'probly' will be considered standard and 'probably' obsolete!
If there are some words that economize on letters, there are others which splurge. The word for this phenomenon is called dittography.
Okay, make that two words I had never heard before, since dittography was a new one on me, too.
I shared haplography with the students in the Writing for Magazines class I have been teaching this almost-ended semester at Augustana College. They were not too impressed, nor did I observe any of them jotting down the URL for A Word a Day. Oh well...all I can do is lead 'em to the water.
You Know What They Say
Yep, time again for some more quotations that have been collecting dust around here. I'm pretty sure that all of them come from the wonderful A Word a Day, which you ought to be subscribing to if you're not already, even though that means you will have already seen most of the quotations I post here. But that's your problem, not mine.
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951)
Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right. -Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906)
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. -James Marston Fitch, historic preservationist (1909-2000)
History is a vast early warning system. -Norman Cousins, editor and author (1915-1990)
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. -Henry Ford, industrialist (1863-1947)
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. -Faith Baldwin, novelist (1893-1978)
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (1850-1893)
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. -Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -Ursula K. Le Guin, author (1929- )
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951)
Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right. -Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906)
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. -James Marston Fitch, historic preservationist (1909-2000)
History is a vast early warning system. -Norman Cousins, editor and author (1915-1990)
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. -Henry Ford, industrialist (1863-1947)
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. -Faith Baldwin, novelist (1893-1978)
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (1850-1893)
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. -Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -Ursula K. Le Guin, author (1929- )
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