Parvum Opus 254 ~ And Then There Were None

PARVUM OPUS

Number 254

November 28, 2007

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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

Local high school students who have rehearsed all semester for a performance of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None have been forced to cancel the play. If you’re a Christie fan, you have 10 seconds to guess why. For the rest of you, the original novel was published in England in 1939 under the title Ten Little N-----s (the title was based on an old nursery rhyme). A year later it was published in the U.S. under the title Ten Little I-----s, I mean Ten Little Indians. The story is one of the great murder mysteries and has nothing to do with people of any particular racial cast. But because the original British title had an unacceptable word, 67 years later a local “diversity” flack has pressured the school to shut down the performance. Here’s the letter I sent to the newspaper today:

Lakota East students were told there was reason to be concerned about their safety if “Ten Little Indians” wasn’t canceled. Clearly Gary Hines, his GPH company, and apparently the NAACP are in the shakedown business. School administrators succumbed to guilt (over an offending word removed in 1940), threats of violence, and financial extortion (buy the GPH “diversity training”). Distorting language is a classic ploy: how do you get “genocide” from this play? True censorship comes from the government. These are profiteering bullies. Is Hines shaking down all those dealers who sell rap music using the N word?

The genocide reference came up in the news story; someone said the play is about genocide, which it’s not. But if it were, would that mean you can’t talk about genocide?

I wonder what these diversity shakedown artists would say if every past use of or allusion to the N word were expunged from every book and film. Would they say it’s a denial of history?

So why do I use the feeble circumlocution “N word”? I heard that word constantly when I was growing up, from my dad, but simultaneously learned it was not acceptable. I’ve never used it except in quotation. And now I don’t want any spam filters to kick out this PO (which happens sometimes, however innocuous I try to keep the language).

By the way, Lakota East High School is going to substitute Harvey as this year’s school play. I should think that old chestnut is offensive for making light of drunkenness and/or mental illness.

See City Journal Autumn 2007, “Ideology Trumps Truth on Campus” by Bruce S. Thornton on a similar scholastic free speech issue.

Also, Dennis Miller spoke of “a good abject lesson” in the imminent closing of Antioch College (good article by Charlotte Allen linked here). I guess Miller meant “object lesson” but abject is even better. Antioch is where students aggressively “call out” other students for being politically incorrect, such as when one student said Eskimo instead of Intuit. (I don’t know why Eskimo is a bad word, even if inaccurate.)

While searching for Allen’s article on Antioch, I ran across the Heretical Librarian blog by librarian David Durant, who had an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education called “The Loneliness of a Conservative Librarian”. Young Durant writes, “I pride myself on my ability to coexist with all kinds of people, and I try hard not to let my politics get in the way of my job or personal relationships.” Hah. Flashback....to a story I’ve been wanting to publish for a long time.

Sometime in the ‘90s I interviewed for an editor’s job at the now defunct Sojourner newspaper in Boston, a feminist paper started in the ‘70s (named after Sojourner Truth, and not to be confused with Sojourners magazine). Two decades after its inception, it appeared to have narrowed into a paper chiefly aimed at lesbians, though its masthead said it was for all women in the nation or something like that. I applied anyway, despite my hetero history. I was invited for a group interview. You know how when you go into one of those gangbangs, you can feel the room? It was cold, and I couldn’t warm them up. So I decided there was no reason to mind what I said.

One of the things I said was, while Bay Windows, the other gay paper in Boston (though they insisted Sojourner was for all women), was readily available in newspaper boxes, for free, all over town, Sojourner wasn’t very visible and it wasn’t free, and furthermore appeared to be written for an elite group of lesbians in New England rather than for every woman in the nation. Bay Windows had wider reader appeal. The Valentine issue of Sojourner had stories of romance that were all about women and, uh, personal appliances, no men. The average woman on the street wasn’t going to get much out of that. The cover photo of that issue was a young black artist with very short hair dyed sort of greenish yellow, which I said made her look a lot like a tennis ball, cute, but still a tennis ball. They were not amused.

One of the questions put to me was how did I get along with people who were “different” from me. Really and truly, for a minute I didn’t know what they meant. Then I said, well, maybe corporate executives are pretty different from me but I don’t really know any personally. Fundamentalist Christians are different from me but for some reason I’d had a few good friends who were fundamentalists. Only later did I realize that they thought I was different from them ~ not (at least not all) straight, and not all of them white.

Not only did I not get the job, I got a kiss-off letter addressed to “Dear Applicant”.

VISUALIZE RESTING IN PEAS

Anne DaBee sent this:

In a TV news report about another senseless killing of a young man on the streets of Baltimore, the camera panned the site of the shooting and showed many of the flowers, pictures, and messages with which folks around here decorate such places. There was a hand lettered sign reading "Rest in Peas", which really hit me on several levels. First reaction, unfortunately, was that it was funny ~ peas might be more comfortable than corn, but surely mashed potatoes would be the ultimate resting place... The second reaction, following almost immediately, was annoyance with myself for almost automatically putting that spin on the scene, and the final reaction was sorrow that those senseless deaths happen so often, at least around here, and that the obvious educational level of the victim's peers was such that "peas" was the best (s)he could do with "peace".

My reactions would have been the same as Anne’s, except I’d go for marshmallows rather than mashed potatoes (and I might operate more in anger than in sorrow). But here’s an abject lesson on the importance of spelling. “Peas” doesn’t even sound like “peace” and the sign-makers could probably distinguish between the pronunciation of the two words. Sigh/grrr.

KEEP YOUR THUMB ON IT

Dea R. said his dad used to say “Keep your thumb on it” but I’m not quite sure what he meant by it. Don’t let it go, don’t lose control?

VERBAL ECHO

Is it possible that my favorite old Scottish toast was influenced by the language of the Bible? Compare:

Here's tae us. Wha's like us. Damn few, and they're a' deid!

(Here’s to us. Who’s like us? Damn few, and they’re all dead!)

Psalms 71

For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens,

You who have done great things;

O God, who is like You?

“O God, who is like You?” or similar phrases occur elsewhere in the Bible also.

This is not to suggest either that we (or Scots) are like God or that God is dead.

GRANDPETS

I read the word “grandpets” recently. It’s sort of cute, but although I don’t have grandchildren yet, I do not consider the children’s pets to be my grandpets, nor do I call myself my cat’s mommy.

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants"

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?"

"If you build it they won't come"

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

"I am here" T-shirt

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron

Plus new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus 253 ~ Thanks

PARVUM OPUS

Number 253

November 21, 2007

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THELMA, DADDYKINGPIG, AND DRU

This Monday and Tuesday, the Baby Blues cartoon by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott featured a little girl who uses colorful expressions that I’ve never heard before but that sure do sound country: “That makes me happier’n a gopher in soft dirt.” “If this place was any nicer, it’d be a chocolate Sunday school.” Why do I identify these as Appalachian (or mountain or country) expressions and not something else? The gopher reference is easy, of course; few urban people speak of gophers. The phonetic spelling of “happier than” is not exclusively rural but it fits. We tend to think rural or southern people are more likely to send their kids to Sunday school. Anyway I can hear a southern or mountain accent in Thelma’s words and I hope she keeps coming back to Baby Blues.

Speaking of Appalachia, I remembered an old Twilight Zone show and identified it as “Jess-Belle” (thanks to the Web, of course) on IMBD.com. It was set in Appalachia or maybe the Ozarks, and resembled an old folk tale though it was written for the show in the ‘60s. Someone had left a review on the site that basically said it was “dumb”. IMBD requires a minimum ten-line review so the writer padded his review by repeating “dumb” four times (with one “stupid”). I added a review myself but in the interest of full disclosure, note that mine has typo. The other reviewer reminded me of what Theodore Dalrymple wrote about the inability of so many people to articulate their ideas, if ideas is even the right word. I’d like to question the reviewer (Daddykingpig ~ do you think he meant Daddykingpin?) in person to try to figure out why he disliked the show.

Some years ago a friend of mine (who was actually named Drusilla) told me she didn’t like an essay she had to read for a college class, and I did question her. I unearthed two reasons. She didn’t like the use of the word “twee” because she didn’t know what it meant (British for way too cute and quaint), and also didn’t like the writer’s view on vegetarianism (the opposite of whatever my friend’s preference was). It wasn’t easy for her to analyze her own reactions. Education in the form of logic and verbal skills are important for people to understand themselves, let alone anyone else.

But someone like Thelma, or at least the culture she comes from, uses language molded by observation, imagination, and native wit. It’s sharp, it’s concrete, it’s clear.

DUELING NERDS RAP

Dave DaBee put this YouTube link on his Caringbridge blog, a funny dueling rap between the PC and the Mac ad guys. Maybe you’ve seen the TV ads for Mac, where the Mac guy always looks cooler and cuter, but there’s an implicit advertorial contradiction because in the computer universe, nerds and geeks are always the coolest.

KINDLE

Amazon has introduced a wireless ebook device called Kindle. Ebooks haven’t been very successful but according to Amazon, this one is better. Maybe.

1863 THANKSGIVING

I wish you all a good Thanksgiving. I’ll get back to the usual carefully phrased griping next week, but this week I am thankful for many things, among them all of you who read Parvum Opus. In 1863 during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln gave us this beautiful Proclamation of Thanksgiving

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed,

Done at the city of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

COREX

||| Theo van Gogh was the grandson of Vincent.

||| You probably see inconsistent fonts when you get Parvum Opus via e-mail. For some reason the codes are unstable when I paste the text into my e-mail. Can’t seem to control it the way I want.

______________________________________________

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants";

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?";

"If you build it they won't come";

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?;

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse;

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag;

"I am here" T-shirt;

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt";

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron;

new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus 252 ~ I Pre-Approved This Message

PARVUM OPUS

Number 252

November 16, 2007

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I PRE-APPROVED THIS MESSAGE

Cynthia L. commented on the silliness of sales pitches that say "Congratulations! You have been pre-approved to apply for a new business credit card!" It is vaguely deceitful. You might think you’ve been approved to actually receive the credit card. However, I once did a proofreading job for some kind of financial company that sent out thousands of such letters, and their mailing list was based on certain things like credit and income, etc. So there’s a grain of truth there. (That was a one-day job for me. It was unbearable.)

GOOMEY-BAHNDE

Herb H. wrote that gum band “sounds like an English pronunciation of the German word. I never saw it in writin', but an East German refugee friend of my youth called a rubber band, Goomey-bahnde.”

OPEN AND SHUT CASE

Bruce S. mentioned the book by Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students.

His writing style leaves a lot to be desired but the book is full of interesting analysis.

Referring back to the lynching discussion, I once read a legal case about a man who was convicted of his own lynching. Lynching has a different meaning in the field of criminal law. It has to do with the aiding of escape of a prisoner (if my memory is correct).

Suicide is usually illegal, isn’t it? So a failed lynching might get you in trouble, or as the devil said to Stanley Moon in Bedazzled, “In less enlightened times they’d have hung you for it.” I’ve never heard “lynch” used to mean aiding escape. I haven’t read the Bloom book but I will add it to my to-do list.

Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List

Bill R. sent “The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List” by Deborah Markus from Secular Homeschooling Magazine. I don’t know why she’s so bitter; the items on her list call for nothing more than annoyance. But she makes a good point about distinguishing between “socializing” and “socialization”. I homeschooled my older son through grades 1 and 2, then he wanted to go to school so I sent him. Years later I got in the middle of a quarrel between a homeschooling parent and another friend who was getting an advanced teaching degree. Yes I think kids ought to toughen up to the outside world but yes I think it’s fine if you want a specialized education for them. I think both things at the same time. And I’m more disillusioned about the school system than I was when I was homeschooling, though for different reasons. I had a vague notion that the “system” was stifling to creativity, etc., but now I think it simply doesn’t teach as much as it did when I was in school.

RESPECTFULLY YOURS

Since I discovered KaraokePlay.com, the top songs have been removed. Don’t know why (but I do miss a great blues singer named Wa11ace whose version of “It’s a Man’s World” is as good or better than James Brown’s; look for Wa11ace, with numeral 11 instead of two el’s, elsewhere on the web). The site gave this caveat: “All songs listed are property of their respectful owners.” They may be, but the writer meant “respective”.

AU CONTRARIAN

G. K. Chesterton wrote in Saint Thomas Aquinas, “The Dumb Ox”:

[Aquinas] does emphatically believe that men can be convinced by argument; when they reach the end of the argument. Only his common sense also told him that the argument never ends....

Are things so different that they can never be classified; or so unified that they can never be distinguished?

Hold this in your mind while I respond to Charlie M.’s reply to my question, why do some people object to the term islamofascism? He wrote, “Perhaps because it links two absolutely unrelated concepts?” I won’t attempt to define fascism; I will say what has to be repeated over and over again, this does not apply to all Muslims. However, many people do find certain acts and actors not absolutely unrelated, and capable of classification, yet people who have no trouble accusing the current administration of fascism cannot identify either fascism or Islam in actions all over the world in recent and remote history that are unified by the common element of Islamic or rather jihadist belief, even though both the actions and motivations trace back to Mohammed himself.

I know the arguments that say these familiar acts of terrorism or aggression are merely individual criminal acts, nothing on a big scale, or else that we deserve them, we provoked them, etc. But after 9/11, for the first time I started reading books outside my comfort zone ~ i.e. I questioned the authority of mainstream media. It hasn’t been an easy path. As reader Kathy T. wrote, “What is happening to the world today when a person feels they can't share their ideas even if others don't agree?” But it was difficult for me just within myself to entertain new and uncomfortable ideas.

On the flip side of the same coin, Dave DaBee, talking about a conservative friend who has turned hostile to him, wrote:

I clearly recall when the insanely nasty rants started with the use of talk radio in the 90s. Ultimately, the best man at my wedding ... became totally taken up with the talk-radio thinking that someone who has a different view can't possibly be a good thinker and is probably the source of America's problems and should be stomped. Eventually he stopped believing in me. It was sad and weird to watch.

But as I say, all it will take is for all of us to just knock it off. And one thing that seems to work, for me, is to keep having conversations like this, with more and more people.

I remember that my first reaction to talk radio was loathing. It all seemed to be angry, arrogant men, who were boring to boot. The successful programs do seem to be mainly conservative. But after sorting through quite a few of them I’ve found that some are quite good and informative. And they do not make up a monolithic body of opinion. Here’s my take on the two worst: I may occasionally agree with Michael Savage (nee Michael Weiner) but he’s a madman and obnoxious and indeed savage. The ur-talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, is likewise personally repellant to me. The two best (I listen to them on the web): Dennis Prager, a religious Jew, is well educated, reasonable, and respectful. Comedian Dennis Miller, funny and well-read in history (though he trips up in his vocabulary occasionally), is also respectful of those who differ with him.

Finally, here’s part of my admittedly selective reading list since 9/11 on islamofascism (though I know there is no end to the argument). I’ve organized them into subcategories for your convenience. (I do read other things too.)

Amusing writers and titles on a not-so-amusing subject:

America Alone

Mark Steyn

http://www.marksteyn.com/

Demographics, especially in Europe.

Radical Eye for the Infidel Guy

Kevin J. Ryan

Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans to a Jew!

Aaron Klein

By women:

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nafisi

The best seller.

Now They Call Me Infidel

Nonie Darwish

Because They Hate

Brigitte Gabriel

http://www.americancongressfortruth.com/

By a fiery Lebanese Christian now living in the U.S. who learned not to hate Jews.

Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia

Carmen bin Laden

Formerly married to a bin Laden brother.

Londonistan

Melanie Phillips

www.melaniephillips.com/

The Trouble with Islam Today

Irshad Manji

www.muslim-refusenik.com/

By a Canadian journalist, a lesbian who still identifies as a Muslim.

Infidel and

The Caged Virgin

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

http://ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/ayaanhirsiali/english/index.html

By the Somali-born woman who became a member of the Dutch parliament, and made the film with Theo van Gogh’s grandson for which he was murdered.

The Death of Feminism

Phyllis Chesler

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/

Why aren’t feminists more vocal about the abuses of women in Taliban-type cultures?

Scholarly:

The war of ideas: Jihad against democracy and

Future Jihad: terrorist strategies against America

Walid Phares

http://www.walidphares.com/

By former Muslims (as are some of the other authors):

Islam and the Jews

Mark A. Gabriel

http://www.markagabriel.org/

Why I Am Not a Muslim

Ibn Warraq

http://www.challenging-islam.org/articles/warraq-debate-muslims.htm

Why I Left Jihad

Walid Shoebat

http://www.shoebat.com/

My year inside radical Islam : a memoir

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

http://counterterrorismblog.org/experts/daveed-gartensteinross/bio/

By an American who converted to Islam and then left it.

General:

The Truth About Mohammed and

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

Robert Spencer

http://www.jihadwatch.com/

Koran

I’ve only read bits of it. If you read it on paper or online, do remember the concept of abrogation, that is, the later Medina (wartime) passages officially override the earlier (more peaceful) Mecca passages, but the text is generally not presented in chronological order.

Interesting article by James Kirchick on the word “neocon”. We could make a list of every hot word used as political shorthand.

Au Contrarian

PARVUM OPUS

Number 251

November 8, 2007

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AU CONTRARIAN

I intended to write a solid follow-up to last week’s observations from Dave DaBee about the surprising enmity some of us experience from old friends who differ from us politically or religiously. I’ve just had another new object lesson in this, from a nephew of Fred who’s a minister, who told Fred he’s going to hell because he has a different religion. But I mostly have a lot of scattered observations. One is that some religious people believe that most everyone else is certainly going to hell, not that they have any personal desire for that to happen, whereas their political counterparts think you are personally rotten right now. When you combine the religious with the political, as in jihadism, watch out.

Next, it is not useful to tell someone to “read this” ~ so now what do you think, huh? ~ though we all do it. Dueling reading lists don’t seem to change anyone’s mind. What interests me is why we choose our reading lists. We tend to read things that we think will bolster what we already think. And why do we change our reading lists? Now I read news and opinion more than ever, but it’s just in the last five or six years that I’ve changed the sources. So it hardly pays to tell me “read this” because I’ve already spent years and years reading that, and clearly not all of it stuck. It no longer seemed to fit reality. When I started reading different sources, what struck me first was that the mainstream media that I always took more or less at face value was perceived simultaneously by the left (my Marxist or “progressive” friends) as pandering to the government and by the right as being a mouthpiece of the secular left. This does not mean there is no objective truth to be found, but people will even disagree on facts and their interpretation, let alone theory.

For instance, someone sent me a link to an article about research that concluded "a fear of our own mortality guides many of our political choices without our ever realizing it." This is hardly news, and I can guarantee you that I’m totally aware of my mortality, if not always fearful about it. This article is all about Bush et al and the war, but I replied to my correspondent disingenuously, “I guess you’re thinking about Al Gore.” I didn’t get an answer.

More to come later (including a reading list).

A GELERTNER* MAN

David Gelertner is a senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem, a professor of computer science at Yale, and an opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal. A couple of years ago he reviewed the much-criticized revision of a new edition of Elements of Style. An excerpt shows the deterioration from the original edition:

[Original] "The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other." Here is the post-White revised version: "The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is an expression of self."

Gelertner called “expression of self” a pompous, high-flown abstraction. But you can hear that the revision is weak in more ways than one, if you study it. “Expression of self” is more jargony, less direct, more banal. Gelertner also wrote:

College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty ~ spiritually bone dry ~ because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.

This is why the vacuity of much of popular culture (multi or not) leaves a lot of people susceptible to the worst who “are full of passionate intensity”, to quote Yeats ~ “somewhere in the sands of the desert.”

*Actually, gelernter is German for a learned man, not gelertner.

READERS WRITE

Tim Bazzett’s fourth book, a biography, is out: Love, War & Polio: The Life and Times of Young Bill Porteous. If you live in the Reed City, Michigan area, you can meet Tim at the annual Evergreen Fest Arts & Crafts Bazaar at Reed City High School on the day after Thanksgiving.

Jim Simmons is a writer/editor/publisher of commissioned biographies, yourbiography.com. Jim’s specialty is literary history. I like the fact that he scrupulously gets his books printed on acid-free paper to ensure longevity. As you may know, many libraries are losing books that were printed on cheap pulp paper, which eventually crumbles, while good paper lasts for centuries.

GUM BAND

Dave DaBee tipped me to his (in the sense that he’s spent some time there this year) hospital’s blog with an item about “gum bands” (Boston localese for rubber bands, and wouldn’t “gum band” be a good name for a rock band?). Maybe you’ve heard of gum boots too, an old-fashioned named for rubber boots. And of course that’s where we get the term “gumshoe” for detectives (who sneak around in soft-sole shoes). And don’t forget chewing gum. Dave has an entry there too, and a plug for PO, which I especially appreciate since he mentioned that he doesn’t always agree with me. Thanx and a tip of the PO hat.

COMMUNIQUE

Last week Fred and I were at the Barnes & Noble coffee shop when a series of horrific growls or snarls pierced the air for 20 or 30 minutes, maybe once every half minute. At first I thought it must be a kid reacting to a computer game, but the noises came from a little girl about seven years old, who was with a man presumably her father or babysitter. The girl clearly suffered from some kind of brain anomaly that caused her to do this; these were not the ordinary howls of a cranky or tired or sick child. I heard no speech from her nor any sound other than the hideous growling. Because people (maybe particularly mothers) are programmed to respond to any cries from children (this was like someone yelling “Mama” in a burning theater), I left the store with a headache. It must be exhausting for the girl too. My question is, were these noises an attempt at communication? The message must be that she wants something for the pain.

It occurred to me that we can adjust to the most horrendous abnormalities after the initial shock, such as seeing burn victims and so on, but it’s difficult to be exposed for long to persistent loud, unpleasant noise ~ like the jackhammers outside the Berlitz office last week. If the man with the little girl intended to bring her into a normal social experience, it didn’t seem to be having a therapeutic effect on her.

XOGIVING

Nicholas Negroponte of MIT has developed a project (http://www.xogiving.org/) to provide inexpensive web-connected laptops to children in poor countries. You can buy a laptop for the program for only $200. For a short time starting November 12, for $399 you can give one tax-deductible computer, and get one for yourself or a child of your own.

SUSAN SHAVER

Sue Shaver was a college friend who reconnected with me a few years ago via the web. She sent several interesting contributions to PO from her New Mexico outpost. Sue passed on, much too young, in July from leukemia. In her memory I give you this epitaph composed by Benjamin Franklin when he was a young man (though it was not the epitaph finally used).

The body of

B. Franklin, Printer

(Like the Cover of an Old Book

Its Contents torn Out

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)

Lies Here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be Lost;

For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More

In a New and More Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author.

I don’t know what Sue’s beliefs were, but she lived a good life, was a hard-working nurse and a good friend, and contemplated her future with serenity.

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants";

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?";

"If you build it they won't come";

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?;

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse;

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag;

"I am here" T-shirt;

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt";

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron;

new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

The Writester Stuff

PARVUM OPUS

Number 250

November 1, 2007

______________________________________________

THE WRITESTER STUFF

Heard on Dennis Miller’s radio program: “in TER necine battles” (referring to Screen Writers Guild strike). I didn’t think that was the correct pronunciation but I didn’t know the correct one. It is “inter NEE cine”. Miller questioned the use of “actor” to refer to females. I’ve written about this before, and how this change has followed the pattern of eliminating words such as aviatrix, editrix, poetess, Negress, Jewess, and so on. But Miller rightly pointed out that we still have Best Actor and Best Actress categories in the Academy Awards. It would be clumsy to change them to Best Male Actor and Best Female actor. One of his callers suggested the example of “waitron” which replaces waiter and waitress in some restaurants: how about “actron”? “Waitron” beats “waitperson” because it has one less syllable, and sounds like an android. But I think we might use “ster” to better effect: the waitster. Then we could have the mailster (but not the poster), the chairster, the firester, the salester, and so on. We already have teamsters and tipsters and hipsters. Not to mention hamsters.

Also heard on Miller’s show: When Hunter Thompson was young, he typed verbatim entire works of Hemingway and Faulkner. I once gave my composition students an assignment to use a particular essay as a structural pattern on which to impose their own topic. One student complained that he didn’t want to learn to write like someone else. But that wasn’t the point. It was a way to really pay attention to the way a piece of writing is built. I thought it was more useful than asking them to outline the essay and point out the topic sentence.

SEGUEWAY

The Fredster noted that I misspelled segueway in an e-mail (I wrote segway). But both of those words are highlighted as misspelled in MS Word. Neither do I find it in the dictionary, but I’ve heard it a lot on TV and radio. Segue appears in yourdictionary.com, but though a Latin root is given, how did we get this media term from Latin? From modern French? Anyway, I was wrong, the word segue is pronounced seg-way. Which I found hard to believe, but it’s true.

THE KING

Florence King wrote in a 1992 review of two biographies of Sylvia Plath that “creative” was a big buzzword of the ‘50s.

“Being creative” was a perfect excuse for majoring in English, an airy-fairy way of saying you liked to read, and a rationale for free-floating discontent and unfocused rebellion. Creative’s twin was intense, a code word for superiority used by intellectual snobs who wanted to recuse themselves from American egalitarianism without doing anything illiberal.

You know Florence King, mean in all the right places. A big word of the ‘60s was “aware”. I had a college boyfriend who said he’d been looking for a girl who was “aware” but he didn’t say aware of what. I ultimately became aware that he was a lyin’ cheatin’ dog, but that’s another story.

In another 1992 essay, “Huggee”, she said that the Jacobins banned the formal word vous (formal you) and made everyone tutoyer (use the informal tu). In English, we’ve lost the informal you (objective thee and subjective thou); it remains in the Bible and Shakespeare (and I think the Quakers were using it at least until the 19th century). I guess the Jacobins threw out religion too so how to address God was not an issue. But think of the theological implications of using the familiar you to address the Deity.

In “Two Kidneys in Transplant Time” King commented on the use of “harvest” to refer to taking body parts from a dead person to transplant into another. It’s a creepy euphemism. When we harvest corn and wheat, the corn and wheat were specially planted for that purpose. Not so with body parts. I wrote a creepy novel about this very topic (unpublished).

A VISIT WITH A CONTRARIAN

Dave wrote in his Caring Bridge blog about visiting a friend:

I'm not sure which one's the contrarian here: him or me. (... he recently said 'I see your politics haven't improved'!) You see, John's an inveterate rightist and I'm an inveterate Liberal, proud of it, capital L. We sorta torture each other, now and then. :)

In years long gone, it wasn't a problem for someone to disagree with you. Even *Senators* with seriously differing views were known to be long-time friends ~ things like that. Somewhere in the 90s it changed ~ it became hateful to be on the other side. We could argue forever about who started what, but I don't care ~ I just want to get back to the way America was, back then.

I don't want to wait for anything to get 'fixed'; I just want my world to be the way it was back then. Discourse, respect, even love for each other (though folks didn't openly talk about love as much as we do today, I must say).

Though some of my specific opinions and general world-view have changed over the years, I refuse to label myself right or left, although no doubt others do. But the changes have made me more aware of the hostility ~ and of my own hostility when I was younger toward others who had opinions that I now have. I’ve lost friends and readers and alienated family members because we no longer see eye to eye and stand shoulder to shoulder on every issue. And it cost me some internal argument to even listen to arguments that I simply ignored in the past. But I find that the most hostile people do not want to discuss specific issues. They want to pass judgment on what they perceive as a monolithic world view. Parvum Opus is my practice in breaking discourse down into small manageable bits.

Here’s one of them: why do some people object to the term islamofascism? It does not imply that all Muslims are fascists. It means that there is a particular strain of fascism associated specifically with some Muslims, just as there was a German fascism with the Nazis and an Italian fascism under Mussolini (and, I suppose, so on, with other brands). But perhaps the whole concept of fascism is too broad. It’s a general concept based on acts and ideas. Where is the common ground of factual knowledge? And if islamofascism pertains to only a small percentage of Muslims, how many is that out of the estimated 700 million to 1.2 billion in the world? One percent is a lot. One-tenth of one percent is a lot. Is it right or left to ask this question? Or to question what’s meant by calling the U.S. fascist? Which facts and history and ideas are we talking about? As I told a former reader who quit the PO for this very reason, when I talk about Islamic terrorism, I’m not referring to the sweet dancing Sufis he thinks of when he thinks Muslim. I’ve read Rumi too.

DESSERT

||| Here’s an oldie from Dave Barry, Mr. Language Person.

||| If you want karaoke at home, you can sing online at karaokeplay. (No, I didn’t record anything there.)

||| William Shatner starred in a 1965 horror movie called Incubus, the only movie made totally in Esperanto (available in VHS and DVD). I’m going to have to buy it. One of the reviewers on Amazon said there are eight different Esperanto accents in the film. I have no idea ... does this mean an English Esperanto accent, an Italian, a French, a German, etc.?

||| Check out the world’s greatest dancing cockatoo (thanx and a tip of the beak to Dave DaBee).

||| Cool freebie: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. At least some of the web site is free. In Brewers of Britain I learned there was a Bass behind Bass Ale. Michael Thomas Bass was born in Burton upon Trent, referred to by A. E. Housman in “Terence, this is stupid stuff”.

||| From David Rogerson across the pond:

Bob's your uncle ~ an expression of reassurance that things will turn out to your benefit. It owes its origins to real life "Bob" the Conservative P.M. Lord Salisbury whose first name was Robert (Bob). During his administration in the 1880s, his nephew A J Balfour was rapidly promoted through the cabinet until he was made Sec. Of State for Ireland. Few could deny that Uncle Bob had served his nephew well.

||| I heard a great song the other day by John Gorka, “I’m from New Jersey”:

I'm from New Jersey

I don't expect too much

If the world ended today

I would adjust.