Parvum Opus 275 ~ Powerlines and Buzz Words

PARVUM OPUS

Number 275

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Easy Virtue

Regarding the April 21 Time magazine cover using the famous photo of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, with a tree standing in for the flag (you know which flag I mean), do you think they will be handing out Purple Hearts to people for buying carbon credits? Greenness has already been turned into a religious practice; remember the English cleric who heard people's recycling confessions? Now it's also a substitute for patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice. People used to call certain women, "women of easy virtue". Easy virtue takes on a new meaning now.

I'd Like To Go Back There: Barn, Beach, Backyard

In honor of Earth Day, which was Tuesday, April 22, I'm calling our cat Earthy Kitt. Sometimes he (or she, we're not sure and have too much delicacy to do a thorough examination) comes in smelling like what I remember a barn smells like, but most likely he's been under the porch. It's been many years since I was in my grandfather's barn in Calhoun County, West Virginia, but I remember the smell: old wood, straw, cows, tobacco twists hung up to dry. There used to be an old hardware store in Lawrence, Kansas, that had an old-store smell very hard to find today: old wood floor, dust, paint, and, well, hardware. It was there just ten years ago or so, don't know if it is still.

Earth Day makes me think not so much of recycling paper and bottles, but of being physically closer to the earth, as I was when I was a kid. Although those old wood buildings aren't the earth itself, they smelled closer to it than the new stores.

For a large part of my childhood, I spent a lot of time at the beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Is there anyone who doesn't know what the ocean smells like?

When I was really little, I was rolling around in the grass, looking at bugs, tasting selected weeds, drawing in the dirt.

If I could hang my laundry outside to dry, I would, because it makes everything smell so good. One of the few household chores I really enjoy. I think I'll celebrate Earth Day by seeing if it's possible to get this town to allow people to hang their clothes on clotheslines. I'm writing to the mayor; maybe I'll draw up a petition ~ I've signed a few in my life but never originated one ~ and if you like hanging your clothes outside, maybe you can do it in your town too.

As for Earthy Kitt, its previous owner, who abandoned it in favor of a new puppy, said its name was Jack. We can't find any clinical evidence of either Jack or Jackie attributes, so we think Jack was neutered. But there's no reason he can't have more than one name, as T. S. Eliot taught us in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which inspired the Broadway musical Cats. Anyway, one way Earthy Kitt pays for his keep is by bringing the outdoors in.

Powerlines

Released just is Powerlines: Words That Sell Brands, Grip Fans, and Sometimes Change History by Steve Cone, on successful sales and political slogans. Dennis Miller interviewed him. I haven't heard any really good slogans in this political campaign, although everyone has had time and money enough to come up with something.

Questions

||| If you don't like Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories, are you anti-semantic? (Can't remember where I heard that one.)

||| Considering recent murders there, is it time for us to pull out of Chicago? (Dennis Miller)

||| Some super-vegetarians say they refuse to eat anything that has a face. Would this be an edible complex? (Mine)

Buzz Words

My old friend and English class veteran Pat Geiger sent this:

Here is the Beacon Journal's latest ~ story on the front page about some barber in Barberton (where else?!!). The writer of the story said that two of the children in the shop "need rescued from their mother's attempted buzz cut"!!! I wrote them an email ~ said the writer ought to think about the fact that she "needs tutored in grammar"!!!

Glad she's carrying on the fight. To be honest, I think I have used that construction. But if so, I was wrong, and I found an explanation in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, p. 656:

In its function as an auxiliary it does not inflect and is followed by the bare infinitive without to: "No pressure group need apply." (Harry S. Truman). The finite verb does inflect; when followed by an infinitive, it requires to: "The church bells needed to ring three times." (Virginia Black) It can also be followed by a gerund: "The facts are too well known to need repeating here." (Tip O'Neill)

The offending sentence should have been, as Pat told the journalist, "need to be rescued" or possibly "need rescuing".

Ee, Ive, Ful

Rich Lederer wrote about "attendee" and like formations:

Suffixes, like words themselves, often carry more than one meaning, as in English / reddish and spinster / dumpster. Although -ee usually signifies "one who receives action," the meaning "one who acts" has been around a long time in words other than attendee (1937). Witness conferee (1771), escapee (1866), absentee (1605), and patentee (15th century).

I should have at least remembered escapee and absentee, though the others are strangers to me.

Unrelated note: I heard somebody say "restive" instead of "restful", but "restive" does not mean "restful" though both suffixes can mean having the quality of or being in a state of.

DaBee

Dave DaBee sent miscellaneous comments:

||| My daughter Lindsey did indeed learn to write letters in elementary school, but that was ~15 years ago, just as email was coming on the scene. She's a surprisingly articulate writer ~ as I may have told you, once I did a (covert) paid plagiarism search on one of her first biology papers because I'd never seen her do science writing and it was startlingly clear and concise. (Perhaps a B/B+ for sophistication of composition, but solid A on most scales, and probably better than B for a 9th-10th grader.)

||| Red-eye at Starbucks is coffee with a shot of espresso, as something to wake you up when you're still red-eyed. (A black-eye is two shots of espresso.) Sometimes, like today on the NJ Turnpike, I forget and use the synonym used at Caribou Coffee in Minnesota: a depth charge.

||| My impression (personally) is that assertions about bitter poor people apply equally to blacks and whites. Note: I did not just say anything about non-bitter poor people. Has anyone observed, btw, the parallel between Obama's words and Marx's "opiate of the masses"?

Yes, others noticed that Marxian echo. I think Obama's remarks about poor white people's guns and religion are projection on his part, considering his own church and considering the gun culture of Chicago. Jeremiah Wright, by the way, has inspired our local anonymous writer of political fliers, which he sticks into the windows of newspaper boxes; this week's was something about "Why should God bless America?", based on bad statistics on hunger in the U.S. If you accept Wright's premises (and Michelle Obama's), what must it be like not to have a country to love? If I examine my own conscience, I do not ask God to damn me for my flaws; no more would I damn my country.

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Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning ~ Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 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 e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. 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.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

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T-SHIRTS AND OTHER 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 kids' things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

PLUS Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears at 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 and music clips of great blues man 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.

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

Parvum Opus 274 ~ Inelegant Variations

PARVUM OPUS

Number 274

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Inelegant Variations

Garner's Usage Tip of the Day renamed the “elegant variation” (named by Fowler) the “inelegant variation”, that is, the suggestion not to repeat the same word in a sentence or passage.

When Fowler named this vice of language in the 1920s, "elegant"* was almost a pejorative word, commonly associated with precious overrefinement. Today, however, the word has positive connotations. So lest the reader think that the subject of this article is a virtue rather than a vice in writing, it has been renamed unambiguously: inelegant variation. ... [However,] variety for variety's sake in word choice can confuse readers. If you call a car "the BMW" in one place and "the sporty import" in another, can your reader be certain that you're referring to the same car? If you write about a person's "candor" in one sentence and "honesty" in the next, is the reader to infer that you are distinguishing between two traits, or using different words to refer to the same one?...

Today: "Elongated Yellow Fruit. "Perhaps the most famous example of inelegant variation is "elongated yellow fruit" as the second reference for "banana." Thus Charles W. Morton named "the elongated-yellow-fruit school of writing," citing examples such as "the numbered spheroids" for billiard balls, "the azure-whiskered wifeslayer " for Bluebeard, "hen-fruit safari" for an Easter-egg hunt, "succulent bivalves" for oysters, and "rubber-tired mastodon of the highway" for a truck. "The Elongated Yellow Fruit," in A Slight Sense of Outrage.... There is even a book full of these things, in which a minister is "an old pulpit pounder," a prizefighter is "a braggart of the squared circle," and a vegetarian is "a confirmed spinach-addict."... See J.I. Rodale, The Sophisticated Synonym Book....

Sometimes the variation leads to real confusion. For example, in the following headline, the reader must wonder at first whether "victim" and "loved one" refer to the same person: "Victim's Family Can Witness Death of Loved One's Killer," Austin Am.-Statesman, 17 Nov. 1995, at A11. The solution there would be to delete "Victim's."

Reminds me of The Romance Writer's Phrase Book, which lists 3,000 metaphors to be used in the garden-variety romance novel. Cliché’s, or in other more or less elegant words, pre-digested language.

Writers have also been told not to repeat “said” in dialogue, but substitutions can become much more intrusive than repeated “saids” which blend into the woodwork. You might as well make it a rule to avoid frequent use of “the”. In grade school I was also taught not to repeat “I” too much, and not to begin a letter to a friend with “I”. I do not follow this rule. Do kids even learn to write letters in school anymore?

*Regarding “elegant”, I think I wrote once about the confusion in the use of “elegant” in Jane Austen, describing the character Anne Elliott in Persuasion. In this case, “elegant” was a compliment, in its meaning of refined, without excess; you can have an elegant solution to a problem in mathematics, for instance. But some reader thought it meant too fancy, fussy, and affected. Not so.

Red-Eye

Heard at the Post Office on tax day: “I’ll give you a red-eye.” A red-eye is a hand-stamp, one of those round cancellation hand stamps used with red ink. So add this to your list of definitions for red-eye: red-eye gravy (made from ham drippings and coffee); a flight that arrives early in the morning, maybe before dawn; the demonic effect of light on the retina in photographs.

Attendee

Just wondering why we have attendees at meetings instead of attenders. Attendants is already taken and means something else. The “ee” ending usually denotes a passive recipient of the action, grammatically, as in employee, donee, payee. By attending one actively provides, not receives, one’s presence.

Anniversary Celebration

Fred and I were married fours years ago yesterday, on April 17, 2004. Here’s an interview with my musician friend Sonny, whose performed with his band at our wedding. (The video link only works in Explorer, not Mozilla Firefox or Netscape.)

Spoiler Alert: Beyond Here Be Drags

Ancient campaign history now ~ going back several weeks ~ but I finally figured out Geraldine Ferraro’s remark about Barack Obama. Remember that? Something to the effect that he’s where he is in the campaign because he’s black. She must have been thinking of John Edwards: good looking, successful, left-wing. Obama is a slicker speaker, and, of course, black, but aside from a few other superficial differences, there’s not a lot to choose between them. But John Edwards couldn’t and didn’t offer to repair your soul, which Obama’s wife said was on offer. Edwards wasn’t mailing out specially blessed prayer cloth / shop rags with the imprint of his face on them.

I usually don’t seek out this sort of insane rant, but while following this riveting campaign, I ran across Harlem Dyse of the Black Anarchists, whose support of Obama (and his minister Jeremiah Wright) goes like this:

Anytime you can sneak a fox to the door of the hen house to play guard, do it. The hope of black America is that this fox’s teeth are sharp and his appetite verocious. America’s chicken houses are full of foul white birds that need to be slaughtered.

Of course it’s the word “verocious” that really caught my eye, an efficient combination of ferocious and voracious. (Shouldn’t he have tried out “foul white fowl”?) And Dyse’s unique take on global warming:

Obama’s got soul and is the Fard Muhammad of our times. He is in touch with the gifts God has given him through his skin color. He knows white people burn in the sun and will hasten global warming and the destruction of the Ozone layer so that the earth may be purged of evil. Obama’s soul is with black people & God. And that’s easy to say because white people don’t have souls or a God.

Am I taking his words out of context? Is he really a great guy if you get to know him? I doubt it. “Out of context means” distorting the meaning, not taking a sample of someone’s expressed ideas.

More rhetorical analysis: Obama said small-town people in Pennsylvania (i.e. white), bitter from lack of jobs, go to guns and religion and antipathy to people who aren’t like them and anti-immigrant sentiment. That is, they have no reason for their religion, no tradition for their gun ownership (including the Bill of Rights), no rational opposition to illegal immigration that might be affecting job availability. So instead of voting on the important economic issues (which they can’t understand), they vote on trivial issues like gay marriage. They’re bitter because they have to rely on family, friends, and God rather than the government, as any rational person would. Well, it analyzes itself, doesn’t it. But just let me note that guns usually mean something different in South Chicago than in rural Pennsylvania. Apparently religion does too. And does Obama mean that affluent people ~ say, rich Republicans ~ vote rationally?

Incidentally, Obama’s web site has a bid for the Amish vote in Pennsylvania, but an Amish observer/journalist says they don’t often vote for candidates, usually only for local issues.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning ~ Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 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 e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. 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.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS AND OTHER 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 kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

PLUS Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears at 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 and music clips of great blues man 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.

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

Parvum Opus 273 ~ Lying on My Mind

PARVUM OPUS

Number 273

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YEOMAN BILL

Bill R. wrote:

||| On climate change: Thomas Friedman calls it "global weirding" for just that reason.

||| On yeoman: In fact, it comes from their activities ~ yeomen were known for spending most of their time polishing their brightly colored yeos. Later, advanced technology gave us yeo-yeos.

||| On medieval life (nasty, brutish, and short): You bet your booty it was nasty brutish and short! (I have a wallpaper that states, "Solitary, poor, nasty and brutish, but of average stature.")

||| On Harry Reid and voluntary taxes: Maybe Harry Reid doesn't get hassled by the IRS ~ ya think?

YEOMAN DAVE

||| Dave DaBee isn't having "climate change":

No no no no, "climate change" is a spin expression created by a spinner-for-hire, paid by the oil industry, to shift the focus from warming (perceived negatively; worrisome) to "it's just *change*. We don't really know what's happening." I saw the spinner-for-hire interviewed on some show last year, talking quite openly about his services, and expressing quite openly that he didn't have a single scruple in his soul. If I recall correctly, he was also the one who, thirty years earlier, served the tobacco industry, recommending that they publicize that there's "controversy" about "this seemingly closed subject." But perhaps that was just a comparison the program made. At any rate, this guy has also come up with one or two other meme changes that are now part of the vernacular ~ I don't recall which.

If you will, it's "differently abled" thinking, implemented this time by the oil industry.

I suppose there's a slippery slope between meme-changing, PC-ness, spin, and eventually Orwellian NewSpeak.

Gotta have some sources, Dave.

||| Dave also sent a lengthy professional comment on typesetting; here's part of it:

In hand-set type, using a larger space between sentences was easy. But that's hard for machines. On a Linotype machine, the variable-size spaces used in justified text are achieved by a spaceband, which is a mechanical thing that physically spreads the words apart when a line is cast into metal, as lead is injected into the mold under great pressure. But it does not work at all well to place two of those spready things together, so that wasn't done. (When a Linotype machine malfunctions, it squirts hot lead into the air, often landing on the typographer; journeyman Lino men had burn scars or holes in their work sweaters.)

||| And he discovered TEAL, two guys on a typo eradication mission. Someone in that e-mail string said here are two people who need to get a job. Maybe they have a job. They did at least one NPR interview (see Hoboken). Seems like a knock-off of the Brit Apostrophe Society, since they spot a lot of bad apostrophes or lack thereof. But can we assume faulty apostrophe usage to be typos? I wonder if NPR would pay for my next vacation if I took photos of typos etc.

||| Dave also was wondering what you might call the phenomenon of seeing a word and thinking it looks wrong, that it must be spelled wrong even if it isn't. He has that problem with banana, for instance. I queried Rich Lederer, who said that as far as he knows there's no technical name for it. Dave would like to name it "typeaux beaugus". When I was a kid certain words used to devolve into a meaningless sound if I repeated them to myself long enough. Probably related to some sort of obsessive-compulsive thing in the brain. Perhaps it could be controlled by drugs, or hours of meditation.

FOOD AND DRINK

||| "Disappearing Concoctions" from The Amish Cook lists a few old-fashioned Amish dishes, which like similar foods from other cultures were created out of poverty and scraps. Some are similar to country (or southern) cooking, with which I'm most familiar, but the names are different. For instance, "Brown Flour Soup" is just flour and milk, but if the flour is fried it's basically gravy. "Coffee Soup" I've never heard of: a mug of crumbled crackers or bread crumbs with hot coffee poured over it. I guess it's the poor relation of dunking your doughnut in coffee. I looked up red-eye gravy in Wikipedia and found that it's a gravy made from ham drippings and coffee. (And I thought I was being adventurous putting coffee in barbecue sauce.) "Rivvel Soup" (if "rivvel" is German, what does it mean?) is dumplings.

||| On the other side of the comestibles universe, in more ways than one, is Absolut vodka. The Swedish company ran an ad in Mexico showing a 19th-century map of North America when Mexico included California, Texas, and other states further north. Part of their "In an Absolut world" campaign. They succumbed to complaints from gringos who objected and pulled the ad. But perhaps Mexicans, who might think that was a more "ideal" vision than current reality, along with the Absolut ad people, might go back even further, before Spaniards or any Europeans arrived. Why not go back to the Aztecs and blood sacrifice? If the border were stuck in the mid-19th century location, wouldn't the border where illegal immigrants cross simply be further north? I assume the United States would still be prosperous enough to lure them, and that the Mexican economy would be just as poor, but it would cover more territory. Anyway, I get the message. No more Absolut for me. Too bad, because I like Fris vodka, by Absolut, and I loved an ad they did years ago with a very verbal work by outsider artist Howard Finster.

LYING ON MY MIND

It must be the interminable presidential campaign that keeps lying on my mind. One of my favorite sayings about lying is, "He lies so much his wife has to call the dog." But here's a good one that's new to me: "He wouldn't tell you the truth if it helped him."

||| Read Theodore Dalrymple on lying.

||| Read about the Chinese Wikipedia block.

||| Read Mark Steyn on free speech (and punishment thereof, for telling the truth, in Canada's "Human Rights" Commission, scare quotes Steyn's); and Steyn on lying.

DARKCOPY

Son Jude sent a reference to the DarkCopy Online Fullscreen Text Editor, a simplified word processor for those who don't like or need the complications of Word, et al.

SEIZE THEM!

Whereas some Christian objections to school library books on gay-parent families have been decried as repressive, oppressive, and suppressive, Muslims were able to get The King and the King, And Tango Makes Three, and other items "temporarily" removed from a Bristol, England elementary school library. Why did they succeed where the Christians did not? Because they'll kill you, and your little gay dog too.

WITHOUT IDEALS OR VIOLENCE

Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer Prize! I thought he was an interesting writer, from way back in the days of teaching freshman comp when I had students analyze "Dear Landlord". Out of all the things I lost by the wayside, I still think he's a good writer.

EXTRA INNING

Ever notice this line in Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die":

... if this ever changing world in which we live in

makes you give in and cry...

Imagine you were a Beatle helping him out with the lyric. How could you get rid of that extra "in" and retain the meter? You could always delete the second "in" and just stretch out the word "live". Or how about, "...if this ever changing world that we all live in". Lots of possibilities.

Parvum Opus 272 ~ American Tongues

PARVUM OPUS

Number 272

April 4, 2008

______________________________________________

TALKIN’ ‘BOUT MY TRUTH

"My truth is that I am a gay American," announced James McGreevey, former governor of New Jersey. He and his wife have since announced more lurid truths. Mark Steyn, as usual, cuts to the heart of the matter:

That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: "my" truth. Once upon a time, there was only "the" truth.

Right. If you catch your child in a lie, for instance, try saying, “Tell me your truth, now, Jimmy.”

A writer named Misha Defonseca recently admitted that her story about living with wolves as a little Jewish girl during the Holocaust wasn’t true. I saw Defonseca in a bookstore in Boston some years ago, talking about her book, and I believed her. It was a bizarre story but I figured there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in my philosophy. She said the story seemed true to her:

There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality ~ it was my reality, my way of surviving.

She felt Jewish though she isn’t, and she is an animal lover. I guess.

Remember the cliché “speaking truth to power”? It’s been popping up lately, around the Irrev. Jeremiah Wright. I was surprised to read that the phrase came from the Quakers as far back as the 18th century. Speaking “truth” to power usually means speaking one’s opinion. Was the Irrev. Wright speaking truth when he thundered that the U.S. government created AIDS to kill black people? Considering how AIDS spreads, did he mean that most black Americans are promiscuous drug users? It’s possible to speak lies to power, and to the powerless as well.

Smokey Robinson spoke truth to at least a few people at a Def Poetry Jam. He rhymes about why he calls himself black rather than African-American. Pretty good. He also mentions the sad loss of the Amos and Andy TV show, when some great comic actors lost their jobs. Today, a show like Bill Cosby’s sitcom about the Huxtable family would draw complaints and protests because it’s not “real” while shows about poor blacks or black criminals draw complaints about negative stereotypes.

LEVELS OF DICTION

Mark Steyn wrote about William F. Buckley’s levels of diction in “The Monosyllabist”. Buckley was noted for his extensive vocabulary, but Steyn says that he chose the right word and the right degree of formality for each occasion. Although I always liked Robin Williams’ send-up of Buckley: “Let me axe you a question.”

THERE’LL BE A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

Have you noticed the recent shift from “global warming” to “climate change”? I think this is because blaming cold weather on global warming was just confusing, but the climate-changers can still blame weather on carbon emissions rather than the sun or the ways of the world.

MORE OVERHEARD IN NEW YORK

||| English teacher: I rose up into the air and flew out the window... You didn't notice this? ~Hunter College High. This could explain a lot about the language skills of today’s graduates.

||| Angry woman to friend: I have a contention with the way people pronounce my daughter's name. I did not name by daughter 'Lady Nasty'! I named my baby girl 'La Dynasty.'

HOMING IN

Dave DaBee is doing yeoman’s work for the cause. He grumbled about this e-mail from EmailSherpa, which he said is a REALLY good company:

Marketers continue to hone in on the best ways to launch viral campaigns.

Dave wrote to “the competent and alert librarian at this excellent marketing company.”

Could you convince someone there that the expression is NOT “hone in,” it’s “home in”? “Hone” means to sharpen a knife. “Home in” means to close in on a target.

Their answer was, “I forwarded your comment on to our editorial department, they will make any necessary changes.” Every little bit helps.

By the way, dict.org says the origins of “yeoman” (farmer or common laborer) are obscure. Could it be the spiritual predecessor of “Yo, man!”? Recently I read that this usage of “yo” may come from the Italian (Italians in the U.S., that is) “uomo” (man) or possibly “giovane” (young man).

I notice, by the way, that in his e-mails Dave still types double spaces between sentences, which is what I learned to do when I took typing in high school. Word processing has led us to pretend we’re typesetters rather than just typists, thus the usual single spacing.

AMERICAN TONGUES

You can find segments of a documentary called American Tongues on youtube.com. The excerpts I saw were about various American accents, including my own Ohio accent, AKA Ohio River Valley.

BEASTLINESS

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, a children’s book by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd, assembles monologues by the inhabitants of a medieval English village. It’s apparently well researched, but gives such a bleak view of medieval, or any, life that I wouldn’t recommend it for very young children. It does bear out Jim Dixon’s tirade in Lucky Jim about the general filthiness and misery of medieval village life (nasty, brutish, and short) that was idealized by the artsy-craftsy academics lampooned in that book. According to Good Masters, for instance, when a man died, a lord had a right to take his most valuable animal. Sort of a forced inheritance. But what interested me was that this right was called “heriot”, which is the nom de plume of the beloved veterinarian writer, James Alfred Wight as James Herriott, who wrote All Creatures Great and Small and numerous other books.

IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF “VOLUNTARY” IS

News you can use as April 15 approaches: Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, said that paying taxes is voluntary. Once in a corporate training class the speaker tried to tell us that the difference between, say, criminals and government is that criminals use force. But law is always ultimately backed up by physical force. I am not calling governments criminal because of this, I’m just saying that was a faulty definition. And Harry Reid doesn’t understand what voluntary means.

FITNA

Another free speech entry: A Dutch movie called Fitna is testing the limits of Islamic patience again. As someone recently said, many people who call Islam a religion of peace think of it as practically like the Quakers, but without that Quaker aggressiveness. Anyway, a Muslim spokesman, or at least a Muslim who spoke, estimated that only about 7% of Muslims are hard-core jihadists. That would come to about 70 million out of a billion (the silent majority).

Also, check out the interview with Walid Phares (see the April 2, hour 3 segment).

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Discussing language, education, journalism, culture, and more, Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 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 e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. 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.