Parvum Opus 288 ~ Dropping Rancor

PARVUM OPUS

Number 288

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Free Speech (And That's an Order)

Read all about it: Mark Steyn's "case" got dismissed by the Canadian Human Rights Board. I think it was because it got so much unfavorable publicity only because Mark Steyn, and MacLean's magazine, are so well known. Although common wisdom has it that cultural influences go one-way from the US to Canada, some think that Canada influences the US, and indifference to free speech will seep over the border. On the other hand, there's some pressure to get rid of Canada's Human Rights Commission. One of the most frequent plaintiffs (though it's not a court of law) is a former member of the HRC, and since the plaintiffs always win, he makes money off his righteous offenses. Doesn't look good. Religious liberty is being threatened as well. While Muslim plaintiffs are protected, Christians who've written about their objections to homosexuality are not. Muslims at home execute homosexuals, which is why Ahmajenidad said there are no homosexuals in Iran, but over here so far Muslims just file suits with the HRC when they (the Muslims) quoted.

Though the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), and the State Department have been supported in the House of Reps (mostly Dems) in their recommendation of a "terror lexicon" prohibiting use of words such as Jihad, jihadist, Islamist, mujahadeen, caliphate, Islamo-fascism, or Islamic terrorist (by the gov, not by the rest of us ~ so far), an amendment from Congressman Hoekstra to bar the use of intelligence funding for such "terror lexicon" measures passed 249-180 (with 10 abstentions). It's like talking about body parts and sex in the old days. We were sort of supposed to pretend none of it existed, except maybe in the doctor's office or out behind the barn.

I just happen to run across almost the same construction in two different articles within a few minutes: "xxx has done what yyy failed to do". And I do have a pertinent point.

Theodore Dalrymple wrote in La Cite, C'est Moi:

The socialist mayor of Paris, in cooperation with French architects, is about to do what both Hitler and Le Corbusier wanted to accomplish but couldn't: destroy the city.

I've never been to Paris but it sounds like I ought to go right away if I want to see the beautiful city that survived the 20th century.

Walter E. Williams wrote in Black Education:

The welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.

Will Canada's protection of hurt feelings do to free speech what a few highjacked planes and Homeland Security failed to do?

Non-English Major Says Her Piece

From an online discussion of business neologisms:

I spent 37 years in Corporate. Trying to get 400,000 employees to move in the same direction sometimes requires speaking english at less than a 12th grade level. I was never an English major and I am sure I have used many of the words and phrases that "stick in your craw". However, I still think I have some skills that perhaps english majors, or others taught finer english in their lives lack. So what a happy world where we can all use our talents without rancor toward those who don't have them. [sic]

She doesn't sound happy.

The discussion group has to do with writing and editing books, so it hardly pays to take personal offense at discussions of language. The business world is particularly afflicted with jargon; maybe this is the first time it's been brought to her attention. The first Parvum Opus, more than five years ago, was just one paragraph, about the misuse of "actionable" as in the business jargon "actionable list". It's worth repeating. A "to-do list" or even an "action list" cannot, or should not, be actionable, which means liable to expose one to a lawsuit.

Journalistic Woes

Journalists are tormented by what to call aging people or old people or people who are older than other people, and have produced a treatise on it 14 pages long. I couldn't read it but it might help someone out there. Looks like "senior citizen" isn't doing the job anymore and will be forced to retire.

SOB Patients

If you're an SOB patient (short of breath) you'll be pleased to learn doctors will be promoting you to SOA (short of air), at least to your face.

Bait

Mike Sykes pointed out the difference between rising to the bait like a fish (which he refused to do), and reacting to baiting like a bear on a chain. The result is bad for both of them but the nature of the bait is different. Then Mike quoted G. K. Chesterton: "I hate a quarrel because it interrupts an argument."

He sent a couple more items worth dissecting:

No one can underestimate the scale of the challenge that climate change represents.

And:

He feels strongly that he would derive less satisfaction from his research if it was not reaching a wider audience.

I think I'm missing something in these examples. They're both awkward sentences ~ too many hairpin turns ~ but I think they're at bottom logical. If you can't underestimate the challenge that means the challenge is big, which is what the writer meant. The second, from the alumnus magazine of Cambridge University, is a bit vague about wider, as Mike pointed out (wider than what?), but that form is fairly common: a comparative (-er) used as an adjective without a specific point of comparison, meaning, "wider than it might be".

And finally Mike sent this:

Saint Peter is at the pearly gates, responding to requests for admission. There is a knock. "Who's there?" asks St P. "It's me, Charlie", says a voice. "Come in Charlie" says St P. This is followed by several more similar exchanges, until the reply to the challenge is "It is I, James". "Oh dear", says St P, "another [expletive deleted] schoolmaster!"

It could be worse. Some people think the most interesting people will be in hell, but that won't include English teachers.

Like, Duh

I've got to backtrack on an item from a couple of weeks ago, because I didn't get it the first time around.

Rich Lederer wrote:

Following up your "This Week in Literacy," here's another book store incident:

In one of the megachain bookstores, a woman asked a young clerk for the author of Like Water for Chocolate. After the salesperson had spent five minutes searching and still could not locate the famous title, the customer realized that the young man had been looking for Water from Chocolate.

I overlooked the obvious, that the young clerk thought "like" was the ubiquitous verbal appendage, not part of the title. I'm going to do penance by eating some chocolate.

Kool-Aid

I'm typing in Starbucks and one of the baristas just said, "I told you not to drink the Kool-Aid." They don't sell Kool-Aid here so I guess that little joke has become ubiquitous.

Ergocise

Here's a great little free program for people who spend hours on a computer, Ergocise. It automatically opens a window at intervals of 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes and gives you a simple, brief stretching exercise to do sitting or standing. Get that blood moving.

______________________________________________

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. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. 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.

Parvum Opus 287 ~ Happy Occident

PARVUM OPUS

Number 287

______________________________________________

I am he as you are he as you are me

Bryan Garner's Usage Tip of the Day has covered the “It is I” quandary a couple of times this week, giving this example of ordinary usage:

"It is not me you are in love with." Richard Steele, The Spectator, No. 290, 1 Feb. 1712.

“Me” is the object of “with” as well as the predicate pronoun. Transposing the syntax of that sentence, obviously you couldn’t say, “You are not in love with I.” Garner continues:

E.B. White told an amusing story about the fear that so many writers have of making a mistake: "One time a newspaper sent us to a morgue to get a story on a woman whose body was being held for identification. A man believed to be her husband was brought in. Somebody pulled the sheet back; the man took one agonizing look, and cried, 'My God, it's her!' When we reported this grim incident, the editor diligently changed it to 'My God, it's she!'" E.B. White, "English Usage," in The Second Tree from the Corner 150, 150-51 (1954).

I just realized that no one has ever questioned another grammatical point about “It is I” (or you or him): “It” properly refers to an object or animal, not to a human. We might make an exception for a corpse, as in E. B. White’s anecdote. But we don’t say either “She is she!” or “She is her!”

God is quoted as saying “I am Who I am” but that doesn’t work for the rest of us. So we knock on the door and say “It’s me!” or “It’s us!” I doubt if even the people who say “It is I” say “It is we” when they show up for a party.

And if you’re unsure about how to use “than” (than I or than me) read Charles Carson on

than as preposition and/or conjunction in Grammar Girl.

White on Price

Remember my Indian student who asked if it’s OK to use idioms like “black and white” at work? (Black) Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price got into a snit because (white) Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield said traffic ticket collections had “become a black hole”. Price said it was a “white hole”. Good thing he’s not a physicist. (Black) Judge Thomas Jones (not that it matters) demanded an apology from Mayfield. I call Jones and Price white elephants. And as long as we’re on the subject...

Orientation

I’ve written before about my puzzlement at complaints about the word “Oriental” used to refer to people from Asia, instead of “Asian”. I’ve been puzzled because it never had any negative implications with me. Apparently Oriental is now only acceptable in referring to objects from Asia, not people, although the real offense is that Orient means east so the word is Eurocentric: “they” are east of “us”. Of course, we’re west of them. True, people usually don’t insult objects ~ “D* *n Oriental Ming vase!” ~ except sometimes ~ “I don’t know if my dog died from eating d* *n poison Oriental dog food or the kids’ d* *n Oriental lead-painted toys from China!”

Naturally the English language names things in reference to English speakers, just as mapmakers put their own location in the middle of the map. You can’t get there from there if you can’t get there from here first. If Columbus had really found China by sailing west, we’d be calling the Chinese Occidentals.

As it is, no one’s complaining about the word Occidental. I can only guess what they call

call Europeans and Americans (i.e. white people) in their own languages. What do you suppose the Chinese called the Japanese, and vice versa, when the Japanese were invading China? (Read The Rape of Nanking.)

My dad was a committed racist who concentrated most of his vocabulary on black people, but if he had used the word Oriental it would have been a compliment. A veteran of the Pacific naval campaign in WWII, his word of choice for Asians was slopehead. When people want to insult Asians, they don’t use the word Oriental.

The word orient comes from Latin oriens and oriri, meaning to rise, as the rising sun. The word origin comes from the same source. The Japanese call their home the Land of the Rising Sun. Wherever did they get that idea? From China. Wikipedia says,

Both Nippon and Nihon literally mean "the sun's origin", that is, where the sun originates, and are often translated as the Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from Imperial correspondence with Chinese Sui Dynasty and refers to Japan's eastward position relative to China. Before Japan had relations with China, it was known as Yamato and Hi no moto, which means "source of the sun".

Another meaning is jewel bright, according to dict.org:

Bright; lustrous; superior; pure; perfect; pellucid; ~ used of gems and also figuratively, because the most perfect jewels are found in the East.

East of...you know. To orient also means to ascertain your location, since we know the sun comes up in the east everywhere (except at the poles).

Occident means where the sun “falls” or goes down (something like accident). Frankly, I’m offended. Let’s start calling the USA the Orient.

People are insulting. Get rid of one word and people will make up another insult. Avoid the latest taboo and people will make up another taboo. Literate people do not find Oriental insulting.

Brain Candy

||| Here’s another gem from Dave Barry’s Mr. Language Person, where he discusses the “as far as” problem, among other grammatorical issues.

||| In the July 14, 2008 Baby Blues cartoon, cute kid says, “I’m hiccing up!” (I’d write “hicking up”.)

Your Weekly Dalrymple

In Grading on a Curse, Theodore Dalrymple wrote about...

... the head examiner of a British school-examination board, Peter Buckroyd, who explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room you’re in,” with “F* *k off” ... should receive a grade of 7.5 percent rather than a grade of zero. Buckroyd went so far as to say that “it would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for.”

First, the candidate had spelled the two words correctly ... which showed some grasp of English orthography; and second, he had strung two words together correctly, which showed some grasp of grammatical structure and an ability to convey meaning. Had the words come with an exclamation mark, moreover, the candidate should have received a grade of 11 percent, because he would have shown some grasp of punctuation.

“We’re looking for positives,” explained another examiner, who was presumably desperate to avoid provoking low self-esteem among his examinees. Buckroyd added that, after all, the candidate was “better than someone who doesn’t write anything at all.”

Hmm, so if someone says “F* *k off” to me, I should congratulate him for being able to speak? I don’t know how old the student was who wrote that very brief essay, but surely there’s an implicit expectation that student writing should progress beyond verbal grunts and snarls.

On a brighter note, in an interview Theodore Dalrymple said, “Music escapes ideological characterisation.” This reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s remark that “Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.” It’s true that most other arts can tend toward corruption or intellectual misappropriation.

Media Worms Turn Over but Hog the Covers

This week has produced the most laughs of the entire presidential campaign. You’ve probably seen, or even bought, the New Yorker dated July 21 with Barry Blitt’s satirical drawing of Obama and wife. Naturally the NYer would not presume to satirize the Os, who are not to be laughed at, and moreover are not funny. The magazine is satirizing all non-O fans, who, they figure, are too dim to get it anyway ~ as if everyone west of New York doesn’t already know what New Yorkers think of them. Cincinnati’s cartoonist Jim Borgman did a great satire himself (July 17, 2008 editorial cartoon) on the famous 1976 Saul Steinberg cover of New Yorker’s view of America, and ordinarily Borgman tends to dress left.

At least Blitt’s cartoon begins slightly to balance all the magazine covers of O with a halo. Unfortunately, his cartoon omitted Jesse Jackson’s finely tuned critique of Obama’s political, uh, stance. Better keep that stance narrow, O!

The actual story by Ryan Lizza inside the New Yorker isn’t satirical; it covers his political career, which has been mostly all about campaigning.

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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. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. 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.

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Parvum Opus 286 ~ LOL Writer

PARVUM OPUS

Number 286

______________________________________________

This Week's Flotsam and Jetsam

||| Treen: a neat old word that means decorative items made of wood.

||| Caveperson: Someone strayed too far into PC land. Surely cavepersons were men and women, if anyone was. One of the effects of using the genderless person in such constructions is to emphasize the function of the adjectival noun, in this case, cave. But the words cavemen and cavewomen place people roughly in an era more than in a type of dwelling. Perhaps the speaker thought caveman would be offensive, implying as it does crude behavior. But there is no Society for the Prevention of Offenses to Cavepeople. Maybe the guy who used the word seriously (I forget who it was) was afraid of the Geico cavemen. ("Cavers", by the way, are people who explore caves.)

||| "That is me offering you an olive basket": from the movie Ocean's 13. Either the script writer had no knowledge of the phrase "olive branch" or else he wrote the character unaware of the phrase, for a joke. You never know, since screenwriters now seem to learn everything they know from other movies, not from books.

||| "They're trying to facilitate him": said on a news show of a person who should have been put in a facility for the criminally insane. Not putting him in such a facility did indeed facilitate him, but not in a good way.

||| lolcat: laughing out loud cat, a newish web word that means cute photos of cats with funny captions that are spelled wrong. (I think if a cat would spell, it would spell correctly.) This specific bit of web humor is common enough now to have earned its own name, and there are loldogs too.

McBookstore McWorker

Rich Lederer wrote:

Following up your "This Week in Literacy," here's another book store incident:

In one of the megachain bookstores, a woman asked a young clerk for the author of Like Water for Chocolate. After the salesperson had spent five minutes searching and still could not locate the famous title, the customer realized that the young man had been looking for Water from Chocolate.

It's like . . . you know.

Like getting water from a stone? Maybe if you squeeze it really hard....

Thinko

William Safire in "Misspeaking Too Soon" wrote:

Students of verbal slipmanship along with a few cognitive neuroscientists took note of a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif., recently by the philosopher Daniel Dennett in which he used the computer-jargon noun thinko. Coined on the analogy of typo, it means "mental glitch; brief interruption of the thought process; wind breakage of the brain," like calling your best friend by your dog's name, which I did this morning.

Let's add speako to the list.

Also from Safire:

The Lexicographic Irregulars have lost a valued colleague. George Carlin, who died two weeks ago at 71, was a social satirist in comedian's clothing with a great feel for language, both fair and foul. A decade ago, he called my attention to "a sin of omission I have encountered . . . the dropping of the words is concerned from the phrase "as far as [whoever] is concerned." And late last year, he set this column straight on the metaphoric origin of nose open. When at age 17 he brought it up with "a black fellow airman from Chicago," he said: "I was told it referred to a boxer getting his opponent's nose to bleed. At such a moment, the nose-opener has gained control."

I've written about the "as far as" blunder, when people drop the end of "as far as that goes", in the second issue of PO at the end of 2002. But I heard "nose open" with a different meaning, from a friend who used to run a couple of bars in black neighborhoods. She used it to mean looking for a man, or woman, in other words sniffing the air.

Good Ones

Passed on to use from Lynn Jones:

||| All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

||| OK, so what's the speed of dark?

||| Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

A Song of Patriotic Prejudice

Mike Sykes, bless his Brit heart (or is it his Euro heart), wrote about patriotism, "Like many isms it's all very well, up to a point", that famous formulation that means it's not very well at all, the point being the vanishing point. He sent a funny song about patriotism.

On July 4th Fred and I went to a typical small-town parade and park festivity where I saw a group of people at a picnic table singing "God Bless America" before eating, as a sort of grace. I was touched; I never saw anyone do that before. Fred was impressed by their pretty good four-part harmony. But the one person I told about it, snickered. I suppose a Brit would lift a sardonic eyebrow, a Frenchman would shrug. When I had two Danish children as students a couple of years ago, their mother bought them an American flag because she was impressed that Americans have flags; Danes don't bother. I just learned that a nickname for Australia is Oz, like that magical land, so they must like their home.

Then on July 5th I saw a man at the gym wearing a T-shirt with an American flag and the caption "Worst Ever". I assume he was being self-referential.

Mike also wrote, "Many wise things have been said on the subject of patriotism, one of the

wisest being GK Chesterton's, 'My country, right or wrong' is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober'."

As for "my mother drunk or sober", read "To My Mother", a poem by George Barker, about his mother (or a mother) during a WWII bombing in London. There are drunks and then there are drunks.

The instantaneous cynical reaction to love of country is like unvarying cynicism about imperfect parents, or children for that matter, imperfect husbands and wives, imperfect home, imperfect religion, imperfect self. Since bad people with bad motives abuse and abase normal sentiments about everything important, and since we think that to love one thing means to hate the other, sometimes our solution is to not admit to loving anything, a popular stance in my college days. Conversely, today the prevailing idea is that to love one's country or to think one idea or behavior is better than another is hateful. If you can't approve of or like everything equally, the least you can do is despise yourself. So many of us have become, spiritually if not literally, like the man without a country, who, in Edward Everett Hale's 1863 story, said:

Remember, boy, that behind all these men..., behind officers and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother...!

Drunk or sober. At least once a year. Then you can cheerfully beat her with a stick the other 364 days.

The Grass Is Always Greener on the Imaginary Other Side

Californians are in a bind. They're prohibited from blocking solar panels, which means trees that shade the panels may or must be cut down, even if the trees are on someone else's property and were there before the solar panels. Australia now has a clinical definition of a psychiatric disorder called "climate change delusion". Some poor boy thought that the whole world would die of dehydration if he drank water.

My Ship Enterprise

I'm branching out into a new publishing enterprise, writing autobiographies for people, by which I mean interviewing them and editing their stories to be published in archival quality books for the family. If anyone knows of a potential client, the ten percent finder's commission would be $2,500. Get in touch in you're interested.

______________________________________________

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. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. 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.

Parvum Opus 286 ~ LOL Writer

PARVUM OPUS

Number 286

______________________________________________

This Week's Flotsam and Jetsam

||| Treen: a neat old word that means decorative items made of wood.

||| Caveperson: Someone strayed too far into PC land. Surely cavepersons were men and women, if anyone was. One of the effects of using the genderless person in such constructions is to emphasize the function of the adjectival noun, in this case, cave. But the words cavemen and cavewomen place people roughly in an era more than in a type of dwelling. Perhaps the speaker thought caveman would be offensive, implying as it does crude behavior. But there is no Society for the Prevention of Offenses to Cavepeople. Maybe the guy who used the word seriously (I forget who it was) was afraid of the Geico cavemen. ("Cavers", by the way, are people who explore caves.)

||| "That is me offering you an olive basket": from the movie Ocean's 13. Either the script writer had no knowledge of the phrase "olive branch" or else he wrote the character unaware of the phrase, for a joke. You never know, since screenwriters now seem to learn everything they know from other movies, not from books.

||| "They're trying to facilitate him": said on a news show of a person who should have been put in a facility for the criminally insane. Not putting him in such a facility did indeed facilitate him, but not in a good way.

||| lolcat: laughing out loud cat, a newish web word that means cute photos of cats with funny captions that are spelled wrong. (I think if a cat would spell, it would spell correctly.) This specific bit of web humor is common enough now to have earned its own name, and there are loldogs too.

McBookstore McWorker

Rich Lederer wrote:

Following up your "This Week in Literacy," here's another book store incident:

In one of the megachain bookstores, a woman asked a young clerk for the author of Like Water for Chocolate. After the salesperson had spent five minutes searching and still could not locate the famous title, the customer realized that the young man had been looking for Water from Chocolate.

It's like . . . you know.

Like getting water from a stone? Maybe if you squeeze it really hard....

Thinko

William Safire in "Misspeaking Too Soon" wrote:

Students of verbal slipmanship along with a few cognitive neuroscientists took note of a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif., recently by the philosopher Daniel Dennett in which he used the computer-jargon noun thinko. Coined on the analogy of typo, it means "mental glitch; brief interruption of the thought process; wind breakage of the brain," like calling your best friend by your dog's name, which I did this morning.

Let's add speako to the list.

Also from Safire:

The Lexicographic Irregulars have lost a valued colleague. George Carlin, who died two weeks ago at 71, was a social satirist in comedian's clothing with a great feel for language, both fair and foul. A decade ago, he called my attention to "a sin of omission I have encountered . . . the dropping of the words is concerned from the phrase "as far as [whoever] is concerned." And late last year, he set this column straight on the metaphoric origin of nose open. When at age 17 he brought it up with "a black fellow airman from Chicago," he said: "I was told it referred to a boxer getting his opponent's nose to bleed. At such a moment, the nose-opener has gained control."

I've written about the "as far as" blunder, when people drop the end of "as far as that goes", in the second issue of PO at the end of 2002. But I heard "nose open" with a different meaning, from a friend who used to run a couple of bars in black neighborhoods. She used it to mean looking for a man, or woman, in other words sniffing the air.

Good Ones

Passed on to use from Lynn Jones:

||| All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

||| OK, so what's the speed of dark?

||| Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

A Song of Patriotic Prejudice

Mike Sykes, bless his Brit heart (or is it his Euro heart), wrote about patriotism, "Like many isms it's all very well, up to a point", that famous formulation that means it's not very well at all, the point being the vanishing point. He sent a funny song about patriotism.

On July 4th Fred and I went to a typical small-town parade and park festivity where I saw a group of people at a picnic table singing "God Bless America" before eating, as a sort of grace. I was touched; I never saw anyone do that before. Fred was impressed by their pretty good four-part harmony. But the one person I told about it, snickered. I suppose a Brit would lift a sardonic eyebrow, a Frenchman would shrug. When I had two Danish children as students a couple of years ago, their mother bought them an American flag because she was impressed that Americans have flags; Danes don't bother. I just learned that a nickname for Australia is Oz, like that magical land, so they must like their home.

Then on July 5th I saw a man at the gym wearing a T-shirt with an American flag and the caption "Worst Ever". I assume he was being self-referential.

Mike also wrote, "Many wise things have been said on the subject of patriotism, one of the

wisest being GK Chesterton's, 'My country, right or wrong' is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober'."

As for "my mother drunk or sober", read "To My Mother", a poem by George Barker, about his mother (or a mother) during a WWII bombing in London. There are drunks and then there are drunks.

The instantaneous cynical reaction to love of country is like unvarying cynicism about imperfect parents, or children for that matter, imperfect husbands and wives, imperfect home, imperfect religion, imperfect self. Since bad people with bad motives abuse and abase normal sentiments about everything important, and since we think that to love one thing means to hate the other, sometimes our solution is to not admit to loving anything, a popular stance in my college days. Conversely, today the prevailing idea is that to love one's country or to think one idea or behavior is better than another is hateful. If you can't approve of or like everything equally, the least you can do is despise yourself. So many of us have become, spiritually if not literally, like the man without a country, who, in Edward Everett Hale's 1863 story, said:

Remember, boy, that behind all these men..., behind officers and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother...!

Drunk or sober. At least once a year. Then you can cheerfully beat her with a stick the other 364 days.

The Grass Is Always Greener on the Imaginary Other Side

Californians are in a bind. They're prohibited from blocking solar panels, which means trees that shade the panels may or must be cut down, even if the trees are on someone else's property and were there before the solar panels. Australia now has a clinical definition of a psychiatric disorder called "climate change delusion". Some poor boy thought that the whole world would die of dehydration if he drank water.

My Ship Enterprise

I'm branching out into a new publishing enterprise, writing autobiographies for people, by which I mean interviewing them and editing their stories to be published in archival quality books for the family. If anyone knows of a potential client, the ten percent finder's commission would be $2,500. Get in touch in you're interested.

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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. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. 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.

Parvum Opus 285 ~ This Week in Literacy

PARVUM OPUS

Number 285

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This Week in Literacy

From Overheard in New York:

||| Teenager in a bookstore: “Dude, my sister is always stealing her friends' books, but like, sometimes no one has the book she wants, how much easier would it be if there was like, a Blockbuster, but for books.”

Dude, that would be like a library, only better than Blockbuster ‘cause it’s free.

||| Teenage girl in a bookstore: “I need Romeo and Juliet. But do you have any with, like, the English on one side and Shakespeare on the other?”

In my day we just had footnotes. Today it’s the No Fear Shakespeare. Example from Hamlet:

Shakespeare:

To be, or not to be?

That is the question—

English:

The question is:

is it better to be alive or dead?

Shame!

||| Chick: “So they called him up on stage, and they were like: ‘We want to bestow this honor upon you.’ And he was like: ‘It is indeed an honor, an honor indeed.’ And I'm all like: ‘Come on, like, I mean, seriously, like, who talks like that? Can't you take it down a notch! Don't you read US Weekly or anything?’”

The honoree could have taken it down a notch maybe to, “I’m like, whoa!”

I’m all like, let’s reduce everything to the lowest common denominator except then we’d be like, you know, amoebas. Elevated language is like formal clothing, use it for certain occasions. Duh.

Thou Shalt Not Plagiarize

Dennis Prager said there’s a Rabbinic teaching about giving credit when you quote someone, and by implication against plagiarism:

He who repeats a teaching in the name of the person who first said it, brings redemption to the world. (From the Office of the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth)

This may mean that the authority of the source is what’s important, but it can also be an admonishment to give credit for ideas; i.e., don’t steal.

New Fonts

Thanks to Kate (the virtual daughter-in-law soon to be real-time) for finding the AnAkronism type font at http://www.dafont.com/. I’m from Akron, and an old friend from college days, Ed Shope, coined “anakronism” to refer to some of Akron’s peculiarities, such as the then rarely sighted city buses. Also from the same web site, the Jane Austen font is an appealing copy of the divine Jane’s script.

Redneck Redux

Kathy Taylor wrote:

when i first moved to wv, i thought rednecks were just stupid, tobacco spitting, all around idiots. my sister was (and still is) a big believer in that definition. of course, she also is convinced she is of the high and mighty, lol. as a self proclaimed redneck (if you've read my articles lately ~ i've used it quite a bit [see www.hurherald.com]) i consider rednecks to be people who are not afraid to be themselves. ... there are those who actually know more about certain areas than an average person might think. for example, i know absolutely nothing about engines or tires, whereas, a lot of these folks that enter mud bogs and demolition derbys know the ins and outs of cars and trucks. it’s funny, when i look back, i thought i would never enjoy a good mud bog. now, i like to go and relax with the crowd. sometimes i don’t always feel i fit in, but sometimes i don’t feel i fit in with the family i grew up in.

As one who’s usually not quite a fit in most places, including inside my own name, I can appreciate Kathy’s sentiment.

Rise to the Occasion

A few thoughts for the Fourth of July:

||| I haven’t yet commented on the government’s new policy not to use the phrase “war on terror” (much less “Islamic terror”), introduced, says Charles Allen, senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, because "it creates animus in Islamic countries." What are the gov’t officials saying instead? “The recent unpleasantness”? “The unfortunate incidents”? “The acts that dare not speak their name”? It’s the Fourth. Today, open your mouth and say what you think as simply and clearly as possible.

||| The American Consumers Cooperative movement of the 1930s adapted “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to “The Battle Hymn of Cooperation”, but somehow lyrics about co-ops and shopping are less stirring than those about death and sacrifice for higher ideals. We all might like to be heroes, but who aspires deeply to be a better consumer? “Consumers marching on” is a ridiculous line. Maybe if they’d patterned the song after “Row Row Row Your Boat” or something....

||| The Black National Anthem is not an “alternative” version of the American National Anthem, nor is the Mexican or Puerto Rican or any other. Singing these in place of the National Anthem in an official, public context, as Rene Marie did at a public occasion in Denver, is singing a separatist song. She was, she said, expressing her “feelings” as a black woman and an “artist”, though she had been invited to sing the National Anthem. Well, as Jim said in Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, artists don’t have any special needs that can’t be readily fulfilled by a tattoo* of kicks on the backside. It’s important to have a sense of occasion. Don’t wear a shroud to a wedding. Remember the scene in Casablanca where the patrons in Rick’s Café started singing La Marseillaise to drown out the Nazis singing a song about the fatherland? Not that I’m comparing Miss Rene to a Nazi, but I don’t buy her saying she didn’t mean to offend. She meant to express her own feelings of offense. The Black National Anthem is a fine song (though the lines “Till now we stand at last / Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast” have a suspiciously white-centric bias) but it was the wrong time and place; the time and place were not all about her. In Denver, the crowd did not counter by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

*Tattoo in the sense of drum beat, not skin ornament.

||| Francis Scott Key wrote “Defence of Fort McHenry” during the War of 1812. According to Wikipedia, the last stanza of what became “The Star-Spangled Banner” is seldom sung, so here it is:

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home and the war's desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Our complicated history, from the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to the War of 1812, to the Civil War and beyond, through all its dark passages, has produced a civilization worth protecting. Read again Lincoln’s thoughts on the preservation of the Union and the ideals on which it was founded in the Gettysburg Address of 1863:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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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. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. 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.