Parvum Opus 299 ~ The Baker's Dozens

Tony Hillerman

The other evening at the library I was telling Fred that it looks like some of my favorite mystery writers aren’t publishing so much as they’re getting older. Then I read that one of the best, Tony Hillerman, died last weekend at 83. He wrote the series about Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman got to know the Navajo people and country well, and the land itself was a powerful element in his books. He’d been a newspaperman before taking up fiction, and his writing was clear and crisp. I’m sorry he’s finished his last chapter. Writers Digest interviewed him in 2000.

Bazzett’s Back

Reader Tim Bazzett sent an update on his books ~ he’s so prolific, I’m envious.

RatholeBooks now features four of my books. The Reed City Boy trilogy ~ ReedCityBoy, SoldierBoy and Pinhead ~ are my own memoirs. The fourth book, Love, War & Polio: The Life and Times of Young Bill Porteous, is something of a departure for me, but continues to feature Reed City and west Michigan, as well as being a kind of homespun primer on WWII and the polio years. Inscribed/signed copies of all four books are available for purchase at my website: http://ratholebooks.com, which also provides a peek at covers, reviews, sample passages, etc. The books can also be purchased through Amazon.

The Baker’s Dozens

Recently I wrote the Top Ten Reasons to Vote for Anyone But Obama. Now here are My Top Ten Personal Reasons. OK, thirteen. Next week I’ll go back to watching old movies on TV, reading trashy novels, and eating chocolate.

13. Did you see the lynching of the effigy of Sarah Palin in West Hollywood? I don’t think the Obama campaign has officially objected to it. Lynching is a powerful iconic image in this country, particularly for black Americans, even though vastly more black Americans have been killed by (1) abortion and (2) gang shootings, than ever were lynched. A lynched effigy of Obama brought McCain campaigners out with police to ask that it be taken down.

12. We haven’t been attacked seriously since 9/11/2001, but even Joe Biden anticipates a test on the new president. I think either man will be tested as president. I don’t believe a warm, sincere conversation with the attackers would be the response we need. Maybe Obama means keep your friends close but your enemies closer. But Obama is not a wartime consigliere.

11. What kind of person writes two autobiographies before he’s 50?

10. “Spread the wealth” around really does mean “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” as Karl Marx said. If these two statements are not equivalent, explain how they’re not. If you actually are a socialist, you’re OK with it and you think if Obama’s elected, at last the world will be made whole and poverty will cease to exist for the first time in the history of humankind. Some of my best friends are still socialists, but I couldn’t stay with the program. I’m not worried about my wealth being confiscated because I don’t have any, but it’s the principle of the thing. If Joe the Plumber makes good in the usual way, the theory is that other people can only make good if Joe pays for it, per IRS order.

9. And, clinging to religion when times are bad means the same thing as religion is the opiate of the people, per Marx. Which means that money trumps spirit. (Is clinging to your guns the crack cocaine of the people?)

8. We expect politicians to renege on promises after they’re elected. Obama reneged in advance, vowing to use public financing for his campaign until he found out he could get vastly more money from private sources. Can’t blame him for that, but why the promise in the first place? Because using public money seemed like the fair thing to do.

7. I never did get that chill, thrill, or even a tingle running up my leg from either Obama or McCain or any other politician, it’s more like my legs fell asleep, but I used to date someone named Barry in college who did give me chills, thrills, and occasional nausea, who was a good-looking, charming liar. And as we know, Barack used to be called Barry. Coincidence? Perhaps. I think my visceral reactions are as meaningful as Chris Matthews’.

6. If McCain wins, lots of people will say that (1) the election was rigged and (2) America is racist, and some are saying now that there will be riots or even another Civil War if Obama loses. I don’t like being threatened.

5. Last week after I sent my son’s wedding photos link to a long list of people, another of my old boyfriends e-mailed me: “I assume you'll vote for the aging veteran and the stupid hunter.” Is that any way discuss the issues? It’s not persuasive, not that any of us is likely to be persuaded of anything at the eleventh hour. The former BF is an aging veteran himself, of the Israeli Navy in the Six-Day War, of all things. Politics has led family and former friends (family is still family) to make the most insulting personal remarks about me, not just about politicians, reviving my youthful rebellious streak. I’m happy to say some people have retained their sense of humor, and you know who you are. These are serious matters, though, so naturally the emotions are engaged as well as the brain. This campaign has been one huge Rorschach test.

4. Obama has been depicted in various rags, mags, and posters as: the Messiah; Che Guevara; and George Washington crossing the Delaware. The Che graphic reference is closest to accurate, except that Che was a man of physical action. Bad action, like murder, but action nevertheless.

3. I myself have had a taste of community organizing. Years ago an old Marxist friend got some people together to start a food co-op, and I volunteered, cleaning a storefront and trying to raise money, at which I was hopeless. This co-op was of no intrinsic value. The neighborhood wasn’t hurting for a grocery store, the prices wouldn’t be lower than at the supermarket, the food wouldn’t be better than at the health food store. But I got it: it was all about organizing. And to what end? I didn’t know then, but now I have no doubt that the influences were from Saul Alinsky, whose ideas influenced Obama: organize with the goal of “change”, i.e. Marxist/socialist revolution, by generating a feeling that the larger society (with the good supermarkets and health food stores and farmers’ markets) is lousy and even evil; that average people are suffering and their lives are meaningless but they will be empowered and energized and made happy (noticed the passive verbs) by being busy at some project or other, especially if it seems to be counter the culture that is actually working; and that the useless co-op was somehow superior, and we “the people” were superior, to the ordinary stores and the capitalists, who were not “the people”.

2. As a community organizer, even Obama has said he didn’t accomplish anything he set out to do. Perhaps his theories are wrong. As a senator, he’s been a campaigner. Maybe this is why he and his wife find the American Dream so bleak. They’re successful but can’t seem to get much done.

1. It’s not true that we don’t know who Obama is. We do know.

P.S. The student I mentioned last week, who noticed that Republicans seem reluctant to admit they are, said he wanted me to use his name when I told him I had mentioned him anonymously. He is Kaou Yattasaye, from France and Mali, and he is a humorous and friendly arguer of political differences.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

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.geocities.com/keithops/. 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, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

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

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

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

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!

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

Parvum Opus 298 ~ Code Words

I Promise

In the cartoon Agnes by Tony Cochran, 10/22/08, Agnes runs for class president:

I promise you that if I am elected class president, all the things you don’t like will be eradicated, completely and immediately! And all the things you do like will be in abundance and free of charge!

I promise that after the election I’ll think and write about something other than politics.

Publishing Trends

The current issue of Men’s Health has a cover story, “20 Heroes of Health and Fitness”, and lo, Barack Obama’s name leads all the rest. I didn’t read the article but I doubt that McCain made the list, seeing as how he’s old and his arms are stiff from all that torture. But I happen to be privy to the next big wave in magazine publishing, and editors and publishers are planning exciting new roll-outs. If Obama is elected, Oprah’s O Magazine will carry photos of Obama on every cover instead of herself, and she won’t even have to change the title. Bird Watchers will name a new bird after him, unless they can’t find any new birds, in which case they will change the name of the scarlet tanager to the blue state tanager. Fantasy Football will feature an all-Obama team. Brides magazine will publish a story in every issue suggesting wedding plans for his daughters. The Zen magazine The Empty Vessel will discuss Obama’s Christianity.

Code Words

Lewis Diuguid of the Kansas City Star says that “socialist” is a code word for black. What isn’t a code word for black these days? If you disagree with Obama’s politics at all, it’s racism. So is capitalist a code word for white? What do you call white socialists?

Remember that my French student, originally from Mali, said ~ unprovoked, I didn’t broach the subject ~ he’s observed in his short time in the United States that Republicans are afraid to say they’re Republican. Now this, from Melvyn Bragg’s newsletter on his BBC radio programme “In Our Time”:

Janet [Soskice] pointed out that it was difficult to confess to being a Christian in America at the moment, partly because the evangelicals were so fierce but also because, in her view, the liberal consensus in America was so dogmatic and all-pervading.

European, in other words. Apropos of this, maybe, is the sign that was in front of a church this afternoon: “Jesus loves Obama.” Looks like the sign was taken down rather quickly, so maybe it wasn’t approved by the church. It’s not a Christian message, since Jesus also loves McCain and even third-party candidates.

I had to go on a student field trip today to the Dem and Rep (Demon and Reprobate) campaign headquarters, and got a slap on the e-mail later because someone complained that I supposedly voiced a political opinion (at the Dems). This is a longish, tedious story but it shows to some extent the touchy political atmosphere today. Here’s what happened, in part: At the Republican headquarters, I talked to the two people a couple more minutes after the rest of the group left, as I was driving separately, and then they gave me some handouts. So at the Dem headquarters, while the students were collecting a lot of literature, I handed out the material rather than wait till tomorrow’s class,. Apparently that was a no-no, even though I mentioned it was just part of their education for the day; actually I've really never visited a political campaign office and didn't realize that anything with McCain's name on it was verboten, as was any political questions. A lady at the Dem office told me McCain's name was a bad word there, and I told her that Obama's name hadn't been a bad word at the Republican office, where they were quite respectful, which seemed to surprise her. A student asked her if the Republican attacks on Obama were being effective, then I asked if Democrat attacks about McCain were being effective, and she said the Dems don’t lie (but it’s always my assumption that both sides lie or at least twist the truth). When I asked her for an example, she said she didn't want to talk about it. Then one student pointed admiringly to a photo of JFK in the Dem office, and I said that while he was a Democrat, the Democratic party had changed since then, so he said it was the world that changed, or something, and I said some things don’t change, and he said like what, and I said like capitalism vs. socialism, strong national defense against attack, and that was as much as we had time for. The Dems were cruising for volunteers; though they knew the students couldn't vote, they told the students they were welcome to volunteer (if they were old enough not to need parental approval). So I don’t know what my error was, or who complained. And note that in class or in any public place, I don’t talk with the candor with which I write to you.

Temn and Demn

Contemn is a verb I’ve never used nor even heard used. I’ve only seen it in print (most recently, referring to liberal women who despise Sarah Palin), so if I thought of the word at all, it was as somewhat archaic. In fact I vaguely confused it with condemn, so maybe I have heard the word spoken, but they are two different words. Contemn obviously is about contempt (from Latin despise). Condemn is to damn (also from Latin).

As a woman, I’m surprised that so many feminists despise Palin. There was a time when feminists were sort of in favor of any woman in office, no matter what. But as a woman, I’m also not surprised. There’s some envy involved, but I’m sure it’s mostly because of the abortion issue. It would be interesting to find out who among those who hate her the most have had abortions, and who’ve had them, not because the baby had Downs syndrome or some other serious disorder, but because the pregnancy was inconvenient. Statistics say that perhaps one-fourth, or 22% of all pregnancies in the U.S. are terminated by abortion, because the pregnancies were “unintended” and maybe 40% of American women have had abortions. Whatever the number, it’s huge.

But I knew the Palin contempt was also about guilt, and a recent article by Anonymous (why Anonymous?) in the Boston Phoenix (an “alternative” paper) confirms it. She writes about the abortion she had six years ago as a 19-year-old college girl in Boston, when she wasn’t financially or emotionally ready to follow through with the consequences of her decision to have sex, for which she was apparently ready enough. (Why hasn’t sex education fixed all that?) When she learned she was pregnant, “There was nothing else to think about,” she writes. Her guilt isn’t about the abortion per se, she says, but about forgetting to take her birth control pills regularly and about being so privileged that all she had to do was cross the street to get an abortion while other women have to, what, go across town? She had a “medical” abortion rather than a surgical abortion (she took a pill, but surgery is also medical, which I only mention because she meant chemical). The day afterward, she went to an editorial meeting of her school newspaper, where they decided not to print a lucrative pro-life ad because it was against their “principles”. She doesn’t remember if she said anything in the meeting.

Anonymous felt guilty and angry when she read about Palin’s pregnant daughter and Palin’s opposition to abortion. While Anonymous acknowledges that some women face more extreme situations, she thinks her own inconvenience is the equivalent of other motives for abortion, but that her decision is made to seem somehow less ethically justifiable in “today’s society”. People like Sarah Palin make her feel “trite and selfish”. Perhaps in tomorrow's society Anonymous need not hide her name, and even surviving post-abortion, uh, creatures need not live to encroach on the peace of mind of their, um, unintendeds, when they are no bigger than a mustard seed.

Ible/Able

“Contemptible” brings me to another question: why do some words end in ible and some in able? Is there a rule? Why, yes there is, says Purdue, but it has exceptions. The rule is to use “ible” to follow word roots (i.e. incomplete words), and “able” to follow complete words, ergo incredible and fashionable respectively. But contemptible is one of the exceptions, as is responsible (“respons” is not a complete word but this is a matter of spelling).

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

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.geocities.com/keithops/. 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

Number 297

______________________________________________

Typewriter OCD

The dexterous yet not sinister Rich Lederer, the Verbivore, wrote:

Here's my little disquisition on "typewriter words" ...

When we seek to find the longest word that can be typed on a single horizontal row of a standard typewriter keyboard, we naturally place our fingers on the top row of letters ~ qwertyuiop ~ because five of the seven vowels reside there. From that single row we can type but a handful of ten-letter words: repertoire, proprietor, perpetuity, pepperroot, peppertree, pepperwort, and ~ ta da! ~ typewriter.

The longest middle-row words are flagfalls (nine letters) and alfalfas (eight letters). Stewardesses, aftereffects, desegregated, and reverberated, all twelve letters, are the longest words than can be typed with just the left hand, while johnny-jump-up (twelve letters, a variety of pansy) is the longest right hand word. The thirteen-letter dismantlement and the ten-letter skepticism sinisterly and dexterously alternate hands.

By the way, I recently discovered that one of my students has a laptop computer from France and the French have a different keyboard layout. However, according to Wikipedia, the French Canadian keyboard is the same as the standard English qwerty layout.

No Paint No Gain

Someone else’s typo is our gain: paintstakingly: how you should paint.

Edison

Mike Sykes wrote about Thomas Edison, “I'd respect him even more if his goal was to invent a product that people wanted to buy. But then he did, didn't he?” Yes, he did. Too bad Nicola Tesla didn’t have his sales acumen. Then maybe we’d be getting free electricity right out of the ground. Or something. I never did understand it but it just goes to show that it’s not enough to have a great idea.

The Former Wizard

Our neighbor John Neal sent a poem that Fred and I like very much, being former wizards ourselves:

Who is You? Who is Me?

I am not the Wizard

That I used to be

I have to relearn everything

From a flower to a tree

It's really getting tough

Being what I used to be

When I can't remember

Who is You? Who is Me?

Make It So

Can words make it so? Can you be a Christian and a Muslim simultaneously, as Seattle Episcopalian priest Ann Holmes Redding says she is, though they have some decidedly contradictory theology?

Can you have a baby and be a real man, like Thomas Beatie, a female who wasn’t really cut out (pun intended) to be convincingly Y-chromosome?

Can you be a practicing conservative, as Christopher Buckley says he is, and vote for Obama?

If all these things are possible, I’ve been way too restrained in my speech all these years. (“I am rich!” I’ll let you know if it works.)

Dave DaBee tipped me off to the article about Chris Buckley, William Buckley’s son, who says he is voting for Obama. CB’s writing reveals some of his father’s style (e.g. Latin tags), yet not quite-quite ("whatever"); and he certainly doesn’t have the same substance (secular prayers).

Brave Sir Robin Meets The Black Knight

I only lost one reader after the 10 Top Reasons to Vote for Anyone But Obama. (Hey, I could have made a longer list, and maybe I will.) Although he didn’t tell me his reason for unsubscribing, I have a solid hunch, and now I can talk behind his back. I knew this person years ago in graduate school, and he used to occasionally send rather lengthy, interesting, and witty contributions to PO. But a few years ago he wrote to me that he was extremely angry that his alma mater had invited George W. Bush to speak at commencement, and I think I wrote back that after all, the man was elected. I never heard from my old classmate after that except when he told me our favorite professor had died. I wish my old friend had stayed to fight it out.

By the way, one of my students, who’s from Mali but was educated in France, brought up the subject that he’s noticed that people here who are voting Republican are afraid to say so.

And my Chinese student became noticeably nervous when we were talking about a qigong master I know of (Dr. Yan Xin) who seems to have disappeared from view since the followers of falun gong began to be persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Falun gong was taught by a very different sort of qigong master, Li Hongzi, but I think the government distrust of him rubbed off on other taoist masters. I haven’t found any updates on web pages relating to Dr. Yan Xin (not to be confused with a man of the same name who teaches martial arts, though Dr. Yan Xin is also a martial arts master) since around 2001. My student was so clearly uncomfortable with conversation about his government that I changed the subject.

Will Edit for Cash

Why graphic designers must have editorial restraints: The current issue of Men’s Journal has a photo of a man on the cover that bleeds over the title so what you read is “Men’s urnal” which looks way too much like “Men’s urinal”. If you look at some of the past covers, you’ll see that this seems to be a habit with them, although one cover with a photo of Harrison Ford laid the title over his forehead. The ways of the designer are inscrutable.

Grab Bag

-|- Rob Kyff has a column called The Word Guy that’s worth catching. His column “Cool Off with a Babbling Book” has some good suggestions for books about language.

-|- Fred turned me on to allwords.com, an English dictionary with a multi-lingual search.

-|- My friend Sonny Robertson has a great new CD out. Buy it at: http://sonnyrobertson.com/buy.html, and listen to the two interviews with Sonny at www.sonnyrobertson.com/. The songs are variously funky, funny, or moody, and there are a couple of witty songs about high-tech communication, “Text Me Before You Sex Me” and “Blues 2000”.

-|- I picked up The Herblock Book at a yard sale, inscribed “LG & Fern H Nichols at Christmas 1952, A gift from us to us.” I paid a quarter but you can pick up a used copy for anything from 94 cents to $50+ on Amazon. Herb Block was a political cartoonist and writer, and while I don’t know much about most of the issues assembled in this book, it all sounds familiar more than half a century later. Block quoted Winston Churchill’s remark that elections are always bad and the only thing worse would be not having them.

Font of Wisdom

Guy: Yeah, that date movie was dumb.

Girl: Oh, you saw it?

Guy: No, but I could tell by the font it would be dumb. It was the same font as Scary Movie and Not Another Teen Movie. I really hated those movies.

Girl: Ahhh, impact.

Guy: What?

Girl: The font. It's called "impact."

There is a type font called Impact. I selected it here but will it survive e-mail and blogging?

Parvum Opus 296 ~ Distractions

Normal 0

PARVUM OPUS

Number 296

______________________________________________

Me Neither

Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic said:

I am not an academic linguist or an etymologist. Linguistics and what I do stand in something like the relation between anthropology and cooking ethnic food, or between the history of art and art restoration. ~ Word Court 2 (2000).

In some ways, as a reader, writer, and teacher, I’ve always felt like a sort of mental warehouse, factory, and distributor of information. Things come in, they get processed to a greater or lesser degree, and I forklift them back out neatly stacked on pallets.

Quiz Jock Overtly Thumps Fox, Dog, Jackdaw Band

Regarding “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” which uses every letter of the alphabet, Bill R. wrote, “I prefer ‘Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz’.” Both are arresting images but the quartz sphinx is new to me.

In the computer age, however, why should we rely on human wit? I entered the complete alphabet into Anagram Genius, an online anagram generator, which came up with this:

Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.

I didn’t think it could be done! The classic alphabet sentences have to add letters to make it work, but this one uses only the 26 letters.

Diameter Divided by Radius Multiplied by Length Equals...

Since the recent huge wind storm blew down a lot of trees and branches, brush pickups in one town are scheduled to collect “tree limbs no longer than 12 inches in diameter”. I thought it was just a one-time typo until further down the page I read about another community, “The usual rules have been relaxed. The city will collect tree limbs no longer than eight inches in diameter and between three feet and 13 feet long.” Apparently the rules of geometry have been relaxed too. Let’s see, a limb 12 inches long in diameter would be a disk. But 8 inches long in diameter, plus 3-13 feet long ~ now I’m confused.

Distractions

Must ~ write ~ about ~ politics ~ can’t ~ stop ~ myself.

I’ve been working on a list of the Top Ten Reasons to vote for anyone else but Obama. A bit cheesy, I know, but these built-in cultural memes are writers’ templates; lists are handy text generators.

10. Obama’s typical white grandmother is now squished under his post-racist bus.

9. He obviously missed the “one of these things is not like the other” episodes of Sesame Street when he was growing up, because he compared the murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech to the “violence” of a stupid and insulting racial joke by Don Imus.

8. All those blasphemous magazine covers depicting “The One” with a halo put me right off, especially after learning that he voted more than once against requiring medical care for babies that survive abortions.

7. He hasn’t changed his middle name, Hussein, the way he’s altered other politically disadvantageous realities of his life, but nobody’s allowed to speak it.

6. Mighty oaks from little ACORNs grow. Obama served with Bill Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund, which helped fund ACORN, which has been signing up people from shelters and street corners in Ohio and elsewhere to vote early and often. Bill Ayers is now a member of the Miranda International Center, a think tank funded by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez.

5. An anagram of Obama’s name, “As chubbier as an amok”, is ungrammatical.

4. When Obama became senator, his wife suddenly got a big promotion and raise at the hospital to which Obama then steered big government funds. If he becomes president, I’m afraid she’ll get promoted to “The Other” and her salary will be larger than the big bank bailout.

3. If Obama becomes president, while in office he’ll continue his life’s work of campaigning for a higher office. Which is...?

2. What part of “Chicago politician” don’t people understand?

1. In 20 years of church-going Obama missed all the “God da*mn America” episodes in Jeremiah Wright’s church. Traditionally Christians pray for their enemies. But America is not the enemy. We pray for our country through error and hardship and danger, to “stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above.”

Mad Science

I’ve written before about Jok Church’s science cartoon that appears on the children’s page of the Sunday funnies in the Cincinnati Enquirer. He advised a teen to “be yourself” like Quentin Crisp, who decided at an early age not to be himself. Last Sunday, in "You Can U", Jok Church wrote about Joseph Priestly: "...he already knew what he wanted to prove and gathered evidence to support that belief. This is also how some folks now fight against ideas such as global warming." Of course that's also how some folks fight for such ideas as global warming. In an interview with the Washington Post, Church said,

Thomas Edison invented market research more than anything else. He decided what things he or his company could sell before they were invented. It was not pure research. It was research to reach the goal of a product he wanted to sell. And I rather respect that.

Oh yeah? Jok Church needs to be on a kids’ editorial page, not in the comics.

Restavec

“Restavec” is the word for a child slave in Haiti, from the French for “stay here”. A Cincinnati man, Jean-Robert Cadet, who is a former slave, started The Restavec Foundation to help these children. Goodsearch is a search engine powered through Yahoo through which you can donate $.01 to his foundation or another charity of your choice every time you use it to search.

Here is what you do:

1. go to www.goodsearch.com

2. look for the space that says “enter your charity here…” and click on it

3. enter the word “restavec” and the full name of the organization will pop up

4. use the above to enter whatever topic you would like to search, as you would for Google or any other search engine

You should never have to enter the name of the foundation again because the site will remember it for your computer.

You may also want to click the option to add Goodsearch to your toolbar.

Goodsearch also links to online shops that will donate a percentage of your purchase to the cause that you are supporting.

I personally wasn’t able to make this work with Firefox but it worked with Explorer.

Cadet wrote a book called Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American. If you’re interested in that, you may also want to read A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner, who spent four years researching modern slavery around the world.

______________________________________________

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.geocities.com/keithops/. 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 295 ~ Home to Home

PARVUM OPUS

Number 295

______________________________________________

Two Tests

>>> From the New York Times, “When Spell-Check Can’t Help” by Philip B. Corbett, a quiz to test your editorial skills.

>>> Dave DaBee sent a daily spelling test, “Do You Mean?” So far I have 100% over two days, but I have to confess that I cheated and looked up Apennines; foreign names are not my strong point. By the way, I’ve been advised that the foreign students I teach are sensitive to being called “foreign”; they prefer “international”. Would the Apennines, then, be an international name for international mountains?

Naming Rights by the Minute

I wrote about Cleveland’s Gund Arena being changed to the Quicken Loans Arena. Now I read that for $6 million, a bank bought naming rights to a new stadium at Northern Kentucky University for 20 years. Does this mean in the future you can buy naming rights for a night or maybe for five minutes? Could be a meaningful birthday gift, like paying somebody to name a star for your GF or BF.

It’s Too Good, Which Is Too Bad

Rich Lederer, a pro on the job, sent this perfect palindrome:

If the strategy of the Democrats is to HARASS SARAH, they have come up with a tactical Palin-drome.

Speaking of which, Palin’s debate with Biden last night was moderated by a woman who’s publishing a book about Obama, and I feel pretty certain it’s a pro-O book. Who decided that? Probably someone who’s still PO’ed about the evangelist who monitored the McCain-Obama face-off that was so discomfiting to the unteleprompted BO.

Brain Candy

One of our PO team from England, David Rogerson, sent a long list of goodies, but today I’m just passing on the ones for typists.

Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

And lollipop is the longest word typed with your right hand.

The sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog uses every letter of the alphabet. (This used to be practice for beginning typists.)

Typewriter is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

When I learned to type in high school, I picked up a couple of obsessive-compulsive mental typing habits myself, but one that stuck was finding words typed on alternating hands, such as right (I don’t know what the longest word is).

Scribe for a Day

The Zondervan publishing company is sending a Bible Across America bus around the country to have people hand-copy Bible verses to appear in a special edition of the Bible, to be published by Christmas 2009. If you contribute you can have your script preserved in the Smithsonian.

From Home to Home

My son’s wedding was the most beautiful ever, and my presumed ancestral stronghold, Dunnottar Castle, was somehow profoundly moving. I’m back here now, and hope I can go back there someday.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

by Robert Burns

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

I don’t have much to write this week, so here’s more poetry. We lucked into a Celtic music jam at a pub in the Marine Hotel in Stonehaven (which is somewhere in the webcam view of Shorehead). One man with a fine voice sang “Star o’ the Bar” to a woman in the pub. It was lovely but she ought to have slapped him. Anyway, this song is a contemporary pub favorite, not an old song. (You can hear a version, not quite as good as in the Marine Hotel, on YouTube.) Here’s part of it:

Star o’ the Bar

by Davie Robertson

Oh I’ll sing ye’s a stave if ye’ll gie yer attention

It’s nae sang o’ pity it’s nae tale o’ woe

And nae word o’ honour or love will I mention

But I’ll sing o’ a lassie I kent long ago.

Chorus:

Nae better than maist, and nae worse as mony

And what drew me tae her ’s no easy tae say

She was coorse, she was heartless and she was nae that bonnie

But she was the star o’ the bar in her day.

Finally, here’s something out of copyright, brought to mind by the end-of-season garden bird I bought in Walgreen’s ~ a solar-powered plastic common yellowtail that chirps when you walk by and trigger the motion sensor.

Sailing to Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

______________________________________________

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.geocities.com/keithops/. 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, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

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

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

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

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!

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