Treacherous words ...

As my clumsy fingers dance around the computer keyboard like an old man trying to do the jitterbug, I am both mildly amused and annoyed, once again, by their insistence on typing the word "signing" as "singing." Wouldn't that look great on the press release I am preparing!

Some words are dangerous that way. Perhaps none is more deadly than "public." Curse the old Latin smarty-pants who came up with that word so perilously close to a verbal cousin who is generally kept locked in the closet -- er, bedroom.

Certainly there are others, not helped by the artificial set-up of the "qwertyuiop" keyboard, which rumor has it was put together to SLOW down the earliest typists, rather than to be helpful.

Eucalyptus in space and time ...

"The ordinarily musty interior smelled of pine and eucalyptus."

-- Julian, Gore Vidal, p. 47.

Eucalyptus: A genus of evergreen timber trees mostly native to Western Australia.

Eucalyptus, interestingly enough, is a Greek word for a tree that no Greek -- nor any other European, unless he were shipwrecked on his way to China -- ever saw before the 18th century.

You see, I may not be the world's expert on Australia but far as I know, Europe knew nothing of the land down under until about that time.

So unless that "mostly" means that some kind of eucalyptus is native to somewhere beyond the land of koala bears and wallabees ...

... or unless "eucalyptus" -- like corn in America -- is an old word that was in use for something else before it became attached to "a genus of evergreen timber trees mostly native to Western Australia..."

... yes, unless that is the case, then celebrated author Mr. Vidal goofed, in hanging eucalyptus boughs in the courtroom of a 4th-Century Roman building.

If so,it is a reminder to the rest of us, just how hard it is to write credible historical fiction. You must know when even the most ordinary objects were invented,such as a pocket watch; what foods they could not have eaten, such as tomato soup in the Middle Ages; and a thousand other sundry details, that, if neglected, will leave annoying know-it-alls such as myself clucking our tongues.

In spite of that, I am enjoying his book on that Roman emperor, Julian, who tried and failed to turn the ship of his state back on a course to the old paganism and away from its devotion to Christianity.

Evolution Revolution

When history began, when people first began to write, the consequences were tragic, at least from one perspective. The ancient art of the oral account, the prodigious memories that were required to be a teller of tales or a wise man/Woman of any repute, withered away and something was lost from humanity.

Only in what few great sagas were transferred to writing, such as Homer's Iliad; and in the captivating tales still told by peoples on the fringes of "civilization," peoples for whom literacy is still rare, do we gain a glimpse into that lost world.

Today, the pundits and purists fret about a new onslaught: The electronic word, displacing paper and ink. Nearly extinct is the grand art of great letter writing; gone from popular magazines and many newspapers are the erudite essays that used to entertain and enrich us all. Popular culture today aspires to the low height of the picture book.

Each new invention seems to squeeze expression a little more dry, in the name of speed and efficiency. Already, teachers fume about students using electronic shorthand instead of actual words in their assignments: 24/7, B4, lol, etc. Alas, they "kick against the pricks."

Progress will be progress and one fights it in vain.

I wrote actual pen-and-paper thank you notes for my birthday gifts recently. I fully intend to write a letter to my uncle this week, in response to his recent query. I love to write and if that makes me a silly old-fashioned fool, so be it. I shall to my dying day cherish the feel of a stout, heavy pen in my hand, a sheet of fresh paper beneath it and my thoughts becoming loops and lines of ink. It is a peaceful art, far more soothing to the pysche than the nervous clicking and clacking of a computer keyboard.

The writing blues

This has been an odd week.

I have been asked by a Facebook friend to translate a letter from Hungarian to English on behalf of two families that I have never met;

to write a customer-service playbook page in football coach format for someone who works at a bank - -and I know little about football and nothing about banks;

and, speaking of football, to write a recommendation letter on behalf of a coach I have never met, who is employed in another state.

Save yourself, child, before it's too late!

It is a pivotal moment in the life of a human being.

There they are, wobbling on fat toddler legs, reaching for the junk piled up on your desk. A sticky paw swings widely – will it grab the calculator or the pen?

If the calculator is seized, chances are the child will do well in math, become a banker or an accountant and live a pleasant life as a member of the Rotary Club, the Country Club or some other genial organization. People in banquet halls will clap politely as his or her accomplishments are listed. He or she will grow pretty petunias and have neatly trimmed hedges and a well-fertilized lawn.

But woe to the poor child who grabs the pen. He or she will suck at math and thus hate school, where math, like the flu, must periodically be endured for no apparent reason. He or she will live a wretched life, forever expressing opinions at which others take offense, collecting enemies like some people collect stamps and constantly worrying whether his paycheck will cover the cost of toilet paper for the month.

Insane people will call her, expressing bizarre theories about the local Freemasons or the corruption in the sheriff’s office.

“This will make a great story,” they declare. “It has everything to do with what happened to Kennedy! You’re just the one [translation = damned fool] to write it!”

And he will grow strange and wild plants, if anything at all, and a lawn speckled with dandelions to which the neighbors will take great umbrage.

When writers trip over their words

Sometimes, as a lover of words, one pushes the envelope, one tests one's limits -- and sometimes, that leads to mistakes.

I recently wrote a bit of verse (In a Dusty City), in which I concluded with a stanza about a hospitable shopkeeper "repining." My intent was to use a synonym for rest or slumber that followed the flow of the words.

Something about that somewhat archaic word, which lies at the far edge of my verbal comprehension, bothered me and I finally broke down and checked it in the dictionary.

Oops.

"Repine" means to complain -- not what I intended at all. "Repose" was what I had meant to say.

So all of you who were wondering why the shopkeeper spent the night complaining instead of sleeping, now know the answer: his writer made him do it.

Women who write

Credit for the first novel to be written in North America goes to Frances Brooke, the wife of a British officer stationed in Quebec. “The History of Emily Montague” was published in 1769.

As with “The Tale of Genji,” by Japan’s Murasaki Shikibu, described as possibly the first true novel in the history of the world, it demonstrates the primacy of Women in the development of literature.

Why did I not learn about Shikibu in school? And why did I have to discover Brooke, just yesterday, in an obscure encyclopedia article about Canadian authors? (Yes, I read encyclopedias for my bedtime story. Deal with it.)

Blog ruminations

So I've done this blog thing for a couple months now -- and find it to be both frustrating and yet satisfying.

I'm a writer, cursed from childhood with the urge to scribble my thoughts, whether the world gives a damn or not.

I have written my thoughts in little notebooks about virtually every book I have read in the last ten years, like some stupid kid unaware that I'm out of school and don't need to do that anymore. Hello -- anyone home in there? (Sound of echo heard within empty head).

I've kept a journal for twenty years and counting, 99 percent bird poop and maybe one percent intelligent thoughts.

I've written a weekly column for a local newspaper for ten years.

I've badgered my way into writing articles for local magazines.

And still I seek more ways to punish myself.

Thus, this blog. In here, I can be almost 100 percent honest, because if I ever get crushed by a tractor trailer on some bad day, or summon the courage to pay some hotel room escort to blow her cigarette smoke at me until I die in ecstasy from a secondhand nicotine overdose, no one who knows me will ever know this blog even exists. They'll have to satisfy themselves with only the far less juicy scribblings in my journal.

But a blog is work. Some bloggers seem satisfied to just write and write and never get any comments from anyone. They don't even care to reply to the few that trickle in by chance.

Me, I crave comments. I open this blog everyday hoping for the Christmas present of a response. Sometimes, Santa forgets to stop by my computer.

You see, a blogger has to work for his or her responses. There are tens of thousands of blogs out there and who in hell has the time to sift through them all, the dross and the gold?

So you have to visit other blogs and actually read them and make comments and hope that someone will eventually become curious enough about their commentator (commentor?) to follow you back to your blog.

And then, if you keep working on the blog-to-blog relationship, you find a friend. And then you have to be careful, because in the cyberworld, nobody can see you smile. Or wink. A little joke can seem an insult. And that friendship can die in a splat of miscommunication, as quickly as a bug on a windshield.

P.S. This post is dedicated to Lance (toughmindwarmheart) and Adena, (ilovesquishingants) the first two enablers of my blog addiction. Smart folk the both of them. Blogs worth your reading.

The endless cycle

I remember the scramble in high school when a big project was due. The misery, the long nights, the utter relief when it was finally done and turned in.

Then I went to college. More big projects, more misery, more long nights, followed by utter relief.

Then I got a job.

See where this is going?

Today will be a clean up the office, enjoy the relief of a deadline met and vanquished, sort of day. Soon enough, a new project will come along.

Meanwhile, being a glutton for punishment, I have assigned myself writing projects beyond this office, on my own time, for various local magazines. Interviewing an expatriate historian. Tracking down a guy who made a huge archaeological discovery in my region.

Life is great. Projects spring eternal. And my office is a mess.

The abuse of "big" words

You can tell a good writer by many things. One is his or her judicious use of so-called "big" words. He or she sprinkles them carefully and with pleasure, like fine seasoning, into the writing that (ok, I'm sick of he-or-sheing everything -- we're going to assume our writer is a she for the rest of this entry) she creates. They are used only when a lesser word won't do or wouldn't be as much fun to play with. There's a time and a place for the likes of lachymorose, and a time for simple tears.

A poor writer dumps big words into her verbal stewpot like so much salt -- and impresses no one. A poor writer keeps a well-worn thesaurus by her side; a good writer rarely, if ever, touches the thing.

I hate jargon. I see it everyday in my job. Today I am editing some pretentious document on the subject of educational communications, which insists that all stakeholders in the division are to communicate clearly and effectively. This hopeful statement is buried deep within a swamp of awful jargon that no normal human being could possibly understand -- making it, what, laughable? Hypocritical?

The document writer even trotted out the word andragogy at one point. I assume, by breaking it up into its parts, that it must mean the teaching of humans. However, the giant dictionary in our office doesn't have the word listed, which means it's very likely the bonehead writer made it up from pedagogy, in an effort to sound Very Knowledgeable Indeed.