Barbara Ardinger's Blog, page 6

A right to bear arms and shoot people? No, no, no!

I am so tired of hearing Breaking News that another testosterone-poisoned
madman has picked up guns and ammunition and shot (a) people going to work,
(b) children and teachers at school, (c) a member of congress meeting and
greeting her constituents, (d) people in a movie theater, (d) soldiers
and sailors on and off-duty, (e) little kids who happen to live in dangerous
urban neighborhoods, and (f) anyone else. There are not enough solemn moments
of silence led by government officials too cowardly to stand up to the
gun lobby to even come close to making up for the gun deaths and terror
caused by guys with guns.




I suppose I’m an extremist about guns. I believe they should all be melted
down and the metal turned into statues of artists and playwrights and authors
and philosophers. I believe that all bullets should be emptied and refilled
with grass and flower seeds and distributed to anyone who wants to plant
them. I believe that we should stop glamorizing men with guns. Like heroic
(and antiheroic) cowboys, sheriffs, marshals, and outlaws. Oxymoronic noble
warriors. Glamorized gangsters, godfathers, and G-men. Big, violent, action
figures in explosive movies and video combat games.




I believe we should either repeal the Second Amendment or pay closer attention
to the part that says “a well regulated militia.” I take that to mean the
Founding Fathers had in mind sensible, enforceable laws about guns and
the people that use them. I’m pretty sure they didn’t intend the amendment
to be a license for deranged men to shoot people. And a militia is an army,
not cantankerous loners running around playing soldier or superhero.




I believe that we should build a new set of really strong stocks (iron,
not wood) and put Wayne LaPierre in the stocks. Feed him regularly and
give him bathroom facilities, but don’t let him out.
Ever. Take the stocks with Wayne in them to the Navy Yard in Washington
and let people talk to him. Take Wayne to Newtown and let mothers and fathers
talk to him. Take him to Aurora, to Tucson, to Columbine, and to all the
other sites of mass shootings by troubled young men and let people talk
to him. Make sure he listens. (Give him listening lessons if necessary.)

Turn the NRA into a new kind of PTA (but NOT on the Texas model) where
parents and teachers consider and discuss the effects of “gun education”
and turn “gun education” into humanities education that covers literature,
mathematics, history, and the arts, classes in most of which have been
defunded by cretins who think we need to guns to protect us from our government.
Take Wayne to visit Jim and Sarah Brady. Take hm to visit Gabby Giffords
and Mark Kelly. Let them have long, thoughtful, courteous conversations.

Give gun dealers new jobs. They could be medical assistants (so they can
see what a bullet does to a human body). They could get construction jobs
and repair bridges and highways and wrecked buildings. They could, for
example, work in and on Detroit.




Retool all the factories of all the manufacturers of guns so they’re building
affordable housing, plowshares (i.e., tractors and combines), and desks
for schoolchildren. This may not require all the employees of all the gun
manufacturers, so send the rest of the employees out with the gun dealers
to repair bridges. They can also be employed to help people whose homes
have been lost in floods, fires, and hurricanes. Turn shooting ranges into
fields in which to grow wheat and corn or parks where people can relax
and play in safety.




Take guns away from hunters. Who needs an assault rifle to kill a deer?
If people still want to go hunting, give them bags of rocks to throw at
the animals. Endangered species will no doubt appreciate this. When they’re
not being shot at and slaughtered, endangered species will reach a point
where they’re no longer in danger of being eradicated from the earth.




Take guns away from children of all ages who feel they have to join gangs
to (a) feel safe, (b) have friends, (c) have something to do with their
empty days because they’re not in school. Send the disarmed gang members
to volunteer for the Red Cross, Americans for the Arts, and other useful
organizations. Send them to work for Goodwill and food pantries and hospices.
Send them to clean the beach or pick up trash in our national parks. Send
them to work as companions for people with Alzheimer’s disease or cancer,
for old people and young children who need help to live and function in
a complex world.

We can also teach people who have used guns to commit crimes to act or
sing or dance. It’s been done! There’s a splendid DVD called
Shakespeare Behind Bars  that shows prisoners in Kentucky learning
important lessons while learning and performing
The Tempest. There’s also an excellent book titled
Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison. 
The lessons of these programs can be expanded to other groups of people.
Guys, put down your guns and learn to act.

Yes, I’m an extremist about guns. I know that while most Americans believe
that guns should be better regulated, our representative and senators are
too intimidated by Wayne and the gun lobby to vote for sensible laws. I’d
like to live in an ideal world where people are equal and not hungry, where
women earn as much as men in any given job, and where no one has to live
under a freeway overpass. And I really do believe gun ownership should
be well regulated. That’s why I regularly send money to the
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, to
Americans for Responsible Solutions, and to
Mayors Against Illegal Guns. I hope you’ll send them money, too.

Stylin' into the 21st century

I took an online survey for my local newspaper, the Long Beach
Press-Telegram last month, at the end of which I could enter their
contest to win an iPad. So I typed my email address and phone number in
the box and clicked on Submit. And totally forgot about it. I have seldom
won anything. Well, in October 2006, when a friend and I stopped at the
Morongo Casino Resort on the way to a book signing in Yucca Valley, she
taught me how to gamble and I won $1.41. I still have the voucher.




Thursday, August 1. Phone call from Hillary at the
Press-Telegram telling me I won an iPad. I’ve been vaguely considering
buying one so when I’m watching an old movie on DVD or something on TV,
I can look up the actors on IMDb. Vaguely considering is as far as I ever
got. Thank you, Hillary.

Monday, August 5. The iPad arrives. I sign for it. Open the box.
Well, it’s pretty, but how do I turn it on? No user guide. Oh, here’s a
picture with arrows pointing to buttons. But I still can’t find the on-off
switch, so I call my friend Angelo. He doesn’t have time to give me a full
tutorial, but at least he tells me how to turn it on, and now I’m watching
“welcome” in a thousand languages scroll across the screen. What’s next?

Phoned my daughter-in-law. She phones me back and says I need to call
my Internet Service Provider (Charter) and find out if my  modem already
has Wifi so I don’t have to go out and buy a router.




Phone call to Charter. I speak to a nice man named Calvin, who is sitting
in a call center in another galaxy. No, my modem doesn’t have the Wifi
gizmo, but they can send a tech guy to upgrade me from 2.0 to 3.0. I tell
Calvin I’ll call back.




Meanwhile, I’m feeling out of sorts and achy all over. I wonder if I have
a fever, but I can’t find my thermometer. I also have a lot of work to
do—books by three authors, plus a couple more waiting in the wings. It
hurts to lean forward to squint at the screen. This iPad is just not at
the top of my list of priorities.




Tuesday, August 6. Phoned my friend Aaron, who lives three blocks
away, and asked for help I still haven’t gotten past turning the iPad on.
I have figured out that the little percentage box at the top of the screen
indicates battery power. Oh, goody—here’s a cord and connector. I know
how to recharge it…if I can find where to plug the iPad end of the cord
in. Aaron comes and sets stuff up for me. Wow—you can take photos with
this thing. Aaron takes one of us, but I have no idea how to transfer it
to my computer. I also had no idea I had to go to iTunes to get to the
screen that shows the apps ’n’ things.




After a visit to my chiropractor, I feel lots better. My whole body was
out of balance, no doubt from sitting in this chair practically all day,
every day. I also had a mild repetitive motion injury because one of my
authors sent his 324-page manuscript to a publisher to be typeset and their
so-called editor sent it back with Track Changes comments to add something
like 200 commas. Plus other changes. And who got to do all the new work
on the manuscript? Moi. Removed nearly all of those superfluous commas
and made other changes. Now the manuscript is in the hands of a trustworthy
proofreader, my friend Sue.




Wednesday, August 7. Got some real work done today. Edited Chapter
50 of John’s fifth book and Part 2 of Barry’s family history. Also email
conversations with Trish in Australia (we’re near the end of her book)
and Flora, who, like me, grew up in St. Louis. And Tony, who is now proofreading
his edited novel. (We’ve been talking about his infatuation with colons
and semicolons.) Phoned the Apple store to find out if they have the iPad
cover with the keyboard attached. Phoned Charter again and set up an appointment
for a tech guy to come and update my modem for Wifi.




Thursday, August 8. Laundry. A stop at the UPS Store to scan and
fax proof that I’m a senior citizen so I can subscribe to three plays at
South Coast Repertory at the senior rate. Apple Store. Yikes! Scary place,
at first, but the folks in their blue T-shirts are very kind. Bought my
ultrathin keyboard cover, then Tim showed me how it works. The tech guy
from Charter is coming on Sunday to hook me up (so to speak) to Wifi. Phoned
Jonathan, my favorite tech guy, to come and teach me how to get online.
All will soon be well.




Watched a wonderful DVD about Chaucer and
The Canterbury Tales last night. If the iPad were already up and
connected—and if I knew how to get online—I could have looked up Pythoner
Terry Jones and learned how and when he became a medievalist.




Stopped at the fabric store and bought buttons for a new top and a jacket.
Oh, goody—here’s something I can do by hand with a needle and thread. No
pesky electronics in sewing buttons. Good grief. I sound like my grandmother!
Emma Clare is
Secret Lives is partly modeled on Gramma. She was a teenager when
the Wright Brothers took their first flight, she saw Neil Armstrong walk
on the moon, and after Grampa died in about 1970, she bought her first
pantsuit. That’s a fair bit of change in her life. And all I have to cope
with right now is a handheld electronic communication device. Jonathan
says I can’t break the iPad if I practice on it. (Wanna bet?) Dame Julian
of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner
of things shall be well.” Words to live by.




Sunday, August 11. Kevin the Tech Guy came with the wireless router
and got me connected. He showed me how to get online on the iPad. I actually
sent an email!




Tuesday, August 13. My friend Liz says she’s imagining me “stylin’
with the iPad.” I’m not quite sure what that means, but it’s a cool image.
Thanks, Liz, for giving me a title for this blog. About the device, she
wrote, “you’ll probably love it after you’ve played with it for a while,
and then wonder how you ever lived without it.” She also says posting this
blog as the sun enters Virgo is right on target. Last night I watched a
movie on DVD and looked up most of the cast. Yesss! Made my first purchase
from Amazon on the iPad tonight: another
Magic Flute on DVD, two books of medieval English history.

Friday, August 16. Jonathan, my long-time tech guy, came and copied
my email address book onto the iPad. I sent another email. He also showed
me (1) how to turn on the volume when I want to listen to a song on YouTube,
(2) how to download apps, though I can’t think of any app I want, and (3)
how to set up my list of sites I want to go to while I’m watching DVDs
(IMDb, IBDb, Amazon, a couple others). I guess I’m organized and present
in the 21st century now. “All manner of things shall be well.”

Why We Forget. Really.

We hear it all the time. Someone forgets what he was supposed to buy at
the grocery store and picks up a dozen cans of Spaghetti-O’s and when he
gets home and his wife asks why, he says, “Oh. Guess I musta had one of
them senior moments.” Or someone else confuses the names of her dozen grandchildren
or forgets people’s names at a party. “Gee,” she says with a nervous laugh,
“I guess it must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

Don’t you believe it. Alzheimer’s is a dreadful, wretched disease that
eats our brain and spits it out in pieces. I remember when it hit my grandfather.
My grandparents had been married more than fifty years, and Grampa forgot
who his wife was. He called her “old woman.”




During the 1990s, I spent several months as a paid companion to a woman
named Fran. I’d known Fran “before.” She’d been a successful businesswoman.
When I started spending time with her, she was eighty-two years old…and
mentally about two. I took her for walks. I also read to her before I helped
her undress and put her to bed. We both got bored really fast with the
books (Erma Bombeck and romance novels) from the assisted living complex’s
library. I brought books from home. You know what she enjoyed listening
to? Jeeves and Wooster. A book of goddess stories. But she spent most of
her time in another world, arguing fast and furious with invisible people
from her childhood. At the time I was writing
Secret Lives, so I spent a lot of time listening to and watching
invisible people. Fran and I made a good pair. She’d have an occasional
moment of clarity (I could see it in her eyes), and I’d say, “Fran, this
is hard, isn’t it?” and she’d say, “Yes”—and go right back into her awful
world.




The
Long Beach Press-Telegram has two columns for ageing baby boomers,
one called “Successful Aging,” the other, “Senior Moments.” I read them
sometimes. I’m also on the
Alzheimer’s Association’s http://www.alz.org/about_us_about_us_...
email list. I’ve learned that Alzheimer’s is one of the top ten causes
of death today. That it’s the only disease we cannot prevent, slow down,
or cure. A few months ago, one of the columnists set out to distinguish
between normal aging and Alzheimer’s. Missing an occasional monthly credit
card payment is something we all do, whereas becoming totally unable to
manage a budget is a sign of Alzheimer’s. Forgetting what day it is once
in a while is normal; losing a whole week or month or season is Alzheimer’s.
Occasionally misplacing your car keys is normal, but misplacing your whole
house is Alzheimer’s. Not liking to cook anymore is normal; turning on
a burner and leaving it on all night is Alzheimer’s. Forgetting the occasional
name or word (“but it’s on the tip of my tongue”) is normal; being unable
to conduct a conversation is Alzheimer’s.

We all forget stuff. I edit books written by people as young as thirty.
My oldest author was a man aged ninety-two. Across the entire age range,
my authors make incorrect word choices and forget details like their characters’
names. That’s normal. Fortunately, I still have all my marbles and can
supply the correct word (or at least make a good guess) and scroll back
to find a character’s name when he or she first entered the plot. I can
usually unscramble plot complications that don’t make sense but which the
author forgot to straighten out.

But there are mornings when I wake up with a snatch of music or lyrics
(for example) in my head, and it takes all day for me to remember where
it came from. And I’ve never been good at remembering names. I have therefore
created a theory to explain this kind of memory loss. See if it works to
you.




You know those huge paper files that many offices still have? Go to any
doctor’s office, for example, and you’ll see row upon row of paper files.
The lives of hundreds of people. Now visualize a room filled with five-drawer
filing cabinets. Visualize every drawer in every one of those filing cabinets
stuffed with paper files—notes, agendas, memoranda, reports, summaries
of everything we ever saw on TV or in a movie, term papers and theses,
business and friendly letters, every song we ever heard, text messages
and voicemail…you name it, it’s there in drawers so full you can’t close
them anymore. That’s your head. As we age and see more and read more and
hear more, the little
daimon(the Greek word for the invisible presence that accompanies
us through our lives, a sort of talkative guardian angel) in our head is
taking notes on everything and putting the notes in our mental files. Everything
we do. Everything that happens to us every second of every day. Everyone
we meet. Everyone we talk or text to and what we tell them. The longer
we live, the more files pile up in our head. At some point, all those papers
burst out of their file drawers. At some point, we get papers all over
the floor of our head. It’s in stacks and the stacks fall over. As long
as we’re alive, that enormous collection of imaginary paper records of
our lives is flying, zooming, buzzing around in our heads.




So ask yourself…what were you supposed to stop and buy for supper tonight?
What are the names of all your neighbors/cousins/grandchildren? Where’s
that Visa bill you thought you paid already? When is your anniversary?
When is your best friend’s birthday? Where’s the receipt the plumber gave
you to give the landlord? Where is…? Where did you put…? When did…? Who
was…? (And it’s even more fun if you read as much history as I do.)




Get the idea? Take another look at that file room in your head. Even if
it’s a hard drive (or a cloud) instead of paper files, maybe your personal
search engine’s sick in bed with a cold. The word I want might be “on the
tip of my tongue,” but actually it’s somewhere in the piles of paper on
the floor of my brain. Yeah. That’s why I can’t immediately identify a
phrase from an Ira Gershwin lyric and why you keep using the wrong words
in your book or the memos you write. Give us enough time, and, yeah, we
can sift through all those mental files until we find what we almost have
in hand. So here’s what you can say to your spouse or friend the next time
you forget something: “Gimme a break. I’ve got all these files in here
[pointing to your head] to sift and search. My cloud turned into rain,
and my search engine is real tired. But I’ll get there. Just gimme a minute.
I’ll find it. Uhhh…what am I looking for again?” Uhhh, what am I supposed
to be writing or editing today? Your guess is as good as mine.

A Double Cancer's Adventures with Water

Here we are again at my natal sign, Cancer. My birthday is near the end
of this sun sign, but I was not born on the cusp. I was born at 28 degrees
of Cancer. A bit before dawn, which makes my rising sign Cancer, too. I
like to say that means “what you see is what you get.”




Cancer is the cardinal water sign, which makes me fairly squishy. Emotional
and empathic. I’m told that’s part of what makes me a good writer—I can
get into my characters’ minds and emotions and write them down so my readers
can get in there, too.. I think it also makes me a good editor because
I can get into the books I edit and help the authors make them better.
Clearer. More real. And I can sympathize with my authors when they feel
picked on by my corrections and comments. In the olden days, I tell them,
if someone dared to criticize even one of my precious words, I’d sulk for
a week. Now I’ve got it down to under 24 hours.




Although I’m an astrological nincompoop, I have two or three natal charts.
I recently asked my friend
Elizabeth Hazel, an astrologer who writes in real English, for a thumbnail
description of Cancer. This is what she sent me: “Cancer is a water sign
associated with nurturing, motherhood, and family ties. People born under
this sign desire profoundly intimate personal relationships and are willing
to dive to the depths for creative inspiration. Many Cancerians love to
cook and travel, and some are successful entrepreneurs.”

Sure, Cancer’s a water sign; I’ve had watery adventures all my life. For
one thing, I don’t swim and I don’t even like to get wet. I live five blocks
from the ocean, but I don’t go there. All that water. And the beach has
all that sand all over it. Ewwww! I have been in the ocean, however. A
couple decades ago, I was part of a circle that met in Laguna Beach. One
night we went to the beach—right into the ocean!—to drum. There we were,
standing in knee-deep water under the dark moon with the tide coming in.
The only drum I had at the time had a natural skin. It went
thud, thud, thud, plonk. Not a pretty sound. That whole scene was
getting pretty scary. I got outta there!

More fun with water. In nearly every apartment I’ve lived in, the plumbing
has acted out. When I lived in Garden Grove, the water main broke. My apartment
was in the front of the building, so it wasn’t just my bathroom that flooded,
but also my walk-in closet, which was right next to the bathroom, and my
son’s bedroom. Squish, squish, squish. Wet carpeting. Wet shoes. It was
definitely time to move. In my next apartment, the air conditioning unit
broke and leaked all over my hall. I moved to Long Beach. In my second
apartment here, the girls upstairs neglected to tuck the shower curtain
inside the tub when they took their showers, so their floor—my ceiling—rotted
away. It’s no fun to look up in your bathroom and see the bottom of the
bathtub upstairs. Next apartment: the main plumbing line ran under the
building and roots of the large tree in the patio made friends with the
plumbing. Close friends. They hugged and invaded the main. This happened
three times. Each time, the plumbers came and used a jack hammer in my
kitchen to get to the pipes. Each time they thought they had it fixed.
Each time they cemented over their hole, I traced a big pentacle in the
wet cement. I bet my pentacles are probably still there under the tile.




In ’09, I described these plumbing adventures (plus others) to my friend
Liz and asked her, What’s with the plumbing? “I took a look at your chart,”
she wrote back. “I’m not surprised that you’ve been invaded by the wrench
brigade. Neptune, the planet that represents sneaky malfunctions and particularly
plumbing problems that are hidden by walls and floors, is opposite your
Venus. That suggests that this problem has been lurking for a while, unseen
and undetected until it turned into a gusher. … Like I said, Neptune can
be sneaky! For every advantage or benefit that comes with this planet,
there’s an equal and opposite penalty. Think about the myths about Poseidon;
he’s not a very nice god on the whole. So everyplace you’ve lived, you’ve
had plumbing problems. This has very little to do with your Cancerian sun
sign and rising, and everything to do with your Neptune/Node combo.”




Then, of course, she had to explain nodes to me. “Nodes are kinda cool,”
she wrote, “although I highly doubt they’re in the pagan astrology book!
The Nodes are where the moon moves north and south across the ecliptic,
which is sort of the solar system’s equator. They move backwards through
the zodiac, and are always very near the sun/moon when an eclipse happens.
They’ve been mythologized as snakes, dragons, and wolves who eat the sun/moon.
… The Nodes…just crossed over your Ascendant-Descendant horizon. The glyph
for the nodes looks just like horse shoes…or wrenches. Ah, the strange
and peculiar relevance of symbols. The North Node is Capricorn is opposite
your Cancer Ascendant. One thing that’s rather typical of Capricorn influences
is the need to tear things apart and rebuild them. Holes in the floor are
par for the course, especially if they have to poke through concrete, which
is a hard, durable, Capricornian substance.”




Uhhh, maybe this is getting close to TMI, at least for a non-astrologer
like me. So let’s change the subject a bit. The sign after Cancer is Leo.
My Venus is in Leo. That makes me like to decorate. I figure if I own something,
I get to decorate it, so I put glittery stickers on stuff. I like to put
“thank you” stickers on my electronics—the microwave, my flat-screen TV,
my all-region DVD player, the phone. I believe the expressed gratitude
encourages them to behave. I sit at this computer for at least six hours
every day. ’Nuff said?




Astrologers, probably including Liz, have also told me that I have progressed
through Virgo to Libra. Virgo rules earth. Does that mean I went through
a muddy period? Libra rules air. Am I now steamy? I think I’ll let my friends
and the authors whose books I’m editing answer that for themselves. Am
I foggy? I don’t think so. I like to quote Stephen Sondheim to my authors.
I heard him speak in person once. He was talking about his lyrics, but
what he said is equally applicable to our prose. He said, “Clarity is everything.”

The GLAWS Editing Panel

I was honored to be asked to participate in a panel of editors addressing
the topic “Beyond the First Draft: Editing Your Manuscript for Success”
at the Saturday, May 18, monthly meeting of the
Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (GLAWS), which meets in West L.A.
This is the third or fourth time I’ve sat on a GLAWS editing panel, and
it’s a lot of fun. One of my authors, John Fulford, four of whose books
I’ve edited (so far), came with me.




When I appear before an audience in edit mode (so to speak), I always
wear my T-shirt that says I AM THE GRAMMARIAN ABOUT WHOM YOUR MOTHER WARNED
YOU. The first year I wore it, a dozen people took pictures of it (and
me) with their cell phones. I like to tell a funny story about this T-shirt.
Occasionally a woman will misread it and exclaim, “Oh, I’m a grandmother,
too!” This most often happens at the grocery store, but once it happened
at a GLAWS meeting. (But not this time.) Funny thing, though—no one has
ever commented on the “whom.”




The other editors on the panel were Mike Robinson, Marcia Geffner, Deanna
Brady, and Robin Quinn, who also served as moderator. My guess is that
there was probably a century of collective writing and editing experience
sitting before those microphones. Mike sold his first story at age nineteen.
Deanna says she’s been editing since she was a child. Marcia spent a couple
decades as a real estate writer. What was especially nifty about this panel
is that we five have different editing processes and styles, which means
everyone in the room can find an editor they’d be comfortable working with.
Deanna and Marcia spoke about meeting in person with their authors and
learning about their expectations for editing and what level of edit they
want. Me, I just sort of jump into the deep end of the pool with my authors
and we swim together. I also tend to be fairly…er…directive, as when I
tell an author he’s used up his lifetime supply of semicolons (which got
a laugh from the audience) or issue a little editing fatwahs, like against
“grab” in all its forms because the author uses it in every other sentence
(another laugh). Years and years ago, one of my authors said I’m a subtle
as a Mack truck. I took that as a compliment. Of course, I also endeavor
to practice what my mother taught me: Always say please and thank you.




I took handouts to the meeting. One, “The Editing Process,” explains in
twenty-seven steps what I do with a manuscript. I also took the printed
final draft of a unique book titled
Chocolate Cake and Coffee (which I spent five months editing) to
show the audience that the author, Tammy Sedin, had done the right thing
by printing it and asking someone who’d never seen the book to proofread
it. The other panelists agreed that proofreading is important.




Robin asked questions she’d sent to us via email earlier in the week.
The first one was “Some writers say they do not like to read the competition.
Why is reading widely in and outside your genre important?” The consensus
of the panel was that we read to learn what good writing looks like, how
other authors construct a plot or build characters, and what kinds of books
actually sell. Another question was “what methods of initial composition
are helpful in making a book successful?” Mike talked about outlining,
which we all agreed is very helpful. So, we also agreed, is just sitting
down and starting to write and doing what I call a “mind dump.” Just get
a first draft written, the panel said. Then, using the metaphor I most
often use, start weeding the garden and pruning the trees.




To answer another of Robin’s questions, I had a copy of

The Elements of Style to wave at the audience, plus half a dozen
examples from books I’ve edited of violations of Rule 11, which is that
an introductory phrase or clause has to refer to the grammatical subject
of the sentence. Here’s an example: “Walking back, my hands shake….” (The
hands are walking?) As I read the examples to the audience, they immediately
got it. The problem is that we see stupid violations of Rule 11 all time
in newspapers and magazines and blogs and hear them on TV from people who
are supposed to be smarter than that. Guess not. Rule 11 doesn’t have to
apply in the dialogue we write, of course, because people don’t always
speak gooder English, but it should be correct in the narrative voice because
it helps us avoid ambiguity. (And look illiterate.)

To answer another question about dialogue, Deanna said that people don’t
usually talk about their feelings (they speak with feeling) and that it’s
best to omit the common little conversation openers like “Hi.” I said we
should listen to how people actually speak and notice the rhythms of their
speech. As we talked about dialogue tags (“he said,” “she replied”), Mike
wisely urged the audience to avoid adverbs. “Yeah,” I said, “no
Tom Swifties.”  After Deanna said that the dialogue we write
should be so clear and personal that a reader knows who’s speaking without
dialogue tags, I spoke about stichomythic dialogue (one-liners exchanged
by two people) and explained that it’s really helpful to add the occasional
dialogue tag or stage direction to help readers keep track of who’s talking.
Deanna added that she certainly hadn’t meant to suggest that we should
omit dialogue tags, to which everyone nodded.

When Robin asked about “ensuring the richness of language while keeping
it economical,” one of my co-panelists spoke about searching for good synonyms
so we don’t have to keep repeating the same word, but I said, “Stay out
of the thesaurus.” English has a huge vocabulary because all those synonyms
are not precisely and totally synonymous, which means word choice is important.




Although we four panelists have differing ideas on some topics, for most
of the two hours we sat there nodding as we shared with an audience of
hopeful writers what we know about working with an editor. Basically—pay
attention to what your editor does to and says about your manuscript. You
hired this person to help you. Afterward, John said he’d enjoyed the afternoon
and found it very helpful.




GLAWS is an interesting and useful organization. Here’s something from
their website:




          GLAWS excels in
many areas:


              
An ongoing education by successful authors and industry experts who present
relevant broad-based and genre-specific information at our monthly Special
Speaker Events,


              
Networking with other hundreds of other writers through our bi-annual parties,
social and special hospitality events.


              
Peer-to-peer Critique Groups to improve one's work,


              
Public Outreach and Bookfair Events for published and self-published GLAWS
members to expand their platform, visibly as an author, and sell books.

“the unpassioned beauty of a great machine”: A Recycled Essay about Recycling (a True Story)

Because we’re approaching Earth Day and every day I receive emails from
nonprofits concerned with the green movement and recycling asking me for
donations (which I often make), I decided to do a little recycling of my
own today. The following piece is from a book I began in about 1990. The
title was to be
Finding Beauty: Cultivating a Fuller Awareness of the Hidden Beauty in
the World Around Us. I wrote a bunch of essays, fairy tales and stories,
and poems, found quotes about beauty in Bartlett’s, secured permission
from the Oxford English Dictionary to quote their definition of beauty…and
then I showed it to my literary agent. She shook her head. “Too esoteric.
It’ll never sell.” After she retired, I took the manuscript to my second
literary agent. He submitted it to half a dozen small publishers. No dice.
Still too esoteric After he died, I showed it to my third literary agent.
“Wiccan it up,” she said. So I Wiccaned it up. She gave it a try. “All
the bookstores,” she reported back, “are gonna think it goes on the same
shelf with makeup advice. Wiccan it up some more.”




That’s when I gave up. (At least that was a good lesson for me about the
significance of titles. Beauty has many meanings.) I copied the whole thing
on a CD and stuck a one-inch pile of correspondence (e.g., “I love your
writing, but no thanks”) from publishers and my agents in a paper file.
I put the file in the cabinet and forgot about it except when I pulled
out some of the stories to be published in magazines.




And now I’m recycling a recycled essay about recycling. It’s a true story.




              
“the unpassioned beauty of a great machine”


                                                          
—Rupert Brooke




Because a cat is a digestive system that purrs and I live with two cats,
I collect empty cat food cans. I keep trying to recycle them, but everywhere
I go they’re rejected because they’re steel.Yesterday I took my cat food
can collection to a scrap yard next to the Riverside freeway. I’d never
been anywhere like it before. First, I was directed to drive my Toyota
up on the truck scale. (I learned that my car weighs 2,420 pounds. With
me in it. That’s good to know.) When the woman in the watchtower far above
my head—but face to face with the truck drivers she normally served—opened
her window and leaned out, I yelled up and explained about the bags of
cat food cans that filled the trunk of my car. She grinned, ducked back
in, then poked her head out again and said their minimum was twenty pounds.
I said I just wanted to recycle the cans. She said okay, they’d pay me
the minimum. Drive forward, she called down. Go through the chain link
gates and turn left.I soon found myself in line behind a stake truck carrying
two tall piles of stripped and flattened cars and in front of a Chevy pickup
loaded with six dead and doorless refrigerators. One of the drivers gave
me a companionable nod.




Forklifts and Bobcats chugged around the yard, weaving deftly among the
mountains of scrap metal—mutilated household appliances, vehicles and pieces
of vehicles, rebar, pipes, shelving and siding, contentless frames, monster
springs and ordinary bedsprings, coils of wire and rolls of mesh, unidentifiable
chunks knocked off of motors and machines. As I watched, two forklifts
and a Bobcat filed toward a distant corner of the lot, bearing their steel
and copper loads before them like the Three Kings. Trucks pulled in and
out, their drivers knowing exactly where and when to stop. Another forklift
came toward our line and picked up half the load off the truck in front
of me, eight flattened cars stacked like the proverbial pancakes. When
something that looked like a truncated metal highway cone got jammed in
the forklift’s right wheel, the man directing all this traffic whomped
at it with a wrench till it fell off and then the other Bobcat hopped over
to pluck it out of the path and carry it away. All this without a word
spoken, without even a lion tamer’s rod and whip to direct the growling
machines.




The cliché description of this activity might be to compare it to a ballet.
To my eyes the cliché is accurate. The forklifts and Bobcats spiraled around
each other with scant inches to spare, dancing from truck to scrap mountain
and back again with no wasted effort. The truck drivers, familiar with
the routine, awaited their turns and crossed deftly to their proper places,
turning eighteen-wheelers in spaces that I’d never essay in my Toyota.
The traffic directors gestured with a precision that even an innocent like
me could follow. The only random elements in this mechanistic universe
were me and my little Toyota.




Because it was so noisy, the wrangler spoke to me with his hands: pull
out of line, drive forward, stop over there, turn around, back up to the
base of that scrap heap, open your trunk. He had the courtesy not to laugh
when I lifted a dozen plastic garbage bags filled with cat food cans and
dropped them in the dirt, surely an insufficient sacrifice to Vulcan’s
smithy. Another gesture told me to drive back to the watchtower.




I stopped on another scale under another high window. I noticed that my
car still weighed 2,420 pounds. Another woman looked down and attached
a ticket to a clipboard welded to a chain on pulleys and lowered it to
me. Her directions likewise wafted down upon me: go to the front office.
At the front office window I picked up my cash for my cans. Twenty-five
cents.

In the cacophony of that scrap yard, even with all its filth and jagged
edges, there was order. There were grace and precision and purpose. A drill
corps comes to mind. Or a
Tofflerian Second Wave symphony orchestra in which all the bowing
is synchronized. Busby Berkeley might have choreographed the people and
machines in that yard, and I also found myself thinking of Charlie Chaplin
sliding through the gears of his 1936 movie,

Modern Times. In Italy and France before World War I a new artistic
movement arose. Called “futurism,” its aim was to depict the energy and
dynamism of modern life as symbolized by powerful new machines and sleek
new automobiles. Encouraged by
F.T. Marinetti, author of the
Futurist Manifesto, Umberto Buccioni and other artists generated
canvases so strong and busy they seem to move. That day in the balletic
recycling yard, I felt as if I might have been looking through the eyes
of those artists.

Beauty in machines? In this heartless, mechanistic age? How can we possibly
find any kind of beauty in smoke and exhaust and repetitive movement and
mindless labor? You’d be surprised at what you can find, and in the unlikeliest
places, too. I certainly didn’t expect to find anything even faintly beautiful
in a junk yard, but there it was. It is, of course, a matter of focus.




In 1976, I was fortunate enough to visit the Smithsonian Institution’s
exhibition of machinery from 1876. Those century-old machines were enormous.
Some of them were two stories tall, they filled enormous rooms, and they
were masterpieces of beauty. Their giant cylinders and pistons were of
shining metal. Although their wheels and cogs were arranged for peak efficiency,
they also showed me the harmony of design, for the parts came together
just so. And those machines still worked. Today, when a mobile device does
the work a room-size computer did a generation ago, those building-size
machines seem monstrous, clunky, out-of-date. But they still work.

Reader, find a machine or an engine. This can be the engine of your car,
the innards of your blender, a lawn mower, a garbage truck, an electric
drill, some obscure part of your computer. Size doesn’t matter. Does this
piece of equipment do its job? How are the components arranged or linked
together? How do they work together? Search the Web or your library to
find pictures, diagrams, and descriptions of machines and how they work.
If you’re fortunate enough to know an inventor or a scientist or a technician,
ask that person about design principles. Take another look at David Macaulay’s
books, of which my favorite is

The Way Things Work. Not only is the art beautifully done, but
as we read Macaulay’s books, we see the beauty of the precision, design,
and execution in every-day machines and systems we take for granted and
never really look at. Let us look at our machines and engines with fresh
eyes. Yes, there’s beauty there.

Finding Newer New Goddesses (and how I name them)

Although

Finding New Goddesses was published a decade ago, I started writing
it before the turn of the century. This was shortly after I read the truly
ovular (a feminist book cannot be “seminal”) book,

Found Goddesses: Asphalta to Viscera , by Morgan Grey and Julia
Penelope. Surely you remember the invocation to Asphalta:


          Hail, Asphalta,
full of grace:


          Help me find a
parking place.




Grey and Penelope invented the term “Found Goddesses.” In the introduction
to their book, they write that they know “something momentous when it happens
right under [their] noses. The concept of a modern parking goddess was
practical, immediate, and obvious. Why, after all, would Artemis or Demeter
wander so far from their ancient spheres of influence to materialize parking
spaces” (p. 1)? Their book is filled with puns. Never in my life have I
been able to resist a pun. So guess what? Punny goddesses started showing
up in my imagination. I was helpless before them. I started writing them
down. And still am.




Because I was working on a Y2K project in 1998–99, the first new goddesses
I Found (I capitalize this word in the
Mary Daly fashion to show its singular meaning) were the computer
goddesses. That was, of course, several computer generations ago. One of
my buddies on the project was Andy, who carried three-inch disks in his
pockets and taught me how to do email attachments. When I asked him one
day if he was a silicone-based life form, he said yes. I wish he’d taught
the project’s two engineers as much as he taught me. One day they decided
to give us a new server. They didn’t bother to do a test run.
Boom! Sixteen computers crashed. The project was down for two days.




Thanks partly to the Y2K project, the first computer goddesses I Found
were Compuquia and Nerdix. Compuquia is obviously the goddess of technological
nincompoops like me. I wrote Nerdix for my friend Sandra, a self-confessed
Mac addict who was forever installing and uninstalling and reinstalling
stuff. Our phone conversations sometimes turned into epic accounts of the
work she was doing on her computer. Today, alas, her health is declining,
so she leaves her motherboard alone.




Lately I’ve been thinking about newer new goddesses. My original computer
goddesses have names like the Queen of Disks, Mr. Floppy, the Silicon Man,
and Whizziwig (pronounced WYSIWYG), goddess of the Internet and the World
Wide Web, who is “the true Great Cosmic Mother, and Her domain is the High
AltaVista, where She tends the Great Green Fields of Baud, planting and
tending Her vast crops of kilobytes and gigabytes and coaxing each golden
url and pixel to bloom.” But I wonder if this is still funny to people
who may have never heard the acronym WYSIWYG and who sleep with their iPhones.
And who uses AltaVista anymore? It got Googled practically out of existence.
In those long-ago days, I also Found Dot Compost (who eats spam—you’ll
recognize a certain Pythonesque influence) and Linker Belle, the search
engine fairy. Those goddesses seem pretty old fashioned today. The goddesses
I’m Finding now must be their granddaughters.




Who’s marching around in my head these days? Henny-Penny, the Twittering
Goddess. Omnivoria, Goddess of Social Media. She’ll eat up all your time
and energy. Seamy, Goddess of Facebook. “See me!” she cries. “Pay attention
to me!” Rude’n’Stoopid, Evil Godmothers of People Who Don’t Turn Off Their
Mobile Devices in Theaters and Movies. Texticulotta, Goddess of Text Messaging.
I’m going to have to get a friend who actually texts, though, to help me
spell her messages right. Spl hr msgs rite?




Maybe you’d like to know a bit about my process. Don’t believe it for
a minute when I say they appear before me, fully formed and named, like
when Athena sprang out of Zeus’s head. I only say that for dramatic effect.
Writing is hard work. I edit myself (as I’m doing right now) more than
I do any of the authors who send me their work to edit.




I start when I spot something I want to satirize, like the so-called cyberuniverse
and modern computing devices. Next, I spend a few days running word associations
through my mind, often while I’m washing dishes or watching the Eyewitless
News…well, you know the equation: busy hands + idle brain = creativity.
As I’m falling asleep at night, I wander through literature and history.
But I have to be careful not to get too obscure. Not everyone is familiar
with, say,
Cymbeline or
The Magic Flute or
The Mikado, not to mention the English Wars of the Roses (which I’m
currently reading historical novels about) or details of the history of
musical theater. I need to be careful with allusions.

Fairy tales and pop culture are nearly always accessible. That’s where
I started when I was looking for a Twitter goddess. Tweety-Bird? Too obvious.
Though she might tweet
thot i saw a pssyct. How about bird sounds? Cluckie? Chirpie? Squawkie?
These are not only too obvious, but they’re also neither mellifluous nor
funny. Names of birds? Vultura? Crowetta? Little Sparrow? (Nope—I don’t
want to insult Edith Piaf.) I saw Henny-Penny in a newspaper headline the
day the meteor exploded over southern Russia: "Henny-Penny was right: the
sky was falling."

What I often do is find a word and then twist it into knots or add a feminine
ending, like Omnivoria, from “omnivore.” Or I work with pronunciation (Seamy)
and immediately write the line that opens up the pun and that the reader
can hear. That’s because puns are often oral, and even when we’re silently
reading, we hear a voice in our head reading out loud. (I tell my authors
to remember this when they’re writing dialogue.)




I play with spelling (Rude’n’Stoopid), too. It’s a means of emphasis.
The double O in “stoopid” is stupider than just stupid (get it?) and shows
my opinion of people who text during plays and movies. Then it occurred
to me that the ’n’ means there are two evil godmothers. Can you just see
them? Are they Disneyesque evil queens or are they dressed for success?




I’m not altogether sure how my brain dredged up Texticulotta. I was brushing
my teeth and “testicular” came into my head. Why? I dunno. But it was a
start. The words “testimony” and “testify” are cognates. (It’s said that
men used to hold their hand to those sacred body parts for the same reason
we lay a hand on the Bible.) But this is the goddess of texting, so “tes”
turned to “tex.” The “-lar” had to be magnified; we’re familiar with “–lotta,”
meaning “a lot of,” which is also the necessary feminine ending. And that
“ticu” bit in the middle might echo “tickle” and/or “tick you off.” See
how these things grow like amoebas? This goddess—like some people I know—texts
way too much. To add to her sins, she’s also verbizing nouns.




So there we have it, or at least a start. Now all I have to do is actually
write a paragraph or two about each of these newer new goddesses. Later!




P.S. Housekeeping report. I finally worked my way up to dusting my collection
of 346 witches (not counting me and the babe in the back seat of my car)
yesterday. At least the ones (plus the Blessed Bees) in the living room.
One Swiffer will handle about sixty-five dusty witches and tchotches. And,
contrary to the suggestion in the commercials, you still have to move things
to dust around them. I guess I need to invoke the
Queen of Clean, who occasionally works with Yuckrootie (a shadow goddess
of cleaning).

Select. Copy. Paste. Voilà!

A few days ago, I read a
Care2Causes blog by Kristina Chew about plagiarism. Chew opens her
blog by noting that Germany’s minister of education recently resigned and
was stripped of her Ph.D. because she had plagiarized her dissertation.
The second paragraph tells us that seventy students at Harvard were sent
home because they’d all cheated on a take-home exam. Their exams were identical
down to typos. “Everybody cheats,” Chew wrote, “not just because it’s just
too easy. We cut and paste because we’ve got the technology to do so. Courtesy
of Wikipedia and the Internet, there’s a seemingly endless amount of material
to draw on and so much that it’s easy to think, ‘how will someone every
[
sic.] find that I’ve taken words that were not my own from this obscure
site?’”




Back during the high renaissance, when I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation
on the persona of Cleopatra in the English plays about her (between 1592
and 1898), plagiarism took a lot more work. I was writing my dissertation
in 1975–76, and “consumer computers” were just being developed. I don’t
think I ever saw a computer on the campus at Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale, though I do remember the first computer at Southeast Missouri
State in Cape Girardeau, where I earned my M.A. That was in 1968. The computer
filled an entire, air conditioned room with elevated floors. Also
Wikipedia didn’t go online until 2001. Plagiarism was a lot harder
to commit back then. You couldn’t just select and copy and paste. If you
wanted to copy something, you had to key it in yourself, and I doubt that
anybody can type well enough not to make any errors. (See the sic I added
in the quote in the first paragraph.).




Since I was writing about plays published in the 17th and 18th centuries,
I spent a lot of time either with my head in a microfiche machine or reading
rolls of microfilm. The only copy I could find of one play,
The Play-House to be Lett (1663) by Sir William D’avenant (who claimed
to be Shakespeare’s godson, but wasn’t), had been microfiched from the
parchment copy. That means I could see both sides of each sheet at the
same time and I also had to wade through the Restoration spelling and typography
with those funny S’s that look like F’s. I typed my chapters on a portable
typewriter, and the final, approved, signed-off version was typed (by the
department secretary) on an IBM Selectric. I have one of the two bound
copies on my bookshelf. It sure would have been easier if I could have
found the eleven plays I studied online, but that wasn’t even remotely
possible.




Over the past decade-plus, I have edited quite a few works of academic
discourse. One of the first was a Ph.D. dissertation titled
That Which Stimulates and Numbs Us: The Museum in the Age of Trauma,
which the author describes as “a theoretical study that straddles the fields
of psychoanalysis, visual studies, museum studies, and post-Foucauldian
French philosophy.” It was fascinating! (And about half as long as my dissertation.)
Another early project was an incomprehensible master’s thesis by a school
psychologist. More recently, I’ve edited five Ph.D. theses by candidates
at Lancaster University in northern England. They, too, were interesting.
My challenges were to remember British punctuation and to help the Greek
and German candidates with more idiomatic English. I also edited a D. Min.
project (dissertation) by a Unitarian minister on the topic of cruelty
to animals. The day I edited the chapter about Chicken McNuggets, I went
outside for my walk and found a chicken walking down 4th St. in Long Beach.
I’d never seen or heard it before, never did again.




Very few of my authors plagiarize, although some of them try to include
lyrics from rock songs without getting written permission from the copyright
holder. Copyright law is exceedingly complex, but in general terms, you
can quote poetry or song lyrics if the author died more than seventy years
ago…unless his estate holds the copyright. Homer, the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare,
and Milton are pretty safe; popular songs require permission. When my authors
use lyrics, it’s not dishonesty but naiveté. Most of them don’t know until
I tell them.




How do I recognize possible plagiarism? The person’s writing style changes.
When someone who writes like he’s never read a book in his life suddenly
spouts postmodern litcrit jargon, my little Editor OCD bell starts ringing.
This happened in the early nineties when I was teaching at a for-profit
university (where students work all day and go to school one or two nights
a week). An insurance adjuster suddenly wrote a perfect literary essay.
Ding, ding, ding. I asked him about it. Did he want to add a footnote?
No, ma’am, he did not. I did a bit of research on my own, found his source,
and went to see the dean. The student tried to sue the school because I
was picking on him.




What is the solution to plagiarism? I think it’s simple—give credit where
credit is due. Cite your sources. Make footnotes. If you use a lot of an
author’s work, thank him or her in your acknowledgments. Don’t just do
a Google search for your topic, find something that looks interesting (but
may not be accurate), and steal it. If it’s good, summarize it. Quote one
or two sentences if they’re so good or telling you couldn’t say it as well
yourself, but cite the source for these sentences. Do your own work and
work hard so it’s something you’ll be proud of. Do not select, copy, and
paste.

Good Words, Bad Words--Which Do We Use?

A few weeks ago, a blogger I know explained why she hadn’t been posting
any blogs lately. She had a health challenge, she didn’t feel good, and
she didn’t want to write any grumpy blogs. I’m less kind than she is. I’m
writing a grumpy blog to start the new year. Abuse of the English language
makes me exceedingly grumpy. (This is a surprise?)




The January 1 edition of my local paper, the Long Beach
Press-Telegram, contained an article about Lake Superior State’s
38th list of words and phrases they’d like to banish from the English language.
At the top of the list was “fiscal cliff.” I didn’t keep count while I
was watching MSNBC or PBS or Eyewitless News, but I know that “fiscal cliff”
was a really hot topic that I got really tired of hearing about. Also on
Lake Superior State’s list are “double down,” “bucket list,” “trending,”
“superfood,” “boneless wings,” “spoiler alert,” and “guru.”

Another word the list wants to ban is “YOLO,” which I’d never seen before.
It means “you only live once,” which is probably not true. I accept the
idea of reincarnation and see our lives like grades in school with a little
time to rest between grades. Hopefully (yikes—here’s a usage that should
perhaps be banned; adverbs modify verbs and adjectives, but maybe not entire
sentences. But I like it.) as we come back to a new life we know a bit
more than we knew in the last life. Except for the Dalai Lama, of course,
there’s no way to verify reincarnation as a universal truth. One of my
authors says he was a movie director in the 1930s, which is why the style
of his novels is so cinematic. I don’t think he’s young enough to have
had a life in the Thirties, and, besides, he can’t identify any movies
he might have directed. But that’s beside the point. He writes good stories
about unforgettable characters. YOLO is of course one of those text-messagy
acronyms like OMG, LOL, and ROTF. Which are really abbreviations, the difference
between acronyms and abbreviations being that we pronounce acronyms as
words whereas we pronounce the letters in abbreviations. LOL of course
means “laughing out loud,” but my son told me a story yesterday about a
man who had written a very affectionate note to his daughter and signed
it LOL. The daughter asked if he was being sarcastic, and the father said,
“It means Lots Of Love, doesn’t it?” No, it doesn’t.

The list makers also don’t like “kick the can down the road,” which seems
to mean to procrastinate. I understand that most of the clichés and jargon
we use come from sports (“reach first base,” “hit it out of the park”),
but I’m not aware of any sport that kicks cans. When I hear someone say
“kick the can down the road,” what I see is Cher in
Moonstruck kicking the can in the road the morning after her night
at the opera.




Of course I have my own ever-growing list of words and phrases I’d like
to ban, and I’ve been known to tell my authors not to use this or that
word anymore. One author used various forms of the word “grab” so often,
I issued a
fatwah against the word in all its forms. I told another author he’d
used up his entire lifetime supply of his favorite word (which I have forgotten).
The words I’m weary of seeing are almost all business legal, and medical/psychological
jargon. Jargon is useful if you’re addressing people who already speak
that faux language. That’s because jargon is shorthand. It’s a substitute
for thought. When you use shared jargon, you know the people you’re addressing
know what you mean (and probably agree with you), and neither you nor your
reader or listener has to give the concept or the context any thought at
all. But what about people outside your specialized field? What about people
who have no idea what your jargon means? As I keep telling my authors,
we need to remember that our readers don’t live in our heads with us. I
also quote Stephen Sondheim, who said, “Clarity is everything.” He was
talking about his song lyrics, but it’s true for any writing or speaking
unless your intention is to be obscure and ambiguous. If you want to be
obscure or give the impression that you know things lesser people don’t,
well, yes, use jargon.




Here are a few of my banned words. “Skillset” (or “skill set”). “Out there.”
I edit books by authors who write that there are people “out there” who
do or know something. Out where? Outside their area of specialization?
At large in the world? In outer space? Another one is “clearly.” But what
is clear to me may not be clear to you. “Literally” is sometimes used for
emphasis. One of my authors, a college teacher, wrote that he “literally
bombed” the students in his class with questions. “Were there body parts
all over the classroom?” I asked him. “Blood all over the floor?” He got
it and dropped the “literally.” Well, no, he didn’t literally drop the
word. (Would it bounce if dropped?)




I often tell my authors to be careful with figurative language because
it can add unintentional humor. Even though I know it’s impossible to do,
I would also like to ban mixed metaphors. Here’s my current favorite example,
spoken on a Sunday morning news show by a very intelligent broadcaster.
“What I don’t understand about trial balloons is just pull the trigger….”
What this seems to say is that a balloon has a trigger. I’m pretty sure
that’s not what she meant.

Another usage that makes me crazy is “processes” pronounced “processEEZ.”
So-called expert businesspeople use this on TV all the time. Where did
this wretched usage originate? When we’re talking about taking more than
one class, we don’t say “classEEZ.” When we visit the optometrist, do we
look at new “glassEEZ”? “ProcessEEZ” is stupid. But I once heard something
worse. An marketing expert was being interviewed on TV. She was talking
about crisis management. And she said “crisisEEZ.” Three syllables. Where
did she go to school??

Thanks to borrowings from every other language on the planet, the English
language has a vocabulary that’s bigger than any other language. That doesn’t
mean we can’t invent new words. I invent them, too. Did you notice that
“text-messagy” up in the third paragraph? I also sometimes accuse people
of “complexifying” an issue, which means to purposefully make it lots more
complex than it already is. And I once called someone a “theologizer,”
which I did not mean as a compliment. I guess I should apologize.




I’ll close with a true story. I once belonged to Toastmasters, Intl.,
a splendid organization. At each meeting, one member is chosen to serve
as grammarian. The grammarian introduces a new word, which the members
use in their talks. It’s a good way to build your vocabulary. Unless you
ask me to be grammarian. At one meeting, I gave the club a new word: “unwidgeonable.”
I even defined it. (Don’t ask. I don’t remember.) Everyone used “unwidgeonable”
at least once during the meeting. Then, as the president was about to end
the meeting, my buddy George spoke up. “The doctor fooled you all,” he
said. “She made up that word.” They never asked me to be grammarian again.

A Midwinter Ritual

Midwinter, or the winter solstice (December 21), is the shortest day and
longest night of the year. I like to think of Yule, an old pagan name for
the solstice season, as a time when we get to take a nice, long, peaceful
nap between all those holiday parties. For this ritual, you need two candles
(silver and gold), a blanket, and a small gift for yourself.




Did you know that Santa Claus is a shaman? He wears red and white and
black, the three sacred colors of the ancient triple goddess, and he’s
fat because he’s well-fed. (A traditional shaman once told me never to
trust a skinny shaman; if his people don’t provide for him, he’s not doing
his job.) Santa flies from the frozen north, where the Saami (or Lapp)
shamans still wield their full traditional powers. He’s drawn through the
air by magical reindeer whose antlers symbolize the surging force of life.
The Christmas tree is the world pole. From Mongolia to the American Southwest,
shamans customarily ascend the world pole to make their astral journeys.
Santa knows everything, especially if we’ve been good or bad, and like
karma itself, he brings us our just desserts. His gifts are the gifts of
the spirit made material. His attendants, the toy-making elves, are the
Old Ones who help the deserving and play tricks on the undeserving. Santa
is not a god, but let’s honor him along with the solar gods and goddesses
in our midwinter ritual.




Because this ritual is about rest and revival as the light is reborn,
you need a blanket or quilt, preferably one that’s handmade and full of
snuggly memories. You also need a small gift to yourself, something you
really want. This is your gift from the goddess Ops, consort of the elder
god Saturn, who was the god of agriculture during humankind’s golden age
and is both Father Time and the Grim Reaper. The week-long Saturnalia of
ancient Rome was named for him. His consort is Ops (her day is December
19), from whom we get our word “opulence.” Your gift can be a crystal or
a book or any small thing you really want.




Light your silver candle and set it somewhere safe, then sit on your cozy
blanket and invite the elemental powers of fire, water, air, and earth
into your space. Invite Santa and the Christmas tree angel, too. Ask them
to take the same places the guardian angels take around Hansel and Gretel
in Humperdinck’s opera—at your head and feet, right and left hands, above
you and below you.




Frau Holle is the German goddess of winter. When snow is falling, we can
see that she’s shaking out her sheets and tablecloths. As I see her, she
looks a bit like Cinderella’s godmother in the Disney movie. Invoke Frau
Holle with these words:




          Frau Holle, Grandmother
of All,


          it’s winter, and
I am cold.


          Frau Holle, Grandmother
of All,


          it’s dark, and
I am frightened.


          Frau Holle, Grandmother
of All,


          it’s the nighttime
of the year, and I am weary.


          Frau Holle, Grandmother
of All,


          take me in your
arms—


          hold me, rock me,
cradle me,


          and watch over
me while I sleep.




Wrap yourself up in your blanket, or at least wrap it around your shoulders.
Imagine Frau Holle coming to tuck you in for the night. Let her sing you
a lullaby—the aria from
Hansel and Gretel, “All Through the Night,” Brahms’ “Lullaby,” “Mockingbird,”
or any other lullaby you love. When the kind goddess has finished singing
to you, she sits in her old rocking chair nearby and takes out her eternal
knitting, which becomes the blanket of snow that covers the land.




Now in your imagination you get to be an animal. Become a bear in your
burrow. You’ve eaten enough holiday meals to sustain yourself through the
winter, and now you get to take a nap. First make sure your candle is safe,
then take your midwinter nap. If you actually fall asleep, that’s all right.
Sleep peacefully through the longest night of the year. Imagine Santa Shaman
visiting you and bringing your gift. Have a brief dream conversation with
him if you want to.




When you wake up, make animal noises. Yawn and stretch. Winter’s over!
The sun has been reborn! Untangle yourself from your blanket and crawl
out of your burrow. Light your gold candle and greet the newborn sun with
these words:




          Hail, Golden Saule,
Beautiful Hathor,


          Mighty Apollo,
Gentle Jesus—


          Morning greetings,
solar gods and goddesses.


          Hail, climbing
power of the rising sun,


          fiery dawn and
newborn day,


          illumination and
warming joy.


          Night is done,
midwinter has passed, and I rejoice!


          Welcome, rising
sun!




Give thanks to Frau Holle for watching over you during the night. Say
thank you to Santa Shaman for the gift he brought you. Thank Goddess Ops
for all the precious and small gifts you know you’ll be receiving all year
long. Sing a Christmas carol, and then begin your new day.




          Joy to the world,


          The light is born.


          Let earth begin
to sing.


          Let every heart


          Rejoice in the
light.


          And heaven and
nature sing,


          And heaven and
nature sing,


          And heaven and
earth and nature sing!




During Yuletide and all the winter holidays, share your joy with your
family and friends.




[Note: I’ve just adapted this from a longer ritual I wrote in 1990 for
my second book,
A Woman’s Book of Rituals and Celebrations. Recycling is a good thing.]