Tom Glenn's Blog, page 33

Foreign Languages

In the recent hullabaloo over all the awards I’ve received, commentators and interviewers have marveled over the fact that I have spoken and worked in seven languages. Their wonder reflects the ignorance and arrogance of us Americans. We are the most powerful nation in the world and expect all others to speak out language. We consider the study of a foreign language extremely challenging and admire those willing to take on such a difficult task.

As a child, I was unaware of the American bias and taught myself French and Italian. I had already learned, due to negligent parents, to be self-reliant: if I wanted something, I had to get it myself—no one was going to do it for me. Foreign languages fascinated me. So I set out to learn the two that I found most beautiful.

It turns out that I have an inborn talent for languages. And I thoroughly enjoy them. That I find learning a language fun puts me at odds with most Americans but very much in sync with the rest of the world’s citizens. In almost every other country in the world, people speak multiple languages, and learning new languages is standard for everybody.

So here I am, now an old man, with a history of having spoken French, Italian, Spanish, German, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Latin—the latter of which I learned to read, not speak. Far and away the most intriguing were the two Asian languages, Vietnamese and Chinese (Mandarin). They both showed me an entirely different way of thinking about language. They both lack anything like western grammar—they have no parts of speech, declensions, or conjugations. Meaning is dependent on word order and context.

More next time.

Style Manuals

As a writer, I learned long ago that a text I was submitting for publication had to meet the editing rules of the publisher or it wouldn’t even get read. That meant I had to know what those rules were. I discovered early on that there were two sets of rules for published texts, one for literary writing (i.e., fiction and essays) and one for news articles or periodical texts (i.e., journalism). And there are “bibles” for each style.

The final authority for the literary style is The Chicago Manual of Style: Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers (University of Chicago Press). This weighty tome is reissued regularly. The version is I have is the fifteenth edition dated 2003, the latest of several I’ve owned and worn out over my long writing career.

The bible for journalistic writing is The Associated Press Stylebook (Associated Press). The edition I’m currently using was published in 2020.

The differences between the two styles are so small that few readers would even notice them. One is displayed on the book jacket of the Chicago Manual. It is the use of a comma before the word “and” in a series; in the journalistic style, the comma is omitted. Another is spacing before and after an em dash (that is, —). In the literary style, there are no spaces—it’s written like this. In journalism, a space is added both before and after the dash — so that it looks like this.

All that said, publishers are picky to the point of being ruthless in insisting that manuscripts submitted to them adhere to the editing and formatting rules they employ. It used to be (and presumably still is—I haven’t submitted anything new for publication in more than five years) that they would reject out of hand, and without reading, texts written according to the wrong rules.

So all you would-be authors out there, beware. Before you submit a piece to a publisher, find out what his style preferences are and revise your manuscript accordingly. Otherwise, you’re probably wasting your time.

Vegetation and Foliage

I have no data that show a recent increase of precipitation in Columbia, Maryland, where I live, but the thickness of vegetation and foliage is greater than I ever remember. The ground between my house and pond behind (to the north of) my house, roughly twenty feet, is now so thick with plants that I have trouble walking through it. The profuse forest of trees around the pond is denser than I ever remember it being. The trees and bushes along the walks in front of and to the sides of my house are thicker than they have ever been, meaning I need to get out and trim them back so that they don’t block the way.

The richness of green around me heightens the sense that I live in a forest. The deck on the back of my house now gets almost no sunshine due to the thickness of the leaves in the trees surrounding it. I revel in the sense that I am one with nature.

The downside of all this beauty will come in the autumn and winter when the foliage will become dead leaves on the ground. Clearing the walkways will be a challenge. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. But never before at this intensity.

Bolster up. Tough times ahead.

Pet Peeves (3)

Last thoughts on my greatest pet peeve: We as a people have so far been unwilling to give up our guns. Until we do, some 40,000 of us will be shot to death each year. Isn’t it time to change?

Lest the readers misunderstand the point I’m trying to make in listing my pet peeves: the U.S. has many problems it can solve, but significant portions of the population (mostly well-to-do Republicans) are using a variety of tools to stop us. In 2021, for example, more than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access were introduced in 49 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The efforts have continued in 2022. The majority, that is, we Democrats, need to quit bickering and unite to get things done. My best guess is that the Democrats will win big in the 2022 election, mainly because the Republicans, led by Trump, have shown themselves to be villains opposed to democracy.

All that said, the U.S. is still the greatest nation in history. We have achieved more and improved our citizens’ lives far beyond any other nation. That we suffer imperfections is no surprise. Now is the time to work toward a more perfect union and correct our mistakes.

The list of things that bother me about the greatest nation in the history of the earth goes on and on. But these are the troubles that stress me the most, largely because it would be so easy to change them.

So easy. Why don’t we start?

Pet Peeves (2)

Now to my biggest peeve: Pre-eminent among our catastrophic failures to assure healthy living for our citizens is our unwillingness to limit the number of guns in the hands of our citizens. We have more than 120 guns for every hundred people. The result is that we have the highest rate of annual gun deaths of any modern democracy in the world. So far this year, we have killed more than 23,000 with guns, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Gunfire is now the leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the U.S. Twenty-seven school shootings have taken place so far this year. Overall, an average of more than 124 people die every day in acts of gun violence.

The places now permanently associated with gun deaths—Uvalde, Buffalo, Highland Park, among many others—will remain infamous in our history. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the Highland Park rampage was the fifteenth time this year that four or more people were killed in a shooting. And more than 220 were shot and killed in the U.S. over the recent July 4 holiday weekend. Yet mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people die, account for less than 1 percent of people killed by firearms in the U.S.

Throughout the nations of the world, the ratio between the number of guns in the hands of people and the number killed by gunfire is the same—the more guns, the more people killed by gunfire. The only way to reduce gun deaths is to reduce the number of weapons in the hands of the people.

My guess is that I’m more sensitive to gun violence than most Americans because of time I spent in combat close to men killed on the battlefield. I know firsthand the horror of people dying from gunfire. It’s the cause of my being afflicted with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). When I read of the people killed during a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, I flinched. That day I marched in a parade. It could so easily have been me.

More next time

Pet Peeves

I’ve spent a good deal of time in this blog talking about things I don’t like. A reader asked if I can summarize my aversions. I can’t, but I can list them.

Almost all my dislikes are focused on facets of life influenced by government. One bunch is made up of governmental functions that distort the will of the people. I oppose the filibuster because it stops the political majority from carrying out the will of the people by empowering the minority to prevent a measure from becoming law. I’m against the electoral college for essentially the same reason: it allows the minority to defeat the majority of voters in choosing our president. Voting suppression also permits the minority to stop majority voters from casting their ballots.

A second category is governmental regulation that protects the wealthy minority while reducing the income of the middle class and the poor. Heading the list is the totally inadequate minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. We should at least double it to reduce the number of people, especially children, living in poverty.

In the same category is our failure to increase social security, resulting in many seniors barely able to get by. Here are the figures: Approximately 11.1 percent of Americans aged 80 and older live in poverty. The poverty rate is 9.2 percent for those aged 75-79, 7.4 percent among those aged 70-74, and 8.4 percent among those aged 65-69. Women aged 80 and older had the highest poverty rate among older women and men in all age groups at 13.6 percent.

More next time.

Top 100 Registry Award

I recently informed my readers that I have received a series of awards. I was named as a luminary by Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who Worldwide and as Professional of the Year and as Top Artist—all for my books. I’ve just gotten word that an organization called the Top 100 Registry has given me an award citing me for “career achievement and exemplary leadership.”

Once again, I am humbled.

Inequity

I’ve written in this blog before about the unfair distribution of income in the U.S. The disparity between the very rich and the rest of us has continued to grow over the decades. By 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of U.S. wealth. The bottom 50 percent (roughly sixty-three million families) owned about 2.5 percent of wealth. The richest 0.1 percent take in 196 times as much as bottom 90 percent. As a result, income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 nations, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Why don’t legislators in the greatest democracy in the world pass laws to move toward more equitable income distribution? Robert Reich’s column yesterday pointed out that because legislators from both the Democratic and the Republican parties depend on contributions from the wealthy to carry out their political campaigns and get voted into office, law makers from both parties have largely supported legislation that favors the wealthy. Put differently, the well-to-do are able to buy laws that support them.

It’s long past time that President Biden and the Democrats in Congress took steps to favor the poor and middle-class majority over the rich minority. That means all of us in the majority have to pressure our representative to level the balance.

If you haven’t already written to the people elected to serve you, now’s the time.

Cryptologist

Among the professions I’m credited with is cryptologist. A reader asks, what in the world is a cryptologist. The Cambridge Dictionary defines cryptologist as “an expert in the study of codes.” Another source on the internet (not identified) explains that “Cryptologists analyze and interpret data and data patterns to decipher and generate encoded signals.”

I’m not satisfied with either of those definitions because they fail to distinguish between cipher and code. Cipher is a method for transforming plaintext into an unintelligible series of characters, usually digits. Code is the substitution of a plaintext value with letters or digits so as to hide the meaning of the text. Cipher usually employs a mathematical system whereas code is simple replacement.

Cipher is often more secure—that is, less susceptible to breaking—than code. Sometimes a cryptosystem will first encode a text, then encipher the code. That adds security. An encoded text enciphered using a one-time pad, constantly changing and never repeating digital keys, is unbreakable.

As an employee at the National Security Agency (NSA), I was professionalized (that is, subjected to rigorous standards of performance, knowledge, and experience and affirmed as proficient) in multiple disciplines including foreign languages (seven), traffic analysis (study of the externals of intercepted signals), cryptanalysis (the breaking of codes and ciphers), and intelligence analysis. Only when professionalized in multiple disciplines could one be honored with the title of cryptologist. I was thus honored.

To this day, I am humbled by the title.

Impassioned

Some days ago, I wrote about boredom. What I failed to explain is that I am the opposite of bored: I’m impassioned.

According to Merriam-Webster, that means I’m filled with passion or zeal, showing great warmth or intensity of feeling. I plead guilty. That really does describe me. But because I’m also an introvert, I rarely put my feelings on display to others. I keep my emotions to myself.

But the Fourth of July brought my emotions to the fore. On that day I participated in a parade representing my American Legion post. Tears came into my eyes as I sang the national anthem. They returned when I recited the pledge of allegiance.

Then a friend sent me a video of the Texas Tenors singing “God Bless the USA.” By the time the singers were into the second line of the lyrics, I was silently bawling. That song, sung in this version with such passion, captured the feelings that led me to risk my life on the battlefield for the good of my country. I really do love my country. I only stopped serving in combat because I was getting too old to be surefooted.

The three U.S. holidays that move me most deeply are Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day. Those three capture my deepest feelings—of mourning the deaths of those who served beside me, of my love for my country, and of my love for the men who served beside me in combat. Considering the objects of my feelings, undergoing anything less than a deep passion would make me trivial.

So I take pride in my passion. Long live patriots.