"My little horse must think it [strange] / To stop without a farmhouse [within range]"

For those not in Boston, there's a Globe columnist that is sort of indomitable.  The other day he weighed in the controversy surrounding an editor's decision to not use "the n-word" in a new edition of Huckleberry Finn. Beam takes the situation to other such words, including "Queer" — read on to see what he does.BEAM:

"Queer,'' "on Queer Street'' and to be "queer for'' have interesting etymologies. The latter phrase, now used only ironically, once meant "attracted to.'' One of the characters in "Giovanni's Room,'' James Baldwin's 1956 novel about gay life in Paris, says: "Actually, I'm sort of queer for girls myself.'' But who needs ambiguity? Let's pack the offending adjective off to the discard pile, with all those other terrible words.

Herewith a couplet from Robert Frost's lovely poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,'' appropriately bowdlerized for modern ears:

My little horse must think it [strange] To stop without a farmhouse [within range]

Not pretty, but it will have to do