Scattershot

The times, they aren't always a changin'

My ancestors on my dad's side of the family—Germans from Russa—came to Colorado in the early 1900s to work in the sugar beet fields near a tiny Colorado town called Sugar City. I often think about them when I read about suspicion, prejudice, and anger toward immigrants today. It's nothing new, of course. 

I have a copy of a letter from 1918, sent by the pastor of the German Lutheran St. Paul's Church of Sugar City to the governor of Colorado. The pastor was worried because "On last Friday demand was made upon us by a number of citizens of our hiterto peaceful town to discontinue all use of the German language, not only in the parochial school and Sunday-school, but also in our church services, giving us the alternative of complying with the demand or having our church property burned down."

Use English or we'll burn your church down? Anti-German sentiment during World War I was prevalent, but—as the pastor points out in his letter—the members of his church had "bought bonds, war savings stamps, given toward the Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., Soldiers and Sailors Aid etc; in short they have proven themselves loyal citizens of our government." However, most of these new farmer immigrants did not speak English. When were they going to study English? Farming is very hard work with long hours, and it was even harder in those days.

Whenever I hear people angrily say, "Learn English!", I wonder if they know how hard it is to become fluent in a new language, especially as an adult. I wonder how many of their own ancestors struggled with or never learned English. I know my grandparents did not speak English (though we suspect they understood a lot more than they let on). I imagine they were just a teensy bit busy, running a farm and raising 10 children. Those 10 children, like the children of most immigrants, did become English speakers. 

In his letter, the Sugar City pastor asks the governor for advice, pointing out that conducting services in English would be the same as depriving his church members "of all services." He points out that "under the constitution of our country, we have the right of free exercise of our religion." He suggests that a word from the governor could help "quiet the sentiments and relieve tension."

What happened? The typed letter has a note scrawled on it, saying "Please make a copy" and "Should handle personally." Did the governor do anything? I don't know. The war ended just a couple of months later, so perhaps the issue resolved itself.

Yes, it would be nice if everyone could learn a new language at the drop of a hat. It would also be nice if we all could remember that immigrants do learn English, but it may take a generation.

 

 

Words with Friends

A couple of nights ago, some friends and I were talking about how much fun it is to play "Words with Friends" (a form of Scrabble) on our smart phones. One remarked that friends she hadn't seen in years had found her through Facebook. "I feel so much closer to them," she said. "I think about them whenever I play a word."

I might have thought that was a crazy thing to say, except that I'd said something similar only the week before. My sister and I have been playing, and I said to my husband one day, "It's weird, but I feel so much closer to her because of this game."

How is it that I can I feel closer to someone several states away, someone I'm competing with via random words placed on a digital screen? Maybe it's because I know her so well that I can imagine her complaining when I submit a word with a "Q" on a triple word score space, and I can imagine her giggling with glee when she sends me words made in two directions with a triple letter "Z." I can imagine her moaning and groaning when she draws all vowels and yelling at her husband in frustration when I win. And when she skunks me, I can imagine her grabbing her little dog Dixie, dancing around the kitchen, and chanting "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I beat your Aunt Cheri!!!!!"  

Yes, we do indeed live in strange times.

 

Laughing and crying

Many years ago my sister and I were getting in my car to leave after a visit to my parents on the family farm. We had been carrying on, making our mother laugh. We loved how we could always crack her up, making her double over with laughter, unable to speak. That day, we continued our silliness as she stood at the door laughing. Suddenly, she choked out something about hating to have us go, and her laughter turned to tears. Ours did, too.

Today, I picture Mom standing at the door waving, smiling, laughing, and crying as we drove away. For some reason, that image of her is one I hold close to my heart.

She died on this day eight years ago, and I miss her still. I will always miss her—her laughter, her tears, her love.

Man and dog

Last week my husband and a friend and I walked over to a neighborhood Mexican restaurant, passing a Laundromat on the way. Inside was a man in his late thirties or early forties—strong, outdoorsy, handsome—doing his laundry in the company of a tiny Shih-Tzu.

My friend loves Shih-Tzus, so we wound up talking to the man and petting the dog. But after we left, I was soon off on one of my “What is wrong with this picture?” tangents. A big, masculine man like that didn’t seem the type to own a tiny, fluffy dog. Odd. He should have had a lab, a golden retriever, a border collie, not a little “keep it in your purse” kind of dog.

And what was he doing at a Laundromat? He looked like a guy who would have a cool apartment somewhere with leather furniture and a stainless steel washer/dryer set, or a wife and 2.2 kids in a ranch house in the suburbs with its own utility room. Was he maybe on vacation? In the throes of a divorce? Did his wife know he had the dog? Was it really her dog? 

Maybe their washer and dryer was broken, and he was a good guy—hauling off all the laundry to wash and fold on his own, out of the goodness of his heart. No….that didn’t seem right somehow. Something was off.

My friend just laughed and said, “You are always making up stories. I think that shows you really are a writer.”

My husband, on the other hand, shook his head, sighed, and said (with more enthusiasm than was really necessary) something along the lines of, “We’re here! Bring on those margaritas!” I guess he’s kind of used to my musings.

But, really, I don’t think that man belonged with that dog in that Laundromat.

 

Hair and other distractions

The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop proofreading a manuscript, and I glanced up as a man of around 70 sat down at a table near me. "Hmmm. He's certainly a good-looking older man," I thought. (It doesn't take much to distract me from proofreading.)

Then I looked again. Was this man actually good-looking, or did I just think so because he had more hair than most men his age? I re-evaluated.

No, he was a pretty average-looking guy. It was his hair—the abundance of it—that made him seem more attractive than he was.

I started thinking about hair and famous men with hair. Could it be that hair contributes to their success, making them seem not only better looking but also more powerful? Could Ronald Reagan have been elected president if he'd been bald? How about Bill Clinton? JFK? Could Mitt Romney have survived thus far in the presidential race, despite the charges of flip-flopping, if he didn't have all that perfect hair?

I wondered. And then I thought of that Bible story about Samson. Something about hair...what was it? I turned to my new iPhone and googled "Samson and hair."  Oh, my. The story is certainly a lot gorier and more involved than I remember from Sunday school. But, yes. Hair is definitely pretty darned important to the story.

I looked down at my manuscript. I had allowed hair to distract me from my purpose.

To be honest, though, just about anything can distract me from my purpose in a coffee shop. A pretty alpaca scarf around someone's neck. A paperback novel sticking out of a back pocket. (Can I manage to read the title?) A child's blue eyes. The smell of vanilla. A song playing in the background. (Who ever decided that "Come On, Baby, Light My Fire," played by strings, was a good idea?) Suddenly realizing, for no good reason at all, that I've forgotten what "antebellum" means and looking it up. Wondering about all the little life challenges faced by the lady in line who won't order the chai tea unless they can prove to her that the milk they use in it is organic.

I should probably consider doing my proofreading in a closet somewhere. A small one. Plain. White walls. No sound. No people. Definitely, no people.

 

 

Cranky language stuff

As I have mentioned before, I have accepted the fact that it is impossible to go into a store today and not hear the annoying phrase "these ones." I recognize that the phrase is becoming firmly entrenched in our language, and I'm trying hard to adjust.

That's why I was taking mental deep breaths the other day as I looked for glove liners, and the sales person pointed out "these ones here" and "these ones here" and "these ones here." I did not blurt, "These! you mean these, not these ones!"

I was congratulating myself on my self control when I heard, across the aisle, a mother trying to get her child to decide between snow boots. "Do you like these ones or these ones?" she said. "Or do you like these ones better?"

And then something else the mother said caught my attention: "Come on. Do you want these or no?"

Hmmm. "Do you want these or no?" instead of "Do you want these or not?" I realized then that I'd heard that construction several times recently. I speculated that it might come from mashing "yes or no" with "want it or not" and coming up with "want it or no."

I heard the "or no" phrase a number of times over the course of the next few days. More turkey, or no? Is it going to snow, or no? Should we add more onions, or no?

Now I'm curious. Is this a new language trend, or has it been around forever and I'm just now getting around to noticing it? I'd like to hear from you: Is it new, or no?

Moose names

Someone once told me that we should never name an animal or an object. Instead, we should try to figure out what the name already is.

I find that notion intriguing. Are some things easy to name only because we’ve simply hit upon the name that already belongs to them in some cosmic sense?

Yesterday, for example, my husband and I were skiing, and suddenly he stopped, put his fingers to his lips in a “shhhhh” gesture, and motioned me to come forward quietly. There, on the other side of the small bowl, were two gigantic moose. Their racks were enormous and shiny, as if they had been polished. They actually gleamed in the sunshine. It was an awesome sight—awesome in the traditional, not slangy, sense of the word.

On the way home, I started calling the moose Felipe and Myron. I didn’t have to think about it. It just seems that their names are Felipe and Myron.

Some things are easy to name, and some are not. Maybe the easy ones are simply a discovery, not a naming. I drove Vivian Volkswagen for years, and it seems that her name was Vivian from the moment I got her. My follow-up car, though, a nondescript used Oldsmobile Firenza, resisted every attempt to name her. It seems that she just didn’t have the personality for it. But then I mentioned my new car to an acquaintance, and he said, “Oh, the PTA mom’s car out there? That’s yours?” Forevermore, she became “The PTA Mom’s Car.”

I grew up on a farm with many dogs, and one of them was always called “The Dog.” We tried to call him by his name, “George,” but it never stuck. He was always “The Dog.” Maybe the problem was that “George” wasn’t really his name.  Maybe he was really, at heart, a “Charlie” or a “Spike” and we just didn’t know it.

Now I’m wondering about my Subaru. I’ve been calling it “The Subaru”—such a cold thing to call such a friendly car with such wonderful heated seats. I suspect that it’s giving me hints as to its identity, and I just need to pay more attention. Someday it will let me know its name.

 

Too much of a good thing

Grammar rules can drive a person crazy. By "a person," I mean me. I'm going a bit crazy.

A company has hired me to write grammar lessons on a variety of specific topics. As I review all the material I can find on each topic, digest it, and then try to turn it into interesting, clear lessons, I find myself thinking of rules, rules, rules all the time. I usually write first drafts fairly easily, but now my fingers are hesitating over certain pronouns, certain verbs, certain constructions. "Wait. Am I doing this correctly?" I'll wonder. Everything I write is now suspect. I find myself examining rules I internalized years ago and wondering if I've somehow got them wrong.

For example, I just used the word "got." Should it have been "gotten"? And didn't a teacher once tell me I should avoid the word "got" altogether? And what about the "and" I've just used to begin the last two sentences? Should I remove the "ands" because some sticklers object to starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions? Such self-scrutiny can be paralyzing.

It makes me wonder how kids must feel when they are bombarded with grammar rules at the same time that they are taking tentative steps toward learning to express themselves well on paper. Too much grammar too soon can be paralyzing and counterproductive.

That's why I'm trying to make the grammar materials I write as friendly as possible. I definitely don't want young writers to freeze up the way I have been.

Trendy words

Have you noticed that no one "makes progress" or "goes ahead" anymore? It seems to be an unwritten rule now that you can only "move forward." I see and hear the phrase everywhere.

I've been conducting my own informal experiment: Is it possible to get through a day without hearing or reading "move forward"? It appears not.

My radio listening is pretty much limited to National Public Radio, but I'm starting to suspect that anyone who appears on the show must be required to say "move forward" at least once. ("Go forward" is encouraged, too.) One day this week, I turned on the radio and heard "move forward" within five minutes. The next day, soon after I flipped on the car radio, I heard "move on" three times in less than three minutes. The next day, I heard "move on" less than ten seconds after tuning into NPR.

Television is not immune. News programs are full of "move forwards," and I even heard the term in a commercial a couple of days ago. I also receive email messages that urge me to donate money so that research or a campaign can move forward.

I'm fascinated by trendy terms like this. Why, really, do they catch on? What mysterious force pulls certain words out of the vast sea of possible phrases and makes them somehow fashionable? It's a mystery to me.

Fuzzy talk

On a flight a couple of weeks ago, the flight attendant welcomed all the people on their way to what I'll call a "Glarfar" conference. (I don't remember the name.) My seat mate was one of them, so I asked, "So what does Glarfar do?"

He answered with something close to this: "Oh, we optimize growth and opportunity and transcend affordability systems on a personal and regional basis."

Oh.

Of course, I still didn't know what Glarfar does. I could have questioned him further, but it's been my experience that doing so all too often leads to what turns out to be an Amway sales pitch. So I just nodded.

I hate words that seem to say something but really don't. Right after the trip, I went to the theater and was reading a history of the musical Hair in the show program. This sentence jumped out at me: "It's still a show with a message, and the message still obtains." Huh? Obtains what? The words make no sense.

But perhaps I just need to know more optimizing growth and opportunity. Maybe then I'd be able to transcend affordability and overcome my irritation, obtaining clarity on a personal basis. Glarfar, here I come.