The ‘F-bomb’ goes big time

Not that you will ever see it dropped in this space, but the F-bomb has entered the language mainstream.    It is now a defined term although the full spelling is still some years away from acceptance and regular use in polite print media.

That it makes it in the abridged version is a commentary on the state of civil discourse.  In some ways, I’d rather see/hear it than the much more vile tone of this season’s political discourse.  Forgive me, but I have stooped to a couple of F-bombs uttered aloud (and a few WTFs too) over my morning coffee as I read what passes for facts these days.  Both sides fudge, but the award for the most consistently skewed effort goes to the Karl Rove-inspired 25-years-in-the-making attack at any cost right side.  For crying out loud, if your veep choice can’t (or at worst, won’t) get his facts straight on any number of economic and environmental issues, well, my WTFs have some merit.

On a softer side, and after being pilloried for holding Emma like a football, Reid recently displayed a deft touch with his niece.  Nice job, kid.

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The U.S. Postal Service delivered this letter to Ellen and Reid last week.

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August 27, 2012

Ellen/Reid: Once again, I cannot close the deal on the golf course.  A hopeful opening nine of 39 followed by a fingernails-on-blackboard 45 on the inward 9.  It is just so totally deflating.  There is no one single problem; there are lots of problems.  Since I distain practice, perhaps 84 is the best that can be hoped for.  But the ‘what if…’ mode of thinking keeps creeping into the picture.  I hope Emma never picks up the game.  No, it would be fine if she did.  Gramps will need someone to play with since I will have scared off all the others by then.

I’m on board to teach another college class in mid-September.  I fumble a bit with the class on blogging but this time it’s on straight news/content writing which will be a little closer to my skill sets.  So far the enrollment is a bit spotty but folks tend to sign up at the last minute so we’ll see.  As long as the college will continue to have me, I’ll teach.  Ellen, I could use some of your classroom organizational prowess.

The ‘F-bomb’ has made it into the lexicon.  Merriam-Webster’s dictionary has added it to the list of dictionary-able terms.  Never thought I’d live to see the day.  You can expect that any day now Fox News will begin to use it to attract a hipper, yet still news-dense, audience.  I sent a note to Norm Goldstein, late of the AP Stylebook, about this unfortunate incident but he hasn’t said anything as of yet.  We continue to lower our language civility threshold one bad word at a time, although I must confess I am a shameless abuser.  Hope my glass house can withstand all the tossed stones.

About the time you get this, Hurricane Isaac, or tropical storm Isaac by the time it gets here, will be dumping a lot of water on the Southeast.  We need the rain but not quite as badly as you guys need it in the Midwest.  There have been a ton of photos that show stunted, runty and kernel-less corn cobs in your neck of the woods.  I’m afraid it is a feast-or-famine twist on global warming.  You have a lot of water one day and almost no moisture the next.  There’s so much hot political air swirling around in these parts you’d think the huffing and puffing would shove the storm up your way.  That would be a highest-and-best use of that unfortunately renewable resource.

Just read on CNN that a hiker was killed by a grizzly in Alaska.  That will be fuel to the fire for next year’s hiking extravaganza no matter where we go.  Makers of bear spray can’t buy this sort of advertising.  What is really sad is the poor guy was taking photos up until the very last second before the attack.  Now that is wild.

It exhausts me just to hear about all the traveling you guys have been doing.  Jeez, that’s a lot of road time.  Ah, but you might as well do it while you’re young and have boundless energy.  Reid, you looked entirely more comfortable holding your niece that you did when you visited Emma in Minnesota.  She was even sacked out in one of the shots.  My theory, however, is that every minute she sleeps during day translates to five (maybe 10?) minutes of awake (“I’m ready to play!”) time at night.  Ellen, you will have to confirm that mathematical formula for me.

This is a short week for me in that, unless Isaac pounds us on Thursday and Friday, I’ll tee it up on Friday with my friend Mike from the bank.  There will be no end of trash talk and finger pointing with him while we play.  He has steadfastly held the upper hand because he gets two strokes a side, although it’s time I knocked him off his pedestal.

Friends without Facebook

As it would work out, I sent a letter to my friend Norm – he, the ultimate arbiter of words – and how does he respond?

By email.

At least he has the sensibility to put Friends without Facebook in his subject line.  I don’t perceive Norm as much of a Facebook or social media guy.  All his working life he was a journalist or a behind-the-scenes journalist, so you’d think e-things would be anathema to him.

Norm’s name probably doesn’t ring a bell for you.  But his work influences what you read in print and online every day.  He was, for a long, long time, the man behind the Associated Press Stylebook.  The Stylebook is the bible of the sport for newspapers, magazines, and virtually any other entity that puts words in front of you in any form.  If or how a word entered official use by journalists, bloggers and writers – Quran vs Koran (“Quran: The preferred spelling for the Muslim holy book”), e-commerce, nano, JPEG, etc. – that was Norm’s decision.

And he was my editor when I wrote my national housing columns for the Associated Press.  He gave me not only a chance, but he let me follow stories on my own.  He rarely, if ever, interfered let alone second guessed me.  He had confidence and trusted me and that meant everything to my writing career and style.

I am glad to call Norm my friend.

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December 9, 2011

Norm: My New Year resolution to stay in touch with you has come a few days early but I suppose the new Post Office dictum to take first class snail-mail to new levels of slowness means this could still arrive after January 1.  Hopefully not.

Actually, there’s not a hell of a lot new down here in North Carolina besides our even farther right than usual right-wing politics. But it is in the 50s here today so at least the weather validates my move.  Nearing six years as a Southerner, so the next time I visit NYC (which is overdue) let me know if I’ve acquired any of the local intonation.

I think you’re onto something with the retirement thing.  The idea of non-work is beginning to dawn on me and I’m thinking of pulling the plug on work in the next year.  Age 63, or at least the 40-some years before it, seem about the right number of years in the salt mines.  I don’t know how you’ve kept yourself busy but I wouldn’t mind finding out how that works.

My daughter is expecting so any advice you have on the grandpa thing would be more than welcome.  Ellen is in St. Paul, MN and likes it very much, although the single digit temps they’ve had the last couple of days may temper her enthusiasm.

Not doing a hell of a lot with my free time except walking and growing older.  I keep threatening to write a book but the inspiration continues to escape me.  That’s probably just as well for the reading public.  There are enough bad books out there.

So what are you up to?  Still freelancing?  I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing.  And Jeanette?  I don’t keep up with the AP much these days.  I see their ‘contact us’ web page still has e-mail with a hyphen even though they issued some decree earlier this year that email would henceforth be one word.  That’s why they still need you in the shop to at least run the Stylebook.  My son Reid still has your signed copy.

Still living alone although I have a steady girlfriend who has quickly moved up to significant-other status.  There is still the very real threat that we could visit New York and you’d have a chance to meet her and give her the third degree: “Felicia, why are you with this guy…?”

Hopefully, you’ll find out sooner than later.  Really, let me know how and what you’re doing.  I don’t need to know the why.  I hope things are well…

A grammarian’s grammarian…

A brash Carolina Wren feeds at the trough just outside the kitchen window. Woe to other birds that dare to venture onto this feisty little bird's turf.

Once in a blue moon I get an itch to get back in touch with long-lost friends.  Among them is my friend Norm.

He is a great man.  He was my editor at the Associated Press and has a storied journalistic past, notably, he was the long-time shepherd of the AP Stylebook.  The stylebook, which is the arbiter of dangling participles and split infinitives (whatever those are) and everything in between that involves words, is the bible of the sport for all writers all over the world.

Who decided the word Internet should be capitalized?  Norm.  Who decreed the term e-mail should have a hyphen?  Norm.  Who introduced us to Quran and not Koran?  Norm.  Look up the definition of dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker and this is who you will find: Norm.

Norm can go toe-to-toe with anyone, anywhere on the elements of style.  He is a grammarian’s grammarian.  When I sent him my national housing columns, he could have (and perhaps should have) taken a meat cleaver to each and every one, but he didn’t.  He was civil and supportive.  And a good friend.

But as has happened with so many folks in my past, I utterly dropped the communication ball with him.  So, hoping to atone for missteps of the past, I sent him a letter.  And in true Norm fashion, he has already responded.

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December 21, 2010

Norm: I’ve often thought about sending you a regular letter but I was always afraid to dangle too many participles or other writing nasty’s that you’d pick up on in a heartbeat.  That’s the problem with associating oneself with someone of your caliber.   I worried that you’d send them back all marked up.

I’m still down here in Charlotte, although my eye is opening a bit wider to retirement.  In that regard, you need to bring me up to speed on what you and Jeanette are up to and how things are going.  Of all things, they’ve given me a chunk of responsibility over correspondence that floods into the mortgage side of the business.  They put me in charge of revamping what passes for a ‘style guide’ although that is like putting a 6^th grade graduate in charge of a nuclear facility.  You won’t believe this, but my first recommendation was to make the strong suggestion to bag our own style guide and buy an institutional subscription to your handiwork at AP.  

Incredibly, they never warmed to my theory of media relations which is to be relatively truthful and candid and plainspoken.  That didn’t work out so well.  They gave me a pink slip back in July after which they allowed (sic: me) to stay tethered to my cube to look for other jobs inside or outside the bank until the end of September.  One of those was to become the senior housing columnist for the Charlotte Observer (I think my first column is still online, tepid as the subject is) and I was primed for a once-per-month piece.  But I’m scaling back on it to focus on the task at hand.  The Observer did set a new threshold for freelance pay: $25 for 750 words.  Their Saturday home section is riddled with writers just like me.  I wish I was still penning for the AP since that was the most fun I’ve ever had.

This is a tough spot for the AP.  Their business writer bolted a few months ago for a PR firm in D.C.  She’s not been replaced, and honestly, to my knowledge, AP has two or three people in a rather large office just south of what passes for a downtown.  It’s a real skeleton staff.  Same at the Observer.  If it wasn’t for pick up from the Raleigh News & Observer, the local paper here would literally be a single sheet 8.5”x11”.  I don’t hear much about AP up in NYC these days but they can’t be faring as well as they could.  We’ll just rely on Fox News for our balanced coverage.

But on the whole things are going along okay.  The two kids are on their own, physically and fiscally, and that is a good thing as you know.  Hope you’re getting down to Maryland (isn’t that where your son is?) on a frequent basis.  If you don’t watch out, I may follow through on the veiled threat to visit NYC.  They say the trip up from Charlotte via train isn’t too onerous, so once your weather – not ours – clears, I may slip up north for a quick visit.  Hope your holidays are good.