Days We Would Rather Know

From the Writer's Almanac 7/26/06 comes this poem by Michael Blumenthal:

Days We Would Rather Know

There are days we would rather know
than these, as there is always, later,
a wife we would rather have married
than whom we did, in that severe nowness
time pushed, imperfectly, to then. Whether,
standing in the museum before Rembrandt's "Juno,"
we stand before beauty, or only before a consensus
about beauty, is a question that makes all beauty
suspect ... and all marriages. Last night,
leaves circled the base of the ginkgo as if
the sun had shattered during the night
into a million gold coins no one had the sense
to claim. And now, there are days we would
rather know than these, days when to stand
before beauty and before "Juno" are, convincingly,
the same, days when the shattered sunlight
seeps through the trees and the women we marry
stay interesting and beautiful both at once,
and their men. And though there are days
we would rather know than now, I am,
at heart, a scared and simple man. So I tighten
my arms around the woman I love, now
and imperfectly, stand before "Juno" whispering
beautiful beautiful until I believe it, and—
when I come home at night—I run out
into the day's pale dusk with my broom
and my dustpan, sweeping the coins from the base
of the ginkgo, something to keep for a better tomorrow:
days we would rather know that never come.

Congressman Lynn Westmoreland

I received this link from a fellow KU SOMA member. It is a video clip from the Comedy Central news program The Colbert Report, whose anchor has brought such gems as "truthiness" to the English language.

Here he sits down with Congressman Lynn Westmoreland to discuss his support for a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be placed in public buildings. Watch the clip here.

A Way with Words

The world of podcasts has opened up my working days to a wide range of entertaining and informative distractions. Last week I stumbled upon San Diego NPR station KPBS's A Way with Words. The hosts have a wonderful gift for gab and ability to educate the masses on the language with the most words on the planet: English.

In a show last week they ran through some of their favorite gems from their Fifty Rules for Writing Good collection. Here are the first 25:

Fifty Rules for Writing Good

English teachers and journalists have been passing around a list of self-contradictory rules of usage for more than a century, and we've been collecting and creating them for almost half of one. Now we can offer you one of the largest accumulations gathered into a single space. We call them "Fifty Rules for Writing Good." Whatever you think of these slightly cracked nuggets of rhetorical wisdom, just remember that all generalizations are bad.

1. Each pronoun should agree with their antecedent.

2. Between you and I, pronoun case is important.

3. A writer must be sure to avoid using sexist pronouns in his writing.

4. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

5. Don't be a person whom people realize confuses who and whom.

6. Never use no double negatives.

7. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. That is something up with which your readers will not put.

8. When writing, participles must not be dangled.

9. Be careful to never, under any circumstances, split infinitives.

10. Hopefully, you won't float your adverbs.

11. A writer must not shift your point of view.

12. Lay down and die before using a transitive verb without an object.

13. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

14. The passive voice should be avoided.

15. About sentence fragments.

16. Don't verb nouns.

17. In letters themes reports and ad copy use commas to separate items in a series.

18. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.

19. "Don't overuse 'quotation marks.'"

20. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (if the truth be told) superfluous.

21. Contractions won't, don't, and can't help your writing voice.

22. Don't write run-on sentences they are hard to read.

23. Don't forget to use end punctuation

24. Its important to use apostrophe's in the right places.

25. Don't abbrev.

The Next 25

An Author Considers the Source

Listen to yet another excellent interview by Terry Gross on the topic of author Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. (LISTEN)

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 11, 2006 ·
Journalist Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, follows industrial food, organic food, and food that consumers procure or hunt for themselves, from the source to the dinner plate. It also examines the importance of corn in all of our food products.

Pollan is a professor of science and environmental journalism at University of California at Berkeley. His previous books include The Botany of Desire and A Place of My Own.
(via NPR)

Go Back To Vermont

Instead of attacking philosophical points, how about tacking brand labels and a socio-economic lifestyle (White, Upper-Middle Class, Educated) to your opponents point of view.

From the 2004 Election Primary season via Club for Growth PAC, comes this ad that epitomizes the Right's linguistic tactics for shaping political discourse.

Husband: WHAT DO I THINK?
WELL, I THINK HOWARD DEAN SHOULD TAKE HIS TAX HIKING, GOVERNMENT-EXPANDING, LATTE-DRINKING, SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, NEW YORK TIMES-READING . . .

Wife: . . . BODY PIERCING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING, LEFT-WING FREAK SHOW BACK TO VERMONT, WHERE IT BELONGS.

Husband: GOT IT?
(via: Club For Growth PAC)

View the ad Real Player | Windows

Chicago Goes Biking

Biking advocay pays off in the Windy City.

The city of Chicago recently unveiled their Bike 2015 Plan, which they're calling "the most ambitious bike plan in the United States." The plan, which features a whopping 150 strategies to encourage bicycling, recommends projects, programs and policies to encourage use of one of our favorite modes of transportation. Three years in preparation, the plan will implement Mayor Richard M. Daley’s goal to make Chicago the most bicycle-friendly city in the United States. Work has already begun on 75 of the plan’s 150 strategies, including, constructing 10 miles of new bikeways in 2006 to help reach the plan’s goal of a 500-mile bikeway network by 2015, permitting passengers aged 14 to 17 to board CTA trains and buses with their bicycles, on a trial basis, so that Chicagoland high school students can combine transit and bicycle use, and providing free valet bike parking at 11 Chicago festivals in 2006. The plan will also establish a mini-grant program to support community bicycling efforts and provide secure bike parking inside five to ten city buildings, to encourage more employees to bike to work.
(Read More)

See the plans here.

(via: Digg @ Treehugger)