Scattershot

Driving through Iowa

As my husband and I drove through Iowa farm country this week-end to see his mother, I marveled, as always, at how different the land looks from the farm country where I grew up. In Iowa, I always see black earth, rolling hills, and odd-shaped fields, some of the rows even circling around hills. In southern Colorado, I always see pale, dusty earth and rectangular, flat fields with perfectly straight rows stretching far into the horizon.

    And then there's the part I always forget until my husband reminds me: Iowa farmers don't irrigate.

    It's astounding to me. It's so astounding that I have a hard time getting my mind wrapped around that fact. "So the farmers just plant the seeds and then just stand around waiting for them to grow?" I always ask. "What do farmers in Iowa do all day, anyway?"

    My husband, a former Iowa farm boy, just rolls his eyes and give me a mildly dirty look. He knows I know that Iowa farmers have just as much to do as Colorado farmers, but it's hard for me to imagine a life where water just falls out of the sky onto whatever you want to grow. 

    Where I grew up, farming centered around water—or, rather, the shortage of it. We would periodically get a short phone call with an announcement like, "The water is coming tomorrow at 7:30 a.m." That meant that, for a certain period of time, we were allowed to draw water from the canal about a half a mile from our house. Headgates would be opened, dams set to direct water to certain areas, and siphon tubes set to bring the water over the top of the ditches and into the rows. Then, some hours later, everything would be moved to a different spot. And then again, and again. It was hard work, and we did it all ourselves. (Okay, my dad and brothers did most of it. My sister and I only set siphon tubes. Sometimes. The rule in our house was that women did women's work and men did men's work—unless the men needed some help. Then women could do men's work. Sigh.)

    Of course, if the family had something special planned, that was the time we would "get the water." It was frustrating, but it was a farming fact of life. Water was and is a valuable resource.

    So my husband always has to forgive my fascination with this subject as I rediscover it on every Iowa trip. As we drive along, I try to imagine what it must have been like on his farm. I try, but the idea of not having to worry about water just isn't something I can grasp. It seems like something from a science fiction to me—impossible but intriguing to think about.

Tickling my fancy

I am prone to getting things stuck in my brain—snatches of songs, funny or horrific images, words that I mentally type over and over again in my head. For several days now, "cockamamy" has been stuck. I heard John McCain use the word to describe a Barack Obama policy, and it glued itself into a couple of my brain cells.

    I haven't really minded. The word intrigues me. It has a certain power, criticizing through ridicule. It also has a certain old-fashioned flavor to it, making me wonder if McCain used it accidentally. (It seems to me that, at his age, he wouldn't want to use any words that might seem old-fashioned.)   

    It reminds me of other old-fashioned words that tickle my fancy. (Tickle my fancy is also old-fashioned, of course). Poppycock. Molyccoddle. Pipsqueak. Flibbertigibbet. Nincompoop. Befuddle. (Befuddle is my absolute favorite.)

    Some old-fashioned words are not so charming, though. One of my least favorites is behoove. For some reason, the word just irritates the daylights out of me, yet I frequently talk myself into a corner and have to use it. I'll wind up saying something to my staff like, "It really behooves us to pay attention to this trend." Only what I'll really say is this: "It really...I hate saying this, but it's the word that fits...behooves us to pay attention to this trend." By adding the words "I hate saying this, but it's the word that fits," I think I'm taking the "ugly and old-fashioned" curse off the word.

    It makes no sense, I know, but I still do it. Maybe it's because I know that words have power. 

    Which they do. And that brings me to wingnut. (Okay, it may not be apparent how that brings me to wingnut, but it does.) It's been popping up a lot lately, and I find it funny. But why do I find it funny? I have no idea what a wingnut really is. I don't know why people are using wingnut to describe someone who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. A few cards short of a deck. A few fries short of a Happy Meal. A few tacos short of a fiesta platter. You get the idea...But why is it funny? 

    I'm flummoxed. 

Dumb school policies

A few days ago, I wrote about company policies that are dumb. A reader pointed out that there can be dumb teacher or school policies, too. She told about the results of a "zero-tolerance" policy in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. A ten-year-old boy was suspended when a pencil sharpener broke and he didn't get rid of the blade immediately. According to the newspaper article, "the boy is a well-behaved, good student and cried when he was suspended for at least two days. He could face further punishment."

    Stories like this make me furious. Surely any thinking individual can see the difference between a broken pencil sharpener and a gun or a switchblade. A bit of common sense is in order.

    And that's the problem with rigidity in general. It doesn't allow for common sense. Often, it doesn't even allow for doing what is right or fair or moral. The "policy" takes precedence over everything. The point of the policy can get lost in enforcing adherance to it.

    Which is why I'm generally not a big fan of rules or policies. I am more in favor of broad principles, like "Be fair" or "Do what is right." They allow us to examine circumstances and choose what is really the right thing, not what the policy dictates.

    One of my favorite lists of principles comes from teacher, friend, and author Randy Larson. He teaches his students a chant with what I think are wonderful guidelines for life:

    Be kind.

    Be strong.

    Don't cheat.

    Follow your heart.

    Forever, Cocoa Puffs!

    Personally, I would replace that last line with, "Forever Fig Newtons," or "Forever, Haagen Daz Mocha Chip ice cream," but I digress. His principles are good ones. These, I can get behind. "Zero-tolerance," I cannot.

Word absurdities

I was all set to write about something serious today, and then a friend of mine sent me a link to writer Becky Clark's blog entry called "Thought Showers." It is a response to a mom who objects to the term "brainstorm" being used with her daughter—because of its violent imagery.

    Clark's discussion of the power of words is very funny. Take a look:  Thought Showers

Dumb company policies

Yesterday when I went in to pick up my new glasses, I had to wait while the optician finished a phone call that was clearly very frustrating. When she finished, she told me the problem.

      She has a customer whose prescription sunglasses came from what I'll just call "a Hawaiian sunglass company." The customer is serving in Iraq, and one of his lenses is scratched. As the lenses are guaranteed, he wants the lens replaced. Doesn't seem that hard, does it? Certainly the optician didn't think so.

    Wrong. The company won't send a replacement lens. It will only replace the lens if he sends the glasses back. He needs the glasses--scratched or not--so he can't do that. The optician suggested that the company send a replacement lens and charge for it. Then, when the man sends the damaged lens back, the company could credit the account. But nooooooooooo. That would be "against company policy."

    What has the company gained from this dumb policy? The ill will of an eye care facility that did a lot of business with it but will do no more. The ill will of the customer himself. The ill will of those of us in the waiting room listening to half of the ridiculous conversation. What if the company had gone the extra mile to help someone serving our country and just sent the lens? If not that, why on earth not charge and reimburse? It makes no sense.

    As I was telling the people in my office this story, one woman chimed in with her own ridiculous "company policy" story. She went into a popular locally-owned store that we all love, carrying her five-month old baby and a diaper bag backpack full of her baby supplies. As she walked in, a twenty-something clerk told her she had to remove the pack. She did, annoyed, but as she went into the store she realized she had nothing she needed for the baby. She went back to explain and to retrieve her pack, but the clerk wouldn't budge. "It's company policy," he said. She was furious and left. "I wasn't going to shop without the things I needed for the baby," she said.

    The store lost a great customer. She told all of us, and we now think less of the store, too. We will tell others.

    I hate hearing the words "It's company policy" used to justify dumb actions. When a policy makes no sense in certain circumstances, surely someone should have the good sense to ignore it. 

Stumped by a semicolon

Yesteday I was stumped by a punctuation question I had never encountered before in all my years of editing and writing. I had written a sentence listing a series of song titles. Because some of the song titles had commas in them, I separated the items in the series with semicolons. But where was I to put the semicolon—before or after the quotation marks around the song titles?

    I had no idea. Neither did anyone else in my office. We turned to Chicago Manual of Style and found that the semicolon goes after the quotation mark.

     The odd thing is that last night after work I was reading an article and stumbled onto an example almost identical to the one I had written earlier in the day. (Yes, the semicolon was placed after the quotation mark.) Weird!

    I call it the "coming into consciousness" phenomenon. Things can remain amazingly invisible to us until we have reason to notice them. Then we notice them everywhere. For example, years ago I had reason to look up and learn the definition for the word ennui. Though I'd never seen the word before that, I started seeing it everywhere after I learned it. Similarly, when I was teaching, my students consistently reported being amazed at how their vocabulary words started springing up everywhere after they learned them. Why weren't the words in their world before? They simply hadn't come into their consciousness.

    Years ago, I lost a bet when I insisted that the word remuneration was really renumeration. It had to be, I reasoned. The numer in it had to come from the word number, and remuneration involves numbers in the sense that payments are money, and money involves numbers. 

    I was wrong. After that, I noticed the word remuneration everywhere, and every time I noticed it, that third letter "m" simply leaped out at me. It had come into my consciousness.

    I'll probably be seeing a lot of semicolons after quotation marks now.

National Middle School Conference fun

I haven't written anything here for almost a week, but there's a good reason for that. I was working at the Cottonwood Press booth at the National Middle School Conference in Denver. (Okay, I wasn't there for the entire week, but between getting ready to go, being there, and catching up after I returned, there was no blogging time in my life.)

    It's always a lot of work to go to conferences like this, and I'm always absolutely exhausted at the end of each day. Still, the conferences are such a boost for me—and for whatever employee I take with me. Suddenly, we see that the materials we create are really being used by real people all over the United States. All day long, people will come up to our booth and say, "I love Cottonwood Press!" or "You have saved my life so many times" or "My kids love your materials!" I have to admit, it's quite a high for us. We work alone so much, and it's energizing to hear that our efforts are successful.

    The best part is when people are crowded around our booth looking at materials, and a teacher walks up, points to something, and says, "This book is great!" Suddenly, everyone wants that book. Our customers really are our best salespeople.

    While personnel at other booths always have quite a sales pitch, my employees have none.  I coach them to simply encourage people to look. The books will usually sell themselves.

    I love, love, love that!

Joy in a job

This weekend, a young woman I haven't seen for several years joined a group of us for dinner, along with her two preteen daughters. I asked the woman, Tammy, what she was doing for a living now, and her face lit up. "I'm a middle school counselor," she said.

    "Do you like it?" I asked, suspecting from the look on her face that she did.

    "I LOVE it!" she said. "It's my absolute dream job."

    How wonderful it is to see someone who loves her work so much, especially since it involves kids. I just knew, from listening to her, that she is good at her job. I asked her more about her work, and it turns out that her school is definitely not a school where counseling is a piece of cake, either. Of the 1600 kids in her school, seventy languages are spoken. Seventy. I can't imagine the difficulties that school must face.

    And yet she loves her work.

   If only everyone working with kids felt the same way.

Interesting text messaging "stuff"

Okay, I admit it. I'm a bit obsessed by cell phones. Last night my husband and I were walking in downtown Denver, and I started looking to see whether or not someone in each group we passed was using a cell phone—either talking or texting. Almost every group had at least one person engaged elsewhere, via cell phone. Almost every individual walking alone was using a cell phone. Then, at dinner, we sat near two men who faced each other at a table but did not interact at all. Each was totally absorbed in his cell phone screen.

    When we got home, I happened to stumble upon an article called "Thumbspeak" in the October 20 issue of The New Yorker. It's about a new book called Txting: The Gr8 Db8, by David Crystal, a professional linguist. The good news is that, no, our language is not going down the drain because of text messaging. What I found most interesting is what the article says about the customs and "rules" associated with texting.

    The article author, Louis Menand, writes, "There is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone...If you receive a text, therefore, you are obliged instantaneously to reply to it, if only to confirm that you are not one of those people who can be without a phone. The most common text message must be 'k.' It means 'I have nothing to say, but God forbid that you should think that I am ignoring your message.'" She goes on to say that four of ten teen-agers claim that they can text blindfolded."

    Wow.

    Menand notes that English users have some advantages in the texting department. While the average English word has only five letters, many other languages tend to have much longer words—14 or 15 characters, for example. As a result, text messaging has "'accelerated a tendency toward the Englishing of world languages." Texters in at least 11 languages use "'lol," "u, "brb," and "gr8," all English-based shorthands."

      If you want to read more, check out The New Yorker article online.

Fall and my mother's shoes

Yesterday morning when I took my morning walk, I suddenly found myself drenched in a feeling of well-being. It was because of the smell of fall in the air. I don't know exactly what makes up that smell, but I love it.

    As I walked among the yellow leaves covering the trail, I was transported back to a wonderful few days when I was in high school. One fall, my parents went away for what I think was a Farm Bureau conference in Kansas City, and I stayed with my "town" cousins. While I was with them, I got to walk to and from school, instead of riding in the tiresome bus, and I was thrilled. My aunt and uncle and cousins laughed at how much I loved such an ordinary thing as walking. They didn't understand what a pain it was to live ten miles from everything. To be able to walk—well, that was freedom to me. I was thrilled.

    Tangled up in this memory is an image of my parents and how happy they seemed when they dropped me off. They had farmed out all four of their children to various friends and relatives, and I imagine the trip was a thrill for them. After all, I was 14 or 15, and they had never gone away together before.

    Most of all, I remember my mother standing there showing us her new gray patent leather peep-toe pumps and looking so happy and pretty in her new clothes. She glowed, and there was such an aura of excitement in the air. 

    Somehow those shoes have woven themselves into my love of fall. I see yellow leaves, and I think of gray patent leather peep-toe pumps and my mother on that long-ago, happy day.