An hour north of here, there is a log home that needs a lot of work. I guess I’m doing the work. I don’t have a lot of time for other things right now.
There is a hymn by Jas. Russel Lowell, that says “New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth.” I take that to mean, every new job requires learning new skills and buying new tools; and what were once perfectly good kitchen cabinets now have to be replaced.
Hopefully I will be done with the project before winter hits, and then maybe I can hibernate in the office while the snow flies.
Chaucer's horses
race o'er scores of
icy mosses, glassy gales
Chaucer's chanters
hint of winters,
citing splinters of a tale
Haunt and hunter
snowy saunter
waltzing water, august mile
Chaucer's sailors
hail to windward
stay the seventh watch awhile
“Screech…is the worst conceivable quality of Caribbean rum, bottled by the Newfoundland government under the Screech label, and sold to poor devils who have no great desire to continue living. It is not as powerful as it used to be, but this defect can be, and often is, remedied by the addition of quantities of lemon extract. Screech is usually served with boiling water. In its consequent neargaseous state the transfer of the alcohol to the bloodstream is instantaneous. Very little is wasted in the digestive tract1.”
When you look at the words I have written somewhere, I want very little to be wasted in your digestive tract. I want it to go down easy while it burns. I want it to surprise, yes, or to trigger a cascade of grey-matter activity, but I don’t want a word wasted. No hitches, no glitches. Chew, and swallow.
Meanwhile, reading a misspelled word is like finding the birdshot while eating a turkey. It’s kind of distracting.
A lot of things will cause a piece of writing to get stuck in someone’s gullet. Basic grammar, punctuation and spelling skills are givens. Like not burning the pie crust, they are the least people can expect of you.
Then there is the aesthetic dimension. Presentation, taste, and texture. I’m not necessarily talking about elegance, per se; after all, even a fast food burger goes down easy, and going down easy is the main thing.
Everything, then, should be turned toward that end. The sounds of the words, the tone of the phrases. Even originality and creative appeal are secondary to this one thought: to get someone to take a bite; and having bitten once, to keep on biting until he has swallowed all; and finally, to have it sit well in his stomach afterwards. Otherwise we are just wasting our time. The reader may agree or disagree, but at least don’t distract them from the matter at hand. If a person reads your whole article and keeps coming back to your condescending tone or your misplaced apostrophes, you have not done well.
There’s one more thing, and it’s about the size of your stomach. People can only eat so much at a time. Ruthless and desperate omission is an absolute requirement for those who would write. Brevity is not just the soul of wit: it is a moral virtue, and the lack of it tantamount to actual sin. Every word is potentially a traitor to your cause.
—JD
Bottled by authority of the Newfoundland government.
Lemon extract and boiling water optional.
1 Farley Mowat, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float
“Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke: the dungeon flamed with light.”
— Charles Wesley, Psalms & Hymns, 1738
About once a calendar year we open the mail and sharpen our pencils. The last several months have seen a drop in reader input as people have concerned themselves primarily with the elections, and we do not address political topics as a general rule. (We do believe Mr. Sanders should be re-elected to the city council for his level-headed leadership on the water supply contract with Rice Lake; and that Mr. Aldrich’s candidacy should be opposed on the grounds that he is running purely out of spite for having been deposed last year by Mr. Dowdley, although there was doubt at the time as to whether Mr. Dowdley himself was running merely to protect his commercial interest in Howell Creek Radio. All that, however, is merely common sense and hardly a matter of contention.)
Other publications – the Pequod Lake Conifer & Gazette being a notable example – make a practice of printing editorial mail every week, and we can hardly blame them since they are in such need of cheap methods to fill up space. Not so for us. We make no pretense of being here to please the general public (although frequently we do), and so reader input is naturally an item of secondary importance.
But, “nevertheless,” in the words of the hapless Frederick to the buccaneers who hold a pistol to his head, “mercy should alloy our stern resentment.”
Narratives
The response to our recent articles, which are heavy on narrative, has been mixed. A number of readers wrote in to say they liked them. Good Night, Irene is well-favoured, and apparently its utter lack of context has not had the deterring effect we hoped it would have. It is being syndicated on the west coast. The jury is still out on the dispatches from the Regular Vein, although they did cause one public library circular in Pine County to drop us like a hot potato. (Then again, it might have had something to do with a long-standing fine I have them for returning Tintin and the Blue Lotus nine weeks overdue.)
On Speed Limits
The article Relativity On the Road drew more specific feedback. J. Watkins was the first of many to say it was not sufficiently focused in scope. A. Gravesend, in a rare burst of energy, went so far as to say it was trash:
“People ought not to feel guilty for breaking the limits? Speak for yourself! How much time have you spent in the emergency room? Tag along with the paramedics for a day and you’ll burn that article up in a minute…Not only is the whole bit poorly organized, it’s misleading and wrong-headed from start to finish…”
However, the article did not say people ought never to feel guilty for breaking the speed limits. For the record, I have been personally involved in assisting at a small number of serious car accident scenes in which speed was a major factor, and I still maintain that high speed is not in itself a cause of accidents. Nor should one feel guilty if, traffic volume permitting, they drive 75mph on a highway designed for that speed even though the limit might be 60mph. But neither should they make excuses if they get pulled over. Also, most of the criticism completely ignored the studies linked in the article, whose final results show that adherance to speed limits is not an accurate indicator of safety.
We are in a similar jam with building codes. If you built a deck on your house one foot closer to the property line than the city setback requirements allow, would you feel guilty? Why?
As for the organization of the article, it may seem on first reading that it meanders, but the simple fact is that, having demonstrated why speed limits have no natural moral basis, it was nevertheless necessary to show their practical value, however convoluted.
Apparently: Metricrats Never Say Die
Some people have accused Mr. Dowdley, and occasionally me indirectly, of skewing the issue of adopting the metric system in The English are Chased Out. I am aware that Mr. Dowdley’s methods are occasionally underhanded and demagogical. But for those of us – the vast majority, I might add – who recognize the Imperial system as having served us well for centuries, and who really don’t see enough benefits to justify the tremendous economic cost of conversion, Mr. Dowdley’s methods are hardly worth discussing. Truth be told, we’re a little glad someone has the initiative to squash these metric cockroaches that keep turning up in the legislative cupboard.
—JD
“Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.”
– Oscar Levant (1906 – 1972)
