Banned Books: A Tiny Rant (And Not the One You Expect)

Ellen received a package from a provincial program that promotes reading for children.  Wonderful!  It contained a free cloth bag and two board books.  Wonderful!  I'm all about the books and the literacy and the reading to babies.  Wonderful!  Except then I actually started reading one of the board books and it's not wonderful.  I'm almost certain it was included in the package because it's based on a song by a Canadian singer, but the book/song is grammatically incorrect.  The first lines are Lay Down / Lay Down / Lay Down for the night.  And as we all know, because we took Modern Usage from a tweed jacket wearing professor and because we were tested and graded on our ability to correctly use the verbs to lie and to lay, you don't lay down.  You lie down.  You lay down a book.  You lay down a gun.  You lay down the law.

I read the book to The Bairn, but I changed all the incorrect grammar.  Clearly, though, this is going to have to be the first banned book in our house, because only three people in the world still care about the difference between lay/lie, and if I keep the book here, other people, who don't care about transitive verbs (like Steve), will just read the book and then The Bairn will be all confused and I'm already waging the pronunciation battle at home anyway, which is enough.

Now I'm going to lay my baby in her swing and lie down on the couch.

Long and Persnickety! Fun!

I'm sure you're all excellent grammarians and never make grammar errors, but I've been watching TV, where no one who finds him/herself in front of a camera, apparently, ever paid one bit of attention in English class. Sooo, I've created a sorry excuse for an equation (TWO equations) to demonstrate the most important rule of grammar (already partially explained here because this must never been done; if you do this, stop it at once).

Here we go.

(Write it down.)

x=pronoun
y=verb
z=preposition

if x1+y=INCORRECT then (x1 and x2)+y=INCORRECT


Here's an example to bring this delightful equation to life.

INCORRECT
Her and Jebediah danced.

BECAUSE
if Her danced=INCORRECT then Her and Jebediah danced=INCORRECT

CORRECT
She and Jebediah danced. (She danced.)

Because most people are corrected when making this mistake, the more common problem is with prepositions, demonstrated with this equation.

if z+x2=INCORRECT then z+(x1 and x2)=INCORRECT

INCORRECT
This kangaroo is for Keith and I.

BECAUSE
if This kangaroo is for I=INCORRECT then This kangaroo is for Keith and I=INCORRECT

CORRECT
This kangaroo is for Keith and me. (This kangaroo is for me.)


Here's a tricky one.

INCORRECT
This is between you and I.

BECAUSE
we=you and I
us=you and me
if This is between we=INCORRECT then This is between you and I=INCORRECT

CORRECT
This is between you and me. (This is between us.)


Now if you ever meet someone about to appear on TV, you can teach him these handy equations and save him from sounding unsmart.

And if you actually use math/science, maybe you can create better equations.

And let's not talk about punctuation. I am impervious to punctuation instruction.

I Used to Know Stuff

I'm cleaning out my bedroom. I'm the only child in my family who still has a bedroom in my parents' house. The room doesn't actually look like it did when I lived in it, and some of my sister's things are encroaching on my space and some of my mom's belongings mysteriously appear in the closet sometimes, but it's still my room. It's full of my stuff and I use it as a staging area/dressing room and I sleep in the guest bedroom most of the time.

Anyway, I'm cleaning it out. Today I finally threw away my Russian textbooks. They've been in the closet for 10 years, because I just couldn't bear to part with them after spending so much time with them in college. Also, I always felt that I might possibly be home for an extended period of time (like this one here) and feel the need to bone up on my polite inquiries or the instrumental case or feel compelled to practice dialogues about Masha's visit to Lena (Lena has a new apartment and the furniture is imported). I now realize this is not true, though. When I'm home for an extended period of time, I feel compelled to eat all the chocolate in the candy dish on the piano and to cry when I think about practicing driving a manual transmission car (which is what I should really be doing with my time).

I also threw out a giant stack of index cards full of notes from my college classes. If my notes can be believed, I used to know a lot about Great Britain that I no longer know. For example (did you know?), the Salvation Army started in London's East End and was condemned for elevating women, and the Chartist Movement emerged in the 1830s and there was a concern that it would lead to a revolution similar to the one in France, and Edward Pusey wrote the most popular tracts in the Oxford Movement. I didn't remember any of that.

Now I'm going to go through my desk and find out what I used to know about art and philosophy.

Did You Know?

Did you know that during the English Civil Wars, Charles I's children (Charles and James) were given sanctuary on Jersey? Yes. And after Charles I was beheaded, Jersey proclaimed his son Charles II and allowed Charles II to remain on Jersey with his courtiers and a jester. In gratitude, Charles and James granted Jersey the land on America's eastern seaboard that became New Jersey. Did you know that? I did not because I did not learn anything interesting in my world history class. Except that video discs were the wave of the future. My teacher received a couple of them because we had a "21st century classroom" (in 1995), meaning the government paid for our classroom to have a big screen TV and several technologies, like giant video discs, that lasted approximately 2 years.

I learned about Jersey's connection to New Jersey, because in the contest between Croatia and Cinque Terre for my affection, the Channel Islands won. Actually, Cinque Terre followed by Mont St. Michel followed by the Channel Islands won. I also learned in my Channel Island research that on the island of Sark they don't allow cars. Living on an island where cars are forbidden is my special dream. When a wealthy resident of the island insisted on buying a car after the ban first went into effect, he was instructed that he could only use the car if it was pulled by a horse. I'm very tempted to move to Sark and live there forever.

Historical Gems

I spent part of today reading The Mental Floss History of the World, which (so far) is a very digestible 400-page jaunt through 62,007 years of history. I have a hard time comprehending history, because I can't fathom thousands of years and I struggle to line up historical events around the world. The idea that Genghis Khan's marauding and Notre Dame Cathedral's construction occurred in the same era makes my head hurt. The whole shifting geography thing doesn't help. We need more songs like Istanbul (Not Constantinople) to help those of us who are already geography impaired keep track of shifting empires.

It's a shame that I won't remember most of the history I'm reading, so I'm noting down some of the wisdom that has been imparted to me today.

1. In the 2004 movie King Arthur (which I watched because it's full of pretty British men), Keira Knightley wears almost nothing into battle, and as I watched, I kept thinking, Battle seems like the very BEST time to cover up. Those arrows are pokey, so now is not the time to show off the abs. However, according to my book, the ancient Celts fought completely naked, donning blue war paint and nothing else for battles. So Keira was just following in the tradition of her people.

2. The Greeks referred to European invaders as "barbarians" because the Europeans' language sounded like "bar-bar-bar" to them.

3. The wedding tradition of carrying a bride across the threshold may come from a third-century Germanic practice of abducting brides from nearby villages and carrying them home.

4. Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed.

5. The werewolf legend may originate with Berserkers, Viking warriors who were said to take on the spirit of a bear or wolf and developed superhuman strength in battle.

Check out the Mental Floss trivia pages if you need more fascinating conversation starters. Because nothing makes people want to be friends with you more than knowing they can come to you to learn that Magellan was eaten by the natives of the Philippines.

Laying Down the Law

We have to pause the gratitude for a day, because I must lay down the law on a grammar issue. There's a lot of bad grammar floating around out there, and mostly that's okay. Split those infinitives (it's a silly rule for a language with infinitives that are already two words) and end those sentences with prepositions to your heart's content (it often sounds pretentious if you don't anyway) and confuse lay and lie if you really must (but, seriously, it's not that hard until you get to the past tense).

There is one thing that must never happen though.

I's

is never okay.

An I(apostrophe)s means either

(1) I is . . .
which is only spoken by characters in Gone with the Wind or possibly by individuals who speak those dialects preserved on remote islands isolated from all other English-speakers for 100+ years.

OR

(2) It's a possessive, and we don't make possessives out of personal pronouns by adding an apostrophe and an s. EVER. Everyone knows this. Think about it. This is he's house. This is you's grammar book. This is we's kangaroo. It's not the kind of mistake that any fluent English speaker would make, but I keep seeing it on blogs, like this:

T-Bone and I's big screen TV is awesome.

If you wouldn't say I's big screen TV is awesome, you should not say T-Bone and I's big screen TV is awesome either. It's always wrong. My. The word is my. The possessive of I is my. Use it. It will change your life.

Naked Mole Rat

If you are unfamiliar with naked mole rats, you are living in some ignorant bliss, because they are nas-ty. And that is why I do not understand why Mo Willems has decided to scar little children for life. Mo Willems, who is, deservedly, a multiple Caldecott Honoree and, I hear, a very pleasant fellow, has a new book coming out in January. It's entitled Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed and it features, of course, a naked mole rat. The PROBLEM is that little children being what they are, they're going to read this book and want to learn more about naked mole rats. And then they're going to discover that naked mole rats are not the innocuous (even lovable) creatures they're made out to be in a happy Mo Willems book. They're going to see (brace yourselves, friends; seriously, don't click the link unless you're prepared to be sicked out) this. And then they're going to be in therapy for the rest of their lives.

OREGON: Portland

We spent one full day and a night in Portland and then drove home via the Oregon Trail the following morning. The Columbia River area just outside of Portland is gorgeous, and I was happy to be seeing the Oregon Trail after all those hours in the 4th grade playing Oregon Trail, the greatest computer game ever crafted by human beings. I'm EXCELLENT at taking down a buffalo with only a keyboard spacebar and arrow keys.

We visited all the places you all suggested with more or less success (I have a very sad story about Voodoo Doughnut).

Near the Steel Bridge

At the Chinese Garden

At the Rose Garden

At the Japanese Garden

It was at the Japanese Garden that I learned the bad news about fish. AJ and I were standing at a waterfall looking at the giant koi in the pond at the bottom. She was admiring their interesting and unique coloring. I was bemoaning the creepiness of fish. And it occurred to me that the only thing that keeps fish from populating my nightmares is the fact that they have to stay in the water. They can't come up on land and get me with their nasty fish whiskers and their icky mouths and their slimy skin. And then AJ told me that there's a fish that comes ashore. It's not a catfish. It's a mudskipper. It's amphibious and it has elbows and it CREEPS me out. Bad and Wrong. Fish should not have elbows.

Texas Part 2 - Photos

I didn't take very good pictures in Texas, but here are a few that aren't bad.

My first breakfast in Austin. I didn't even want a waffle, but how can you resist breakfast foods in the shape of the state you're visiting? If they'd had a waffle iron in the shape of an armadillo that would have been even better.

McKinney Falls State Park. Don't be deceived by the name. There were no falls to speak of. If you click on the park link, there's a picture of some very nice falls, but they seem to have been dried up on Friday.

These are flowers on the grounds of the Alamo. Everything was in bloom.

This is Mission San Jose, one of five missions built in the 1700s in South Texas (the Alamo is one of the five). I'm fascinated by the missions. I find them architecturally very interesting, but I'm also interested in the history surrounding them. The Spanish and Native American cultures brought together at the missions were so different from one another. The chapel portion of the mission still operates as a church. Services were being held while we were there, and we could hear the singing out on the grounds.

This is some existing detail work on the side of the mission. All of the missions were originally very brightly painted with big, bold patterns.

This is my lunch from Pesca on the River Walk. Every other meal I had in Texas was large enough to feed 12 people. And my most excellent meal at Threadgill's (grits, spinach goodness, and sweet potato fries) included free refills of all the dishes. More grits? Here you go. Sure you wouldn't like more spinach? It's on the house.

The Supreme Coordinatrix and Stash on the River Walk. We spent a lot of time on the River Walk, because it was so much cooler than being on street level.

The Random Post

Main Entry: random

Function: adjective

Date: 1632

1 a: lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern

People in Utah* really like the word random. They use it A LOT. I'm not sure why they love the word so much, because an awful lot of them seem unclear on the definition. They use it to mean unexpected or beyond comprehension. That ain't what it means, folks.

A few days ago I had this conversation at work:

Stylo Guy with a Girlfriend I Disliked on Sight (because I'm mean and dislike snuggly patrons): Are there any enclosed spaces other than Special Collections here? [subtext: because we want to go be loud and/or make out away from your prying eyes]

MBC: This is our quiet area, so group work and meetings aren't allowed in this part of the library. You can ask at the other reference desk to reserve a small meeting room or you're welcome to use any of the tables or seating areas in the rest of the library, if you need to talk together.

Stylo Guy: Huh. Random.

Not random! Carefully calculated and well-established policy to keep Stylo Guy and his Amazing Leech Girlfriend from bothering researchers and studiers. Not. Random.

*Before all the natives fuss at me, I'm perfectly willing to accept that it's not just Utah, but Utah is the only place where I have noticed it.

Library Patrons

From staff meeting:

Co-Worker 1: Who are you talking about?

Co-Worker 2: The scary guy who was friends with the crazy lady.

Co-Worker 1: Oh, not the smelly guy.

Co-Worker 2: No.

Library patrons are special. There's the guy who thinks he's bionic. He informs us that he's cured everything except old age and viruses. There's the guy obsessed with birds who loves my supervisor's feet. There's the girl with the plastic spider ring who confided in me that she's married to Spider-Man. There's the guy who leans against the desk and asks me, "Now, in your opinion, as a woman . . ." You know who would have fit right in at the library? Charles VI of France. He thought he was made of glass and worried that people tried to stand near him so they could knock him over and break him. Special guy.

Je suis bad at French.

Today at work I was using my vast chick lit knowledge to replenish a sad, depleted, romance book display. A man with an accent approached me and pointed to an Alexandre Dumas book on a different display.

Mr. Accent Man: This is Mr. Dumas (he pronounced it Du-Mass)?
Well-Versed in Chick Lit Librarian: No, Dumas (Du-Mah).

Apparently this was a test. A few minutes later at the reference desk, the man approached me again and, in French, asked me if I speak French. I did not disgrace myself or my three French teachers by attempting to answer in French, because I absolutely do not parle the français. I can recite most of a poem by Jacques Somebody or Other and I can read and understand a few things, but mostly my French training was a disaster. I had three French teachers.

Teacher #1-COMPLETELY insane. I'm not sure why any school board ever thought this woman was fit to be in the company of children. Mostly I learned about the Moulin Rouge and French prostitutes in her class.

Teacher #2-One of the meanest women alive. She looked exactly like a short, round potato with legs and she was very fond of telling my class that when we got out into the real world no one was going to be easy on us like she was. She was not easy on us. I think her true calling was the military (possibly Hitler's military) and somehow she missed it. Perhaps because she looked exactly like a potato.

Teacher #3-If we drew a snail on our test papers, she gave the class extra credit. She had a thing about snails. She also taught us how to sing "Achy Breaky Heart" in French. She did not resemble a potato or any other vegetable.

French pronunciation is a little bit interesting to me at the moment, because I'm reading Bill Bryson's book, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, and it's full of fascinating stuff about foreign words that have been Americanized or used in strange ways for place names, like Versailles, Indiana (pronounced Ver-sales) and
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (heart of the awl? what?). There's also great stuff about old British pronunciations that have survived in the South (explaining why my sister who spent her formative years in Kentucky pronounces pen as pin and why some of my relatives say warsh for wash and cheer for chair). And the parts about contractions! The contractions are fantastic. Newark is a contraction of the original place name New Ark of the Covenant, and good-bye is the contraction of God Be With You (Godbwye), and there are more! There are lots more. I'm stopping now, but isn't it so, so interesting? Oui! C'est très intéressant.

History (Mine and Ben Jonson's)

I attended a perfectly nice high school with a rigorous academic program and I had many very fine teachers. However, the sports program was also important, which is how I ended up with a number of teachers who were hired for their coaching skills and not their teaching skills. I know that many coaches are also great teachers, but mine were not. My most memorable coach/teacher was my driver's ed instructor (football coach) who called all the boys meathead and all the girls petunia. Oh, and my health teacher (football coach) who made us watch NASCAR because "you have to be in really good shape to drive those cars. Those boys are lookin' after their health." My European history teacher was a baseball coach. Somehow he made European history the most boring subject I've ever studied, which is absurd! European history is fascinating.

Did you know that Ben Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer in a duel? Apparently, Elizabethan actors were skilled fencers and it sometimes got them in trouble off the stage. Ben Jonson was released from a death sentence by reciting the "neck verse," a remnant of the medieval legal system that allowed the condemned to escape the gallows by reading from the Latin Bible.

Why didn't Coach teach us that?

I learned it, because I've been reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 1599. I'm also reading several chick lit books at the moment. They're teaching me lots of stuff I didn't learn in school, too. Like how to seduce a Scottish man.

Being Educated Against Your Will

Trying. To. Restrain. Myself.

I can't, though. I must tell you more British history facts. They are too fascinating (to me) and I'm short on time to post anything that takes more thought today.

I've been reading Bill Bryson's new book, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, part of the Eminent Lives series. (I tried again to read A Short History of Nearly Everything--thanks for the suggestion, Chris--but even well-written science makes my eyes roll back in my head--sorry, Chris. I'll have to stick with Bryson's other works.) Bill is very up front about the fact that we have very few facts about Shakespeare or his family. Books like Loving Will Shakespeare (a good middle-reader book) are almost entirely speculation. Having said that, Bryson goes on to share really interesting information about the few existing documents (other than the plays) that mention Shakespeare and fleshes out the late 16th century world to help readers understand Shakespeare and his work.

Fascinating facts include:
1. Sugar was a good thing in Elizabethan England, and black, rotted teeth indicated that a lot of sugar had been consumed. People whose teeth weren't naturally rotted would blacken their teeth to look like they had eaten a lot of sugar, too.

2. Those huge, starched ruffs worn in the 16th and 17th century were called piccadills, which is how Piccadilly got its name.

3. It was thought that tobacco prevented plague. Students at Eaton were punished for "neglecting their tobacco."

4. Money for plays was put in a box that was kept in special, safe room called, ta da, the box office.

There. That's your learning fun for the day. Sorry.

Happy (Actual) Halloween

I'm still engrossed in British history thanks to my Kings and Queens book that I posted about on Monday. If I were much younger, this book would have driven me to sew myself a cape and to insist on wearing jewels to the grocery store by now. I was that kind of child. When my class studied Native American culture in grade school, I built a teepee out of pink bed sheets and a clothesline in the basement and spent several afternoons pounding corn in a bowl I made from salt dough.

Since I'm an adult now, I just blog endlessly about the subjects that interest me. Especially when they make such excellent Halloween reading. I'll even make some connections between literature and British history for you, because I'm feeling librariany today.

Number One
Classic Halloween Literature: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

Kings and Queens Connection: Robert the Bruce of Scotland died of leprosy (probably) in 1329, but on his deathbed he arranged to have his heart removed after his death and taken on crusade to the Holy Land by Sir James Douglas. Sir Douglas was killed en route to the Holy Land, so Robert's body was buried at Dunfermline Abbey and his heart was buried at Melrose Abbey.

Recent Literary Selection to Complement Gory British History and Poe: Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness creepily illustrated by Gris Grimly

Number Two
Classic Halloween Literature: The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
This is a picture book but it is in NO WAY intended for children.

Quote from Gashlycrumb Tinies: T is for Titus who flew into bits.

Kings and Queens Connection: James II

Quote from Kings and Queens: He was killed at Roxburgh Castle, in 1460, when a cannon exploded next to him and blew him to pieces. (page 71)

Number Three
Classic Halloween Literature: Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Okay, so maybe people don't rush to read this on Halloween, but it's got witches.

Kings and Queens Connection: In the Shakespeare play, Macbeth kills Duncan (his predecessor) in his home. In reality Duncan died in the Battle of Pitgaveny. Macbeth ruled in Scotland from 1040-1057 and never seems to have suffered any twinges of guilt from taking the crown. One of Duncan's predecessors was treacherously murdered in someone's home, though. Kenneth II was murdered by a noblewoman who "prepared a bizarre contraption: a statue bearing a golden apple connected to a number of hidden crossbows, which were set to fire when the apple was lifted" (page 59). Kenneth took the apple.

Recent Literary Selection to Complement Study of Macbeth: Enter Three Witches by Caroline Cooney

There are so many more interviews with dead people I'm going to have to conduct after finishing this book. Was it really necessary for you to kill Edward II in such a brutal way?

Happy Halloween!

The Marmots' Pumpkins
I love the bitty teeth.

Being Friends with Shakespeare

I buy the 800s (mostly literature not housed in the fiction collection) at work. In our library, the 800s are like the mistreated step-children of the Dewey Decimal System. The budget for the 800s is very small, because no one in our town reads poetry, plays, or literary criticism at the public library. So, I choose a different section of the collection to address each year, and the rest of the section gets neglected until it becomes the lucky winner for fix-up another year, when I have a new budget.

The last couple of years I've been adding mostly to the writing section, because everyone in town is writing a novel. I know this, not only because of the circulation statistics, but also because the would-be authors ask me how to contact J.K. Rowling so they can chat with her about having her ghost write their work. (I DO give them the contact info and then I send out a little silent Sorry into the universe for J.K.)

This year, I decided it's time to bulk up our Shakespeare collection and replace our battered copies of plays that were purchased in the 1960s. While I was going through the list of Shakespeare's plays, I realized that I'm REALLY close to having seen all of his plays. I've already seen some of the snoozers (I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare's historical plays, except for the version of Richard III set in Nazi Germany that I saw back in the day at the International Cinema) and the creepy ones like Titus Andronicus, so it seems logical to just go ahead and finish watching the rest. (Knowing almost nothing about science, math, and geography, it seems wise to become as proficient as possible in some area of study.) I dragged home Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline from the library last week, and I've finished the first two (seems I left the plays with the most lechery for last).

In preparation for finishing the historical plays, I picked up The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Kings and Queens of Britain, which is a BEAUTIFUL book, broken up with each ruler receiving a two-page, well-illustrated treatment. It's wonderful if you need to know that Eleanor of Acquitaine is the mother of both King John and Richard the Lionheart or that William the Conqueror was so obese at the time of his death that he came spilling out of his coffin or if you happen to be morbidly fascinated by Richard III's murdered nephews who were found (scientists believe) buried in the Tower of London (and I AM).

Now go to your libraries and check out as many books from the 800s as you can carry, so you stop causing your librarians to despair. And if you live in my town, check out Henry IV, Part I. The version from the Marlowe Society hasn't checked out since 1995.