Grandma Grammar

1. Public Service Announcement: Clamor is not the same as clamber. You do not sit on the floor and then clamor to your feet, you clamber. Good grief. What is the world coming to? The first time I saw this it was in a novel published by a big five publishing house and I rolled my eyes so hard at their carelessness. Then I saw it in another novel today, also published by a big five house. Apparently this is now acceptable linguistic drift.

I know, I know, my shrew is showing. And you've probably read enough here to know that my grammar-- tinged with equal parts East Texas roots and aging brain--is not perfect, either. But still. 

*sighs* *gives up*

This is apparently a decision that copy editors have already made. I wonder what is the age limit for being bothered by this one? Do people under age 60 really think that those two words mean the same thing? And probably people of all ages are thinking, wait, does she really care about this? seriously? because nobody else does. Except the twenty-seven of us who do care, and I bet I'm not the only one who reads here who is one of them.

2. In my previous blog, I used to run a weekly post about words. It's been more than ten years now so the details are hazy, but I think it was called Words on Wednesday, and I would pick words that were frequently confused (like peak/peek/pique) and explain why/how they were different. But I stopped doing it because I figured I was preaching to the choir (cliché). 

3. We are human beings who communicate through language, so we'll never get to the point that words don't matter. But I think we are quickly reaching the point where precision in language doesn't matter. It's easy to get all up on my high horse (cliché) about that, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad change. 

I mean, I will always regret it for myself, because words are My Thing. But it probably doesn't spell doom and gloom (cliché) for our culture. The culture snobs thought that the world was ending back in the 19th century when the novel eclipsed poetry, right? (in English speaking countries, I don't know the timeline in other languages.)

Tastes change, technologies change, and for some time now, the cutting edge of narrative art has been visual, not literary. It's no less art, and it's no less creative or challenging to create. I've seen plenty of movies that blew me away, not to mention well-written TV shows, and even music videos.

But I'm not quite to the point where I've reconciled myself to books and movies that are essentially video games in another format. I know the same argument applies-- it's not bad, it's just a new way of telling stories-- but it's harder to wrap my head around. 

We went to see "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" last week, and about halfway through I leaned over to Doug and said, this is a movie of a video game. They gather a team, and then they walk around shooting people and blowing things up. It was well made, and it wasn't exactly a waste of time, but it didn't do much for me-- at least partly because I don't really find violence to be all that entertaining. And you know what? That probably wouldn't bother Guy Ritchie one bit. Senior citizen word nerds are not his target audience.

Have a good weekend. Go for a hike and clamber over some rocks. 

My Inner Shrew

Edited to add: this turns into a rant at the end. Avoid if you're not in the mood.

Back in the 90s (a lot of my posts start with that), getting in touch with your “inner child” was a thing. A huge thing. There were books and seminars and people talked about it with their therapist and then told you more than you ever wanted to know about having play dates with their inner child, the pure innocent being that supposedly lives deep inside us, covered over by the cares and responsibilities of adulthood.

It was helpful — maybe even life-changing — for a lot of people, even some people I knew. But it never worked for me. I was in therapy at the time, so I remember doing a quasi-hypnosis thing with my therapist, and I remember going to a "Find Your Inner Child" workship one Saturday, and I'm pretty sure I read at least one book, to no avail. I never got in touch with anything that resembled a sweet, luminous inner child. 

Then a couple of weeks ago I think I figured out why: it’s because my inner child isn’t pure and innocent, she’s as mad as a hornet trapped in a window. I was thinking about a couple of things that happened when I was four or five—not anything out of the ordinary for 1965, just how it felt to exist in my family in the world at that time— and my younger self's voice sounded in my head with perfect clarity: These people don’t know what THE FUCK they are doing. 

“These people” being my parents, and “fuck” being a word that of course I wouldn’t have known when I was four (it was not a word that was said casually in 1965), but somehow that inner self scooped the word out of my adult brain as the best way to describe how she felt. 

My parents had good intentions. They were not bad parents, especially not for the times. But they were incapable of seeing my need to be something other than what they expected me to be, and they were definitely not going to protect me from the expectations of our southern Baptist subculture.

They weren't even aware there was a problem. In their minds, and in the minds of at least a few Sunday School teachers, girl scout leaders, and other kids' moms, when I didn't fit in, the problem was me. 

Oddly, finding that enraged little knot of confused child shaking her fist at the universe has felt as freeing as I imagine the other sort of inner child would feel. I'm sure there are those who would say I just haven't dug deep enough yet; and maybe they're right-- maybe somewhere further down inside me is a pure innocent little angel. Or maybe some of us are just born to be little shits and I should own it.

OK, I said little shits because it made me laugh, but of course I wasn't really a little shit, or at least not any more often than most kids. I was just already a jaded mini-adult by the time I was five, and I couldn't foresee any chance things would ever change. I gave in early and often; I did not try to resist.

Maybe the reason this has come up is because for the past several months I have been so angry. So angry. Angry that we might end up with that conman as president again, angry that our guy didn't step aside for someone new, angry that the world is so fucked up right now, angry that there is so much hatred and spite in the air.

Most of us just want peace and safety for ourselves and our loved ones and a reasonable amount of prosperity and why is that so hard? Why are the people who are in power so determined to stay there that they will lie and propagandize and sell their own souls, no matter what it does to the rest of us? Why are the people in economic power, the billionaires who create our economy without having any sort of mandate to do so, scooping hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, out of our economy as their compensation for some weird biz school concept like "being willing to take on risk" and stagnating the wages of everyone else because anyone can be a secretary/plumber/custodian? 

Have they ever even looked around? OF COURSE not just anyone can be a good secretary. We have receipts that prove not just anyone can be a good plumber. Not just anyone can be good at cleaning a bathroom or replacing a transmission or flipping burgers.

How did we get this weird idea that the people at the top of the economic food chain deserve to be paid as much as possible, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, and the people at the bottom are just shit out of luck because .... ? I don't even know why. Maybe because to acknowledge that the burger flipper deserves dignity and respect and a reasonable living would mean that those people at the top wouldn't be able to win at the uniquely American game of Cutthroat Competitive Greed, a game that becomes more terrifying and more world-destroying for the rest of us every day. 

I'm starting to rant. No, I'm well into a rant. It just makes me so fucking angry. I heard a young athlete, probably 25 or 26, who has already made his first millions because he is very good at what he does, say in an interview, "I believe in capitalism, I'm going to make as much money as I can," and I thought, that is not what capitalism means-- except in our country, where self-centered, no-holds-barred greed has somehow come to be known as capitalism, and the phrase "but we can make money" is an excuse for anything and everything. 

Somewhere along the way we managed to let caring for our fellow human beings and community involvement and just plain and simple kindness become optional, the thing that seems silly and delusional, while lining our pockets is what really matters. I'm just sick of all of it, and of the people who look at you like you're a naive idiot if you push back.

Well, believe it or not, this post was originally supposed to end with some positive, hopeful commentary about something that I can't even remember anymore. I guess I got a little carried away.

Related: check out this story about an enormous study that found that venting doesn't reduce anger. But I think I do feel a little better, so maybe they're wrong. I suppose I'd better go back and add a rant warning at the top of the post. Have a good weekend. Do something that the "capitalists" would think was stupid.

a post that will make no sense if you haven't read the last two posts

I've got two half-written posts I could subject you to, and another half-dozen in my head, but I am feeling singularly unmotivated to post anything this week, so I will just leave you with a couple of addenda to past posts and maybe I will do better next week.

I did go back and add the recipe for Garden Minestrone in the first comment to my last post. But I did it in a hurry, and I didn't remember until I found half of a bag of frozen peas in my freezer that I only used half of the bag of peas. Apologies if you already tried it. An entire 14-ounce bag would have been a lot of peas.

Also, I was so excited to tell you about reading cookbooks that I neglected to mention a book that I meant to pass along to any other dark fantasy fans. You probably know me well enough to know that I don't like my dark fantasy very dark, but I don't know what else to call a book about a school whose students die regularly-- as in, one in four students will die before they graduate. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik is a about a school of magic so of course it gets called a dark Harry Potter, but really it has much more in common with The Hunger Games than Hogwarts. I loved the main character El, who is doggedly determined to do the right thing in spite of being shunned by her fellow students. There has been some controversy about veiled, unintended racism-- Novik has apologized for one particular comment, but there was nothing in the book that rose to the level of boycott this book for me.

Honestly, I am so tired of hair-trigger reactions to the smallest things leading to books being canceled or boycotted. I know, I KNOW, that's a sign of my own privilege. I get that, but I'm still tired of it. This book is actually one of the best illustrations I've read of how privilege works so at least it has that going for it. You could hand it to a teenager who doesn't believe privilege exists and let them learn. It's the first book in a trilogy. The other two were good, but I think this one is the best of the three.

And finally, it occurred to me that a conservative who read my mini-rant in this post (see #5 and 6) about the agenda-driven takeover of local libraries might think that the way my parents raised me is obviously wrong because I turned out to be a liberal or progressive or whatever we're calling me. So I thought I should clarify that my parents have three daughters (I'm the middle), and I'm the only one that is no longer evangelical. The other two are still firmly within the fold, so to speak, and they are the reason that I so often say that there are conservatives I deeply love and respect, because I do love and respect my sisters who are amazing people.

And after that bunch of nonsense, I'm done. Have a good weekend. I know this was a pretty boring post but believe me, the half-written posts I didn't finish were way more boring so really I did you a favor.

Reading Report January-March 2024

I haven't read very many books in the first three months of this year, and I'm not sure exactly why. I've been reading, but mostly I've been reading books that I didn't finish (life's too short to read a book you're not enjoying), or that I've read before-- and I don't usually count re-reads in my tally. So I don't really have that much to report. Here are a few: 

Circe by Madeline Miller. I know. Everybody else read this five years ago. I just finally picked it up a couple of weeks ago. It's really good, but you probably don't need me to tell you that because you probably already read it yourself. 

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman, #2 in the Thursday Murder Club series. I enjoyed the first one in this series, but not enough to prioritize reading the sequels. I'm sorry I waited so long, because this one was much more interesting. Really enjoyed it. 

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. We listened to this on our road trip, because we're in a couples book club and this was our March selection. At the beginning of the trip, we called it our homework because it was pretty dry--we made ourselves listen to 30 minutes a day before we could listen to anything else. But once we got about a third of the way through, it became much more interesting, and before long we were listening to an hour or two a day. We finished it well before we made it back home. Whether or not you agree with any of his conclusions about mind-altering substances, it is a great book to discuss-- both for the two of us on our trip, and for our book club when we finally met up a couple of weeks ago. Also, Pollan is a great reader of his own work.

All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore-- if you're an "exvangelical" like me (someone who was raised evangelical but no longer shares those beliefs), this is a must listen. In the 1990s-2000s, Beth Moore represented a lot of things about being a Christian woman that I did not appreciate (to put it mildly). I was a judgy snob about her work, even though I'm not sure I ever read any of it. But she is so candid in this memoir, and so clearly trying to do the right thing in the face of enormous opposition-- by the end, she had won me over. I went back and forth between the print version and the audio and she is also a good reader. There have been some complaints about her accent, but I went to Jr High and High School in East Texas, about three hours away from her hometown, and I can verify that people really talk like that, especially when they're telling stories. Not everybody has that much twang, but enough do that it didn't seem exaggerated to me. 

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin-- I loved this at first. A young woman named Greta works as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist who might not actually be a licensed therapist. In the small town where she lives, it is almost impossible to maintain clients' confidentiality, even when she tries--and sometimes she doesn't try very hard. It is darkly comic, painful, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes crude, a bit absurd. But after about the first third, it got to be a bit too .... much for me. I skimmed through the middle and then started reading again about 50 pages before the end. It's sad and hilarious and profound, and not always easy to read. Sort of recommended. 

I was super disappointed in Tim O'Brien's new book. Maybe I'll write more about that another time. Super disappointed. I think the religion of progressive intellectuals is cynicism. They cling to it with fanatical devotion. It is profoundly boring to me. Just watch while I smack down your juvenile efforts to be sincere or hopeful or kind. Hmmm. That got a little preachy. Sorry not sorry.

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Have we ever talked about reading cookbooks? Even though I'm not much of a cook-- I'm not terrible, but I'm not very good, either-- I love to read cookbooks. I almost always have at least one going.  

Reading cookbooks is a different thing than cooking from a cookbook. A cookbook with great recipes might not be interesting to read, and the reverse is also true. I'm particularly fond of Mark Bittman, Deb Perelman, Ina Garten, the Cooks' Illustrated people, and a bunch more. Normally I don't tell you about the cookbooks I read because I'm not a good enough cook to be able to recommend the recipes, and I don't know that there are all that many other people who read cookbooks for fun. But just in case, here's one: The Essential New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser, "lovingly revised and exceedingly cookable," published in 2021. 

What made it so interesting to me is that it ends up being a history of cooking in the US. There's a recipe for Clam Chowder from 1881, Fried Green Tomatoes from 1897, Brownies from 1943, Mocha Cheesecake from 1976. There are recipes from Julia Child, Barbara Kafka (who wrote the famous roasting cookbook back in the 90s), Marian Burros (including her famous plum cake that is apparently the most requested recipe ever published in the NYT), and a zillion from Craig Claiborne. Each section opens with a brief essay by Hesser about food trends over the past 140 years. It's a thousand pages long, so it took me about a year to read it, a little bit at a time, but I thought it was thoroughly intriguing. 

I haven't cooked from it, though, because NYT Cooking recipes are not usually the kind of thing that I cook. Not because I wouldn't like to but because they often call for ingredients that we just can't get here, or if we can get them, they're past their prime or dusty and out of date. Then this week I tried a recipe-- Garden Minestrone, first published in 1973-- that was so good I'm rethinking that. Maybe I will try some others. 

The reason I tried it is because it was so different-- you slice/prepare all the vegetables (a mandoline makes it less onerous) and then layer them in a dutch oven, cover, and cook without adding any liquid. The veggies release their liquid as they cook and make the broth. I used a drained 28 oz can of canned whole tomatoes (no fresh this time of year in MT), frozen peas, and garbanzos instead of limas, and it was still delicious. I can't find a version of it online or I'd link to it. Maybe if I have time this weekend I'll type up the way I did it (which has enough changes that it probably wouldn't be a copyright violation)(I did it in the oven, for one thing) and put it in the comments.

Wow. Just discovered that the ebook version is currently on sale for $2.99. The print version is $40. But who wants to cook from their iPad? Not me. They probably have it at your library. The Garden Minestrone is on page 118.

Well, this got long. Here's hoping for better reading soon. Have a nice weekend.

7ToT: Trip report and various other things

1. Every time we get back from a trip, I'm surprised how many people ask, "What was your favorite moment?" I guess it makes sense, come to think of it, because it keeps you limited to one moment from the trip, instead of going on and on, which nobody wants. But it surprises me because who can do that? have one favorite moment from a three-week trip? Maybe I should just randomly pick a good one and go with it. Like watching my internist spouse eat a hot dog so loaded with peppers, wasabi relish, teriyaki sauce, and jalapenos that you could no longer see the dog, or driving a golf cart in Scottsdale up and down paths that were so steep I about bit my tongue, or standing at the edge of Canyon de Chelly with my jaw dropped at the gorgeous colors. It was a good trip. There were a lot of great moments--many more than one-- including some lovely moments with long-term friends (the best kind of friends). You know who you are. <3

2. I thought of some other possible ways to write my trip report, though. One was as a "tips and tricks" for a three-week camper trip, which would have been kind of silly since it's the first time we've ever done a trip that was more than five days. Or maybe, "Things I will do Differently Next Time," but I could only come up with one: BRING MORE TOWELS. There you have it. Even counting the towel I lost (see next item), we still needed many more towels.

3. I also considered writing it like a daily travelogue, where each day I would report on The Thing I Left Behind. Day One: Left my favorite sunglasses in the bathroom at a rest stop. Day Two: Left my entire kit of toiletries behind at a hotel (the only night we stayed in a hotel because of 35 mph winds). Day Three: Left my towel in the bathhouse at that night's campground. Day Four: Dropped my favorite hat--but lucky for me, some nice guy picked it up and ran after me with it. Fortunately, by Day Five the rain of things I was distributing all over the Southwest had slowed and I think I made it home with the rest of my possessions. But those sunglasses--damn. They were good ones (not prescription, but bifocal cheaters which are super hard to find).

4. The amount of toiletries I "need" is absurd and excessive. I freely admit it. But every time I try to trim them down, I can't figure out what to leave behind. So on our second day when we were three hours down the road and we got a phone call that I had left my toiletries behind, it was kind of a problem. Our trip was a big loop, so at first I told them to hang on to them and we would pick them up when we drove back through. Then we stopped at a Target and I spent almost two hundred dollars replacing what could be replaced. Not kidding. It's all stuff that I would have bought eventually anyway, but still. That's a lot of stupid. Then that night I realized it wasn't just toiletries; my glasses and my retainer were also missing. So the very kind hotel employees mailed the whole (literal) kit and caboodle to Scottsdale, our next stop. I am forever grateful, but the hotel employee sounded so happy to do it that I wondered if maybe it was nice to get out of the hotel and head to the post office for a few minutes.

5. Moving on. Like so many other small towns, the board of our public library has been taken over by ultra-conservatives who probably hadn't darkened the door of the library in years, if ever. Now they are worried that LIBERALS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD through local libraries because.... ? how? I don't know. (Aside: A friend who is friends with the librarians told me that the book they are most upset about hadn't been checked out in two years until they started complaining about it, now there are dozens of people waiting to read it.)

6. I've been a liberal/progressive/Democrat/etc since I was about 22, but you remember, I'm sure, that I was raised Evangelical, and I am mystified by this attitude. I was raised to know that what we believed in our home was not what we would be taught at the public school we attended, or endorsed by any public institution (like a library). My parents took responsibility for teaching us their beliefs, and when what we believed was different than what we were taught in school, they took it upon themselves to explain why. They did not expect that the school (or a library) would be a Christian organization supporting the Christian faith, because hello, First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."). Public schools and public organizations were supposed to be neutral toward religion so that everyone--Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Christians, and everyone else-- would be welcome. Amazing how many people there are who want to interpret the Second Amendment (about the right to bear arms) as broadly as possible, but then pretend that the First Amendment no longer applies. 

7. Truth in Advertising: in my last post, I told you about my obsession with NYT word games. First of all, I have subsequently flailed, which I suppose is to be expected if you publicly announce how much you love something. But also, not once but twice I said I do those games every single day and it wasn't until after the post went up that I thought, no I don't. I do them every single day except when I don't. But since right now I'm at a month and a half of yes, actually doing them every day, I guess it seems like it's always this way. Also, I made it sound like *pearls clutched* I would never use hints or cheat, and while that is usually true, I do sometimes use the spelling bee grid published by NYT, and less often, the Bee Roots page, which is maintained by fellow enthusiasts.

Also, I tried Connections again after reading about Michael Chabon's method, and it didn't work for me. I am still terrible at it. Well, maybe not terrible, but bad enough that it is not good for my mental health. 

(In the midst of the type-A takeover of the then-Twitter Spelling Bee community, I changed my profile description to "Champion of Type-B Personalities Everywhere." I don't think anyone got it except me, but it made me laugh every time I thought about it.)

This post is exactly why I frequently say I'm going to start writing shorter posts, but then I never manage to do so. Hope you have a good weekend. I had to plan a party again, so it's unlikely that my weekend will be fun, but at least it will be over soon.