?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Today

Posted on August 16, 2011

Today Earl and I drove the final leg of our journey to Canada where we are fishing for five days. And what we saw along the way was a microcosm of all our days on the road.

Once you get out of the cities – Chicago, Rockford, Madison, St. Paul, Fargo – much of our country is pastoral. Starbuck’s is left behind. Instead, you set your sights on truck stops. You watch how far it is from one exit to another. You don’t assume anything. It doesn’t matter what state you’re driving through.

This morning we had breakfast in Fargo, North Dakota, and then headed north on I-29 to Canada. The sun wasn’t brilliant, but it shone. Every now and then, a rain cloud reminded us that weather is always changing. Field after field was heavy with crops; but, being a city girl, I couldn’t distinguish one from the other. All I knew was that August was full and ripe.

Mile after mile rolled under our car. Along today’s stretch of highway I noticed that trees were planted in long rows, and I wondered if this was deliberate. Did these tree fences help when winter’s gales arrived? Were they the city’s version of snow fences? And, as usual, we experienced our share of construction. It seems August is synonymous with construction everywhere from Michigan and Indiana to North Dakota and Canada.

Earl and I have done several road trips of more than a thousand miles, and there is a certain familiarity about them. Whether it was today’s journey or one we took in May or last year, we are always subjected to the weather, the landscape, and the rural vs. urban attractions. It makes for great entertainment along the way.

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Google-de-gook

Posted on August 15, 2011

I want to start lobbying for the Word of the Year for 2013. And I hope Ben Zimmer, whom I wrote about a few days ago, is paying attention. Even if he isn’t I think my word has merit. It’s Google-de-gook.

At this point nobody has heard of it although many people have experienced it, some with their smart phones and others who are subjected to people with their smart phones in inappropriate situations.

Gobbledygook is defined as unintelligible information, gibberish, something that is not understandable. It is the father to my word. Since I’m the mother, I choose to define Google-de-gook not as something unintelligible but something that someone with a smart phone decides must be researched in the moment, must be injected into an otherwise gentle conversation among humans, must be the final word.

I’ve been in more than one conversation where someone says, “I wonder what the annual mean temperature on the top of Everest is.” In the past, this might lead to others’ opinions and perhaps some really interesting dialogue. But when another in the group has a smart phone and insists on an immediate empirical answer, all conversation changes. The answer is not unintelligible, but it is a distraction in the context of a free-flow conversation.

And it is becoming more and more prevalent in our society. There is even a debate going on as to whether instant information is productive or if it’s leading to the dumbing down of our people. If the latter point of view wins, then Google-de-gook will indeed become synonymous with gibberish.

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Baumgartner’s

Posted on August 14, 2011

There are probably not a lot of people out there who can say they drove 350 miles for a liver sausage sandwich, but Earl and I are proud to be among them. After all, the sandwich, which comes on rye only with onions on request and no condiments, is a signature dish at Baumgartner’s, an old-time tavern and cheese store in Monroe, Wisconsin. It’s located on the town square that is as quaint at the tavern itself.

Earl and Baumgartner’s go way back, long before I showed up on the scene. So when he and I were traveling through western Wisconsin years ago it seemed natural for him to introduce me to this friend. Since then we’ve probably been there eight/night times, and the liver sausage has never disappointed. Neither have the cheese curds. They’re so fresh, they squeak.

Which is why we visited Baumgartner’s today on our way to Winnipeg, Canada. Let it be recorded that Monroe, Wisconsin, was about two hours out of the way; but we knew from early morning we’d make that detour.

The tavern itself is long and narrow, like many old-time stores. Cheese sales are rung in the front; while hearty beer, cocktails, various sandwiches and some other food items are served in the back. We always head for the back first and climb onto barstools that make me feel really tall. Then we laughed at the various signs above the bar, although we’ve seen them every time we come.

They include: “Good food takes time to prepare; yours will be ready in a minute.” Or “If you’re drinking to forget, please pay in advance.” In addition, there are hundreds of one dollar bills clinging to the ceiling. The first time I visited Baumgartner’s I wondered how they got there. I learned every server is able to send the bill, from a curious customer of course, to the ceiling with a technique that includes a tack as adhesive and a quarter as ballast. These are wrapped inside the dollar in a certain way as to make the tack and the bill stick while the quarter returns to the server’s palm.

Then there is the map of the United States and the map of the world with stick pins everywhere to represent where Baumgartner’s customers come from. I noticed that nobody had visited from Benton Harbor, so I asked for a pin to represent my community. And by the time I’d done this, our liver sausage sandwich was ready. A minute must have passed.

I don’t know what it is about Baumgartner’s. It’s dark and loud and clearly inhabited with more locals than tourists. But it exudes such energy in such a sleepy town that it’s contagious. I walk in the front door, smile, and can’t wait to bite into that liver sausage.

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Back to My Kindle

Posted on August 13, 2011

Earl gave me a Kindle a couple years ago. While I like it, I find that in my own home I prefer holding an actual book in my hand as opposed to the virtual kind. However, when we’re taking a vacation the Kindle is front and center.

We leave tomorrow for ten days of traveling in the United States and Canada, and I’m about to load my Kindle with reading material. It will include a couple novels others have recommended, Olive Kitteridge and Edgar Sawtell among them. It will also include The New York Times Sunday edition, which has enough reading material every week to qualify as a novella.

On a trip, the Kindle consolidates one’s reading material and reduces the weight involved. You can also have a stack of books at your elbow without taking up a lot of luggage room. Even if you’re traveling by car, it’s nice not to lug a shopping bag of reading material into the motel room each night.

So for the next several days my Kindle and I will be best friends. I’m looking forward to it.

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Ben Zimmer

Posted on August 12, 2011

I’d like to extend a personal invitation to Mr. Ben Zimmer to join me under my rock so we can discuss words, their definitions, and their importance. Zimmer is the executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, an online thesaurus that uses a mapping concept to show the relationships among words.

In addition, he succeeded William Safire as the “On Language” columnist for The New York Times. After Safire’s death in 2009, I secretly bemoaned that there wasn’t anybody out there who could cut through the piteous prose that often passes as professional writing. When I got stuck with some grammar item, I muttered under my breath, “Where is Safire when I need him?”

But I’ve followed Mr. Zimmer for a while now, and I believe he is a most able successor. A column he wrote today talks about how the word downgrade has “taken on powerful significance, to the point that it has vaulted into contention for Word of the Year.”

Word of the Year, you say? Is that like the Academy Awards or the Emmys or the Cleos, recognizing the best in its class for a given time period? Not exactly. The word isn’t always the best; for lack of a better explanation, it’s the one word that most closely typifies the grammatical focus of our country at any given time.

Some of the words that were recently honored are subprime (2007), bailout (2008), tweet (2009), and app (2010). And if frequency is a criterion of the Word of the Year, then downgrade has been upgraded to first place.

Not a lot of people in the general population seem to care about this; but, Mr. Zimmer, if you read this just know I’m glad you’re here when I need you.

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Under the Rock

Posted on August 11, 2011

I’m here hiding under my rock. (If you read yesterday’s blog, you understand.) I’m waiting for the angst of the current politics to subside and am concentrating on literary things in the meantime.

For the past seven years, I’ve worked in finance and human resources. Go figure. Now I’m updating this website, because I recently quit my job and want to focus on writing. I’m researching what’s happened in the publishing industry since I stopped working as a pen for hire eight years ago. I’m trying to reconnect with my writer’s self. I hope to get my work into print via a traditional publisher. If I don’t succeed, I’m evaluating e-books.

Part of my research is to read. And today I read an article about the most looked-up words in articles found in the New York Times. It seems there’s a department at the newspaper that studies this. It fuels the debate about whether print newspapers should dumb down their writing to accommodate readers who want news in a hurry vs. readers who think they know a lot of unusual words and are proud of it.

For the record, the top three words on the look-up list are “panegyric,” “immiscible,” and “Manichean.” I must admit I’d heard all of them, but didn’t know what they meant. So I took the time to look them up. I urge you to do the same.

And whether you come down on the side of quick reading or erudite reading when a newspaper is involved, I hope you at least consider the issue in the first place. Newspapers, as well as books, are quickly being relegated to the endangered species list; and we might not even have this discussion before too long.

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Market Madness

Posted on August 10, 2011

It’s up, it’s down, it’s up again. Oh, no, now it’s down. The stock market has become a yo-yo, and everyone is weighing in on what will happen next.

Yo-yos are simple toys with two components: a spool and a length of string attached to it. A novice can manage to use the string to make the spool go up and down. A true yoyoist can make it fly in all directions almost defying gravity. He or she knows what to do to make things happen.

If I were to belabor this analogy, I’d say our country is being run by novices who can’t do more than make the spool go up and down. I’m not picking on any one individual or party here; I’m picking on them all indiscriminately. And I’m going to hide under a rock for the foreseeable future.

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Reading Program

Posted on August 9, 2011

Now that I am no longer gainfully employed at Fred Flare, Inc., I’m making various lists of things I want to do with the time I once put to finances, human resources, and legal issues.

One of my goals is to read every book in my three-bookcase library. I’ve read many of them, but particularly those that were given me as gifts have waited their turn. Now it’s here.

I started last week by picking the first book on the top shelf of the bookcase in the piano room. Called Sudden Fiction, it’s a collection of short, short stories (also called flash fiction) by many different authors, some whose names are instantly recognizable (Ernest Hemingway) and others that are not. What characterizes these stories is that all are two thousand words or less.

I read most of them and also the various essays in the back about this genre. One of its hallmarks is that it leaves the reader feeling as if an entire story has been presented in a brief space without wrapping up all the loose ends. Personally, I found the stories that attempted to explain a small event rather than rewrite War and Peace for Dummies the more rewarding. I guess I don’t like loose ends.

The next unread book on the same shelf is David Guterson’s the country ahead of us, the country behind (sic). And once I finish the selection I’m reading for my book club, Mr. Guterson will get his turn.

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August Doldrums

Posted on August 8, 2011

“I’m just an early summer gardener,” said a friend of mine a couple months ago. When pressed to explain, she said, “I like planting and watching things grow, but by August when everything is in bloom I’ve had enough. I don’t want to weed and deadhead anymore.”

At the time I appreciated her frankness but didn’t really agree with her point of view. I was eager to get out in the sun and commune with my plantings. Then August arrived a week ago. My flowers are either raging in color and fullness or languishing because of missing nutrient in the soil or too much water or too little. Since this is only the second summer I’ve planted at this home, I’m still in learning mode.

So I’m happy with the alyssum, the zinnias, the roses, and most especially the hollyhocks, one of which is as high as our roof. The wild grass and the black eyed Susans have done well too. The geraniums, on the other hand, seem pinched and frustrated. So do the New Guinea impatiens. Their leaves are not a vibrant green nor are their flowers big. Perhaps they’ve received too much water. Or maybe they’ve succumbed to some mite. Or lack of fertilizer.

To date, I’ve put a lot of money, time, and energy into my flowers this summer. I’m not mad that some grew well and some didn’t. Nor am I discouraged. At the same time, I too am becoming disenchanted with the regular upkeep of both thriving and non-thriving plants. And it has occurred to me that I might be an early summer gardener like my friend.

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Junk Mail

Posted on August 5, 2011

Our snail mail these days is filled with catalogs, flyers, bills and the very occasional card or letter from a friend. These usually occur around birthdays, and I treasure them. But they arrive so infrequently, I’d have no problem seeing our postal delivery service cut to three or four days a week.

I wish I could also stop the flow of junk e-mail that proliferates more than the real paper catalogs. As I write this there are eighty-one emails soliciting my attention in my spam folder. Of course, I don’t read every one but I do scan the subject line in case my spam settings accidentally tagged a legitimate email as junk.

Here are some current emails that really are junk . . . as well as the email address they came from. Info@agslvedro.com wants to tell me about a better bra because that’s “what all women wish for.” ALL women is a pretty big statement, and I wonder how it was determined. Does it include women in China? In India? What about women who don’t wear bras?

Info@mouleglit.org kept its email short and to the point. It invites me to earn a cooking degree and points me to the website involved. Freescore@animalcrackeria.com is concerned about the security of my identity and wants to monitor my credit scores. Then there are emails urging me to print grocery coupons, get the online degree I “deserve,” and cash in on cheap airline tickets.

I guess it’s a law that if you want to unsubscribe from these websites, the email must provide a link to how you do that. The thing is it sometimes is more trouble than it’s worth, especially because every single email address I’ve published here doesn’t exist. I checked each one for validity. So the easiest way to get rid of junk is to hit the Delete All button. Ironically, a window pops up and asks if I’m sure I want to do this. Trust me, I’m sure. It’s the equivalent of pitching a smail mail without opening the envelope.

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