Posted on August 10, 2004
The English language has a certain chicken-or-the-egg factor about it. Only it’s called the-noun-or-the-verb. And it’s all about words that begin life in one category but end up being used in the other. Often we don’t know which came first.
I believe languages are living, changing things, so I’m not advocating that we never create another verb from a noun or vice versa. Rather, I’m nominating – since it is an election year – the following nouns for verb status.
The word ‘back burner’ is in my current Webster’s Unabridged as a noun meaning “a condition of low priority.” But here are some ways to make it a verb: I plan to back burner watching the presidential debates. The candidates back burnered any serious conversation on the issues. We must back burner the proposed increase in taxes. Of course, it doesn’t need to have only a political bent. I’ve back burnered weeding my garden for days.
Then there’s ‘curmudgeon,’ which means “a bad tempered, difficult or cantankerous person.” Does such a person curmudge? Do right wing talk show hosts and left wing pundits also curmudge? Might Shakespeare have suggested that “He doth curmudge too much?”
‘Sledgehammer’ is already in the dictionary as a verb, but only when it refers to the activity involved in using a real sledgehammer. I think we can broaden this definition to include theoretical sledgehammers too. For instance, the commercials on television sledgehammer me during every program.
As you can see, I’m potentialing many changes for the next edition of Webster’s.
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Posted on August 9, 2004
I have a running dialogue with Kyle, my computer assistant who provides the technical know-how to keep my web site running so that I can concentrate on content. This conversation repeats itself almost every time my printer runs out of ink and one of us has to change the cartridge.
We reach into my office closet and extract a box the size of a hefty roll of masking tape. It is glued shut and is impervious to fingernails under its flaps. But within its confines rests the new ink cartridge. At this point, I exclaim in Charlie Brown fashion, “Good grief. They couldn’t make it any harder to open this box if they tried.”
I’m not sure who “they” are, but I don’t like them.
Then follows a discussion about why printer cartridge refills are sealed in such a secure manner because, after all, it isn’t as if their formulas were FBI or CIA top-secret information. I come down on the side of security; it makes them more difficult to steal from Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and the like.
Kyle comes down on the side of image. He believes that when you pay between $20 and $30 for a teeny, tiny cartridge you feel more like you are getting your money’s worth if the packaging is bigger than the product requires and exudes power in its bigness. He believes printer cartridge marketing executives know this and use it to their company’s advantage.
Probably we are both at least a little correct, so it’s not much of a sticking point between us. What is the real challenge is to make sure my closet shelf always has a spare.
See more 10 Minutes in category Annoyances, Technology
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Posted on August 8, 2004
Pickles are an interesting phenomenon. While I haven’t done an exhaustive study on their origin, I believe they all come from cucumbers searching for some spice in their lives. To this end, there is a plethora of pickle tastes, shapes, and sizes at any reputable supermarket.
Dill, sandwich, sweet, sweet and sour, kosher, whole, sliced horizontally, sliced vertically: have you ever considered that pickles are like a microcosm of human beings.
Some are so strong as to be enjoyed in small doses, others are so mild that they are welcome at any meal. Yet, both enhance the occasion. Just like people you probably know. Some are straight and narrow, others rather skewed. Some have strong religious affiliations; others don’t.
If pickle companies can highlight their products’ differences and make a profit, could there be a moral lesson here for the rest of our country?
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Posted on August 7, 2004
I am thrilled that women have discovered color for their wardrobes this summer, because I am a color person. For example, the walls in every room in my house are a different color, from eggplant purple to sea green to purply pink. It’s drama in paint chips. Plus the red sofa in the family room.
I like to wear colorful clothing too. Green pants with white and yellow daisies. Iridescent purple and blue pants with a blue shirt; slim cut jeans with fish and seaweed painted all over them. Blue shoes, red ones. Even gold.
Yes, I have the requisite “little black number.” In fact, I have a couple of them, because the rest of the world has been enamoured of black for the past few years. It has been the uniform of choice, possibly because it requires so little thought. Or maybe because the world at large thinks black is slimming.
Regardless, when I was little, very few people wore black. Old women with buns. Funeral attendees. Chimney sweeps. But beyond that, the world was a sea of color. I’m glad to return to those days.
See more 10 Minutes in category Nostalgia
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Posted on August 6, 2004
Halfway through sixth grade, I moved with my Mother from Syracuse, NY, to St. Louis, MO; and, in the process, I changed my name.
Originally I was christened Elizabeth Anne, but everyone called me by my middle name in the early years. It was only when I started school that the nuns felt bound to follow some proper protocol and call me Elizabeth. My report cards were all about Elizabeth A. It meant I responded one way to the adults at home and another to those who ruled the classroom. On the playground, I was Anne.
Then we moved. Somewhere in the plane over Ohio I decided I would tell everyone at my new school that my name was Kim, even if the nuns there still insisted on Elizabeth A. And so I did. My new friends didn’t question the discrepancy and assumed I’d been Kim for years. My Mother shook her head, but kept the secret.
I lived as Kim in St. Louis for three years before Mother moved on to the next job and I had to move with her. It was the most wonderful three years of my growing up. And to this day, whenever I talk with friends from that period, I am still Kim.
It’s odd, because I went back to being Anne the day we moved away.
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Posted on August 5, 2004
Every last Friday of the month, the women on my road gather at noon for lunch at a local restaurant. We do this every last Friday, rain or shine.
It started when Phyllis, who lives two doors down, had the idea that we should know each other better. “That way, if one of us needs help, she can call upon neighbors,” Phyllis explained when we had our first luncheon about three years ago. We were all relative strangers then.
During the past three years, we’ve dined at a variety of restaurants, the particular spot decided by the woman who is doing the calling for the upcoming luncheon. It’s on the principle that whoever is doing the work of calling should pick a restaurant she likes.
There are five widows in the space of a little over a mile on our road; and they, in particular, seem to relish being among other women, sharing thoughts, and an occasional glass of noonday wine. The conversation will never rival that of the Roundtable at New York’s Algonquin Hotel, but the sense of camaraderie is surely the same.
Which is what Phyllis had in mind in the first place.
See more 10 Minutes in category Dining/Food, Me/Family, Small Town Life
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Posted on August 4, 2004
I hate rain. It’s like an uninvited guest who shows up on the doorstep just when you’re sitting down to dinner or a favorite TV show.
This probably says more about me than it does about rain itself, because all my friends know to call first before dropping in. I’m the sort who needs a plan, who considers all contingencies before saying, “Sure, come on over” or “Sorry, I can’t get together this afternoon.”
Rain isn’t that considerate. It doesn’t consult me before its arrival; and, even when weatherpersons attempt to provide fair warning, it does as it pleases. Like today.
I planned a variety of outdoor activities; you know – weeding, cleaning the deck, sweeping cobwebs, the kind of maintenance having a home on a river requires. Being the organized sort, I’d made a list, cleared my calendar, and gathered supplies. But You-Know-What showed up. You-Know-What is making everything wet. You-Know-What is keeping me inside.
A favorite saying of mine just flashed through my consciousness: “When the student is ready the teacher will come.” Hmmm. Could there be a lesson in flexibility here?
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Posted on August 3, 2004
A couple weeks ago I wrote about what I perceived as unnecessary things in the world. (See July 17, 2004) Included on my list were mosquitoes, neckties, and cellphones in coordinated colors.
Well, I have more nominees in case you are making a list of your own. What about moles, those creatures that can ruin a lawn in less than a single summer?
You don’t think of moles if you live in a big city where there is more concrete than grass, but if you live in the country moles are a source of constant aggravation. They live under the lawn and spend their waking hours creating tunnels this way and that. The tunnels are soft and squishy when those who live above ground walk on them. With bare spots where grass used to be, the tunnels are unsightly too.
I’ve tried to rid our lawn of these creatures, but they’re clever. The sonic noisemakers I put down their tunnels only prompted them to move to another part of the yard. The castor beans we planted, on a tip that moles don’t like the smell of the flowering bean, never sprouted. The $15 traps we set – all four of them – have yielded just two tiny culprits.
I’m running out of ideas. Except maybe we should raise a white flag on our flagpole, tear out the grass, and install green-colored concrete.
See more 10 Minutes in category Flora/Fauna
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Posted on August 2, 2004
There are those who think the ability to identify a caller before answering the phone is a wonderful invention. The phone rings, you look at it, the telephone number from where the call is placed flashes on a little electronic screen, and you decide whether to pick up or not.
In fact, there are those who don’t pick up at all unless they can identify the caller on the other end of the line. And there are those who read the Caller ID number, don’t recognize it, but then call back to confront the original caller. “Who are you calling?” “What did you want?”
I don’t use Caller ID. Even though my phone company forces me to pay for this feature, my telephone instrument is so basic that it lacks the little electronic display screen. I like it that way. There’s a certain mystery, an anticipation, of wondering who is calling.
Some argue that Caller ID enables them to talk with those people they want to talk with and avoid telemarketers in the process. I see this point; but, these days, with the federal Do Not Call program in effect, I personally receive very few solicitations. Besides, if I answered my phone only when I recognized the caller’s number, I’d probably miss that big time publisher who’s eager to work with me. In my line of work, it’s a good idea not to be too elitist.
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Posted on August 1, 2004
As a writer, I’m always interested in ways to hone my skills; so, from time to time, I do practice exercises. Recently I came across one that set me thinking. The assignment was to spend ten minutes writing down everything you remember about your first grade teacher as a way of developing characters for stories.
Ten minutes, I thought. I can do that. So I sat at my computer.
Two minutes ticked by, and in that time all I could remember was my first grade teacher’s name. It was Mrs. Cary. But was she tall? Thin? Stout? Short? Grandmotherly? Or young? I cannot picture her at all in my mind’s eye.
Five minutes ticked by. I recalled things about my classmates and the school bus that turned around in my front yard, since I lived farthest from Virgil Central School. I remembered the classroom itself and the play yard. Even Darla and David, the twins who lived next door and rode the same bus. They had eight older brothers and sisters, some of whom also piled onto the bus. But beyond her name, nothing stands out about Mrs. Cary.
Do you remember your first grade teacher? If so, maybe you could spend ten minutes writing about him or her and email me some good descriptions. Perhaps we’ll even discover the art of character description together. Send your memories to Anne@AnneBrandt.com. I’d be grateful.
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