WEARING DIGITAL, NOT A WATCH

Last week I asked what this means: "No one picks on a Marine unless they wear [or were?] digital."

Son Jude sent an answer: "I think this refers to the new digitally designed camouflage prints (MARPAT) the military has come out with. See Digital Camouflage History."

Thus, it means no one can criticize a Marine except another Marine.

JUST FOLKS

Thinking about folk music the other day ~ maybe even listening to it ~ I started wondering who the folks were. A wave of "folk music" became popular with such diverse artists as the Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Richie Havens ~ lots of popular singers who weren't singing rock or jazz or blues or country or pop somehow got to be "folk" if they sang old songs from the old country (any old country) or sang new political songs. But "folk" just means, you know, people. The people may forget the original composer or writer of a song, and change it over generations, but a song still has to be written by a particular person ~ or maybe more than one, in collaboration, but while a group of people can sing, a group cannot create one work of art. So why were the new compositions called folk songs?

In some cases, the new music emulated antique song forms. But I think in some cases the new artists wanted to be identified with the "real" people, as opposed to all those fake people, and conversely, some of them wanted to bolster their own political opinions with the fantasy that all our ancestors, the folk (at least the working class folk) would have sung their songs and agreed with whatever they had to say.

But we're all folks, including people who write or sing commercial jingles, Broadway show tunes, classical arias. "Folk music" is a sloppy term, and people who sing the ancient songs of their people or nation can't refer to it, and themselves, that way unless they get educated to it.

MISLED

Some word wag once said that he grew up thinking "misled" was the past tense of "misle" (pronounced myzel, although Fred said some of his people actually said mizzle) and was disappointed to find that it was in fact the past tense of "mislead". He felt that the verb "misle" would be an agreeable addition to the language. He's not the only one who misread (misered?) that word, and misle would indeed be a cool word. Of course if there were such a word, lots of people would read it as "mile" (like "isle").

AU JUS

In a TV ad, a woman demonstrating some kind of terrific kitchen gadget said, "I use it to make my gravy or au jus!" The phrase au jus has already been beaten senseless on menus ~ e.g., roast beef sandwich with au jus ~ by people who don't know that it's French for "with juice" (or meat drippings) and doesn't need another "with". But it's going too far to say you're going to make au jus, because as far as I know, you don't make it, it just happens. When you cook meat, it leaks, and the leakage is tasty. You can add more fluids (water, wine, etc.) and you can deglaze a pan that is more dry than jus-y, but you can't make it no matter what gadgets you buy.

PLANT WARS

Roger Swain, who used to host the TV show The Victory Garden, now hosts HGTV's People, Places & Plants. I didn't know he'd switched shows and I thought maybe The Victory Garden was gone, perhaps as a war protest. The term "victory garden" came from World War II ~ possibly further back, maybe WWI ~ and referred to small gardens where people raised vegetables in small patches of ground, their front yard, the devil's strip, anywhere, to contribute to the country's food needs during the war, when supplies were stretched to the limit. It was patriotic to have a victory garden. But The Victory Garden is still on TV, and on PPP, there was Roger Swain talking about the "freedom lawn" in which you avoid using pesticides and tolerate a little crabgrass. Herbicides, however, are OK for poison ivy; he said you shouldn't attempt "hand to hand combat" with poison ivy.

I think of gardening (and farming) as among the most peaceful of human activities, but even here we can't avoid war metaphors.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS

A promo for a Renaissance festival was headlined "Shiver me timbers". This nautical expression of surprise, meaning something like "splinter my masts", doesn't have much to do with Renaissance castles, although this festival does feature a Pirate Assault Catapult. No ship, though. Wouldn't be my choice of headline. It made me think the writer just dredged up something that sounded old, regardless of century or scenario.

BOOK 'EM

Garrison Keillor, the English major's champion, suggests politicians throw some pork our way in "Book 'Em". (You can access Salon.com for free if you watch an online ad.)

THE SUMMER SCENE

# The Sam bro ran across an obituary for a fellow whose nickname was "Deadly", who fortunately went home to be with the Lord. The photo in the paper showed a man with a huge smile. Maybe he was just a lady killer, in the nicest sense.

# Spotted at a concert in the park: Man with a tattoo of Abraham Lincoln. Woman with a Mohawk hairstyle, which wouldn't be so extremely unusual except it was a little bit of a wisp of a Mohawk that appeared to be regrowth after chemotherapy.

COREX AND COMMENTS FROM MIKE S.

I'm a bit late passing these on to you, but Mike S. commented thoroughly on several things:

Engineers and e.g. and i.e.

I can't find any statement about this in "ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 Rules for the structure and drafting of International Standards" dated as recently as 2005-06-28. However, this document contains numerous occurrences of both /e.g. /and /i.e./ (none of which is followed by a comma, which I find surprising in the former case, though not in the latter).

The only thing it says about style is:

To facilitate understanding by all readers, the style shall be as simple and concise as possible. This is particularly important for those readers whose mother tongue is not one of the official languages of ISO and IEC.

Mike asks for a source on Dave DaBee's note about international document standards.

Different

I find that, as usual, I agree with Fowler (Burchfield edition). Briefly, having noted the "commonly held view that /different/ should only be followed by/ from/ and never by /to/ or /than/", he mentions that the /OED/ has quotes of /different from/ in 1590, /different to/ in 1526, and /different than/ in 1644; he concludes with "A wiser course, perhaps, is simply to avoid /different than/ if you happen to be speaking (or writing) in Britain."

BBC and terrorists

All I can say is that a search for "terrorist" at BBC - bbc.co.uk homepage - Home of the BBC on the Internet produced 1,227 hits, the first of which was BBC NEWS | In Depth | UK on terror alert (notice the date: 8 June). Whether there is, or ever has been, any policy at all I really don't know, but clearly one should not refer to any named person as a terrorist unless they have been found guilty of a relevant offence (same like "murderer", "thief" &c.). Hence you'll certainly see references to "terror suspects" and "terror detainees".

Here's a good, or bad, example of the news reporter (and then me) not doing the research.

I must note a couple of other unusual or non-American usages by Mike: "same like" where we would say "same as", and &c., which I have seen in the U.S. but not often. It's cute.

Bernadette Roberts Workshop

I am organizing a workshop with Bernadette Roberts, a remarkable Christian contemplative and author of three books:

What is Self? : A Study of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness

The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center

The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey

This workshop, called The Essence of Christian Mysticism, will be held on the weekend of May 5-7, 2006, in Loveland, Ohio. For more information, go to Bernadette Roberts Workshop. The site will probably be updated from time to time.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

NEED A SIMPLE WEB PAGE? WOULD A NEWSLETTER, ELECTRONIC OR PRINT, HELP YOUR BUSINESS? TALK TO ME ABOUT PROFESSIONAL EDITING AND WEB WORK.

I have a contribution in a new anthology about the "center of life", Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, edited by Yitta Halberstam.

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