BOOK REVIEWS

/// Finished reading Conservatize Me by John Moe. Despite his surprise that someone might consider the past ~ AKA history ~ when thinking about the present, he concluded with a couple of good insights, such as:

Maybe if you shut your mouth and open your ears, you'll hear something that makes a shocking amount of sense because it's coming from someone who really believes it instead of coming from someone belittling that person's belief.

Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw the other day: "Don't assume I share your prejudices." Notice that the word "prejudices" rather than "opinions" assumes that your views are biased. Which is a prejudgment. Fred thinks the bumper sticker might be ironic, but I'm dubious.

/// Continuing in Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, about sentence diagramming, in which Kitty Burns Florey serves up lots of fascinating tidbits. I learned something my grade school teachers never taught us: a line with a bend in it is used for a participle and a line with two bends, like a stairstep, is for gerunds. Florey gives a couple of examples of misleading newspaper headlines: Squad helps dog bite victim. This is what hyphens are for: Squad helps dog-bite victim. Also, FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE. Nothing can help that one. Does it mean that a farmer named Bill died in a house, or that a bill in Congress concerning farmers died in the House of Representatives? Also, while people joke about mispronouncing "ask" as "axe", it turns out that's been done for centuries and even found its way into the first English translation of the Bible, by William Tyndale (1526): "And the people axed him, and sayde: What shall we do then?" I couldn't be more surprised. More to come when I finish this terrific little book.

JUST US

/// Word definitions I didn't know till I read about them: Some people want the criminal justice system to be "restorative" rather than "retributive"; that is, a criminal should be rehabilitated, not punished or even confined. (Though I'm not sure mere confinement can be considered either rehabilitative or cruel.) I don't know the recovery rates from emotional or mental disorders in the general population. You could search "recovery" online at the National Institute of Mental Health and possibly come up with statistics. But while people can change, and some things can be controlled, with medication, for example (if people remember to take their meds), I'm sure that serious disorders leading to criminal acts are more difficult to manage. "Restorative" sounds so much kinder than "retributive" (remember when I wrote about "revenge" vs. "karma" recently), but consider how difficult it is for you to fix your friends who need improvement, your relatives who need even more improvement, or you yourself who are hardly even criminal, or at least hardly ever. Consider how difficult it is to keep a New Year's resolution for more than a day.

/// When I was quite young I saw the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, about the Nazi trials, and because Burt Lancaster's character seemed to feel remorse, I didn't think he should be punished. Because I saw him on screen, I was touched by him. I didn't see his victims, or at least don't remember them, so they played a smaller part in my imagination.

/// Coincidentally, a couple of days after I wrote about restorative/retributive, Marcia Ribble, a U. of Cincinnati assistant professor in Humanities, Media, and Cultural Studies (i.e., everything and nothing) published her views on prisons and education in the Cincinnati Enquirer. She says that the existence of prisons proves that prisons do not prevent crime. (This is sort of like saying the presence of hospitals proves that doctors do not prevent illness.) People who believe in prisons are like Scrooge. Further, she of course believes that the cause of crime is poverty, which creates stress, which affects the brain's biochemistry, making it hard for kids to learn. Would it be too corny to remember people like Abraham Lincoln, who read books by candlelight or firelight in his family's dirt-poor pioneer cabin? My own parents, who had high-school educations, were from poor farm families and went to one-room schools up until high school, and they did not become criminals. Their education was in some ways better than what kids get today, because their reading materials were more complex and more was expected of them. And what can be said of criminals who come from middle-class to affluent families and have decent educations?

/// It's like the old saying that people swear (not a criminal act, but not quite nice either) because they have poor vocabularies (i.e. bad educations), which was supposed to shame you out of swearing, I guess ~ but only if you assumed responsibility for your language. Poor vocabulary is not why I swear.

GAMES

/// Here's an online word game about etymology: Etymologic.

/// You might have some fun with anagram generators online. Here's one for Merry Christmas: Scream, "It's myrrh!" Rhonda Keith could be Oh dare think! or Oh read, think! or Had her kit on or Her kinda hot or Oh kind heart or Ha! Red hot ink or I do thank her or Hark! Edit, Hon. Good way to find yourself some new passwords.

O HOLLY BLIGHT

Jan says this bit of holiday cheer, making the rounds of the web, should keep the masses content:

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!*

*"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishees. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

Well, I think that should just about cover it. Except "holiday" means "holy day" and is therefore questionable. Who decides what's holy anyway? And why should any one day be privileged over another? Furthermore, constructing any sentence in the imperative, even a so-called "greeting", smacks of elitism. Bah humbug.

COREX CORNER

I did it again. Still rewriting within the e-mail window last week, I wrote "literarary". Bill R. replied, "It's a long way to literary...." How true. For those of you younger than a hundred years old, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" was a popular song of the first World War. The First World War web site has the lyrics and audio clips. Tipperary is in Ireland. As for the typo, I'm saving up to have a spellchecker microchip implanted in my brain, with an audio alert since obviously I don't always catch typos visually. As it happens, the Tipperary song has a verse about typos (or writos):

If I make mistakes in spelling,

Molly dear, said he,

Remember it's the pen, that's bad,

Don't lay the blame on me.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

DECK US EVERY ONE

And now a final Christmas greeting, thanx to Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo (sing to tune of "Deck the Halls"):

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,

Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!

Nora's freezin' on the trolley,

Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,

Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?

Trolley Molly don't love Harold,

Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

______________________________________________

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at www.sonnyrobertson.com and www.youtube.com/rondaria.

CUSTOM CHRISTMAS GIFTS! If you have an idea for a gift with a special message or design on a T-shirt, mug, mouse pad, tote bag, whatever, I can design it for you.

SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" shirts in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries.

The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2006. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.