Digression for Christmas

I have been lying in bed for four hours, trying to fall asleep. I was exhausted when I went to bed, and I'm still exhausted, yet sleep is nowhere in sight. Insomnia isn't uncommon in people my age, and usually I read until I'm sleepy, but tonight I really just wanted to fall asleep because I was so tired.


As usual when waiting for sleep to arrive, my mind is a beehive of activity, and tonight is no different. I'm worrying about my apartment, which really needs a good vacuuming; I'm worried that I have not completed my Christmas baking, owing to a peculiar lethargy and a really bad migraine attack that kept me in bed for two entire days this week. After I have these episodes, it seems to take several days for my brain to function again. So, for instance, I went to Whole Foods and bought food for Christmas dinner but forgot to buy lavender soap for the sink. I was supposed to have a guest for Christmas, but she's not coming until the 26th, which means I'll be alone on Christmas. This, too, has happened before, but I never take it well.


Maybe it's because Christmas is a holiday that has always promised so much pleasure and delivered so little. It has seemed to me, since I was a child, that there should be one day a year when no one had a fight with anyone, when everything was beautiful, and when there was real joy everywhere (in spite of the commercialism of the holiday). But in my life, the promise has seldom been fulfilled, and certainly not when I lived with my family of origin or when I was married, for various and tedious reasons.


Anyway, I thought I could handle everything okay this year, so I put Messiah on the stereo, pretty loud since I don't think any of my neighbors are home except the drunks, who always have their own music on. It is one of my favorites, and when I could sing and did sing, I was in several performances of excerpts from it. My recording is particularly fine and I was enjoying it. I even sang along with some of the songs until my voice gave out. But I dropped my kitchen work to listen to the "Hallelujah" chorus. I sang along pretty well, quitting only on the high Fs, Gs, and the single A, until we got to the final "Hallelujah," when I inexplicably began to cry.


It's been quite a few years since I decided I just didn't believe some of the basic tenets of Christianity, namely the virgin birth, which is scientifically impossible since Mary would have had a clone of herself, not a boy; the Affirmation of Faith, which I could no longer attest to since I did not believe in its central tenets; and finally, the act of Communion itself, which seems totally barbaric to me, as well as cannabalistic. Eat the body of Christ? Drink his blood? It seemed like a throwback to a time in Judaism where they practiced human sacrifice, only in Christianity it had been sublimated into a symbolic act, without any real flesh or blood involved. Yet there it is, one of the central Mysteries of the religion, and the thought of it made me nauseated.


We all go to church and participate in these rituals without thinking about them, or at least I realized that I had always done so when I was a member of the Methodist church. But one year, I had decided not to eat sugar, so I didn't bake my usual thousands of cookies, and I had this little satori: my relationship to Christianity was basically one of habit and sentiment. After that I started to look at the rituals with clearer sight.


This is, after all, what the Buddha says we must do. We must see things clearly. All things. Everything. In order to become enlightened we must accept what we see. So I saw these things and realized I couldn't be a Christian. It wasn't that I wouldn't or didn't want to be; I could not be one anymore.


One would think that would be the end of it, but alas, it is not. Nowadays when I walk into a particularly beautiful church, I cry. I cannot sing hymns from my childhood without crying. When I try to sing certain Christmas carols I dissolve into tears, just as I did today. For many years I asked myself why I had turned into such a crybaby about things having to do with the church of my childhood.  Finally, this past year, I decided that what was happening to me was grief. It's one thing to say you no longer believe something, and for very rational and sensible reasons, but quite another to persuade your heart, which isn't rational or logical or even sensible. And after being a Christian for nearly forty years, off and on, giving up on it is more difficult than I could have imagined.


For me, as a singer, God was in the music. My primary form of "worship" was singing, literally raising my voice in song. When I sang, I would feel that I was touching the divine. Feeling that I couldn't go into a Christian church anymore and couldn't sing made me simply stop singing entirely. That's why the Fs, Gs, and As were hard to sustain. It's been over five years since I sang a note, even around the house or in the shower. I'm telling my readers this so they will know that nothing comes without a price, at least in my experience. I never realized I'd stop singing if I couldn't sing music from The Sacred Harp or by Handel. When I stopped believing, I didn't realize what it would mean—really, really mean. And it isn't just church music; it's all music.


What does a person do? I don't know. I suppose the Buddha would instruct me to meditate in order to find peace in the decision, but right now, my heart is torn, shredded. Who will I sing the "Boar's Head Carol" to? It's supposedly the oldest carol in English. Who knows it? I do. But who would I sing it to and why? I've always felt that music was separate from words, and that for church singing, the words weren't that important; it was the music itself. But it's the words and the music together that seem to cause the manifestation of grief, not the one or the other.


I made the decision, though, and somehow I must work it out. The monotheistic religions are what Jung would call extraverted. God is somewhere "out there," while a spiritual belief such as Buddhism is introverted. The individual him/herself must find the divine "in here," in him/herself. The monotheistic religions allow only one god, which causes many wars; but Buddhism says only that if you look inside yourself and live by certain precepts, such as loving-kindness and not killing things, you will eventually be able to see everything as it is, and one hopes, end one's suffering. Monotheistic religions rely on continual suffering—guilt, revenge, the desire for a superficial perfection, and persecution of infidels—while Buddhism relies on the attainment of clarity of perception to bring about a more peaceful reality.


Frankly, I don't see anything wrong-thinking in this comparison, every though it's simplistic and I know it. It's also basic and fundamental to the differences between the four great world religions, three of which are the reason for so much war and death in the present day. The god of Abraham is a jealous god, and the world gets to be the stage upon which this jealous contest is fought. Seems like a pretty pitiful historical record to me.


Well, in any event, and out of my tears of grief and loss, I wish anyone reading this a happy holiday season. I'm sure I'll solve my dilemma eventually if I keep working on it. And believe me, this is probably the first and last serious entry I'll make in this blog.

Digression: Apology

I want to apologize for not writing in the blog at all last week. I wanted to do more work with proper prepositions, but I had so many errands to run and projects to complete, that I never had time. Yes, I do have to earn a living through means other than writing in the blog!

So it's Tuesday and instead of writing purposefully, I'm just going to make it short and sweet and not at all serious.

If I have time between now and Christmas, I'll write some more entries. If I don't, well I'll be back after the holidays. Right now I'm making a card and trying to get it mailed to everyone, trying to do some holiday baking and cleaning, and in general trying to organize my apartment and life, to make art and think up new subjects to write about. I promise more about prepositions ere long.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Misuse of Prepositions

"an organization headquartered in downtown Cleveland that has been unusually successful in helping struggling Ohioans to hold onto their homes. " Sentence found in today's New York Times. Italics are mine.


I've seen this usage so frequently in the Times that I wondered whether the rule had changed. I checked my trusty Collegiate Dictionary and found . . . nope, it has not changed. The proper verb in question here is to hold on, which means that when you want to hold on to something, you do not hold onto it. In writing, this misuse of the preposition with the verb is probably one of the most common there is. I cannot say how many times I've seen it handled the wrong way. I suppose what was shocking to me was that the Times misuses it frequently. Are their copy editors brain dead or what?


Another one that squeezes bile out of my brain is oblivious to. The proper preposition to use with oblivious is of. You are oblivious of the suffering of the poor. This one is from Roger Cohen's editorial in today's Times: "against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat." Italics are mine. 


Another often misused construction is different than. Now I admit that sometimes even I find it hard, when making a comparison, to not want to use this construction, so maybe someday it'll change, but right now it is still different from. This house is different from the one next door. In a more complex comparison, though, the changes in wording one must make to use the correct formation lead to wordiness, and it's in these places where I wonder why I can't say the former rather than the latter, simply for the sake of economy of words. So maybe it'll eventually change. But then again, maybe it won't. In the forty years I've been working with print the rule hasn't changed.


I'm starting this entry early in the day. No doubt as the day goes along I'll find more bad constructions and add them. There is another wonderful reference work I haven't mentioned, Words Into Type. Whenever I want to double-check the right preposition to use, WIT has a wonderful list of them and I turn right to it. If you don't have this book, get it. Save yourself the embarrassment of using the wrong preposition. Will other people notice? Maybe yes, maybe no. And since you don't know which ones know the correct usage and which ones don't, it's better to be right than wrong.

Sunday's Digression—Cookies

I'm sorry I didn't write in the blog yesterday. I had been intending to write every day, but it snowed in Chicago, and I needed to pick up some prescriptions and do some shopping, so off I went. By the time I got all the stuff, lugged it upstairs, unpacked it, parked my car, and talked to my sweetie for an hour or so, I was totally exhausted.

The first snow, naturally, turned to slush right away because the ground isn't completely frozen. And in Chicago, homeowners are not penalized for failing to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes, so getting back from my car involved a process of shuffling along over packed slush so as not to slip and break my back or an arm or, god forbid, my precious brain case.

One of the things I scored at Target was two very nice tins for cookies or fruitcakes. I'm not making fruitcakes, so cookies it'll be. I worked on a cookie book this year so I'm wheedling my friend for a copy so I can use some of the author's recipes. Of course we have family traditions, but I'm tired of those cookies. I've been making pecan crescents since I was twelve. Gads! When my son was a child we made a cookie to roll out and decorate, which I've actually made since. Boring. I want to try sablés and tuiles, macaroons and amaretti. These are cookies I've never made. What a challenge. But of course, they could all be total failures. Although I don't usually fail at baking (she said modestly), I must admit a friend gave me a recipe for oatmeal and almond crisps last week and I rushed to make them. All went well until I left the kitchen and let the timer count out the 14 minutes they were supposed to bake. Well forget that. When I went back, they were all slightly burned. I ate them anyway, but I could never have used them for gifts. Henceforth I'll bake them for 10 to 12 minutes and keep an eye on them.

That last part is the real secret of baking: keep an eye on the goods. Although my oven always seems to run at the correct temperature for recipes, there was apparently some error in this recipe. I know they're really fine little cookies because my friend made them for me when I was visiting Massachusetts in November, so I'll do them again, and for my own information, I made a note in pencil on the recipe.

Cookbooks are, in reality, suggestions of recipes in many cases. Many cookbook writers include recipes they've never tested themselves. I know. Very odd. But when I was working at Random House, right around the corner from Bridge Kitchenware, Mr. Bridge told me this when I bought a tube pan from him. I've tried recipes when I'm working on cookbooks and found them to be really horrible. I'm not going to name the author, but I tried a recipe for scones in a cookbook written by a well-known English cooking personality, and it was dreadful. Too dry—I had to add extra milk—and when baked, the scones were totally uninteresting. Just wrong. I can't say it any other way. I couldn't believe anyone had tested the recipe, since it was such a disaster.

I always give a recipe one try to see if it was written properly and whether it works. If it does, fine. But if it doesn't, depending on how big a disaster it was, I start changing it to make it work better. If the disaster is too great, there will be a recipe for it elsewhere and I'll just try someone else's version. Or if I generally like it but see ways it could be improved, I make notes on the recipe.

Lemon bars have been the most difficult to pin down. I have a friend in Massachusetts who has the perfect recipe, but I've never been able to get it from her. Nearly every other recipe I've tried has had faults. The one in the new Joy of Cooking is by far the worst ever. It uses far too many lemons. When I made it, the acid of the lemons actually burned my mouth and gave me indigestion, so ultimately, I ended up throwing most of the batch away.

I always make notes in pencil about changes I think I should make in a recipe, or never to make this recipe again. All of my cookbooks have pencil notations somewhere, and I think any good cook or anyone who wants to become one should pencil away. Cookbooks are meant to be written in, have food spilled on, and in general be mistreated by their loving owners.

Clauses, Commas, Semicolons, and Colons (Part 3)

Before you can use commas, semicolons, and colons sensibly, you need to know something about clauses. My discussion is going to begin with the easiest clauses for today.

Restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses
According to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) (and what I learned in seventh grade in the Days of Yore), these two types of clauses are relative clauses. As you can guess from their names, a restrictive clause restricts something of meaning in the sentence, while a nonrestrictive clause does not. If the clause is restrictive, the sentence as a whole makes no sense without it; if the clause is nonrestrictive, the sentence can be understood without it. Believe it or not, as I was trying to fall asleep last night I was trying to think up examples of each type of clause. It's not even as remotely effective as counting sheep, no matter what anyone thinks. So here goes:

• A man having a limp and using an unusual cane walked a Golden retriever in the dog park.

If the police are asking you if you saw anyone in the dog park, telling them you saw this man would be very important, since omitting mention of the limp and the cane makes the man much more general and less specific. Therefore—and this is the important part—no commas separate the clause "having a limp and using an unusual cane" from the rest of the sentence. As soon as you bracket that clause with commas, you make the man much less specific, and this is obviously a particular man.

[A disclaimer here: Unlike Microsoft Word's menu of styling choices, this blog program doesn't give me a choice to simply indent a paragraph or a list without using either numbers or bullets. I'm choosing throughout the blog to use the bullet, but in general, one would not use a bullet.]

• My dog, a Golden retriever, used to like to escape so she could run wild and free and bark at all the neighbors.

You don't need to know that Molly, the dog in question, was a Golden retriever. It may be interesting to know that she was, but it's not important to know it; therefore, there are commas before and at the end of the clause. It is nonrestrictive because I could leave it out and you'd still understand the sentence.

Use of That and Which with Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses
There is no more confusing a rule in our language than this one. Very few people understand how to use that and which, and most people misuse it. I found when I was copy editing scholarly works that academic writers constantly misused "which." Maybe they thought it sounded more "hi-class" to do so, but that doesn't make it right. This idea may have arisen because British English writers seldom make the distinction and use them interchangeably, but in formal American English, it is customary to make the distinction (per CMS 5.202.)

• My apartment building has three addresses: one for each wing and one for the center, which is hard to see because it's behind a hedge.

Although it's interesting to know that house number for the central part of the building is behind a hedge, it isn't necessary for the essential description, which is that it has three addresses. In this case, you need to know what the clause is modifying: the building or the center of the building. Clearly, it describes only the center part. Further, the clause falls immediately after mention of this central address. That's actually a clue. The clause that begins with a comma and "which" is almost always going to follow the word or part of the sentence it modifies.

• The cape that I wear for much of the winter was made by the Navajo of New Mexico.

There is no mystery here. Yes, the cape was made by the Navajo, but what's important about it? I wear it for much of the winter. I could have changed the wording to

• The cape, which I wear for much of the winter, was made by the Navajo of New Mexico.

But do you then know how long or how often I wear it if I omit the clause from the sentence? No. You don't even know that I own it or that I and the cape have any connection with each other. So the clause is restrictive and can't be handled as if it didn't add meaning to the entirety of the sentence.

Independent and Dependent Clauses
An independent clause is basically a complete sentence. It contains a subject, verb, and an object or predicate. But there are times in writing when several short sentences in a row would be jarring to the eye or to read aloud.

• He wanted a new suit. He went to the corner and caught a taxi. When he arrived at Nordstrom's he got out of the taxi and went inside. He bought a suit and a new shirt to match.

Well, we certainly know what he did, but do we care?

• He wanted a new suit, so he went to the corner and caught a taxi to take him to Nordstrom's. Not only did he buy a suit he liked, but he also found a shirt to match.

First, note that I linked the first two independent clauses with a comma and a conjunction. Then I shortened the third sentence and incorporated it into the first two. Finally I made two clauses out of the last sentence and joined them with a comma and a conjunction and expanded the description a little to make the whole thing sound more natural.

If I decided to get rid of one of the comma-conjunction constructions, I could have said it this way:

• He bought a suit he liked; he also found a shirt that matched it.

The important part about using a semicolon to link two independent clauses is that with a semicolon, in this construction, you never use a conjunction. Even if you are creating a series, you do not use a conjunction.

• He bought a suit he liked; he also found a blue shirt that matched it; the suit and shirt made a complete ensemble for his business lunch on Friday.

It's not the most graceful example, but it's correct. A smoother version might be structured this way:

• He bought a suit he liked, then he found a blue shirt to match. The suit and shirt made a complete ensemble for his business lunch on Friday, when he hoped to discuss the terms of his new position with the company.

In several of the examples I created, I also used dependent clauses, but to clarify, a dependent clause cannot stand alone. It is usually not a complete sentence, and most of the time it needs the rest of the sentence, the independent clause, to give it meaning.

• Mary wanted a suit like her sister's if she could find it.

The same sentence could also be worded like this:

• If she could find one, Mary wanted a suit like her sister's.

You can see in the first example that the dependent clause—if she could find it—is not preceded by a comma, but when the dependent clause introduces the sentence, as in the second example, you must use a comma. The dependent clause achieves its meaning by being integral to the sentence, and without it, the sentence would not only be less informative, we would not know whether Mary had a plan for getting a suit like her sister's.


Colons
Finally, a few words about the colon. Think of a colon as an equals sign (=). What you write on one side should equal what you write on the other. A colon used as I did in the example above fulfills that function. On the one side is "A smoother version might be structured this way:" and then I proceed to give the example of just that thing. The colon is also used to introduce a list, as above.

The colon also stands in for the verb to be, so it must be included in a sentence as you would that verb.

• The contents of the purse were the following: a wallet, business cards, a glasses case, and a pair of leather gloves.

If you omitted "the following" you would in essence be saying:

• The contents of the purse were were a wallet, busines cards, a glasses case, and a pair of leather gloves.

I cannot even count the number of times this construction is misused. When I took writing courses in the communications department at American University, the professors pounded it in our heads that when introducing a list with a colon, we had to say "the following: or as follows:"—no ifs, ands, or buts. So far as I know, this rule hasn't changed over the years, and it still holds true (CMS 6.65). If you read the entries in the Manual that follow the one about using a colon with as follows or the following, you'll find other useful information about this interesting and frequently misused punctuation mark.

A colon may never be used the same way a semicolon is. They do not serve the same purpose, so even though as terms they seem related, they are not.

Don't confuse collaborate with corroborate - chicagotribune.com

Don't confuse collaborate with corroborate - chicagotribune.com