WordWacky

I’m not really a reader of USA Today. I think of it as too conservative and dumbed-down to waste my time on. Sometimes I glance at it over a hotel continental breakfast. And for some reason, my workplace, known for its staggering cumulative intellect, peddles this newspaper exclusively in the cafeterias.

But today, amid the ”greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression,” a friend pointed me to a story by Craig Wilson in the USA Today that is worthy of some note: it’s National Punctuation Day.

Today is National Punctuation Day, a day set aside to reflect on the fact a semicolon is not a medical problem. At least that’s what NPD founder Jeff Rubin, a former newspaperman, wants to impart.

I hesitate to write about punctuation since it has never been my strong suit. Commas especially. Or is it commas, especially?

I have long held the belief that I must have been sick the day commas were taught. Where to put them. When to use them. When not to use them. Do you put one before the conjunction in a simple series of three or more items? (The answer is yes. I just looked it up on Rubin’s website, nationalpunctuationday.com)

I am a great fan of punctuation. Generally I try not to be a prescriptivist when it comes to language rules, but I am so fond of punctuation that it’s difficult for me to keep my directives and opinions to myself. (Lest you now take great joy in scouring my prose for punctuation errors, let me disclaim that I am not perfect, and even the best of us punctuation nerds can benefit from an editor. So please, feel free to correct me.)

Opinions? What would opinions have to do with something so precise as punctuation?

Style guides, those taskmasters of prescriptivism, differ – for example, on the serial comma rule. The Associated Press Stylebook, which lords over the majority of journalism in this country, deletes the serial comma. While The Chicago Manual of Style insists upon it. Maybe it’s because my true love is fiction, but I take Chicago’s side on this (and most other) punctuation quibbles.

I read a good portion of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I didn’t finish it, in part because it was overdue at the library and in part because though it was funny, I wondered exactly how much of her British punctuation rules really applied to our ‘Merican habits. I did appreciate that, though she was not in favor of comma proliferation, it was a matter of taste, not standards.

I love the comma. For me, that half breath taken is like life itself, breathing its way into sentences. A little pause brings character and drama to otherwise flat, dull sentences. And when there isn’t a pause denoted by the comma, there is visual deliniation, a guide for the reader of the sentence. What commas do is eschew obfuscation — that is, they clarify a sentence. It’s especially important when some knob is trying to read your precious word strings aloud.

So I loved hearing that my liberal peppering of the comma was tolerated, even by those not so comma inclined, like Truss.

I’ve also made dear friends with the semicolon. As Wilson points out in his article, they are somewhat too pretentious for casual communication; I’m loathe to put them in e-mail. But they are handy little buggers, creating conjoined twins of sentences that would otherwise be merely adjacent.

So we come to the exclamation point, that much-maligned symbol of exuberance and emphasis. Like many students of my generation, I was initiated to proper composition with a slim copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. According to Elements, this abrasive slash marring the end of your sentence “is to be reserved for use after true exclamations or commands.” Egads! We’re using it wrong. Of course, Strunk doesn’t sink to talk at all about multiple exclamation points, which in my opinion are one of the greatest scourges of the Internet.

There we have it, my punctuation manifesto, in honor of National Punctuation Day. [Editor's note: Exclamation point omitted in deference to Strunk and White.]

I have to admit, when my ex-girlfriend first told me about Car Talk, I was skeptical. As she was the consummate driver, we were probably in the car when their show came on the radio, and she was probably, in her undeniable wisdom, telling me how great Click and Clack were. And I probably said something like, “A show about cars?”

But I listened, and she was right (she would say I was often wrong). It was more than a show about cars.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, or Click and Clack, as they call themselves in honor of aging cars, are brothers who have been solving people’s car dilemmas on the radio since 1977. They became mechanics in 1973, originally opening a do-it-yourself garage that became The Good News Garage, a more traditional garage. Says their NPR biography:

In 1977, Tom and Ray were invited to the studios of NPR member station WBUR in Boston, along with other area mechanics, to discuss car repair. Tom accepted the invitation, and when he was invited back the following week, he asked, “Can I bring my brother, Ray?”

The show is a combination of commisseration about cars — from brand names to mechanical quirks — to real problem-solving. Their advice is human and opinionated, and often the brothers disagree with one another. More than once I’ve heard them settle bets between spouses and friends. And my own personal favorite part of the show is the Puzzler. For example, this one from July 28 of this year:

There is a series of nine numbers: 335 443 554 __ followed by a blank. What’s the blank, and why?

Give up? Here’s the answer.

Thanks to Doug at Car Talk who was kind enough to write back to me with what Tom and Ray were reading! Authors themselves, Tom and Ray have a new book out: Ask Click and Clack - Answers from Car Talk.

Ray is reading a book by one of the guests on Car Talk, a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt.

Traffic is something I think about frequently, and at great length. I think (and speak) in phrases punctuated by expletives worthy of my Bronx childhood, as I address other drivers from the safety of my vehicle, which is invariably crawling along I-5 or SR-520.

Mary Roach from The New York Times says of Traffic, “My solution to the nation’s vehicular woes would be to make this good book required reading for anyone applying for a driver’s license.”

The driver of this book has a blog, How We Drive, that’s worth checking out, too.

The book Tom is reading, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, held me hostage. I looked it up on Google Books, and I found there were a good number of pages available to me. Within minutes I had lost track of the task at hand, and I was convinced that our destiny was to become human-computer hybrid beings.

The Singularity, as Kurzweil describes it, is the consequence of the speed with which technology is advancing. He predicts that technology and biology will merge. On page 9, Kurzweil says, “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine, or between physical and virtual reality.”

Futurism of this sort is perfectly familiar to us — in the realm of the fantastic, books and movies that we categorize as science fiction. But this is not a novel, and it’s not sci-fi. There is a Singularity Summit happening this October 25 in San Jose. Speakers include representatives of MIT, Berkeley, Intel, and IBM. It’s put on by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is: “In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.”

Bill Gates said of Kurzweil that he is “The best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” And Janet Maslin in The New York Times says the book “is startling in scope and bravado. Mr. Kurzweil envisions breathtakingly exponential progress, and he is merely extrapolating from established data.”

It does not escape my notice that Tom is reading a book by an author named Ray, and Ray by one named Tom. Even in their reading material, Click and Clack are inseperable.

Hey, Western Washington, tonight is a great night to eat out and support literacy in your own community.

Dish Up Literacy is an event sponsored by Page Ahead, an organization that promotes literacy by distributing books to kids and encouraging their parents to read with them. Eat out tonight, Thursday, September 18, at any of the participating restaurants, and they will donate at least 20% of their proceeds to Page Ahead.

Make sure to mention when you go that you’re at the restaurant for the event, so the proprietors will continue to participate.

I used the word schadenfreude not long ago in an IM conversation regarding Sarah Palin. It was the early days of her addition to the ticket, and I was relishing her scandal, yet simultaneously ashamed of my glee at someone else’s difficulties. Sort of.* The next day, the person I was messaging told me she’d seen that same word multiple times within the last 24 hours in friends’ blog posts. At first I blamed the collective unconscious. Avenue Q was too long ago — even when it finally made it to Seattle — to be a direct influence. Then I realized it was likely Sarah Palin who was making us all feel joyous at another’s pain.

[Editor's note: As I said, this was in the early days of her campaign, when it seemed natural to assume that someone who'd advocated the losing proposition of abstinence-only education would feel saddened when, as expected, it didn't work at all -- even in her own privileged Christian home.]

If you’re not completely clear on the word, or just need some video entertainment, here’s someone’s Disney-altered version of the Avenue Q song, “Schadenfreude.”

Of course, my schadenfreude regarding the Palins was limited to Mom. Toward poor Bristol, I felt something quite opposed to schadenfreude.

Back when I was working in the mental health system, there were strict rules around the use of prefixes, when it came to the client’s feelings, especially their pain. We were allowed to empathize, but never sympathize.

What’s the difference? It’s slim, to be sure, and I would argue that friends can do either, and both, at the same time. But to maintain a professional distance, empathy was required over its fraternal twin, sympathy.

American Heritage defines the prefix em- as:

en- or em- or in-   

1. a. To put into or onto: encapsulate.
    b. To go into or onto: enplane.
2. To cover or provide with: enrobe.
3. To cause to be: endear.
4. Thoroughly. Used often as an intensive: entangle.

While the prefix sym- is:

syn- or sym-   

1. a. Together; with: synecology.
    b. United: syncarp.
    c. Same; similar: sympatric.
    d. At the same time: synesthesia.
2. a. Same; similar: sympatric.
    b. At the same time: synesthesia.

The base of both words is the root, path, which is related to pathos, the quality of evoking compassion or pity. It comes from the Greek, páthos, or suffering.

So if we were to understand the words based on their components, empathy would be to get into a feeling with someone, while sympathy would be to feel it with them, or at the same time. This is pretty close to the meanings of the words. From Dictionary.com:

empathy - (noun)
1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 

sympathy - (noun)
3. the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

Still pretty similar ideas, but the clinical distinction was definitely one of distance. To empathize was to imagine how the client felt, while maintaining your own place in the relationship with the client. To sympathize would be to feel it right along with them, for example, perhaps telling stories of when similar things happened to you.

So while I have no sympathy, mere hints of empathy, and some schadenfreude for Mrs. Palin, I do feel some combination of sympathy and empathy for Bristol.

For example, I feel sympathy for her being pregnant for the first time, and aprehensive about what might happen next. I am able to get right in there and feel it along with her, as I am going through the same experience, at least as far as those aspects of it are concerned.

But I am twice Bristol’s age. I have a partner, and my baby was not only planned, but in some sense, engineered. My partner and I are both degreed and employed. Mine and Bristol’s situations are not, in fact, similar enough that I can truly sympathize with her. Yet I can empathize with being too young to make lifelong decisions like marriage and children. I can empathize with having no choice but to go obscenely public with what I will generously call her decision to become a teenage parent.

*Perhaps I should disclaim my schadenfreude, tell you that I am outraged by the McCain campaign’s insertion of a woman — any woman — on the ticket, in the hopes that as a lowly woman I would see no difference between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps I should ennumerate all of the ways in which Palin’s ideology is an assault on my life and everything I believe in.

But probably I shouldn’t, since this blog isn’t about politics. It’s about words.

Who’s Craig Newmark? You may not be familiar with the name, but if you’re an internet junkie living in a big urban center, you’re already on a first name basis with him, I promise. Craig, as in craigslist.org. When I mentioned I was doing this post, someone responded, “Oh, there’s a Craig?”

I used to want to write a book called My Life on Craigslist. (Yes, before someone made a movie.) For many years, almost nothing major has happened in my life without Craig as the middleman. I met my most fabulous ex-roommate — and now good friend — through Craigslist. I bought one car and sold another on Craigslist. Many free items, including a giant wooden arbor that we had to pry from the ground, have found homes in and around our house, courtesy of Craigslist. To say I’m a fan of Craig’s is a gross understatement.

Yes, there is a Craig, and from everything I’ve heard, he’s a very cool, approachable guy. He even personally responded to my e-mail when I asked what he was reading.

Craig is reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. First off, let’s stop and admire Craig’s dedication (and even more so, Stephenson’s) — this is a 937 page novel. Once upon a time that wouldn’t have been too big a deal, but these days novelists seem to tend to keep things short. If a novel nears 400 pages, I’m surprised.

It should be difficult to say what a book that approaches 1000 pages is about. If it’s not about pretty much everything, it should have been edited down, in my opinion. And that seems to be what Stephenson’s book is about: nearly everything. Said one Amazon customer review, “It is a difficult book to describe to others. In some ways, I felt like I was reading a novelization of Goedel, Escher, Bach.”

From the publisher’s description: “Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside ’saecular’ world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals.”

Booklist starred its review of Anathem, saying, “The novel is beautifully written …and, even though it runs to nearly 1,000 pages, it feels somehow too short, as though we’re made to leave this carefully constructed world and return to our own before we’re quite ready. A magnificent achievement.”

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post had not-so-flattering things to say about it:

[Anathem is] “…ultimately grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull. That’s an awful thing to say about a novel as formidable as Anathem, but there’s no getting around it. The made-up language is rebarbative (though often clever), the plot moves with elephantine slowness, and much is confusing (the process of decipherment actually drives the book, as characters and the reader Try to Figure Things Out), and every so often we just stop for a long info-dump or debate about cosmology, philosophy, semantics or similar glitzy arcana.”

I had to look up the word rebarbative (repellant), but otherwise I was left wondering if Dirda was not just the wrong audience for the book.

Now, I’m not too much of a sci-fi reader, but if there’s one place I do tread in the sci-fi world, it’s intellectual sci-fi. I like that sci-fi is involved with big ideas, though I sometimes feel cheated that there has to be a fantastic setting so that they make sense (this is, I think, what defines me as not into sci-fi). Stephenson, whom I admit I’ve never read, is among the giants in that realm. One blogger calls Snow Crash, Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk bestseller, one of the ten best intellectual science fiction novels.

If you want to attend a reading of Anathem and happen to live in the Portland area, Seattle-based Stephenson will be at the Bagdad Theater tomorrow, September 16 at 7 p.m. $5, tickets available online.

Listening to NPR on the way to work this morning, my wife and I heard Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED on Morning Edition. That book’s been on my reading list for awhile, as I am a fellow logophile who has been tempted to get neck deep in at least a few dictionaries, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary included.

The segment, which you can listen to on NPR’s website, is on the word bailout. The reference is to the dispute over whether or not the U.S. government is bailing out Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae by effectively taking them over with a large cash infusion.

As we probably all know, words have some weight, and I believe the argument is over whether or not the Treasury is putting too much into a lost cause. What Ammon Shea concludes is that whether or not you like the word, it’s appropriate to the situation — and you can tailor your definition by choosing the dictionary from which to draw its meaning.

Says Ammon:

Those who oppose the plan can point out that the Cambridge Dictionary of American English defines bailout as “the process of saving a company, plan, or other thing from failing by providing lots of money.” This would bolster their claim that the Treasury is subsidizing poor business practices and potentially throwing away billions of dollars that could help needy Americans.

Treasury secretary Henry Paulson could counter with the definition from the New Oxford American Dictionary. A bailout can also be an instance of giving assistance to a failing economy. That would bolster the claim that the government is acting to save the larger economy, and not simply trying to help the privileged few.

The dictionary wars continue on, and if you’re like me, you quickly lose track of which side is which, as the meanings blur together and collide.

For me, the most interesting part of the dictionary is not the fine lines between one meaning of a word and another, but the etymology of the word. In this case, the etymology is not out of current usage. To bail [out] still means the same thing it did when first used in the 1600’s: to dump water out of a boat that is leaking. The alternative, of course, is obvious — the boat would sink.

As an aside, I did learn about a new dictionary from the segment, the Merrriam-Webster and Garfield Dictionary. Who’s Garfield, you ask, and how did he get in on that exclusive dictionary team? Well, he’s a cranky orange feline, of course. [Editor's note: Personally, I prefer Garfield Minus Garfield.]

[Editor's note: Kudos and thanks to Adrianne and Seth at This American Life for finding out for me!]

Ira Glass is one of my heroes. He’s been in public radio for 30 years, beginning as a humble intern. I became familiar with him because of his radio show, This American Life, a weekly production of Chicago Public Radio, syndicated by Public Radio International on over 500 stations, including Seattle’s own KUOW. In 2007 the show hit the boob tube on Showtime, condensed to a half-hour program.

If you’ve never seen or heard the show, you’re really missing something. Every week there’s a theme (this week’s is “The Devil in Me,” and last week’s was “Something for Nothing”), and talented writers tell true stories about their experiences with the theme. The stories are often documentary style, including interviews and sound/video clips of the subjects of the tales. I tune in as often as possible — on my station the show’s at 7 p.m. on Saturday, repeating at 11 a.m. Sunday morning.

So when I started thinking of celebrities to ask about their reading life, Ira Glass came to mind quickly.

Enough already: what’s he reading? Glad you asked. Here is what I heard Ira is reading now:

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
I haven’t read Then We Came to the End, but I’ve seen people reading it on the bus. With its yellow post-it note cover, it’s eye-catching. I assumed it was an office-set story, and I guess it was well marketed by its cover, because that’s precisely what it is.

Some reviews:

“Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative ‘we’ brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. Only once does Ferris shift from the first person plural (for an extended fugue on Lynn’s realization that she may be ill), and the perspective feels natural throughout. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris’s cast makes a real impression.” Publisher’s Weekly

Information professionals crave information, and when it is denied them — who is going next, how many and why — they spin superstitious theories and adopt curious totems. The employees discover that the office coordinator keeps tabs on which furniture belongs in which offices, and they fear that their chairs — scavenged from laid-off peers with better furniture, in a round-robin so complex no one remembers whose Aeron was originally whose — will get them fired. The New York Times

And you really must check out the book’s website, with its flash intro, office floor plan, and MySpace pages for all of the characters.

But wait… there’s more. He’s also reading:

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

I love Sarah Vowell. Her regular spots on TAL always thrill me, not only because she’s sharp and funny, but also because of her voice. The lazy-sounding, deadpan delivery only serves to increase her hilarity.

If you haven’t heard one of her spots on the show, I suggest you listen to one before buying this book (which you can’t quite do yet, since it’s not out until October 7, but you can preorder from your favorite indie bookstore, or on the ‘net from Powell’s). Here’s a TAL with a Sarah Vowell segment, so you can read the book to yourself in her voice. It can’t help but be more enjoyable that way.

The Wordy Shipmates, according to the publisher’s comments, is an examination of the Puritans of the past and their legacy to the present. Among the questions her essays ask and answer: “What was the Puritans’ pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon. What is the lesson of the Pequot War? Why, don’t fire one of your military’s embarrassingly few Arabic translators just because he’s gay, of course.”

Hmm…. According to Publisher’s Weekly, her style in The Wordy Shipmates is “less colloquial than her previous books,” but Kirkus says, “Fans will be pleased to see that Vowell’s admittedly smart-alecky style is alive and well: It’s not every historical monograph that tosses together Anne Hutchinson and Nancy Drew, Dolly Parton and John Endecott.” Is it less colloquial, but still smart-aleky? We will have to see in October.

So thanks, Ira Glass, for responding, and to those involved in helping me get my information!

So maybe you’re not famous, but I want to know anyway: what are you reading?

This is a question I asked, via a television show’s website. After a few back-and-forth communications, I actually received an answer. More on that in a bit.

I asked because this is a question I would like to promote. I wish more people asked me this question. I wish more people asked politicians and celebrities and babysitters and potential employees this question. I wish the information on what people are reading was volunteered more often, as I have made my own reading material public on this page and my Goodreads profile.

Why? Several reasons:

1. What people read tells you something about them. It shows their taste and their intellect, at least, but can also clue you in on their politics, their personality, their hobbies, their values, their modernity…. When I visit someone for the first time, the first thing I look at in their homes is their bookshelves. Don’t have a bookshelf? That tells me something, too.
2. People who do not receive the Sunday Times or another newspaper that still deigns to publish book reviews should have some idea what to read. We covet the same clothes and cars as celebrities. Why not books? Someone besides Oprah should be telling people what to read.
3. Literacy. Can you imagine a day when a ten year old is reading a book they heard Brittany or Justin – or Obama, perhaps – was reading? The only way to encourage our celebrity-obsessed youth to sit down and read may be by setting them a high-profile example.
4. Bookstores – if you haven’t figured out that independent bookstores are having some trouble, and that I support them, you haven’t been listening.

So what is this television personality reading, already? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find that out — this post has become a little long.

In the midst of all the closures, some brave people are choosing to open new bookstores. How will they do it? Here are some of the strategies I’ve seen from the newbies.

Test

A group of entrepreneurs is opening a bookstore in Fitchburg, MA. The Rabbit Hole was preceded by a “test store” in Alberta, Canada, opened nearly four years ago.

They have used that store to learn what works and doesn’t work, but realize that the Fitchburg store will be its own niche, dependant on what the customers want.

“Helping everyone feel welcome is important,” said [co-owner] Hugendubler.

One thing the group hopes to do is team up with the library in hopes of offering some of the programming the library cut back in July.

In a downtown area that is being revitalized, this group hopes their store will become a community staple.

Organize a Movement Around Your Store

From the New York Observer:

Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo, the events coordinator at the Nolita bookstore McNally Jackson, has been public about her intention to open a new independent bookstore in Brooklyn since at least January, when she won a $15,000 grant for the project from the Brooklyn Public Library. Since then, she seems to have zeroed in on Fort Greene as her neighborhood of choice, and the Fort Greene Association, which administered a survey to 380 locals and found that 74% of them wanted a bookstore in the neighborhood, is trying to help her make it happen.

Called the Fort Greene Bookstore Initiative, the group met for the first time last week to discuss making this bookstore a reality.

Says Stockton-Bagnulo on her blog:

…This level of commitment to a local bookstore before it has even opened is unique, I believe, in the contemporary book industry, and reinforces my love for Brooklyn as a place where community is a powerful force.

I have no doubt that a community-built bookstore will have a great chance of survival. It takes a village.

Diversify and Caffeinate

At Inner Chapters, a new bookstore in the South Lake Union neighborhood in Seattle, they opened their café before the bookstore. The café had time to build some clientele and hear the kudos from neighbors who were excited to have a new bookstore in their midst. Especially one in which they are encouraged to sip and linger. From The Stranger: 

…according to owner Kristina Barnes, Inner Chapters is going to be primarily a used bookstore, although it will carry as many new books as customers seem interested in—but it’s a space intended for reading and leisurely time spent among books: a good selection of magazines, a cafe counter, a couch and other comfortable seats, and a large room lined with bookshelves lit by natural light from a skylight.

Good Business Move or Foolish Pipe Dream?

Returning to last Sunday’s Seattle Times story: 

Seattle is an exceptional reading town, but national trends are not encouraging — even in cities with highly educated populations like Seattle’s. Miller, who runs the “Most Literate Cities” survey, recently reviewed five years of survey results, and found what he called a “disturbing” trend: “While Americans are becoming more and more educated in terms of their time spent in school and their education level accomplished,” Miller wrote, “they are decreasing in terms of literate behaviors. This is particularly obvious in our lack of support of bookstores and the constantly diminishing circulation of newspapers.”

In his five-year review, Miller noted that 43 out of 59 of the cities studied had a higher percentage of high-school graduates than they did five years ago, and 46 of the cities a higher percentage of college graduates. But “not a single city in our survey has more independent bookstores now than five years ago,” Miller writes. “Fifty-seven out of 60 cities reported fewer retail booksellers in 2007 than in 2003; in several, the number of booksellers per capita dropped by half of what was reported in 2003.

The statistics are not encouraging. What hope does a newcomer have to build their business and keep it thriving when older, more established businesses are forced to make hard choices and/or close?

Perhaps location, strategy, and community will create the opportunity these booksellers are looking for. I count myself among those rooting for them.