TaleCatcher - Tracy Kenny's blog

A bit more on whether it matters

I betrayed my passion for the old grammar rodeo in an entry earlier today. Now I've revealed my guilty pleasure, I'll keep my 'grammar anorak' on for a bit longer :-)

So during the BBC piece I noticed that the beeb itself failed to notice one more 'mistake' in its final sample: there wasn't a full stop at the end of the second sentence in the last example.

See some things don't just come down to rules. Some of it's cultural. Some of it's historical. And some is just the language shifting. A quick note on each:

Culture: The BBC example might not be considered wrong. In North America, one always, always completes a sentence (an independent clause, if you like) with a full stop, no matter what. In British English, it is rather less strict, particularly in a bulleted list. This is in educated communities as well as amongst the uncertain. I'm not sure of the cause of this one. I am very happy to admit my ignorance and would love a discussion if anyone knows more!

Interestingly, many Brits put a full stop after everything, even after each line of an address. The best I can make out from this one is that it's a result of poor education - apologies to all I've observed and learned from, but I have actually heard you repeating your teachers' instruction to end every line with a full stop.

History: Some people say you should neither end a sentence with a preposition, nor split an infinitive. Sticking to these 'rules' produces two famous corruptions of statements:

'To go bodly where no man has gone before'

'Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. '

The latter is attributed to Winston Churchill.

You can see how silly it looks. You don't have to follow these rules. They were introduced by the Latin-loving educated classes during the 19th century. True, gritty, Germanic English ought to happily split infinitives all over the place.

Language shifting: If we use a word or phrase to mean something, we all understand its meaning, and we communicate with it on a regular basis, does it matter if we're using it incorrectly? At some point the dictionary meaning becomes obsolete. There's a big debate about whether the dictionary should be prescriptive or descriptive. The role of the communicator is more about getting the point across than about trying to educate the audience about how words ought to be used.

'Inflammable' is a good example of this. It actually means 'capable of catching fire' - as in 'inflame'. And yet 'flammable' means the same thing. Because of langauge shifting, we try to put our modern 'in-' prefix on it to create the opposite, when 'inflame' is already a word in its own right.

'Not flammable' is the opposite of flammable, and of inflammable.

It isn't clear, is it? When it's a burning (or not burning) matter, who's got time to look it up in the dictionary?

So all this to say...

The rules aren't as clear as you'd like them to be. Even Oxford and Cambridge have their own schools of thinking on some issues (such as 'single' or "double" quote marks).

But even though there are a few loose threads, the rules are clear and committed, and even used corrected by toddlers just learning the language. Observing the rules isn't just being pedantic. Learning them and how to play within them can be hugely liberating, and we should love them and use them. Beyond that, the only real rule I advocate is to be clear: so if a rule gets in the way of people understanding your point, by all means break it. In the end you are trying to connect with your audience. Don't put stumbling blocks in the way.

Stories not to tell

Instinctively I know that the stories we tell build the world around us. There is a kind of metaphorical framework or scaffolding that happens, that our world hangs on and builds upon. I havne't been able to fully describe it yet. But I know it, same as I know my own skeleton supports my body.

Ray often comes home with stories from Chattanooga. I tell people 'We moved back here from the south for a number of reasons,' and I usually leave it at that. Sometimes I think it would be interesting to capture more of them in this blog, but for the 'building my world' thing - I don't want to dwell on it. I don't want to keep telling the stories, and having them alter the 'framework' of stories that I'm building my life, attitudes, philosophies, behaviours by.

For instance there were two stories this week.

A man in Chattanooga phoned the police to say that he was going to kill himself, because his bank had foreclosed on his home. When the police arrived, he came out waving a gun around (not that unusual). The police shot him dead, with eleven bullet wounds. According to the radio it was called 'suicide by cop.'

Okay I complained about the police here yesterday, but let's face it, but I think I'd choose the unhelpful police, if that's what you get.

The other story: At the mall just across from where we lived there, a pet shop was closed for the systematic abuse of animals. Please, please don't read this without warning. It is horrifying. And it is only one story, but it is not the only I have heard of its kind.

Like I said, we left Tennessee for a number of reasons. If I dwell too much on them, they'll become part of me again.

'Tell affirming stories' is easy advice to give, of course, if your life is full of pretty easy stories to tell - just stop telling the ones that drag you and others down. But there is the difficult problem of what to do if your reality is full of the really hard stuff, like these two stories. In this case, inaction is worse than focussing on positives. If you truly can't change your reality, if you can't change the circumstances around you, then getting out may be the best thing you can do.

A story happens when you do something, and it means something. It's the first way to make a new story. Do something, and start building that new world around you. Even if it's someplace else entirely.

Speaks for itself

Stories come in words. And yet big stories can be bigger than their words. 

I struggle to illustrate this in workshops. It needs good examples.

This summer is the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird. I've not read it for years. I will go back to it.

The BBC visited Monroeville Alabama, where Harper Lee grew up. The clip of the report is 3:30 long, but the segment where he visits Latoria Brown at her home is a great example of a story being bigger than its words. (Watch closely from approx 2:40 - where the kids get off the schoolbus)

Latoria doesn't say anything useful. In any traditional editorial sense, the clip should have been cut.

But watch from the moment the camera pans her trailer park. Watch everything. Listen between the lines.

The bigger story is that Latoria, her situation, her struggle even to talk to the reporter, all speak for themselves. 

BBC visits Monroeville Alabama

Can't forget

On holiday Jennifer took us to Etowah Tennessee. The big headline on their official town website is that leaf collection has begun. It's a little tiny place, population 3663 at the last census.

I loved that in the 50's style cafe we had lunch in they were selling a cookbook for the local dimentia society, called 'Recipes we can't forget.' I haven't been able to find it online. It makes me laugh every time I think of it. Great matches between purpose, design and output are a delight.

I used to refer to Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel as typical of some people I went to school with in the county. Jennifer's now shown us a better example in Tavin, and some new views of stuff to be thankful for...

A story to tell, but only for a little while

I usually say there are three types of stories. If I'm asked.

But sitting in a police car today (in the front seat!) reminded me that there's another type that I've avoided considering, basically because I hadn't got my head round that type of story: what do you do with a 'story' that actually you can't find any useful meaning or applications for? That just doesn't have any visible purpose, a story that you can't understand?

All along I've been focussing on how the stories we use influence those we tell them to. But it takes two, doesn't it? Something happens in me when I tell the story. So there's another kind, a fourth: the story that just makes me feel better for telling it.

You have to be careful with these stories that just can't be understood or explained. On the estate we lived on in Chattanooga, we put up with a long-lasting and confusing racist effort to get rid of us (Ray being English, me being... well, not a redneck.) I never could understand it, so I decided a long time ago not to tell it anymore. To put it behind me, so it wasn't a part of me, not one of the stories that make up who I am.

Back to today. We chose the girls' nursery school because it sits in such a lovely little country setting, in the orchard of the disused Hall. It's one of the most picturesque villages in the county, full of thatched cottages, and very exclusive - the family who lived in the Hall still own most of the area, and from what I'm told you don't get to move in unless they choose for you to. We hear woodpeckers on our way in, and see rabbits and pheasants and deer.

So it's not really the place you'd expect to encounter road rage. But a man who lives in one of the cottages on the other side of the orchard from the nursery this morning decided he wasn't happy with all us parents driving in, and started the morning by blaring his car horn as he came up the drive. I saw this happen. I saw the hand gesture. And then when I came back out to find out why all the 'traffic' (maybe five or six cars) was backed up on either side of this junction, I found out that he'd slammed on his brakes and reversed into the car that had been coming in behind me. While I was standing out there talking to Nicole's dad, the victim, the angry man came across and began threatening me.

I was shaken. I gave my statement to the police. After a couple of hours when they went back to visit him, the guy was regretting what he'd done, and everyone was satisfied that he should get away with a ticket, a mark on his record, and a fine. I said to Nicole's dad, 'It's like with the girls - we never know how hard we have to come down on them to make them start behaving. Do we really need to push for more?' Personally I just wanted it overwith; I didn't want him nursing a grudge while he waited for a court date.

But while I was waiting to find out that it all ended okay, I just kept wondering, why? And remembering that we never know what's going to happen in a day.

And when I got my girls back, the hugs meant so much more.

I've told the story a couple of times now. I'm starting to feel better. But there's no moral there, no lesson to be learned. Just an opportunity for me and the listeners to shake our heads in disbelief. It's not necessarily that the story shouldn't be told. I'll just tell it, get over it, and then stop. Stories may make us who we are, but our responses decide just how they become a part of us.

Meanwhile

So it turns out that while I was making light-hearted comments about Tennessee, tornados were ripping through the area. Not where my family live, but less than an hours' drive away. Close enough. Just a fraction of a shift in the wind, in the temperature, can make these hit somewhere else.

Ray always thought it strange that there is a 'tornado season.' Maybe there isn't one after all. Cause this isn't it.

We nearly got wiped out by one once. We came back to our place at Hickory Valley Apartments (shudder) from visiting Niki over the Easter weekend to our street blocked by police, flashing lights and emergency vehicles and debris everywhere. The building opposite ours - literally twenty feet away - had lost its entire upper floor. It was just gone. The tree in front of our front window had fallen on where we usually parked our car. (Unlucky for the neighbours who'd helped themselves to our spot!)

For the sake of twenty feet, the shape of our lives could have changed forever. We wouldn't have hung around in Tennessee any longer. We would have got back here pretty quickly - we wouldn't have had much to pack.

But three more years of adventures there waited for us...

Like we said at the time, at least it cleared up the leaves from the previous autumn.

I've had the television on (I must be watching too much of the stuff, as I didn't have to get the book out this time to figure it out!) to try to see some footage, but the BBC has moved on. I've seen enough of it to know. The story is the same - only all the details are different. Our thoughts are with them.

Grammar rodeo and all that

I notice I have a category on this blog called 'Grammar rodeo.' I ought to explain...

Yes it is because I can get carried away by a debate about language, its variations, and the dots and squiggles that we drop through its written version. I'm the one in the office who they'd ask their 'who and whom' questions. That is, to whom they'd ask their who and whom questions. Or whether it's practice or practise that makes perfect.

And grammar stuff does make me laugh. I'm not a balaclava-wearing, spray-paint-toting member of the Apostrophe Preservation Society or anything. I'm pretty relaxed, because I believe language should be about getting a point across first, and not a mission for its own sake.

   'Grammar rodeo' is actually one of my favourite phrases from the Simpsons. In the episode 'Bart on the Road,' Bart Milhouse, Nelson and Martin use Bart's fake credit card to hire a car and go to Knoxville, Tennessee to see the Sunsphere. Now this is just next door to where I spent a good many years growing up, so it warrants a picture. 

Since Knoxville's a long way from Springfield (wherever that is), the boys tell their families they're going to the National Grammar Rodeo. I must admit my heart skipped a beat when I heard mention of it... 'I must go! What do I wear?' As Lisa's did, when she complained she hadn't been selected to represent their school.

Do you remember the rest of the story? The advert for the Sunsphere turned out to be from the 1982 World's Fair, and since then the Sunsphere had fallen on hard times and was now called the Wigsphere. Nelson chucks a stone at it and knocks it over, 16,000 unsold wigs spill, and Bart ends up delivering organs to try to get them all back home again.

There's more that's closer to home in that episode (and I don't just mean Cletus and his family), but I'll save that for another time.

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

Let me outta here

Have a look at this - a prisoner was released from a Kentucky psychiatric facility when his friend sent a fax authorising his release - from a grocery store fax machine. They didn't catch the mistake for two weeks. And they excused their behaviour, as well as they could, by saying it's not uncommon for court orders to have loads of spelling mistakes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6583043.stm

Kentucky's not that far from home. I despair.

Mother

It's mother's day in the US today. Why in the world they celebrate it on a different day I don't know.

So now I've got to phone up and grovel about having missed it. Forgotten it.

But how did I know? It was only when I was online trying to order flowers for a frail and elderly auntie's birthday that I spotted it's this weekend. Too late to do anything - to send the card that I bought back in March, especially.

I hate buying Mother's Day cards. I never know how I'll be feeling two months later, when I'll need it. Will I feel sloppy and sentimental, or just like sending cheerful best wishes? I stand there in the shop debating how I feel now, and how I will feel. I make too big a deal of it.

Anyway the whole thing feels arbitrary. Why today, why any particular day, except maybe to line up all the children and mothers in a kind of competition to see who does the most for their mum? I'm debating trying to make her see that point, and offer to surprise her sometime when she won't be receiving cards and flowers from her other children. I somehow don't think it will work.

Same as my attempts to figure out how it's everybody else's fault that they didn't tell me in time for me to do something.

It seems like we could almost call a truce... they don't need to feel obliged to tell me, and I don't need to feel obliged to keep up with their tradition. Maybe next year I'll send a card on the March Mother's Day. So she'll get an extra day of looking after, and I'll feel like I have a mum when everyone else around me is thinking about theirs.

Dog chute

Here's a story that's always stuck with me, ever since I found it when I had to read the local papers for Channel 45. I wish I'd kept it. I can't quite believe it's true.

One of the small towns around Chattanooga was trying out a new way of dealing with unwanted dogs. Some people didn't take time to bring their dogs to the 'pound' during opening hours I guess. Whatever the reason, the local authorities created a dog chute, like how people return library books - a place where they could open a door and drop the dog in, and they could collect it in the morning. It still disturbs me. How frightening for the dog - but how much worse if there was another dog down below?

Americans have so much to learn about animal welfare. I don't expect them ever to though. It would be a sign of deeper understanding about compassion and living out what they say they believe.