More Confessions from a Grammar Nazi

In the final resolution scene of the movie Jerry McGuire, after Tom Cruise delivers a heartfelt speech to Rene Zellwegger's character, she responds:

You had me at hello.

Now, I can promise you that in my daily life, my love life, my professional life & my reading life, I have initiated & experienced You had me at hello moments.

But, at times, in all the aspects of my life, I have also experienced You lost me at . . . moments.

Since the advent of personal computers, spell check, email, social media, text messaging & Twitter & a total lack of appreciation for the importance of grammar & punctuation, it is in my reading & literary life that I have experienced too many You lost me at . . . moments.

I cannot honestly say when I joined the grammar police.  However, I remember a moment in Patsy Kay Kelly McGinnis’ Composition class at John Foster Dulles High School.

I took the course because I wanted to write. 

Our final paper of Patsy Kay’s Composition class was a research paper.  

We turned our papers in, Patsy Kay graded them.  At my second high school, our grades were not recorded as A, B, C, D or F.  Instead, they were in numerical form that translated into letter grades on our transcripts.  

.

(We received additional points for honor classes.  For half a year, after I transferred in, I was assigned to the library because my new school did not offer a class I had taken back in El Paso.  I literally received honor points for reading every morning.)

Anyway, back to Patsy Kay.

On the day Mrs. McGinnis was to return our graded term papers, she stood before the class to give her assessment of our efforts.  After a general overview of her approval, she said:

One of you, who knows better, ended her paper with a run-on sentence.  I am disappointed.

Then Patsy Kay Kelly McGinnis handed me my paper.

We received two grades on our papers – one for content, one for grammar.  I looked at mine – 100 for content, 80 for grammar.

I reviewed the ending of my paper.  In my closing sentence, I had left out a semi-colon, creating a run-on sentence.

And paid dearly for it.

So perhaps Patsy Kay Kelly McGinnis initiated my eventual role as a grammar Nazi.

Over the years, I have given up on Internet grammar & punctuation.  Not for myself – I still text in complete sentences, try to remember to proof my posts, & edit my spelling & grammar. 

Words matter, the use of words, the choice of words matter. 

Two is not the same as to or too, there is not the same as they’re or their, your is not the same as you’re, won is not the same as one, here is not the same as hear & in the case of the Apricot-in-Chief’s tweets, roll is not the same as role.

And while I no longer correct cyber grammar, I still cringe. 

And continue to experience you lost me at . . . moments.

Recently, when I read Fire & Fury, my first you lost me at . . . moment occurred on page XIII of the Author’s Note.  

The second full paragraph beginning At the same time, it is worth noting . . . consists of three sentences.  The second sentence is fraught with semicolons & contains 82 words.

Including three words I had to look up:  risible (laughable}; sanrizdat (referring to a clandestine publishing system within the former Soviet Union, by which forbidden or unpublished work is reproduced & circulated widely); & gobsmacked (flabbergasted, amazed, astounded," literally "smacked in the mouth”).

Now I understand that my own vocabulary is lacking – doesn’t everyone know risible, sanrizdat & gobsmacked (which reminded me of the Everlasting Gobstopper of Willy Wonka fame)?

And I realize that one of my favorite classic British works begins with a single sentence paragraph consisting of 119 words, However, Michael Wolff is no Charles Dickens & Fire & Fury is not A Tale of Two Cities.

But the Author Note was not my only you lost me at . . . moment before Chapter 1 Election Day.

In the Prologue:  Ailes and Bannon, page 3, at the end of the third full paragraph, Wolff writes:

This was the job Bannon a week later.

I looked at the line for ten minutes.  Did it modify the previous never-ending sentence?  Did the job do something to Bannon?  Did Bannon do something to the job? 

A casual reader would have missed it – a close reader would have been able to put together from previous content that the author was referring to Bannon accepting the job that Roger Ailes declined.

I was still back on the 82 word sentence connected by semicolons.

Wolff’s incoherent sentence (when taken out of context) affected my entire reading of Fire & Fury.  Before Chapter I, I was predisposed to find it sloppy & poorly edited.

A few days ago, I read a post from the official city page of our little one square mile city (actually, it is not quite one square mile).  

For months now, we have, as a community, risen up & resisted a plan by the Fort Bend Independent School District that would impact our city.

Specifically, a facilities assessment that could close the city’s heart soul – our local elementary school.

An ardent & active group of parents, former parents, students, former students, teaches & former teachers came together to organize the effort to save Meadows Elementary, creating an example of grassroots efforts to resist.

The City post urged us to keep resisting & contacting the powers that be in the Fort Bend ISD.

And stated that the district board members needed to continue to “here from us.”

As if the board members could “here” from me.  As if here  meant communication.   As if they could here what any of us had to say.

I was struck by the irony of a city fighting for quality elementary education in a diverse environment & its city government’s inability to go past Spellcheck & proof a press release.

In the end, pending the passing of a bond issue, the school district voted to rebuild our 35-year old elementary school to accommodate 450 students.  

Apparently, letting the board here or hear from past & current parents, teachers, & students impacted the decision.

The board heard. 

But I have to tell you, my friends, that I am still not over here or hear.

Grammar Nazis do not go quietly into the night.

Nor, apparently, do former English teachers. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/us/politics/trump-letter-english-teacher.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=11&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F05%2F27%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-letter-english-teacher.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

On Jean, Brioche, Prayer & Notebooks

In the past several months, I believe that I have discovered brioche for the first time.  It may be that I have eaten brioche in a previous decade of my life.  If so, the memory may have been erased from my data banks to make room for something else.

According to Julia Child & Simone Beck in Volume II of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, “the wonderfully, buttery, light, & thoroughly delectable texture” of brioche may convince one that brioche is “manna from another planet.”

I am convinced that it is indeed a culinary manna. 

And there are numerous forms & situations in which to consume brioche.  As a bread, as a roll, a pastry, – for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack or coffee break.  As the pastry encompassing Beef Wellington. (I seem to recall an evening long ago with a dear friend & his Rice University housemates involving Beef Wellington).

I found brioche rolls at Aldi’s, of all places.  I think they may replace white yeast rolls at my Thanksgiving table.  I used most of them in a recipe for overnight blueberry French toast. 

The remaining rolls I used for tuna fish sandwiches.

Eventually I discovered loaves of brioche with or without chocolate.  I bought the chocolate, made another batch of overnight French toast & used the remainder of the loaf for simple morning French toast.  Jean loved it.

Of course, I think Jean loved it because I grated dark chocolate over the toast.

As the loaf diminished, I began to suspect that one other member of the household was enjoying it.

During my discovery, or perhaps rediscovery, of brioche, a chaplain from Jean’s home health care agency began to visit.  The chaplain’s name is David (I could not decide whether to call him Pastor David or Reverend David but Jean asked him & we are to call him David.)

David is truly a gentle giant – a black man so tall that I have to stretch my neck to look him in the eye.  He has an amazing voice – I am always a sucker for an amazing voice.

Apparently so is my mother Jean.

Last week, David, who is a dapper dresser, wore a hat.  I always take Jean’s visitors into her room & re-introduce the visitor to her memory bank.  And then I leave, giving the Jean her visit.

When David the Chaplain visits, I can hear his amazing voice & its cadence from outside Jean’s room.

After David’s visit last week, Jean said:

David asked me what I would like him to pray for.  I asked him to pray for our country.  I wish you had heard his prayer.

Over the next few days, Jean again said I wish you had heard David’s prayer.

At first, I did not understand what she was trying to say.  I decided that she had forgotten that she already expressed that she wished I had heard David’s prayer.

Finally, Jean was able to articulate what she was trying to tell me:

I wish you had heard David’s prayer so that you could rememb

er it for me.

When I last wrote about Jean’s memory & her need for a notebook to write down things she wants to remember or recall, my friend Cate Poe responded to my blog:

 You are her synapse, aren't you? Her bridge to those memories. Maybe, too, you've become her notebook.

Cate is correct, I am Jean’s notebook.  At best, an imperfect notebook storing my mother’s memories.

This week Jean wanted to discuss what is going on in Texas about schools, about what is going on across the country with teachers.

We talked about it & then she said:

The next time David comes & asks me what I would like him to pray for, I want him to pray for our schools.  Which is connected to my asking him to pray for our country.

So, in between discovering or rediscovering brioche manna, I am a notebook.

A very flawed notebook. 

Because I have been eating brioche in one Viennoiserie form of another since I first bit into a croissant. . .

On Jean & One Tree HIll

Jaki Jean on Jean & One Tree Hill

The other evening, the Hallmark Channel aired a promo for an upcoming Hallmark movie, “The Beach House.”  I was reading, but I looked up & recognized an actor who starred in a WB turned The CW series from 2003-2012.

I asked Jean if she remembered the actor, if she remembered “One Tree Hill.”  When she indicated that she did not, I reminded her that for several seasons, “One Tree Hill” was her favorite show.

And that her favorite character, Lucas Scott, was played by a younger version of Chad Michael Murray, soon to appear on Hallmark’s “The Beach House.”

So I told Jean a story - what I remembered of the series, set in the small town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, the plot revolving around two half-brothers.  Fathered by the same man, Dan Scott, within a few months of one another. 

The elder son, Lucas, lived with his mother Karen, who owned a café in Tree Hill.  His father Dan never married Karen, never interacted with his eldest son.  

Dan married Deb (whose family had money), the mother of his youngest son, Nathan.

I explained the complexities of life in Tree Hill, where the major form of entertainment is the local high school Ravens basketball team.  In the first few seasons, basketball set the tone for each episode – which brother played best, their father’s reaction to his youngest son’s performance, his fury that too often Lucas outperformed Nathan.

I told Jean about the females I remembered.  Peyton, the broody, deep, cheerleader, Brooke the slut cheerleader, & Lucas’s best friend Hayley.

And I reminded Jean that whenever Lucas misbehaved or acted like a male slut, she always defended him.

Lucas is a good boy.

Good as a two-syllable word.

Jean asked me if “One Tree Hill” was still on.  I explained that it ended in 2012, but I would try & find it on Netflix.

“One Tree Hill” is not on Netflix, but I remembered that I keep forgetting to cancel my Hulu account (I only signed up for “The Handmaid’s Tale”).  And there it was – all nine seasons.

The next night, I hooked up my computer to Jean’s TV & we binge watched three episodes of “One Tree Hill.”  I pointed out the characters, explained the relationships.

During one scene, Jean asked what made Brooke the slut cheerleader.  I told her she needed to keep watching & all would be revealed.

As we watched, I began to recognize actors now appearing in Hallmark movies.  My friend Rachel Halperin Plotkin’s daughter Emily Plotkin, posted in recent Facebook memory that Hallmark movies were where all former stars of sitcoms go. 

I think Emily is right –but I would include sitcoms, soap operas & nighttime teenage angst dramas.

I know that I cannot recreate those past evenings of watching “One Tree Hill” with Jean.  We can watch more episodes & before each one, I will have to explain the characters & relationships & why basketball is so central to the plot.

The next day after our three-episode binge, Jean asked me the name of the aide who comes in three times a week to bathe her.   Angela, I tell her.

Jean repeated:  Angela, Angela, Angela.

Later in the afternoon, Jean announced:

I need a notebook

.

Curious, I asked her why she needed a notebook.

I need a notebook to write down the things I have forgotten.  To remember.

I assured Jean I would get her a notebook.  Then I left the room so she would not see me weeping.

I wept, not because my mother feels the need to write down what she has forgotten, what she wants to remember, but because Jean already has a notebook.

Jaki Jean on Marginalia & Library Books

This morning I went to my local library to pick up two books I had placed on hold.  And to return a paperback copy of Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist.”  I have no memory what prompted me to add “The Alchemist” to the post-it notes above my work space.  Or when I did it.

Most likely, something came across my Facebook news feed that prompted me to add Coelho’s book to my post-it collage.  Apparently other readers who frequent Fort Bend County libraries had the same idea.

Because I had to put “The Alchemist” on hold.

When I opened the thin paperback of Coehlo’s work, the front cover immediately disintegrated.  I carefully turned the pages to read this text I no longer remember needing to read.

And as I read, I found myself distracted from the narrative by random words underlined in pencil.

While I appreciate marginalia, my own immensely, I do not expect to see random underlined words in a library book. 

I am trained as an English Major to pause at an underlined word or highlighted section.  To look for what is missing, what is in the margins of the text.  

To wonder why a previous reader found the need to underline or highlight a passage.

But the random underlined words in the library’s paperback of “The Alchemist” eluded me.

I found no rhyme or reason to the single words underlined.  Believe me, I tried to determine a red common thread, a focus, an interplay between Coehlo’s text & the unknown previous reader.

Either the thread or focus or play did not exist or I failed to find it.

So I closed the book, wondering how & if the shepherd boy was going to find his treasure.

I explained all of this to the librarians at the check-out desk.  They offered to try & find me a clean copy.

For a brief moment, I wondered if I would ever be able to read “The Alchemist” with the memory of those randomly & unconnected underlined words.

I declined the librarians’ offer, explaining that not only was I checking out two novels, I was still finishing up “Russian Roulette,” expecting the arrival of “The Displaced:  Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives,” & had the unread “Orphan’s Inheritance” on the book shelf next to my bed.

And all those post-it notes above my work space . . .

Without randomly underlined single words.

Jaki Jean on reading "Fire and Fury"

(I wrote this response because I am a member of a loose, no pressure, reading group online created by my friend Cate Poe.  And Cate likes participation & a response or reaction.)

Somehow or another, I lost my original reply to my take on “Fire & Fury.”

And every day, when I try & edit my resurrected response, something else happens in the upside down, topsy-turvy world of the current administration.

But I remember thanking everyone in the group in my original reply who commented & analyzed Wolf’s text.  Because Wolf’s prose did not keep me reading - the commentary in this reading group did.

I found “Fire & Fury” both fascinating & frustrating.  Fascinating because of the subject matter.  Frustrating because it needed more organization, more editing.

It is gossipy.  Gossip is an ambiguous source without concrete verification.  It can be fueled by envy, ambition, subjective observation, or malice.   Gossip is also often a red flag, signaling the need to pursue the possibility of opportunity or exposure.

Do I believe Wolf’s text in spite of the errors that have surfaced?

Unfortunately, yes.  We have now lived with this administration & the campaign leading up to it for what seems like forever.  The revolving door at the current White House, the president’s failure to staff key positions & now a senior staff member with access to sensitive information who did not have the necessary security clearance for his position, confirms Wolf’s narrative.

The White House is one big cluster frack.

Cate asked readers of “Fire & Fury” what we each found most surprising.  Originally, I said that I was surprised by the depth of Bannon’s role as the Apricot in Chief’s Svengali or perhaps Rasputin & Bannon's Breitbart agenda.

Now that I have finished the book, I was most surprised by the role in this comedy of errors with grave consequences, by the hosts of “Morning Joe.”  I am a fairly recent viewer of the MSNBC morning show.  I had no idea that Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski were originally Trump supporters. 

I certainly did not know that they were involved in a “not so secret secret relationship.”  Although the SNL parody should have clued me in.

A trite, shallow observation.  But because, like the actress & activist Elizabeth Markel (who plays a President on “Homeland”) said about reading F&F, I found it “madcap, surreal, very gonzonesque” – I zeroed in on something trite & shallow.

I had to look up gonzonesque.  I could not find a definition.  But I did look up gonzo & learned about gonzo & gonzo journalism.

 adjective

1.(of journalism, reportage, etc.) filled with bizarre or subjective ideas, commentary, or the like.

2.crazy; eccentric.

Noun

3.eccentricity, weirdness, or craziness.

Since the release of “Fire & Fury,” the administration has continued to "function"  in chaos, fractured by factions competing for control & influence.  No surprise, considering the fact that they have a self-absorbed & unequipped leader at the helm.

Gonzo sums up the administration, the presidency, our current norm & perhaps, this fascinating & frustrating book.

Rest in Peace, Ronald Reagan Davis

When I was sixteen years old, my world was abruptly upended by a move from El Paso to the outskirts of Houston, Texas.

At the time, it was the most disruptive & distressing thing that had happened during my years in teenage angst.   Of course, the previous most disruptive & distressing thing to happen to me was a move from Dallas to El Paso five years earlier.

I was not a happy sixteen-year-old Jaki Jean.  The thought of leaving my friends, my school, the mountains, the desert, for a place my father once vowed never to live, consumed me.  I began to grieve long before the departure date.

And then I had a dream.

During my childhood & youth & well into the subsequent decades, my dreams were vivid.  Sometimes involving complex plots & narratives & histories.

My dream before leaving El Paso & my familiar world was about my new high school.  I only knew its name:  John Foster Dulles High.

Somehow, I was quite sure John Foster Dulles was a major player in the Vietnam War.

In my dream, I was in an unfamiliar room – tables with seating for four to six.  Sinks, stove tops nearby.  I recognized it as a classroom I could never imagine entering willingly – Home Economics.

And in the dream were two people seated at the table with me.  A guy with a funny name & an amazing voice (I have always been a sucker for a man with an amazing voice) & a cheerleader with really great hair, dressed in red, white & blue.

At the time, I thought it bizarre – what was I doing in Home Economics?  Who was the guy with the funny name & why was he nice, so familiar, to me?  Who was the cheerleader with great hair & an engaging smile & why was she so nice, so familiar?

Why was the cheerleader wearing red, white & blue & not the navy blue & gold of Coronado High School in El Paso?

I left the dream behind with the move from the desert to life too near the Gulf Coast.

Until I found myself in my assigned Home Room, located in a Home Economics lab.

When I was led to a table, occupied by a not very tall guy with a great voice & funny name & a girl with an amazing smile & great hair.  A cheerleader dressed in red, white & blue.

Ronald Reagan Davis, who introduced himself as Dobie, was the not so very tall guy with a great voice.  The cheerleader was Lydia Court.

Both, seen first in a dream, changed the trajectory of my teenage angst-ridden life forty- five years ago.  Both were popular icons in the world of John Foster Dulles High School back in 1971.

Deposited in an unfamiliar high school world, galaxies different from my previous school, I was terrified.  The school had a dress code.  (Nothing I owned was compliant.) There was no modern dance class, no debate class.  Instead, I was assigned to library duty & a speech & drama class. 

I was lost.

But the boy with a great voice & the cheerleader with the engaging smile, took me, one of a number of new students converging on the area, under their wing.

Both of them drew me out of my self-imposed isolation & resistance to change.  Dobie & the cheerleader were not the only classmates to reach out & envelop me.  But they were the first & they were influential.

Ronald Reagan Davis was not named after a former president but after his mother’s favorite actor.  How he came to be Dobie, I have never ascertained.  Over the ensuing decades, he went by Doc, Ron, Reagan, Renigan & finally in my mind, just Davis.

As I have mentioned, Dobie had an amazing voice.  It served him well on stage, in front of an audience, in the classroom, in a quiet discussion between friends.  He loved history & politics & had a fricking unbelievable vocabulary. 

Dobie was witty & kind & more than once wrote me poetry.  He explained the high school hierarchy of John Foster Dulles to me because he had lived with the players all his life:   who was related, why relationships that seemed normal to me were contentious & secret, why the class bully liked to hit.

Our lives crisscrossed over the years after our soiree with John Foster Dulles & friends.  As “Doc,” he took me to a rehearsal for a University of Houston rendition of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors.  Done as a rock opera.

At that rehearsal, I met Steven Michael Epstein, Dennis Quaid & eventually the man I married.

Once again, Dobie Davis changed the trajectory of my life.

After our twentieth high school reunion, I saw Dobie perform on the Miller Theatre Stage in Hermann Park.   It was with the Ensemble Theatre.  About the Buffalo Soldiers.

He was still amazing on stage.  

One day, after several decades since our last crisscross, I listened to a voice mail on my crackberry & heard that Dobie Davis voice.

He had obtained my number from my sister. 

So, we had dinner several times over the years whenever he was in town.  We saw more than one play together.  We talked, we emailed & eventually interacted on social media.

I listened to his narrative.  His hopes, his ambitions, his dreams.  It was not always an easy narrative to listen to, but I let him tell it, let him interpret it.  It was his story, not mine.  And it was complicated.

At a time in my youth, when I was scared & unsure & did not see a way to fit into the culture in which I found myself, Dobie Davis chose to be my friend.

And because of that friendship, I made a decision to embrace the new world in which I found myself & enjoy my senior year of high school. 

Along the way, my existence & understanding expanded because of that world & culture & experience.

I stopped grieving over the loss of the mountains & embraced what was in front of me.  Flat & humid & waiting to implode into the diverse power player known as Houston.

Like many of us, my friend Dobie was his own worst demon.  And that demon held him back, in a place I did not always comprehend or understand. 

But Ronald Reagan Davis never lost hope, never stopped planning to reach an ambition, never abandoned his dreams.

My friend never stopped making me feel valued & welcome.  Much like those first days in that Home Economics classroom.

Rest in peace, sweet knight.