Good News about Bad News

T-cells

I got some yesterday--good news about bad news. I received a letter from my insurance carrier that they will cover the fairly new procedure that I will undergo in January (dates are not yet fixed), a procedure to empower my own body to fight more efficiently the metastatic prostate cancer (moving into the bones), a disease first diagnosed late in 2004.

A few weeks ago I wrote about this procedure--this "immunotherapy"--so I'll not do so in detail again, but, simply (!?!), I will undergo three sessions of draining my blood, removing T-cells (the warrior cells!), returning my blood to me, sending the T-cells down to Atlanta to be energized, infusing them back into me. Three withdrawals, three warrior-cell enhancements, three returns to me--in a five-week period.

The withdrawals will be at the Akron Red Cross; the returns will be at University Hospitals in University Circle. Each session will take up to four hours. I'm going to have to find some fat novels to take along with me!

I am relieved for the coverage, but I'm not going to jinx myself by telling you who it is. (Don't want anyone to have second thoughts!) It is very expensive, I can tell you that--so much so that if the company had not approved the sessions, I would not be having them.

Of course, I am grateful. Relieved.

But I am also passionate about how this sort of procedure should be available for everyone who needs it. Imagine this conversation:

PHYSICIAN: We have this procedure that might save and prolong your life.

PATIENT: That's wonderful! I can spend more time with my family, my grandchildren, my--

PHYSICIAN: Only ... [Pause.] ... you don't have insurance. [Or: Your insurance plan won't cover it.]

PATIENT: But--I--

PHYSICIAN: I'm sorry.

PATIENT: How much time do I have?

PHYSICIAN: Who cares?

Well, no physician would say such a thing--surely not! But it's exactly what our country's health-care system is saying.

If you're fortunate enough to have worked for an employer who offered health insurance (I was), if you're fortunate enough to have a comprehensive plan in later life (I am), if you're financially secure (we're not rich by any stretch--but we are making it), well, then you're in luck! You've won the Lottery of Life!

But if not ... well ... who cares?

I just don't see how these Senators and Members of Congress who are weighing the removal or reduction of health benefits to the most needy among us can look at themselves in the mirror.

Maybe they do look, though. It's just that they don't see anything there. Vampires can't.

About those dashes ...

I was never much of a dash man--or boy. My dad was. A champion sprinter in his Oregon high school, he was uncatchable out in the yard in our little football games--unless, of course, he let us catch him. And he often did. (Good man, my dad.) It was fun catching him--but frustrating because I knew he'd just let me!

Yes, I was somewhat slow afoot and cursed throughout high school the genetic failure of my parents to pass along to me the Speed Gene. Neither my younger brother (Dave) nor I got it.

My older brother, Richard, did. And didn't care a bit. He was interested in opera and fat novels with small print, and the fact that he could outrun everyone in his class (when forced to do so in gym) brought him some mild pleasure--but not enough to convince him to join the track team. I have to say that it annoyed me--massively--that I (the putative athlete) could not catch my older brother when we were running around.

Life is not fair!

So ... dashes ... not my thing.

Except the ones in writing! It's possible I've posted about this before. Too bad. I'm doing it again.

And the reason? I'm getting ready to publish (via Kindle Direct) the latest collection of "poems" I've written, this particular batch dealing with the years of my life. And as I was going along and reached the years when I was a teacher, I found it more convenient to write about school rather than calendar years.*

So ... I had poems with headings like this one:

1990-1991 School Year

Now ... take a look: That little horizontal mark between the years is a hyphen (all that Blogspot will permit--unless I paste in an alternative). And I should have an alternative there. I should not have a hyphen but an en dash. (So named because it equals in length the width of the letter N.)

There is also an em dash, the kind used, well, here: I liked Snickers bars--a lot. (Blogspot allows only a double-hyphen to serve an an em-dash.)

Okay, what are these things?

Here are the definitions--swiped from Webster:

• hyphen: the punctuation mark used to divide or to compound words or word elements (use with brother-in-law, for example--or to divide words at the end of a line)
• en dash: used to represent a span or range of numbers, dates, or time (like 2003–2004; we were there from 4–5 o'clock) (I had to paste those suckers in.)
• em dash: can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons—in each case to slightly different effect (Examples: I'm sorry I was late—traffic; I saw you at the movies—was that your boyfriend?) (Again--had to paste.)

Okay. In the popular social media (Twitter, Facebook) the only way to include en and em dashes is to paste them in from elsewhere (a pain), but if you're using Word, the program does it automatically for you--if you observe the following:

• to get an en dash: type the word (or number), leave a space, type a hyphen, leave a space, type the next word, type a space--and, voila, an en dash appears (you then need to delete the extra spaces you just made); there's an easier way: in Word, go to Insert-Symbol; find the en dash, select it, then choose a code so you can insert it quickly; I use alt-n; saves time.
• to get an em dash in Word: type a word, type two hyphens (no spaces anywhere yet), type the next word, hit the space bar--an em dash appears! It's like magic! (I set up a code for this, too--alt-d.)

So ... why am I writing about this today? Well, it's harder to make an en dash on the Word version I use on my iPad (which is how I do a lot of writing now), so today I was going through my manuscript (on my computer) and replacing all the hyphens with en dashes.

English-teacher fun (and, yes, that's a hyphen!).**

*You can see them all on my other blog: Daily Doggerel. (Link to it.)

**And Joyce, my teacher, just reminded me (okay, taught me--schooled me?) that there are two other related marks:

• the 2 em dash is used for missing parts of words
• example: You are such a d——ed nuisance!
• the 3 em dash is used for the second instance of an author's name in a works cited list or bibliography
• Dyer, Daniel. I Am Stupid. Hudson:. Stupid Publishing, 2017.
• ———. I Love Snickers. Hudson: Stupid Publishing, 2017.

Feeling a Draft? (Or a Draught?)

This came up last night during our car trip for an emergency service (hot coffee): What is up with the words draft and draught? I feigned knowledge I did not have--a skill I developed in elementary school, perfected in junior high and high school, and abandoned later when I realized that technique didn't fool too many (i.e., any) of my professors in college and grad school. And it definitely didn't fool the middle school students whom I began teaching in the fall of 1966. Kids can tell when a teacher is faking!

Anyway, here's what I know (I think) before I look it all up and share it with you:

• a breeze coming through the house is a draft
• a beer on tap is draft
• there is a military draft and you can be drafted
• an ox is a draught animal
• you can take a deep draught of a liquid

Okay, let's go to the mighty Oxford English Dictionary and find out what's what ...

PAUSE WHILE I CHECK THE OED ...

And the first thing I see: draft is a "modern phonetic spelling" of draught.

I knew that (not).

And I see a few meanings I missed/forgot: 

• an order for the paying of money (a bank draft)
• a preliminary form of an art work or some writing (a rough draft) ... how in the hell did I forget to list that one?
• it's also a technical term in masonry: "Chisel-dressing at the margin of the surface of a stone to serve as a guide for the leveling of the surface." Okay, I understand that (not).

Okay, let's check out draught now ..

• the action or act of drawing or pulling (a beast of draught)
• a quantity drawn (a specific measure of something drawn or extracted)
• the act of drawing a net for fish
• the quantity of fish taken in one drawing
• a measure of weight of eels
• the drawing of a bow; a bowshot
• the drawing of a saw through a block of wood
• the drawing of a liquid into the mouth--or down the throat
• a fanciful name for a company of butlers (!!!)
• a dose of liquid medicine; a potion
• the drawing of smoke or vapor into the mouth
• the drinking in of something by the mind or soul
• a move a chess or any other similar (!) game
• a current, stream, flow
• a current of air
• an appliance for creating a draught in a fireplace
• drawing of figures

I quit! These go on and on and on and on (I've even left out some earlier--lazy). Okay, here's another one that I think is my favorite:

• the entrails of an animal drawn out

Anyway, there are 46 definitions of draught just as a noun! And dozens of compounds (many are adjectival)--e.g., draught-screen: a screen to block draughts.

Draught is also a verb--but the meanings (as I look over them) are related to the nouns.

By the way, you can read in the OED and on other sites about where the word came from--why it's pronounced the way it is--etc.

Okay, not to be lazy: Here's what Merriam-Webster says of the origin:

Middle English draht, draght, draught; akin to Old High German traht, trahta act of carrying, Old Norse drāttr act of pulling; derivatives from the root of Old English dragan to draw

First Known Use: 13th century

But here's what I learned: I don't know nuttin'! I remain, it seems, what I was in seventh grade: a fraud!

I'm Not a Grammar Nazi, but ...

I always feel a little uncomfortable using the word Nazi for anything but a Nazi. My dad fought those actual Nazis in World War II, and based upon what we know those Evil Ones did, it seems almost heartless to use the term for anyone or anything else.

But grammar Nazi is now a term we use to apply to people who insist that Right and Wrong exist in English grammar and usage and punctuation (surely they are carved on some stone tablets somewhere?) and that those who fail to observe those Commandments are, well--let's just say it, all right?--inferior.

I taught English for about forty-five years--grades six through undergraduates--so I have seen a lot of things on student pages that ... startled me. Over the years I marked such things, taught the standard way to say such things, etc. And every year I felt as if I were starting from scratch, even though I knew the teachers in the previous years had pounded away at the same (or similar) things. (I also knew that in the subsequent year my students' teachers would wonder if they'd done a thing in my class!)

A dear former colleague of mine from Harmon Middle School, Penny Wolfe, joked to a class that she'd been teaching them not to write alot for thirty years.* When are they going to get it?

I've lived long enough to notice how things change in grammar and usage and punctuation--and I've written about those things here before. (Example: Teachers used to give us countless worksheets on the differences between will and shall ... that distinction, I believe, is mostly gone.)

Also, I must say that I am humbled because I keep learning things, keep discovering that I've been doing things "wrong" for, oh, a half-century or so. Joyce just told me recently, for example, that when I'm using an apostrophe to indicate the absence of a letter (or of letters), I need to use the apostrophe form that looks like a 9, not the one that looks like a 6.

Example: 'nuff said? (Not 'nuff said.)

I've grown especially mellow in this age of social media. Mistakes are easy to make (I do so all the time) when you're clicking away on Twitter or Facebook. So ... I cut people slack, hoping, of course, that they will do the same for me.

One sort of error that continually pops up here and there actually has a name: hypercorrection. This is a word to apply to terms or phrases we use because we think we're being more correct than what we ordinarily would have said. For example, some people think they should never use Bill and me, so they use Bill and I instead--even when the grammar demands a me: She gave the cookies to Bill and me. (She gave the cookies to me, not to I.)

Okay, here's what I've been leading up to. The other day I finished reading Sue Grafton's latest "alphabet" mystery--Y Is for Yesterday. Her private eye, Kinsey Millhone, usually narrates most of the text, and near the end of this one, Kinsey wrote this:

For my part, having watched Pearl crush the life out of Ned, you might wonder if I feel badly about the manner in which he died, suffering as he did (481).

And there it is--a hypercorrection: feel badly. Actually, the only way you could feel badly is if your sense of touch didn't work properly. Feel is a state-of-being verb (when it means emotion), so it must (in our grammar) be followed by a predicate adjective (bad), not an adverb (badly).

When you're using feel to mean the sense of touch, it is an action verb and can have a direct object or an adverb or whatever after it:

I feel the cloth with my hand.
Because of the injury to my hands, I feel badly and cannot appreciate the texture of the cloth.

So ... that surprised me, Kinsey's hypercorrection. Her grammar and style are usually informal but flawless (at least in my memory; I am not going to go back and read and re-read the other novels to check). And so this hypercorrection leaped out at me and slapped me upside my startled head.

Which shows, I guess, that I'm still an annoying English teacher at heart. (And, yes, I know: I just wrote a sentence fragment: It was intentional! Get a life!)


*This will do--but there are, of course, countless other examples.

Sunday Sundries, 168

1. AOTW: Another winner at the health club! Finished with my workout (such as it is), I come into the locker room. Near my locker is a long bench, designed to be shared by the others with lockers in the area. Some guy has spread his gym bag and toiletries along about half of it. Okay. I strip (I know: who wants to imagine that?!!?), head to the shower, return: The bag et al. are still there. So ... I work around it. Then, just before I finish dressing, here comes the AOTW; he sees me there, sitting on the bench, pulling on my boots; he sighs with deep umbrage and impatience until I finish (about 10 seconds later). AOTW!

2. This week, Joyce and I finished streaming the first season of Line of Duty, a British cop show. Talk about intense. (I've become such a wuss that I could watch only about fifteen minutes at a time.) We'll start the second season one of these days ... after I grow up?

3. We've also begun streaming the final season of Longmire (as I mentioned last week) and Broadchurch, with David Tennant as a troubled detective (is there any other kind these days?). A strange, strange 1st episode in the latter.

4. I finished two books this week.

     - The first was the penultimate novel in Sue Grafton's alphabetical series about P. I. Kinsey Millhone--Y Is for Yesterday. It's a long book (and it is one I read in 10-page segments in bed--along with about a half-dozen others each night). It's not my favorite of the series. It involves an incident from about a decade earlier--conflict among teens--the making of a "sex tape" (yes, tape: we're in the late 70s for that part of it)--some consequent violence. A secondary plot involves a Bad Guy from a previous book, a guy who reappears in order to kill Kinsey and get even with some others, if he can.

Well, it goes on and on and on, and the motives for people didn't seem all that interesting to me. Also, because the narration is first person, readers know that Kinsey is going to, you know, make it. (Though there are devices, I well know, that a writer can use to deal with that. We'll see what happens in Z Is for ...?)

I've not read them all. The first I read was G Is for Gumshoe, and I've generally enjoyed them all (I've read from G on). When it's all over, I'll probably go back and read A-F. We'll see. I like, by the way, how Grafton (whom Joyce met on some sort of panel years ago--signed a bunch of books for us!) keeps the stories in sequence--we haven't reached 1990 in the novels, and that lets her keep her character fresh--and not have to come up with weird ways to get her into new decades--the problem that Robert B. Parker faced with Spenser (a Korean War vet in the early books), that Michael Connelly faces with Harry Bosch (a Vietnam War vet).

     - The second was The Keep (2006) a really fine novel by Jennifer Egan, whose novels I've begun reading in the order that she wrote them. (This is the 3rd I've read. Previously: The Invisible Circus, 1995; Look at Me, 2001).

There are a few narrative threads to follow: Thread 1 is a story about a guy who goes to work for his cousin in a mountainous eastern European region (no one's even really too sure what country!), a place where the cousin has bought an old castle that he is planning to convert to a resort. Near the castle is its keep--a tower--the place where, centuries ago, castle-dwellers would hole up when they were under siege. Okay, some weird stuff is going on there, including the last surviving member of the original family that owned the castle for centuries, a woman who has some Rapunzel aspects about her--but who also ... ah, read it.

Thread 2: We're in a prison where a guy is taking a writing class from a teacher (Holly)--there's a mutual attraction. Pretty soon we figure out the connection between the castle story and the class story.

Thread 3: Near the end, we find out who had told the castle story--and why--and when.

And I was dazzled, I'll tell you. In one paragraph near the end, the narration suddenly shifts to first person, and you realize who's been talking ... and it's a surprise.

Loved this book. Admired it. Recommend it!


5. Last night (Saturday) Joyce and I drove over to Solon to see Lady Bird, a film I first avoided because (not having read anything about it), I assumed it was a bio-pic about Lardy Bird Johnson. Which did not interest me. But ... we saw the filmmaker on The Daily Show last week (Greta Gerwig--who both wrote and directed), and she was amiable, and the clips she showed were funny. Also, Joyce and I had both read some good things about it from various FB friends. So ... off we went ... (Link to film trailer.)

Okay, it's a story about a young woman--a senior in a Catholic high school in Sacramento (2002?); she's debating about where to go to college (the debate is principally with her mom--and there is, to say the least, tension between them). Dad (played so well by playwright/actor Tracy Letts) has lost his job, is depressed, but sides with the young woman to an extent I found a little troublesome, to tell truth.

Okay 2: I am not a mother; I have not had a daughter; I did not have sisters. So ... I cannot speak about the mother-daughter relationship all that much because, well, I don't really know what I'm talking about, do I?

But now, let's say that I was surprised by the film because it never surprised me. Predictable. Cliche after cliche. And--to me--finally ... boring. There was a silly scene about a football coach trying to direct a school production of The Tempest--but I found that more fitting for an SNL skit than for a key scene in what purports to be a Serious/Important Film.

I was very disappointed in it--perhaps expectations too high?


6. A Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org--I'd never heard this used as a verb ... love it! I'm a-gonna Newgate you, Dude!

Newgate

MEANING:

verb tr.: To imprison.

noun: A prison or a prison-like place or situation.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Newgate, an infamous prison in London, in use since the 13th century, rebuilt many times, and torn down in 1902. The prison is so-named because originally it was located on the site of Newgate (a gate in the Roman London Wall). Earliest documented use: 1592.

NOTES:

Some notable guests of the Newgate prison and their serious crimes:

* William Penn, the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, for criticism of religion. While in prison, given paper to write a retraction, he instead wrote his treatise No Cross, No Crown

* Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe for his satirical pamphlet about religion The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters

* John Walter, the founder of The Times for libel on the Duke of York

The prison also had people come in for minor crimes, such as murder. For example, Ben Jonson, playwright and poet, got in for killing a man in a duel, but was released after reciting a Bible verse.

Newgate was a private prison, so inmates had to pay for everything: room, board, getting shackled and getting unshackled, and so on. Often, they were double-billed, but that may have been due to computer errors. Software was not as reliable in the 13th century.

Because running prisons for profit is such a humane thing to do, we have private prisons, even in the 21st century. Check out this report of anundercover investigation of a private prison.

USAGE:

“One fair contunding* of that whelp .. would be reward enough for being Newgated by the Speaker.”

Alan S. Bell (ed.); Lord Cockburn: Selected Letters; Birlinn; 2005.

* contund: to bruise by beating 

    

Scrooge, Crossing the Green

As I was walking home from the coffee shop this morning (around 9), I was in the middle of the sidewalk that traverses the Village Green, when I heard sirens and saw flashing lights. Crime? Fire?

No.

Santa Claus.

I looked over on the south side of the Green (separated by a little bit of Church Street--our street) and saw the little ones and their parents clustered around the Gazebo, where Santa would soon sit and ask about goodness and promise things he probably won't deliver. (Hmmm ....)

I didn't want to get in the middle of it all, so I ... accelerated (insofar as this is possible these Unsteady Days of mine). I glanced over to East Main (which runs along the east side (duh) of the Green) and saw the Santa vehicles approaching from the north (where else!?), lights flashing: a police car, a fire engine, another safety car of some sort. All were proceeding slowly, adding fuel to the excitement of the little ones, now a-swarm. (Below, see a Google Earth image of the setting.)

I made it onto Church Street before the cortege reached the South Green (whew), hurried (?) across to my side of the street, headed home, thinking that there were probably kids on the Green who were wondering, Why is that Old Man hurrying away from Santa? [Pause.] Mommy, is that Scrooge?

Yes, Virginia, it was Scrooge--especially on this day when I've just learned the news that the actual Scrooges in the U. S. Senate have decided that lots of people less fortunate than those 51 Senators (and their donors) just don't need much help from the rest of us. In fact, it might be a good idea to take some of the little we've provided for them and return it to ourselves (and our ilk) because, you know, we deserve it. We work so hard. And, after all, it is Christmas, isn't it? A time for gifts?

But the Senate has chipped away at, you know, just unnecessary things--frills like health care, help for the elderly and indigent and what not. Merry Christmas to us! cries the echo we can all hear from the Capitol. What a victory!

To which there is only one response: Humbug!

Oh, there may be one more response: See you next November.

Willing

I read Dickens' David Copperfield (1850) a bit after I "should have." (My quotation marks.) I was a little ... slow ... to come to Dickens, as I've written here (and elsewhere). It all didn't begin in ninth grade when our lit book, Exploring Literature, featured an abbreviated version of Great Expectations, which I just could not read (as my miserable scores on reading quizzes most patently certified).

I vowed I would never read another damn word by Dickens (not that I'd read too many so far). Then, at Hiram College, just a few years later, here came Great Expectations in a lit class. I audibly groaned (and no doubt cursed) when I saw the reading list posted at the book store.

But, surprise, I loved it this time. (I was so much more mature in college!)

And in the ensuing years I read all of Dickens' novels--and a lot of his nonfiction as well. (And as I recently wrote, I wept like a wuss last week when Joyce and I saw the new film about Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas.)

So ... David Copperfield ... just wait a minute for the relevance here ...

During that run of reading Dickens, I bought the Oxford Illustrated Dickens (pic below--not our set but the same thing).

I just looked in my copy of Copperfield from that set and see my little note in the front: I read it in December 1998 and January 1999; my note also says "2nd time." I cannot remember the first--but it wasn't too long before this second reading.

I just looked in my journal from 1998-99, and I see I began it on Christmas Eve 1998 and was reading it pretty much every day in January 1999, finishing it on the 13th (not a Friday!). But--curse my laziness!--I said nothing about it really except that I was reading it again. 

Okay, what does all of this have to do with anything?

It has to do with marriage ... with spousal responsibilities ...

But first, a moment from the novel. Barkis is driving a carriage (see photo at top), taking David away from home. David has with him some treats baked by Peggotty, a servant back at home. Barkis is impressed--they taste good. He asks David if she has any sweethearts; David, mishearing, thinks he's said "sweetmeats"; they straighten it out.

Then Barkis asks David if he will be writing to Peggotty while he's away; he says he will be. And let's let Dickens handle the next little bit ...

‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’

I replied that such was the fact.

‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be writin’ to her?’

‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.

‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?’

‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the message?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’

‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and could give your own message so much better.’

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to know—BARKIS IS WILLING.’ (Chap 5, p. 65 in my edition).

Okay, you now have all the context you need. Joyce and I--like most husbands and wives, I would guess--have divvied up our quotidian tasks--from emptying the dishwasher to doing the laundry, etc.

There is one job, though, that both of us do from time to time--taking our cars in for routine servicing, as per our warranty. Sometimes I do it; sometimes she does. (She has been doing so more often lately because she works out early in the morning, and the health club is about 1/3 of the way to the dealer ... so ....)

But I feel guilty. I think I ought to do it more often.

So I always tell her--always--that I'm, well, willing.

And yesterday, almost simultaneously as we were going through this all-too-common exchange, we both hit upon that line from David Copperfield: "Barkis is willing."

So ... this morning ... she was out in the car, ready to leave, waiting for the windshield to defrost. I went outside, motioned for her to lower the window.

She did.

I said, "Barkis is willing."

She laughed. And drove away.

our copy