Yoko Ono in the New York Times today:
They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.
“Who are we as a country?”
Yoko Ono in the New York Times today:
They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.
By Michael Leddy at 2:54 PM comments: 0
Viewer discretion is always advised.
[Infinite Jest-inspired.]
By Michael Leddy at 9:56 AM comments: 0
By Michael Leddy at 1:48 PM comments: 0
The so-called 1932nd Psalm:
Politicians who are willing to lead us in the paths of destruction for their party’s sake frighten me too. Mitch McConell (R-KY): “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”Published in the Weatherford Democrat, June 10, 1932. Collected in Donald Whisenhunt’s Depression in Texas: The Hoover Years (New York: Garland, 1983).Depression is my shepherd; I am in want.
He maketh me to lie down on park benches; He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth the bread lines; He leadeth me in the paths of destruction for his Party’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Unemployment, I fear every evil; for thou art with me; the Politicians and Profiteers they frighten me.
Thou preparest a reduction in mine salary before me in the presence of mine creditors; Thou anointest mine income with taxes; my expenses runneth over mine income.
Surely unemployment and poverty will follow me all the days of the Republican administration; and I shall dwell in a mortgaged home forever.
[Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers’ Journal, March 1922.]The Democrat is still publishing in Weatherford, Texas.
[Locomotive Engineers Journal, June 1922.]
By Michael Leddy at 7:15 AM comments: 3
I received an e-mail this morning from a reader asking about each: does it take a singular verb, or plural? Garner’s Modern English Usage has the answers. I’ll paraphrase:
1. Each usually takes a singular verb. A sample sentence from an earlier post: “Each of these issues becomes a non-issue with handwritten work.”
2. When each is not itself the subject and the subject is plural, the verb should be plural. Another sample from an earlier post: “‘We each have an opposable thumb,’ I said.”
[Reader, my e-mails to you bounced back. I hope you see what you’re looking for here. In the sentences you asked about, the verbs should be singular.]
A related post
If I were , if I was
By Michael Leddy at 12:12 PM comments: 5
By Michael Leddy at 5:43 PM comments: 2
At Recovery.gov, an Edward Tufte-designed map and graph track moneys distributed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Points of light, indeed.
By Michael Leddy at 9:45 PM comments: 0
Steve Martin talked about art — not the funny — at the 92nd Street Y. Audience members complained. So the Y offered refunds credit for an evening did not meet the usual “standard of excellence.”
Steve Martin on the Y’s “standard of excellence”: “it can’t be that high because this is the second time I’ve appeared there.”
Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y (New York Times)
Update, December 5: In the comments, a reader points to a first-hand account of the evening.
Update, December 6: Steve Martin comments in the New York Times.
By Michael Leddy at 3:03 PM comments: 3
A search for a single sentence: give me sentence for the word orange. Seeing as you asked politely:
Orange was the color of her dress, then blue silk.If you want to hear the Charles Mingus composition whose title is that sentence, here’s one version.
By Michael Leddy at 8:01 AM comments: 5
It was snowing, barely, yesterday afternoon, and twice in two hours, I heard someone say “It’s spitting.” The word spitting was apt: snow was coming down in dribs and drabs — ptooey, ptooey, ptooey.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition for the verb spit: “Of rain or snow: To fall in scattered drops or flakes. (Usually with it as subject.)” Here are the illustrative sentences that follow:
1778 [W. H. MARSHALL] Minutes Agric. Observ. 129 To sprinkle (or spit), to rain slow in largish drops. 1818 S. E. FERRIER Marriage vii, “And“ —putting her hand out at the window — “I think it’s spitting already.” 1836-7 DICKENS Sk. Boz, Tales vii, It had been “spitting” with rain for the last half-hour. 1860 TYNDALL Glac. I. xxv. 189 The fine snow . . . was caught by the wind and spit bitterly against us. 1887 SERVICE Life Dr. Duguid 171 Feeling that it was spittin’ through the win’, I quickened my step.The OED entry for the participial adjective spitting has a phrase from Thomas Drant’s 1567 translation of Horace’s Epistles: “A linnine slop in spitting snow.” Or as Christopher Smart’s 1755 prose translation puts it, “thin drawers in snowy weather.”
By Michael Leddy at 11:32 AM comments: 2