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If I Ran the Zoo…(Just how important are proper spelling and grammar, anyway?)

(This is a repost of an entry I wrote on 21 Aug 2008.)

This morning, I was reading an excellent entry by Deb Punctuality Rules! Using Grammar and Good Manners to Save the World. The article is entitled “Do We Need New Spelling?” I was moved to write a sufficiently long comment that I would like to expand on a bit here. Deb refers to Laura Fitzpatrick’s article “Making an Arguement for Misspelling”(and, yes, that hurt to type) in the current issue of Time. I strongly suggest you read both the article and Deb’s entry so you have the context for what I am sharing below:

Okay, there are a couple of things going on here.

First: While the grammar geek in me screams at improper usage and spelling, the plain fact of the matter is that - for most of linguistic history - there was no such thing as standardized spelling. That has only come about in the last couple of centuries, with the collections of words that eventually developed into the dictionaries we know and love. Language is not something dead that can be codified completely. It lives and evolves o fit the needs of its users.

Second: I started screaming about this back when people started claiming that it was too difficult to understand how to use a semi-colon; I saw that as the first step down a slippery slope, and I still do. I am comfortable with the language as I have learned it. Hell, I still get upset about omission of the final comma in a series. That is my preference. I’m not sure it means I have the right to force that preference on others, though.

Third: If I recall correctly, the first country to start doing away with punctuation in addresses - and in print in general - was Great Britain, so I find it difficult to swallow when someone from there now complains that spelling is too difficult. When I was an administrative assistant at a major corporation, and America was first starting to adopt this trend from the British, I used to go crazy fighting with bosses over which was the proper for to use. My all-too-provincial American bosses could not believe that their European clients did things differently than we did, even though they had the evidence on every envelope addressed to them from Great Britain.

Fourth: Anyone who thinks the primary aim of the American education system was really to educate people well is fooling themselves. It was designed to shape a very diverse group of people into a relatively homogeneous workforce. It succeeded in doing that for a while, maybe; but is not even succeeding at that small aim these days, sadly.

Fifth: I do realize that what seems to me to just be laziness might very well be a real difficulty with learning the rules. I work in a school (and, no, I am not a teacher) where most of the student body are immigrants or the first generation children thereof, and I can understand the difficulty a lot of these kids have with English (even our watered-down American version). In fact, though, many of these kids are illiterate in their native languages as well. And since I do not believe that all of them were born “stupid,” I’m not sure how this can be dealt with.

Did I want to sit and parse sentences as a kid? Heck no. Am I now glad I had to? Absolutely. However, the sad fact is education has become even less about education than about making kids feel good about themselves.

My questions are: If it will hurt a kid’s self-esteem to fail a subject or lose at a gym activity now, how much more will it destroy his or her self-esteem to not be able to get a job that pays more than being a counter-person at a fast-food joint? In a society moving ever more rapidly toward information services and technologies, how will a person who cannot effectively communicate survive?

Standard spelling and grammar evolved for the same reason manners did: to ease interactions between people of a society. Should we toss that away just because it might be difficult for some to master? I think not. Should some variation on them be allowed? Well, language evolves. That is a fact. If it didn’t, we would probably still be speaking some form of Old English (if not some form of the languages that Old English developed from).

Is it distressing to see this happen in our lifetimes? Absolutely; in the same way that it’s distressing to go back to the neighborhood where you hung out as a teenager and find it has changed entirely (mine was New York’s Greenwich Village). People long for certainty and permanence. When something they grew up believing in changes, it can be shattering. This doesn’t mean that all change is bad, but neither does it mean that all change is good. Things do change, however, and since we are all different it is, perhaps, ridiculous to expect us all to adapt at the same rate of speed.

I don’t know what the solution is. I’m not sure that letting language evolve is “giving up the fight to educate our kids.” I’m not sure that spelling and grammar matter as much as *I* was taught they did (as much as it pains me to admit that). I do know that, whether I like it or not, language will continue to evolve and mutate long after I am no longer here to protest it doing so.

There is a game, played among science fiction fans, called “If I Ran the Zoo.” It’s about running a science fiction convention, and how you would handle the various problems and situations that come up in doing so. I am so glad this is not my zoo to run.

“A, B, C, It’s Easy…” – Jackson Five, Part I – Journal-Keeping for Everybody

(Originally posted 6 June, 2008)

Journals, or blogs, no matter how frequently or infrequently posted to, are one of the great joys of a conscious life. (Having said that, I suppose I should explain what I mean by a conscious life. To me, living a conscious life means not taking for granted the things people tell me. It means examining my beliefs to make sure they are mine, and not just handed down to me by parents, teachers, etc. It means thinking about my views on things, and putting my beliefs and values into action.)

Private or public, they are a place to record the minutiae of daily life; reflect on insights; note memorable quotations, passages from books, poems, or songs; mark occasions; track progress on personal (or work) projects; and rant, rave, or otherwise work out solutions to problems and coherent opinions on troubling issues.

Marvelously flexible, paper journals can be (depending on their size) tossed into a purse, briefcase, or luggage; tucked into a pocket; or hidden in a drawer (or under a pillow, or on a shelf). They can be hard-bound, spiral-bound, or custom-bound; cloth-covered, paper-covered, plastic-covered, or cardboard-covered; lined or unlined; large or small; expensive or inexpensive – whatever suits your fancy!

Blogs, while not quite as portable yet as paper journals, have other advantages: ease of editing; legibility; ease of sharing (if you choose to share) over large geographical areas; ease of incorporating research results, pictures, and articles from the World Wide Web; and ease of storage (if you back up your blog, thumb drives and CD-ROMs take up a lot less space than physical notebooks).

So, after you decide whether to use paper or to go online, the next question is what to fill your journal with. In either case, the possibilities are almost infinite. I’ve filled my paper journals with photos, ticket stubs, cards and letters, drafts of stories, poems, laundry lists, reminders, and quotations; and my online ones with news, photos, memories, short fiction of the fannish variety, reminders, birthday shout-outs, and quotations.

There are a number of books on journal-keeping, which offer a treasure trove of ideas, journal rituals, pointers, and tips. Two of the best books of this kind are Tristine Rainer’s The New Diary, and Kathleen Adams’ Journal to the Self. (There is another classic in the field, Ira Progroff’s At a Journal Workshop, but that introduces a whole, complex system for organizing and keeping a journal in sections, which is a bit beyond the scope of this article.) Both are inspirational and, with Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, some pre-Internet books on researching, and a number of excellent books from Writers Digest, form the basis of my writing library. A lot of what I learned about making a paper journal truly your own has come from these two books.

To my mind, there is one huge advantage to online journal-keeping: its social aspect. While I admit to still being wary of putting anything online that I would not want to see blazoned as a headline in my local newspaper, there are social aspects that are just too alluring to resist, including getting photography advice from professional photographers; met writers whose work I adore; gotten excellent writing advice from editors and writers; had superb support systems when the lemons life handed me stubbornly refused to turn into lemonade; had fun and learned about friends with the odd meme; gotten information about places that tourists might miss in a town while I was still planning my itinerary; and found a whole new group of online acquaintances with whom journal-keeping was just one thing I had in common.

Now I want to note the greatest secret of journal-keeping: while it is an ongoing commitment, the one thing that there are no hard and fast rules about is the frequency of posting! I’ve heard so many people say some variation of “I’d love to do that, but I don’t have the time to write every day.” You don’t have to write every day! Some folks do, of course, but your frequency of posting is totally up to you. Julia Cameron, in her excellent twelve-week course, The Artist’s Way, recommends doing three pages each morning, which I did when I did the course. In real life, however, my journal-keeping varies wildly. During the school year, for example, when I get up absurdly early, I may only make one or two catch-up entries in any given month. If I’m writing a story, or working through a difficult real-life situation, I might go through a whole notebook in that span of time.

Again, the key is to make your journal your own by amassing a “tool box” of tips and tricks, and using them as needed.

If you thought about keeping a journal, but decided against it, what stopped you? If you choose to rethink the decision, what are some creative solutions to the challenges?

If you do keep a journal, do you use paper, post online, or some combination of the two? Are you posting as much (or as little) as you want? What can you think of to facilitate doing so?

Personal Financial Tipping Point

(Originally posted 3rd June, 2008)

Today, Free from Broke, did an excellent article re personal financial tipping points.

As I’ve noted earlier, mine came when I found out that my roommate had not been paying her mother (who writes our rent checks because the Landlord will not accept checks from my roommate because of the “high latex content”) her share of the rent for over four months.

After all the histrionics between her mother, her, her best friend, and me had died down, I did a lot of thinking. Not only did I never want to be in that situation again, but I realized that (other than my fiance) I really do not want to be sharing living space with anyone. After a long hard look at my own actions (avoiding paying creditors, spending beyond recklessly, eating out 6-7 times a week, taking cabs almost everywhere), I decided to take action. The first thing I did was to go to annualcreditreport.com, and got copies of all three credit reports, so I could see just how deep the hole I was in was. I then called my creditors and made agreements (all of which I kept). I stopped buying books — totally for a while, now only using gift certificates and buying used at that.

It’s been a long two years since then, and I have paid of all but one credit card (and that is well on its way to being paid off). I am working my way to freedom, and it will take about two years to get there.

My roommate still screws up, but I recently found out that that is because she does not want to be responsible for her finances. She says she wants someone to make it all go away and take responsibility for her, but refuses to let anyone actually do so. My ex sent me a spreadsheet so she can track her checking account, and she refuses to fill it in herself, or let me do it. She now claims that she thinks she could let my ex do it, because working with him will be less “emotionally painful,” but I bet when he shows up she will find more excuses.

Yes, I am angry about the situation — things that I could have put money toward have had to wait as, in order to keep a roof over my head, both her mother and I have had to cover for her. However, I know that this is temporary, and that once my credit reports are clear enough to not scare off Landlords, things will change drastically!

Disorder within Order, or Vice Versa?

(Originally Posted 3 June 2008)

B Nelson has a wonderful article over at Gomestic called “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, Or Is It?”.

It briefly and succinctly explains why a touch of disorder in our lives is not necessarily a bad thing.

I thought about it, and pretty much the only thing I am presently unwilling to be disorderly about is my finances, because right now I am still learning, and correcting problems I created for myself.  I do, however, look forward to one day not having to watch every penny quite as rigorously, while still not straying from my goals.

What are you unwilling to be a touch disorderly about?  Why?

"Making a List, Checking It Twice"

(Originally Posted 2 June 2008)

Most people who know me know that one of my passions is journal-keeping. I’ve been keeping a journal since somewhere around my fourteenth birthday, when I was given – like many girls of that age and time – a copy of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and one of those little mock-leather-covered diaries with a key and a lock that supposedly kept it private but could be picked by any enterprising mother with a hairpin.

I outgrew that book pretty quickly, and graduated to a set of blue plastic post-and-bar report covers, where I could, by reversing the direction of the post and bar, add pages of looseleaf paper in chronological order as quickly as I could fill them. And fill them I did.

I wish I still had that binder. It was about four inches thick and full of the dreams, anguishes, and triumphs of my teen/young adult years. However, my mother destroyed it because she was afraid my father would find it. And, while I actually understood why, it’s the one thing that took the longest to even begin to forgive her for doing.

In 1979, I moved into a women’s hotel in Manhattan. A friend had introduced me to the New Age movement and I was taking a lot of courses, all of which not only required extensive amounts of “navel-gazing,” but writing reams about the insights acquired thereby. I find a lot of my writing from that time painful to look at now, but I keep it because it does reflect – for good or ill – where I was at the time.

Eventually, I ended up on the Internet, and started a small writing career (science fiction/fantasy short stories). While I still kept the bulk of my journal on paper, I led some workshops for an online writers’ group on journal-keeping for writers. I got a lot of positive feedback about these workshops, but never managed to figure out how to move to the next step, so that was pretty much where my journal-keeping remained.

Now, of course, a journal does not have to be kept on paper. While some folks still prefer paper journals, lots of others take advantage of blogging websites, such as LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger; others prefer to use areas set aside for such things on special-interest websites like SparkPeople; and some folks just set aside a part of their personal webpage.

Still, the main question regarding journal-keeping is more about what to write than where to write it. This series will explore a bit of both in three articles, discussing:

• 
  
  Journaling for everyone,
• 
  
  Journaling for writers, and
• 
  
  Tips and tricks for journaling.

Do you keep a journal? Would you like to? Would it be a general-purpose one, or would it be for a specific project or subject?

“It’s My Life, I Can Do What I Want” – “I’m Crying” – Eric Burdon & The Animals

(Originally Posted 29 May 2008)

An online friend and I were discussing some upcoming changes in her life revolving around her church, and the conversation turned to how one acquires one’s beliefs. We both had experimented in the past, and finally returned to what we grew up with, and tossed around a few concepts, such as that when you have removed all the things you are not, what is left is what you are; and that unexamined belief is a scary thing.

Well, in further thinking about the second concept, it seems to me that a lot of us get into, and stay in, financial difficulties because of unexamined beliefs. Since the beliefs vary according to each person, I’m not going to go into them right now. I am, instead, going to concentrate on how we can make more conscious choices regarding our finances and futures.

It’s very easy (and very comfortable) to just keep on doing what we have always done. The problem with that is that, often, people do what they have always done and wonder why they get the same results they have always gotten. This was driven home to me the other day when a friend was writing out a check to renew a subscription to a magazine. Now, for most of us, this would not be a problem, but: 1) Her account was overdrawn and her paycheck had not dropped. 2) Even if #1 were not the case, she has no clue ever as to how much is in her account at any given time. 3) Further, she has no idea as to which creditors are going to take out how much from her account or when they will do it. I asked her why she was spending money she didn’t really have, and it brought her up short. She had not realized she was doing that. We ended up having a talk about decision-making, and how learning to stop and think and make choices, rather than running on automatic, might affect her finances.

My point is that wanting to get out of debt is useless without examining what you are doing that keeps you in debt. It’s not easy to do, and not pleasant, but it is the way to go. As with unexamined religious belief, it’s easy to just go on in the same manner you always have, but then your efforts are really empty. Even having a real desire to get free from debt is not enough to accomplish that goal. What will get you there are conscious choices.

Now, hopefully you want to know what I mean by that. I mean that getting out of debt is the result of a series of small choices, made at every step of the way. Those small choices eventually build into a major shift of your attitudes, and to more actions which further your goal.

It can be as small a decision as putting the money you might spend on a latte toward one of your bills instead, or paying off one small debt each paycheck. It can be looking to see why you make the decisions you do. It can be making a list of all the debts you owe – even the personal ones that your friends are willing to wait for years for you to get around to. Each small decision – each small, conscious choice – helps build a foundation from which to make the next one. And, each small victory is a step on the way to leading your life – not as an echo of someone else’s life – but the way you want to live it.

What are two small changes you can make in your life (or in your spending) that you think could have big effects further down the road?