Apostrophes, Commas, and Steller’s Jays

It is March 24, 2018 as I write, and all over our country and on Vashon Island people have come out for the March for Our Lives, a protest asking that we have sensible gun laws and regulations in our country, and that automatic weapons and assault rifles not be sold, and that politicians and people in general snap out of it and realize that the second amendment does not protect anyone’s right to own those guns.

This is important stuff, and there is a lot to be said about it, and a lot of people are saying it. I’m going to go for something much lighter in this essay, because, hey, we all need to inhale sometimes.

“Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” a book by Lynne Truss, surfaced on my bookshelf recently. Ms. Truss describes herself as a “stickler,” and her book is about punctuation, and how important punctuation is to the flow of the written word. When it’s correct, you don’t notice it.

She lives in the United Kingdom, and her usage in the book adheres to UK rules. That’s why she uses quotation marks “thusly”.

In the US we use quotation marks “this way.” Take as much time as you need to see the difference.

There are epic battles between writers and editors over this issue. It’s simple: in the “States,” they go “here,” in the “UK”, they go “here”.

Shall we move on?

The humble apostrophe works hard, and Ms. Truss takes a lot of trouble to explain its correct usage. It’s not the apostrophe’s fault that it is left out where it ought to be and put in where it ought not. Perhaps you’ve heard of the guy who goes around London at night painting over apostrophes that don’t belong in signs?

Example: Big sale on orange’s!

Argh. You see these desecrations all the time. Sometimes they are done intentionally to bring annoyed people into stores, where they are then persuaded to buy the goods.

Commas: there are rules for commas, but don’t try to enforce them. I learned while editing that every writer has their own distinct Comma Code and will fight to the death defending it. I decided that unless a comma or lack of comma changed or confused the meaning of a sentence, I would let it stand. Choose your battles.

When I was a child, so long ago that when I looked it up online it wasn’t there, there was a comma mishap with far reaching effects. Consider this story hearsay, because no doubt I’m remembering it wrong.

Sometime in the fifties or sixties, there were taxes imposed on imported fruits. Unfortunately, in the legislation’s list of fruits, someone left out the comma between banana and apple, and the legislation passed without a tax on bananas or apples, but with a tax on the banana apple. Respect your commas, and your proofreaders.

I learned a lot working as an editor, both of the Loop and of manuscripts. Regular Loop writers were good writers. What I learned is that good writers are much easier to edit than not so good writers, who tend to think their work is holy writ. Psst: it’s not.

Also, all writers are insecure and need to be encouraged. We are, and we do, okay?

One thing I learned about while editing the Loop was the Steller’s Jay. Orca Annie wrote of a Steller jay in one of her columns, and ignoramus that I was, I changed it to stellar. Well, she got in touch and tore me a new one right smartly. That’s when I learned that the Steller’s Jay is named for Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746), a German physician, botanist, and zoologist who explored Alaska under the auspices of Russia and was the first European to observe and record several species, some of whom were named for him, including the Steller’s Jay. I don’t know what the indigenous people called them. Anyone?

I also learned that the Steller’s Jay is a member of the family Corvidae. Yup, they are related to crows, which explains a lot – their voices, and their intelligence, for starters. They are not merely pretty faces.

The internet, texting, and messaging have made nonsense of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and yet some sticklers are soldiering on. Granted, the spirit of communication is more important than the letter of the law, but grammar and punctuation are what allow us to read something without being jolted by some clanger.

I confess that since I stopped being an editor I’ve become something of a grammar and punctuation barbarian. Sentence fragments! I use prepositions to end sentences with! And I start sentences with “and” and “but!” I use exclamation points much more than is necessary or correct! I am a wild woman! Up the revolution!

Okay. Break’s over. Back to saving the world.

Tear Down the Walls

On November 10, 1989, we were driving south on I-5. “We” were Libbie Anthony, Velvet Neifert, and me. We sang together as Women, Women and Song, and we were on our way to Corvallis, Oregon, to do a concert that night.

We were in our usual configuration: Velvet driving, Libbie riding shotgun, me in the back seat.

Somewhere north of Portland Libbie asked Velvet, “Did you hear what’s happening in Berlin?”

“Yes!” Velvet said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What’s happening in Berlin?” I asked.

They told me that the Berlin Wall was starting to come down.

Amazing. Astonishing. I was gobsmacked.

The Berlin Wall went up in August 1961, enclosing West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany.

My husband’s father was stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany at the time and all the American military was on high alert at this perceived possible threat. What Rick remembered most vividly was that tanks were running down the autobahn, and he hitched rides to the swimming pool on the tanks that August. A kid’s perspective on world affairs.

As we drove along I-5 on that November day in 1989 my astonishment began to take shape as a lyric, and I got out my pen and notebook and began writing it down:

“For women and men to live in freedom, tear down the wall

For brothers and sisters to stand together, tear down the wall.”

The wall was built, first of barbed wire, then gradually of concrete almost twelve feet high, with a wide, empty “kill zone” on the East German side that troops guarded with machine guns. The official East German line was that the wall was to keep western fascists out.

Before the wall, West Berlin was the easiest place for East Germans to defect. The wall made it much harder, but people still tried to defect. Some succeeded. Some were killed in the attempt.

“We’ll stop and remember the ones who died, tear down the wall

Trying to reach the other side, tear down the wall.”

In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy went to West Berlin and gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, which inspired the people of West Berlin and annoyed the Soviets.

In 1989 there were revolutions in Eastern bloc countries, including Hungary and Poland. Civil unrest began to build in East Berlin. On November 9, 1989, the East German and East Berlin governments finally said, “Open the gates. People may pass freely between East and West Berlin.”

And the people went through the gates, and the news went around the world.

“Open the gates, let the flood tides roll, tear down the wall

East or west, we are all going home, tear down the wall.”

People from both sides were climbing on top of the wall, cheering. People were chipping away at the wall with chisels and hammers, breaking off chunks for souvenirs, opening holes in the wall.

One miraculous thing about the opening of the Berlin Wall was how quietly it happened. There were no battles fought.

“If the human heart will sing its song, tear down the wall

The music will right the ancient wrong, tear down the wall.”

This is the song’s chorus:

“Tear down the walls between us!

Brick by brick and stone by stone

If this winter is to end in springtime

Tear down the walls.”

I told Libbie and Velvet, “Hey, I have a song.” I wrote out the words, and we began singing the song and working out the harmonies as we drove down the Willamette Valley.

We got so involved in the song that we drove past the turnoff to Corvallis. At some point I saw a hill on our left and thought, uh oh. We’re getting close to Eugene. So, we took an off ramp around Brownsville, managed to get over to 99W, and drove up to Corvallis from the south, still singing.

That night we sang the song in our concert. The crowd went wild. After that we included the song in our repertoire for as long as we stayed together as a trio.

I thought “Tear Down the Wall” was a topical song about the Berlin Wall when I wrote it, but I have realized since that there is always someone wanting to put up a wall. It’s all about trying to control people, keeping someone in or keeping someone out.

Tearing down walls is always topical. So, I have started singing the song again.

Of course, once you’ve torn down a wall, you have won the right to tear down the next wall. So lively on up, people. We got some wall tearing down to do.

Please Tell Me It’s the Tipping Point

Emma Gonzales by Steve Musgrave

Looky here: I grew up on a farm. There was a gun rack on the wall in the hallway outside my bedroom door. It held a .22 rifle, a .30-.30 rifle, and a single-barrel shotgun. The gun rack was always locked.

One time a skunk tried to move into the crawl space of our house. My parents felt that a skunk was an unacceptable housemate.

One day when the skunk was waddling toward the house from the orchard, my dad got the shotgun down from the rack and loaded it. He went outside and approached the skunk. It turned to look at my father, who was about ten feet away by then. My father raised the shotgun, aimed, and fired.

The skunk became a non-skunk. One side of it still looked like a skunk, but the other side was a bright red bowl of flesh and blood.

I watched the whole thing from the living room window. I can see the bloody remains of that skunk as clearly in my mind’s eye now as I did that day. You combat vets and EMTs and ER employees can laugh, but that was my experience of seeing what a gun could do to a living creature.

At this point in my life I don’t have a problem with civilians using guns for target shooting, hunting, Civil War or other historical re-enactments, or any reasonable use that does not lead to the senseless mass killing of human beings of any age.

Gun use by law enforcement and the military is a discussion I won’t get into today.

I believe that the teenagers who were present at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School the day that a former classmate came in and shot down seventeen people with an AR-15 rifle have been more than eloquent in their rage about that incident, and in their call for gun control. They want nothing less than for their school shooting to be the last school shooting.

I’m afraid they are going to be disappointed in that wish. Call it a hunch.

Many people have said quite a lot about the need for gun control after the shooting in Parkland, as people have after every mass shooting and slaughter of innocents for years, to no avail. As we have all seen, pleas for common sense have fallen on deaf ears, and in the case of politicians who could legislate gun control, ears that have been paid to remain deaf by the NRA.

These teenagers give me a glimmer of hope. Are we reaching a tipping point? Does common sense finally have a chance?

The survivors and children across the country are tired of seeing their friends and teachers murdered, of going to school wondering if this is the day they will be murdered. They want it stopped, and they are not kidding.

The students from Parkland are still vibrating with the terror and grief of their experience: realizing what was happening as the bullets flew; hiding; running for their lives; seeing their friends, who were alive minutes before, lying in pools of blood; waiting for someone to tell them it was safe to leave the building.

They are demanding change. They are running into brick walls, fortresses built of corruption and lies. They don’t want lies. They are sick of lies. They are sick and tired of people dying of lies.

Now, aside from politicians accepting NRA money, the usual segment of the population has been wailing about second amendment rights and how the liberals want to take away their guns.

It is more than the liberals, and you darn betcha we want to take away your guns. We want to take away the automatic and semi-automatic rifles that were designed and built for the military to kill people. The ones that leave internal organs so shredded that there is nothing left to sew together. Those guns.

The semi-automatic and automatic hand guns which kill people every day. Those guns, too.

Some anti-gun control people wish to use the methods of suppression that were used on civil rights protesters over fifty years ago: high force water hoses; attack dogs; rubber bullets; tear gas; truncheons; real bullets. Yeah. That’ll make those spoiled brats shut up and go home. Teach ‘em a lesson.

Some of the survivors and their families have received death threats. That is an indicator that the kids are on the right track. Nothing like telling the truth to make people want to kill you.

The energy, conviction, and sanity of these children who literally dodged bullets encourages me. They seem to believe that our government really is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Pretty radical, huh? Quaint.

They might have picked that idea up in school.

You know, before the shooting started?

POST SCRIPT: In the months since I wrote this, the MSD survivors have been called every name in the book by the “gun rights” crowd – brainwashed, crisis actors, liars, tools of liberal conspiracies, etc. – and of course their looks, clothing, haircuts, sexual orientation, intelligence, knowledge, and experience have all been ridiculed and held up as reasons to hate them.

It is much the same way rape victims are treated when they speak out against their rapists.