Reading Recommendation

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Canned Chatter
 

“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. ... The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
 

―Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

• Editorial Comment: Good advice. But what sane person would take advice from this guy?


 
PeezPix by Ted Pease

A Street, Eureka, Califonia













Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Speaking in Tongues

. . . . and Rumors

“I have often spoken of rumors as ‘terrorism,’ of how you can kill a person with the tongue,” Francis said.

“If this is valid for an individual person, in the family or at work, so much more it’s valid for journalists, because their voice can reach everyone, and this is a very powerful weapon,” he said.

Criticism, the pope continued, is legitimate, as well as the “denunciation of evil, but this must always be done respecting the other, his life, his affections,” because an article is replaced from one day to the other, but the life of a person “unjustly defamed can be destroyed forever.” 

—Pope Francis, Pope says journalism based on rumors and fear is ‘terrorism’, The Crux, Sept. 22, 2016 (Thanks to alert WORDster Steve Marston)

• Editorial Comment: I heard the news today . . . . oh BOY!

PeezPix by Ted Pease

Headless












Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Just Shut Up

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Punditry

“What transpires during the paid [pundit] contributor segments isn’t journalism. It isn’t politics. And it’s rarely even entertaining. I’d call it the worst sort of tasteless soy filler, only that would be an insult to soy, which is nutritious.”

—Jack Shafer, pundit and commentator, “CNN Dumped Donna Brazile. It Should Keep Going,” Politico, Oct. 31, 2016

• Editorial Comment: Soy, anyone? 



PeezPix by Ted Pease

Rockhead













Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

There Will Be A Tomorrow

Amazing and courageous journalist Christiane Amanpour receives the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for her work in the cause of press freedom at the International Press Freedom Awards. Her speech made me cry. Watch it. Listen. Use it. https://youtu.be/NawMb9ia0F4

Blossoms

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Thanks & Giving

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
  

—Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist.

• Editorial Comment: Thank you, everyone. Still stuffing. No turkeys, please.


PeezPix by Ted Pease

Sunrise













Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Changing Times

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Heirs of the First Revolution

—John F. Kennedy (1913-1963), 35th U.S. president, was assassinated yesterday 53 years ago. URL

• Editorial Comment: Is the world is very different today?


PeezPix by Ted Pease

Sunrise













Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Threatened Species

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What’s for Lunch?

“Carnivores eat flesh and meat; piscivores eat fish; herbivores consume plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. I am such a creature.
”    

—Richard Lederer, American verbivore

• Editorial Comment: I ate a book today. Yum.





PeezPix by Ted Pease

Sun’s Up









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Read a Book

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Reading to My Kids

“When they were little I read

to them at night until my tongue

got tired. They would poke me

when I started to nod off after twenty pages

of Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket.

I read (to them) to get them to love reading

but I was never sure if it was working

or if it was just what I was supposed to do.

But one day, my daughter (fifteen then)

was finishing Of Mice and Men in the car

on our way to basketball.

She was at the end when I heard her say,

No, in a familiar frightened voice

and I knew right away where she was.

“Let’s do it now," Lennie begged,

“Let’s get that place now.”

“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta,”

and she started crying, then I started crying,

and I think I saw Steinbeck

in the back seat nodding his head,

and it felt right to me,

like I’d done something right.”

 

—Kevin Carey, poet and writer, “Reading to My Kids,” The Writer’s Almanac, Oct. 17, 2016 

• Editorial Comment: Really? Does anyone read anymore?


PeezPix by Ted Pease

What Book Was This Again?










Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Finding Wisdom

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WORDMeister Notice: Bruised, disappointed and disillusioned after the past week and at the prospects to come, I will try to avoid political quotes for awhile. There is too much to say, of course, but it also is too raw. And like shooting fish in a barrel. What is disturbing to me is that so many of us thought this was a good idea. Now, as Obama and Hillary say, we need to stand back and give the man a chance to do some good. So the WORD will try to eshew political news and go back to its roots in writing, free expression, culture and journalism. In that vein, I quote the mighty philosopher Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one.”
 
Looking Ahead

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.” 

—Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate poet, writer, thinker, “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear,” The Nation, 2015.

• Editorial Comment: Wisdom would be welcome. Where can we get some?





PeezPix by Ted Pease

And I Think I'll Make Some Irish Sodabread









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Novel-Writing

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Laden with Pelts

“Novelists are like fur trappers. They disappear into the north woods for months or years at a time, sometimes never to reemerge, giving in to despair out there, or going native (taking a real job, in other words), or catching their legs in their own traps and bleeding out, silently, into the snow. The lucky ones return, laden with pelts.”

—Jeffrey Eugenides, “The Pieces of Zadie Smith,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2016

• Editorial Comment: I think bleeding out alone in the snowy northern woods sounds pretty good right now.


PeezPix by Ted Pease

Down the Road, Gerry.








Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Brave New World

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Almost Hell

“Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.”

    —Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), British writer, author of Brave New World (among others) and notorious crazy person.

• Editorial Comment: Oh, hell.






PeezPix by Ted Pease

Bus Line








Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard