Earfluff

Note: The WORD is calling a Pooh Break to end a rough week.

“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”  

—Winnie the Pooh, savant, gourmand and practitioner of real politik, friend of English author A.A. Milne (1882-1956), 1926.

• Editorial Comment: The Centers for Disease Control confirms a worldwide uptick in earfluff, centered in Washington. Take appropriate precautions.

PeezPix

Clowns Might Help, Too.

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Post-Mueller

“These stories have nothing to do with the lives of most Americans. This descent into the inane and the tawdry gives immunity to Trump. In attacking the press he attacks an institution most Americans loathe. . . . Little the press says about Trump will now be believed.” 

—Chris Hedges, columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, “Mueller Report Ends a Shameful Period for the Press,” Truthdig, March 25, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Very little about Der Drumpfie is believable.

PeezPix

Happy socks

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Diverge

Note: Yesterday would have been poet Robert Frost’s 145th birthday. Don’t need much more excuse than that for a little medley. How you apply them to your life today or to the world is your business. —TP

“If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”  

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” 

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” 

“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”  

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” 

“I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.” 

 

—Robert Frost (1874-1963), a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner who sold his first poem at 20 for $15, launching a career that made him America’s poet.

 

 

• Editorial Comment: That’s me, well mixed.

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Write About Dogs

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Hometown News

“While national outlets worry about a president who calls the press an enemy of the people, many Americans no longer have someone watching the city council for them, chronicling the soccer exploits of their children or reporting on the kindly neighbor who died of cancer.”

—David Bauder and David A. Lieb, reporters, “Decline in readers, ads leads hundreds of newspapers to fold,” Associated Press, March 11, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Not everyone wants a local watchdog. Or a national one.

PeezPix

Coincidentally . . . April’s Senior News hits newsstands today

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Spin

“When the news dropped that Robert Mueller had submitted his report to Attorney General Bill Barr without any further indictments, liberal pundits had to process their dismay on live television, and the result was a combination of hysteria, disbelief, and denial. . . .”

“[Chris] Matthews was obviously experiencing the second stage of grief, which is anger. His MSNBC colleague, Rachel Maddow . . . was still stuck in the first stage, which is denial.”

—Madison Gesiotto, Trump campaign adviser, 2016 inauguration spokesperson and former Miss Ohio, “Media’s Stages Of Grief Over Mueller Report Are Playing Out On Live TV,” The Daily Caller, March 23, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Also: Gloat. What other words can we think of?

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Duck Butts

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Stop Being Terrible

“You stop being terrible, we’ll stop pointing it out, OK? I don’t want to talk about Donald Trump every day. None of us do, none of us who host these shows do. But he gives us no choice. If he sat in the White House all day, quietly working on things, I would almost never mention him, because it’s not interesting.” 

—Jimmy Kimmel, late-night TV host, March 2019

• Editorial Comment: And because he’s really Not. Funny.

PeezPix

Fisherman’s Dream

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Wave at Mr. Zuckerberg

“[S]ocial media reach into us. They know not only our likes and dislikes, but can infer our moods and fears by what we say, order, joke about, search for, play, like, loathe or long for; all of those clicks are shared, stored, and studied. Social media companies don’t make money by keeping our information confidential; they sell it for a price.” 

—Scott Simon, host, Weekend Edition Saturday, “A Country Divided, Click by Click,” NPR, March 24, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: How much am I worth, Mr. Zuckerberg?

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Woodshed Kitty

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

More on Facts

“I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts. I don’t know anything that mars good literature so completely as too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can’t use too many of them without damaging your literature.” 

—Mark Twain (1835-1910), writer and lecturer, in a speech a London’s Savage Club, “The Savage Club Dinner,” 1907.

• Editorial Comment: Mr. Clemens would be gratified to learn that, by 2019, facts and truth would be going out of style altogether.

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Hose House No. 4, Eureka

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Mutant Nation

“More ominous than the president’s impoverished vocabulary is that he cannot string together sentences that make sense. This replicates not only the shoddy vocabulary of television, but more importantly the incoherence of television. Trump is able to communicate with tens of millions of Americans, also raised in front of screens, because they too have been linguistically and intellectually mutated by digital images. They lack the ability to detect lies or think rationally. They are part of our post-truth culture. ” 

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, “Worshipping the Electronic Image,” Truthdig, Feb. 18, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Is it too late to cut the cable?

PeezPix

Storm Hound

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Triangulation

“What’s true is that there isn’t one truth. But there are a hell of a lot of facts, and the more time I spent in the Johnson library, the more facts I got. The more facts you get, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.” 

—Robert Caro, double Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, author of four volumes of “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” working on volume 5, in “George R.R. Martin Isn’t the Only Author Who Can’t Finish a Beloved Series,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 22, 2019. (Thanks to alert WORDster Chris Frates)

• Editorial Comment: More fact-finding needed.

PeezPix

Cache Valley Sunset

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness 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. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard