Crack Me an Egg Plant

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Crazy Talk

“Let’s face it — English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England, nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

“We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.”

—Richard Lederer, wordist, “English Is a Crazy Language,” Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day (title stolen from the Bible and Today's WORD...)

• Editorial Comment: Wait . . . .what about hot dogs?



PeezPix by Ted Pease

Lazy Hog, Brookings, Oregon









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
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The Quiet Life

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Quiet Down

“I loved the life, the secret life, of the typewriter when the house was quiet.”

—Barry Hannah (1942-2010), novelist

• Editorial Comment: My typewriter is not that quiet.



PeezPix by Ted Pease

Front Window












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
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The Secret Life

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Quiet Down

“I loved the life, the secret life, of the typewriter when the house was quiet.”

—Barry Hannah (1942-2010), novelist

• Editorial Comment: My typewriter is not that quiet.



PeezPix by Ted Pease

Front Window












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
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Writing Careers That Work Out

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Good Food

“I never knew for sure that I would follow a literary profession. I was 27 or 28 before anything happened that gave me any assurance that I could make a go of writing. I had done a great deal of writing, but I lacked confidence in my ability to put it to good use. . . . 

“I ordered dinner and began opening my mail. From one envelope, two or three checks dropped out, from The New Yorker. I suppose they totaled a little under $100, but it looked like a fortune to me. I can still remember the feeling that ‘this was it’ — I was a pro at last. It was a good feeling and I enjoyed the meal.”

—E.B. White (1899-1985), pretty good writer, “E.B. White, The Art of the Essay No. 1,” The Paris Review, 1969.

• Editorial Comment: Nothing like a good meal to make you feel like a success.


PeezPix by Brenda Cooper

Jack












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
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Word Clouds

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Unprepared

“In general, though, Mr. Lauer’s questioning of Mr. Trump was like watching one student quiz another to prep for a test neither had done the reading for. The host asked soft open-ended questions that invited the candidate to answer with word clouds.”

—James Poniewozik, media critic, “Matt Lauer Loses the War in a Battle Between the Candidates,” The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2016.

• Editorial Comment: You both get an F.

PeezPix by Ted Pease

Yesterday: CalFire fights a fire on Pewetole Island off Trinidad.









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
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Word Things

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Speak Carefully

“Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.”

—Maya Angelou (1928-2014), poet, artist, civil rights activist, inspiration. (Thanks to alert WORDster Steve Marston)

• Editorial Comment: And how do we fumigate that?

PeezPix by Ted Pease

Wheatfield Sky












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
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Women’s Lib

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The WordMeister says: Phyllis Schlafly, one of America’s greatest-ever anti-feminist "feminists,” died at 92 yesterday. She is worth remembering, both for herself and her views, and for how she skewed American politics and American cultural perspectives.

Full-time Homemaker

“I really spent 25 years as a full-time homemaker before I did any particular traveling around,” she said in 2014. “And by that time, the children were well along in school or college. And they were very supportive. My husband was very supportive. I told the feminists the only person’s permission I had to get was my husband’s.”

—Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016), conservative “feminist,” died yesterday. NPR reports

• Editorial Comment: My mother, who died in her 80s two years ago, actually said about 10 years ago — and I quote — “I would like to kick her ass.”

PeezPix by Ted Pease

Good Advice.  
From Crabs’ baseball park in Arcata, California









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
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Basic Drumpflish

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The WordMeister says: OK, I really don’t want to go to The Drumpf for WORDs, both because it’s ’way too easy, and because I never want utter ValdeDorf’s name. Oh, and because he can’t really utter actual words that reflect thoughts. But this will be difficult to avoid in the coming Stoopid Season. Sorry.
 

Sensible Syntax

“Trump often ignores the basics of English grammar and speaks in tangled tenses, mountains of interrupting clauses, and without sensible syntax or even subject-verb agreements, all of which can render his speech opaque at best.” 

—Alan Yuhas, “The lies Trump told this week: from Obama and Isis to support for vets,” The Guardian,

August 2016

• Editorial Comment:  Jeez, Guardian. Get over your whole “Speak complete English sentences” thing!!


PeezPix by Ted Pease

Lazy Hog











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
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Stretch Out in the Sun

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There’s Still Time, Hank

“The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.” 

—H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), accomplished curmudgeon and journalist.

• Editorial Comment:  That’s me. I have an itch. And the sun is out....






PeezPix by Ted Pease

Korean Vets Remember the Fallen








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
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Dog

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Woof! Get me Rewrite

“If you’re in journalism and you’re looking for friends, you should get a dog.” 

—Dan Rather, TV news person, on Real Time w/ Bill Maher, 2006

• Editorial Comment: Which is why so many journalists have dogs. Some cross-dressers.




PeezPix by Ted Pease

Sadie’s Nose








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
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