The Happy Accident

Note: Friday’s WORD featured Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen’s contention that “there’s [n]ever been a greater need for people to be able to write at a functional level, whether they’re tapping on their computer keyboard or on their iPhone.” Mencken would obviously agree. 

“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.” 

 

—H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), the “sage of Baltimore,” journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, iconoclast, scholar of American English and author, The Book of Prefaces, 1917.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: We live for those.

 

 

PeezPIX

Merry March snow

 

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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

 

 

Informed Outrage

“Public outrage is the best antidote, because it often leads to change. But people can’t get outraged without rapid access to solid, useful information — what we used to call journalism. There’s so much garbage being disguised as fact and so many gasbags posing as sages; somebody has to cut through the crap. That’s the job of reporters, and their job will be more important than at any time in history.

“There’s been this great lamentation about the end of newspapers as we know them, the end of the era of the paper hitting your doorstep in the morning, but I don’t think the language or the craft of writing is dying. In the next 40 years, there’s going to be a larger demand than ever for people who can communicate with the written word, whatever format it takes. 

 

“I don’t think there’s ever been a greater need for people to be able to write at a functional level, whether they’re tapping on their computer keyboard or on their iPhone.”

—Carl Hiaasen, newspaper columnist and novelist of the weird, “Carl Hiaasen on Human Weirdness,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2010.

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Think first. Then write.

 

 

PeezPIX

Harbor mist.

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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

 

 

Continuing Education

 

“One of the best days in my life is when I got my first press pass. To be a newspaperman is one of the best educations in the world.”

—Pete Hamill (1935-2020), New York newspaperman. NYT obit here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Take good notes.

 

 

PeezPIX

It’s coming.

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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

 

 

Troubling Diagnosis

“I think one of the diagnoses that comes out of this last very difficult 12 months is that we seem to be in a society that is so polarized that even objective truth doesn’t necessarily have a chance.

 

“That is a very disturbing aspect of what we’ve learned over these 12 months. And if our nation has a path forward to get into a better place, it has to take that on, that we have to be a nation that actually values truth and not just opinions.

 

“We didn’t do very well with that over this last year.”

 

—Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, in joint interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, “In The ‘24th Mile’ of a Marathon, Fauci and Collins Reflect on Their Pandemic Year,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, March 9, 2021.

 

• Editorial Comment: Anyone need a second opinion?

 

 

PeezPIX

State Beach to Pewetole

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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

 

 

Boyish

 

“If it is boyish to believe that a human being should live free, then I’ll gladly arrest my development and let the rest of the world grow up.” 

 

—E.B. White (1899-1985), writer, “Freedom,” Harper’s, 1940. Image: Jill Krementz. 1973.

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: I’m with you, Scooter.

 

 

PeezPIX

Nice. Sky.

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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

 

 

International Women’s Day

NOTE: Today is the 110th International Women’s Day, founded in 1911 in Copehagen. #ChooseToChallenge.

 

“It is not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.” —Lena Horne (1917-2010), singer. 

 

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. . . . Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” —Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), social reformer. 

 

“If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it?” —Sojourner Truth, (1797-1883), abolitionist.

 

“Congressman John Lewis, before his passing, wrote, ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act.’ And what he meant was that America’s democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. To guard it and never take it for granted. And protecting our democracy takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it. And there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future.” —Kamala Harris, vice presidential victory speech, Nov. 7, 2020.

 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ―Margaret Mead (1901-1978), anthropologist.

 

“This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.” ―Taylor Swift, pop singer, title of her 2019 book.

 

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” ―Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a rare case of a scholarly article achieving near-global popularity as t-shirt, coffee mug and bumpersticker material, 1970s.

 

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir . . . mighty scarce.” ―Mark Twain (1835-1910), writer.

 Image: From video, Women Leaders of the World. Recommended.  

  

• Editorial Comment: No question: the world would be a better place with women in charge.

 

PeezPIX

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

 

 

 

 

 

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