Current national and global events.
Editor’s Note — wait, the writer is the editor: Each time I cleaned some syntax, another mass shooting or three were reported, and the shore moved even quicker from my drifting dinghy*. Time for a final update, publish and move on.*“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” — […]
And the dish ran away with the spoon. From the nursery rhyme “Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercis’d in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste.” John Milton, “Areopagitica” (quoted by Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book Club, June 2022) A few years ago […]
When I have taught or trained in editing or writing or somesuch, I always bring out a personal lesson: What is wrong with the headline “Suspect Arrested”? For those who did reasonably well in high school English, you’ll recall having been taught that such sentences or phrases are in the passive voice and that you […]
Of all the things I might remember about fifth grade — that would be age 11 plus-minus — why does the state-mandated Arkansas history semester stay in my noggin? Before today, I thought it was because this was the first and last time I cheated on a test. Not because I needed to. The smart […]
From Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, to Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, neither spoken nor written have I ever used the phrase President Trump or any variation. That is I did not adjoin the word “president” and the word “Trump.” Or “president” and “Donald J. Trump,” etc. I called the man by his names, and I liked […]
It’s been embarrassing. The state flag of Arkansas includes an explicit reference to the Confederacy. The overall design can be seen as having similarities to the Confederate battle flag of the American Civil War. The early 20th-century legislation establishing the banner sets four large blue stars within a diamond to refer to the nations to which Arkansas […]