National Grammar Day

National Grammar Day is Sunday, March 4th this year.

I can’t let this day go by without some sort of tribute to the importance of grammar. So to celebrate, I’m posting last year’s winner of the Editor Mark National Grammar Day Haiku Contest, which features the always entertaining homophone!

Spell-checkers won’t catch
You’re mistaken homophones
Scattered hear and their

                           ~ Gord Roberts

Unwrapping the Gift

On a January morning during rush hour in the Washington, D.C. Metro station, a non-descript young man wearing jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and baseball cap positioned himself beside a trashcan, opened his violin case, and began to play.

Over the course of an hour, close to 2,000 people passed by him. Only seven stopped to listen before hurrying on; 27 dropped money in his open case, totaling about $32. Only one person recognized him.

The street performer playing in the metro station that morning was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing a priceless violin handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari.

It was a social experiment arranged by The Washington Post to see if we perceive beauty in commonplace environments at inconvenient and even inappropriate times. And if so, do we stop to appreciate it? 

A hidden camera captured the steady march of an indifferent human parade. There was no applause and no acknowledgement; just the awkward silence after his music stopped.

So what did the experiment teach us? That if we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made, how many other things are we missing as we rush through life? The world unwraps itself to us again and again. Do we pause to accept the gift? Do we invite beauty to transcend?

Murmuration

Is there a word in the English language lovelier than murmuration? It’s one of nature's most phenomenal sights: the incredibly beautiful group behavior of thousands of starlings swishing and swooping together like one living, breathing entity. Why do starlings gather in these odd flash mobs?

The mesmerizing act is typically seen at the beginning of winter, right before dusk, as the birds look for a place to roost for the night. It’s actually a survival function. Numbers build up slowly near the roost, and by late afternoon there is a huge swirling, living cloud. Essentially, it's an epic battle to determine who in the flock survives, and who's a target for predators. It’s all about safety in numbers — none want to be on the outside and none want to be first to land. Each bird tries to copy the bird next to it exactly, which results in a stunning rippling effect with uncanny coordination that biologists don’t yet understand.  

Survival can be a gloriously beautiful thing. And starlings may be the most visible example of the beauty that can happen when we work together. 

Flypaper

“If you take a book with you on a journey, an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in the place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it… yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”  ~Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

Lives Left Behind

When the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York closed in 1995 after operating for 126 years as a state mental hospital, 400 suitcases were discovered in the attic. This luggage had belonged to men and women who were involuntarily admitted to the facility and, as the presence of the suitcases suggests, never left.

Opening the steamer trunks, cardboard boxes, and suitcases of people who lived 75 to 100 years ago revealed lives that hospitalization interrupted, and in many cases ended. The contents included letters, photographs, diaries, books, clothing, and religious items. There was evidence of careers: nurses’ collars, an army uniform, needlework, and photography equipment. The suitcases speak to their owners’ aspirations, accomplishments, and community connections, as well as to their loss and isolation.

An exhibit was created that sheds light on the history of mental health care in America through a series of these very personal images and stories, which tell of the many things that brought people there: poverty, displacement, physical illness, loss of loved ones, and guilt, and the many ways in which the psychiatric system failed those arbitrarily swept up in it.

The exhibit haunts me still. They were human beings not so different from me. “That could've happened to me,” I kept thinking. And that’s the point. What a fine line there is between mental anguish and mental illness. Stripped of their choice, voice, and freedom, we’re left with the contents of their suitcases to learn of their humanity and the lives they left behind.

Snowdust

There is something magical about the first snowfall of the year.

Autumn Bliss

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

Fluttering from the Autumn tree." 

~Emily Bronte