the finite infinitive

Not to be or to not be that is the topic in question. What does this splitting of the infinitive or its verb say about the misuse of language? It is not merely ignorance, laziness or the declining use of the English language. Rather I think the implications go much deeper. An infinitive has infinite possibilities. It is raw, uncooked, off the leaf, the seed of future use but what can we say about this change in use...perhaps it's always been so, perhaps it 's a cultural trend to be noted and expanded to other areas of life. First one notices that the verb stands alone with its negation separated from its coded form, proclaimed by the infinitive to. Not to know is very much different from to not know... the emphasis shifts from knowing to the ever expanding 'not' of the speaker. One may deduce that this shift is an example of the effect of individual speakers strengthening the negation. We hear this in the sarcastic comment to certain activities.. I'm going to Europe, NOT. Something humorous comes out of this... we're being the butt of a joke.. with NOT the punch line. Quite similarly the negation from a distance is a play on language , a divergence from it with NOT becoming an auxiliary verb itself. Verbs are morphing into nouns and other parts of speech.

Recently I heard a foreign-born speaker who actually used the infinitive correctly which amazed me.. I thought it worth mention that native speakers in the U.S. almost categorically misuse this convention. One could explore the rise and fall of the English infinitive, NOT. Why bother most will ask? People understand what's being said! BFD, split the infinitive what's the harm? Everybody knows what is meant.

The contracting of language use is implicit in this one departure from convention. Convention thus becomes unconventional. The new language, the plain English movement has played its role. Parring down adverbs and adjectives seems to make more people sound literate.

Every infinitive split from its root source becomes a different verb. Using the the opening lines as a template, one can infer that not to be is conclusive, final, ontological, uncorrupted. A thing, state of being or action is NOT... In the modern use.. it is not the verb which receives its positive or negative charge from its infinitive form. With a split infinitive, the adverb turned auxiliary verb "NOT" becomes primary.. One might as well say to not makes 'not' a verb instead of a verb marker. Nothing new, English is endlessly flexible constantly flexing its muscles, inventing new words, changing the use of others.. nouns become verbs, verbs become adjectives.

But what does this splitting of the infinitive say beyond the lack of grammatical instruction in our society? Many things! First we are a pragmatic people. If you understand my meaning, who cares if you use the proper form in any case. Second I believe that putting the 'not' directly in front of the verb adds emphasis. I don't approve, but it's happening.. Infinitives are probably not going to be in the future. I hold the first view that this one example shows a larger problem. Anyone who understands pronoun cases in English ( as simple as pronoun cases can be) will daily cringe to hear for you and I, for she and me or him and me done went there. It occurs to me that correct use of pronoun case (and there really only two which can be confused: nominative and objective) is a direct consequence of the "whole language" movement. However,as we are a litigious society, a disembodied verb pre-empted by negation as if the negation itself had become a anti-verb, alone verb-like in its popping about, makes sense.

Which brings me to pronouns cases. Some one one asked me if I could explain it in 30 minutes, I knew she meant 15, hoping for maybe 5. I said I couldn't do it and didn't. It can be done in 90 minutes with 3-4 drills and then a quiz. I didn't have the time, she didn't want to spend it... so heck with it. You see a pronoun takes a verb in 3 ways: the easiest way is the possessive, almost always the easiest and most correctly used: mine, your, her, their, ours, its, the exception being the possessive before a participle (but that's another lesson). Simple one down, two to go: Nominative pronouns I, you, he, she, we you , they- the active doers work with verbs as the doers of the verb r the be-ers of the verb. Am I sounding pretentious. Too bad.

We can tag a pronoun onto the Subject-Verb and make it an objective pronoun and here's whereit gets tricky: Lisa called her,. They saw me. I saw Lisa and her. Lisa saw her and me, The objective case pronouns : me, you, him, her, they, your (p)them are almost exclusively direct objects. What the heck is a direct object... and why does anyone care. Good point. Stop reading, if you're bored, or in text-soeak if your board.

But these are only two of the many misuses we daily hear. Verb tenses seem to perplex many people.. I seen them, I have saw them... are a few examples of uses I often hear. This is often true with verbs expressing the primary states of being... to have, to be, to do with an auxiliary such as to have. I'm sure this reflects a deeper disconnect people have with language and existence. It's so simple, so logical once one understands the basic sentence structure of English. But why is such widespread misuse spreading and why does it continue to spread (or to continue to spread)with almost alarming rates.

Here is a superficial look at several common errors one hears everyday, both on television and in society. Homophones, homonyms and words that sound alike are often improperly used... It may be a simple as hearing loss.. as in the case of a Median Strip not a Medium Strip on a highway. Also note the use of bobbed wire and rot iron. More to the point there is the confusion over Cavalry and Calvary. Christ was not crucified at Mt. Cavalry. It was Mount Calvary. Here we have sorry example of the growing decline of historical perspective that is an after-effect of the secular humanist-linguist movement. Get real Lem who even knows where Christ was crucified.

Nothing so aggravates this writer like the subject-verb disagreement and improper pronoun use one hears on the major television networks from so-called educated people. People who as journalism students should have had a basic understanding of English grammar, usage and its parts of speech and their proper use. NOT. What are journalism schools teaching, body language, politically correct terminology or libel and slander law? But it doesn't end there... I've heard things from so-called tele-journalists that worry me. One Fox commentator referred to the American flag as the stars and bars... which is what the Confederat flag was called. Recently a Fox anchor called North Korea a tenderbox... instead of tinderbox... Either the sympathies of the reporter were in the right place.. or perhaps it was an unconscious double entender. For educated people responsible for reporting, such gaffs are unacceptable. Can anyone argue that not reporting the news in conventional English is a continuing source of language misuse across society.

So who cares? Nobody! This commentator will continue studying and enjoying the use and misuse of the English language. To not do so or not to do so would be laziness which is probably the root of all our language gaffs and not to do so would be a criticism that this writer is unwilling to admit. For one who loves language, the peculiarities and variances are a source of endless complaint and often joy.

More later or NOT.

Media Matters

Media matters

Recently I've been collecting misinformation, partiality and out-right lies from various media outlets, namely television news broadcasts. Point, there are biases in news reporting. In fact I dispute that there is any way not to report according to a given point of view: the Heisenberg Effect being my reference here. But there are also errors which make for humorous commentary.

My observation of media bias finally drove me to write about things I've seen and heard. I'll begin with June 6, 2010 and CNN. On DDay I was unable to find any mention of the importance of the date in our local newspaper. No kidding, not a word! Later in the day I began watching CNN at 6 in the evening- to be honest 6:30. From 6:30 to 7:00 CNN did a piece on Black-Jewish dialogues followed by a piece on Lebron James. Perhaps I missed the tribute to DDay that CNN showed. Perhaps there wasn't one. Still, CNN should have dedicated more time to this most important day in our nation's history.

On the day that President Obama first visited Louisiana to assess the damage done by the BP oil spill, Fox News made comments that 300 workers had been hired, albeit off the street, to make the President's visit a photo-op. Asinine! The three hundred individuals on the beach were most likely Navy Seals or some other elite branch of the military. It would be ludicrous to send the President of the United States to a beach with 300 people who have had no security check. Shame on Fox for claiming that the President's visit was merely a photo-op, staged with complete strangers.

Several nights ago while watching Chris Matthews on CNBC , I was appalled. Mr. Matthews was blathering on and on about James Bond- I didn't catch the beginning of the piece. Matthews

blithely said (and I paraphrase here), "We all loved the James Bond books when we were kids. I read all of them." Now, Matthews may have been alluding to the works of Ian Fleming but his phrasing made it sound as though James Bond was the author. Shame on Matthews for disseminating what could be misconstrued as false information.

But it gets better, or worse:

Fox is not immune to idiotic comments. On Friday, July 2,2010, Doocey the younger was reporting on a huge American flag which is hung on the Brooklyn Bridge. After blathering on and on about the size of the stars (3 feet in diameter) and the stripes (five feet tall) Doocey referred to the American flag as the "Stars and Bars." No kidding- I nearly catapulted out of my seat. Just how dumb does a TV commentator have to be to mistakenly refer to the American flag as the Stars and Bars and not the Stars and Stripes. For Mr. Doocey's benefit and many others who do not know the difference, The Stars and Bars was the flag of the Confederacy.

Who are these reporters and where were they educated?

But here comes a true favorite. Recently our local television station ran a scroll regarding students from the Arts High School. The scroll said-and I got this verbatim-that the students would be going to Carnage Hall in New York. Carnage Hall! Obviously the person who wrote the scroll didn't know what carnage meant, had never heard of Andrew Carnegie and was completely oblivious to the error. By early the next morning, someone had edited the mistake.

Tonight one of the most mispronounced words in the English language caught my ear. Every time I hear this word mispronounced I want to grab the speaker and shake him. The word is cavalry and it usually incorrectly pronounced calvary. The irony of this is that most people who make this error don't know the significance of the word they are saying . A few other people with as much free time as I have will recognize that Mt. Calvary is where Jesus was crucified. In other words those who incorrectly pronounce cavalry, calvary need to be corrected and quickly, especially if they claim to be Christians. Or, perhaps they believe the calvary crucified Jesus on Mt. Cavalry.

People- the open area between two roads is not a medium- it's a median.

Finally and this one goes back to a radio broadcast about a famous rock and roll singer who was found dead of gunshot wounds in his family room. Ouch. You got to love those misplaced modifiers.

Please forgive any typos or other errors I may have made.

Lem

The Toylet and more

The all new cross between a Toyota and a Chevrolet will be coming soon to a dealership near you. It's called the Toylet. I hope readers will excuse this bit of bathroom humor but what a concept. Imagine a car that runs on poop. A car you can fill up without leaving the comfort of your driver's seat. Of course there is one tiny problem- emissions. But the Excrement Protection Agency (EPA) will certainly embrace and allow this daring new idea.

Only kidding folks.

Here's the heart of the matter. Many of you may know that years ago the state of Maryland and probably the United States had movie censorship boards which decided which films were suitable for public viewing and which weren't. Whatever happened to those boards? When were they disbanded? Has anything replaced them?

Today there doesn't seem to be any standard for films. Has anybody else noted how many films have not been rated and yet are coming to theaters near you? But the real question that confronts us is what happened to the Constitution that allowed such censorship in those days? Isn't it the same Constitution? When did it change? Who changed it? Why? Oh, I get it: it's the same Constitution only with a different interpretation? I guess it's the new and improved Constitution, upgraded for today's audiences. But is everything really new and improved? Could it be new and unimproved or old and unimproved? While you are wrapping your mind around that, have a nice day or maybe not.

ENTERTAINMENT AND LIESURE(sic)

I can spell but Fox News can't! Today, April 2, 2010, Fox News ran a scroll about the improvement in the jobs market as issued by the White House. One area which showed marked growth was (according to Fox) Entertainment and Liesure. Now was Fox making a joke of the president's comments or was this a spelling error made by the network. According to Lem- in this his first article under the new title Lem's Gems (formerly known as Lem's Corner)- Fox would do well to hire proof readers or at least people who can read and write the English language instead of filling up its air time with an endless line of pretty faces. Don't take that the wrong way. I like the faces Fox has hired but in the process, Fox is besmirching its reputation by not hiring editors and production staff who have some skills in the English language. This is the least a network that claims to be America's 'fair and balanced' network can do. By the way Fox- I'm available. I wouldn't be the first former teacher to grace the payroll at Fox, would I.

Here's a gem from the pen of Lem. Ever wonder what the advertising phrase "new and improved" means? Here you go: it means we (the manufacturers) have a new package (as in the 11.5 ounce pound of coffee) that has "improved" our (the manufacturers) profits. So that's what's new and improved.

Consider this: somewhere in this great land of ours there is a government sponsored program designed to find out whether woodpeckers get headaches from their pecking. Well, if there isn't one- there will be. Or should there be? Think of the positive benefits- we could find out what chemical in the woodpecker's brain prevents or cures its headaches. Isn't that something we could all agree is worth tax payers' money? The Entertainment and Liesure industry could sell this compound to all those who can afford to be entertained and liesurely.

I hope any and all who've read this enjoyed the humor of it. And don't forget to tune in for another episode of LEM'S GEMS.

Good old college days

I spent my college years at the school of hard knocks- many of my girl friends spent theirs at the school of hard cocks. So, it worked out well for all of us, and what a time it was. Birth control- very very few births and very little control, and lots of mind-numbing drugs. I look back and see how the curricula were down-graded, a gentleman's C became a B, short skirts in front rows were always good for a B- if extracurriculars were included a ladies A. Two things I remember from college:

On my first day I had my first black professor (instructor or whatever his title was)who shocked us deliberately by saying that if Christ were alive today (then), Christ would be classified as a paranoid-Schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. For a Christian raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church this was anathema, it contradicted everything I'd ever been taught. I gave the idea a fair evaluation. You see my father was a paranoid-schizophrenic so in both ways this comment affected me. I did not like the teacher- color aside. He was arrogant and he purposefully sought to shock us. I do remember I asked the instructor that by the definition he'd given us, weren't our state mental hospitals were full of people who thought themselves to be the Risen One.

This took him back a bit- I don't suspect he expected a college freshman to be so quick to question his statement. But, to his credit, he agreed. I suspect this was the beginning of a lifetime of questioning- thanks to the teacher who had forced me to think differently.

A second major revelation took place on the last day of college. At the time I was out of if most of the time, deliberately numb. I had come into my Psychology Final late, loaded and looking it. I'd been cutting and arriving late all semester.

The professor, many thanks sir, did ask me why. Ironically, it was the day my father and mother were finally divorced or had their marriage nullified. I told the professor I had been looking after my father's business and that that morning my parents were divorced. A convenient lie- but it worked- I got a D and was able to graduate. It was a gift....My college education had many stops and starts, many calamitous events- divorce, questioning the religion I had been taught. I experienced lost love, lost family, lost values and was myself lost in a traumatic time. I had no family, no one to advise or counsel me. So blundered through making mistakes and loving it. I had what most of my peers thought they wanted- no parental control. Yet, I didn't want it.

I will digress to a funnier and happier occasion. One of the jobs I had in college was as a taxi driver. It was a Monday morning, my first day on the job. I was sent to an apartment building to pick up my first fare. He took his time walking down the long sidewalk to my cab. Got in and without greeting, he told me to take him to an office building in Towson, MD. I was unsure of the way so I took the routes I knew. When I pulled up the meter read 65 cents. The grumpy old codger got out of the cab and handed me 50 cents. I said Sir the fare is 65 cents. He said that I went the long way and that the fare was always 50 cents and 50 cents was all I was going to get. I took the money, and pissed as I was took off. I wondered how the heck was I going to earn money to eat, pay tuition, rent, books and grass, if I kept being stiffed. It was my initiation- every new cabby got to drive this fellow- who it turns out was a millionaire.

Well, that never happened again- I learned to ask fares if there was a particular route I should take to their destination. I learned to skim tips. If a fare was 75 cents, and the fare gave me a dollar bill, I'd take the dollar and say thanks, not giving the person a chance to ask for change. It usually worked. Well on with my original story. It was the last day of my career as a cabby for this cab company and as fate would have it, Mr. First Fare had called for a cab. I now knew the area well and I remembered the jerk that had stiffed me. As I remember it was a cold, rainy day, rain slashing with a whipping wind. When the apartment building door opened, I recognized the guy as my first fare, the guy who had stiffed me of 15 cents. The side walk was about 50 feet from door to curb and as I said the weather was atrocious. I watched the man walk to the cab, umbrella in hand, as he reached to open the cab door, I stepped on the gas hoping to splash him. He stood there a second calling after me.... I opened my window and waved a not so friendly finger flag at him. I could hear him yelling that he knew the company's owner and was going to report me. I finished the day, an average day, expecting to be fired or called into the office by the boss. When I got back, the other cabbies, stood up and gave me a cheer. The old buzzard was known to one and all as a cheap, nasty bastard. My fellow cabbies applauded me for sticking it to the guy. I'll related one other cabby story. It was May or June , 1968, the anti-war movement was in earnest. I had taken a fare from Towson to down town Baltimore, a nice fare. As I drove up Greenmount Avenue the streets were filling with black people. This was an almost all-black area but the shortest way from downtown to the Towson suburbs. Suddenly all Hell broke loose, thousands of people were streaming into the streets. Groups of people were rocking transit buses trying to overturn them. Rocks were flying through the air, shots rang out, a glass bottle hit a side window of my cab, people were coming after to me, throwing bricks which bounced off the cab leaving dents. A mob was about to jump the cab and perhaps drag me out. I was scared shitless. Ordinarily I didn't mind driving up Green Mount Avenue, occassionally I'd even snag a fare to Towson. But whatever the hell was going on, I wasn't going to stop. I ran the light at Green Mount and North Avenue and sped up, hoping to get out of the area as soon as posssible. I was still in danger and when I radioed the cab company to ask what was going on, one of the other cabbies came on to tell me they, "they killed that nigger." I said who? He said Martin Luther King. No wonder the ghetto had gone berserk. I drove that cab as fast as I could, disregarding signals, cutting in and around traffic. When I got back to the cab stand the other cabbies were standing around looking smug and self-satisfied. I broke ranks with my cab mates who were boasting that this would teach them niggers a lesson. My only comment was that it was not going to be a good time to be driving a cab and turned in the keys. Being a poor white kid from East Baltimore I was now in North Baltimore and had to get back to my neighborhood. The streets were packed with cars, stalled, stopped, or abandoned. Looters were smashing windows as I headed south on my Vespa motor scooter. The day was getting late, my fear level growing. How was I going to avoid being dragged off my scooter and beaten.

I took to the alleys, the sidewalks and as the sun began to set I didn't turn on my light. I circumvented downtown, 33rd Street (former home of the Orioles and Colts), skirted the areas around City College that were still predominately white and got to Edison Highway... In the dark I made my way to safety in Highlandtown. For days the city was under curfew and no one was allowed out after nightfall. Luckily I had that little scooter..I could dart down alley without lights to my friends houses where we played ping pong, cards, watched the news and got loaded. And that was the last day of cab driving for that company. But there were 2 cab companies in Towson at the time.

The first one I worked for had cabs which were bought second hand in NY- not allowed by law. Those cabs were in terrible conditions, hardly road worthy, bald tires, smelly. The owner was an Italian fellow, no names please. If you know the area and the time, I'll say the cabs were blue. The other company was owned by a family, their cabs were newer and white- no names. The second cab company was the better. One last reflection on my cabby days. One day while working for the white company, we had a woman dispatcher, unusual for those days, but even more remarkable was that she was blind...yes blind. Yet she could direct you anywhere in the area better than the sighted fellows. I really liked her- she was rather heavy, not very good-looking but a total marvel and easy to talk to. I still wonder how she could direct cabs to destination she'd never seen.

I was never robbed, nor seduced by a fare. One lady, rather odd if you will, did tell me that her mother had died in my cab the week before. I didn't speak until I got her to her destination and I certainly never asked her if it was the exact cab or a cab I was supposedly driving when the woman's mother died.

Cab driving was something I said I'd never do again...the split was 55% for the company and 45% for the cabby. I think that's how it went but it may have been the other way. You learn a lot driving a cab- how to eat a burger and drink coffee while driving; how to judge a tipper from a gyper; how hard it is to make a buck. How seniority gets priority. I drove for quite a while before I got a Towson to BWI fare...at that time a $15-20 ride. You learned what the dead times were- early afternoon, and when and who to talk to as you drove. I guess I thought I was going to see hot chicks and get laid a lot. Very few hot chicks have to ride in cabs, so forget that and as to being laid- no fare ever invited me up to her place. To be brief, it was a lousy job, plenty of time to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, not enough tips, and barely enough money

to make it worth the time- especially for a college student.

But one last footnote to this blog- I never attended my college graduation, I was driving a cab that day. Now, the reader may take out a kleenex and wipe a tear. So sad, poor guy, etc...

But remember I had no family to invite. My Dad was in a Veteran's Hospital and I didn't have the money for a cap and gown, plus my rent was due and I was out of grass.

Note to reader- some parts of this blog are fictitious...even the writer doesn't know which parts though. All geographical names are as true to real as I could make them. The dates for the assassination of MLK and my memory of the event may be incorrect but it did happen and in the way I described it.

The Petrified Forest

Having just watched Humphrey Bogart's first major movie Petrified Forest, I must say it was riveting yet fanciful. The dialogue rolled like a stream with Leslie Howard and Betty Davis captivating the screen. Electric exchanges between Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart teetered on the absurd and the profound, augmented by a setting that both attracted and distracted. Most interesting that two of the characters were Black, cast not for PC but as real life people, one a criminal and the other a driver for the rich couple whom Bogart's gang has robbed of their car. The dialogue between the two Black actors was as important then as now. Drama at its best- as is often said, "they don't make them like they used to" really is appropriate for this movie. 1939 usually is cited as the year which produced the greatest American movies. Just say the 30's movies were special, and black and white movies, though some dislike them, were an art form never to be repeated. As with The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird, Petrified Forest would not have had the effect it did had it been in color. Why were those movies so special- perhaps because Hollywood knew what people wanted and would pay to see and perhaps that movie makers felt an obligation to use the new medium to say something, to be ART. Money was tight so for a movie to be popular and profitable, it had to be artistically done and produce an effect on audience. Today's movies are in the words of the Bard, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

No doubt television led to the demise of great American movies. The movies went from pure protein to pablum and then television came along and is little more than mental bubble gum. Televisions best use is sports. And now even sports are being molded by commercial breaks, ruined by talking heads, dreadfully unnecessary. And then there is the 'news'. The medium doesn't report the news, it chooses and creates news. And the news isn't really new, it is the same sad rehash of sorrow and human misery and evil brought to us from differing sites by roving maggots with production crews in tow. A death toll, a tearful replay by the unapologetically rude cameras and the half-educated on the spot reporters who use bad grammar and lack propriety. Nothing is sacred except the commercial break.

Critics, thinkers, intellectuals, faux philosophers and panel after panel of hired experts all infest the small screen which has become a big screen with small ideas and themes. Man playing with the bigness of his littleness (sorry e.e.). Sad to say that technology has had a detrimental effect on the quality of television and the quality of life. The multiplying villainies of improved technology and a lack of respect for the suffering and woe of human beings side by side. We were happier before television, perhaps in our ignorance, naive to the world, satisfied with our little lives, unaware of the vast suffering of strangers.

Now, television shows fester into movies which then multiply into sequels, the hydra-headed monster. There was a time when movies meant something, when there was art - no more. I've seen two movies at the theater this year, both dreadfully tedious and worthless. I admit there are still great movies being made but when measured against the number of releases, the great ones are merely the tip of an iceberg beneath which a monstrous collection of garbage rests.

Modern thinkers have long railed against the 'wasteland' of television some even and cite the TV shows of the 50's as being the classic or grand era of the medium. Was it? What is there on television that lifts us from the flat plane of our vapid, narrow world- almost nothing. Many have said commercials are the most carefully created things on TV- no doubt. What I often wonder about is effectiveness of commercials. Do they really work- not on me, well not that I know of that is.

I was born in a world that no longer exists and live in a world that no one could have anticipated. As a child I had no television and didn't begin watching it until I was nearly 10. For that I am truly grateful.

My apologies to the reader, as my pronouns have drifted from the impersonal voice of argumentation, I apologize for the invasion of the first person into this blog. It signifies that it is time to close today's entry. More to follow soon.

It takes an effort, a substantial, engrossing energy to write and often I'd rather not for fear of having nothing to say and doing that. One may go for the fable, wrapped in myth, showered by poetic images, add heroes, horses, houses rising and falling. Then, there's the real problem- what the heck to say, how to say it, say it, revise it and put it out for show. I can start with something I now realize: not being able to write in cursive is an obstacle to composition for many people. . Instruction in cursive emphasized sentences. capitals, periods, and in so doing was an important element in better writing. I noticed over the years that the failure to organize sentences and use of capitals became more and more obvious, wide-spread and were worth the time to consider what factors were at work. The experts had written off handwriting instruction because of spelling and grammar checks in word programs. The lock and key effect characterizes handwriting in that composing by hand gave one practice in the use of capitals, periods and other mechanics. Looking back it was just those kinds of errors that made high school compositions so poor.

Granted, handwriting in and of itself isn't the whole truth, but is links up very nicely. But, one may offer that many people are currently writing online who never really wrote anything out long-hand. I don't think we did the best for students by not teaching handwriting. So what, some may say. And they are probably more correct than I am. Readers and writers are all usually self-taught. Thus the more you know about the language, the better you write and read.

I feel lucky to have been a teacher. As jobs go, it was a very rewarding profession. Most of my remembrances are pleasant and many of the things I taught were a great education for me. To write, one must write; those who can't, don't; and many of those who can, don't. It's such a difficult task to say something, to tell a story, relate an experience, thus when a person who hasn't learned to write, to think of things in organized ways is faced with the task; he cringes.

Having had nothing to say this evening, I feel satisfied with what I have written, for I didn't have a specific goal in mind, a fixed method of delivery. All I can say is I expressed an opinion that has little support in modern education. There are few fixed laws about language and its use. This area interests me and I often give time to considering how people communicate. Too tired to bore, any more. Good night.