Month: March 2022

The Lessons Wombats Teach Me

personby Gillian Polack
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This week is far too full of crises. Every time there’s a crisis, people raise money to help everyone deal. When the Australian bushfires dominated my life (aeons ago: 2109-2020 – the fires were out just after the pandemic hit Australia) books were a good fundraiser. I often contribute to such books, because they give more than I can give, personally. The anthology I was in that helped save wildlife during that particular crisis was called Oz is Burning. It contains some remarkable stories, and I’m very pleased I could contribute and be in such company.

There was one fundraising book that stood head and shoulders above all the others. Jackie French lives in rural Australia and she’s currently dealing with floods. Her part of rural Australia was very badly hit by the fires, and she handled it in a very Jackie-ish fashion. During the crisis she reported to the rest of us what was happening in her local town. She was cut off for what felt like months (I don’t know what it felt like to her, but I was worried about her for over a year) and she compiled observations and reports and made sure the rest of the world knew what was going on.

She reported on wildlife as part of this. Also, as someone who knows wombats particularly well.

One of the wombats she helped had a particular story. She talked about this wombat on social media and we all wanted a happy outcome… but we weren’t sure that the wombat would survive.

Later in 2020, she turned the wombat’s experience into a book for children. The Fire Wombat became an instant classic (though not as classic as her earlier book, The Diary of a Wombat ) and raised money to help wombats. It talks children through the crisis and how those rare animals who survived were helped. It gave children a path to understanding the impossible and, at the same time, raised money to help wombats.

I have my copy in front of me now and have re-read it. The floods in Australia right now are hurting the same regions as the fires did just over two years ago. Jackie’s work reminds me that wombats need help, too.

When we’re both allowed to travel again, and when it’s safe (fire and pandemic and now floods) I’m going to feed her dinner and ask her to sign her book. Her work has helped me remember how to get through crises and how to look outside my small environment and see what I can do. I may not be able to do much, but if Jackie can write this amazing book when she’s confined to a very small piece of land for over two years then that opens the door for me. I just need to consider what I’m capable of. Step One is to not let the fear developed by over 30 months of sequential crises decide my actions.

PS Jackie writes about so much more than wombats. She’s one of Australia’s best writers. I wrote this piece because wombats bring me comfort.

A Few Words About the US Constitution

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Allow Me to RetortElie Mystal, who writes about legal matters for The Nation, has written an excellent book about what’s wrong with the U.S. Constitution: Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution. I reviewed this book for Washington Lawyer — the District of Columbia Bar magazine — and I recommend that everyone who is concerned about the future of the United States and our democracy read it.

I know a lot of people worry that if we try to fix the Constitution we’ll lose the good stuff in it, but the last few years have made it very clear that the flaws in it — both the ones built in by those who didn’t want true democracy and the ones that have been introduced by some very bad court decisions — are too damaging to ignore.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Mr. Mystal.

 

Some Thoughts on Commas and Rules

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I have a confession. I don’t care about the Oxford comma.

It’s OK with me if you want to use it. It’s also OK with me if you want to follow what I think of as the newspaper rule (because it’s in the AP stylebook) and only use it if the sentence would otherwise be confusing.

For those who are not of the writing or editing professions and who do not follow the heated debates about this issue on Twitter, the Oxford comma is the comma that appears just before “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items. It’s also called the serial comma.

Under the newspaper rule, you generally don’t put a comma there.

Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma:

I like persimmons, strawberries, and grapefruit.

Here’s the same sentence without it:

I like persimmons, strawberries and grapefruit.

As far as I’m concerned, either version is fine. There’s no confusion either way.

Generally, the only sentences where you need to deliberately include or omit that comma are ones where the words divided by the “and” could be taken as describing the previous words.

So for example:

“I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick, and Jane” does not mean the same thing as “I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick and Jane.”

In the first sentence, “cousins,” “Dick,” and “Jane” are all separate categories. In the second, Dick and Jane are the names of my cousins.

If you mean the first, you need that final comma. If you mean the second, that final comma is wrong.

Actually, this rule isn’t really about commas. It’s about the fact that sometimes something that looks like a list isn’t. And if it’s not a list, then you need to use commas differently. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Commas and Rules”…

Going to The Theater

personby Madeleine Robins
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I’m going to New York in June, and just bought tickets to see Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man. I am ridiculously excited about it.

The first show I saw on Broadway was Oliver! with the original cast: Georgia Brown, Clive Revill, Jed Allen, David Jones (pre-Monkees). I don’t remember who actually played Oliver.  I was… maybe nine? I already knew the score (we had cast albums by the dozens in my house, and I was sponge-like in my tendency to scoop up songs and commit them to memory). I dressed up to go to the theatre (which is what one did in those far-off days) and went with–my grandmother, I think. Or my grandmother and my parents, and my brother. Aside from the bragging rights and the pleasure of the show, seeing Oliver! marked my change from a pure consumer of theatre to a theatre kid. And while the performances were wonderful (Clive Revill’s Fagin was juicy in his evil glee) what really got me was the stagecraft.

By which I mean: I’d seen theatrical productions before–mostly kids’ shows–but this was full-blown Broadway, and this show did things I did not believe you could do live. Continue reading “Going to The Theater”…