Annual cat picture

How embarrassing. We missed the little guys' homecoming day, which was Sunday. So here's a belated anniversary picture: Woodward (right) and Bernstein settling into their new home, seven years ago Tuesday.

Bernie's still kind of suspicious, and Woodchuck is still sort of a marshmallow, but in all, they're doing pretty well. Please accept their best regards.

A toast for Veterans Day

While we're celebrating the return of basketball with a Carolina game on an aircraft carrier in San Diego, let's pause for a toast to the folks who will get up tomorrow and go to work aboard the Vinson, and their past and present comrades in arms.

Raising a glass here are members of the "black gang" of LST708, in San Diego en route to the Pacific in December 1944. Language Czarina's dad, Joe, is second from left. They had, as you don't have to imagine, a fairly dangerous year ahead, but it was at least finite. On this day in 1945, Joe was at Guam and waiting for the carrier that would take him back to the States.

Joe had worked at one of the Ford plants and spent a little time training as a cook, but after the war he wasn't interested in working indoors, so he got a job at the city cemetery. He stayed there until he retired as superintendent, and when he died -- 60 years after the photo above was taken, give or take a few days -- that's where he was buried.

I had a chance to wave to Joe for Veterans Day, because I took the kitties in for a checkup. We use the same vet that they used even before Language Czarina came along, and it's -- literally -- across Main Street from his corner of the cemetery. You don't need the flags to know Joe has a lot of company. You can brush away the leaves and see all the wars that people and their families remember.

Many ordinary-seeming people we run across in our ordinary lives have done very extraordinary things. I hope journalists always remember that, but that's a special case of hoping that everyone always remembers that.

So -- what kind of doctor are you?*

Shurely some kind of comma is still customary between the parts of the compound predicate? (First flagged by JKaufman at TCEs.)

On a related note: The little plot summaries at Netflix frequently make him "Who" on second reference. That seems to be carrying AP style a little too far.


* Worth the wait here.

On language: Desafirization

So with the university closed for the Great Summer Snow Day, I undertook to get a few errands done in the neighborhood. Being overcome with the urge for a coney island, I stopped in one of the local places on the way back, and I saw a construction I'd never seen before:

Egg Benedicts

This sounds almost as if someone's trying to re-grammaticalize, or de-Safirize, "Eggs Benedict." Look familiar to anyone out there?

Now we are six

Annual off-topic cat picture time. (Oh, get used to it. It's a blog.)

In addition to its numerous other virtues, April 15 marks the day in 2005 when Woodward (right) and Bernstein left their makeshift home under the shrubbery and moved in with us at The Lane. They also have an official birthday, determined by Doctor Debbie the vet, who dangled young Woodchuck in the air, wrote "March 1" on the birf certificate* and sent us all home with an admonition to keep the kibble dish full. But today is the formal celebration.

They've turned out pretty well. Woodchuck is the gregarious one who's Most Likely to Succeed, but he's pretty cool about it. Bernie's the copy editor. He stays up late worrying about what got out of place when he wasn't there to watch. (Since it's probably your fault, he also tends to be free with the advice.) And a birthday is always a good reason to raise a glass, so happy Bernieversary to all.

* Funny, he doesn't look Kenyan.

Because nothing says Christmas ...

... like "Kittehs vs. Trains: How the Midwest Was Won."

And with that, your originating station goes into holiday mode. A safe, warm and merry Christmas (along with any and all other holidays you're enjoying) to you all from me, Czarina, Woodchuck (right)* and Bernie.

Regular transmissions resume shortly.

* Stormy, husky, brawling. Kitty of the Big Shoulders. Bernie's sitting next to his favorite heat register pretending not to know any of us.

Lovecraft, Asimov, Clarke

Hem. Apparently with the blog hat on, Your Editor writes like Lovecraft (with occasional doses of James Joyce). Most recent journal article, Asimov in both the intro and the conclusion. Best paper for Denver,* Arthur C. Clarke.** People just won't stop coming up with amusing  algorithms to play with in the intertubes, will they?

I could stay up and keep trying for a Tolkien, but that could take years and cost millions of lives.

* The grammar survey will be there too! I will send results out soon, honest. It also rated a Lovecraft.
** As was a chunk of the diss. Plus ca not so much.

Goin' rogue, 1964-style

Whence the feral elephant? Well -- this is why I love my job. Sometimes I actually have to go to the library, and to get to JK and JQ, you have to go through the music section, and because it's a library and not a way station in the intertubes, it actually rewards the occasional browse.

As is the case with Purnell, F., and Wells, H. (1964). The Republican song book. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Strike up "Let's Forget that Medicare," maestro:

Now Mister President, forget that Medicare
We got troubles enough, don't you think?
With the taxes goin' up and the dollar goin' down
You're gonna drive us all to drink

We will never know just how the pioneers
Ever got across the great Divide
But we know for sure it wasn't a subsidy
That put 'em on the other side

So Mister President, I wanta emphasize
That two and two make four
Tho' there's lots of folks down there in Washington
Who think that ain't true anymore

I know we got the doctors, we got the wealth
But there's too danged many people who enjoy ill health!
So Mister President, forget that Medicare
We got troubles enough as it is!

This is hardly a breakthrough in American politics. Check out "The Democratic Donkey (Is In His Stall Again)" here,* or go enjoy the cover by Norman and Nancy Blake. And for that matter, one of the fun things about summer teaching is spending a little time on the Good Old Days of pre-mass-literacy political communication (knock yourselves out, Maddy Prior fans). But it's certainly a nice chance to look back at what was going on around the campfire at another turning point in the mass-mediated creation of meaning.

* It's really annoying to find out that there's a copy of "Democratic songs, poems and jokes for the 1936 campaign" as close as Central, but it's listed as library use only.

Anniversaries again

Time flies like a banana, doesn't it? Today marks five years of posting at our little corner of cyberspace here, so consider yourself welcome to our open house. Come in and support the Michigan economy with a fine Bell's product! (Cheaper than a Pinto and less flammable.)

Things have changed a bit over the years. Headsup: The Blog began life as an online version of HEADSUP-L, the semiregular critique of copy editing at the Missouri J-school's baddest and most venerable teaching laboratory, the century-old daily known as the Missourian. Other topics and other news sources began to drift in as they seemed pertinent to the ongoing question of what editors do and whether and how they should or shouldn't do it.

The table also got bigger as other folks started to stop by: Doug from the small world of the editing classroom, Hat from the land of language blogging, RayB and Strayhorn from newspapers past, The Ridger from the corner of Language and Politics. Those were some of the early visitors, and I certainly don't mean to slight any of the other fine characters who comment, send in tips, provide the occasional link, or just read. (Except the guy with the WoW Gold. He's slighted.) I'd say it's still an editing blog, but it's less tolerant of peeving -- and journalistic gullibility -- than it used to be, and perhaps a little more inclined to address the general WTF-hood of journalism today. And five years ago, I might have worried about that last comma.

I'm your editor, and I generally go by Fred. (Those are my initials* at the end of the posts, but I don't use the whole thing in publishing, because that gets you to a rather different publication record.) I write about editing because I think it's an important craft and because it's what I did for many years before I jumped the fence into graduate school full time back in 2004. And, at least since I first annoyed a supervising editor by posting our convention hed next to the ayem competition's on the bulletin board -- "Ex-Candidate Leaves Mark On Platform" and "Carter Finds Platform Sticky," if you're scoring along at home** -- I've kept a file open for things that slip past editors. Think of it as a reminder of all the things we catch.

This is Language Czarina, my partner in assorted crime and misdemeanor.*** Conveniently, when I was dissertating and she was academic-advising, a job opened up at the Big State University where she had been a wide-eyed little sorceress way back when, and it turned out to be a nice fit. We live in her old hometown, which has three brewpubs, an 80-year-old bakery that starts turning out octopus-shaped cupcakes at this point in the playoffs, and Dr. Kevorkian collecting signatures downtown. I actually do have a view of Canada from my office. (She has a view of an inflatable moose head, which is not bad.) In what may prove a surprise to our far-distant newspaper colleagues, we have produced our first co-authored paper, albeit her degree is in Blake.

I really do like the stuff I teach, which tends most frequently to be editing, content analysis and journalism history. Most of my research time goes into looking at things that got my attention when I was a working editor: how stuff comes to look the way it does in news accounts (particularly the Fractious Near East and the creation of threats) and what happens when it does. I try to be sure it makes as much sense to editors as it does to academics. That's a little optimistic.

You've already met Woodchuck and Bernie, the official research kitties, but here they are again. Bernie's the one who sounds like Jon Stewart imitating Dick Cheney. Woodchuck's the dreamy one. Pictures of Your Editor are rare, for good reason, but if you look here, he's on the left. (Didn't know there was a Christmas version of "Nunsense," did you?)

And that's our show. Please stop by often. And please say nice things to your friendly neighborhood copy editors, should you see them stalking the earth in daylight. They're some of the better-behaved and more sensible people in journalism. There's a lot about the craft that I don't miss, and if you want my three slices of mediocre free pizza next election night, you can have them. (Please don't get me started on the sort of deep-catalog clue deprivation that prevails among those who desperately want a glass office of their own.) But you can't watch the game without a kind thought for the people who are still playing it.

* At my first newspaper, you used a string of characters including your initials to wake up the VDTs -- mean little dinosaurs that would hold all for 3,500 characters before you had to dump your prose to a punch tape. We sort of got into the habit.
** My own Most Fun Hed was a 1/30/2 on the occasion of the Rajneeshis buying their ranch: "Om, om on the range." I don't do that anymore.
*** Bonus points for identifying the tube stop. It isn't the nearest one to the buro.

Baby pictures!

That's the trouble with growing up: some- body's always pulling out the baby pictures. So here, in celebra- tion of the day in April 2005 when the little guys left their perilous home under the J-school shrubbery to become our Official Research Kitties, are Woodward (left) and Bernstein in their first few days of domesticity. Happy Bernieversary!

Minor pragmatic sidelight: That's the order we always introduce them in, but when they go to the vet, they're Bernstein and Woodward. Ah, the tyranny of the alphabet.

Your regular program of Fox-bashing, grammar-questioning and hed-ridiculing will resume shortly, but meanwhile -- lighten up. It's a blog. It's supposed to have pictures of cats every now and then.

Today in journalism history

On this date in 1980, the N&O in Raleigh had a fire. Owing to the comity that then prevailed among publishers, the N&O was printed that night at the Herald plant in Durham, and the next day's edition of the N&O remains a collector's item, because it looked just like the Herald: Awful.

A couple dozen miles away, a bunch of people at my first newspaper were watching one of the staff favorite bands (the guitarist worked in the composing room, and they did genuinely rock). And that, believe it or not, was Your Editor's first date with the lovely and talented Language Czarina.

(Different club entirely, of course, but those of you who remember that era will enjoy this collection of posters from the old Cradle.)

Mousewater

Strange recombination of the day, collected while waiting to fill the growler at the local. Two guys are comparing notes about some of the other brewpubs* and trying to figure out which of the waits at a rival establishment is the one who was making fun of customers behind their backs:

A: I know most of them. What does she look like?
B: Kinda dishy -- mousewater blonde.
A: Oh, yeah.

Which meant Czarina and I spent much of the afternoon looking for ways to use "mousewater" in conversation:

Mousewater Jack bought a shotgun
Mousewater ... I am the lost Dauphin!
Did the cat pee on the bookshelf again? No, that's mousewater
MoH2O: Mousewater conservatives

Procrastination is a beautiful thing.

* Our Little Town is just eat up with brewpubs.

That space-time rift in action

So there I was, peacefully checking the timetables between Paddington and Cardiff, when apparently something I entered disagreed with the machinery, and back came the coolest error message in history:

Outward travel must not be in the past.

Is there something about Cardiff they're not telling us?

This is not good

You jest. A Friday? At Coop's? In mid-October? Canceled due to "cold" "weather"?

This does not bode well for journalism education.

Chain letter!

This is mildly off topic, but not entirely* -- I mean, I do teach media history over the summer, and this is like getting a Telex, reading an evening newspaper, and seeing Fred and Barney sneak behind the house for a Winston, all at once. In glorious black and white. It's an actual chain letter, on paper, in an envelope, from Missouri, with a first-class stamp!

Well, not really. After all, it says very clearly: "This is not a chain letter." And it's from a retired attorney! Whose client asked him to look at the letter! Which he found "not 100% legit"! But at client's request he "made only one small change which made the program totally legit"! See, you have to add "please put me on your mailing list," because that way, you're selling something of value! In return for the hundreds of thousands of dollars you are about to receive! ("You may want to purchase and** electric letter opener.")

The big difference, best I can tell, is that these days, you buy a mailing list from Datafax, rather than yanking the chains of people you already know. ("Specify that you want the names and addresses of OPPORTUNITY SEEKERS," 200 of whom*** will cost you 45 bucks, and the peel-and-stick envelopes at Wal-Mart are a great deal.) All you have to do is call 1-877-328-2977!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to go open a Schlitz and -- oh, write an inverted pyramid or something. If anyone wants to assign extra credit for seeing if you can get Prince Albert in a can along with your OPPORTUNITY SEEKERS, it sounds like more fun than another essay.


*And lighten up out there anyway. There's a whole raft of Fox stuff to work through, and tonight was the first meeting of the all-new (!) media-conflict-crisis seminar, and editing is tomorrow, and an accept-but-revise just got here, plus I'm still typing with somewhere between eight and nine fingers and the deck has steadfastly refused to scrape and paint itself during my convalescence even though winter is yclosing in, lhude sing [naughty words here].
** Sic. But i expect Czarina's mom has one around somewhere.
*** OK, "which." Sheez.

Battle of the hometowns

Hey, thanks for making the Old Hometown look all up-to-date on the international stage and everything, you guys!

So how are things in Language Czarina's native territory? Eh, went downtown today for sets by Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dave Brubeck (quartet first, kids later), with some rising talent in between. Fried perch and craft ales on the way back. Gave moral support to the (probably expiring) state fair the week before. Got caught in the Dream Cruise before that.

We can hold them at bay on the fried fish for a while, but otherwise things aren't looking all that good for the old zip code.

Bernieversary!

Here's a semi- regular off-topic update for interested parties. Think of it as sort of the HEADSUP-L pledge drive; regularly scheduled program- ming will continue shortly, but you can leave your credit card number in the comments if you're feeling guilty about not helping newspapers stay afloat or something. Or you can turn the page.

Anyway! April 15 is a special day around here for several reasons. Yes, there are those freedom-loving tea parties, and yes, it's the first day the local bistros can set out their sidewalk tables,* but it's also Bernieversary, whereby hangs a tale.

A bunch of the sharp undergraduates at the World's Most Refulgent J-School came in one morning to report a litter of abandoned** kittens under the hostas. Permission was granted*** to bring the little monsters indoors, and after a fairly consensual discussion, an overnight office stay and some minor tactical hoop-jumping, everybody**** had a forever home. Woodchuck (left) and Bernie -- formally, Woodward Woodward III and Bernstein J. Firecat -- moved into the cottage on the Lane on April 15, 2005. Usual Suspects will be happy to know that they have become upstanding young gentlemen.

It's Bernieversary because, well, Woodward has a genuinely iconic piece of American asphalt named after him (about a mile west of here, a few blocks east of the midtown bureau). So we had to equalize where we could. Either way, best Bernieversary regards to you members of the original rescue party and all you other cheezburger-eaters out there.

* Honestly. In about a month, this is going to sound a lot better than it does now.
** Not by hoomans; Language Czarina is fairly sure she saw their mom doing the Mehitabel thing around campus on several later occasions.
*** Where would journalism be without the passive voice?
**** At last report, sister Pickle was a happy farm kitteh in central Missouri.

Spring Break II

Every now and then on spring break, you end up annoying the wildlife. Language Czarina inter- rupted some sandhill cranes at breakfast for this one, from a north- western trip in 2005.

Spring break with the cranes is actually cooler than it appears from a single photo. Apparently, if you're a sandhill crane anywhere in the western hemisphere and your last name begins with L through Z, you're obliged to fly through a chokepoint about 10 miles wide near Kearney, Neb., when you go north in March. So rather than a couple birds noshing in a former cornfield, the modal image is, like, hundreds of millions of red-eyed gray monsters wandering around going "Dude! Spring break!"

Spring break I

It's spring break, so you should all be out enjoying yourselves, unless spring break is your chance to drop the portcullis and try to get some writing done before the AEJMC deadline. Anyway, here's the first of a few irregular off-topic photos from spring breaks past. Other reminiscences, of course, are welcome, particularly if any of these sights ring a bell.

This one's in honor of the day. We think of it as the Horking Leprechaun, as in "Did you know there's a leprechaun throwing up in your french fries?" Dublin on a spring day in 2004.

A behind-the-scenes birthday

With a nod to The Ridger,* here's a birthday for copy editors: Lloyd Loar was born this day in 1886.

Why should copy editors celebrate? Because Loar is a guy whose work you know without knowing it. If you've ever heard Bill Monroe, you've heard Loar. He was Gibson's demon acoustic engineer for the first half of the 1920s (that's his signature in a 1924 F-5 at right). Bluegrass sounds the way it does because, when Monroe got around to inventing it, he had an instrument that did the things Lloyd Loar had taught it to do.

Late in life, Loar indulged in academia at Northwestern. This is from a nice bio at Roger Simonoff's site:

C25. The Physics of Music. The scientific side of music. Composition of tone; tone color or timbre; sound waves; vibration; resonance; acoustics of various wind and stringed instruments; the piano and pipe organ; voice acoustics; radio. This course will be accepted toward a degree as either a music elective or in lieu of Liberal Arts requirement to the limit of three semester-hours. 1:30-3:30, Mr. Loar

Makes you wish you were in college again, doesn't it? Anyway, on behalf of copy editors and anyone else you know who works out of sight of the crowd, raise a glass to Lloyd Loar.

*Scholar, birder, indefatigable chronicler of birthdays.