It’s a foggy evening here in Milwaukee. Only after I’d already taken this photo did I realize that someone was running toward me down the middle of the street. Kind of an eerie night, but peaceful and quiet. Nothing except the sound of dripping water . . . and this runner’s footsteps.
I just realized that yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the plane crash that killed three members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, and several members of their crew.
High school dances are mostly DJ-powered today, but back when I was in high school, local bands provided the music. “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird” were two of the most-played songs. Those and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” (A music-store salesperson once joked with my husband about how every kid coming in to try out guitars played the same song: “Stairway to Freebird.”)
When Handel wrote “The Hallelujah Chorus,” he said the music so moved him that “I did think I saw heaven open, and saw the very face of God.” While I could certainly never go quite that far with “Freebird,” I do get chills at the point where the song transitions from the first part’s slower ballad section to the hard-rocking section of the second part.
One of the funniest uses of “Freebird” in film is the marvelous scene near the end of Elizabethtown. As the cousin’s reunited old band is playing “Freebird” as a tribute at the memorial service for Orlando Bloom’s father, they attempt a rock-arena trick by sending a giant paper-mache bird soaring out into the hotel ballroom on a wire. The bird catches on fire from the overhead lights, setting off the sprinkler system and causing the guests to evacuate as the band plays on with a joyful abandon that makes the tribute all the more touching within the context of the movie. Watch it here on YouTube.
Ronnie Van Zant left behind two young daughters. In poking around the Internet for more background info on the band, I came across this poignant video in which his older daughter, Tammy, now an adult, sings a song she co-wrote with Robert White Johnson, titled “Freebird Child.”
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Last week I snapped a photo of a tree with yellow-orange leaves that glowed in the late afternoon sun. I took that picture Friday as I left my office, and when I got to work again on Monday, that tree’s branches were almost completely bare. A few moments later on Friday and I would have missed the sunlight; a few days later and I would have missed the leaves themselves.
Today was gray and wet. It won’t be long until all the leaves have fallen. I took a few pictures to remind myself of how pretty the colors are.
Because next week, who knows if they’ll still be around.
The title of today’s post is actually one of my blog’s categories, shown at the lower right-hand side of the screen. Someone was wondering about the difference, so I thought I’d explain. What follows here is not dictionary-type definitions, but rather my own “feel” for each of these terms after teaching English for many years.
I hope it’s not too boring 🙂
GRAMMAR refers to the way words are put together to make units of meaning. Below are some grammar-related terms. I’ll run through them in a way that builds cumulatively.
A phrase is a group of words that fit together to mean something. So “over the river” and “through the woods” are both phrases, while “up tennis cold” is not. A phrase does NOT have both a subject and a verb.
A clause builds on a phrase. It is a group of words that fit together to mean something, and it DOES have both a subject and a verb. There are two kinds of clauses: independent and dependent.
An independent clause can stand alone. A “simple sentence” is one independent clause:
The rain ended.
We went outside.
A “compound sentence” has two or more independent clauses, joined by a conjunction (i.e., and, but, or, nor, so, for) OR by a semicolon or sometimes a colon:
The rain ended, so we went outside.
The rain ended; we went outside.
A dependent clause looks almost like an independent clause, except it has a word at the beginning that causes it to be unable to stand alone. Here is a dependent clause:
After the rain ended
This dependent clause can’t stand alone as a complete thought, because we’re still waiting to find out what happened once the rain ended. However, once you add an independent clause to the dependent clause, then you get a complete thought. And a sentence that has both a dependent clause and an independent clause is called a “complex sentence”:
After the rain ended, we went outside.
We went outside after the rain ended.
Sometimes you can have a compound-complex sentence, which would be some combination of at least one dependent clause and multiple independent clauses:
After the rain ended, the sun broke through the clouds and we went outside.
Because grammar involves the way we structure our sentences, this category includes the eight “parts” of “speech”: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections (like “ouch!”).
Different languages have different grammars. In English, for example, an adjective comes before the noun it modifies:
the red ball
Whereas in French, an adjective comes after the noun:
le ball rouge (the ball red)
Grammar can be “prescriptive,” meaning a rule you’re supposed to follow, or the way your sentences should be. Or grammar can be “descriptive,” meaning a rule that describes the way things are, just like how the “rules” of physics describe how gravity actually works, not how it ought to work.
So that pretty much wraps up grammar: it’s about the rules that govern the way we structure our thoughts in language.
PUNCTUATION refers to the “symbols” we use to help people read/process sentences the way we want them to be heard and understood. I always think of this as similar to musical notation. A musical score has all kinds of symbols that specify things like volume, speed, key, “crispness” (for lack of a better word), slurred passages, etc.
So punctuation takes the form of “marks,” as in “marks of punctuation.” Here are a few common marks of punctuation:
I know you know all of these, so I won’t go on. There are lots of punctuation rules; I’m sure I’ll eventually end up talking about them in future blog posts.
As with the grammar rules, punctuation rules sort of build out on themselves. Sentences end with periods. Compound sentences have a comma before the conjunction, but if there is no conjunction, there should also be no comma (for then you would have the error known as a “comma splice,” which means you’ve semi-attached two independent clauses together with inadequate punctuation). If you don’t use a conjunction, then you join the two independent clauses with either a semicolon or a colon.
So with punctuation you go from the simplest, most clear-cut mark (the period) to the more difficult choices. But there is always a logical train of thought. For the most part, punctuation rules follow common sense, and the rules themselves can (and should) be bent if necessary to help readers “get” what you are trying to say.
MECHANICS refers to all the arbitrary “technical” stuff in writing: spelling, capitalization, use of numerals and other symbols, etc. These are conventions, and you just have to memorize them. For example, you should never begin a sentence with a numeral:
NOT: 2012 is an election year.
BUT: Twenty-twelve is an election year.
OR: Remember, 2012 is an election year.
Another one you’ll know if you have a strong science background: you use the degree symbol ( ° ) with Farenheit and Celsius temperatures but not with Kelvin. (And here’s a temperature scale I know nothing about: Rankine. It also uses the degree symbol.)
Spelling falls into the “mechanics” category, as does capitalization. Proper nouns (names) are capitalized. Therefore, things named after people are also capitalized, like a Bunsen burner. But only the “name” part is capitalized. Note that “burner” is not capitalized.
USAGE refers to the way language is used. Correct usage is “correct” only insofar as “experts” agree upon a particular “rule.” Usage applies to everything talked about so far in this blog post: grammar, punctuation, and/or mechanics.
The most interesting and important thing to know about “usage” is that usage rules change over time and with shifts in context.
For example, when I first started teaching freshman composition, the English teacher’s “rule” was that someone using the plural “their” with the singular “everybody” (instead of “his” or “her”) would be guilty of a grammar error. Eventually, my fellow teachers and other experts (journalists, editors, writers, etc.) came to a somewhat general agreement that because no good alternative exists, the plural pronoun is not an error worth correcting.
Here’s another grammar-related change that has occurred relatively recently. “Data” is now usually considered a singular unit rather than a plural (in Latin, datum is the singular; data is plural), so it takes a verb like “is” and a pronoun like “it” (as it just did in this sentence 🙂 ).
Usage can vary from culture to culture. In the United States, collective nouns (like committee, audience, faculty) are considered singular, but in England, they take the plural form:
The audience shows its appreciation through applause. (United States)
The audience show their appreciation through applause. (England)
OR
The committee is meeting this morning. (United States)
The committee are meeting this morning. (England)
Because usage evolves, it’s fascinating to encounter a time capsule of a previous era’s language, as in an old book. I picked up a novel by Gene Stratton-Porter at my grandmother’s house when I was very young (Freckles was its title, a 1904 book in the Horatio Alger tradition), and some of the strange spellings puzzled me greatly. One of them, “good-bye,” didn’t seem that odd to me because I think when I was a kid, it was actually often still spelled like that (with the hyphen). And actually, I’ve seen it recently in subtitles while watching the “Downton Abbey” series. But the spelling of “to-morrow” with a hyphen was completely foreign to me.
Expert consensus regarding “correct” usage is reminiscent of the divide mentioned above between “prescriptive” versus “descriptive.” Experts can expound upon the way they believe something ought to be OR they can observe common practice and say that’s the way it actually is.
One of the things I love about American English is the way it is constantly reinventing itself. Although this may also be the case with other languages, I know that some languages (e.g., Spanish and French) have official governing bodies intended to standardize and protect them from the influence of other tongues.
American English is nowhere near so pure. It’s a dynamic reflection of our very messy, exuberant history and culture. As such, it’s extremely democratic. If someone creates a clever spelling, an especially apt way to punctuate, or a new word or catchphrase, others will notice and adopt it as soon as they recognize its value.
Our language’s lack of order is also, ironically, a unifiying force. Because America’s people come from such disparate backgrounds, it can be challenging for us to share a national sense of “self.” The ability of American English to embrace, adapt, and morph so rapidly helps put everyone on the same page, so to speak. Expressions have currency, and if you are quick to pick up on a new way of saying something, you can join the “in” crowd’s conversation. You belong.
And now, as Aristotle would say: so much for the difference between grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
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Today is Rod Temperton’s 65th birthday, according to Wikipedia.
For reasons I’m not completely sure of, I’ve always paid attention to songwriting credits. Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album had three really great songs written by someone named Rod Temperton: “Off the Wall,” “Rock with You,” and “Burn this Disco Out.” The name was so unique that I never forgot it. Over the years I’d see his name pop up again and again. Temperton is an incredibly talented songwriter.
Just look at this partial list of Temperton’s songwriting credits (some songs co-written with others):
If you link to the Wikipedia article at the top of this post by clicking on Temperton’s name, you’ll see a much longer list of songs.
But I’ve saved the best for last. Temperton also wrote “Thriller,” the song that powered Michael Jackson’s monster music-video masterpiece (an annual Halloween must-see 🙂 ).
Watch the Thriller video here, at the official Michael Jackson website, if you have fifteen minutes. (And here, in this clip from 13 Going on 30, you can watch Jennifer Garner save a party by getting everyone to do the Thriller zombie dance. Plus you can see the “moonwalk” done by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings.)
Happy birthday, Mr. Temperton! And many happy returns.
Last week Friday I was fortunate to spend time in the radio booth with Sonia, who hosts “The Blues Drive” every Friday afternoon on 91.7 WMSE (“Frontier Radio, anti-established in 1981”), a radio station owned and operated by Milwaukee School of Engineering, where I teach.
Sonia in the WMSE studio – October 5, 2012
The WMSE radio station website carries this bio page on Sonia:
Sonia is WMSE’s resident authority on the blues and blues history. She has written articles on the history of the blues and blues musicians for many magazines and brings this knowledge to her weekly playlist. Sonia has also interviewed many of the greats on her show such as BB King, Philip Walker, Taj Mahal and on and on and on. This show proves time and time again to be a unique listening experience in the living history of the blues.
I asked Sonia, “Why the blues?”
The first music she remembers listening to was her parents’ records. She heard Andrés Segovia (the Spanish virtuoso guitarist) playing Bach – “the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard” – and recognized, as a four-year-old, that “music has the ability to be sublime and cathartic for a listener.” Her brother had records from the Columbia House mail-order music club, so she listened to his music. As a teen, Sonia attended concerts at the Oriental Theater, Summerfest, and the Jazz Gallery, where she encountered acts like the Kinks and Lou Reed. And also as a teen, she heard B.B. King, whom she describes as “an ambassador” for the blues. (All of this background information, and more, can be found on the WMSE website blog feature “Get To Know Your WMSE DJ – Sonia.”)
Sonia has turned her passion for blues into an artistic outlet that has endured in Milwaukee radio for nearly 25 years.
In addition, for the past 12 years Sonia has regularly taught a course on blues music through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Continuing Education. To find new topics each time the course runs, Sonia focuses on a certain instrument (piano or harmonica, for example) or the music of a certain region (Delta blues) or gender (women of the 1920s and ’30s) or playing technique (fingerstyle blues). This past June her course was titled, “Coffeehouse Blues: The Folk Blues Revival” (Sonia’s course description is on p. 6).
During the Spring 2013 semester, Sonia will be teaching English 360: The Art of Poetry. A Voice without Restraint: The Poetry of Bob Dylan for the U.W.M. English Department, where she holds her primary teaching position.
How did Sonia get started in radio?
“I attended the University of Hawaii-Manoa from 1984 to 1987. I received a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. My Master’s thesis was a collection of short stories, entitled, What They Were Desperate For. My boyfriend at the time called to tell me that WYMS [a radio station at that time owned and operated by Milwaukee Public Schools; the call letters stand for “Your Milwaukee Schools”] was running ads for women DJs. There were very few women in radio at that time.
“I had been accepted into the Ph.D. program at New York University. But it was a very expensive school. So I thought I’d come back to Milwaukee to be a lecturer [at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee] for a year, but I was unable to go to NYU and stayed in Milwaukee. I wrote a letter to WYMS and was accepted as a DJ. There were several women at the station then. We were called the ‘blues angels.’ I played blues for a while, but I also did a Jazz show at WYMS.
“I worked with Manny Mauldin, who said that he was the first Black DJ in Milwaukee. Mannie celebrated his 50th year in radio during the time that I had my show at WYMS. We did the shows from Manny’s basement at 37th and Fond du Lac. It was damp, cold, dim. Water-damaged LPs. We had a remote set-up, recorded reel-to-reel.
“I began with 3-6 a.m.; then 2-5 a.m. From 1988-1994 I worked my way back in time from the middle of the night to evening: I worked 1-3 a.m., then 11-1 a.m., and finally 9:00 p.m. till midnight.
“While I was at WYMS, I had become friends with Jon Klotz, who went by the name J.K., who had a 9 a.m.-noon show at WMSE. He needed a sub. In 1990 he asked if I’d apply to WMSE to be a sub. I took a year, then applied in 1991. Never heard back. My application had been filed away. Tom Crawford, the station manager, finally discovered it and called me immediately.
“I went through a six-month training program, even though I already had several years of radio experience, and substituted for other disc jockeys’ shows for four and a half years before getting my own show. I subbed for Dewey’s big band show, Pamela Means and Jasper Toast’s folk shows, Hal Rammel’s twentieth-century experimental classical music show, and Jerry and Dewey’s Friday afternoon rock music shows. I was playing music from every genre. For a while I had programs at both radio stations. Saturday I was at WMSE live, 9:00 a.m. to noon. I taped my WYMS show and would hear it driving down the street Saturday night.”
It worked out well for Sonia that she was just a sub during the early 1990s, for she was presented with two opportunities to teach and live overseas. First she taught at the Malaysian Institute of Technology Shah Alam main campus from January to June 1991. Then she spent two years at Justus Liebig Universität in Giessen, Germany, from 1994-1996.
Sonia returned to Milwaukee in 1996. Back at WMSE, “Jerry could no longer do his time slot due to work commitments. I took over his show, which at the time was from 2-5 p.m.”
* * *
During her “Blues Drive” radio show, which airs 3-6 p.m., Sonia is amazing to watch. She moves about the booth like a Zen master. She rises from her chair to find a CD on the shelf, then sits back down at the console, fluidly opening jewel cases to remove and replace CDs, pressing buttons to cue the next song – all the while talking with me, answering my questions about when she discovered the blues and how she got started in radio. She is unflappable, easily segueing from our interview conversation back into the maintenance of her show, swinging around to the microphone to tell listeners the title of a song that has just ended. Every half hour she does the weather and public service announcements.
From my seat on the other side of the desk, it is like watching ballet.
When Sonia answers phone calls on the studio line, her voice is friendly and relaxed.
Hi. . . . Oh, that’s kind of you to say. . . . Was there a song you wanted me to play? (pause) Oh, thank you . . .
So they’re getting married tonight over at the Harley-Davidson Museum? I’ll mention them shortly.
“I’ve always lived my life in service to others, so my radio show fits with my value that it is important to serve other people. I accommodate listeners, answer their questions. I try to serve musicians by being prepared for interviews and doing my homework. So it is a hobby that serves the community.
“The process is subconscious. The subconscious is important in relation to the radio. There is something that happens when you get into a flow. Your mind starts making connections, and you realize you’ve been playing songs that fit with a theme. At WYMS, once I read five books for a program that I prepared on British Blues. I was immersed in doing shows that had themes, just like my courses.
“I have to be able to entertain myself. I want to learn more about music, so I’ll take a chance. I see new albums come in, and I take a chance. I like to play musicians who are virtuosos with the instrument they play and offer something beyond the banal, who do bring something special to their craft. When I came over to WMSE, I came into the more free-form vision. Speaking of originality, I want to play songs from musicians who aren’t redoing what has already been done. If a song has been done before, I want them to have their own arrangement.”
* * *
Sonia considers herself fortunate to have interviewed many, many musicians. She has written many freelance articles, including a few for Living Blues Magazine, published by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Among musicians Sonia has interviewed are Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, guitarist and bass player, respectively, for Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.
“I think it is important to have a conversation, rather than an interrogation,” Sonia says.
One large, ongoing project is her biographical work on Chicago blues guitarist and singer Hubert Sumlin (1931-2011), who played with Howlin’ Wolf. “We conducted approximately 60 hours of interviews at his home. He was one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. I interviewed him many times over the years. He was on the radio program seven times; no one in the world has interviewed him that much.”
Sonia also interviewed Les Paul, the Wizard of Waukesha, twice. The first time, Les was in Waukesha for a fundraiser related to establishing an exhibit in his honor at the Waukesha Historical Society. The second time was a week before he came to Milwaukee for the opening of the Discovery World Exhibit. That interview was by phone from Paul’s home in New Jersey. They spoke for two hours on the radio.
“Les Paul was an inventor. He offers a good lesson on creativity. We don’t invent out of a vacuum. We rely on our environment and creativity that came before us. He was able to look around a room, outside, and see another purpose. And I recognize that as genius. We draw purely upon what is around us, look at it in a different way, and transform it. That’s what makes art.
“In recent years, I have been asked to do album reviews. I have my own theory about writing. It’s very important to be descriptive. I do not want my words to affect whether people buy an album or go to a concert. I intentionally reject that kind of power. It’s much easier to say something is good or bad, but I would rather be descriptive. Let me give an insight to the life, career, and creations of these musicians.
“John Hammond said when he read my article about him that he felt it was the first time someone quoted him accurately and accurately portrayed his life. When Hubert listened to a tape of the first radio interview that we did together, he said that it was as if a mirror had been held up to him of his life. Sometimes we are just the vehicle.”
* * *
During my time in the WMSE studio last week, I interviewed Sonia in between her DJ duties while the music played. During the later portion of her show, Sonia turned the tables and started interviewing me live on the air! I was petrified at the possibility of long, awkward silences, but Sonia is an excellent interviewer. Just when it felt like our conversation was headed for dead air because I couldn’t think of anything to say, Sonia would rescue me with a great question or comment on something I’d said earlier. (Thank you, Sonia 🙂 )
Sonia’s show, “The Blues Drive,” airs every Friday afternoon from 3:00-6:00 p.m. Central Time. You can hear it live on the station’s website – wmse.org. In addition, WMSE archives its radio broadcasts. So if you’d like to listen to our conversation from last week (Friday, October 5, 2012), just click on the “2012-10-5” link here to download or stream the show.
When I left my office around 5:00 this afternoon, the first thing that caught my eye was this tree’s orange leaves, illuminated by the slanting rays of the sun. The tree fairly glowed in the shadows of downtown Milwaukee office buildings beneath the blue sky.
The effect was already starting to diminish by the time I dug out my iTouch. When I snapped my second shot, just moments later, the light was gone.
My great-grandfather was an avid amateur photographer. He kept his camera and tripod in the trunk of his car, and if he was out driving and saw something he thought would make a good picture, he’d pull over right there and set up his gear. He has always been my role model for how to maintain an artistic life in parallel with your everyday existence.
Years after my great-grandfather died, I discovered Ansel Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Not only is Adams’ photograph a masterpiece, but I felt my great-grandfather’s presence and had to laugh when I heard the dramatic story of how Adams shouted to his friend to pull the car over to the side of the road and then worked frantically to set up his equipment and capture the twilight image of faded sunlight reflecting on white cemetery crosses under a newly ascended moon.
Just looking at my two photos above, you can see what a difference a mere moment can make when you want to photograph an ordinary object or event rendered fleetingly beautiful by the elusive, magical quality of light.
Sometimes letting Nature take its course leads to surprises we could never have imagined.
Last year I planted Morning Glory seeds in a pot on my patio. I let the sun and the rain tend them, so, on their own they grew up and flowered. It made me happy to walk past every day and see their lovely colors. Eventually they faded and died away, so I pulled out their vines and let the pot lay dormant for the winter.
This year other seeds fell into the pot and I let the sun and rain tend them as well. They grew into a various assortment of flowering weeds and grasses. Still, it made me so happy to walk past and see their healthy growth.
And then, I noticed a vine growing up the neighbor’s fence, across the walkway from my pot. Before too long it flowered — with Morning Glories the same color as mine. Every day when I walked past I’d see more…
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Because I’m teaching a technical communication course on writing and editing this quarter at MSOE, I’ve had issues of grammar, punctuation, and spelling on my mind more than usual lately. One common error that came up in class last week was “principle” versus “principal.”
Everyone probably knows that a principal is your “pal,” but how do you remember which spelling to use in in contexts not involving school administrators?
Here’s my trick.
So we would talk about:
Or we would talk about:
Principle = rule. Principal = main.
I’m very sold on mnemonic devices as strategies for learning, retaining, and recalling complex information. Using the “le”/“a” mnemonic to remember the correct spellings for “principle” and “principal” has always worked well for me. Maybe it can for you, too.
Nope. Just ours, distorted in the reflection of our neighbor’s car window. Totally Grinch-worthy, don’t you think?
I love Dr. Seuss books for their art and wordplay. Just looking at a list of Seuss titles brings back each book instantly, almost viscerally. I can see the illustrations; I can hear the sly rhymes:
What a beautiful imagination Dr. Seuss had! I can’t decide which of his books is my favorite. Can you?
Katherine Wikoff 