Newspaper Page Text
♦ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2007
4A
Iftousttm Hailg Ajauxnal
OPINION
Daniel F. Evans
President
Editor and Publisher
Julie B. Evans
Vice President
Group Marketing
Warning sirens
sounds good to us
It was good to learn a couple of things in
regard to a county-wide early warning
system.
It was good to learn we may be able to
access grant money through the Federal
Emergency
Management
Agency that
would pay for
75 percent of
the cost - 25
percent to be
paid for by us.
And, it was
good to learn
that our plan
ners had the
foresight back
in 2003 to
apparently
make it part
of our pre
disaster miti
gation plan.
That appar-
ently has smoothed the way for us to make
it a reality now.
And that’s good news.
Did you know? According to David Emory
Stooksbury, the state’s climatologist and a
professor of engineering and atmospheric
sciences at the University of Georgia, a
Katrina-like hurricane will strike Georgia,
causing many deaths, major disruptions of
lives and millions of dollars in damages, lost
economic growth and tax revenues.
The question, he says, is not “if” it will
happen, but when.
Yes, the coast will be hit the hardest
- Stooksbury says with a Category 3 hurri
cane and a storm surge of 20-30 feet, almost
everything east of 1-95 will be under water
- but we’ll have to deal with that, flooding,
too.
And worse perhaps for us, is the threat of
high winds and ultimately tornados.
We pretty much all can relate to high
winds. Who - and we in the news business
sometimes make that worse by showing pic
tures of damage done - is not guilty of look
ing at a tall tree in their yard (from inside,
of course) during rough times and holding
their breath in hope.
Some months ago - back in March - every
one will remember the strong storms that
came through and produced tornados in
areas such as Taylor and Sumter counties.
For those of us who live in Perry and that
area in the vicinity of Robins Air Force
Base, we heard the sirens go off.
It was of no comfort knowing why they
went off but the fear of the unknown at
times like this can leave you* just as appre
hensive.
With any luck and the Good Lord willing,
all they’ll ever get is a daily operational
check, but should it come down to it, and
they save just one life. We believe it would
have been money well spent.
Letter to the Editor
The shame of progress
I think it’s a shame to see a Perry home, a historic home
yet, to be destroyed for a drugstore! We need another
drugstore like we need another subdivision, another
church, another gas station and/or another restaurant.
Progress is progress, but this is crazy. I’m referring to
the article on the front page of Thursday’s Houston Daily
Journal on July 26. I bet many agree with me. Sounds
like the almighty dollar to me.
Barbara Everts, Lake Joy Road
Send your Letters to the Editor to:
The Houston Daily Journal
P.O. Box 1910 • Perry, Ga 31069 or
Email: hhj@evansnewspapers.com
Foy S. Evans
Editor Emeritus
Don Moncrief
Managing Editor
We pretty much all
can relate to high
winds. Who - and we
in the news business
sometimes make that
worse by showing
pictures ol damage
done - is not guilty ol
looking at a tall tree in
their yard (from inside,
of course) during rough
times and holding their
breath in hope.
Moms can choose more homo time
To work or not to work, that is the
question. At least it is the latest
question asked by researchers at
the Pew Research Center of moms with
kids younger than 18.
Six out of every ten moms say that
part-time work would be ideal (although
only 24 percent actually have part-time
jobs). One in five moms said they’d
prefer not to have to work at all out
side the home. The number of working
moms who view full-time work as the
ideal option is down 11 percent over
the last 10 years.
When the Pew Center released this
survey, the results were featured in
every major newspaper, most local
papers, on morning television news
programs, talk radio...and all I could
think was, “is this even news?” Given
the chance, wouldn’t most moms natu
rally want to work less so they can be
home more? Is that so shocking?
As is so often the case in the news
business, controversy sells. And this
issue of moms working outside the
home - or choosing not to - seems to
stir up plenty of controversy. Many
papers even use the term “mommy
wars” to describe the debate.
Interestingly, nearly everyone seems
to be on the same side of one particu
lar skirmish in the mommy wars. Pew
researchers asked moms, as well as the
rest of the general population, what
they thought was best for children.
There is a distinct difference in this
question. What is best for kids? Not,
“what would you prefer,” not “what is
feasible.” What is best for children? At
least 90 percent of moms—and the rest
of us—said that something other than
full-time work for mothers was better
for kids. People differed on whether
they thought part-time work or no
outside work at all was ideal, but very
few saw full-time work as the best situ
ation for the child.
In the great “mommy wars” it is
complicated to tell who is on the side
of “good “ and “bad” exactly, but it’s
not hard to spot the ugly. In an effort
to stay out of the ugly category myself,
names will be left out to protect, well,
the ugly. One highly educated woman
has stated that smart, talented women
who choose to leave the work force
-= - Y3SS& BB®QjQ®^Sf|
I fc fIBBRK
"Buying school supplies is not my idea of a holiday!"
Wordy crop of newcomers now respectable
You would think as a sometimes
creator of words and phrases
(“hellsleet,” “endorphin drip,”
“California Wimp Factor” and “always
outed” among my most recent efforts),
I would applaud Merriam-Webster.
Anybody who sees the value of “ginor
mous,” “crunk” and “Bollywood” is
indeed a kindred spirit to those of us
occasionally prone to go our own way
with words. Props all around to M-W
editors.
Every year, M-W adds a few entries,
terms and expressions that better cap
ture the living, breathing world with a
living, breathing language. You would
think, with 400,000 words to choose
from, we might be able to come up
with something to describe a new kind
of music or social event or activity or
whatever.
Apparently not. Otherwise, “flex
cuff,” “microgreen” and “smackdown”
would still be out there, the patois of
a particular or even peculiar set of cir
cumstances. Instead, they are now part
of mainstream language.
I have proof. It is the phrase that
settles arguments, assures writers and
soothes schoolchildren: “Hey, it’s in
the dictionary.”
But just as alternative music can no
longer call itself alternative after it
shows up on Casey Kasem’s Top 40,
when “perfect storm,” “speed dating”
and other inventive, original words
and phrases show up in the dictionary,
they no longer cut the same swath.
Eye roll
Here’s the entire list that is now
OPINION
to care for their children are wasting
their talents and doing a disservice to
humanity. One Associated Press writer
covering this new poll attributed the
rising numbers of women yyho would
prefer not to work full-time to guilt.
“The guilt is almost tangible,” she
wrote. Is that it? We’ve just spent the
last decade making moms feel guilty for
working, so now the guilty answer polls
saying they’d prefer to work less?
The issue is much more complex,
and every family is unique. Notice
again that most of the moms who say
that part-time work would be ideal
don’t actually work part-time. For
those families who don’t feel they can
financially rely on only one income,
part-time work isn’t always easy to
find. And remember too that many of
the moms surveyed are single moms.
What option do they have, realistically,
to stay at home or work part time?
And yet when a majority of women
express a desire to work less, it seems
there are plenty of other women wait
ing in the wings to belittle such a desire
as an archaic, unintelligent notion. As
if giving up (or postponing) a career
for children somehow means giving
up something greater for something
menial?
It brings to mind a few enlightened
comments G.K. Chesterton, the British
journalist and scholar, made about this
very subject. In the world of work, we
are asked to give our best. And yet,
when a woman leaves the work force
to enter motherhood full (or even part)
time, she does not just give her best
- she gives her all.
A mother who is home with a child
- full-time or part-time - is home with
a human at a time when, as Chesterton
puts it, “he asks all the questions that
there are, and some that there aren’t.”
He goes on:
part of the M-W family: agnolotti,
Bollywood, chaebol, crunk, DVR, flex
cuff, ginormous, gray literature, hard
scape, IED, microgreen, nocebo, perfect
storm, RPG, smackdown, snowboard
cross, speed dating, sudoku, telenovela
and viewshed.
I’ll leave looking up the definitions
to your own sensibilities with this con
dition: The exercise will do you good.
My writing students, when consider
ing such advice, often roll their eyes
or complain, neither of which I remind
them gets them closer to the usage of
“viewshed” or why “chaebol” could
have possibly made the list.
That’s a good question. M-W says it’s
all about usage, that it employs editors
to search a daily dose of writing for
“new usages of existing words, variant
spellings and inflected forms,” which
they mark. (Any votes for hellsleet?) A
marked word becomes a citation; cita
tions are put into a database.
If M-W computers see the citation
enough and it passes muster among
the book’s editors, then the word has a
shot at the mainstream respectability a
dictionary entry gives.
That all works for me.
Jamie
Self
Columnist
Georgia Family Council
George
Ayoub
Columnist
Morris News Service
HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL
Now if anyone says that this duty of
general enlightenment is in itself too
exacting and oppressive, I can under
stand the view. I can only answer that
our race has thought it worth while to
cast this burden on women in order to
keep common-sense in the world. But
when people begin to talk about this
domestic duty as not merely difficult
but trivial and dreary, I simply give up
the question.
For I cannot with the utmost ener
gy of imagination conceive what they
mean. When domesticity, for instance,
is called drudgery, all the difficulty
arises from a double meaning in the
word. If drudgery only means dread
fully hard work, I admit the woman
drudges in the home, as a man, might
drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or
drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But
if it means that the hard work is more
heavy because it is trifling, colorless
and of small import to the soul, then as
I say, I give it up; I do not know what
the words mean.
How can it be a large career to tell
other people’s children about the Rule
of Three, and a small career to tell one’s
own children about the universe? How
can it be broad to be the same thing to
everyone, and narrow to be everything
to someone? No; a woman’s function
is laborious, but because it is gigantic,
not because it is minute I will pity Mrs.
Jones for the hugeness of her task; I
will never pity her for its smallness.
Where children are involved, the only
question to be asked, really, is “what is
best for them.” Most of us seem agreed
on that point. Now perhaps we can
support women who are able to make
the choice to stay home much or some
of the time. And we can support those
who would like to, but perhaps have
yet to find a way. Perhaps it is time
we restore the honor and dignity that
comes from raising children. We should
respect the grandness of the task it is
to be a mother.
Our mothers are not simply carrying
out a chore or exercising a skill. They
did not teach us one trade, they intro
duced us to the world.
And to those sensationalizing the
mommy wars: can we call a truce, at
least for now?
Well, there is that one thing.
Words are more than the denotation
you find when you look up “nocebo”
in M-W. They are even more than the
connotation we derive from a word’s
usage.
Words have value-added features, too.
Sound, rhythm and attitude increase a
word’s quality and worth.
Going legit
Take “ginormous,” the fusion of
“gigantic” and “enormous” and mean
ing very large. My online dictionary
lists 30 synonyms for gigantic and 25
for enormous. A bunch of them over
lap, too. Needless to say, if I decide to
go big, I have plenty of choices, includ
ing “herculean,” “mungo,” “colossal,”
“super-duper” and the always lovely
“big mother.”
But none have the pluck or whimsy
of “ginormous,” which M-W says was
first found in 1948 and always seems to
me best used when the size in question
exasperates the writer or speaker.
A hill in front of me might be big,
but the prospect of climbing it makes
it “ginormous.”
The point is that, while it may be bit
tersweet when an underground word
goes legit, using the right one at the
right time for the right reason requires
lots of them to choose from above or
below the literate horizon.
Apparently, 400,000 of them, a ginor
mous number, are not enough.
And that doesn’t even include endor
phin drip.
You can reach George Ayoub at george.
ayoub@morris.com