friday the 3rd

02Jul09

How fantastic is it that even though the 4th is on Saturday, the government says you have to take a holiday during the week? So I get tomorrow off. (It’s the government’s doing as far as I’m aware, feel free to correct me.)

Alan’s artsy neighbor told me about an annual folk festival on the National Mall all this weekend, so the plan is to check that out in the afternoon, with study, possible exercise, and relationship maintenance aka Matthew skype time on the big morning agenda. Then Saturday is the day of the famed fireworks and dinner party (chez Alan’s Afghani friend and friend’s French wife), where if I’m lucky I’ll get to speak a bit of French, although I’m hoping not to stick my foot in it by volunteering and then mentally freezing, frantically searching for the word for paté. (It’s pâté in case you wanted to know.)

Momentary insecurity…gone. Moving on: to Matthew–sweet poem. I found it when looking for the piece on Strunk, since part of it describes me very well: I violate the conciseness rule. This is why a blog is better for me than Twitter.

Really enjoyed hearing about Strunk and White, as read by Garrison Keillor, and re-reading it for myself. While I understand both sides of the argument over the English language, I lean toward the grammarians. As is abundantly evident, without rules, the language disintegrates. I agree that there must be freedom in a language to express thoughts in one’s own voice; however, if you want to break the rules, you should first know which rules you are breaking. You can’t build without a framework. If you don’t understand the rules, your writing ends up stupid.

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Tags: English, French, july 4th, matthew