22 Words

An interview with preeminent online wine connoisseur, Gary Vaynerchuck:

The Main Thing to take away from this interview…

When you go into a wine shop, try a wine from a varietal you’ve never had before. Don’t buy another Pinot Grigio, Zin, Pinot Noir, or Chardonnay.

You’ll be a wine expert if you go 2 years and never order the same kind of wine.

7 other questions he answers…

1. What’s some good wine in the $10 range?
2. What’s the most important thing to consider when buying wine?
3. What should you ask a sommelier to impress your date?
4. Where are the best places to learn about wine?
5. Are bottles over $25 worth it?
6. Are wine clubs a good way to learn about wine?
7. What’s the best way to find good wine values?

4 Comments so far

I can’t say whether this story works to frighten children out of thumbsucking (Because that’s the best way to parent, right?), but our friend Jennapants postulates that it was pretty effective for her as a kid.

It’s from the book Struwwelpeter, which is quite a delightful collection of stories, I understand.

Enjoy, and if any of my more barbaric readers decide to put this tale to practical use, let me know how it goes.

*               *               *

Before she’d turned the south,
He’d got his thumbkin in his mouth!

Bang! here goes the door ker-slam!
Whoop! the tailor lands ker-blam!
Waves his shears, the heartless grub,
and calls for Dawmen-lutscher-bub.
Claps his weapon to the thumb,
Snips it square as head of grum,
While that lad his tongue unfurled
And fired a yell heard ’round the world.

Who can tell mother’s sorrow
When she saw her boy the morrow!
There he stood all steeped in shame,
And not a thumbkin to his name.

12 Comments so far

John McIntyre edits and writes for the Baltimore Sun, teaches editing at Loyola University Maryland, and is a former president of the American Copy Editors Society. He has this to say regarding the who/whom dilemma:

My advice to you, if you have trouble deciding when to use who and when to use whom, just use who for both subject and object. It will simplify your life, ease your mind, and put you ahead of the game when the dictionaries finally attach obs. to whom.

6 Comments so far

The city council of Lino Lakes, a Twin Cities suburb, has voted to make English their official language and avoid as much translation as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will allow.

Way to be progressive.

In trying to defend that the new ordinance is motivated strictly by economics, the mayor said, “It angers me that people made it into a race issue.”

Perhaps he has a point. Language and race don’t strictly correlate. How about we call it a culture issue?

A townsman in favor of the resolution opined, “I’m tired of going to restaurants and hearing these new families speaking their native tongue to their kids.”

I’m sorry, What?

I feel sick to my stomach.

The council member who placed the only no-vote said after the meeting that she is concerned about how this will make Lino Lakes be perceived.

I should say so.

I won’t go into detail about how I perceive people who support this crap, but I imagine you can guess.

I’m going to let my brother have the final word in this post, since he’s far more level-headed and thoughtful than me. This is what he wrote in the comment thread back when I ripped on Tim James for similarly naive, linguacentric priggishness:

“Learn English” is almost completely a nonstarter for me. Immigrant families nearly-inevitably *do* learn English, and the assimilation takes one or two generations after immigration.

To grossly simplify: The older folks may never speak fluent English, their kids–who grow up speaking the family language at home and English at school, etc–are bilingual and may speak with an accent, and their kids in turn are native English speakers.

Here in SW MN, that’s how it worked for Germans and Swedes in 1910, and it’s how it’s working for Mexicans, East Africans, and Burmese now.

This still leaves real, complex, and sometimes costly questions of how much and what kind of accommodations and services to offer during the transition.

But demanding, “Learn English”? That’s purely and only a message of fear for English-speaking constituents. It says nothing to immigrants. They don’t need to be told; they *are* learning English.

27 Comments so far

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I’m sending this out to my brother Barnabas. I’d expect nothing less of him in this situation.

6 Comments so far