Canthook

Judging from the chyrons on MSNBC, they aren't very careful about getting the details of the news right. It's difficult to watch for even an hour without seeing something spelled incorrectly. I wouldn't watch, but Blondie loves MSNBC, and if I want to sit with her, I put up with what she has on the tube.

I think it may have been on Rachel Maddow's Tuesday night show where a guest displayed a picture of west Manhattan, which looked positively rural. The guest said the picture was old - it was from 1980. Uh, I don't think so. Maybe 1880. Anyone can misstate themselves, of course, but shouldn't someone at MSNBC be watching the show and pass a note in class telling the host or the guest telling them they made what appears to be a slip of the tongue?

Not Just Chryons

Tonight, though, there was a full-screen graphic, a promotion for one of their shows, where they ask whether someone will need to "tow the line." That would be toe the line. That is, you are required to remain behind a line, and not cross it, even to the extent of one toe. If a fishing boat, on the other hand, has a mooring line fall overboard, and the rope drags behind the boat, being pulled by one end, the boat is towing the line.

By a curious coincidence, I was reading a post this evening and the blogger made reference to her brother. "As a toe-headed child and on into his brown haired, six foot four inch years, my brother loved mashed potatoes." I hate to ask if that's what she really meant, because if you have a toe for a head, that's far more interesting that someone who eats mashed potatoes with gusto. It sounds like she meant tow-headed, that dark blonde color that develops in the preschool years when brunettes start out blonde at birth.

And it's really not fair to be overly-critical, for she spent the last few years in Europe, and it's the kind of mistake anyone could make when they are not fully alert. I wouldn't be reading her blog but for the fact that at least 50% of the time, it's quite interesting. I usually keep a blog on my RSS reader if they can produce even one interesting post in ten.

Quibble Is A Funny Word

As a former newspaper editor, I've spent many hours correcting the writing of others. Regular readers will observe that I soaked up a lot of their errors, which now leak out my fingers as I write blog posts.

On one of the bulletin boards I frequent, there was a grammar flame. Spelling flames are considered pretty lame, and if anything, grammar flames are even lamer. However, one user did a grammar flame, and the response was a rebuttal, along with a challenge, asserting that the flamer wouldn't be able to get a real grammarian to agree. Well, there aren't many people who are real grammarians; editors come fairly close, so I posted a discussion of the various points, and whether they were valid or not.

I put my protective clothing on before I returned to the BBS, but instead of the many people attacking me that I expected, I found a number of people thanking me for an interesting and informative post. Wow. And one commented that the word "quibble" was a funny word. I'd used it a lot, because neither the flamer nor the flamee were entirely correct about most of the points.

Pettifogger Is A Funny Word, Too

Someone who quibbles is a pettifogger. A quibble is a disagreement based on something minor, something that's usually not particularly significant. You can also cavil, or you can brabble, which are also disagreements about something that doesn't matter, but those who brabble are chiding, and those who cavil really have their backs up. A quibble, especially when you admit it's a quibble, is actually an agreement of sorts. It's nice, friendly, yep you're right, although there's just this one minor point where we disagree. I prefer to be nice and friendly, although some days, I get so frustrated that I feel like I should thump the next idiot over the head, as a civic duty to improve the gene pool.

When I was young, Dad would hassle us kids - we were always doing something important, like reading a book for pleasure - and insist that we redd up the table. I never heard anyone else use that phrase, to redd up, and I wondered if he was misusing the word "raid". In my 20s, though, I stumbled across the word in the dictionary. I'd looked in many dictionaries, over the years, to see if it accepted by any lexicographer, as a definition of the word "red". Without that double "d" on the end, I missed it entirely. I had never said a word to Dad about it, and to apologize openly at this point wouldn't be kind, but I said a prayer for him, from hundreds of miles away, that he get more respect and less hassle from those not as learned as he.

Schooling vs. Learning

Dad was forced to quit school in the middle of his freshman year of high school to help farm. He always felt inferior because of that, but his lack of schooling had never stopped him from learning. He'd watched tradesmen do things, and he'd asked questions, and he'd tried to do things over and over until he got them right, and ended up a quite capable handyman. He was a farmer most of the time, but insurance agents hired him to repair damage to customers' homes. The agents knew that he'd do the work right the first time, that his quiet and gentle manner would be pleasing to the customers, many of whom were retired ladies, and that the customers would be impressed with the fact that Dad always cleaned up the area when he was done working.

At one point, the town dentist decided to relocate, and the school board was short a member. One board member asked him to fill that seat, at least until the next election. He pointed out his lack of a high school diploma, and that board member told him it didn't matter, that was was really needed was common sense. He served on the board, and when election time came, he got more votes than anyone else running.

Dealing With The Hothead

When he first joined the board, they had to elect a board president. One of the board members was a hothead, a former maintenence man who'd been fired. The story was that he got caught stealing; he insisted he was fired unfairly. He originally wanted to get elected, so he could fire the superintendent who'd fired him, but he got cheated of that, because the superintendent took a job with another district at a big pay increase. Every year, though, he wanted to be elected school board president, and the other board members chose someone else.

Dad nominated the hothead to be president of the school board. I thought the result would be disaster, but really, all the board president does is sit at the end of the table; every else's votes counted just as much, and individual board members were powerless, as only the board acting as the board could do anything. Having gotten the respect he thought he'd been denied years before, the hothead was finally satisfied, and he decided not to run for election again. Being on the school board is actually a big pain. Once again, Dad was incredibly smart, making a decision I'd never have chosen.

He Only Ran Once

With five on the board, that meant that three members could run things if they acted in concert. During his second term on the board, his first full term, it became increasingly obvious that three of the board members were meeting ahead of time, deciding what they would do, thus making the actual board meetings moot. What's more, their discussions were held in private, and the public didn't know the reasons they were doing what they were.

Perhaps they were acting with the best interests of the school at heart. The fact that they were acting in stealth mode, however, suggests otherwise. What's more, Dad wasn't too fond of the moral character of those three. Oh, it was nothing like having an affair. It was the fact that these three board members were repeatedly caught in lies, and were known, on occasion, to treat customers in a manner other than what Dad thought was right. He didn't know what was going on - but he wanted shed of it. He was eager for his term on the school board to end, so he could be an ordinary citizen again.

Dad Cheated On His Taxes

It's generally accepted that most people cheat on their taxes. Most of them are minor cheats. If you win $20 in a raffle at the fair, you're supposed to report that as income; few people do. Dad, however, cheated on his taxes in favor of the IRS. For instance, he had a station wagon that was used 70% of the time for farming, buying parts for farm equipment, or seed, or fertilizer, etc., and about 20% of the time for doing insurance repair work. About 10% of the time, it was used for personal purposes. For instance, if he had gotten dirty, and needed to make a quick trip to town, he'd take the station wagon in order to keep the sedan clean.

Since he sometimes used the sedan to fetch parts, paint, nails, etc., that business use pretty much equalled the personal use of the station wagon. It would have been reasonable to claim 100% of the use of the station wagon as business expense, and that's what most people would do. Others would go to the hassle of claiming 90% of the use of the station wagon, and 10% of the use of the sedan. Dad, however, insisted on deducting only half the use of the station wagon, and none of the use of the sedan, because he wanted to be fair to the government.

Last year, Joe Biden said it was patriotic to pay your taxes, and the GOP candidates at every level made fun of him for saying that. All I could think, though, was that Joe Biden would have loved to have known my father. And I keep working on it, hoping that someday, I'll manage to be half the man my father was.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
chyron - income tax - Joe Biden - MSNBC - pettifogger - quibble - Rachel Maddow - redd up - school board - toe the line - tow-headed