But have they played the Red Rocks?

Ten miles west of Denver, Colorado, is an amphitheater not built by human hands (for the most part).  It's a natural setting in the rocks, which look red.  Being invited to play there has grown in popularity among bands who really want to be somebody.  Everyone has heard of U2, for example, but not in 1983.  Those in attendance the day U2 played at the Red Rocks Amphitheater say it was, still is, U2's best ever concert.  After playing the Red Rocks amphitheater, people began to spread the word about this great band called U2.  A band may be popular, but until they have played at the Red Rocks, then their stardom is not written in stone.

One of my favorite bands is Coldplay.  They sing songs with a message.  I'm not alone.  Many people enjoy their lyrics.  Of course, they're nobody unless they've been to the Red Rocks.

Oh, but they have!  Enjoy.

Homespun genius

The Zac Brown Band came to notoriety a few years back.  Whatever It Is was one of their hits.  I absolutely loved it.  The lead singer brings a homespun genius to lyrics that talk of everyday matters.

This song is about Sweet Annie.  How down-home is this idea.  How true for all of us.

Disruption and delay

Bank of America advertises in the lobbies of its many branches that one can become investment savvy by going to the internet and watching a short video of how to make your money multiply.  BOA has teamed with Kahn Academy to produce this video because it is in its best interest.  Because BOA advertises and provided funds for this video, it has a smarter clientele who will invest with it and make both investor and investee money.

There are many, many of these videos from BOA and Kahn from banking and budgets to understanding interest and investing.  Khan Academy is well known, and it caught the eye of Bill Gates as an investor shortly after it started.  It represents how current education can go from a very compartmentalized form of imparting knowledge to a rather seamless and non-disruptive way of helping people achieve the degree of quality of life that they desire.  People don't really want to go school 6-8 hours a day.  It gets in the way of making progress in life and becoming productive in order to enjoy life.  As it is, children take a hiatus of 18 years of their lives to "learn" how to become productive and enjoy life.  That is probably a whole decade too long.  Learn and learn well through Kahn's method AND get on with your life at the same time.

It makes sense to me.  I relish the thought of a productive citizenry instead of a forced daycare system that extends to an age well past its usefulness.  Teenagers could be productive consumers of society, not detractive consumers.  I'm thinking that education has an opportunity to go this direction.  In twenty-five years from now, I hope to see a whole segment of the population reaping the rewards of its labor rather than treading water until they can fulfill some antiquated notion smart people aren't productive until they've learned to be a cookie-cutter citizen.

People differ

Language capacity is innate, no doubt.  It's the phases that language goes through that make it less than predictable.  The idea is that as a human proceeds from infancy to maturity, language growth does the same.  Maturity is really easy to see and chart with the physical aspect of a human's maturity.  It should stand to reason that other human developments go through the maturing process in much the same way.

Here's the thing that schools refuse to accept, and in so doing, wreak havoc with young people's mental image of themselves.  The language people use is so diversified that it is impossible to project a trajectory for it.  People's accents differ.  People's jargons differ since choice of profession dictates the jargon learned to a great degree.  People's friends differ, thus their basic stock of words vary.  People's interests and personalities differ, so the words they choose will follow the lines of these two areas.  People's motivations, intrinsically and extrinsically, differ.  Thus, the number of words and types of words vary.  It's a ragged growth journey from infancy to maturity, physically, mentally, and yes, linguistically.

So, why people are so caught up in trying to make a cookie cutter system for language development is absurd, ludicrous, and otherwise ridiculously inane.  Making a standard for what young people should be saying, writing, and reading is cruel at best and unusually inhumane and unrealistic at worst.  No one really chides a child or adolescent for exceeding or underachieving an average weight or height for his or her age group.  That's unquestionably ridiculous.

People would do well to remember that language matures as people mature.  Because people are unique, their developments are unique in every aspect of growth.  That's what makes growth ragged. Just as healthy eating is good for a body regardless of how short or tall a person is, or what body shape a person has, so a system for good language input is important.  But the outcome of that system is not manifested in a uniform, standardized manner.

A popular phrase making the rounds

Sometimes a language phenomenon gets a name that someone mentions, and the name sticks for one reason or another.  The modern way of expressing action in English is sometimes to add an adverb to the verb and thus change or extend the meaning.  This can occasionally be done with prepositions as well.  We sprayed water on the house to put out the fire is an example.  

It's an unfortunate accident of someone unthinkingly talking about verbs that include an adverb and remarking that now a single word verb has changed into a phrase of words in order to express its full meaning.  The idea caught on with grammarians (who else?!), so they coined the term "phrasal verb."

Nevermind that  linguists (a very different group from grammarians) had  already used the term "verb phrase" to describe the words that make up the verb.  That's because much of the time people use auxiliary verbs with their action words to express tense, progression, reiteration, hypothetical action, or likelihood.  They use a verb phrase to express every negation of action, such as didn't sing, and most questions, like Have you given your dog a bath?

So, why grammarians thought that the term "phrasal verb" needed to be coined is a mystery to me.  It absolutely serves no purpose since a "verb phrase" already existed, and it serves to confuse the two terms by intertwining their ideas.  "Verbal extension" or "verbal addition" might have served as a better descriptive term.  "Pre-auxiliary" (for current auxiliary verbs like did, have, can placed in front of the main verb) and "post-auxiliary" (adverbs added after the main verb like in, out, down, up) might even be better terms.

Consider the sentences below.

We put the plates on the table. (standard meaning)
We put out the fire. (extended meaning)
We put down one of our friends unwittingly. (extended meaning)
We put up with a lot of noise from the children in the crowd. (extended meaning)
We need to put away $300 a month. (extended meaning)
We all put in our money for the donation. (extended meaning)

It's easy to see that the adverb extends the verb's meaning.  But, what grammarians don't do is analyze why that might be true or if it is actually true.  As an example, one has to ask what the noun is following the verb phrase.  Is it the direct object?  If so, it usually immediately follows the verb like plates does in sentence one.  If one moves out from its position of immediately following the main verb to a position after the noun, then yes, the noun is the direct object.  Indeed, that can occur in sentence one.  Since that is true, then out is really an adverb but is idomatically used.  It merely answers in what condition the fire existed.  Thus, out is not part of the verb phrase at all; it's an idiomatic use of an adverb.  That means there is no such thing as a "phrasal verb."

In addition, other adverbs already invade the space of two or three word verb.  For example, in the sentence, I have never seen the Swiss Alps, the verb have seen clearly has the adverb never between the two words of the verb.  Grammarians have never bothered to classify never by any other term than adverb.  It operates the same way as what they call a phrasal verb, however.  It shows an additional aspect to the verb, like all adverbs do because they answer the questions how, when, where, to what extent, and in what condition the action exists within.  So, to separate an adverb into another classification has no justification really.

Grammarians will not have the last word on this issue, nor should they, since they are not the language scientists.  Ask an English major (the usual field of those who claim to be grammarians) if they have taken a linguistics course, and their response is often, "Yeah, but just the introductory course.  Those courses are way too hard, and they focus too much on language."  Right. Grammarians don't have the tools to analyze changes to English structure over time.  They usually follow established rules for written English and don't analyze the more malleable usages of spoken English.

The next time you hear the term "Phrasal Verb," you can dismiss it outright.  It's not set in stone.  The last analysis has not been made.  As long as competing analyses are active, those who analyze language will continue to debate the phrase's structure, its descriptive term, and its effect on semantics.  Till that debate is over, the term is only a notion of a particular group of people.

Just on the other side

Living on a cul de sac has a lot of advantages.  One of them is that it is really private.  And after living on a street where many people traveled, it is a pleasant relief to have privacy.  Part of the pleasantness is that I get to lean against my car or sit on the trunk and look at the end of the street and see the natural park that runs the length of the housing addition.

It's virtually impossible to judge distances in the picture above.  It's about 20 yards from my driveway to the sign, about another 15 yards to the trees growing along the stream, and the green sloping hill beyond the trees is about 40 yards.  At the top of the hill is a street of houses.  100 yards beyond that street of houses is a runway for private small planes.  All the houses along that airstrip have hangars for the Cessnas and other planes.  It's been active this spring.

I can't see the runway just on the other side of the hill that slopes up from the stream that I sit staring at, thinking.  But, I know it's there because I see planes landing and taking off.  That keeps me thinking, of course.  I wonder who is in flying the plane and why they are flying.  I imagine a lot of things without really knowing.  But, I think that's why I like looking at this hill and wondering what exactly is happening just on the other side of my vision.

And, by application, I look ahead of me in time.  I can see only a couple of hundred yards in front, but I can lean against what I have already done in life and imagine.  I think of people that I might meet and that I have already met. For the latter, I wonder what they're doing, what their mission now is.  I know they're flying somewhere piloting their craft toward the good life they deserve.  For the former, I have a few more intersections to go through where I will meet people, and I wonder what they will be like and why they will be in my path.

I don't really like seeing only what is directly in front of me.  It's hard to judge the distances looking too far ahead, and then the scene disappears.  I can't see what lies just on the other side.

Leaving for work

I have one of the greatest gifts every spring, summer, and fall.  I didn't really do anything to deserve this gift.  I just get to enjoy it for three seasons of the year.  As I leave for work everyday, my front walk has two rose bushes at the end of it.  They greet me as I walk out the door.  And it's a beautiful, hearty "Good morning" because the bushes are loaded with red roses.

Then I get in my car.  On the corner of the garage is another red rose bush loaded with red petals.  As if "Good morning" were not enough, I get one more kiss to say "Goodbye."






I back out of the driveway, and start to make my way down the street.  I look to my right as I am leaving the shadow of my house behind, and there, on the corner of the house, as if waving to me, are the most outstanding yellow roses covering a tall bush, shouting to me, "Have a good day."



I love my rose bushes.  They start my days with color, fragrance, and eye appeal.  There is no better way to be sent off than with a Good Morning, Goodbye, and Have a Good Day.

They also represent the colorful memories I have of some particularly fragrant days full of my mind's eye appeal. Now if those days were to become a reality... again... there are not enough roses to tell the story of what that would be like!

Who you gonna call?

I am always amused at the English teacher establishment, those little ladies that run around in tennis shoes and ankle length skirts, usually short in stature.  I think they have little-man syndrome even though they are female.  They want to call the shots on what gets said and written by people everywhere.

Juxtapose that picture of a person against the one who wears Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals and who, with great swagger, says that a native speaker can't be wrong.  The two are polar opposites. 

Of course, no one ever controls language development, written or spoken.  Language just doesn't work that way.  About 88% of people finish high school, and only about 28% of people finish college.  So what kind of person is it that thinks knowing all the rules about language really gets them anywhere in life?  Yet, if I go to the website of Grammarly.com, I see all kinds of promises using the bandwagon approach of propaganda.  They even advertise that linguists have built their site.  While that may be true (because linguists have been working on making machines detect and use natural language), they make it sound as if linguists endorse the premise of this site with all of its rules, promises, and judgmental attitudes toward the average person who speaks English (which represents about 72% of the people if not graduating from college is the criterion).

Linguists know better.  They know how language works; they're the scientists of language. Grammarians, on the other hand, are those people who want to control language and judge rather harshly all who have inferior knowledge to their own.

The real kicker to me is the main boon of the Grammarly.com website.  The site claims to make you a better writer.  Are these people going to be surprised when in a few short years writing will be relegated to the world of captions and single word identifications!

While there will probably always be little ladies in long skirts and tennis shoes feeling good about trying to police the language they hear and see, people of that ilk will dwindle in the face of the need for using video to record and apps to transmit how real people communicate, the 72% who relate to working, making money, and using communication that meets their needs very adequately.  People aren't calling grammarians to help them - they're calling those who can write... in code.

The people in Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and sandals aren't surprised one bit about this!

What I have to know

Time changes everything and everybody.  Our genes are linked to time from the time they trigger development at inception in the womb to the last day of decay when the body's in the ground.  It changes us in stages both in body and mind.

My good friend and colleague from 12 years ago has been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for the last 5 years.  He's young, but something about his genes triggered this disease at that time in his life.  It has ravaged him, and he stands as a constant reminder that time does take its toll in one way or another on us all.

My recent bout with a leg joint disease reminds me too that time is going to take its toll.  I'm not immune.  I still bear some of the visible effects of this bout.  

And somehow, I still have to be comfortable in my skin or I go crazy.  Before my body descends any further into the stages of aging, I have to know that I have intellectually taken right paths, or at least good paths, paths that pay dividends physically, mentally, and spiritually, that bleed over into the next generation.  I constantly evaluate that.  So far?- so good.

Just can't compete

A recent online newsletter touted the forward thinking of Sweden's school system.  They were retraining their teachers to teach an integrated curriculum.  It seems their people at the top didn't like their students taking subjects in isolation.  The article thought this was a first in the world move on the part of educators.

Apparently, the writer ignored or was ignorant of similar movements in the U.S. that have been occurring on a regular basis.  The first wave came in the form of magnet schools, but the during the last 5-7 years Harmony schools and STEM academies have been popping up all around the U.S. with similar approaches.  I suppose the fact that Sweden was making this a system wide change in one fell swoop is a first, but then again, Sweden is only the equivalent of maybe five states in the U.S., so a change would be much easier to accomplish in a smaller environment.  If the truth were known, the same number of children in the U.S. and in Sweden are probably undergoing the same type of formal training.

I would say, however, the world is about to see a really large change.  It's not in the area of integration of ideas anymore.  That is yesterday's news.  The change will be away from building knowledge of what has gone before, in favor of being able to use collections of ideas to predict the future.  In math and science this is known as learning the algorithms that have produced results and being able to change the algorithm's constituents to yield different results.  Presentation skills will supplant reading and writing skills.  Knowing where and when to touch a screen will be as important as having a high level of vocabulary.  Having the right set or combination of apps to rely on will be much more important than being able to recount and recall who did something when.

Schools that can read the tea leaves of where the world is headed will produce the next generation's leaders and wealthy class.  When cyber hackers are one of the world's biggest problems because they can steal identity and cost businesses billions of dollars in theft and prevention of theft, then knowing facts, or even integrated ideas, can't compete with what is available outside of the educational circle.

As always, there will be those lone voices who lead the way.  My concern is that this time, the usual number of followers a few years later (the better-late-than-never crowd) won't be able to follow.  They won't be able to even speak the same language as those who lead the way.  They'll be left behind.  That has happened in history before, but during the most recent time that happened, the Middle Ages, the masses suffered greatly.  At one point, (the Black Plague) the world shed its population by somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3.  It saddens me to think that could happen again.  But when people willingly leave themselves behind...

The first order of things

I don't mind arrogance.  I recognize the strategy, especially for those who would lead a cause or try to become a symbol for change.  I also don't mind so-called arrogance in those whose confidence derives from higher levels of education, who have read widely about a subject and know the percentage chance of something being true or of something being plausibly true due to research.

The link here connects to a teacher's resignation letter.  It's one of the longest ones I've ever read because she was trying to lead a cause.  I think something got lost in translation, if her motive was to cause change, because of the blah-blah-blah effect of the length of the letter.  But more than the arrogance that comes from the righteous cause she wants to lead is the fact that she names her profession as an English teacher.  Now, my thinking is that if a person wants to name an area of expertise (in her case, only an area of experience) and then launch a tirade against "the system," then she better have her own craft of English in perfect order.  If not, she is no better than the system she claims is broken.  Her own area of teaching needs to have some additions to her own bank of knowledge.

My mother used to explain to me that I should not criticize someone else (implied something else, like a system) unless I had my own ducks in a row.  Otherwise, it would be the same as the pot calling the kettle black. That's a good saying to know.  It has kept me in touch with my roots.  I recall also some other good, even if ancient, advice from when I was young.  Why try to remove the speck from someone else's eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye?  I'm just thinking that this woman needs to apply these principles before she starts lashing out.

In this teacher's lengthy letter, she makes the following statement as she compares students she taught before the advent of NCLB with those she taught after the initiative.

... my students from five to eleven years ago still had a sense of pride in whom they were and a self-confidence in whom they would become someday.

Here's the log in her eye: in whom they were and  in whom they would become.  In whom of course is a possibility in English, but only if whom is the only word following the preposition.  In the case of a clause following the preposition, which is a noun slot, the choice for who or whom depends on the pronoun's use in the clause. In the two clauses this teacher uses, the choice should be who since on both occasions it appears as the predicate nominative after the verbs of being and becoming.

Because she wants to cast stones instead of focusing on her own craft, this woman's words fall on my deaf ears.  First remove the log from your own eye, then remove the speck from someone else's.  It's the first order of things.  Violate it, and you should know that people are seeing your lips move, but not hearing a word!

Changed but a better fit

I have had an opportunity to look again at a language I learned some 40 years ago.  At the time I learned it, I thought it was so special and did everything I could to learn it well.  Time passed, and I exposed myself to it less and less.  But recently, I have reacquainted myself with reading it.  I like the language.  By this time in my life, I am very comfortable reading it.

But, something has changed.  It's not on a pedestal anymore.  I see many more aspects of it than I used to and know how to connect what it says a whole lot better because it belongs in a bigger world than I at first had imagined.  I know a whole lot more about translation principles now and work with other languages as well.  I have also seen this second language translated into a third and fourth language, not only from a second language into a first language.  It's a really different experience now to read the language that at one time I had thought was so special.

If I apply that principle to the important things in life, I get the same effect.  The world fits a larger context now.  My world view has more experiences to make up its mosaic.  Translation principles of what is really important have changed almost completely.  Enjoyment and comfort have taken on a whole lot more meaning.  And love?  My whole definition for that word has changed.  I'm not even sure I would use it anymore.  It's such a misnomer.  I know it when I see it, though, and it has a whole lot more to do with enjoyment and comfort, and a lot less with commitment and determination.