There was a time–actually, most of my life–that I could not imagine spending a sunny afternoon in a movie theater–sacrilegious, if not immoral, to my native northern brain where even the least amount of sunshine is worshipped–never ignored. Finally, after years in the South, and now several in California, I have at last recovered from the entrenched fear that the sun will never shine again if I don’t take advantage of every moment its every appearance.

Now I’ve decided I need gray more than more sun, and I’m not getting enough of it in California. Therefore, the necessity of going to Paris a couple of weeks ago, and, Paris did not disappoint. There was gray, dark, and even snow–didn’t need to have had things go that far, but at least the snow didn’t last long. Not only was it soothing to sit in the dark theater watching more darkness unfold on the screen, while the sun blazed on outside, but it was fun to be reminded of my past life in France–the five years I spent there, even though I was mostly not in Paris itself.

Some things are just French, regardless of where you are in that country–like the colorful produce markets, the boulangeries full of baguettes and croissants, and the people–French in a way that’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there to see for yourself. And that’s what’s great about the majority of French movies–they give you generous slices of everyday life–French life, and in the case of Paris, the movie, about 24 slices of 24 lives, more or less. Unlike American movies that love to show things being bombed, blown up, or crashing into each other, French movies love to show the ordinary, everyday details of lives that relate so well to your own. French movies can be such a relief from all that non-stop American hyped-up action.

For me, to see Juliette Binoche looking like the average, believe it or not, French market shopper, dealing with the so familiar and often gregarious market vendor personalities, salesmen to the core, that I came to consider as part of the wallpaper of my French life, was like stepping back into the very ordinariness of my French past.

For three of those five French years, I lived on a street that hosted a 6-day a week produce market right outside my front door. All I had to do was step outside to find the most gloriously artful arrays of shapes and colors in the forms of fruits and vegetables, which often sent me running back inside to retrieve my camera in order to attempt capturing some of the perfection for posterity. The French all thought I was beyond odd–taking all those pictures of all that common stuff-lemons, lettuce, tomatoes, turnips, grapes, peaches, apples, bread, cheese, oranges, and olives. But after all, I was American, and so, such odd behavior was to be expected, excused, and humored. Under certain circumstances, the French can be quite tolerant. Paris was full of market scenes.

When I came back after my five years in France, so many Americans would ask me “Did you just love it?”, and of course expected me to go on and on, rapturously gushing about the beauty and the romance and all those things Americans think all things French are, until, perhaps, they actually find themselves living in France indefinitely, and not just on a prolonged vacation with a predetermined end.

So, no, the maybe surprising answer to those who have never embarked on a long-term foreign living experience, I didn’t “just love it,” at least not all of the time. I lived it. So, sometimes I loved it, sometimes I hated it, sometimes I was delighted with it, and at others annoyed by it, and sometimes it was simply OK. Just like Paris, the movie.

One thing the French are not shy about is showing the graphic realities of life in their movies or in real life. They are particularly not shy about the realities of bodily functions, or the real facts about where our food comes from. Still strongly influenced by my squeamish American/Puritanical roots, I could have done without Paris’s extended vomiting scene (wouldn’t have just a few sound effects accomplished what they needed?), and definitely would have been much happier had I not been overexposed to the horrors of a cavernous meat locker over stuffed with bloody animal carcasses hanging and dripping as if they were props on a Dracula set. (Maybe that scene will convince more people to consider vegetarianism as a lifestyle, however, so maybe there was a justifiable reason for showing the sad remains of the awful massacre.) When I lived in France, I learned very quickly not to go to the fresh meat part of the market–ghoulish is one word to describe what that part of the markets was like with all those poor animals stripped of their skins and hanging pathetically by their necks. The rabbits looked horrifyingly like cats, and it was already bad enough knowing that they were rabbits. I just couldn’t go there.

But on a brighter note, was the everyday delight, joie de vivre, and savoir faire that I encountered so many times in each day, if I took the time to notice it. The cafés and their patrons spilled out onto the sidewalks as if no one had a better or more important thing to do than sit there and drink coffee and have intense conversations…or maybe than just to sit there and watch the world go by. The outlandish displays of chocolates and pastries in the patisseries, which seemed to be every other shop on a given street, were enough to think you’d died and woken up in a real life Candyland–one where no one was fat. The fountains and statues mixed in with the more practical aspects of city life were constant reminders of the centuries upon centuries of life that had passed before, but were still remembered.

The aesthetics of the place alone would take your breath away–of course, you had to be in the right places for that to happen, because like everywhere else, France has plenty of not-at-all aesthetically pleasing sights too–stark public housing that makes you think you have suddenly been transported to a third world Communist country, industrial complexes made up of buildings of utilitarian and very ugly corrugated metal, suburbs with more look-alike houses than Wantaugh, Long Island, and the all-pervasive dog poop that’s pretty much everywhere. Happily, and aside from those meat locker scenes, Paris, the movie, did not show too many others of those unaesthetic places, but instead played to the tourist in us and let us glimpse the glories of Paris, the city.

When I left Paris, it was dark in California–and that felt right and kept the mood the movie had created. I had glimpsed my past, seen some gray skies, felt warm and cozy, if only vicariously, and was made to feel that it really was fall–so, it was Paris that came to my rescue from the relentless California sun. A trip well taken.

Yesterday I went to a spelling bee that my 11 year-old friend was in. I was excited because the fact that there was actually a spelling bee meant that at least in this one school, they are actually teaching spelling. Prior to now, I’d had my doubts.

Hard to see any concrete evidence that adults can remember any spelling they theoretically learned back when they were in school, as I know it was routinely taught back then, so I’m wondering if adults can get permission to go back and re-enlist in a spelling course in elementary school. The need is great.

The competition I saw yesterday was for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, so 10-12 year-olds. The list of words they had been given to study was formidable. Many were words no one has ever heard of, leave alone uses. I thought that was fairly pointless. What about the words that the masses use every day that adults can never seem to get right when it comes to spelling them?

I think there should be spelling bees for adults–with big cash prizes. I’m sure that’s the only way to inspire and motivate. How about a Deal or No Deal TV program for spelling–a contest where contestants win because they know how to spell, rather than because they just get lucky at a guessing game. And it could just be everyday words, no need for the exotic to make it challenging among today’s common man (or woman).

So many everyday words get butchered every day–not only on internet message boards, but on websites, in printed newspapers and newsletters, and in public signage everywhere. Open your eyes and think as you read. You’ll see how right I am. Your going to be amazed…see what I mean? That one is everywhere.

Some of the funniest spelling mistakes are found on online dating sites–people who, one assumes, are trying to make a good impression, but instead, are just making thinking people laugh. (Emphasis on thinking.) And that’s good too, but obviously not the intention.

A man in Texas has had me laughing for three years. He’s still looking for “a woman with a vanity.” `Now, I know that’s not exactly a spelling issue, but one of word usage, but I’m so tempted to subscribe to this dating site just so I can e-mail this long-suffering soul to let him know that a vanity can certainly be found on eBay, thereby eliminating the need for searching for a woman with one.

But back to the spelling. One man said he never “put on heirs”…which, I suppose is a good thing too, especially considering how heavy, to say nothing of cumbersome, carrying a group of them around could be.

A particularly attention-getting invitation was made by several men who implored women to “please bare with me”…intentional, Freudian slip, or just bad spelling? Oh, I know. These guys must belong to a nudist colony.

One guy professed–or was it confessed?–to having great carma–he never said if it was a Mercedes, Ferrari, or just a BMW.

Another said he keeps his tux under rap…would that be as in rap music?

And there were a number of men who were desperately, it seems, searching for their sole mates, leaving us to wonder if it was a bottom of a shoe or a kind of fish that was the object of their search.

Several wanted to loose weight…I’m not quite sure how that would be done–how do you make fat loose?–and that assumes that it’s started out tight, but have you ever seen tight fat? That’s another scary thought.

From the man who liked to walk threw flee markets to the one who claimed to be have a great since of humor and the one who said he had concord the world, I would like to like to invite them all to an online spelling class. My 11 year-old friend, who placed third in the spelling bee yesterday, will be the teacher. She is more than qualified.

Things are already confusing enough and few are those who know that they LIE down on their beds as well as command their dogs to LIE down. Somebody needs to inform exercise class instructors everywhere–I have heard only one of them in years of listening, although, granted, I have not heard them all, use the correct verb when instructing people to LIE down on the floor…you know what they say, I need not repeat it here.

But there is further cause for confusion. The very bad news is that the past tense of the verb “to lie”–the one meaning to put one’s body in a horizontal position is–are you ready?—LAY.  I warned you this was bad news.

So if you want to say that yesterday (necessitating the past tense) you “put your body in a horizontal position” on your bed to take a nap, but you want to use the correct three-letter verb beginning with “l,” you will say correctly that yesterday you LAY down on your bed to take a nap….not “laid .” You can, however, say that “yesterday our hen LAID three eggs.”  That’s the past tense of TO LAY. I admit it’s confusing. For starters, I would feel ever so much better if we could at least just get the present tense right.

You are probably wondering, who cares about all of this anyway? I, for one, care a lot about the rather desperate state of our language. If we just ignore all of the rules, and everyone just starts making up his/her own and saying whatever comes into his/her head, in no time at all we will have little to no idea of what it is that others are trying to say to us in the first place. Anarchy has rarely led to clarity.

When we learn a new language, it helps to have some idea of the grammar rules. Have you ever spoken to someone from another country who is just staring to learn English?? If they do not have a grip on the basic grammar rules their sentences are often incomprehensible. That’s the way we will all become if we don’t start paying attention now. We need to either learn to say it right, or risk not being understood or, worse yet, appearing to be more ignorant than we would like to. (And do we want to appear ignorant at all?)

As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I find that non-native speakers find it most disconcerting to hear incorrect English used by newscasters on TV, or to read it written in newspapers. These are places where one would expect to find correct usage. What they hear in the everyday world that surrounds them is something else again and is additional cause for confusion. But at least they recognize the mistakes–I often wonder how many native speakers do. Perhaps it’s time to branch out and start teaching the natives.

  ]]> http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/to-lay-or-to-liea%c2%85that-is-the-questiona%c2%85/feed/ 0 http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/with-he-and-ia%c2%85/ http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/with-he-and-ia%c2%85/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:14:44 +0000 admin http://localhost:8888/wordpress-nancybabcockwrites/?p=446 [read the rest...]]]> That did it…I just heard it again. The TV was turned on to the 6:00 news–apparently nothing earth shattering was going on. A reporter was talking about a dispute between a suburban mayor and his city council. What I heard the reporter saying was something about a problem “between he and the council members”. Between HE…?????? My hair stood on end for perhaps the tenth time so far this week. Where did this reporter–as well as what now seems to be a majority of the American population–learn English? Obviously they have not learned it correctly.In this week’s Sunday paper there was a similar error in a nationally syndicated column. Here, the columnist said that it had taken “two weeks for my wife and I to pick out a new car.” I couldn’t resist. I wrote and asked him if his wife had not been part of the scenario would he have said, “it took two weeks for I to pick out a new car?” I doubted it then and I doubt it now. So question is, why did he, unconsciously perhaps, change the correct form of “it took two weeks for ME…” to the incorrect form of, “it took two weeks for my wife and I…”??? I cringe to think what he would have said if he had been referring to his wife in pronoun form….what do you want to bet that he would have said, “it took two weeks for she and I…”?????? I would put any amount of money on it. Yet, I highly doubt that he would ever say, “it took two weeks for she to pick out a new car.” At least I hope he would never say that.The disappearance of what used to be known as the “objective case” has reached epidemic proportions in American speech patterns. More often than not you hear people everywhere saying “with he and I,”  “for she and I,”  or “they told he, she and I “…next it will be, “it was sent to she and we.” (I haven’t actually heard that one yet, but I’m sure it’s just around the corner and the next step in the total annihilation of correct grammar usage in American English.)

If people would only stop and think and break down any compound like “she and I” to just one or the other and see what sounds right–then apply that same form to the other member of the compound and voilà, they would have correct English! I am putting great faith in that no one will think it is correct to say ‘with I,’ or ‘to he,’ or ‘for she.’ The happy result will then be that we will again start to hear the melodious ring of ‘with HIM and ME’ and ‘for HER and ME,’ and ‘they told HIM, HER, and ME.’ Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

To their credit, I am quite certain that the majority of people who are making this particular error actually think that they are making a heroic effort to speak correctly. They are hearing their mother’s admonitions ringing in their ears (and probably not melodiously) of the countless times when they were first learning to talk and were corrected when they said, “Him and me want some ice cream,” and, of course their mothers were right to correct them in this case. I only hope that mothers today are correcting their children when they say “for he and I”…but somehow I doubt it.

I can’t help it–every time I hear one of these glaring grammatical goofs on TV, or on the radio–especially when they occur in a prepared script–I make a note and eventually try to find the time to inform the speaker or the writer of what was wrong-as well as why it was wrong. Sometimes their response is most gracious and grateful. Sometimes there is no response at all. And sometimes, as with David E. Kelley regarding a script he had written for Ally McBeal, the response is downright hostile. (How could I dare to challenge his writing-even on a very obvious error?)

What I try to point out in each instance is the obligation that a writer has to the public to present correct English within a TV or movie script, assuming that it is consistent with the character being portrayed. When the fictitious character is a lawyer, as in Mr. Kelley’s case, one would expect that the lawyer would use correct English.

With TV reporters, even–or especially, those morphed from lawyers, one would assume (or at least I assume) that correct English would be used. But then again, maybe not.

One morning, during a much publicized trial of national interest, one of NBC’s legal correspondents–a high-powered, very hip lawyer from Miami who regularly offered his take on the day’s proceedings on the Today Show–came out with the worst grammar imaginable. Either his mother couldn’t get through to him way back when, or he has a faulty memory, or he just doesn’t care what comes out of his mouth. Whatever the reason, the results on that morning were most unfortunate.

Then, as if Katie Couric herself had landed in my living room, I was struck speechless and in a state of beyond disbelief to hear this man say, “Her and her mother told witnesses…” Yikes! Wonder if he would also say simply, “Her told witnesses…” I should have written and asked him, but I was incapable of picking myself up off the floor.

  ]]> http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/with-he-and-ia%c2%85/feed/ 0 http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/please-mr-alito-to-the-rescue/ http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/please-mr-alito-to-the-rescue/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:14:44 +0000 admin http://localhost:8888/wordpress-nancybabcockwrites/?p=443 [read the rest...]]]> Being the grammar nut that I am known to be, I nearly stood up and cheered when I heard Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito deliver his nomination acceptance speech. Given that he was preceded on the speaker’s platform by Dubya, it is no wonder that hearing Alito’s grammatically correct and clearly delivered speech, complete with natural intonations and inflections to give it the intended meaning, was a huge contrast to what we had just been subjected to.

I don’t know that Alito and I share common political perspectives, but that’s not what this is about. I appreciate seeing a person–and perhaps especially a man, since men are supposedly language-challenged–who can use the language as it should be–something so rare these days that I can’t remember the last time I noticed it. Right after hearing his speech that day, I sent an e-mail to a friend saying how impressed I was and that perhaps Alito should be named Grammar Czar. We sure could use one of those.

Apparently I was not the only one who noticed. In a piece from the 11/07/05 NY Times, both the judge and his father were noted for their language prowess.

One legislator took to calling him (Alito’s father) “the professor.” Mr. Applebaum said of Mr. Alito, who had emigrated from Italy as a child: “He would never hesitate to correct anyone’s English. He’d come right out and say: ‘Don’t use the word ‘presently. Use the word ‘currently.” Years later, lawyers working in Washington would get documents kicked back to them by Mr. Alito’s son with what Professor Kmiec describes as ‘arrows and cross-outs and rewritings that reflect this senior Alito’s instruction on how to write a good, clear sentence, an organized, structured paragraph, not to bury the lead, as it were, so as not to keep your client guessing as to what he can or cannot do.’”

Can’t we find someone else to nominate for the Supreme Court? This man’s talents should not be wasted when our language is in such an alarming state of dilapidation and disarray. Need some for instances?

When is the last time you actually heard someone say “There are two things?” Listen, and you will hear that everyone says–and often writes, “There’s two things.” In other words, the ‘s at the end of ‘there’ means ‘is.’ ‘Is’ is clearly incorrect because two things are not one thing–that is, two things are plural and one thing is singular. Plural things take plural verbs (like ‘are’) and a singular thing takes a singular verb (like ‘is’). Where and how did we go so wrong that now everyone on the planet–with perhaps the exception of Mr. Alito and me (and I’ve had to catch myself more than once) says, “There’s a thousand reasons…?”

And here’s another example of what well-educated people have fallen into: “Mary went with Joe and I,” or,”Mary told Marcia and I.” Worse yet, but still frequently heard, “Mary told she and I.” Yikes! Mr. Alito, Senior is no doubt doing flip-flops in his grave, no disrespect intended.

I once had the nerve, as it turned out, to correct David E. Kelly on a line in an Ally McBeal episode that had high-powered lawyers with presumably high-powered educations to match, succumbing to the “With-He-and-I” syndrome. He did not take kindly to correction, but I noticed on a later episode that the problem had been taken care of. One for our side, Mr. Alito.

How about the lay and lie thing? Oh my word–Mr. Alito and I have few that we can count on our side on this subject. Suffice it to say that each time I hear an aerobics instructor tell an exercise class to “lay down on the floor,” or a TV reporter say, “He was laying in the street,” I want to shout, “It is not possible!”–unless in each case they were talking about laying eggs. Similarly, it is impossible for someone to have “laid down,” or to be “laying” on the bed–unless of course egg laying is being referred to again.

Really, saving the English language is more than a full-time job and there are far fewer people who are qualified to head up that effort than there are to serve on the Supreme Court. We need Samuel Alito to save us from total linguistic anarchy, to which we are well on our way and where we will soon arrive, unless something/someone steps in to take charge and reverse the stampede.

Please, Mr. Alito, think of what your father would say.

I did that yesterday and boy, was I surprised at what I found! It was right there at the top of the Google search page for my name–the very first entry–and here’s what it said: “Nancy Babcock Becomes A Bride.” What’s more, I apparently did this 16 years ago…and it was reported in the New York Times, so it must be true. Oh my word, I need to file a missing person’s report. Where’s my husband?

I wonder where I’ve been all this time. Am I living in a parallel universe from that of internet reality? That could explain a lot beyond my now questionable marital status.

It was 16 years ago that I moved to France–or so I’d been thinking. Maybe I got married instead, Or, perhaps the marriage, including the apparent fact that my husband is missing, was just lost in the chaos of the move. Yikes! What did I wear? I must still have the dress around here somewhere–I never throw anything that significant out…oh wait a minute, I do recall pitching my first wedding dress, but wasn’t that in a past life? Now I’m really mixed up.

So, about that missing person’s report. Who could my husband be? Do I get to choose? I suppose the choosing has already been done, but in case it hasn’t, who would I choose to go searching for, assuming he’s actually out there and waiting to be found? This is great–since I’ll get police help with the search, I’d better make this good–really good.

OK–I choose tall, dark, and handsome–I know that’s not original, but sometimes it’s best to go for traditional. Think “Big,” as in the Sex and the City character, but a few years older.

My missing mate is someone who decides spontaneously to jump on a plane to meet me for the first time at an airport over 1,000 miles away from where either of us lives. Someone who begins our first ‘date’ at Costco and ends it counting falling stars from a Sedona balcony…and then spends the next 2 days with me, no destination in mind, driving around Arizona in an open Mustang convertible. Someone who invites me to travel across the country to go raspberry picking with him…and his mother. Someone who, when faced with the myriad choices at Starbuck’s, chooses mocha frappuccino, and who travels to Mexico twice in one week to kick the tires of a newly arrived Spanish bull.

So, that should make it easy enough to find him, but then again…what if he’s not in this world at all? Do police searches cover parallel universes? I’ll have to check that out.

But wait…there’s another Google listing for me and this time the news is rather grim. I am dead. I allegedly died just after this past Christmas. Oh my.

I’ve been saying all along that my recent move to California has made me feel that I’ve died and gone to heaven–I thought it was just an expression, and also just a feeling, but perhaps it’s a whole lot more. Why haven’t I Googled myself before?

And it gets even more curious. Since discovering my state of apparent marital bliss–or perhaps death–I have continued to search Google for any other of my recent activities of which I have perhaps previously been unaware.

My original intention had been to see where, in the scheme of things, nancybabcockwrites.com showed up on Google’s list. I have discovered that sometimes it’s on the first page of results, and near the top, in the #3 position. But then, overnight, it can disappear to its burial ground at the bottom of p.6 of the Google results. Why this is, when other listings never seem to move around at all, I cannot say. There are many things I cannot say.

However changeable this, my website’s position, continues to be, there is one thing that remains sure and steadfast in this mostly unpredictable line-up of the Google world. The unchanging #1 listing for me, Nancy Babcock, says irrefutably, that I have become a bride. So, it must be true.

Break out the champagne!

At least I went early–and in my own defense, I must say it was an impulse stop, as I was trying to maximize my trip through town as I was off to buy hay for Morgan. (Morgan’s my horse, for those who haven’t met him.) What I wanted to get was not crucial for The Big Food Fest that tomorrow has become, but the object of my mission was something I could take as a hostess gift to the dinner I’ll be attending, but not cooking.

So, there I was…at Safeway on the morning before Thanksgiving. The place was pretty mobbed, and not with the usual suspects of women, kids, and teenagers from the nearby high school. It was mostly full of men…men?? Yes, men. Lost Men.

Some looked bewildered, some looked grumpy, and all looked lost, as they charged up and down the aisles in search of maraschino cherries, cranberry sauce, stuffing mix, and spinach dip. Not living up to the male reputation of never stopping to ask, these guys were grabbing anyone who walked by to get directions through this usually no-man’s land of a maze. I bet it was the first time this almost-ended year that most of them had set foot inside a store that provides most of what they need to survive–food. I also bet that their wives had sent them off on this errand just to get the guys out of the house and out of their hair–knowing that sending them to the grocery store would keep them gone for hours.

Even though I’m in this very store at least three times a week, there I was in the question line, along with all the Lost Men. What I couldn’t find was something that had made a sudden first-time appearance in this store just last week–cheese straws. Southerners know what these are–for the rest, think of shortbread with cheese baked in, instead of sugar. I’d never heard of them until I lived in Atlanta, and I’ve been addicted ever since. Here in California, however, I’ve been an addict without a source–until last week; and then, there they were…appearing as mysteriously and unexpectedly as those ruby slippers that so shocked Dorothy when they turned up on her feet.

Cheese straws in California?? Do Californians even know what they are? I was about to find out.

After returning to the very spot in the store where I had encountered them last week, and seeing that they were no longer there, I was beginning to suspect I’d been hallucinating…but wait, no that couldn’t be. I still have the bag of them I’d bought, so had it been a hallucination, it had come with tangible benefits–and hallucinations rarely do that.

So I got in line with the Lost Men to ask one of the beleaguered Safeway checkers, turned talking store directories, where the cheese straws had been stashed. One of the Lost Men, one of the grumpy sorts, pushed his way ahead of me in line–as if I were wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak–to get his directions to the maraschino cherries. I decided not to add to his obvious unhappiness at being there on such an annoying and seemingly impossible mission, and so I didn’t assert myself by claiming my rightful place ahead of him.

When I got my belated turn to ask directions to the cheese straws, I realized I might as well have asked for fairy dust–the checker guy had no idea what I was talking about…and neither did the checker next to him or the one next to her. He did, however, volunteer to lead me to the bowels of the store in search of the on-duty manager.

Once found, the manager did actually know what cheese straws were–although she seemed less than thrilled with their arrival in her already crowded store. She assured me, with thinly veiled displeasuere at being burdened with them, that they were only a seasonal item. She led me and the checker guy on a trek to the farthest reaches of the store, to the well hidden corner to which the poor cheese straws had been banished. As far from their original location in the store as they could possibly be, and as buried as they now are, they’ll still be there next year at this time since they’ll never have been noticed (or recognized) by either shoppers or store personnel.

On the way to the hidden corner, we encountered legions of Lost Men, bearing the wild eyed looks of agitated lost dogs, each one grabbing at our leader (the manager) or my companion (the checker guy) to throw at them the name of whatever it was they had been sent to retrieve. Cranberries, naturally, in all their possible forms (fresh, sauced, jellied, whole but in a can…). Balsamic vinegar. Baking powder. A certain brand and kind of butter. Cooking spray. Sour cream. Leeks. Hardly surprisingly, not one of them was on the hunt for cheese straws.

But, that’s what I was there to buy, and once I’d found them, I loaded up, both for hostess gifting and for me. And now that I have the name of the company making them—The Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory (I just knew it had to be Southern), I’ll never have to rely on the whims of Safeway to stock them, or will i ever have to go without them, again. I am thankful for that, minor detail that it is, as well as for so much, much more.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(I do hope all of those Lost Men found their ways home with what they had been sent to fetch too.)

I have good news! You know how there is a great need for more jobs all over this country? Well, I’ve found one place that really needs more workers–and fast! And the best part about it is that this need is right in your own backyard–well, it’s in part of your considerably enlarged backyard, now that you are president.To illustrate my point–before I even make it–I have just wasted two and a half HOURS, most of it on hold…with…and here’s where they need more workers asap–the IRS!

Yes, Mr. President, the IRS is in a calamitous state. There are not nearly enough people to handle the incoming calls, and once these calls finally get answered, no one there at the IRS can answer the questions that were the purpose of the calls. I told you it was calamitous.

I have what I thought was a simple question to ask the IRS. Apparently no question is simple when it comes to taxes, because everyone at the IRS is very specialized, to the point that they know nothing outside of their designated area–and I’m not so sure they know anything about what they’re supposed to know in their designated areas anyway, because of the four people I talked to, none could answer any questions I had, none of them even had a clue. None.

Supposedly, the problem with my one question is that it involves two areas of specialty. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and “Itemized Deductions.” After a 20-minute wait on hold, a young-sounding woman whose couldn’t-care-less attitude was all too evident, couldn’t even understand my question, even though I put it to her in a dozen different ways–and the question isn’t even complicated. Believe me, if I am asking a question about taxes, it could not be complicated.

According to this couldn’t-care-less IRS employee, NO ONE in the entire IRS knows about both HSAs and Itemized Deductions. According to her, it’s not allowed for anyone in the IRS to know anything outside of his/her own specialty area, and I’m not convinced that this woman knew the first thing about her own supposed area to start with. Now that is not only inconvenient, it is negligent and an improper use of the taxpayers’ money–and I am a taxpayer who is protesting. Right there is a need for several armies of people to be hired to fill in these enormous gaping holes in the “system”–can this even be called “a system” if none of the parts is connected to the others?

This first woman sent me off, rather hurriedly, I might add, to another hold time of at least 20 minutes to wait for an “Itemized Deductions Specialist,” despite my protests that my question had as much or more to do with the HSA end of things than with Itemized Deductions. But off I went, regardless.

This time an older, much nicer sounding woman in Jacksonville, FL, with an infinitely better attitude was on the line. True to what the alleged HSA specialist woman had told me, the Itemized Deductions Specialist woman knew nothing–no, less than nothing–about HSAs. She didn’t even know what HSA stands for–she asked if it was an insurance company. Not good, Mr. President, not good.

At least this Jacksonville woman had a pleasant personality and a sense of humor…something that I had heard is not common in the world of IRS employees. (And that rumor is most definitely true based on my overall experience today.) She had to put me on hold several times to try and figure out what to do with me just to get me to a place where someone in the IRS would know the answer to my question. At least she offered hope…and she was trying.

Finally, she announced with a notable sense of accomplishment, she was going to send me to the “Complex Issues Area.” That really made me laugh, because my question was NOT complex–at all. Then, she started to ask me if I would mind taking a survey, but then realized that she couldn’t really ask me to do that as she was going to send me on to this “Complex Issues” place…when I asked what the survey was about, we both had a good laugh when she said “about whether you have been well served at the IRS today”…and at that point I had no idea how un-funny that was about to become.

Another 25 minutes on hold waiting for the Complex Issues Specialist, and the phone was picked up by a very stressed-out sounding man. First problem: he was NOT a “Complex Issues Specialist”–he seemed to have never heard of the breed—he was an HSA Speciaist, as he grouchily informed me. So here I was, back to square one after nearly an hour of this run-around to nowhere.

He was pretty grumpy, I have to tell you, Mr. President. I’m sure that working for the IRS is no picnic, especially with its having this seeming chaos and confusion among its rank and file, but this man is in bad need of a happy pill. Really bad.

He practically hung up on me, but not before practically shouting at me what by then I was already most painfully aware–that he was an HSA specialist and knew NOTHING about anything else. I guess my error was in trying to make him see that my question did have to do with HSAs, in addition to having to do with Itemized Deductions. I guess such questions are also NOT ALLOWED, because he just could not handle that news, Mr. President. He sent me flying right out of his door, via the phone, to another HALF HOUR hold time. I had no idea who I was waiting for by then, because this latest HSA Specialist man with the short fuse (and NO sense of humor, I might add) had never heard of the Complex Issues Area that the nice woman from Jacksonville supposedly had sent me to.

Finally, FINALLY a new woman (to me) picked up. I asked if she was in Complex Issues…she seemed a bit bewildered at that, and hesitated, as she probably thought of her own pending third divorce from her illegal alien to-be ex-husband, his pending jail terms, and the custody arrangements for his five children from-previous-relationships and their 25 pit bulls (now, I don’t really know all of that, sir, but that’s what came to my mind when I first heard that term “Complex Issues”).

No, this woman knew nothing of “Complex Issues,” as she was a “General Tax Questions Specialist”—translated, she knew less than the other three I’d already talked to, none of whom knew anything at all that I could tell.

She did manage to look up some bulletin that she asked if I had read…was she kidding? Me??? Read a bulletin on taxes??? I’m still trying to get to the newspapers of the past two weeks and the stack of 59 books piled next to my bed–and she asks if I’ve read some tax bulletin? Right. I’ll put it on the list.

I told her that if that bulletin had the answer that I needed, she should forward copies of it to the HSA and Itemized Deductions departments because they were the ones who really needed to know.

You see what I mean, Mr. President? This is the bad news: the IRS is in dire straits, and is about to implode from no one there knowing anything about anything. (No wonder the phone lines are so jammed–and in November, no less–months away from April 15, they are overflowing with calls being rerouted to places that don’t exist—like the alleged Office of “Complex Issues.”) Mr. President, THIS is an EMERGENCY of the Highest Order!

Quick! Forget even considering sending more troops to Afghanistan or anywhere else—except to the IRS! There you are, that’s part of the good news! That question is answered–no more troops going outside IRS borders…AND the needed new jobs are created, because more people are needed than the the number already there–and, this is all in one agency that YOU are ultimately in charge of, so you can wave a wand and there they are–new jobs!

And think of all the more new jobs there will be since these new recruits will need training–and trainings require trainers. I admit that these may be hard to come by as the present people at the IRS don’t have the first clue about anything (more of the bad news). But I’m sure there are plenty of outsiders who can grasp the issues better than those who have been paid for years to do that, but have so sadly failed. (Both good and bad news here.) As for the money to pay all of these new employees…stop paying the ones that are there and not doing anything because they don’t know anything, and use that money to pay the new ones. Let the current IRS employees be the ones to worry about finding new jobs. No one will even notice if for several months no one is sitting in those formerly occupied chairs at the IRS while the new recruits are getting trained–heck, no one in them right now is able to answer a really simple question, so take action and save us all what we are spending on salaries of people who aren’t doing the job in the first place. You have NOTHING to lose!

Go for it, Mr. President–so far we’ve solved three of your biggest problems–what to do about sending more troops to Afghanistan (NO), how to create new jobs (do it at the IRS), and how to save the IRS from implosion by ignorance (fire the present crew and replace them with the troops McCain would have sent to Afghanistan).

Pretty neat, all things considered, don’t you think, Mr. President?

Sincerely,

A simple taxpayer looking for a simple answer to a simple tax question ]]> http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/409/feed/ 0 http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/can-you-hold-a-moment-please/ http://www.nancybabcockwrites.com/2011/07/can-you-hold-a-moment-please/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:14:41 +0000 admin http://localhost:8888/wordpress-nancybabcockwrites/?p=356 [read the rest...]]]> I have transferred my phone service to Vonage. They sure have AT&T beat on price–especially if you want to call another country–let’s say some place far off and exotic, like Canada. AT&T really socks it to you if you unknowingly call Canada, as I did and inadvertently cost myself $30 for 20 minutes…and I didn’t even know the number I’d called was in Canada until I got the bill. So, time for a change and as Vonage doesn’t penalize you for calling across our northern border, I went with them. (And I can call western European countries for free too–amazing when I think of the mortgage-size amounts that AT&T demands.)

Overall, Vonage has been great. When I first signed up, I thought I had just married into a very large extended family as I was getting daily calls from all kinds of people I’ve never met to see if my phone service and I were on speaking terms. I had to stop taking their calls–there were just so many that I couldn’t keep up with all these new relatives on top of my usual callers.

Given that neither we nor Vonage is in a perfect world, there have been a couple of issues with sound quality that I’ve called Vonage about. The most recent time was just a few minutes ago, so the conversation is fresh in my mind.

One thing I’ve noticed when I call Vonage, and they’re not the only ones, but often I’m talking to someone at the other end of the earth–someone whose English is not of the native variety, although all of the Vonage people I’ve talked to have at least been fluent, but “fluent” doesn’t necessarily mean “fully functional.”

Today I talked to “John”–and I sincerely doubt that that was really his name…Juan perhaps, but definitely not John. I think it was his first day. He seemed very eager to please, but unsure of how to do what he needed to. Twice he asked if he could call me back “in two or three minutes” while he did some “documentation.” Each time he called back within 30 seconds. And each time I was back connected to John, I wondered why we had bothered with the call back routine at all. Here’s how it went:

John: “Could you hold a minute please?”

Me: “Sure.”

30 seconds later…

John: “Would you mind holding just a minute please?”

Me: “No problem.”

30 seconds later…

John: “If you could just hold for a couple of minutes…”

Me: “OK”

30 seconds later…

John: “Just a few more minutes while I complete the documentation…”

(What in the world was all this ‘documentation’ he kept talking about? All I needed was to have some questions anwered about the quality of sound I was getting on my service–no documentation reqired. And anyway, hadn’t he already done the ‘documentation’ during the time I was waiting for him to call me back? Maybe he was working on writing his latest novel and couldn’t be interrupted with Vonage details. I didn’t ask, thinking it wouldn’t help anything and would only confuse matters more than they apparently already were.)

Me: “OK”

This bit of John’s asking me to hold every 30 seconds went on and on and on for at least ten minutes. At one point I stopped responding and just started laughing and that really did confuse poor John.

Me: “If anyone is listening to this ‘conversation’ they’re definitely laughing.”

John: “Don’t worry M’am, no one is listening.” (Did we have something clandestine going on here?….and, someone needed to clue John in on the fact that many of us really don’t like being addressed as ‘Ma’m,’ but we were so far from being able to address that point, that I let it go without comment; if I hadn’t, I’d still be unsuccessfully trying to explain it all to John.)

Me: “I’m not worried, John, just thought it would be funny for them.”

John: “Oh, I see. I apologize M’am.”

(I don’t think John had a clue about what I was talking about or, more importantly, finding funny. His requests for me to hold, coming every 30 seconds as they were, had made him take on the persona of my microwave with its timed beep reminders that whatever is inside is ready to come out…and that mental image was what was in my head, but, again, no way to explain that to John.)

Finally, John had news.

“I’m going to have to transfer you.” (I felt like I had a debilitating and undiagnosed disease and was being sent to a specialist in another country, and actually, I was.)

“You need to go to “Advanced Technical Support,” John gravely and apologetically announced. I was beginning to think that the sound problems I’d been experiencing with my phone service were all in my head anyway, and I almost told John to drop the case. But, I played along and agreed one last time when John posed the final question… “Will you be able to hold for a minute, please?”

What’s even more weird, is the attention he’s been given since his untimely departure from this life. I mean, two weeks of incessant news coverage–of what?? At best are the retrospectives on his life, at worst are the ghoulish re-hashings of poor Michael’s last minutes, and the unending speculation about how it all happened, and then more obsessing about his left-behind assets, debts, and children, all the more ‘interesting’ now that he’s not here to oversee them.

But over and above all that, is the ultimate in weird…and that’s us–all of us who have supported this usurping of our news sources so that the only news entity on earth (could be only a slight exaggeration here) that wasn’t broadcasting Michael’s memorial service live was NPR. Thank heavens for NPR. CNN succumbed completely, not unexpectedly. Is this what CNN was supposed to be about? It became a worldwide news fixture with its live coverage of the Gulf War, and whether or not we consider that to have been worthy of the coverage it got, it still was a fairly significant world event with thought-to-be potential cataclysmic effects, or so it seemed at the time. Is Michael Jackson’s memorial service on a level with that?

While it seems like what must have been the majority of souls in this country were fixated on the star studded goings-on inside the Staples Center in LA, the American President Barack Obama–does that name ring a bell?–was in Moscow negotiating so that we have less of a chance of being blown up in a nuclear holocaust. Is anyone aware of this? That’s what concerns me–where are our priorities?

What all of this total obsessive attention to Michael Jackson–with a passing glance at Sarah Palin’s latest antic–says, is not so much about Michael or Sarah, but everything about us and our culture and what we value most. In a word, entertainment.

Perhaps this is about the culture of the world, given Michael’s reported even greater popularity in other countries, although I doubt other countries have suspended all other news to cover and scrutinize every coming and going from Michael’s mother’s house over the past two weeks.

And here’s another weirdness. For all of Michael’s success and popularity, most agree that his gig had been up here in the US for some time–which is why he was staging his planned comeback out of the US. And yet, from the reaction of the masses, including the media blitz that has likely perpetuated that, you would think we’d experienced the equivalent of the Wizard of Oz being ripped from the midst of the munchkins.

More weirdness: Michael could never have staged as big a comeback in life as the one that he has in death, so there was no way he could ever have enjoyed any of this colossal outpouring of adoration while still on the earthly plane. It would never have happened, to this degree anyway, had he continued to live. I only hope he is enjoying it from where he is now.

Can we wrench ourselves away from this obsession with weirdness? Or are we what’s really weird? There’s no wrenching away from ourselves.

It’s interesting. At his memorial service, Michael Jackson was proclaimed to the “the greatest entertainer that ever lived”…as if that were the highest honor and achievement any earthly being could ever hope to attain. And perhaps for many, it is. Interesting, again, as a commentary on us. It’s also just weird.