Meandering Through the Words by Liz Flaherty

I had to look up the word cabal this morning, because I'd never used it, and even context didn't clue me in on what it was. In truth, I should always look up words I don't know, because too often the person using them doesn't know what they mean either, so even context can really mess you up some. 

It sounds kind of silly, I guess, maybe even disingenuous, to say I love words, since I use so many of them. Some of them, like just and that and look, I use so often that when I do a global search of a manuscript and take out the unnecessary ones, I need to write a new chapter just to bring the book back to the length I want.

That might be an exaggeration. But not by much. 

When I was in high school--I think it was junior year--our literature class had to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Although I liked the wow factor of a young woman having an affair with a minister and carrying his child out of wedlock in the 17th century--after all, it would have been just as shocking in the middle of the 20th century and, of course, all Hester's fault--I hated the book. I still regret the six weeks we spent on it when we could have been reading something...readable. 

But I have to admit that even now I remember Hawthorne's overuse of the word ignominy and all of its derivatives. If he'd had global search abilities with his quill and rag paper, I'm sure he'd have used it a lot less. 

I try to understand why we read the things we read in class, why we were introduced to Shakespeare and why we read parts of Beowulf and the Iliad. It was to introduce us to classics. At the time, I thought it was to encourage us to love reading and learning and I couldn't understand why it fell so wide of the mark. I didn't like any of it. 

However, reading all kinds of books is what taught me I like reading genre fiction best. I don't particularly care if it changes my life. If I don't like it, I don't finish it--life is too short to read what I don't want to. (Case in point, I never read another Nathaniel Hawthorne book.) I read for entertainment and to learn things. Especially things I like to know that clarify other things. It's a wonderful chain, the learning one. 

I learned about seasonal disorder in a romance by Jackie Weger. I learned about the Iron Range and Minnesota's lakes in books by Kathleen Gilles Seidel. I learned about the 19th century in books written about it by people who did the research before they wrote them. 

If it were left to me, I would never have read most of the classics on my mental bookshelf at all. (Other than Louisa May Alcott--she's a whole life chapter unto herself. I'll spare you.) Except for the words I learned in them. I had to look them up and develop a wish to use them in drawing a picture a reader could see. Their writers used a plethora of words, and they never used one word when 56 of them would do. But they sure could draw those pictures. 

This was certainly the long way around from me having to look up the word cabal, wasn't it? I'm trying to find my point, and I think it's one I've made more than once. If you use words without understanding what they mean, you're telling lies. If you use words only to hurt someone or create a false picture of them, you become the villain of whatever story you're promoting. 

But if you learn from them, if you use them to explicate what you say and mean, they're like the gift that keeps on giving.  (No--I don't actually use the word explicate. I looked it up to be a showoff. You can do that, too!)

I hope when you read something that you enjoy and learn from it. Check sources. Quit in the middle if it's not making you happy. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody. 

Come see Nan and me at the Whyte Horse! 

The best of things... Liz Flaherty

When I can't think of things to write about--or, more likely, when I'm in danger of writing about the same things too often--I make lists. My favorite this or that or the other. Since I've complained fairly incessantly about the last couple of years, which haven't been my favorite anything, I thought I'd make a list of things about 2018 that were good things. Happy things. I'd love it if you'd offer up some things in the comments, too.

1. Best movie. I don't watch all that many, but I loved Mary Poppins Returns. The cast was so wonderful I don't know how they got so much goodness onto one screen. Seeing Dick Van Dyke dance and Angela Lansbury sing would have had me in tears if I hadn't been smiling so hard.

2. Best time. Thanksgiving weekend, when most of our immediate family was in one place. I remember when our oldest was born, thinking I'd never again be able to love anyone like I did that little baby, but then finding out with his sister and brother how love just grows and multiplies and gets stronger because it's braided instead of single-strand. There are a lot of braids when family gets together.

3. Best bittersweet moment. At my brother's funeral, when one of his best friends related a certain streaking story that relieved and delighted everyone who was there. Thank you, Jim Conley. There was much light offered by friends on that sad day, but yours was the brightest.

4. Best play. Ole Olsen Memorial Theatre, under the direction of Jayne Kesler, presented The Diary of Anne Frank. Kurt Schindler, who's been making me laugh since the day I met him, made me cry. Carsten Loe as Anne was...I don't have the words for how good she was. Sarah Luginbill's magic turned Ole's small stage into an attic so convincing you forgot it had ever been anything else.

5. Best song. When Duane sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

6. Best new place. There are many contenders for this--you only have to look at the buildings in downtown Peru--but Black Dog Coffee in Logansport is my favorite. Scott Johnson has done as much for art and artists of all media as anyone I've ever known, and he's still doing it.

7. Best TV show. Murphy Brown. It's not for everyone, I know, but it is perfect for me. No, better yet, it's less than perfect. Its characters are flawed and so are its stories.

8. Best book. Too many to choose from. My friend Nan Reinhardt's A Small Town Christmas is right up there. So are 2018 releases by Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Laura Drake, Mary Balogh...

9. Best day. Today.

So, Happy New Year. I hope you share your bests--or worsts. Mostly, I hope 2019 is wonderful.