In Defense of Participles

Are students taught about participles any more? I, for one, am getting sick and tired of hearing people who should know better using a participle when a past tense is called for. Chief among this group are the TV newsreaders, who prefer to be called “anchors.”

Perhaps that appellation causes them to think they know something about matters nautical. If that were so, they’d never report, “The boat sunk in 100 feet of water.” No, no, no! The boat didn’t “sunk;” it SANK! Why do they make that mistake when they’d never make the opposite mistake and say, “The boat has sank”?

Sink, sank, sunk, sinking. Present, past, past participle, present participle (also gerund). Does no one learn to conjugate verbs anymore?

Same goes for stink, stank, stunk, stinking.

And you wonder why I’m sometimes referred to as the anal-compulsive grammarian?

Book Review

The Tender Bar

By JR Moehringer

Remember that book you’ve always thought you had inside you? You know the one I mean; a cross between Animal House and The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met. The one that’s populated by the loons, goons, and weirdos that have crossed your path and defined your character. The one that actually explains how you became who and what you are. Well, you can forget about it; JR Moehringer has beaten you to it.

This excellent memoir—in spite of the rather silly wordplay in the title—takes us along for the ride as a mostly fatherless boy travels the path to manhood with the help of the denizens of a bar called Publicans. Among the surrogate fathers are engaging characters like Bob the Cop, Smelly, and fuckembabe. And Uncle Charlie, the ringleader of this merry band.

Pulitzer-winner Moehringer has crafted his characters with loving care, putting one in mind of Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight. The reader can’t resist the invitation to get into the author’s head and watch while he learns to live, love, drink, dream, and deal with his fears and failures. The crazy path that takes him from his grandparents’ decrepit home in Manhasset to Arizona to Harvard to Lord & Taylor to the New York Times always leads back to Publicans and—fortunately for us—always leads back to writing.

Pour yourself another drink; it’s a comfortable place to spend some time.

Fermi’s Paradox

Anyone who has studied physics, and many that haven’t, will have heard of Enrico Fermi. In the first half of the 20^th century, Fermi and his colleagues were busily re-writing the physics textbooks. The collegial atmosphere that surrounded these brilliant men led to many discussions that ranged far from their specialties. One of those discussions was on the possibilities and probabilities of life—and particularly intelligent life—elsewhere in the universe.

Fermi had a reputation for doing lightning fast, complex computations in his head and came up with the result that there were probably billions of planets capable of supporting life, and millions of them probably held intelligent life. But if that was so, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” And that’s the paradox.

Where, indeed. A number of possible answers to that question have been posited, and if you’re interested enough to explore them, I suggest you Google “Fermi’s Paradox.” For now, let’s consider the three most obvious answers. First, ETs don’t exist. This answer is the least fun, and to me, the hardest one to accept. It requires us to believe that in the ten billion years that our galaxy has existed, on the billions of planets it encompasses, intelligent life has arisen on only Earth. It seems to me that the odds against this being the true answer are—well— astronomical.

Second possibility: They exist, but haven’t been in touch with us. And I ask, “why not?” Well, civilizations younger than us may not have the ability to communicate with us yet. Okay. But since Earth is a middle-aged planet of a middle-aged star, there must be civilizations older than we are, and one would think that they would have been in touch. If they have the capability to know of us and to communicate with us, it’s hard to believe that they wouldn't want to talk. Maybe they just haven’t found our number yet.

Third possibility, and my favorite: We have already been visited by aliens, and perhaps colonized and even fathered by them. To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the ET, and he is us.” There’s no generally accepted evidence that this has happened, although there are a number of researchers who believe they have found concrete evidence of long-term visitations by aliens to early Egyptian and Aztec civilizations. None of the evidence is incontrovertible but it is tantalizing. If this possibility interests you, let me suggest Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken.

One more possibility; call it 2a: Persistent civilizations have learned that the universe is a dangerous place, and the best way to get by is to keep your head down and make as little noise as possible. An excellent fictional treatment of this rule of survival can be found in The Forge of God and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, by Greg Bear.

Sooner or later, this puzzle, too, will be answered. At least that’s the way it seems to me.

Extinction

I recently saw a piece on television about the Great White Shark. What I know about sharks is from the movies Jaws and Blue Water White Death, or Shark Week on Discover. Interviewed in this piece was an earnest-sounding scientist who opined that the Great White Shark was, “as close as you can get,” to being an endangered species.

Well, this information sent me skittering to Wikipedia to do a little research on Superorder Selachimorpha. I knew sharks have been around for a long time, but I was surprised to find that, in one form or another, they’ve been swimming in our oceans for 420 million years! Just to put that in perspective, dinosaurs started showing up about 120 million years ago and were extinct by 60 million years ago. Meanwhile, several varieties of shark are still at the very top of the food chain.

But this isn’t about dinosaurs, or even sharks; it’s about extinction.

If you want to stir up an otherwise dull discussion, try bringing up the subject of endangered species. Everyone has an opinion about snail darters, spotted owls, California Condors, cheetahs, wolves or elephants. It’s become fashionable to contribute to the various wildlife funds devoted to saving a species, to do our bit to prevent species extinction.

So far, the results have been mixed. Some species, like mountain gorillas, are barely hanging on. Others have made a robust comeback, like the grey wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone, although ranchers in the area are not particularly pleased about the wolves’ taste for calves and lambs. But such projects are seen by many as the responsible thing to do. We are, after all, the caretakers of the planet.

It seems to me we’re missing something here. Extinction is a normal function of nature. Nearly every species that has appeared on Earth since the first cell was imbued with what we call “life” is extinct. From that first cell to T-Rex, to passenger pigeons and the dodo; all extinct. Truth be told, one day, a thousand, a million, or a billion years from now, we will ourselves be extinct. There is no doubt about it, except in the timing.

The extinctions to date have come about in different ways and for different reasons. Some have been as a result of asteroid collisions, some as a result of climate change, and some simply because some other species found the now-extinct species tasty.

But man is trying to change the rules and prevent further extinctions. Why? Because in all these millions of years, man is the first species to have a conscience, to feel guilt. Each time the bell of extinction rings, another angel loses his wings. (Not so much with plants and bugs, though. Interesting.) But our guilt is leading us in the wrong direction. As so perfectly put by a now-extinct television commercial: It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. No matter how well-intentioned, messing around with the balance of nature is an unforgiving lesson in the law of unintended consequences. (Watch for upcoming rant on kudzu.)

Better, I think, to cherish and enjoy the many works of nature as they exist, and preserve — electronically and artistically— the memory of those that slide into extinction.