Word on the Street

How Words Shape the Way We Experience the World

I’ve always considered words to be beautiful — the way they’re used, the way they sound and the way they can be used to shape our experience of the world around us.

I started thinking about this more after reading a brief in Tuesday’s St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times mentioning a Mississippi State University survey that looked at which words were “pretty” and which ones were “ugly.”

The Times reported:

“When classics professor Robert Wolverton asked students in his annual survey to list beautiful and ugly words, “eloquent” was a favorable choice for six of the 75 students that responded. A total of 148 words were deemed beautiful, including love” (for votes), “symphony” (four) and, strangely enough, “beautiful” (three votes). “Vomit” got six votes for ugly, followed by “puke” (five), “moist” (five), “ugly” (four, possible some of the same people who said “beautiful” was beautiful.)

The survey results reminded me of a recent National Public Radio story about the words people use to describe the word “bridge.” When Germans hear the word “bridge” — or die brucke — they’re likely to associate it with words such as “elegant,” “slender” and “peaceful” because of its feminine association. Hispanics, on the other hand, hear the word “bridge” — or el puente — and are likely to think of more masculine words such as “strong,” “dangerous” and “sturdy.” In short, we characterize nouns based on their grammatical gender.

NPR reported:

… the grammar we learn from our parents, whether we realize it or not, affects our sensual experience of the world. Spaniards and Germans can see the same things, wear the same cloths, eat the same foods and use the same machines. But deep down, they are having very different feelings about the world about them.

In reading that passage, I can’t help but wonder if native English speakers would have a more sensual experience of the world if our language feminized and masculinized words. Would we perceive places and things differently if we could more easily conjure up a variety of words to explain what we see? Would it be easier for us to detect beauty and ugliness in a befuddling world?

It’s a lot easier to think that a word sounds beautiful or ugly, or masculine or feminine, if you know the meaning of the word. I read a while ago, for instance, that said non-English speakers surveyed found “diarrhea” to be one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It makes sense when you think about it; the word sounds euphonious if we disregard what “diarrhea” actually looks like and means. “Syphillis” is another word that I’ve always thought sounded pretty despite its ugly definition.

Some other words I find beautiful are: “autumn,” “blossom,” “calm,” “embrace,” “gladiola,” “melody” and “mother.” These words make me happy, and make me think positive thoughts when I hear calming melodies, see gladiolas blossoming or feel a mom’s embrace.

Maybe my experience with these words adds to the beauty of the way they sound rather than the other way around. Or maybe I’m just too much of a word geek …

Keeping Traditions Alive, Even When You Live Alone

Being away from family during the holidays has been difficult, but it’s gotten easier, especially thanks to friends and surrogate parents who invite me to their houses so I won’t have to be alone. I’m grateful for the invitations, but I still miss the family traditions I grew up with — Easter supper with my parents and grandparents, decorating Eggs and then hiding them around the house and in the front yard, having an Easter basket filled with pink Peeps and Cadbury eggs.

Funny how traditions tend to disappear as you grow older and move away from home. They’re so closely associated with families that it’s hard to think about creating your own ones when you live alone. Often if I’m feeling alone during the holidays, as I was earlier today, I try not to think about the traditions and festivities that I’m missing out on back at home.

Instead, I head to a local coffee shop, or Panera or Starbucks so I can feel connected. I like my alone time, but there’s a distinct difference between feeling lonely and being alone. Alone time helps you learn to appreciate and enjoy your own company. Too much of it, though, can lead to loneliness.

Loneliness is when you feel isolated and cut off from others, like when you’re up late at night and you look outside and see no other lights. You begin to feel like you’re the only one awake in the world, and then sure enough, loneliness finds its way through the door without so much as a knock.

So many people I know — including some of my family members — choose to be alone for Easter, Thanksgiving, etc., because the holidays, they say are tough. Partaking in traditions reminds them of what they’ve lost, of a time when holidays were spent with loved-ones who have since passed away. It’s easier, they say, to be alone and to “do their own thing.”

I’m the opposite when it comes to that. Traditions that my mom and I started when I was younger help me remember her and keep her memory alive around the holidays. We used to walk around the front yard, for instance, in our bathrobes and look for Easter eggs that the Easter bunny had hidden. I didn’t do this as I got older, but my dad still hid Easter eggs around the house even when I was in college. I was probably pretty old to be hunting for Eggs, but I didn’t care. It was a tradition that I wanted to hold onto and that I someday want to someday carry on with my own kids.

In the meantime, I’ll have to start thinking about some new traditions I can start on my own for the upcoming holidays. Any suggestions?

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Talented Friends, Former Colleagues Hurt by Dallas Morning News Layoffs

Tuesday started off with uncertainty and ended with confusion and loss. In yet another round of layoffs, The Dallas Morning News lost several talented reporters, photographers, copy editors and more.

Though I was only in the newsroom for three months last summer, I met countless journalists who befriended and coached me during my internship. Many of these great journalists were laid off Tuesday, even despite their years of hard work and dedication.

Sure, news organizations lay off people who may not be performing well, but the journalists I know who were laid off were committed to the craft, proving that newsroom layoffs these days are far less about poor performance and much more about a news organization’s need to survive.

I wonder, though, how one of the country’s largest papers can manage to continue to survive after losing so many of its key players. I’m not saying it won’t stay around, just that it’s going to be a lot harder for the paper to produce quality work when its journalists are stretched so thin. Such is the case with too many papers nationwide.

We say that these papers will have to do “more with less,” but really, they’re often forced to do “less with less.” Journalism contest judges I’ve talked with say the quality of work submitted seems to have diminished throughout the past year, in part because there just aren’t enough resources to dedicate to long-term projects. In a Poynter Online article this week, for example, Kenny Irby said that judges in the NPPA contest “boldly withheld winners in a few categories rather than embracing the ‘good enough’ attitude that has plagued online journalism.” Good work is still being done, though, even if it’s harder to come by.

What doesn’t seem to be hard to come by is newsroom camaraderie. It might not be evident on a daily basis, but just look at journalists’ Facebook pages after a round of layoffs and you’ll see what I mean. This is how I kept track of who had, and hadn’t, been laid off throughout the day.

In many ways, social networking sites are transforming the way journalists vocalize their reaction to layoffs and buyouts, and the way others respond to them. Some DMN journalists came right out and said they were laid off in their Facebook statuses. Others said it had been a “good run,” while one simply wrote “–30–“. An editor wrote: “If you’ve ever had to say goodbye to dear friends, as they are headed down to HR, and all you can do is hug them, hold on to them for one more second, in tearful silence, because nothing you say can possibly change anything, and all you can think about are these newsroom treasures, slipping away, along with the laughs and craziness and the great stories — then maybe you will know what this day is like.”

Colleagues wrote thoughtful posts on these reporters’ and editors’ Facebook walls, reassuring them that their futures would be bright.

The Dallas Morning News lost a lot of bright stars Tuesday. I’m confident, though, that wherever they end up — in journalism or not — these stars continue to shine.

(Here’s a piece I wrote about layoffs at The Dallas Morning News last fall.)

Lots of Books in My Bookcase, Eight on My Nightstand

I’ve always read a lot, but lately I haven’t made as much time for books as I’d like.

Growing up, it was easy to find time to read — I read while walking two miles every day on my way to and from middle school. I read while climbing trees, while walking through the grocery aisles with my parents, while in the car.

Pretty much any spare time I had was spent reading, or writing. That was before I had a laptop that started to consume my life! Don’t get me wrong; I love my laptop, but sometimes I wish I were better at closing it and opening a book. A daily whiff of old, yellowish book pages is healthy for the mind.

I have a 70″x 29″ bookshelf full of books, as well as several on my little Ikea nightstand (which I managed to put together myself!). The books that are currently on my nightstand are all reflective of the different types of books I like to read:

“Rabbit Is Rich” by John Updike — Got a copy of this book in the free book section of the Eugene Patterson Library at Poynter. I had always wanted to read an Updike book and, given his recent death, I thought it was as good a time as any to start reading it. I haven’t yet read the other two Rabbit books that came before it, but plan to at some point. The book’s opening passages are eerily reflective of today’s poor economy. “The f***ing world is running out of gas” is one line in particular that stuck out at me.

“Final Salute” by Jim Sheeler — I started reading this after The Rocky Mountain News ceased publication last month. Figured it was an appropriate time to remind myself of some of the great work done at the paper.

“The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It” by Geneen Roth — A colleague lent me this book last summer and I’ve been holding onto it ever since. (Note: If you lend me a book, it may take me a little while to get it back to you …) I didn’t read the book as thoroughly as I would have liked the first time around, and now that I have a cat, I want to read it again. Geneen Roth is wonderful at personal writing. She always writes about her experiences in a way that makes you feel as though you can relate to, and understand, what she is going through.

“Dewey” by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter — My grandmother was reading this book when she came to visit me in March. She forgot it here, so I’m saving it for her until I see her again in October. Clara, my cat, likes the big photo of Dewey, the cat pictured on the book’s cover. And I like having the book nearby because it reminds me of my grandma.

“Don’t Shoot the Messenger” by Bruce W. Sanford and “The Power to Write” Caroline Joy Adams — I ran out of space in my bookcase, so I’m basically keeping these media/writing-related books on my nightstand until I get enough books to start a second bookcase. I don’t plan to read them anytime soon, mainly because I read about the media at work all day, five days a week. I still like reading books about the media, but lately I’ve wanted a mental break from them, probably because media news has been so grim lately.

“It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks” by Catherine Lloyd Burns — I got this book from the free book section of Poynter’s library, too. The description on the back of this memoir about a mother and daugther starts off by saying: “Loss is a way of life for both Catherine and her mother. But where it made the daughter ravenous for contact, it made the mother lose her appetite for people. While the two have always had a fierce attachment, by turns and intimate tumultuous, mother and daughter found a reprieve from decades of fractious and contentious and frustrating interactions after the birth of Catherine’s daughter, Olive …” Sounds kind of interesting.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston — I’m reading this for a virtual book club that I’m in. We call it a “virtual” book club because there are five of us in it and we all live in different states — Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania. We e-mail each other about when we want to discuss a book and then we talk about the book using Skype.

It’s a pretty fun, laid-back system. We try to read a book a month but sometimes it’s a book every other month, depending on how busy we are. I suggested we read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” because it takes place in Florida and because the protagonist sounds appealing to me. On the back of the book she’s described as “a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness fear or foolish romantic dreams.” Just my kind of gal.

Oh, and I can’t forget the diary that’s also on my nightstand. I always like having a pen and paper near my bed to record those late-night thoughts I always seem to have.

What books are on your nightstand or to-read list?

Final Days of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I wrote a short piece last week about one reporter’s take on the final days of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which ceased publication in March. The piece was based on an article from paidcontent.org:

In a new article on paidContent.org, former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Joseph Tartakoff remembers the uncertainty of the days of the newspaper and the tension that built as some employees were asked to stay on for the Web-only operation.

Tartakoff describes the empty boxes, recycling containers and shredding bins that started arriving in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newsroom on March 10. An all-staff picture had been taken, news budgets were nearly bare and a final, commemorative issue was about to go to press.

[READ MORE …]

A Sunday Spent Eating Outside, Shopping at an Asian Market

Today I spent the afternoon with some friends who have a beautiful garden in their backyard. While making lunch — veggie burgers, fruit salad and crackers with hummus — we went out to the garden to get home-grown lettuce for our burgers, which we ate with fresh cilantro pesto. Yum.

As we munched on lunch outside, taking in the smells of the garden, I couldn’t help but admire what a cool backyard my friends have. The patio surrounding the garden is covered in brightly-colored flowers painted by a local artist who stops by the house from time to time to add to the artistic creation. Nearby, a hula hoop hangs on the branch of a tree.

Talking about gardening and fresh produce made us want to go to a nearby Asian market on 34th Street in St. Petersburg. (It’s actually called “The Oriental Market,” which seems politically incorrect.) It was fitting for us to go there, given that after lunch we had looked at about 150 photos my friend took during a recent trip to Beijing. We learned, from listening to the stories behind each photo, all about the Great Wall, the food, the people and the culture there.

A lot of the food at the market was similar to the food my friend had eaten in Beijing, but some of it she had never seen before. Understandably so. The store is filled with a wide variety of Asian produce, meat, sweets and more. It has two aisles full of cheap and elaborately decorated kitchenware, (I bought a spatula for $1.97); nearly three aisles of rice noodles (who knew there were that many different kinds of noodles?!); and freezer cases full of dumplings, edamame and more. There is also a ton of nail polish, which only costs $.50 a bottle — much cheaper than paying up to $7.50 per bottle at a drug store!

Naturally, I came away from the market with two bottles of pink and red nail polish, as well as a bag of edamame, a mango and a package of apple gummy — a chewy candy that’s similar in taste to Gummy Bears. The message on the candy’s packaging prompted me to buy it: “Every drop of fresh apple juice, carefully pressed from the reddest apples, shining in colors of the cheeks of a snow-country child, is yours to enjoy in each soft and juicy Kasugai Apple Gummy.” The color of the gummy does look like rosy cheeks, though not necessarily the rosy cheeks of a “snow-country child.”

I’m glad I bought the gummy and some Asian produce because I’m normally not very adventurous when it comes to trying new foods. When you’re with people who love to grow food and who are experimental with the way they prepare and eat it, though, it’s a lot easier to want to be adventurous yourself. Such was the case today.

Clara the Cat Is Good Remedy for Loneliness

clara This is by far my favorite photo of Clara. I took it with my laptop the same night that my grandmother and cousin left Florida to fly back home to Boston. It’s as though Clara knew I was feeling lonely after my company had left. Cats have a good way of sensing when humans are lonely, and they’re pretty darn good at remedying the problem!

Grocery Shopping with Grandma

Showing off some of the items we bought on our last grocery shopping excursion -- a mop, rice cakes, the St. Pete Times, toilet paper ... Gramz recently "gave in," as she says, and started using those little motorized scooters to get around grocery stores. Now she can spend hours racing up and down the aisles!

One of the first things my 86-year-old grandma did when she came to visit me last week was open my refrigerator. It was the first time that she, and my cousin who was on spring break, had been to my apartment, so my grandma was naturally curious to see what the place was like. She opened cabinets, hall closets, the freezer. Her eyes widened when all she saw in the freezer was a small stack of veggie burgers and a single purple Popsicle.

“Oh we need to go grocery shopping, Mallary,” she said.

“I knew you’d want to go the first day we were here!” I said, laughing.

Anyone who knows my grandma is well aware that she loves to grocery shop and does it several times a week. She scours the paper, looking for the best deals, then heads to the store, equipped with coupons, a long list and plenty of meals in mind. In the five days she was here, we went grocery shopping five times — four times at Publix and once at Sweetbay.

These trips were in part to shop for an Italian dinner that my grandma, cousin and I cooked for one of my colleagues. (My freezer is now filled with individually-wrapped veggie lasagna slices.) The other trips, though, were for foods that my grandma wanted to munch on or that she wanted me to have in the house — Italian salad dressing, Brach’s jelly beans, cheddar cheese rice cakes; a mop (“to wash that kitchen floor”), Clorox (“to scrub the black off of the shower tiles and the back of the sink”), etc. As soon as we would come home from the store, Gramz would start up a new list. Needless to say, my fridge is now fully stocked, as is my freezer.

The appeal in having a stocked freezer stems in part, I think, from living through World War II. The idea of running out of food scares seniors because, like my grandma, they know what it was like go to not have food in the pantry and to go to bed on an empty stomach. To this day, Gramz eats every bit on her plate. “I was taught,” she says, “to always clean my plate.”

People in my generation, she said, don’t always understand this, nor do they necessarily value the communal nature of food. Meals are meant to be eaten with families; they’re to be savored rather than gulped down in a few bites while standing over the kitchen sink, they’re to be made with love, care and the kind of creativity that doesn’t call for a microwave.

When preparing a big meal, it’s not unusual for my grandma to spend the entire day in the kitchen, making most things from scratch and usually making far too much of it! Cooking is a way for my grandma to feel closer to her family, and a way for her to get some “exercise” standing in the kitchen and mixing ingredients.

She used to get exercise walking through the aisles in the grocery store, but has since “given in,” as she says. She now uses those little motorized scooters to get around grocery stores. Instead of creeping down the aisles with her cane, she can race up and down them on the scooter and always get the right-away.

Going to the grocery store is also a way for Gramz to get out of the house, to meet people and feel as though she’s part of the outside world. “I could stay in bed and not do anything all day,” she says. “But I make a point to get out of the house every day and go somewhere.”

When she’s not going to the grocery store and making small talk with other shoppers, she’s cooking meals for, or watching “Jeopardy” with, her 87-year-old boyfriend, Gordon. Making meals for him has given her an excuse to start cooking again on a regular basis. Having grown accustomed to cooking daily meals for her two boys and husband, she had to learn to adjust when her children moved out and when her husband later died 10 years ago. It’s just not as fun cooking for yourself, she has said, and sometimes your appetite isn’t there, especially after a significant loss. Lucky for her, Gordon likes to eat, and he likes her meals.

And lucky for me, I don’t have to make any trips to the grocery store anytime soon. I can barely see what’s in the fridge it’s so full. Leave it to grandmas to fill your fridge, Clorox your bathroom tiles and sprinkle your apartment with love.

Do all seniors seem to like grocery shopping, or is it just my granmda?

Taking a Look at ‘Our First Loves’

A former colleague who’s now a professor at Northwestern University sent me a link to a project his students recently put together. I found the project, called “Our First Love,” pretty interesting — mainly because of the stories, which are about each student’s first love. I especially liked the audio (and the origami hearts) in Annie’s story.

Even though I didn’t know any of the students’ first loves on a personal level, I still felt as though I could relate to the feelings associated with this universal theme. Part of me wanted to know more about how the students defined “love,” especially those who talked about loving a significant other at a young age. Was it puppy-dog love, or a more genuine kind of love? Given the subjectivity associated with it, love can be pretty difficult to define. I don’t think you can really define it until you find it…

Dad Can’t Save Newspapers, but He’s Still One of Their Biggest Cheerleaders

My dad, the eternal optimist, reads the newspaper every day.

“Front to back,” he says. “I love the newspaper.” Reading it online, he says, is too cumbersome, too time-consuming.

Let’s face it: He’s not like most people, who would rather read the paper online and get e-mail updates throughout the workday instead of waking up early to read it, or reading “old news” at home after work. I talk about newspapers and their demise regularly with my dad, mainly because of the work I do, editing and writing stories about the news industry for Poynter Online. My job is centered on online journalism, so I know its value. But I still read the paper every day.

Often, my dad and I share articles with each other about the newspaper industry. Mine are usually about bad news in journalism. His are always about good news. It’s as though he gets Google alerts for “newspapers are great!” or “newspapers will be saved.” (I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.)

In our most recent article sharing exchange, I sent my dad a New York Times story and a related map last week looking at the future of newspapers. The article said “some economists and newspaper executives say it is only a matter of time — and probably not much time at that — before some major American city is left with no prominent local newspaper at all.”

Ouch.

In the same e-mail, I told my dad about how crestfallen many of my friends seem about their jobs at newspapers, and how some have said they’d be happier if they were laid off. They say they’re tired of having to continuously face the fear of imminent loss.

This kind of news makes me sad. I love journalism and believe in its future, wherever it may end up. Maybe I’m too much like my optimistic dad, but I — and so many other journalists — have invested too much in this profession to prematurely declare its death.

In his attempt to be newspapers’ life line, my dad manages to find obscure studies about the so-called “growth” of papers/readership. I have yet to see an actual article about any of these studies (!), but I trust he’s read about them somewhere.

Here’s my dad’s latest “I believe in newspapers” e-mail, sent last Thursday:

Hi Mal,

Hang in there. I have seen a recent study that local papers are actually doing well, and that young people are reading them! It seems that the larger city papers are the ones that are hurting the most. I will send that article to you. People have other, preferred ways to obtain world news, whereas the local papers are still the best, and often only, way to obtain local news. Also, every company in every field has to learn to run lean, to trim the fat. The weak will be weeded out and the remaining will survive, adapt, and become stronger.

Maybe you will find your happiness/success at a smaller paper, rather than measuring your success by the size of the paper that you work for. As you already know, the need for news will always be there, the delivery of it will just change, like everything else. Tape replaced records. CDs replaced tape. Internet downloads are now replacing CDs. However, more people purchase music now more than ever before. Only the format has changed. The music industry is not dying, it is only adapting. That is what the newspaper industry is going through now too.

Keep your eyes open. Things will work out for you.

Love,

Dad

Some may say he’s blinded by optimism, but you have to give it to him: he’s a good cheerleader — for newspapers and for journalism in general. Thank goodness for paternal, eternal optimists.