Category Archives: etc.

Heliocentric Holiday

etc.

We made it! Another lap around the Sun, another year into the record books, and the cycle begins again. From an outside observer’s viewpoint, nothing much has changed. A few solar flares, maybe. But for the most part, the Earth keeps on rolling around the Sun in its elliptical orbit as the Sun continues its motion through the Milky Way Galaxy.

Accomplishing this is something we celebrate, even though we had no hand in making it happen. We’re just along for the ride. But every year, we have ceremonies, traditions, and rituals that mark the occasion.

My husband and I have settled into a pattern of New Year’s celebrations. On the Eve, we open a bottle of champagne and heat up some frozen hors d’ouevres. (This year I drank my bubbly from a “My Therapist Has Four Paws” mug. We had some champagne left over, so we had mimosas in the morning. But I digress.) Then Dan stays awake long enough to see the ball drop and wakes me up to see it, too. He calls his mother at midnight and sings “Happy New Year to You.” And we shake our purses or wallets at midnight, a tradition in Dan’s family meant to ensure prosperity in the coming year. (This has never been known to work, but we keep doing it anyway. Dan’s grandmother did it, and that’s good enough for him. But I digress some more.) Our only resolution? To do it all again the next year.

On New Year’s Day, Dan wants his pork and cabbage, and some years he even gets it. We’re not too strict about the form of these foods. One year, we had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and cole slaw. This year, it was pork fried rice and kimchi, as we went to a Chinese restaurant, which we often do on holidays like New Year’s, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (Except for the years we get takeout sushi (I’ve never seen pork or cabbage sushi), and Dan has to rustle up some sausages and sauerkraut later, preferably when I’m not in the house. But I digress again.)

New Year’s Eve brought me a bit of good fortune to start off the year. I landed a ghostwriting assignment for a science fiction novel. I checked the list of posted projects and noticed one that had just gone up and had no one clamoring to be the writer yet. I pounced. I sent a request, assuring the customer that I was an avid sci fi fan and had written an sf novel before. Before I knew it, the customer accepted my request and I started on it Friday. (There will be no digressions in it. But I digress even more.)

This New Year’s Day was memorable for the Chinese lunch we shared with three friends, Kelly, Stewart, and Beth, at the China Garden Buffet. Beth pointed out that the group of us hadn’t been together since our friend Robbin’s funeral, almost five years ago. (Trips around the Sun often pass without our even noticing them. But I continue to digress.) We feasted and gabbed for 3 1/2 hours.

When you think about it, all holidays are anniversaries of a trip around the Sun. (Except for “moveable feasts” like Easter and Hannukah, of course. But I digress yet again.) Earth Day means one lap since the previous Earth Day. The Fourth of July, exactly one year since the last one. And of course, everyone’s birthday is a celebration of one more revolution.

The Sun and the Earth notice this not at all, but we notice them and their steady dance over each year’s time. Fortunately, we can expect many more.

Christmas Is Over. April Is Coming.

etc., family, holidays, humor, , , ,

It was November, and I was manic. I had just gotten paid for a freelance job, and I went on the internet. I instantly started seeing items for sale that my husband might like. So I started buying.

(The mania was a part of my bipolar disorder and reckless spending is one of the known risks. At least I didn’t get into other risky behaviors like reckless driving. But reckless shopping is fun, and I hadn’t been able to do much recently. But I digress.)

The first thing I bought him was a t-shirt that said: Stay Groovy. I thought it was appropriate because any time a server in a restaurant asks, “How are you today?” he always says, “Groovy.” But then, he’s an old and unrepentant hippie.

Then I found another t-shirt, “Make America Grateful Again,” with the skull and lightning bolt symbol that the band The Grateful Dead used. I was off and shopping.

I found more t-shirts, all in the same vein, such as one with the lyrics to “In My Life” (Dan’s favorite Beatles song) and a shirt with a tie-dye hand missing one finger. (A reference to Jerry Garcia, the leader of the Grateful Dead, who actually had only nine fingers, despite the fact that he was the lead guitar player. Dan is frequently mistaken for Jerry Garcia, as his hair is the same wild, curly mass that Jerry had. Sometimes he tells people he is Jerry Garcia and in the Witness Protection program. And that he had the missing finger surgically replaced as part of his disguise. But I digress again, at length.)

Then I found what would turn out to be his main gift—a piece of the wooden stage from Woodstock mounted in a peace sign pendant—and relegated the shirts to being stocking stuffers. (It came with a certificate of authenticity, but who really knows? It’s the thought that counts. He put it on right away and has been wearing it ever since. But I digress yet again.}

It had become my turn to be Santa. (Dan is often accused of being Santa, especially (but not exclusively) in December. Again, it’s the hair and beard. He often plays along, telling children to mind their parents and play nicely with their siblings. This year, he even wore red sweats and a Santa hat to work on Christmas Eve, then went around the store handing out “Santa Bucks” coupons, “signed by Santa.” He even wore a nametag that said “Santa C.” It was all his idea; no one at the company put him up to it. But I digress even more.)

Was I done shopping? I was not.

While I was perusing t-shirts, I found one that showed layers of rock and said, “My Sediments Exactly.” Well, Dan studied geology in college, and heads to the fossils, petrified wood, and interestingly shaped rocks when we’re in a rock and gem shop. (He even brought home an “interesting rock” that he collected when we were in Ireland. He almost didn’t get it through Customs. But I keep digressing.)

So I pretended that the internet was a fossil and rock shop and fired up PayPal again. I bought basalt, various kinds of quartz, and several minerals that fluoresce under UV light. I also bought a UV light so he could appreciate them fully.

About that time (late November), it occurred to me that I couldn’t give him all these gifts for Christmas. It would be un peu de trop (a bit much). So I sorted the gifts into two piles: one for Christmas and the other to be saved for his birthday in April. I decided that the “hippie freak” gifts seemed more Christmasy, and the “rockhound” gifts more birthday-y. (Don’t ask me how I decided which was which. It seemed logical at the time.)

Anyway, on Christmas, I told Dan to get the pile of presents on the right-hand side of the closet. They proved to be a hit. In April, he gets the other stack.

Fortunately, there are no other present-giving holidays or occasions that occur until next Christmas. One never knows when mania and PayPal will take over. Or at least I don’t.

P.S. Dan never reads my blogs. Let’s keep this just between us.

Where Are the Fat Geese?

funny things, humor, Christmas, holidays, religion, Christianity, etc., music, food, ,

A little-remembered Christmas carol starts out: “Christmas is coming/The geese are getting fat.” In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” there are six geese the first time around, with more to come, based on their a-laying and the repetition of all the presents ad nauseam.

But you hardly ever see a goose baked and broiled sunny-side-up on people’s Christmas tables, or as part of turgooducken. Turkey and ham are the popular choices. (Me, I go for something nontraditional, such as sushi, lasagna, ratatouille, or Chinese take-out. The Chinese food, I guess, is more traditional for Jewish people, pagans, Pastafarians (who might prefer the lasagna), and others with unconventional tastes. But I digress.)

Why does no one sing the carol about the fat geese anymore? Probably because the rest of the song is about charity to the poor—”Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat./If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do./If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you.” Carolers these days hardly ever accept a penny for their services, and ha’pennies went out with farthings. Carolers might get a cup of cocoa or a cookie with red and green sprinkles, but that’s about it. Maybe they need a union.

Modernizing the carol wouldn’t come easily either. “Please to put a penny in the Salvation Army Kettle” doesn’t fit the meter, and nobody carries around ha’pennies these days. (Indeed, soon, they won’t carry pennies, either, what with the mint doing away with them, and possibly the nickel, too. You’d be left with putting a quarter in the kettle and settling for a dime. But I digress again.)

But back to geese. I don’t think I’ve even seen them on the menu at a restaurant. Perhaps it’s because they’re fatty (hence “The geese are getting fat”). Maybe it’s because they’re big. No one would order a whole goose. A smaller party might order slices of goose, but that would leave the kitchen with a lot of extra goose. What to do with it? Serve goose hash the next morning? I somehow doubt that would be a big seller.

Live geese aren’t any prize, either. They’re mean. Big ones can weigh up to 20 pounds. Just imagine an easily enraged, 20-pound bird with a loud cry, a hard knob on the top of its head, a large beak, and much given to pecking, chasing you around the yard. (It’s my theory that the fad of concrete dress-up geese on the front step (which I hope has passed) was thought up by someone from an ad agency who had been hired to improve geese’s image. But I digress some more.)

(For that matter, swans are also not candidates for the Beast Congeniality crown. Yes, they’re stunning—at a distance—and (it’s said) monogamous. But they are geese with an even better ad agency. They’re really savage. The Stratford Canada Shakespeare Festival warns visitors to avoid the killer swans that roam the grounds. (Despite the swans, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is well worth a visit. They present theater-in-the-round and frequently stage works not written by The Bard of Avon. The 2026 season includes Death of a Salesman, Waiting for Godot, and Guys and Dolls. But I digress yet again.))

Anyway, we started this ramble with geese and Christmas carols. Every year, I ask friends what their favorite and least favorite Christmas songs are in both religious and secular categories. My favorite religious one is “Mary, Did You Know?” Least favorite: “The Little Drummer Boy.” My favorite secular song is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Least favorite: “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” (Though there are some interesting parodies like “The Twelve Days of Star Wars” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHSEUAXDucw, if you want a change of pace. But I digress musically.)

No one has ever mentioned the one with the geese.

What’s So Funny?

blogs, etc., funny things, humor, writing

Recently, I fell in with a comedy site that has weekly online meetings where members are encouraged to submit their humor for feedback. My interactions with them have proved perplexing. I submitted for analysis a piece I was working on. The response was tepid at best, so I revised and submitted it again. Here’s the first draft:

I Use Satellites to Hunt for Tupperware in the Woods

That’s what a contestant on Jeopardy told Alex Trebek when asked about his hobbies and interests between rounds. Alex was taken aback and, for once, clueless.

I have done the same. (The satellite/Tupperware thing, not flummoxing Alex Trebek. I wish. But I digress.)

What both I and the Jeopardy contestant had in common is “geocaching.”

It goes like this. One person hides a piece of Tupperware or other waterproof container (an ammo case is also popular), usually in a natural environment but sometimes within a city or suburb. The container holds a piece of paper, a small pencil, and assorted trinkets, such as a postcard or a small toy. This is called the geocache.

***

Here’s a revision of the first section, rewritten according to what they suggested, or so I supposed.

I Use Satellites to Hunt for Tupperware in the Woods

That’s what a contestant on Jeopardy told Alex Trebek when asked about his hobbies and interests between rounds. Alex should have replied, “So you’re some kind of kitchenware spy,” but missed the opportunity.

I have aspired to kitchenware spying myself.

It’s called “geocaching” to those in on the process. A piece of Tupperware or other waterproof container (an ammo case is popular) is hidden, usually in a natural setting. The secrets within are a piece of paper, a small pencil, and assorted objects of unknown value. This is known in the trade as the geocache or “drop site.”

***

That second version was close to the one that you saw when I posted it. I think it was improved somewhat, but at the next meeting, they suggested even more changes.

I had trouble implementing their suggestions. The first one was “Lose the digressions,” which I was reluctant to do because of the name of my blog and a reasonably consistent shtick when I’m writing what I intend to be humorous pieces. They act like footnotes or record the meanderings of my mind while I write. But I ditched them for the second version, just to see. I also bumped up the spy references, using words like “agent,” “secret identity,” “tradecraft,” “the drop,” and “Ilya Kuryakin.”

On seeing the second version, they suggested that instead of describing how geocaching works, I should use “I” more: “I bait the drop,” “I decipher the clues,” etc. I agree that, in general, unless you’re writing an academic paper, “I” is preferable to “you.” So that was probably good advice.

They also told me I needed more hyperbole and more jokes. I already had some jokes in there: one clue being “Look under the big W” (a reference to It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) and my secret identity as “DjangOH” (in honor of my cat Django, who was named after Django Reinhardt, the jazz musician). They thought that one was pretty good, but assumed I was referring to the movie Django Unchained, which has nothing to do with cats or jazz musicians. They were apparently too young to get the other references as well. I’m beginning to doubt they got the one about Ilya Kuryakin.

Anyway, based on their comments and critiques of other people’s work, I gathered that what they were looking for was zingers, punchlines, and an over-the-top tone, like a stand-up comedian’s.

But that’s not the kind of writing I prefer. I grew up on observational, story-telling humorists like Erma Bombeck, James Thurber, and Jean Kerr. And if I could write one-tenth as well as David Sedaris or The Bloggess, I would count myself a happy writer. Hyperbole, yes, but no punchlines.

So I ask you these questions:

• Should I keep doing what I’ve been doing, with digressions?

• Should I lose the digressions and rename my blog?

• Do you prefer a stand-up comedy-style writing or an observational one (but not like Steven Wright)?

• Do you want to see listicles? Shorter pieces of writing?

• Would you prefer no serious posts like the one last week about my father? Should I have a separate blog for them? (It would be occasional, as I don’t think I could write three blog posts a week.)

I sincerely want your opinions. Please feel free to sound off in the comments.

Apparently obligatory joke:

Ist old lady: My, it’s windy today.

2nd old lady: No, it’s Thursday.

3rd old lady: So am I. Let’s all go get a cup of tea.

Melvyn vs. Multiple Myeloma

etc., family, health, ,

This is my father. His name was James Robert, or Jim, or Jim-Bob in his native Kentucky. My friends and I all called him Melvyn. It was based on a line from a comedy show that none of us remembers.

This picture was taken at my wedding reception, after he had dispensed with his tie. It looked unnatural on him anyway, although I must say that all through my childhood, he worked a government job that required a suit. I remember the scents of Aqua Velva and Vitalis, and the shine on his black shoes.

Then, when I was a teenager, he took medical disability because he had multiple myeloma.

When that happened, he went back to his Jim-Bob roots. He wore sneakers, flannel shirts, and a cowboy hat. He spent his time rediscovering hobbies like reloading bullets. When he was bedridden, family friend and library worker Beth McCarty brought him sacks of Zane Grey and Louise L’Amour westerns. It was quite a surprise to me to see him reading.

The disease spread to his bones as well as his blood. His pancreas failed and had to be removed, so he needed drugs to replace its function. He had an operation to take a piece of bone from his hip and use it to support his neck.

He had chemo and radiation. He didn’t really have much hair to lose at that point, but he threw up a lot. The doctors gave him only a couple of years to live. But he beat them by a significant number of years—10, I think. I really don’t remember the exact total; I wasn’t counting then, just hoping it would last.

One thing he didn’t do was go to group therapy. The local hospital had one group for cancer patients called Make Today Count or some similarly upbeat name. He flatly refused to go. My guess is that he had that Kentucky take-care-of-your-own-problems, keep-it-in-the-family mindset. It’s unlikely that they could have given him something more than he found within his own resources. Melvyn was stubborn, which in his case, he could substitute for positivity.

My mother was his caregiver, and she went it alone, too, except one time when she asked me if she was doing a good job. She knew down deep she was; she just needed to hear it from someone else. But, like Melvyn, she kept it in the family.

Recently, however, the New York Times reported a story, “From No Hope to a Potential Cure for a Deadly Blood Cancer.” It was about multiple myeloma and how new therapies are extending life for people who have been given a death sentence. People like Melvyn.

It’s a new kind of immunotherapy, which wasn’t possible, or maybe even thought of, all those years ago. The study, the Times said, was a “last-ditch effort.”

And, somehow, it worked, at least better than expected. “A third responded so well that they got what seems to be an astonishing reprieve—to have made their cancer disappear.” And after five years, it still hadn’t returned in those patients — a result never before seen in multiple myeloma.

No doubt, before the human test, there were studies on rats. (Melvyn always said he hated being compared to a rat.) The immunotherapy isn’t cheap. One dose is all that’s needed, but it costs $555,310. Our family couldn’t have afforded that, even with government insurance.

The scientists hope that if they diagnose the disease early enough and give the treatment then, it could be a cure. As it is, immunotherapy still isn’t a cure, but the treatment “increased median survival from two years to 10.”

That was something Melvyn accomplished on his own.

I Use Satellites to Find Tupperware in the Woods

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That’s what a contestant on Jeopardy told Alex Trebek when asked about his hobbies and interests between rounds. Alex should have replied, “So you’re some kind of kitchenware spy,” but missed the opportunity.

I have practiced kitchenware spying myself.

To make it sound less like spying, it’s called “geocaching.” A secret identity, if you will.

A piece of Tupperware or other waterproof container (an ammo case is popular) is hidden, usually in a natural setting. The secrets within are a piece of paper, a small pencil, and assorted objects of unknown value. This is known in the trade as the geocache or “drop site.”

To get your mission started, go to a website that contains geographical coordinates. Sometimes there’s a cypher that offers an encrypted clue. (“It’s under a big W.”) You use the satellite coordinates and a sophisticated process called warmer/colder until you find the cache. Or not.

To prove you’ve succeeded in your mission, you sign the piece of paper, take an object another agent has left, and replace it with one of your own. This is known in tradecraft as “the drop.” Then you return to the website and report that you have found the cache and made the swap (or not).

The hiding places can be diabolical. One I was in charge of was attached to a statue celebrating sewer workers. Or you may need to locate a next-to-invisible “microcache” that contains only a tiny piece of paper. (BYO pencil.) One I found was a magnetic key holder. Another had an extremely cryptic encryption clue in a foreign language. It contained the expression “2d,” which I at first interpreted as two-dimensional or flat. Instead, the dropsite proved to be cylindrical, a tiny roll of paper wrapped around a nail inserted into a fencepost. The nail was known as a two-penny nail. 2d in British tradecraft means two-penny.

Another cache was the back of an official-looking magnetic sign on the side of an electrical box. To prove you had located it, you had to peel off the magnetic notice, sign the back, and then replace it.

One complication is that you must retrieve the cache without being seen by laypeople. It’s interesting trying to climb up a swing set in a park without looking like that’s what you’re doing. Once, to avoid blowing my cover, I had to mime losing my car keys and looking for them under an overpass where the Tupperware was hidden.

I haven’t hunted Tupperware lately, especially since I sustained an injury. And lost my GPS in a tornado. And need a GPS to find my motivation, which could be anywhere, but probably isn’t in my house. Maybe I lost that in the tornado, too. But I just went back to the website where you find the coordinates, and learned that I was still registered as an agent with a secret identity (DjangOH).

There is at least one cache very close to my home base that I could conceivably find with only the clue and no coordinates. I miss the thrill of the chase. Maybe I can even locate that cache while using my walker. And pretend my husband is Ilya Kuryakin.

Walkin’ the Walk

etc., funny things, health, , , ,

Babies learn to walk by stumbling around with a Frankenstein gait and frequently falling on their padded butts. And people think it’s cute.

Me, not so much. (It’s true that I have an amply padded butt, but it’s not sufficient to cushion a fall from my height to the floor. Which has happened to me fairly frequently since I had my knee replacement in late April. But I digress.)

The reason this all occurs to me is that I have had to learn to walk all over again. And I don’t look cute as I waddle and toddle and go boom. The going boom part has necessitated stays in the hospital and the post-acute rehab facility (aka nursing home). At least there was someone there to pick me up when I did go boom.

(Dan did fairly well when I boomed at home. (Yes, we’re both boomers. Like that was any secret. But I digress parenthetically.) But he has to work and wasn’t available for eight hours a day, which made us both very nervous. Fortunately, he was home when I fell and broke one ankle in two places. But I digress some more.)

But everything has changed—or is, at least, back to what passes for normal here. I’m at home, doing PT on an outpatient basis, and getting around the house with the walker and a PT technique I learned called “stand and pivot.” (Sounds like a square dance move to me. Perhaps I should curtsy to the walker. But I digress yet again.)

Square dancing isn’t in my immediate (or, most likely, long-term) future. Nor are ballet, polka, and can-can. (Waltz, perhaps. It was probably invented by someone who could do the stand and pivot. But I digress even more.)

Regular walking, though—that may not be beyond my power. At PT last week, I walked 97 feet, and yesterday I walked 250 steps. Both with the walker, of course.

Dan is urging me to try trickier forms of ambulation—climbing stairs and walking up and down a ramp that we installed for my wheelchair. My PT people insist that I need better balance and stamina first. And I don’t want to do anything that involves going boom. Chair-dancing—that I can handle.

Foot Plus Mouth Equals Disaster!

Christianity, education, etc., health, humor, , , ,

In the comic strip “Peanuts,” Linus says that one should never discuss “politics, religion, or the Great Pumpkin.” That’s good advice, as far as it goes, but the list of things you shouldn’t discuss in public goes much further. In fact, erase that bit about “in public.” They’re dangerous to discuss among friends and family, too.

These days, politics is strictly off the table. You never know who has a concealed carry license. And Linus was certainly right that it’s best to avoid religion. When someone says, “Bless you,” the right answer is “thank you,” even if you’re not a believer. After all, they meant the religious equivalent of “Have a nice day.” (Or “gesundheit,” maybe. By the way, “Bless your heart” should be used with caution when you’re in the South. It can be a verbal middle finger. But I digress some more.)

Another topic to avoid is any that leads to a near-death experience. My husband, Dan, has blundered that way more than a few times. For example, when we were preparing for a party, I washed my hair, blow-dried it, used a curling iron, moussed, and sprayed. As I came down the stairs, Dan asked, “Are you going to do anything with your hair?”

And stay far, far away from talk of pregnancy. Suggesting that a woman is pregnant based on her weight, her clothes, or the way she waddles can be deeply offensive, particularly if she isn’t. In fact, one expert advises that you not comment on a woman’s potential pregnancy unless you actually see a baby emerging from her vagina at that moment. Better safe than hopelessly embarrassed. (I was a victim of this faux pas when I walked into an office looking for a job, wearing a loose denim jumper and a nice blouse. Admittedly, it may not have been the best choice for filling out an application, but the receptionist didn’t have to ask how far along I was. Later, she repeated the story as an amusing anecdote, not realizing that I was in the room and was embarrassed all over again. But I continue digressing.)

Everyone knows by now not to comment on a woman’s anatomy on pain of getting fired or a punch in the mouth. Not even when you’re trying to make a joke. I once told an acquaintance that I wasn’t at a party “because I was home nursing a sick cat.” “Didn’t you get scratched about the breast?” he asked. He almost got scratched about the face.

Then there was the time a guy had two girlfriends and was invited to a wedding. I don’t think he clearly understood the concept of a plus-one. He suggested taking one lady to the ceremony and the other to the reception. He somehow survived the occasion with at least one of the relationships intact. How? I don’t know.

Speaking of weddings, one of Dan’s bigger faux pas was when he suggested that, since his family lived in Pennsylvania and mine lived in Ohio, we should have our wedding on the state line, to inconvenience both families equally. (He was serious. But I digress for the final time. I promise.)

Because you’re bound to offend or insult someone, somewhere, sometime, my best advice, no matter what you are about to blurt out, is to remember your mouth has a zipper. Use it!

AI Writing: Friend or Foe?

education, etc., funny things, language, literature, ,

You may have heard that AI writing means the death of writing done by actual, live people. In a way that’s true, and in a way it isn’t. Let me explain.

Many—perhaps most—of the fiction books that you see for sale on Amazon and other outlets are AI-written and almost universally bad. Rotten, really. So bad that you want to throw them against the wall. (Unless you have a Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader, of course. Then you only want to delete them. But I digress.) They are too short, too filled with adjectives and adverbs, too lacking in a coherent plot, and too deficient in character development. Even the most potentially vivid genres are bland.

You may say to yourself, “I could write a better novel than this turnip.” And you very likely could. (So why don’t you?)

But AI has taken over most of the writing space. Even books that you yourself don’t write aren’t written by a human being. (I should know. I often freelance for a ghostwriting service that shall remain nameless because of the NDA I signed. They used to have lots of us human beings doing the writing. Now they largely have “writing packages” produced by AI. The only time a human being touches the book is to supervise the AI engine, which sometimes goes madly astray, and to “humanize” the results (it’s known in the trade as “polishing dogshit into gold”). But I digress again. At length.)

That’s the bad side of AI writing. What, I hear you ask, is the good side?

It can make you a better writer.

Hear me out.

Let’s think about the most basic AI writing tool that almost everyone is familiar with: Grammarly. Yes, it follows along behind you and corrects what you’ve written when you’re typing too fast (like “isfamiliar”). And it always changes your word choice to “ducking.” It’s never “ducking.” But, if you pay attention to it, Grammarly is a teaching tool.

Grammarly sends you reports that list your most common mistakes that week (or month, I don’t remember). If it says you have problems with subject-verb agreement, brush up on that. If you have trouble remembering whether commas introduce an independent clause or a dependent one, look it up and try to remember it the next time you write.

Teachers worry that their students will use AI to write their papers for them. (One of my friends now has her students write out their essays longhand, like I did in the Victorian era. But I digress some more.) They may indeed rely on AI. (A survey of students found that they considered it cheating, however.) But there are many AI detectors available to teachers that sniff out suspiciously smelly AI-created sentences and paragraphs and report on how much of a piece of writing seems to be human or AI.

This, of course, has led to ways to avoid the AI detectors. One I saw recently offered a series of prompts a student could give the AI program in order to produce a piece of writing that would appear to be human-written. The list of things the sneaky student should tell the AI program to avoid was comprehensive and long.

It told students to create a prompt that specified not only the topic and tone of the illicit paper, but also to avoid common signs of AI content that the AI checkers teachers use frequently will flag.

The list of things to tell the AI to avoid included: sentences more than 20 words long without one clear idea and paragraphs all the same length; passive voice; abstractions instead of concrete words; sentences of all one length; a lack of measurable facts; suspect punctuation (semi-colons and em dashes) (I disagree with this stricture. I love semi-colons and em dashes, as if you hadn’t noticed. But I digress yet again.); overused words and phrases (an extensive list, including last but not least, cutting-edge, delve, game changer, nonetheless, despite, moist, subsequently, furthermore, utilize, leverage (and any other biz-speak or tech jargon)); adverbs and adjectives; hedging; more than one prepositional phrase or verb phrase; all-caps or numbered lists; and metaphors involving landscapes, music, or journeys. (I once asked ChatGPT to write some poetry, and it really overdid those metaphors. But I digress even more.)

In other words, if you know what to tell the AI not to do, you already know for yourself what not to do—or keep that list handy and refer to it often—you’ll be able to write your own sparkling prose without Robby the Robot’s assistance. And the process of learning to tell the AI how to write undetectably will improve your own writing.

If you think of AI as a way to learn instead of a way to cheat, you’ll do well.

The Comeback of Bullying

education, etc., health, mental health, social policy, , ,

TW: suicide, violence

Some people have suggested lately that bullying is a good thing. This flies in the face of most people’s understanding of the effects of bullying and years of anti-bullying campaigns in schools.

We all think we know what bullying is, or at least that we know it when we see it. But what is bullying, really?

Bullying can be physical, verbal, or psychological, just like other forms of abuse. It can happen face-to-face or online. Online bullying is increasingly common and more difficult to deal with because much of it happens after school hours and because of the speed and vast reach of bullying speech or images.

Joanna Schroeder, a media critic and author, says that “the word ‘bullying’ often stands in for plain old bigotry or discrimination.” She notes that a slur for people with intellectual disabilities (the “R-word”) has been making a comeback.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance provides a succinct definition. Bullying, they say, consists of four characteristics:

• the hurting of one person or group by another person or group

• repetitive hurtful speech or behavior

• intentional behavior

• a real or perceived imbalance of power.

So, bullying is hurtful, repeated, and intentional behavior. That’s easy enough to understand. Let’s examine the last characteristic, the imbalance of power.

An imbalance of power in the workplace of a superior and a subordinate is a clear example. In schools, principals and teachers would be one example, and teachers and students would be another. But how does this play out in terms of student versus student? Where’s the power and the imbalance?

The imbalance of power can be obvious, such as that between the quarterback of the football team and the other players or the imbalance between a senior and a first-year student. A perceived imbalance can exist because of students who are larger in size, more athletic, neurotypical, physically unimpaired, or belonging to a majority racial or ethnic proportion of a school. They are perceived as having more power than those children who do not possess those qualities. And a clique of “mean girls” or a group of “rich kids” has the perceived superior power of popularity. Any of these imbalances can play into bullying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that higher rates of bullying are directed at girls, LGBTQ students, and teenagers with developmental disabilities.

In the case against bullying, we have seen accounts that some children who die by suicide have been subjected to extreme bullying and others who perpetrate mass shootings have, too. (There are often other factors that contribute to their deadly actions. Bullying is rarely the whole answer.) Deaths have occurred during incidents of college hazing of pledges or recruits by the senior members of organizations. Mental health professionals view bullying as too serious a problem to be considered a character-building exercise.

So, if it’s so harmful, why is bullying losing its bad reputation? Some people think that society has gone too far in “coddling” children and that they need to toughen up or be less sensitive. The world they will live in is often harsh, and children must grow into adults who are aware of that and able to handle it. In this increasingly popular view, sensitivity is for the weak, and only the tough will succeed. There is anecdotal evidence to support this view. We can all think of bullies who have succeeded in politics, business, entertainment, or the media.

“If I’d never got bullied, I don’t think I’d be where I am today,” said one TikTok influencer. “I don’t think I would have the motivation to prove people wrong.” He believes that bullying “is not as bad as it is made out to be.” He has said, however, that it’s “never OK to turn to physical violence or pick on people based on their race, religion or disabilities.” But he maintains that at least some kinds of bullying are not as harmful. One wonders what his definition of bullying is and what the Anti-Bullying Alliance would say about it.

Just as the self-esteem programs of the 1980s, so popular at first, drew increasing criticism as leading to “participation trophies” and the devaluing of personal accomplishment, the idea of bullying may be undergoing a redefinition as a response to “wokeness” being seen as “weak.” It remains to be seen if this opinion will spread to society at large rather than just the bullies we already have.

Quotations in this post first appeared in the Oct. 6, 2025 edition of the New York Times in an article by Callie Holtermann.