I chuckled when I got the following e-mail this week from a female NASCAR fan:
“Some of us toothless, beer-guzzlin’, rednecks wanna know what happened to the NASCAR page in the Sunday Sports section? The Nextel Cup is down to the last 10 races of the season and you cancel the only weekly link to this tremendous sport that we get in Salt Lake?”
Michael Anastasi, managing editor for sports and features, speedily sent me the following answer:
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the space any longer to accommodate 6 columns for NASCAR, as much as I’d like to.
“We knew this was going to happen last spring when I decided to launch the page, but I decided that having it for 25 of the 35 weeks of the season would be better than having it for 0 weeks.
“To our critics, I would point out that the amount of space and the prominence of NASCAR has never been stronger from this paper than this year. I mean, not even close.
“In the meantime, we’ve continued to play NASCAR strong (stories on both the front of sports Sunday and Monday) and we continue to be on the lookout for strong stories that can run in the middle of the week. And, if the space appears, we’ll commit it to the NASCAR page again. I’ve been hoping for it each week, and I continue to work to get an ever increasing amount of space in Sports.”
So much for the need for speed.
Noun-verb agreement?
Another e-mail from a member of the grammar police points out the problem with a headline on a story about women washing their hands more frequently after using the bathroom than men. The headline used the phrase “one of four men” and then used a plural verb instead of a singular verb that would match the subject of the sentence “one.”
“[An article in Thursday's] Trib has a headline which says, in essence: ‘One don’t wash hands,’ and ‘one fail to wash.’ They do not sound correct to me. Maybe [you] don’t got no proofreader?”
Apparently one of the copy editors was on lunch break when that one slipped through. Please keep sending me notes on errors like that. There must be some ballet masters to keep us on our toes.
They are evacuees! I am not surprised that I am getting calls and e-mails about what has become a nationwide newspaper debate. What to call the people who survived Hurricane Katrina and were moved to areas where they could be fed, take showers, find jobs, put their children in school and try to regain some semblance of normality in their lives. Said one:
“Perhaps you’ve not been notified of this situation, but if you’d paid closer attention to the news out of New Orleans over the past three weeks you would understand that the evacuees find the use of the term refugee to be disparaging and incorrect.
“Most news sources refer to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina as evacuees. These citizens had to flee their homes because of Mother Nature and the failure of the government to correct the problems that caused the flooding, in the first place.
“Most of them have every intention to return, unlike refugees, who are forced out of their homes (and countries) by other humans. Refugees have little hope to return to their homes. You may want to check your Web site to be more compassionate, tolerant, and politically correct and fix this error.”
Nouns that carry only dictionary definitions denote a person, place or thing. Some nouns, however, gain a connotative meaning based upon the common experiences of a nation. I suspect this is what has happened in this instance.
This nation has been generous in taking in and making welcome refugees from all kinds of repression and war. They know they will never go back to their homes.
Most of the survivors of Katrina, however, hold dear the belief they will return to their homes when New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast communities that were wiped out in the storm are rebuilt.
I side with the people who believe they should be called evacuees.
