Erratum OoN
19v12
A reader writes about transitive and intransitive verbs. In
my today's OoN "teaching,"
I led you astray. The pistol
was lying on the cushion. The man laid it there. I hope this
is correct. Anyhow, the pistol's not there anymore and
hasn't been for forty years or
so.
OoN is and continues to be a place where the language gets a
fair treatment and can
be trusted. Sometimes.
The pleasure in all this for me is that OoN does get read
and carefully proofread. A
long time ago I wrote a weekly
essay for the Sunday "leaflet" for a church where I
was
rector I learned that the essay was frequently used in a
graduate school and in a
divinity school as a fair
example of above average "church writing." I never heard a
word, comforting or otherwise, from the congregation for
whom it was intended until
I would add a typo now and
then. Then I heard for sure.
Anything else about OoN can be relegated to style.
So there.
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Anecdotage OoN
19v12
The news says that now some places allow concealed firearms
to be carried in public
places like shopping malls and
churches. I suppose churches are public places though
I've often wondered. By coincidence, I was once rector of a
prominent old highsteeple
church in Our Town. It was not
only a coincidence. It was also a surprise, not
only for
me, but later on for the vestry, as well.
It was a Sunday morning at the hallowed hour of eleven. The
nave was maybe half
full of people which was an
exception. One of the ushers was standing just behind the
last pew on what used to be called the "gospel side," the
people were standing for a
hymn or whatever the liturgy
called for which wasn't all that clear in the 1928 prayer
book. The usher noticed an old military-issue .45 automatic
pistol laying* on the pew
cushion beside a man who at the
time was standing. He signaled to another usher who
called the police who sent two plain-clothes officers who
when the time came blended
right in and assisted with the
alms-taking and waited until the liturgy ended before
inviting the man with the gun outside with them and asking
him what he might have
had in mind.
Later, I asked the usher who'd first noticed all this that
if the man with the gun had
taken a bead on me had he
planned to leap in front of him Secret Service style. He
said, "No."
___________________________________________________
* I
never know which, so I looked it up. The transitive verb
"lay" is always followed
by an object and gets "-ing" to
make a participle present. The intransitive verb "lie"
never is followed by an object, but loses its "-ie" and gets
"-y" when necessary with,
of course, the same or maybe
another "-ing."
Nostalgia OoN
18v12
Nostalgia may not be the word for it, but on
17 May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that
school segregation violated
the Fourteenth Amendment. Eight days later, I was graduated
from the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest.
An eight-year-old girl named Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas,
had to travel 21 blocks every
day to an all-black
elementary school, even though she lived just seven blocks
from another
elementary school for white children. Her
father, Oliver Brown, asked that his daughter be
allowed
to attend the nearby white school, and when the white
school's principal refused,
Brown sued. The Supremes
already had five school segregation cases from different
states on
their docket, so they combined them under one
name: Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of
Education of
Topeka. They then decided to list Brown's case first because
it originated in
Kansas, and they didn't want to give the
impression that segregation was purely a Southern
problem.
On July 1, 1954, I was ordered a deacon and assigned as
vicar of St Matthew Church and
chaplain at Lamar State
College in Beaumont, Texas, where "Southern Problems"
abounded.
Two years later when the Federal Court in
Beaumont ordered all-white Lamar College to
accept black
students, I became a southern problem myself.
The night of the first registration for black students at
Lamar, all entrances to the campus
were blocked by
pickets -- white men carrying axe handles and baseball bats.
The
Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian chaplains, the
rector of the downtown Episcopal church, and I walked
black students, one on each arm, through picket lines so
they could register for
classes.
Dozens of Beaumont's finest plus two Texas Rangers kept
watch. Texas lore had always told that it never takes
more than one Ranger to handle any kind of "disturbance."
That there were two was sufficient cause for me for chill
time of which there was plenty.
The next day's paper showed my picture with students and
pickets on the front page above
the fold (the clerical
collar did it). My bishop (John E. Hines) called, said he'd
noted the
publicity, said he was getting a lot of calls
wondering why he'd sent me there, why didn't he
send me
packing instead.
He said that he knew I'd have to make a lot of quick
decisions, that any decisions I made
would be his, would
I please let him know as soon as I made them, so he'd know
what he
was doing.
I said, didn't I, that this was nostalgia time? And a
reminder about what bishops can do when they are of a
mind to.
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