Toast of the Town

Hello World,

Well, there's no getting away from the fact that the Back-to-School season is well and truly upon us, and it would be impossible to miss the school buses and crossing guards all over town, where we haven't seen them all summer. Anyone who tried recently to do any shopping at Staples or other such retailers can tell you that the crowds there did much to cheer the hearts of the President's economic advisers, as you couldn't get near anyplace that was selling anything even remotely associated with school supplies. Since that category has unaccountably expanded these days - to include such items as candy, electronics, furniture, toys, appliances, cars and even wine - it pretty much covers just about anywhere you might have wanted to go, but didn't dare. So those of us with no back-to-school needs had to take a break from the stores out of self-protection for a couple of weeks, until things get back to normal on the retail scene after the buying frenzy has subsided into just another academic year. One thing I do know after Hurricane Irene, those kids will be going back to school with all the flashlights and batteries they could ever want, believe me - not to mention lunchboxes full of French toast, oui?

Monday was Labor Day, of course, and I hope that you were able to enjoy a nice relaxing three-day weekend that included resting from your labors, in the spirit of the legendary Samuel L. Gompers, and long may he wave, by golly. Around here, the Flag Brigade did another excellent job of flying the colors, upstairs and downstairs, and remembered to bring them back inside again before the weather became a hazard to them. It's true the local weather has been a lot better than in many other places, heaven knows, but it must be said that by the time the flags came back inside, they had both been wrapped completely around their poles, thanks not. And while it's always nice to have a day off from work, I'm sure everyone already knows what I think of those short weeks at work, and this one even worse than usual - since I came down with some sort of stomach bug that was going around, and found myself spending more time in the bathroom than at work, and once again, thanks so very much not. So it turned out to be a rather long and challenging week all around, and I was more than glad to see the tail-end of it on Friday, and that's putting it mildly. Right about now, I'm thinking that some of that back-to-school wine might not be such a bad idea after all, and garcon, toss in some of that French toast while you're at it.

Of course, everyone is tired of me picking on the local newspaper by now, just because they can't seem to put a whole sentence together that is grammatically correct, doesn't leave out any words, where everything is spelled right, and uses the right words to start with, and not just something that sounds close enough to the right word. Honestly, the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when people had to actually know something in order to put out a newspaper, and not just toss any old thing together and throw it out on the streets in the face of an unsuspecting public. In this day and age of technology wonders, it's amazing to me that they continue to make these same kinds of routine errors week in and week out, as if the stories magically write themselves, and print themselves on paper, unseen or untouched by human hands. Or at least, human hands that belong to any English-speaking people anyway. Well, it's all too true that there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, but I will say that these two items from last week really surprised me.

The first is from the Sports section, about a local high school athlete winning an award, and I will say right up front that I have no reason to blame the newspaper for this, however startling this caption may have appeared:

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National gold medal-winning

fencer Jonah Shainberg of Rye,

and his coach Archil Lortkipanidze

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Lortkipanidze??? What the heck kind of a name is Lortkipanidze??? They spelled it the same way numerous times in the accompanying article, so I have to assume that it's right, but it certainly got my attention, when I normally would not find much of interest in a story about high school fencing, believe me.

The next one is a personal favorite, and appeared as a sidebar in a column entitled: "Some Lawmakers Have Spotty Attendance Records." The sidebar was a short list of those legislators who had perfect attendance records, setting them apart from their more lackadaisical colleagues, and giving credit where it's due is always a virtue to be applauded. What set this apart was the headline of the sidebar, which I am reproducing verbatim, I assure you:

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AF ;AILFN A;ILFN A;LDFNAFD

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Ya gotta love it! Mind you, this is how the paper was actually printed and went out to their dozens of subscribers (or however many thousands they claim to have) and not just some slip-shod mock-up they fabricated to test the placement of the stories or whatnot. No, this actually hit the streets in this condition, which even the most ancient of civilizations, carving figures into papyrus reeds or clay tablets, and no technology of any kind at their disposal, would have easily avoided. I tell you, sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry. The reason that it's a personal favorite of mine (and probably why it leaped at me off the page in the first place) is that I often employ the same strategy of typing random letters, which I call a "place holder," in a spot where I need to have text that I haven't decided on yet. Mine always looks something like this - a;ldkjfa; ;lasdkjf a; jf;alsdkfj a; jfalskdjfa; fjalskdjf a;ljfalkdjfa - because those are the keys that my fingers are resting on anyway. But I will point out the big difference between me and the local newspaper is that I always go back later and type in the real text and take out the gobbledygook. This is something that the newspaper staff could learn - that is, if the paper didn't magically write itself and print itself on paper without any human intervention at any point along the way.

Meanwhile at work, we were all recently bombarded with a screaming press release about one of our sister institutions, which is named after a local family of philanthropists ("Mom and Pop's Nursing Home o' Quacks") that the headline assured us was about to "Benefit From Global Project." There was a picture with the Vice President o' Quacks and a representative of the project, and I admit that I couldn't resist having high hopes when I noticed this interesting caption: "MPNHQ was the beneficiary of Morgan Stanley's community commitment and their international corporate project - Global Volunteer Month." After all, Morgan Stanley is a multi-billion dollar world-wide finance conglomerate, and I would think the outcome of their global volunteer initiative would be something not only economically significant, but also a much-needed improvement that was previously out of the recipient's reach, before this magnanimous gesture. So you can imagine that I was more than a little surprised - and here, stupefied is not too strong a word - to read the following:

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Now after more than 50 man-hours of work

from 25 employees at the Westchester

Campus of Morgan Stanley,

MPNHQ patients, visitors and staff alike,

have seasonal decorations to adorn the doors

of the residents' rooms.

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Excuse me??? It took 25 employees 50 hours to make a box full of decorations to hang on the doors - gee whiz, could they spare it at Morgan Stanley? Heck, even the late great John D. Rockefeller himself used to give out dimes, he didn't have 25 people make door decorations for the poor. It actually goes on to say that it all began in 2010 when the Global Volunteer Month folks got in touch with the United Way for ideas about their project, and then really pulls out all the stops with this gushy finale: "United Way used their extensive experience to facilitate a marriage of resources, opportunity and need - one that made all involved winners, particularly the residents of MPNHQ, who are again reminded of the spirit of volunteerism, exemplified by this company's employees and are grateful for the cheery welcome the decorations provide everyone." Well, I'm sorry, but here you can all please give me a large break. I mean, if they had sent out a press release that a troop of Brownies had donated a box of door decorations that they made out of recycled newspapers and soda bottles as part of an Earth Day program, I would think that was adorable and wonderful. But once you trot out fiscal powerhouse Morgan Stanley and their Global Volunteer Month, then please don't toss me a box of decorations and expect me to get excited about it, for heaven's sake. In fact, I'm surprised that they didn't just give us a box full of flashlights and batteries that the employees had stockpiled for Hurricane Irene, and have United Way throw in a bunch of their plastic lapel pins, and call it a day. Of course, with our luck, they would have given us a box full of left-over French toast instead, non?

Elle