Archived Editorial for 06/29/03

A Writing Life in Essays
by The Editor, Rebecca Brown

“Make writing an excuse not to do other things” -- John Hewitt, Director of Writer's Resource Center

Always carry a notebook.
Always read interactively.
Rewrite your notes & File so you can find them again.
Always create a bibliography: Book Title: Subtitle, Author's full name, Year of Publication, Publishing House, ISBN & a one introductory paragraph.

What is an essay? It is a short literary composition of an analytical, interpretive, or reflective nature, dealing with its subject in a nontechnical, limited, often unsystematic way &, usually, expressive of the author's outlook & personality. Other essays are arguments putting forward an organized collection of ideas of your take on something (usually, not always) you've read:- “This is what I think about that.” An essay has a topic which you raise in your introduction, then you list your point/s, & finally you conclude with your opinion & other ideas to back you up.

When you quote always surrounded it with quotation marks & add the Author's Name, Text Title & page number listed.

Most places accept a five paragraph essay as the norm. Essays tend to have long paragraphs, although long sentences are frowned upon.

In my writing life, I'm not writing to be graded by a professor at a university, nor by a professional in the business world, so my essays are more reflective than analytical, rather like compositions, articles, pieces, themes. I also tend not to be argumentative--which exasperates my Belovéd. I'm not naturally a disputatious, quarrelsome, contentious type--I merely wish to share my point of view.

Consider this epigram (quip, bon mot, joke) by George Bernard Shaw, most remembered for Pygmalion & its descendant My Fair Lady:- “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” Circa 1910.

What is my topic? Having emigrated from the former to the latter, I know something of which Mr. Shaw writes--two peoples speaking a common language, heavy on idiosyncratic usage & definition.

I first caught sight of America after viewing the Statue of Liberty by dawn's early light, with The Star Spangled Banner by Frances Scott Keyes playing over the PA system, from the deck of the Castel Felice. She was an ancient cruise ship with a proud & checkered history, filled with returning American college students & folks heading off to new lives in the Antipodes. For the uninitiated see below for this beloved old bucket's provenance.

When I stept off the overnight train in Chicago, Illinois after viewing the spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties & fruited plains of America the Beautiful by Katharine Lee Bates, I was eager to explore my New World. I was lulled into a sense of belonging, normalcy, association, kinship by hearing the denizens of that lakeside city speaking familiar words. I was no bumpkin, having lived & studied in an English metropolis, yet when it got down to the nitty-gritty, essence, crux, core of street skinny, I realized I was going to have to learn a whole new language.

It was the 1960s, at the apex, zenith, pinnacle, acme of the Civil Rights Movement. At my first American breakfast in the cafeteria of the YWCA, I learnt I could not ask for black or white coffee without receiving a spur-of-the-moment primitive lesson in political correctness.

It was the 1960s, when the war in Viet Nam was worrying every young man I met.
When every child born into suburban bliss was coming into the city for a taste of real life.
When Sleeping Beauties of my age were rousing even as male chauvinism reached its climax, & finding we were all little secretaries or airline stewardesses in a world of male bosses. Coffee, tea or me? No glass slipper, only glass ceilings!
When hair was being teased into beehives, hems were above knees, Playboy Bunnies were icons of envy as well as discontent, & life was very, very good.

As a young, healthy, single woman I quickly joined in the mating game, & discovered words & phrases which got me into both hot water & embarrassing situations. Same words--different connotations--braces, suspenders & garters, rubbers & erasers.

Actually, the great GBS wasn't entirely accurate because even in his England, the people were separated by language. When I first arrived in Chicago, I was hired as a nanny for a family of several American generations. The wife commented she'd never heard my accent before. As a graduate of a “finishing school” who went on to a trade art school, I had been ribbed (taunted, harassed, bothered & ridiculed) mercilessly about my accent. For the two years I dabbled in drawing, sculpting, the graphic arts & painting I had eroded my pronunciation until it aroused little reaction.

After decades of becoming an American & traveling the length & breadth of this fair land, I have learnt there are as many accents as there are regions. My children's American grandmother lived in New Orleans, & when we visited, it took us an age to understand each other. She would mutter grumpily: “Can't understand a word you say, woman! Where you from? Up North?” I will not try to duplicate either her accent or her dialect as it was, quite naturally, as thick as molasses...as was mine!

Whether from William Shakespeare's “Scepter'd Isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars. This other Eden, demi-paradise” (The Tragedy of King Richard II Act ii. Sc. 1.), or a vast continent “from the mountains to the prairies, To the oceans white with foam” as in Irving Berlin's God Bless America, we all sport exuberant dialects. Everywhere there are vernaculars & slangs, cants & argots, colloquialisms & neologisms, vulgarisms & pseudologies, lingos, jargons & shoptalk.

With each job & neighborhood, religion & play place, economic class & hobby, a new lexicon, glossary, thesaurus, vocabulary has to be learnt. No matter which side of The Pond. Now, of course, when I do return to the land of my birth, my ear is so out of tune that I am as bewildered as any native-born American, & the denizens of the Old Country peg me for a Yank, which, strictly speaking, I am not, having never lived in New England, just the old one.

In summation, while Englanders & Americans have a common ancestral language which down the generations has thrived diversely, it is more the usage & the accents that set us apart. A century after George Bernard Shaw's witticism, this confusion is even more evident as within each nation English becomes a second language, after people's mother tongues.

Understanding essays with guidance from Kathy Livingston in her Guide to Writing a Basic Essay & How To Write An Essay by Tom Davis

For your information: The TSS Castle Felice was built in 1930 by A. Stephen & Sons, Glasgow, Scotland for the British India Line on their Bombay to Durban run.
Length: 150,3 m / Beam: 19,6 m / GRT: 12,150 t. / Speed: 16 kn. / Passenger capacity: 1,400
Former names: Kenya, Hydra, Keren, Fairstone.
In 1940 she became a troopship & was later refitted as an infantry landing vessel.
In 1946 she was sold to Ministry of Transport & in 1948 was laid up in Holy Loch.
In February 1949 she was stranded after breaking adrift in a storm, refloated, repaired at Glasgow & sold to Sitmar Line, Rome, Italy.
In March 1951 she went to Antwerpen for conversion into a passenger ship & in August 1951 to Genoa for further rebuilding.
In October 1952 the conversion was complete, she was renamed Castel Felice & was put on the Genoa to South America service, then Bremerhaven to Quebec, later Southampton to Sydney.
On 15 August, 1970 fire broke out in accommodations while berthed at Southampton. A decision was made not to make repairs.
October 21, 1970 she arrived in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for demolition.

For those who traveled to new lives aboard the Castel Felice:
http://members.home.nl/bnijhuis/bnhp5.htm
Immigrant Ships, Transcribers Guild, World War II Refugees to Australia
http://istg.rootsweb.com/ww2_au.html

Rebecca