I enjoy watching a magician at work. You know it’s a trick or the workings of hands that have been practicing handling cards or objects and you also know what you see is not what has happened – you have been fooled or duped. Is there some kind of magic or illusion being pulled in America?

George Washington made an observation: "…by an intermixture with our people, [immigrants], or their descendants, [they became] assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people."

"Today, all too many Americans feel like aliens in our own country---strangers in a strange land... They're the second and third-generation Americans---whose ancestors came here legally, and learned our language, identified with our history and heritage, and were proud and grateful to call themselves Americans---who are now asked to press one if they wish to continue in English." ---Don Feder

Today, immigration laws appear to be out of whack for whatever reason. Harvesting crops creates needs for extra help – it always has; but we’re not talking about a few extra hands or neighbors helping get in a crop of hay, we’re talking harvest big time. Is this the only problem involving immigration?

Traveling has never been a big thing for us so I have to admit I have never set foot on any foreign soil. That being a given, I still have a problem believing the moment I arrive in Paris, France, for example, and wish to call home announcing my safe arrival, when I put the coins in the phone I would hear: “For French, please press one.” If I were landing in Germany, when I inserted the coins, would the operator say, “For German, please press one.”? Is my country-bumpkin mentality showing or what? Is something not quite right when, IN American, the first question we have to deal with (on the phone) is whether we want to hear English spoken?

Who set up all these rules and philosophies that are overwhelming us every time we make a call for service – “Press One to hear this in English.” When did all this magic or illusion take place? Did we vote on this? Was this on a ballot I missed? Did our congress decide, on their own, “Things have to change”? Is this part of the One World order? Is the United Nations really “in charge” of our business acumen? Are we to assume that “somebody”: or the ubiquitous “they” have done this. And “they” are responsible for all this generic information – is this the case, and is it going to take another revolution to reclaim our American name and identification? We are seeing such messages on every hot-drink container or sandwich package in multi-languages. What ever happened to just AMERICAN instructions in plain English? All of a sudden we would see Owner Manuals being one-fourth the size in pages instead of the three additional languages in addition to the English instructions. I am for this, are you?

I thought I lived in America and I am ashamed of the people, companies or organizations who think it is fitting and proper to direct us to “Press One” to hear someone talk in English. It is English, not Spanish. I think we are being sold a bill of goods and those peddling this bill of goods is worse than any magician or illusionists because this is no trick I am talking about – it is a downright TAKE-OVER and I am not happy about it. I believe if anything is needed in recorded messages is rather such words as: If you speak Spanish, Press 2. If you speak French, Press 3. Should it be too difficult to assume and accept the concept that in America we speak English? We should not be required to press any button. Is there no outrage in America against this obvious and flagrant practice to put us on the defensive? Consider this writer outraged. In America we speak English. True, some parts of our country may give it a little different pronunciation or twang but as Snuffy Smith used to say, it is the “Newnited States of Amerryca”! How about the immigrants (legal and otherwise) learning our language like immigrants have been doing for years!

Resource for George Washington quote: Patriot Post

THE WORDWRIGHT

Posted by Bill Venrick at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, May 12th, I joined over three hundred other men and women to judge the presentations of over one thousand teenage boys and girls as they worked out hypotheses, wrote about their discoveries, shared their conclusions and reported the results of the projects they had claimed as theirs for the past several weeks and months.

The place where all this happened was the French Field House in Columbus, Ohio. A more important or popular sounding reference would be to say this was next to St. John Arena where great basketball games draw Ohio State University fans and visiting enthusiasts to watch men and women a few years older try to make their marks as well. The place I call home, Lancaster, Ohio, is just about thirty miles from this arena for sports and not being even an itsy bitsy fan of sports, about the only thing I know or remember are the unfortunate marks some OSU sports personalities have left on both their personal characters and the reputation of the college of their choice. I will leave it to the dogged routine of the news media to call our attention to misspent youth and misplaced values among a very small percentage of such athletes. Seems that is what maximizes our minds – the failures of a few youth who made some poor choices.

As I sat exploding the facts of my great day to my wife, Jean, she thought I better put such words to work and say something GOOD about youth for a change. I don’t recall “chewing out youth” per se recently or even during the time I have written essays for this website but I will admit some comments have shown less than a good opinion of some of the youth today.

My relatively new “career” as a judge started a few months ago when I was asked to judge a school district Science Fair in Baltimore, Ohio. Since I had never done that before I felt rather unprepared and inadequate but I accepted the challenge. Then came along another Science Fair level of participants who were to be judged at Ohio University – Lancaster Branch. I got involved with that too. I was, you could say, becoming hooked as a judge but I still had some doubts as to my qualifications. Just a few weeks after this second science fair I was contacted asking if I would serve as a judge at the state level of the Science Fair projects. This was the epitome of my experience with the Science Fair program in my brief tenures as a judge. According to the printed program of the 50th Annual State Science Day it became obvious why all this was new to me – I graduated from high school one year after this kind of program began here in this part of Ohio.

Our children were not in the college-bound or heavy-into-scholarship achievements so all during their school days science fairs were never a part of our school participation. I am grateful someone asked me to be a judge for that school science fair a few months ago. I discovered the kids of our society are learning something. I discovered kids of our society are doing some real thought-provoking projects. Regretfully, I have joined other adults in comparing the youth of today to the perfect examples we thought our generation was at that age (even though there were no science fairs when we was in school).

I want to, no, need to go on record as commending, congratulating and giving all the kudos I can muster to more than a thousand teenagers for being involved in the Science Fair program. Participants for the Science Fair were from grades seven through twelve, and of course both boys and girls were involved. Fortunately, also, any child with any level of handicaps (or, “challenged” as some say today) was given an opportunity to take on such projects. I will have to say all of these kids were not Einsteins, but I also must say, “Neither was the boy Einstein, the ‘Einstein’ he became!” These young people worked on projects, involved others as participants in their projects, kept accurate records, made charts, notes, worked up hypotheses (I doubt I even knew the word existed when I was their age) and prepared presentations to give before judges like myself, and the more than 300 judges I worked with in Columbus, Ohio. I was impressed! These kids were sharp. Most boys were dressed in gentlemanly attire and most girls were “dressed like girls” (excuse the generational-gap-critical-comments where people my age see unisex attire, and aside from certain areas of body shapes, it is hard to tell the boys from the girls sometimes).

After my period of judging I took the time to visit those thousand spaces but admittedly my visits and observations were cursory. One boy had worked on catapults and since I had made several models of toy catapults that caught my eye and we had a great few minutes sharing our successes. One young lady had worked on a project involving the color “orange” and I could not resist chiding her for picking out the color used for her poster – orange (what else?). Some posters, even though all were nearly identical in kind, size and design, individual talents came through and some naturally caught my eye quicker than others. The quality of being neat was nearly uniform and I cannot remember one that was poorly done. Sometimes teams (of two) worked on a project and the team my judge-partner and I interviewed did a quick job of “picking up” where one team member left off — well queued or practiced I could not tell, but they spoke as one voice.

Those teenagers worked on projects as daring as: “If you only had a brain”, “How catnip affects cats”, “Deflection: Don’t get bent out of shape”, “Is 13% more accuracy worth 140% more money?”, “Right cerebral hemisphere: Which gender among teens is stronger?”. One boy, Joshua, a 12th grader, is working part-time with a Lancaster orthodontist, had some professional mentoring by his employer, had a very involved project, “Which dental bond brand has the most tensile strength?” This young boy recognized me first and it wasn’t long until we figured out I had been a judge on his project at the Ohio University location. With limited space in my essay it is impossible to fairly represent the other projects but I honestly don’t recall seeing many duplicates and that in itself it a real scientific achievement.

Personally I feel like the winner in this science fair – I learned we have a very substantial group of young men and women who can think and express themselves. I actually included such words in the comments section of my judge’s card. If I live long enough I will not be surprised to see a surprising number of those participants on lists of patent owners, authors, chemists, dentists, opticians, essayists, naturalists, professional farmers and “professionals” of a couple dozen other fields. My hat goes off to all of those teenagers. Naturally there were incentives, and as the printed program reported: “Sometimes in the excitement of the sponsored awards and ratings we lose track of the fact that everyone at State Science Day is an achiever.” Amen to that. Practically speaking, only a few hundred projects could be collectively granted $1.7 million in sponsored awards and scholarships. Hats off to the many sponsors including names we see around us everyday – electric power companies, chemical corporations (one of which was founded in 1885 and has 143 affiliates in 47 countries). You see, this was not a small stuff project – it was a big deal to deserving youth and proudly supported by observant sponsors in both the private sector as well as corporate giants.

“GREAT JOB!” is my comment for all the participants at the 59th Annual (Ohio) State Science Day held Saturday, May 12, 2007, in Columbus, Ohio.

The Wordwright

Posted by Bill Venrick at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Written by my wife, Jean, with some concluding thoughts by The Wordwright.

As I was cooking broccoli recently, its wafted fragrance passed my nose. I was immediately taken back to Home Economics Class where I learned to prepare a couple of dishes we never had at home. Broccoli was one of them. Mother never grew this vegetable, so she bought some for me to prepare.

Another dish we learned to cook in that class was Spanish Hamburgers. My mother had never fixed that for our family either, so I prepared Spanish Hamburgers, adding one more recipe to our country home cuisine. Evidently it was a good choice because we had Spanish Hamburgers after that and we still do today. They are known as Sloppy Joes in this day and age, somehow I like the sound of Spanish Hamburgers better.

I still have the baking book we were given in Home Economics Class. It contains a lot of basic recipes for cake, muffins and such.

Open windows and doors on a sunny, warm day after being closed all winter, allow a refreshing fragrance to come inside. The birds chirping add to the enjoyment of the coming spring.

I well remember the smell of our everyday closet; as a child, where my mother and dad kept their work clothes worn while tending chores at the barn. We had a couple cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. The dirty boots worn on rainy days added to a smell I can still remember.

Gardenias will quickly bring to mind the corsages my husband, Bill, would buy me in our younger days. He said he didn’t know of any other kind of flowers to buy. They turned brown quickly on the edges so you could hardly wear them more than once.

Another important fragrance, smell or whatever you want to call it, was how my mother smelled to me as a young child. She was a stay-at-home farmwoman whose duties were ones that took her outdoors a lot. She would naturally perspire; she was not a dirty person, just that her clothes would absorb a work odor. Even if I had been blind, when she held and cuddled me, I would know it was Mother. It was not objectionable to me – is it possible there is such a thing as a “mother smell”?

Since we lived in the country and a road ran by a field in front of our house, I learned the sounds of all the neighbors’ cars. I didn’t even have to see the car to identify the neighbor who was going to town. Cars were not as plentiful in the 1930’s and 1940’s so it was not hard to recognize one from the other. I would hear one going by and say, “There go Siscos to town.”

Another sound, which would find us running outside, would be an airplane. We would look skyward until the plane was out of sight. Even today I find myself looking up if I hear one going over our house but I don’t run outside to view one. It’s amazing how our memory records such things and for so long a time too, I’m 75 now and those sights, sounds and smells are still fresh in my mind. ###

I am grateful my wife adds her occasional words for use in The Wordwright. Today, the sound might be a life-flight helicopter, and thoughts of accidents on the highway immediately come to mind. Commercial jets fly at such altitudes their sounds are no longer heard. The ear-piercing sounds of emergency vehicles often interrupt our peace and quiet. And, strange as it may seem that “sound” of everything electrical stopping when the electric goes off!

My own life contains a memory bank of sights sounds and smells—I can still smell the fragrance of oats cooked by my Great Aunt Vashti Wilson; the very texture and taste is clear in my mind to this day. Aunt Vashti also baked short bread, and this mere mention starts specific glands working. Toast being made at the table or in the broiler section of the gas oven in our kitchen brings back aromas; bacon frying in the skillet, with eggs cooking, all add to those memories that take us back when we were home as children. We had a toaster that had a unique feature allowing the toast to be swung out and away from the heating elements and turned on a pivot to swing back and toast the second side. The fancy modern toasters, where you dropped the bread into the top and bread could be toasted on both sides at once, were not on our kitchen table. Even then I marveled at the design of that special toaster.

The fragrance of popcorn cooking at a theater’s concession stand, and the other smells that flow through the corridors of our brain’s memory storehouse that recall the visits to the candy counter at Kresges (or another Dime Store) or the smell of tobacco at the drug store. The smell of a match that had just been struck by Dad as he lighted his pipe; this was before the days when fears of cancer outweigh the joy of an occasional smoke. The smell of Dad’s hunting jacket or the mixed odors of gasoline and oil as I stomped on the kick starter of my 1942 Cushman 3-wheeled motor scooter; and the rush of excitement as the sound of that single-cylinder motor promising an afternoon of traveling the streets of Lancaster or wandering the roads of Fairfield County.

All of us have such memories enjoying that “random access memory” for decades to come--long before we were to learn the word RAM. Computers have nothing on the brain God gave us.

THE WORDWRIGHT’S WIFE & BILL HIMSELF

Posted by Bill Venrick at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)