Grazie! תוֹדָה! Dziękuję! Merci!

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who view their lives through the lens of gratitude and those who view it through a lens of snark.

Thanks to my mom, I learned early on to "please" and "thank you" with the best of them. I have taught these magic words to my children, too, and I believe they are some of the most charming incantations in the human spellbook. But, though I bandy the words about freely, I find myself dwelling deeply in the land of snark. 

I'm not apologizing here (although I do that very well, too, and far too often). A little snark never hurt anyone. Snark is funny. It helps get me through my day. It takes a quick wit and a sharp tongue to pull off snark with aplomb, and I appreciate a talented practitioner. Many of my favorite writers — Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, professional snarkers all — have proven over and over again that the pen truly is mightier than the sword, and I wish I could thank them all personally.

So let me take just a moment to be a little snarky about gratitude. Ever since Oprah jumped on the gratitude bandwagon, it has become big business. If you search her Website, more than 200 results show up for gratitude. I'm not complaining. I'm grateful for Oprah. Her show has made me laugh and cry and think, no small feat for the small screen. But all this gratitude talk also makes me cringe just a little.

Some years ago, I was given a copy of the bestselling book Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. It was a lovely gesture, the perfect gift for an aspiring writer, for which I was very grateful. I've not read it. It stares at me reproachfully from the top shelf of my bedroom bookcase, it's sticky sweet pink cover making me feel like a middle-aged goth wannabe. Just thinking about it gives me a sudden urge to get a tattoo. I'm grateful for my profound aversion to pain, or I would be a painted lady by now.

The trouble with these prescriptions for injecting gratitude into our lives is that they tend to be full of cloying, treacly little algorithms for better living: Eat Pray Love; discover The Secret; Focus on the Good Stuff. It's hard to convey real gratitude without sounding mawkish (but when I discover the secret of how to do it and write my book about it, I will be eternally grateful to Oprah if she will interview me about it on her show).

"I feel a very unusual sensation — 

if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude."

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

But this morning (or yesterday morning or whenever it was that I last awoke from sleeping, as I see it is now after 3:00 a.m.) I heard a litany of "I hates" reverberating in my brain and the oddest thought popped into my mind: What if I changed every "I hate" statement I hear in my head to an "I love" statement. I know, I gagged, too, but that hazy, waking, early morning brain is hard to control and, unbidden, it started to make the conversions. Don't panic, there was no epiphany. But it did make me smile to myself in a genuine, unsnarky way — especially when I heard "I love school-related paperwork" whispered in my inner ear — and it got me thinking, which always a dangerous thing.

I am grateful — you know, sometimes. (Watch out, here comes the cotton candy.) When I look at my children, I am (usually) awash in a gratitude so profound that it defies verbal expression, so I smother them in kisses and make them promise never to grow up. I'm grateful to live in this country (where, despite all its faults, it is still the best place to be) and in this century (when, despite all its faults, it is still the best place to be). I'm grateful for our myriad comforts and gifts (even though I would be plenty grateful to wake up debt free with a brand new kitchen). 

I know I'm not grateful often enough. I don't need to read all those best sellers to understand that true gratitude, like exercise, takes practice and commitment before you can reap the benefits. I feel guilty enough without them harping at me.

My friend and fellow Chicago Moms Blogger, Kim Moldofsky, inspired this blog post (although, once she reads it, she may feel somewhat less than grateful). Kim has taken the 21-Day TinyPrints Gratitude Challenge and is writing about her feelings of gratitude for three straight weeks. I admire her commitment and effort at making gratitude a habit — as well as the speed, grace and frequency with which she posts.

I do have one funny little gratitude ritual. I keep a tzedakah box for collecting coins to give to charity in the cupboard above my washing machine. Whenever I find a penny or a dime or a quarter in the laundry, instead of pocketing it, I put it in the box and offer this little blessing: I'm grateful for the health and well being of my family. I try to say it without a trace of snark.

I'm always grateful for your comments — be they snarky or full of appreciation — just click here to share.

I'd like to express my gratitude for the fabulous photo that graces this post — Cafe Gratitude, San Francisco Mission District. My thanks to Shayan Sanyal who shared it through a Creative Commons license. 

Facing Up to Facebook

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who use online social networking tools and those who don't. Yet. 

Social networking is exactly what it sounds like: communicating among a group of people with common interests — and it is not new. Plato's Academy, way back BCE, was a social network. The writers, editors, actors and agents who frequented the Algonquin Roundtable after WWI practically defined social networking. Heck, talking over the back fence with your neighbor an act of social networking.

So, what's all the fuss? Do we really need Twitter? Has LinkedIn changed the way we link up? Are people really being served by listserves?

Just as it has altered everything else it has touched, the Internet has changed the very nature of social networking — allowing people from all over the world to make instant connections. Sometimes these connections are nameless or pseudonymous, many times they are faceless. Some "require" you to post your real name and picture, but who's really checking the millions of users involved in these lawless social networks, often referred to as the wild west of the 21st century.

A few weeks ago, I ran across SheWrites, a brand spankin' new Web-based community of (primarily) women writers. I was attracted to the idea of a place online that was all about writing all the time. Since the site went live sometime mid-June, it has grown to more than 2,500 members. But Facebook boasts 100,000 times that amount, claiming to have 250 million members.

When I mentioned SheWrites in my last post, I heard from my friend Marcy, who said: "Why are you not on Facebook, woman? I just posted a link to your blog, you silly gal."

Why wasn't I on Facebook? Here was someone else promoting my blog on the world's largest social networking site, so why wasn't I? I guess it seemed a little crass — all those horror stories of people posting pictures of themselves in compromising positions and then losing their jobs over it. I guess it seemed a little scary — 250 million people! I guess it seemed like a black hole ready to suck even more of my time and creative writing juices (read this hysterical review). 

But, as of July 14, Facebook can now boast 250,000,001, because I finally caved and joined. Facebook is the crack cocaine of social networking. Highly addictive, it sucks you in with the ability to make more friends in 10 minutes than you have in your entire life. With its online food fights and rounds of simulated drinks, if you're not careful, you could find yourself suffering one wicked virtual hangover. 

On the other hand, you can talk to people you never see or hear from except around the holidays. You can reconnect, promote your business and (one day) your book, and even learn a thing or two. You aren't promising your life away by posting a few lines here and there. When you're done, you're done. You don't have to comment. You don't have to post your status. You don't have to check your wall. (Well, maybe you don't have to check your wall … hang on, I'll be right back.)

The cure for boredom is curiosity.

There is no cure for curiosity.

— Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)

Ok, I'm back. With the passing of Walter Cronkite, I have been thinking a lot about the new media. Is this instant communication anything more than curiosity run amok — our escalating narcissism and voyeurism spun into the ultimate exercise in navel gazing? Is unedited, unvetted, user-generated content the literature of our time? Is this how our words will be judged?

In a well-crafted post, Merlin Mann argues that we need to do better:  "What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, make believe insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it's making us small … All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better."

Here's to doing better. I hope you'll keep me on my toes here at Two Kinds of People. Use your right to comment and call me on typos, spurious arguments and run-on sentences. All you have to do is click here.

Photo credit: Circle of friends by Frederic Poirot

Real Good Grammar

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who get the heebie-jeebies when they see this cover of The Elements of Style, and those who get warm fuzzies.

It's probably no surprise that the classic Strunk and White grammar reference is a favorite among my ever-growing collection of books on writing, grammar and publishing. My brother claims that while he recognizes when something is grammatically incorrect, I can tell you why. If that's true, it's due in large part to my reliance on The Elements of Style.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of E.B. White's reexamination of Professor William Strunk Jr.'s "little" book, originally self-published in 1918. In the 1971 third edition, White wrote in his introduction: "Today, fifty-two years later, its vigor is unimpaired, and for sheer pith I think it probably sets a record that is not likely to be broken. Even after I got through tampering with it, it was still a tiny thing, a barely tarnished gem."

My copy of that "tiny thing" is 92 pages, including the index, and cost $2.95 when I bought it in 1979. A brand-new, hard-cover 50th anniversary edition is $13.27 on Amazon.com and runs a whopping 128 pages. That pith, along with a dose of humor, is what makes this grammar book, of all things, still newsworthy after 90 years. 

I admit that I'm a grammatical fuddy-duddy. E-text makes me crazy. I loathe the misspellings, lack of punctuation, and incomplete sentences that are acceptable — even expected — in e-mail and texting. I cringe as I see already-mediocre vocabularies being whittled down to a pitiful collection of abbreviations and emoticons ;-). Stop telling me that you are FOTFL and let me hear the joke. I'll decide for myself whether it's funny or not.

By Strunk & White's standards, my writing falls far short of ideal: "Do not inject opinion" (pg. 80), they warn. This blog, indeed blogging in general, would be damed for "affecting a breezy manner" (pg. 73):

The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. 

But despite the harsh criticism that I imagine I hear directed at me from beyond the grave, I still treasure the advice and simplicity of The Elements of Style. Times change, language grows, and grammar evolves, but evolution does not mean obsolescence. Grammar is the framework upon which we build our stories, the bones that define the features of our characters, and the shiny mirror that allows us to reflect our meaning and our society with clarity and precision. Keeping a few good guides on your desk or bookmarking them online just makes good writing sense.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy. — Dorothy Parker

If you hate the book because you think it has weakened our study of grammar by reducing it to a mere 100 or so pages, you might enjoy Geoffrey Pullum's "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice." If you hate it because you think grammar is stupid and unnecessary (or are just a word nerd, like me), check out Marc Acito's commentary on NPR's All Things Considered called "Who Needs a Manual to Write Real Good."

For those who have not run screaming into the night, you may be interested to know that the revisions to MLA (Modern Language Association) Style also go into effect this month. 

Happy anniversary, Mssrs. Strunk and White, and thanks. If you have a grammar horror story or favorite writing reference to share, please click here.

Finally, in honor of National Poetry Month, here's Carl Sandburg on grammar:

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.