May 11, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

by Linda Bergeron

Here’s an if-then question, folks. If the catch phrase blog comes from the miniaturization of the phrase Web Log, then let us imagine that the original phrase coined had been, instead, any of the following: Web Journal, Web Annal, Web Record, or Web Chronicle.

If you use your brain while twisting your lips around a bit you can see immediately that trying to let something like bbb-chronicle drop out of your mouth simply does not work, so that one could be elim-inated, no question.

Now bannal (which my MicrosoftWord program insists I am not spelling correctly), if pronounced in the same way that one would say annal with that assertive ah start to it, just doesn’t quite draw up an image of fast words sent off on a keyboard, and would not have worked well either.

The truth is that saying the phrase blog forces one’s mouth to drop open – for an extended moment even – in order to say it out loud, suggesting similar phrasings, sounds and meanings such as the blahs, bloppy, and various non-word, unofficial sounds that generally communicate boredom or a ho-hum, super-casual attitude and…[Excuse me, my spelling error just brought up attidude which completely distracted my train of thought.]…well, one can probably think of some other possibilities. Mouthing blog truly does suggest an element of mild surprise or maybe feeling aghast. (Are we in fact amazed at our-selves for writing a Dear Diary without a lock and key?)

Brecord is a stretch. As a weird combination of a puff of breath - said with a determined accent as in brec’ord – it can be suggestive of haughtiness inherent in the Queen’s multi-shire version of English. Brecord. Not once does it make one think of writing up one’s thoughts or hard-earned opinions, and posting them in a public, unlegislated place for absolutely anyone on the planet to view while in their slippers at home, sitting straight at work, or tilting the monitor away from the next cubby at the library.

Now the offspring of ‘Web Journal’ – and I’m suggesting bjrnl, here – has a whole lot going for it. With European tennis players and unconventional female singers adding to the world cultural fund, most of the word-pronouncers of the literate English-speaking world no longer have any problem wrapping their flexible lips around anything beginning with ‘bj—.’ It’s slightly tricky getting the hard b and the leggy y to be friends but most of us can do it with minor practice, so this suggested short phrase of bjrnl (which is a second-degree short form of bjournal of course) might really have worked.

Blog is it, though. Some will not want to spend even a synapse’s handshake between brain hemis-pheres over this kind of what-if playfulness, let alone a half-hour of their Sunday afternoon (as I just have). But, sometimes one can’t help the ideas that surface and demand a little attention, which simply will not stay still until one does something with them.

As for me, I don’t have time or exhibitionism enough to blog. What do you think memoirs are for?

Linda Bergeron writes poetry, autobiographical essays and has been a freelance correspondent for the HELLS CANYON JOURNAL for ten years.

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May 11, 2008 by Clair Button.

Have you started the “Big Read” Project, Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club?” When I read something that doesn’t fit within the limitations of style or content of the things I know I like, then my reading is always tentative. Until I find value, a message that speaks to me, I am always ready to put the book down and do something else. It helps when a book is well written, and thoughts expressed with character, but what would a Chinese immigrant woman have to say to me?

She could relate history perhaps, since she lived through the Japanese invasion of China, but that was a tale of misery she was reluctant to speak of, even to her daughter. From the cover description, I can see that is not to be the subject. The “deep connection” between mothers and daughters, now there is a subject fraught with the potential to make any guy run for the last project abandoned in his wood-shop. In my experience, every daughter seems to fear becoming her mother. Enough said about that. I have to sand a drawer front on that desk I was making last summer.

Yet in the first twelve pages of “Joy Luck,” I found three little gems that make me think I am going to enjoy this book. The first was the description of four women having a celebratory party in the midst of the anguishing misery of war as an affirmation of the value of living. The second was the snippet of history merged into the cultural jolt of adapting from life in China to the new world of America, complete with going to a Baptist church because it was a duty incurred to repay charity. And the third was a bit of the promised wit, folk wisdom so practical to life. Of course, if the purpose of a club is to gamble and experience true “luck,” then the skill of card-playing defeats the purpose, because some players will always win and some will always lose. What more perfect decision than to put the pot into the stock market so they can all gamble and win and lose equally? “There’s no skill in that” so of course it is the purest expression of gambling and good or bad luck when they succeed or fail.

I hope others will read this book and share here what they like or not about it.

Clair Button is the current President of WGEO who hopes he will find the luck to get other writers and audience involved, and perhaps even so lucky as to find a new volunteer for the office of President next year.

Posted in Joy Luck Club - The Big Read | 1 Comment »