Steve Kass

1 [of 2]: Raising My Rainbow

RaisingMyRainbow.com is a blog about the adventures in raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.

It’s written by C.J.’s Mom, a feisty, sassy girl-woman trying to have it all and usually feeling like she is failing miserably while all those around her are none-the-wiser. She works part-time as a business consultant, full-time as a mother and overtime as a walking panic attack.

And it’s about raising C.J. (age 3), the most enchanting child you will ever meet with an insane knack for art and color, interior design and dance. His passions include Barbie, Disney Princesses, Strawberry Shortcake and women’s hair and shoes. Paul Deen holds a special place in his heart.

Go. Read. Be thankful C.J.’s parents love him for who he is.

2 [of 2]: The New York Philharmonic Digital Archive

The New York Philharmonic has just launched the first part of its remarkable digital archive. A New York Times article on the project is here.

Browsing the archive (just launched today) is tricky (for example, you may see “Found In: Scores > Mahler, Gustav,” but neither Scores nor Mahler, Gustav are clickable), and the document reader is finicky (especially until you find and click on the faint unlabeled arrow that undocks a useful navigation bar), but don’t give up. Search for something — anything — to get away from the home page. Then you’re likely to find useful links and category tabs to click.

Now and then, I peregrinate past something well worth keeping. Starting today, I’ll keep some of those somethings right here.

Today’s keeper: Is Being Done, an essay by Richard Grant White from the March, 1869, issue of The Galaxy¹. (Publishing² from 1866 to 1878, The Galaxy was subsumed into The Atlantic Monthly; Cornell University Library’s Making of America project contains a complete digital archive of The Galaxy.)

Little did I know that the so-called “progressive passive” tense (as in “Your Amazon order is being fulfilled.”) was a relative grammatical newcomer (i.e., it appeared centuries after Shakespeare) to the English language. White did not welcome it. This is an excerpt from his incisive essay.

In Goldsmith’s ‘Citizen of the World,’ (Letter XXL) is the following passage, descriptive of a play.

‘The fifth act began, and a busy piece it was; scenes shifting, trumpets sounding, drums beating, mobs hallooing, carpets spreading, guards bustling from one door to the other; gods, demons, daggers, rags, and ratsbane.’

Read the second clause of the sentence according to the formula is being done. ‘Scenes being shifted, trumpets being sounded, drums being beaten, mobs hallooing, carpets being spread,’ and so forth. The very life is taken out of it. No longer a busy piece, it drags its wounded and halting body along, and dies before it gets to rags and ratsbane.

Related information: Mr. White’s son, Stanford, the celebrated architect, designed the Washington Square Arch and was murdered in 1906.

[Source: Mark Liberman at Language Log]