You could get pickled tonight

at the Mt. Olive Pickle Company's annual pickle drop.

Or if that's not your cup of tea, maybe by later tonight you can make it up to Cherokee County for the possum drop. Here is what Randall Williams wrote about it for Salon three years ago.

The Possum drop officially began when a fire engine driving along State Road 64 turned on its sirens and red lights. Mike Logan, [son of Clay Logan, the organizer], followed closely in his red semi. The attendees stood at attention and watched the procession. When the vehicles were directly in front of the gas station, the semi's doors swung open and about six hillbillies--Clay's friends wearing straw hats, Billy Bob fake teeth and overalls--jumped out and ran around crazily.

Then, from out of a small door in the semi, one hillbilly passed something to another. It was a Plexiglas pyramid, about a foot square at its base, adorned with gold tinsel. Inside, an opossum, alive but playing dead, lay surrounded by its own feces.

The crowd parted to let the hillbillies and their opossum through. Camera bulbs flashed as the hillbillies tied the cage to a string dangling beneath the metal Citgo canopy. They attached a glass disco ball to the bottom of the cage and hoisted the whole thing about three feet above the crowd. They tied the connecting string to a nearby post.

Last year's event was different, though. Threatened by PETA with a lawsuit, Clay Logan rolled over. He used roadkill.

What'll it be this year, dead or alive? Looks like you'll have to be there to find out.

The poet of the Paris of the Piedmont

Dan Coleman has a nice column on Patrick Herron, poet laureate of Carrboro.

Com-pound it!

"Compound noun" is a self-executing construction; like "oxymoron" or "a little alliteration," it is what it says it is. But when did it become the rage?

A tug of war goes on in language between logic (saying exactly what you mean) and gracefulness (saying it with style). I fear that gracefulness is losing.

Compound nouns are clunky and graceless. Any good grammar book counsels their judicious use--especially when it comes to a lot of them in a row.

Compound Noun Phrases

Avoid long strings of noun that may be unfamiliar to the reader. Break up the string by using prepositional phrases or infinitives.

The plant safety standards committee discussed recent air quality regulation announcements.

Revised. The committee for regulating safety standards discussed announcements about regulation of air quality.

Long noun phrases are the worst offenders, but lesser offenses abound.

Remember "Legal Departments"? One day sometime during the Reagan administration, someone noticed a logical flaw. Legal Departments were not necessarily "legal." All kinds of activity might be authorized or condoned by corporate lawyers. Hence the birth of the "Law Department."

Scientific issues are now science issues.

Ethical dilemmas are now ethics dilemmas.

Logical fallacies are now logic fallacies.

Logistical problems are now logistics problems.

Our Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970, before this nonsense started, but in Australia, an agency founded more recently is called the Environment Protection Authority.

On September 11, 2001, I thought we experienced terrorist attacks, but the media called them terror attacks.

Sometimes this new habit turns something logical into something illogical. How many deserted islands are actually deserts? Yet "deserted island" is now interchangeable with "desert island." At least one careful writer knows the difference.

Maybe I'm too fussy. Maybe these coinages make perfect sense in the natural progression of our utilitarian native tongue. But it sure is hard to come across phrases like this (from a review of Tom Wolfe's new novel):

I Am Charlotte Simmons, however, has not invited Dickens comparisons.

Is that not the cake-taker? What would Dickens think? You know, Dickens: author of A Two-Cities Tale.

UPDATE: I stand corrected by language hat on "desert" v. "deserted." It seems that in ancient times, "desert" was an adjective. I knew that adjectival and adverbial endings in English were often latecomers, so that (as language hat points out) "slow" is as good as "slowly" (the -ly coming from "lich," which means "like," in other words "slow-like" or, like (you know), slow), but this one was news to me. Still, I don't really think that people who say "desert island" are consciously tapping into 13th c. English. It's nice that what goes around has come around I guess, but I think the reason has to do with this weird fad favoring compound nouns.

UPDATE 2: Correcting myself this time. I did a couple of word searches, hoping to find it verified that "desert island" went into hibernation sometime around the 17th c. only to come out in the past twenty years. Not so! Since 1980 in the New York Times "desert island" has run well ahead of "deserted island" (even subtracting the "Mount Desert Islands"--I've always wondered about how that name came about). More to the point, "desert island" turns up twice in 19th c. manuscripts in the holdings of Documenting the American South. So it looks as if this is a relic, a phrase that refused to modernize. Thanks again language hat for sending me on this expedition.

UPDATE 3: I rest my case.

. . . A global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social, cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives’ governance structures. Both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories, but face similar pressures from conventional market logics, practices and dominant actors. . . .

The tsunami next time

The eventual Atlantic mega-tsunami.

What if Leandro had gone the other way?

No, not what if the state had won. What if the plaintiffs had gotten what they asked for. What if Justice Robert Orr's dissent in the first Leandro opinion, in 1997, had carried the day.

Justice Orr had the privilege of writing the second Leandro opinion (see below) this summer just before his retirement. In the opinion an odd phrase is used at crucial points: "the equal opportunity to receive a sound basic education." What does that mean?

Here is what it doesn't mean. Chief Justice Burley Mitchell made very clear in the first Leandro opinion that the law does not require equalized funding. The North Carolina Constitution does require a "general and uniform system" in which "equal opportunities shall be provided for all students," he conceded; but such language does not "mandate[] equality in the educational programs and resources offered the children in all school districts in North Carolina."

The plaintiffs--representing five impoverished rural school districts--argued that the "great variations in per-pupil expenditures from district to district" were a large part of the problem, that "inequalities in the facilities, equipment, student-teacher ratios, and test results between their poor districts and the wealthy districts compel the conclusion that students in their poor districts are denied equal opportunities for education."

Justice Mitchell engaged in some constitutional history. In 1868, he noted, language requiring a "general and uniform system" was in the constitution, but (naturally enough) the "equal opportunites" clause was not. In 1970, as Jim Crow languished on his deathbed, the constitution was overhauled. That's when the phrase requiring "equal opportunities . . . for all students" was added.

But then his opinion does an interesting thing. It confines the phrase to its narrow historical moment. The era of segregation came to an end. The problem the language was meant to fix is solved. What's left is a dead letter.

Justice Orr--who by the way, like Judge Manning, is a Republican--begged to differ (scroll down for his partial dissent). To him, the plain language meant what it said.

. . . [T]he 1971 constitutional framers removed existing language from the 1877 Constitution which mandated that "the children of the white race and the children of the colored race shall be taught in separate public schools; but there shall be no discrimination in favor of, or to the prejudice of, either race.". . . The framers did not choose simply to remove the initial racially discriminatory language, but instead rewrote the constitutional language to provide for "equal opportunities . . . for all students."

. . . [I]n regard to education, our Constitution displays a deep concern for "'ensur[ing] every child a fair and full opportunity to reach his full potential.'" . . . The Constitution, by its literal reading, means all students. It does not discriminate as to race, gender, handicap, economic status, or geography. Thus, students residing in a poorer district are still entitled to substantially equal educational opportunities as students in wealthier districts.

But this view did not prevail. What the majority settled on instead was the "equal opportunity to receive a sound basic education." This turns out to mean a right to certain minimum standards. As it stands, Leandro is potentially a major achievement. But it will not turn the Hoke County school system into a Chapel Hill-Carrboro.

What if Justice Orr's opinion had prevailed? So many things would have started to look different, not the least being the lay of the land in wealthy districts like our own.

Susan Sontag, rest in peace

Almost thirty years ago at a PEN conference, I heard a talk by Susan Sontag. Perhaps I even talked to her. A college student barely introduced to the world of ideas, but pedaling as fast as I could, by myself I had flown to Houston to hear what I could hear. There were Sontag, Grace Paley, Donald Barthelme, Max Apple, Shelby Hearon, and others talking about poetry and prose as if they involved things that mattered.

The following is the entry on Sontag that I wrote for the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995). She had much to say in the decade that followed, especially after September 11. Her searing, searching voice will be missed.

Sontag, Susan (b. 1933), essayist, fiction writer, filmmaker, screenwriter, philosopher of culture. Sontag belongs to what Russell Jacoby defines in The Last Intellectuals (1987) as a rare class: the public intellectual. At North Hollywood High she shunned Reader's Digest assignments for the headier world of ideas in the Partisan Review. At twenty-six, she became a contributing editor of Commentary, entering the New York liberal intelligentsia that had already captured her imagination. Fascination with the ethics and aesthetics of modernism, especially its European forms, has inspired Sontag's prolific, often controversial, career.

With Against Interpretation (1966), she departed from the older New York liberalism, particularly its resistance to popular culture; "Notes on 'Camp'" drew criticism for its trendiness. To the contrary, this essay illustrates Sontag's ability to sense the intellectual roots of social movements. Constructing the essay in numbered sections, she connects "camp" with the European postmodernist trend toward fragmentation--a trend more familiar to her in 1966 than to her American critics. Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes she considers kindred spirits.

On Phography (1977; National Book Critics' Circle Award) continues Sontag's exploration of the modernist aesthetic as modified and eventually molded by photographic imagery. Its power is insidious, she complains: "The camera doesn't rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate--all activities that . . . can be conducted from a distance." Sontag's assertion that "[t]here is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera" anticipates feminist film critics' reactions against the aggressive masculine "gaze" of the camera eye.

Illness as Metaphor (1978), written after Sontag's breast cancer, breaks out of the abstraction marking her earlier essays. Yet it revisits a critical issue: the need to distrust totalizing schemes offered to explain complex realities (a need that modernism, for Sontag, promises and repeatedly fails to answer). She critiques the treatment of cancer as metaphor for moral fault. Shrouding the disease in mystery and theorizing "cancer personalities" is more than cruel, she asserts; it impedes recovery. Sontag's antidote, here as elsewhere, is demystification. The same theme informs AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989).

Sontag's politics defy labeling; she writes, she has said, out of grief. This impulse, she observes, is both radical, in wanting to right fundamental wrongs, and conservative, "because we know that . . . so much is being destroyed" ("Nadine Gordimer and Susan Sontag: In Conversation," Listener, 23 May 1985, 16-17). Her restless, surprising career exemplifies the paradoxes of modernism itself.

Tsunami

The Wikipedia's real-time coverage of this tragedy is pretty amazing.

Tar Heel of the Year--and then some

The N&O's award of 2004 Tar Heel of the Year to Judge Howard Manning is a modest recognition for a man who has spent the past six years forcing the state legislature's feet to the fire on the funding of public education.

In its first Leandro opinion, in 1997, the N.C. Supreme Court left it to the trial court to work out the details of what it meant to provide a constitutionally mandated "sound basic education" to all North Carolina students, and Judge Manning was handed the job. He took it seriously--as you can see by scanning this list of documents pertaining to years of hearings and findings.

Manning's Judgment (.pdf) of April 2002 gave no doubt how serious he was. He noted that a "shell game" was being played in which the blame for a sorry situation was passed from the state to the local districts and back. Both are responsible, he said, but the buck stops in Raleigh.

Intervening plaintiffs, wealthy school districts, complained that to do what Manning was asking would require them to divert resources from academically gifted programs. On their behalf, State Board of Education chairman Phil Kirk argued that Manning's mandate would "drive more of the brighter students away from public schools into private education." To which Manning responded,

It has become clear to the Court that it was the state's "minimalist" vision of what the North Carolina Supreme Court expected a student to obtain that caused the educational and political leadership to fail to appreciate the fact that Leandro's guarantee of a sound basic education applies to all students, including the "best and brightest."

Manning's judgment of April 2002 was almost entirely upheld on appeal this summer. The only part that was rejected was his requirement for pre-kindergarten education. That, the Supreme Court said, could be required only by a legislative decision. On all other points, Manning's opinion was upheld. His "restraint," in fact, was complimented:

[W]e note that the trial court also demonstrated admirable restraint by refusing to dictate how existing problems should be approached and resolved. Recognizing that education concerns were the shared province of the legislative and executive branches, the trial court instead afforded the two branches an unimpeded chance, “initially at least,” . . . to correct constitutional deficiencies revealed at trial.

Oh, one more thing. Incredibly, the state actually argued that a grade of Level II (a C) was enough to meet the "sound basic education" standard. Don't be ridiculous, said Judge Manning.

The State's position that the equal opportunity to receive a sound education has been provided when a child performs at a level of minimal mediocrity (Level II-below grade level) and is barely scraping by to obtain a high school diploma is just plain wrong.

That too was upheld on appeal.

There's too much to say about Leandro, which is why I've refrained from blogging about it till now. You'd be better off reading Jack Boger's article "Education's 'Perfect Storm'? Racial Resegregation, High-Stakes Testing, and School Resource Inequities: The Case of North Carolina," 81 N.C. L. Rev. 1375 (2003), but unfortunately you'll need Lexis or WestLaw access to get it.

Recommended reading

Paul writes a nice review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which he gave me for Christmas and we have both read already. What a great story of a strangely believable young man. You can read the opening pages here, but be forewarned that you might have to go out and find the rest of it.

George W. Bush, builder's friend

Only Alan Greenspan and the head of Fannie Mae edge out George Bush on the list of the 50 most influential people in home building.

An honorable mention goes to the North Carolina Home Builders Association:

Not one bill this group opposed—including a controversial public campaign finance proposal and three promoting local impact fees—made it into law during the 2003—2004 legislative session. Meanwhile, lawmakers passed all of the HBA's proposed legislation. The North Carolina Center for Public Policy has named Mike Carpenter, the association's executive vice president, one of the state's top 50 lobbyists every year since 1993.

UPDATE: Oops! The Fannie Mae man, Franklin Raines, has been ousted in an accounting scandal, so I guess that bumps Bush up a notch.

An unconventional defense

For apparently the first time in North Carolina, the state's violation of a 1963 international treaty has been raised as a defense in a criminal trial, invoking an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear.

Franklin Manacer-Herrera, a Honduran citizen, is on trial in Durham for murder. His lawyer, Mark Edwards, says he was arrested in violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. (Durham Herald-Sun 12/16/04.)

The adoption of the Vienna Convention, says an ACLU source (.pdf), was "'undoubtedly the single most important event in the entire history of the consular institution.'" Even so, it has not been consistently enforced in this country. But in more recent years, "foreign nationals have increasingly referenced violations of the Vienna Convention in criminal litigation."

Art. 36 of the Vienna Convention requires that when foreign nationals are criminally detained, they be informed of their right to communicate with consular officials.

When Manacer-Herrera was arrested, no one informed him of his right under the convention. But the question is: so what? Does this mean that evidence against him has to be suppressed? Is it an exclusionary rule like Miranda? Is this "a new form of attack on the death penalty," as Durham judge Orlando Hudson asserted? The cases cited in the ACLU .pdf above tend to say no. Over vigorous dissents, the courts either dened that there is a private right of action or said that even if there is, Art. 36 was never meant to operate as an exclusionary rule. But those cases go only through the year 2000.

In March 2004 something very interesting happened. Mexico took the United States to court. In a case involving over 50 Mexican citizens arrested on capital charges, the International Court of Justice ruled that indeed Art. 36 of the Vienna Convention has teeth. The court

said that it was "for the courts" of the United States to provide "effective" review of the convictions to determine whether the violations caused "actual prejudice" to each defendant. It rejected the U.S. argument that failure to respect the right to consular notification could be rectified by simply raising that fact in a petition for clemency.

In Oklahoma, as a result of this decision, the court stayed an execution and the govenor issued a clemency order. But down in the rights-hostile 5th Circuit, it was a different story. In May 2004, in Medellin v. Dretke, 371 F.3d 270, that court held that the issue of the Vienna Convention was "procedurally defaulted" because the defendant had not raised it in Texas court at the trial stage (and, further flouting the international court's opinion, it said there was no private right of action).

This is the case the Supreme Court will hear in the spring. As Tony Mauro wrote in advance of the court's decision to hear the case, it arises admidst an "already intense debate over the role of international law in Supreme Court decision making."

Justice Stephen Breyer in a recent talk before the Paris Bar Association meeting in Washington, D.C., said his job has "changed tremendously" in 10 years because an increasing portion of the Court's docket involves international law. But whereas justices have cited foreign law in recent years to give a global context to their decisions, Medellin poses a direct conflict between a ruling by a U.S.-endorsed international court and a lower federal appeals court, with Oklahoma's contrary state court decision thrown in for good measure. All the rulings interpret a treaty, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, that was actively embraced and advocated by the United States in the early 1960s.

Much is at stake, including the fate of one Franklin Manacer-Herrera of Honduras, lately of Durham.

Oh my

Anonymous Lawyer unmasked.

A picture-perfect Christmas

I'm a sucker for old post cards.

Found with other neat seasonal links at The Morning News.

Dashing through the whatever

The author of "Jingle Bells" was a Savannah music minister and Confederate loyalist, but a Yankee claim on the song lives on.

Triangle blog conference in February

Following soft on the heels of the successful Piedmont Blog Conference in Greensboro, here's one being organized in Chapel Hill. Ed Cone, who along with David Hoggard organized that one, gives a nice mention of my favorite blogger, who promises to be there. Join us!

UPDATE: The "Chapel Hill" link to the conference is updated and should work now.

Santa not a Coca-Cola product

No matter what you may have heard, Santa Claus did not originate in Coca-Cola ads. I know, he wears the same colors, so it is confusing. And it doesn't help that on the NORAD tracking site, the oldest photo of him is dated 1959.

Freethinkers

In his 1919 history of the North Carolina Supreme Court (177 N.C. 617), Chief Justice Walter Clark gave the religious affiliation of all 40 former and current members of the court that he could recall. (Twenty-three, since you asked, were Episcopalian.) But the three who were "freethinkers" he declined to identify by name--perhaps he thought he was doing them a favor. Now Susan Jacoby tells their story.

Some men are an island.

What could be more emblematic of our sad time than this trend among the very rich.

The trial of being a modern southern belle

Jacqueline Duty's prom dress led inadvertently to other duties (thanks Eric).

Looks like she's getting help from a North Carolina group that we've seen before.

Santa pause

The strangest pictures you've never seen of Santa and his charges.

Found via Jason Kottke, whose "Best Links of 2004" and "Favorite Weblogs of 2004" could keep you occupied for hours.