This is Otis! He has been reunited with his family after found wandering the streets in Sinton, Texas carrying a bag of dog food! #doglovers pic.twitter.com/NomB0Cw4Pp
— Dex Dadog (@DadogDex) August 26, 2017
Ya gotta admire a guy who brings his own go-bag. Yeah, I’m glad it wasn’t my dog, too — but Otis wasn’t “scared,” he just didn’t intend to let the weather interfere with his life. From the Washington Post:
Just before Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast, Salvador Segovia left his grandson’s dog, Otis, in his screened-in back porch, along with food and water.
But the storm must have scared Otis, so he busted open the screen door and ran away on Friday night in Sinton, not far from Corpus Christi.
“I stuck my head out yelling and yelling, and no Otis,” Segovia said. “The following morning, I got out and kept yelling, circled the block and everything, and nothing. We didn’t know where Otis was.”
Meanwhile on Saturday morning, Tiele Dockens was on her way to check on the houses of some friends and families who had evacuated when something caught her attention. A dog was walking down a street, carrying a big bag of dog food…
Dockens said the dog looked familiar. In a town of about 5,000 people, she said it’s likely she has seen him before. As she followed the dog to make sure he wasn’t lost, she ended up outside Segovia’s house.
“This lady comes by and tells me, ‘Is that your dog coming down the road?’ ” Segovia said. “And I turn around, there comes Otis, and he’s carrying food!”
The brown German shepherd mix with a dark snout and slightly droopy ears walked up to the front porch, set down the bag of food, and lay on the floor, Segovia said.
Otis was a local celebrity in Sinton long before he became a viral sensation. Everywhere Otis went — at the county courthouse, local antique shops, the grocery store — everybody seems to know him. And people always feed him…
Otis is probably about 6 years old, Segovia said. He found the dog when he was just a puppy. A man who was driving around stopped by one day, and said he was planning to just leave the dog somewhere, unless Segovia wanted it.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, leave him here, we’ll keep him,’ ” Segovia said. “He left the dog here, and it became my grandson’s dog.”
Also from the WaPo, in case you were wondering: A running list of Harvey’s viral hoaxes. Dogs, yes; sharks, no!
***********
Apart from cheering the resourcefulness of survivors, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Hungry Joe
All right, this put a crimp in my day: “A man who was driving around stopped by one day, and said he was planning to just leave the dog somewhere, unless Segovia wanted it.”
An author friend of mine is always swearing that the title of her next book is going to be “Just What Is WRONG with People, Anyway?”
eclare
Mental Health Break
Mel
Glad that Otis is safe. What a good boy!
Baud
Man. Another NK missile.
Mnemosyne
If my boss gave me the cold that I’m stuck at home with, she doesn’t get to be mad that I’m out sick today, right?
Just kidding — my boss never gets mad at me about stuff like that. But I still find it funny that I’m missing work because she came in sick. ?
Amaranthine RBG
This story gives details about how you can make donations to help pets following Harvey: http://www.nola.com/pets/index.ssf/2017/08/want_to_help_pets_displaced_by.html
Major Major Major Major
Awww what a good doggie.
So work decided to implement some new bullshit policy where we have to… *squints at powerpoint*… do nonspecific bullshit teambuilding every first and third monday, and you have to be in the office and can’t even be gone for a vacation? They specifically listed deaths and weddings as reasons you could be gone, so that seems like they’ll be pretty restrictive about it.
Nobody in my department can discern any value for us from this. We have no idea why they decided to do this. Possibly because our president likes taking random squishy ideas he finds at other big-name nonprofits and doing them twice as hard.
Betty Cracker
Glad Otis is safe, but it was a dick move to leave him on a screened in porch with a Cat 4 hurricane on the way.
jacy
@Baud:
Some report on CNBC just said it’s heading for Japan — and Japan has warned residents to “take precautions.” Have not seen confirmation elsewhere.
Baud
@jacy: MSNBC said it flew over Japan and landed in the ocean. Still early.
trollhattan
Heh, Trump even has problems telling blondes apart.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud:
Wow, that’s brash.
FlipYrWhig
@trollhattan: And Trump said, “Oh, really? Tell me more about this… what was it, Fin-land?”
Patricia Kayden
Nice story about Otis. Glad that he’s reunited with his owner. God forbid I’d have to leave my dogs and birds behind in an emergency.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major:
I assume that attending a Red Wedding or similar would be doubly OK?
Barbara
I had a dog just like this. My sister adopted her when she was a puppy and then promptly went away to college. She was a shepherd mix and she was well-known in the neighborhood. She was tall enough that she was able to lean on the screen door and open it. She would ask to be let out every day at around 2:30 pm in time to run to the neighborhood playground and play with kids getting out of school. She was a great dog.
sharl
Please stop being mean, people!
Davebo
@eclare: That’s priceless!
Barbara
@trollhattan: I had a Danish au pair who once asked me why so many American men seemed to lose their minds when they interacted with blonde women. I told her that as a brunette, I had been asking myself that same question all my life.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: It was. I couldn’t do something like that. My dogs are my children.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Mango Mussolini also noted the 100-year history of good relations between Finland and Russia, apparently ignorant of that unfortunate invasion incident in WW2…
Baud
@sharl: I’m sure his illegally imprisoned captives had pleas too.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Wait, wasn’t that the debate slip that cost Gerald Ford the presidency?
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
90% of the time initiatives like this are sourced on the golf course with some consultant.
There will be consultants!
Kelly
We’re mostly stuck in the house for the last couple days since the wind shifted and the forest fire smoke came over to blanket us instead of the folks in central Oregon. Visibility a bit less than a mile. I’m certainly better off than the folks that have been getting to know Harvey. We have air conditioning. May flee to the Oregon Coast. Over 300,000 acres afire in Oregon. I don’t know what the total is across the west. We could use a bit of that Gulf Coast rain just now. It’ll be October sometime before our fall rains put everything out.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: WaPo said the Japanese were not amused.
raven
CNN is reporting that some folks are panicking and even shooting at Cajun Navy boats trying to get them to stop and pick them up.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Google isn’t turning it up. Maybe I’m thinking of something else.
ETA: I was thinking of Finlandization.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: No way. OMG. There is no way he is not in thrall to Russia. How would this even be relevant to Finland’s relationship with the U.S.?
Patricia Kayden
@sharl: Now that’s what you call chutzpah. A man who jumped on the birtherism bandwagon against the first Black President. A man who racially profiled Latinos, jailed and mistreated them, and boasted about housing them in Concentration Camps. But now we’re supposed to give a dang that he’s distressed? Really? Suck it up, Snowflake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
thoughts and prayers:
I’ll add, tax-sheltered 16,000 person, etc
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: No, that was Poland.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
It’s sad to say, but that’s what people used to do when they had puppies and kittens they couldn’t find homes for. I assume cats are better at fending for themselves than dogs, which is why many places are home to large feral cat colonies but very few have large feral dog colonies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: No Soviet domination of… East Germany? Or Czechoslovakia?
ETA: Eastern Europe
raven
Downtown Julie Brown. Cause I’m a Blonde!
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: So you literally cannot take a 2-week vacation. How did that make it from one idiot’s bad idea to a personnel policy. Is it April Fools?
My personal theory on bullshit stuff like this: For every stupid policy like this, there is a particular instance or event that people are too cowardly to address directly, so they implement something like this.
One person out of a million, doesn’t understand what business casual means? Make a policy that no one can come to work in jeans with holes in them. (Yes, I have seen this particular one in action.)
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t know what the guy’s circumstances are, and the story doesn’t say, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d leave my dogs to fend for themselves on a screened porch during a Cat 4 hurricane. God knows my chickens aren’t the most endearing creatures on earth, but our hurricane plan includes turning them loose in our bathroom for a hurricane we’re riding out or loading them into a dog crate and transporting them to higher ground if we’re forced to flee. They’re our responsibility.
Major Major Major Major
@raven:
But I was told that a well-armed society is a polite society.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: People shooting at me always makes me want to stop and shoot the breeze.
FlipYrWhig
@?BillinGlendaleCA: In my head it was Finland. (The little-known followup to “Carolina in My Mind.”)
OzarkHillbilly
@sharl: OK, “The ex-sheriff of Maricopa county who implemented incredibly racist law enforcement actions agains people of color.”
sharl
@Baud: Yeah… I’m gonna have that excellent (and horrible) Phoenix New Times twitter thread open in a separate tab, just to fire it at anyone responding favorably to that guy and his press team. (Not that it will do anything constructive, beyond providing convenient catharsis for me.)
Patricia Kayden
@Kelly:
Wow. That sounds like a horrible situation. So much madness is going on in this country.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I predict that that policy will last about three months, or until a sufficiently senior person wants to take a vacation, whichever comes first.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
The goal is to prevent you from being able to take vacations longer than 2 weeks.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: The dress code in high school inexplicably specified “no transparent clothing” (or was it ‘see-through clothing’?).
They indicated at the meeting announcing it–(for which I was thankfully in the air, I am a maker of faces when listening to people)–that longer vacation blocks spanning one of these days would be acceptable, but that one-week vacations must avoid them.
My (direct) manager is rather unhappy. We’re software engineers for fuck’s sake.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
I asked this question last night. I got a response but didn’t really understand the answer:
When you’re writing a story when should you make a new paragraph? I know that when a character speaks they should have their own paragraph but what about ones with only narration? Or first person pov?
trollhattan
Ted Cruz is still the warm, friendly, compassionate person he has always been.
BethanyAnne
I’m grateful that I’m bored here, but it’s hard to not be cabin-fever-y and a bit anxious. Been cleaning the apartment and cooking for 3 days now.
Anne Laurie
@Betty Cracker: From what I’ve been able to gather, Otis hadn’t been left behind — his ‘primary’ family got out of town, but they left Otis with Granpa. Granpa put Otis out on the porch, with food & water, but apparently just while he went out for a while. Otis got bored, decided to take his usual constitutional, and (since it was right there) brought his own snack…
Having a rescue with a bad case of the Runaways has made me more tolerant about other peoples’ inability to keep their dogs under control at all times. It’s obviously not ideal that Otis should be out wandering around under such circumstances, but I’ve had to apologize more than once to kind strangers who found our “poor little obviously neglected” Zevon running loose after he’s pulled a Houdini. So I try not to be too judge-y — after all, this is the man who rescued Otis in the first place!
Kelly
@WaterGirl:
My final employer allowed us to wear shorts to work. 98% of us bought nice shorts. Second summer a memo went out that somewhat that artfully said your shorts have to cover your cheeks.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Whenever you want to. Some writers have one-sentence chapters.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good that someone is asking a very wealthy Pastor to help the needy in his own backyard. Would love to see his response.
Patricia Kayden
@trollhattan: Republicans act horribly with the knowledge that Democrats will not reciprocate. It’s that simple.
Kelly
@Patricia Kayden: Lots of fires seems to be the new normal out west. May be some climate change involved. More likely our forests evolved with fires and the many years we suppressed them is the anomaly.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My FB feeds says that’s still a negatory from the fine pastor.
japa21
@Kelly: @Kelly:
Talk about a high waist line.
sharl
@Patricia Kayden: Maybe by now the Great Pro$perity Go$pel multimillionaire has responded, but as of a couple hours ago this was spot-on “friendly” speculation:
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
Huh. I always thought there were rules or something. Thanks.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
It’s a style decision, so there’s no hard and fast rule. Either do what makes it most readable, or however you feel like doing it.
trollhattan
@Kelly: I imagine Oregon has the same issue as California, where an estimated 100 million trees in the Sierra Nevada were killed by bark beetles in the drought. That exacerbates the century-long timber mismanagement effects and creates giant fires. We (CA) have been lucky this year and most of our fires have been in brush and grass, the result of the wet winter. Forests are still pretty moist even this late in summer.
Anne Laurie
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The answer, at least for me, is “somewhat more often than you think is really necessary.”
Write out your chunk of narration, then go back and read it out loud. There will be places where you automatically pause, to ‘reload’ or to switch topics. That’s where the paragraph breaks go.
The breaks aren’t really important for your first draft, anyway. Once you’ve gotten the story (that chunk of the story) down on paper, then you can worry about formatting. If you’re still not happy, then you can ask a good friend to look at it and make suggestions.
Ohio Mom
@Kelly: It makes my asthma kick up just reading about that much smoke. You only get one set of lungs –be careful!
Baud
@debbie:
Kelly
@trollhattan: Bug kill on the east side and at the crest is a big problem. Not much of a problem on the western slopes or down around the Umpqua and the Chetco. Biggest fire is on the Chetco which includes a lot of land that burnt during the Silver fire in 1987. That surprised me. I thought that once land burned over fires would be small and easy to contain.
Roger Moore
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
There are no hard and fast rules about when to start new paragraphs, even in non-fiction. The general rule is that each paragraph is supposed to have its own topic, so you change paragraphs when the topic changes. For example, if you’re giving moderately detailed descriptions of a group of people, you might give each person’s description a separate paragraph. If you have a lot of detail, you might have a paragraph for a person’s face, one for their clothes, one for mannerisms, etc.
Kelly
@Ohio Mom: I’m staying inside. Still need Allegra and sudogest to be comfortable. Glad to have air conditioning. We Oregonians used to consider AC pointless. We only have it because a heat pump is a good choice out here beyond the reach of natural gas pipes.
Ohio Mom
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’d guess the answer is, a new paragraph whenever it makes sense.
Why don’t you take a second look at a published book of the same or similar genre that you enjoyed reading, and analyze how that author handled paragraphs? Read it this time for structure, not for content.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: @Anne Laurie: IMO, AL is absolutely correct about drafting. My paragraph lengths whipsaw up and down during drafting and in between drafts. Generally what I end up with is 40-100-word paragraphs for expository segments and punchier things for dialogue. Compare:
germy
@sharl:
d58826
Our bassett was forever finding pieces of chicken or the odd slice of pizza when out for his walk. Well one night he found a brown lunch bag, and just like Otis, headed for home with the bag in his mouth. Turned out it contained two PBJ sandwiches, probably some kids lunch. He got to one before I could stop him but I confiscated the second one.
germy
I recommend this style guide from Wolcott Gibbs
https://pando.com/2014/08/13/in-the-1930s-a-new-yorker-editor-wrote-the-perfect-style-guide-for-todays-bloggers/
germy
@d58826: He used to just wander around by himself?
Laura
@Major Major Major Major: I have endured a metric shit-ton of team building exercises. There is only one that was worth a damn and it is SO GOOD I’d recommend it to you because YOU are so good.
It’s called Arctic Survival Simulation and it’s from our neighbors to the North in Canadastan.
Here’s the poop:
http://www.subarcticsurvival.com/
debbie
@Baud:
Yeah, right. Funny how that works out.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
A little late in the day to pretend you give a shit about animals, sweetie.
Patricia Kayden
@sharl: According to some Tweeters on Little Green Footballs, Osteen has been blocking anyone who suggests that he open his mega church to any of those made homeless by the hurricane. Who is surprised?
Jim Parish
@Major Major Major Major: I remember an SF novel – I think it was Brunner’s The Jagged Edge – in which the first and last chapters were less than one word long. (The title of Chapter 1 was “I-“; the text was “-solation”. The title of the last chapter was “You-“; the text was “nification”.)
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Christian Persecution!!!!!!!! How dare you, you heathen?!! The Horror!!
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Betty,it’s been a day or so since I read that story, but I believe someone left otis with this person to take care of himwhile they were away.
debbie
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The rule is that there are no rules. You don’t want to hinder the reader’s ability to understand what’s going on.
Sometimes, technique gets in the way. James Frey’s second novel (I think) had zero commas, which was difficult sometimes (of course, the writing was so mundane, nothing was going to enliven it).
Some authors like to use em dashes (—) instead of quotation marks for dialog. Traditionally, there’s a new paragraph every time there’s a new speaker. However, I’ve seen multiple speakers in a single paragraph, separated only by em dashes.
Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy (well, maybe some day the third book will be published) stuck to pronouns instead of names. It was always “he,” but it wasn’t always clear which he “he” referred to. It put a lot of readers off, but I decided to assume “he” was always Cromwell, and 9 times out of 10, I was right.
Still with me? Write however you want, but know if it’s confusing or difficult to follow, the reader may not stick it out with you.
BethanyAnne
Maybe I’ll cook jalapeno spoon bread next. No fresh jalapenos, but plenty of canned. I hope the stores near me are good by Thursday – I’d really like to shop around then.
machine
Keep a weather eye (NPI) on Lousiana. They’re next in the Harvey shenanigans.
Amaranthine RBG
@Kelly:
Yikes, it was starting to get bad last week when we were up there for the eclipse. One of the roads (136 or 138?) was already closed. Can’t imagine how bad it is now.
We eventually said screw it and just abandoned our pre-paid hotel reservations and went over to the coast and spent the week there. Just terrible.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Was it you who posted the photos of a flock of flamingos during Andrew in the Miami Zoo’s restroom the other day? Your chickens surely couldn’t be much messier than a dozen or however many flafuckingmingos.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: I really hate it, most of the time, when style gets in the way of clarity. I for instance am not a fan of Faulkner. Oddly enough, I liked House of Leaves.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
This is almost exactly word-for-word what he said to Katy Tur on MSNBC. Don’t know which interview came first, but clearly he anticipated the question and had a well-rehearsed answer.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe you could stop stalking me from thread to thread, ummmkay? Kind of gross.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m with you. I didn’t mind Faulkner so much, but 500 pages of James Frey’s cutesy antics really ticked me off (I have only myself to blame for insisting on reading through to the end).
The only reason I stuck it out with Wolf Hall is that I was unemployed and (unhappily) had plenty of time on my hands.
Shana
I’m trying to get to bed early since I have to get up at 5:00 to open my polling place at 6 am. Because the R-aligned at large school board member who had to resign because her husband has a new job overseas didn’t want to wait 2 weeks to put in her resignation which would have allowed the election for her replacement to happen in November when we have our state wide election. She had to do it when she did so our county has to have a special election to fill her seat on August 29th.
And the R-aligned candidate was endorsed by the white supremacists.
Murmeltier
Aww!! Poor Otis! Glad he’s back w/ his family!
Ironically, I’ve been reading “Isaac’s Storm; A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History” By Erik Larson. It’s about Galveston’s 1900 hurricane. I have 2 hours to read the last 97 pages before it needs to go back to the library.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amaranthine RBG: Steve….
Shana
@Amaranthine RBG: I don’t think it’s stalking to read new posts and then the comments as they come online. It’s called being an engaged reader of the blog. And you may notice that there are A LOT of people on the blog who comment all the time. Hardly counts as stalking Snowflake.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
As gross as your supporting the guy who posted photos of a dead cat being skinned, butchered, and cooked?
I have to say, it really gave me a good insight into how we ended up electing Trump. You hate me, you saw that I hate Davebo for posting the link to those pictures, you immediately decided that Davebo was your new best friend and you had no problem with instructions about skinning and cooking cats because Davebo hates the same person you do.
That’s how white dudes like you think: the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and you will support anything your friend does that pisses off your enemy. That’s why you love Freddie — sure, he’s a rape apologist, but he pissed off feminists, so you support him 100 percent.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Please stop the stalking from thread to thread. It’s gross and creepy.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
When you stop supporting commenters who post illustrated instructions for how to skin and cook a dead cat, I’ll stop reminding people that you were all in on supporting a commenter who posted graphic pictures of how to skin and cook a dead cat.
If you didn’t want people to realize you were an asshole, you shouldn’t have picked up that tiki torch.
ETA: And just to be clear, in your world posting graphic pictures of how to skin and cook a cat on a pet thread is not gross and creepy. Reminding people that you’re a hypocrite about animal welfare is the only thing that’s gross and creepy.
Maybe you should stop supporting gross and creepy people just because you both hate the same person?
Heidi Mom
@Murmeltier: Or you could pay an overdue fine, a tactic I’ve resorted to quite often.
Amaranthine RBG
You’re gross and creepy.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
… says the guy who’s all in on skinning and cooking dead cats.
Good one.
Amaranthine RBG
You’re gross and creepy. Just stop.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’ll stop when you stop championing people who post gross and creepy pictures just because those pictures piss off people you hate.
Again: you wholeheartedly supported a guy who posted instructions for how to skin and cook a dead cat just because he was arguing with me. You put yourself on record as being okay with his gross and creepy post. Don’t whine now when I call you out on your bullshit claim to give a shit about animals.
Amaranthine RBG
You’re gross and creepy. Just stop, thx.
d58826
@germy: no. he was on a leash but when it came to finding ill-gotten food that nose of his found it faster than my eyes. And it’s not like he wasn’t very well fed at home.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG: Take a look in the mirror, troll.
Oh and thanks for the advice everyone!
Hungry Joe
When determining paragraph breaks you should also keep in mind the final, in-print format. When writing for my newspaper (which was most of what I did before I left it for novel-writing) I put in A LOT more paragraph breaks because newspaper columns are very narrow, and what looks like an ordinary paragraph on the screen becomes an endless-looking, off-putting block of gray goo* on the page.
* Some page designers referred to words as “gray goo.” In their wholly visual minds, our words got in the way of their art. They had to work around us, poor things.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
A full 2% of the people in the United States right now have a fully frozen economy.
Zero economic activity – and a ripple effect that goes deeper in terms of a slowdown. Oil refining, chemical manufacture, oil extraction are all affected, and I’m guessing fuel prices increase to $3.20/gal by November.
This is beyond catastrophic.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Faulkner had paragraphs that wound on for a couple of pages. He didn’t do grammar, didn’t care about it in the least. Even when he had something interesting to say, he did it so badly I hated having to parse it.
Wife had an English Prof who would let folks in class write about anything, nearly – but Faulkner. Verboten.
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’ll take Mnsmosyn’s place, then. How about that?
MoxieM
@Betty Cracker: Like, the Winter War, and all that nonsense, ahem, after WWI? yeah, that stuff. But, they’re blonde! And they know how to complain, in song. (can I just dump a link in here…?? )
MaryRC
@Anne Laurie: Apparently Otis didn’t take a snack with him — he picked one up on his travels. Otis has a regular treat route around town and one of the places where he stops is a lumber supply store where they sell dog food. His owner (or his owner’s grandpa) guesses that Otis went on his usual route, found no-one home at the supply store, and picked up a bag of dog food from there … just stocking up. They should send him out for bread, milk and toilet paper.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/08/27/a-photo-of-a-dog-carrying-a-bag-of-food-after-a-storm-hit-texas-went-viral-heres-his-story/?utm_term=.72ffd6a8f7df
Anne Laurie
@d58826:
I have read entertaining-because-it’s-not-my-dog stories about highly-trained working guide dogs taking advantage of such ‘sidewalk bonuses’… including a story from a blind woman who wondered why her dog always preferred the south side of a particular street, until a sighted friend walked the route with them & found out that was the side with the popular ice-cream-cone shop. He had mastered the ability to snatch a dropped cone without so much as breaking stride!
Anne Laurie
@debbie:
Punctuation, and even more paragraphing, is all about making it easier to read a particular chunk of text.
A lot of what we think of as “normal” written-grammar rules are fairly recent, derived after paper became cheap and easily available. I’m reading a (most enjoyable, but dense!) volume of Jane Austen’s letters, and the lengths to which even moderately ‘affluent’ individuals would go to save paper & postage is taxing — all those em-dashes! And that’s even after the original text has been ‘translated’ from the tiny cramped handwriting & interwoven ‘crossing’ lines / emendations of the original.
There’s a whole academic debate about how much a modern publisher is allowed to ‘break up’ the text in older novels so that current readers don’t give up in despair. (Along with the argument about how much new editions should ‘improve’ the spelling & grammar of such novels.) I am not a purist; there are certainly arguments to be made in favor of ‘authenticity’ — but on the other hand, I can imagine that the original authors could’ve been just as irked over typos, copy errors, and the need to put cheapness ahead of clarity that every published writer knows!
Murmeltier
@Heidi Mom: I considered that. But I wanted to finish it, & that was my self-imposed challenge! I finished & returned it by 8:30!! (Library is just a few minutes drive.)