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Why Not Use a Temp?

Volume II, Issue 4

May 4, 2008

Dear Readers,

I am honored to present in this issue the very first of as many as three winners of the 2008 Word-wise Short Writing Contest, a short story titled "Ric and the Raven" by Diana Thurbon of Keysborough, Victoria, Australia. I hope you enjoy this story of heartbreak, healing, and hope.

Diana Thurbon is post-60, with grown-up children and some grown and almost grown grandchildren. She lives in the 'burbs with her flying instructor/pilot/writer husband, her cocker spaniel, Anakin, and her two hens, Amelia and Emily.

Diana used to be a librarian but changed careers after a serious bout with lymphoma and a bone marrow transplant. Now she practices as a medical herbalist/naturopath and teaches meditation. Writing has always been part of who she is, and lately she spends more and more time perusing this part of her life. Her stories often revolve around two central themes: acceptance and being true to yourself.

Congratulations, Diana! AM signature

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Ric and the Raven

by Diana Thurbon

The day Sarah finds the fledgling corvid, it is ten years to the day since she heard from her son. Is it an omen? A black crow-like bird doesn't exactly have positive symbolism - so maybe it is better if it isn't.

She walks through the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and kicks bitterly at the neatly raked piles of fallen coloured leaves. The special sharp fragrance of autumn leaves mingles with the musty scents of damp earth. Being back in this place at this time of the year unearths a deep sadness for the past. She feels a sudden chill and her spirit fills with melancholy - she desperately wishes that somehow things could be different. She fights tears and the solid lump in her chest. She used to bring Ric here to play in the fallen leaves under the trees when he was little; she remembers how he always chose a few of the prettiest coloured leaves to take home to paste on squares of stiff white cardboard.

Bitterness is mingling with misery when she hears the tiny shrill chirp over the crackling of scrunched leaves. Looking down she sees the little black fledgling under the tree. It is autumn - baby birds belong to spring. That's odd, perhaps it is some kind of omen!

She looks around for the parents, but the baby seems to be abandoned. She reaches down and tucks him warmly into her jacket. I'll look after you and love you - how hard can it be to raise a corvid? She is sure she can learn.

The baby bird sleeps quietly as she drives home - her mood is distinctly brighter, and her mind is full of plans for her new pet. She doesn't know if she has a raven or a crow - maybe Ric's forgotten bird books will be able to clear up the identity. I'll unpack them as soon as I get home.

Hopefully the Internet will tell her how to raise the fledgling. She knows she can't leave him to the fates and foxes. Maybe she'll be better at birds than she had been with her human child.

The bird books aren't much help - it seems only an expert can distinguish the various crows and ravens; so she guesses he's a raven and names him 'Omen'. Likewise, for once, the Internet is practically useless. Crows and ravens appear to be rather unpopular birds, and nobody seems interested in raising fledglings. She reads the stark descriptions: crows peck the eyes from weak lambs; they worry animal wounds to open them for blood. They like blood. She learns they are very clever and that they are destructive pets because they peck holes in things looking for food. Nowhere can she find anything about feeding baby corvids, so she settles for infant formula and mashed lamb's liver - there is plenty of blood in liver, she reasons.

This is a crow rearing major mistake. She returns from work on day three to find he's had diarrhoea from one end of the house to the other. The mess and smell are unbelievable. Poor little bird. She cleans the baby's smelly caked bum and tail feathers and then her furniture and floors.

Her mind drops her back into the day Ric found and swallowed her red coated iron tablets - he was about eighteen months - his diarrhoea all over her bed had been on a par with what she has just faced with Omen. Then it had meant a phone call to Poisons Information, a trip to the casualty department of the local hospital and a panicked mother. For the raven it means being shut in a newspaper draped bathroom while she phones the zoo and a wildlife veterinarian. She learns that liver doesn't just have a lot of blood; it is also a very rich source of Vitamin A. It's too rich and not suitable corvid food.

Settled into a diet of baby formula, fine minced beef and kitchen scraps, the bird blossoms. He flies across the room and lands on her shoulder every day when she comes home from work He develops rich glossy black feathers, sooty brown underparts and bright blue intelligent eyes and is now officially (she decides) a raven.

One day she goes into her yard forgetting he is perched on her shoulder - he flies off - she is alarmed and calls him loudly, 'OMEN! OMEN!' He ignores her cry and disappears, but he returns five minutes later with a shiny lolly wrapper which he drops into her hand.

When Ric was a little boy he'd often brought her presents: a pretty bunch of dandelions, some seed pods, or interesting stones he'd found. When they went to the beach he found shells to give her. As soon as he was old enough he used to like making her breakfast and bringing it to her in bed. On Mother's Day he brought little presents home from school.

Her mind eases gently back into the moment and Omen's gift. She carries it inside and the raven follows. She takes a china bowl from the cupboard, gives it pride of place in the centre of the dining table and drops the sweet wrapper into the bowl.

Three months later the large blue bowl in the centre of the table is full of corvid presents. There are bottle tops, foil from cigarette packets, coloured buttons and chocolate wrappers. She has also been presented with the occasional worm but she always hands those back. Omen doesn't seem to take offence.

After six months of life with Omen she takes a deep breath, and overcoming her fear of rejection, she posts Ric a photo of herself with Omen perched on her shoulder. Surely a photo of me with the bird will touch his stolen heart.

A week later it is returned cut in half. An accompanying note says in hard angry writing, 'Don't contact me - I have nothing to say to you - the photo is a lie and so are you.' She feels the familiar tears but blinks them back as Omen snuggles comfort into her ear.

So many of the little things that Omen does remind her of her lost son: certainly the mess and scattered rubbish when she gets home from work is reminiscent of life with a teenage boy.

She can never open the fridge without Omen sticking his head in there looking greedily for treats - just like Ric she thinks for the hundredth time - the familiar lump rising from her heart centre to the base of her throat.

The following autumn, when Omen is twelve months old, he leaves her shoulder and flies high into the sky. Three chilly days pass before he returns. It is now eleven years since Ric had left home and joined the cult and still the solid lump remains undissolved in her chest.

A month later Omen has made several long solitary flights. She knows the time is coming when he'll leave her for good.

The night following his latest absence, they are watching television and sharing popcorn. The bird gently pushes a buttery piece into her mouth. She feels a soft sad, yet warm glow filling the middle of her chest. Long-held deep resentment and bitterness begin dissolving at last.

"You're going to leave soon, aren't you Omen. That's what wildlife does; and you won't come back either; you will find a Mrs Omen, and a new life. I think I can be OK with that now. It's my choice. I can choose to let go. I've learned I can keep love warm in my heart, and yet still say goodbye. Thank you."

Usage Tip

Affect vs. Effect

Countless writing guides have addressed the erroneous interchanging of affect and effect. We know better, yet it remains one of those usage items that many of us still have to consciously check every time.

In their most common uses, affect and effect have these definitions:

affect: v. to act upon or influence
effect: n. a result

It's easy to see how these words are confused; often they can both be used correctly in the context of a single incident, story, or paragraph:

The thunderstorm did not affect our electrical power, which remained constant through the night. However, the effect of the storm bordered on disastrous in Chicago.

Here's one trick that can be helpful: the e's have it. The word the often precedes a noun. In this case, you get two e's in a row when the right word, the noun, is chosen:

Incorrect: the affect
Correct: the effect

There is a complication. Effect also has a second, less common definition, one that makes it a verb which is almost opposite in meaning from the verb above:

effect: v. to cause

Ex: We'll have to completely overhaul our sales strategy if we expect to effect a change in our bottom line.

Most of the time, this second usage is uncommon enough to disregard. On those rare occasions when the verb form of effect is used, it's worth taking a quick look in the dictionary to verify rather than trying to memorize another rule.

Language Corner

When Not to Edit

While returning from mundane errands the other day, I stopped on a whim at the local library and was thrilled to find the latest release from one of my favorite authors available.

I eagerly began devouring the book as soon as I got home. While tellling the story, the author used the word loop where its homonym, loupe, should have appeared. Even as automatic a proofreader as I am, I was so engaged in the tale that I probably would not have noticed the single missed edit had some previous library patron not slashed through the offending word in bold black felt-tip and written the correction in the margin. But that would-be editor did not stop there. Emboldened by that first correction, this person marked additional edits through the remainder of the novel. I found myself more annoyed by the markings and less attentive to the plot the further I read.

Not only were these unasked edits utterly disrespectful of the publicly owned book and its every future reader, they also were ill-advised. Save the initial loupe vs. loop, every single change this would-be editor penned was incorrect. The person had inserted more errors into the novel!

It occurs to me, then, that among all my talk of correct grammar and usage, perhaps I also should note a few occasions when making corrections is not the best idea. Some are trickier to navigate than others.

In quoted material.
Although it may be tempting to subtly fix someone's minor errors when quoting him, it is not appropriate. Quotation marks imply that whatever is within them appears exactly as it was given by the source.

There is a small amount of leeway to this rule.
- When an interview that was conducted orally is put into print, it may be edited to normalize spelling. For example, if a person's accent makes the word "toiling" sound more like "tollen," the word will still appear with standard spelling in the transcript.
- Those who transcribe oral interviews will insert punctuation marks, and deciding where a sentence begins and ends can sometimes be subjective. Two transcribers may punctuate the same quote differently. For example, one may separate two independent clauses with a semicolon while the other may separate them with a period and subsequent initial capital. If the quote's meaning is preserved either way, both options are acceptable.
- Finally, quotes may be shortened by the careful use of ellipsis (...) only if doing so will not create a misleading meaning or critical omission.
In a written interview, the source should be contacted for clarification and permission before any changes are made. Changes that are not authorized must not be made. The user of the material may note instances that stray from standard spelling or grammar with the marker [sic] to specify that the nonstandard usage is not an error by the quoter but what was given by the quotee. Here's an example:

A reporter for an American journal interviews a British inventor via e-mail. There is little editorial leeway since the interview was written, not oral. But American and British spelling vary slightly, so a quote the reporter lifts from this material may look something like this:
Though he is well regarded by his peers for his innovative thinking, Jones himself believes he is "an organisational [sic] nightmare."

In this case, the [sic] flags the word organisational as nonstandard to American spelling. Because it is standard for British spelling, however, it would be inappropriate and presumptious to "correct" the difference. Using [sic] preserves both the original material and the norm of the journal in which it is reprinted.

Adding or rearranging words or correcting grammar, on the other hand, are never appropriate changes to make to quotations, whether spoken or written, without the source's express permission.
When corrections could make the boss look bad.
It's one thing to call an error, particularly a minor one, to the Big Cheese's attention privately, before his presentation begins. It's quite another to point out that error when the audience is assembled and ready to commit. And if the error is the type of minor fluke that no one is likely to notice in the next hundred presentations anyway, it's not worth jeopardizing a career to correct immediately.
When doing so will make you appear condescending.
Back during my teaching days, I was one of the unfortunate souls left to squirm awkwardly in the stony silence that followed when a guidance couselor corrected a parent's grammar during a parent-teacher conference. Needless to say, that did not make for good school-family relations. When making a correction serves no long-term purpose and is likely to embarrass someone else, just let it go.

Oh, and did I mention it's NOT OK to write corrections in borrowed books such as those taken from the library? If the errors are so egregious that they distract from a casual reading or create misleading factual claims, do something more productive than marking up the book. Alert the library staff to your concerns and suggest an alternate title. Find out whether the book's publisher has released an errata report, and if so, recommend the library purchase it. Contact the book's publisher and lodge a formal complaint. Write a query letter to find an outlet for the critical review you wish to write. But please, for the sake of all the book's future readers, don't make corrections directly in the book.

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