The Case for the Ablative

   Forgive me, Alma Doran, if I don't get this quite right. It was a long time ago, but I remember the first assignment we had in Latin class was to be able to recite the 5 grammatical cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Ablative.
   The Ablative Case is the irregular perfect passive participle of the word "auferre," which means to carry away, to express motion away from something. I believe that the translation to English always included the word "had." The Ablative case was probably the most difficult to translate, as it denoted the case of nouns, pronouns, or adjectives  in passive sentences or action described by a verb.
     The word Ablative itself is an adjective describing a particular grammatical case. The noun form of the word would be Ablation, which expresses motion away from something, a taking away or removing of something.
     In the field of medicine there are various methods of removing the unwanted. Cutting it out with a knife is one way, extreme heat as in radiofrequency ablation is another and extreme cold as in cryothermal ablation still another.
                      "Some say the world will end in fire.
                       Some say in ice."
                                                     Robert Frost thought either would suffice.

Moon Landing Apollo 11

Well-baby checkup at Dr. Grattan's office in Waterford. Dr. Grattan came out into the waiting room to invite everyone into his office to see the event.  I held her up to see, but I don't suppose she remembers, since she was 9 weeks old. She weighed 10 lbs. 14 ounces and was 24 inches tall.

Aqua Ducks

   It was a  beautiful summer day and we  decided to use the passes that Dorothy's friend, "P." had won in an early morning radio trivia contest. He had no interest in going so off we went to the Port of Albany and boarded the Duck Boat for, first, a tour of the city of Albany and then the water tour. Dorothy, Snookie, Barbara, and I.
   The land tour was fairly smooth, though some of the streets were cobblestones and the old converted tank or whatever it was didn't have much in the way of shock absorbers. The transition to the water was another matter, quite a bumpy transition from wheeled vehicle  to boat. When we boarded, I started to feel a little queasy, not having much skill as a swimmer. I asked where the life preservers were, and that seemed to be a joke question. But underneath our seats were black plastic bags that the captain told us contained life jackets. No one looked of course, but to me the bags seemed very difficult to open and don the contents. But nothing untoward could happen on such a nice day; the other passengers seemed relaxed and comfortable.
   When we were quite far out on the river, a sudden storm arose and swept over the boat, with sheets of cold rain gusting across our vessel.  One of the passengers attempted to unfurl a boat-length canvas curtain which was attached around a pole at the bottom meant to hold the curtain down, but the pole slipped out and was lost at sea, so to speak. The captain was visibly irked at the loss; attempts to retrieve it soon failed.
  It took a while for him to bring the duckboat back to the dock; the boat's engine sputtered, died, but then kicked back in. We were cold and wet by then and went into the Port of Albany restaurant for lunch, hoping it would warm us up. The host who greeted us was Mark V. a former teacher. He did not seem surprised at our adventure. He said that just yesterday the Coast Guard had to rescue the Duckboat's passengers, and that was a fairly frequent occurence.

Cross Words!

  I was just remarking, to myself as usual, that no one reads anymore. Of course that's a little bit of hyperbole, but it it seems all too true. The thought was inspired by my rifling through a brochure at a doctor's office, a 6-sided multi-colored edition put out by Albany Advanced Imaging, an affiliate of St Peter's Health Partners.
   Considerable thought and expense undoubtedly went into preparing the brochure, which must have been distributed to scores of offices. If each office received 100 such brochures, the total printed may number well into the tens of thousands. So wouldn't you think the printing company would have been overseen by Albany Imaging and that measures would have been taken to invest in first-class proofreaders.But obviously not.
  At one time, I worked as a proofreader for the New York State Regents Department, and am well aware of the proofreading process. Proofreading is not just a look-it-over exercise; the proofing process is composed of several formal steps and the goal is to detect all errors or redundancies and present a product that is 100% free of any mistakes or misperceptions.
  I looked through the little brochure, "Your Medical Imaging Experts," and noticed minor lapses in subject-verb agreement, omission of articles before nouns, and random sentence fragments. Nothing too striking until I came to one of the highlighted sections with the heading, "LOSE DOSE CT."
That caught my attention--what the heck is a lose dose? But the following sentences referred to LDCT, Low-Dose CT scanning which can detect disease before (ahead of ) apparent symptoms. I figured that, unless there actually is such a thing as a "lose dose" the proofer must have nodded off for a while. But to have gone to the time and expense to prepare a widely-distributed health handout and find an absurdity with such a negative connotation should be of importance to someone. But then, my point is that nobody reads anymore. An executive decision  contracts for an agency to construct  a compendium of medical advice, send it to the printer, and distribute it to the pertinent medical offices.  Nobody cares what it says as nobody reads. But the project is done. And somebody covers the cost.
  At home that same night, I was doing the Word Jumble in the paper and had the thought that there must never be an error in those words. Just imagine what would happen if those letters could not be arranged into a word. The Horror! And  that train of thought extended to crossword puzzle constructors. I remarked, again to myself, that  I'd  never encountered a mistake in either:
        UNTIL TODAY
           Bored, I turned to "The Daily Crossword" in today's July 14 T.U.  allegedly by Andrew J. Reis.  The first thing I noticed was that there is no 7 Across clue.No 14 Across.  No 13 Down  or 14 Down either. As a matter of fact, there are 121 Down Spaces in the puzzle and 127 Acrosses, while the Clues number only to 63 Across and 57 Down. Evidently someone failed to match the Clues with the correct Grid.
        Nothing is sacred anymore.



 
 

New Word Order (Didja ever notice?)

 You can listen to media accounts and reports and chances are you will not hear the word "before."  Another perfectly good and succinct in meaning vocabulary word has succumbed to media trendiness. Just as the word "yes" pretty much disappeared as an answer to any question, being replaced by full sentences:
"I was. I did . I will. I have." 
   Currently you are much more likely to not hear the word "Before" in any construct.  The in-terminology is "Ahead of":
    Trump will not address the investigation ahead of his meeting with Putin. 
    I will not answer your question of what might occur if Plan A is followed ahead of Plan A's actually occurring.
     "Ahead of " may have been popularized and so largely attributable to Sarah Sanders as she has used the term approximately a million times to deflect answers from the press, but the term has morphed into general use.  People seem to tire of basic vocabulary terms and look to the media for a change.  I could comment more on the subject but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Hey, Little Snake...

...Don't mean to be cruel but you should have stayed

in the grass.

"Those were the days, my friend,...

....We thought they'd never end."    But they do, and they did.  Dave thought nothing of jumping in the car and driving to Fenway to meet David, and watch the Red Sox. (Second picture)