The Lies Have It

Recently the comic strip Pickles featured Opal complaining about things that really annoy her: web sight instead of website, low and behold instead of lo and behold. I’m right there with her. Homophones (words that sound alike) drive me crazy. This morning my local paper trumpeted my right to bare arms. Tank tops for all!

Opal also bemoaned the misuse of lay, as in “I’m going to lay down.” Of course, you all know that it should be “lie down.” What? You’re confused, too? Well, join the club. Lie and lay confuse a lot of people.

Here’s a simple chart I made to help clarify the issue:

Verb	Definition	Present	Past	Past Perfect	Participle	Case
Lie (1)	To tell an untruth	Lie, lies	Lied	Lied	Lying	Intransitive
Lie (2)	To rest in or move into  a horizontal position	Lie, lies	Lay	Lain	Lying	Intransitive
Lay	To set down; to put in position	Lay, lays	Laid	Laid	Laying	Transitive

I included Lie (1), “to tell an untruth,” for completeness. This “lie” is pretty straightforward with the exception of its participle, lying. The y replaces the ie in order to maintain the pronunciation. The same thing happens with the participle of Lie (2).

The difficulty arises with Lie (2) and Lay, specifically because the past tense of Lie is the same as the present tense of Lay. So you could say, “I lay on the sofa” and mean you did it yesterday or you’re doing it today. Except if you mean you’re doing it today, you’re using the wrong verb.

One good clue is in the last column of my chart. Lie is intransitive; Lay is transitive. I know, I know, geeky grammar words, but they’re pretty easy to understand. They contain “trans.” Think transportation, transit, transfer. A transitive verb transfers action from the subject to the object: I hold your hand. She loves you.

Lay is a transitive verb. It transfers action from the subject to the object: He lays his cards on the table. I laid my head on his shoulder. We have laid my father to rest. So whenever you are laying something, use Lay. Fortunately, it’s the easy one to remember—lay, laid, laid.

Lie, however, is intransitive. It describes an action, but doesn’t transfer the action from the subject to the object. “I lie on the sofa” describes what you are doing on the sofa, not what you are doing to the sofa. So when you need to describe an action, use Lie. His cards lie on the table. My head lay on his shoulder. My father has lain in peace for two years. If this seems hard to you, remember that the forms of Lie are harder to remember—lie, lay, lain.

Some folks believe that lie should be used with people, lay with things. This is an urban myth. A blanket can lie on the sofa just as easily as a person.

Got it? No? Check out Chicago Manual of Style for more info. Or a good dictionary.

(P.S.—Just to confuse the matter even more, my dictionary informs me that lie and lay were used interchangeably until about 200 years ago. There is even some discussion of returning to that interchangeability. However, most commentators frown on mixing up lie and lay.)

Down to the River

A gentle rain dimples the surface of the river as I slither down the steep bank, bag of supplies in hand. The path, nearly overgrown with poison ivy, has not yet been soaked, so the dirt and loose stones shift under my feet. The leaves of oak, maple and ash trees gather the raindrops together before letting them sheet off; the rhythm of the rain under the canopy differs from what I see on the open water. Larger, more sporadic splashes land on my head and shoulders. Somehow this secondhand rain feels colder than the just-more-than-drizzle that falls on the river.

Every other week, June to September, I join a bevy of water testers to take samples on the Souhegan, Nashua and Merrimack Rivers. It’s a discreet bevy; each of us treks to a separate site, draws a few ounces of water, and delivers them to our assigned test lab. We’re lay scientists, if you will, volunteers in the ongoing study of pollution and nutrients in the environment. Our samples are pixels in the long-term image of the watershed, and we’ve had some success: the three rivers are much cleaner, and wild salmon are returning.

I undertake this minor inconvenience for the sake of the river, of course. It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be our septic system. And I do it for selfish, human reasons. Better ways exist to handle all our wastes than mindlessly dumping them in the water we then drink. Water treatment costs have come down since the sampling and cleanup began; fewer swimmers get sick; more boaters, fishermen and hikers enjoy the river. Osprey, bald eagles, otters and other critters visit more often, delighting wildlife watchers.

But the real reason I get up early one morning every two weeks is for the brief, precious moments of communing with the river. The actual sampling takes only a couple of minutes, the routine observations of the area very little more. Nonetheless, I often spend half an hour or more at my site, noting things that don’t go into my report—the fall of sunlight on the leaves, the pattern of the ripples, the singing of the water over the rocks. I watch the progression of leaf to flower to fruit, sweet flag to meadowsweet to goldenrod. Sometimes raccoons, otters, or weasels leave their tracks.

On this rainy day I don’t linger. The rain is mild but soon seeps through my t-shirt; the river feels warmer than the air. I peer downstream toward the bridge, unseen in the rising mist. Shivering now, I climb back to my car and deliver my samples to the lab.

But when I get home, my clothes and my hair smell of the river. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll visit again.

River Bends

RIVER BENDS

You never know which way the river will go. You just slip into the water and hang on for the ride. 

 

For example, I went on a tree hunt last week. Since I live in the most heavily forested state in the union, you wouldn’t think this would be such a big deal. Heck, I don’t think I’ve been anywhere in New Hampshire where I couldn't see a tree. But I wasn’t just looking for any old tree. I was in search of a big tree. Specifically, a big hemlock. 

Anne Krentz, of the New Hampshire Big Tree Project, had emailed me and explained that the previous hemlock champion in my county was dying. She’d heard there were some big hemlocks in Sheldrick Forest, a property of The Nature Conservancy; did I, as a volunteer steward in the Forest, know of any?  

I confess that I’d never sought out big trees of any species. Sheldrick Forest hosts a magnificent yellow birch “candelabra” tree, a huge thing with six mossy stems. It’s one of my favorite trees ever, but because it is really a clump of trees grown together, it doesn’t qualify for the Big Tree designation. But, I told Anne, there certainly are some big hemlocks in the Valley of the Giants in Sheldrick. Sure, I’d help her look for a new champ. 

Anne  and another tree expert and I tramped around the Forest and measured a bunch of trees. The biggest hemlock we found measured eight feet in girth and 130 in height. As an afterthought, Anne had us look for a big red maple. We found one of those, too, seven feet around and 125 high. Two champion trees in one day—what could be better? 

Photo (c) Naturedigger

While Anne was finishing up her notes, I shuffled along the trail and came across some rather stunning white berries. They stood about two feet above the ground, on an attractive plant with astilbe-like leaves. I found another plant of the same type a few feet away. I’d never seen this species, so I took a picture and identified it from a description and sketch in a Peterson guide.  

Some people call it doll’s eyes, because of the black dot on the end of the white berries. But it’s more ominously known as white baneberry. Checking my guide to edible wild plants, I discovered that any part of white baneberry, if eaten, causes severe dizziness and vomiting. Darn, and I was going to see if I could grow some in my garden. 

I let Anne know about my identification. Next thing I knew, I got an email from a woman who is writing a book about poisonous plants. Could I guide her and her photographer husband to the baneberry? I never object to a visit to Sheldrick, so the following day we braved the tail end of a rain shower. Tara and Mark Johnson were fascinating people to know, and they got some terrific photos of the white baneberry, like the one above. And of the poison ivy rash on my ankle. No, I’m not sharing that picture. 

From big trees to poisonous plants to meeting four fascinating people.  You really never know which way the river will take you. But if you're open to the possibilities and willing to go down a few dead ends, you’re bound to end up someplace interesting.

Today I’m pleased to host Holly Hunt, author of The Devil’s Wife and Scale and Feather from Champagne Books. Holly is a delightful personal with a devious and subversive mind. Her books are great reads. Welcome, Holly!

Tell us about Scale and Feather. How did it come about?

Scale and Feather was a book that's gone through about 7 different drafts, and ended up being the combination of 2 different stories. I love reading dragon books, and wanted to try my hand at it. Somehow, though, it ended up being a bit fairytale, with a princess, a rescue and a civil war. But, hey, what can you do?

I love genre mash-ups, especially when they work as well as yours. What/who influenced or inspired your writing?

Generally, my books come out of reading something, and not liking where it ends. So I reconstruct it, put my ending in, then go back and make it my own. It's the simplest way to do it. The Devil's Wife was my take on the end of Lucifer's fall. Blood Moon my take on all the soppy werewolf stories going around. Scale and Feather is just me goofing around with a book I did like, and it slowly evolving into its own world.

I haven’t gotten to Blood Moon yet. I’m looking forward to it. Do you have a regular writing routine? I know you have a busy schedule with your job and school; how do you fit writing in?

Regular writing routine? What's that? I write as much as I can Mon + Tues (my days off), and research every odd evening after work. And when that's done, I get to work on my school stuff. Sometimes I write a lot, sometimes I find myself spending 4 hours on Facebook instead of doing what I should have.

Ah, social media. The great time drain.  What do you like best about writing? The least?

The best bit? Finishing a story. The worst? Finishing a story. Finishing a story, you're ending everything you've done. You've spent years (or weeks) writing this thing, and all the characters are there, and you don't have anything to o with them anymore. I always feel like I'm losing family when I finish a story. And I can't usually bring myself to start a new one. Who needs the pressure of sticking to the rules you've already created?

Finishing a book is like empty nest syndrome. You’ve done your best with these characters and now it’s time to turn them loose in the world. It’s a bittersweet moment. Tell us about your favorite non-writing activities.

Wait, there's something other than writing? Well, I watch a lot of cartoons (Batman, Spiderman, Young Justice, the newer stuff), movies (Batman, Spiderman, Avengers, Prometheus, all that) and looooove wandering through the pages of history. Working on a time-travel, fossil-filled book at the moment. But I don't want to say any more, or I'll jinx myself!

Any advice for newbies?

I'll pass on the best advice I ever got - "You can't edit a blank page." Also, once you have that contract, promote your butt off.

Holly, it’s been a pleasure having you here today. The Devil’s Wife is available now from Champagne Books; Scale and Feather, also from Champagne, is due out in October. Blood Moon is available from Amazon Kindle.

MUSSEL WRITING

There are thousands of mussel species in the world, most at sea but hundreds of them living in fresh water, and at least ten in my home state of New Hampshire. (I’m told freshwater mussels are edible, but not as tasty as saltwater ones. Being too squeamish to catch and eat my own specimens, I’ll leave that judgment to others.) All mussels spend most of their time clinging to a rock or burrowed under sand or mud. They’re all filter feeders; they siphon in water and eat any organic matter they find. They don’t tolerate pollution well, so if you find mussels in your local lake or brook, you can rejoice in the purity of the water. When the season is right, they release their eggs and sperm en masse; the resulting babies drift along the currents in huge numbers until they become prey for larger animals, or after a rather complicated maturation cycle, find a nice bit of real estate, secrete a shell, and settle down for the rest of their lives. Depending on species, they grow to as little as one and half inches or as much as eleven inches. Sometimes, if the currents change and again depending on species, an individual mussel might seek out new hunting—er, siphoning grounds. 

Mussels—at least the ones I’ve seen—also do another thing. They write. Don’t believe me? Check out the picture below. This guy is clearly practicing his cursive e’s in the sand, though he got a little sidetracked there at the end. Or maybe the e’s are the sidetracking until he figured out where he wanted to go and set off to get there. (Don’t ask me how I know it’s a guy; I’m using the generic masculine here, folks. The only way to sex a mussel is to dissect it, and my curiosity didn’t extend that far. Besides, I wanted to read the rest of his book.) When you consider that mussels crawl at a cracking one to two inches per hour, and that the track in the picture is about 16” end to end not counting the e’s, you can only conclude that this guy had a lot to say.

Going down to the lake early every morning while I was on vacation last week, I saw a lot of mussel writing, mostly scrawled lines, quick scribbles and enigmatic traces. The strange hieroglyphs would appear overnight and then wash away under the force of powerboat waves, so they were only visible for a short time. They were hard to photograph, given the refractive power of water, the low angle of the sun, and the constant rippling of the waves. I took about thirty shots before I got this one. When something is so fleeting and furtive, I figure it has to mean something. 

So what does this mussel writing mean? Some would say it means nothing; it’s just the random wandering of a hungry mollusk. But, I ask, what about those weirdly regular e’s? Are they a sign of mussel madness? Magnetic disturbance? A message from the Ineffable? Sheer joie de vivre? 

I don’t know what it means to this particular mussel, but here’s what this writer finds in it: Keep going. Keep writing. Even if you’re going around in circles, it’s okay to keep writing. Maybe if you’re going around in circles, eventually you’ll get dizzy and stagger onto the right track by accident. And who knows? Maybe the circles will give you glimpses into other tracks. After all, every curve has an infinite number of tangents to explore. At the very least, you’ll build up your writing mussels.

DICTIONARIES

The other day on NPR, Diane Rehm rebroadcast a conversation with the editors of The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). The fifth and final volume of this massive work was published in January, but I’d missed this interview. It became another “driveway moment.” You know, those shows or stories that are so interesting you sit in your car to hear the end of it. Except my husband and I weren’t in our driveway. We were at a rail trailhead, and we left the radio on and our car doors open while we hoisted our bikes down from the roof rack. 

Now, I could listen to a discussion of language shifts and regional slang for hours. It’s just so fascinating to watch English evolve. What do you call meat or other fillings in bread? A sandwich, sammidge, sangwich? If the filling is in a roll, do you call it a hero, sub, hoagie, torpedo, grinder, spunky? Of course, hubby and I wanted to call in with the little quirks we’ve come across—“all” used to mean “all gone” in Pennsylvania Dutch country, or the variations of “ayuh” (yeah) in New England. My grandfather’s dramatic pronunciation of “Gawd.” Or the odd Mennonite custom of dropping “to be” in phrases like “the car needs fixed.” Even my DIL’s addition of “the” to road numbers: the 309, the 202.  

Ever since My Picture Dictionary dropped into my five-year-old hands, I’ve loved dictionaries. I often get carried away when I go to look up a word, and find myself five columns down from where I started. I never throw one away, even when I buy an updated one; I still have my dad’s big old Webster’s from 1949. The gold title on the binding is nearly gone, and the dark blue fabric has faded to gray, but I won’t let it go. It carries the scents of my early home, the memory of my father’s big rough hands turning the fragile pages, and the mystery of words. 

Earlier this summer, a friend gave me a wonderfully strange lexicon: The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. The version my friend found at a yard sale is a 1978 facsimile of the 1894 edition, complete with random ink blots and lacunae. Given the good reverend’s interest in religion and literature, it includes many entries on assorted heresies and often goes into detailed discussions of minor characters in classic literature. But there are also some colorful terms and phrases from ordinary life: going by the marrow-bone stage, i.e. walking. (This expression is listed under “Bayard,” a horse of incredible swiftness, and is an alternative to the ironic “ride bayard of ten toes.”)

Beyond its obvious value in deciphering outdated or archaic terms and characters, Phrase and Fable provides a fascinating insight into what constituted the world of a well-educated Englishman in the late nineteenth century—a thorough knowledge of classical Greek and Roman literature, plus Moliere, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott. The book is also invaluable for tracing the origins of words—though sometimes the origins Brewer gives are suspect. Take, for instance, London, which he claims comes from the Celtic Luandun, City of the Moon. Two lines later, he admits “it would take a page to give a list of guesses made at the derivation of the word London.” So dip into this dictionary with a box of salt (skepticism) at hand. 

Above all, Phrase and Fable is a glimpse into the inquisitive, eclectic mind of a man of his times. I would love to eavesdrop on a conversation between him and another great scholar of language, J.R.R. Tolkien. Wouldn’t you? 

Either DARE or Phrase and Fable would make a wonderful gift for any writer. Put them on your wishlist and see what happens.

Seven lines from Julie Eberhart Painter

From time to time I'll post a few lines from a new or upcoming book. Today it's seven lines from page seven of Medium Rare, by Julie Eberhart Painter. Enjoy!



To be released in December from Champagne Books, MEDIUM RARE the sequel to KILL FEE, Book of the Year 2011, by Julie Eberhart Painter

            Celeste Holler had accumulated a large following since she hung her shingle out in the town of Cassadaga, a Mecca for psychics. Thank goodness no one knew about Preacher Barney's upcoming trip. He was only doing it for his co-workers' own good; he'd check her out, and expose the fraud.
            What a weird place, Cassadaga was. He’d never forget the first time he drove out there to offer his spiritual comfort to his hospice family. Why would anybody go there if they didn't have to? On the other hand, the predictions that she talked about were coming true. He tried not to think about what this Celeste woman might discover about him, but he had to know if she had him figured out.