“With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

You say ‘with’ at the beginning of the sentence or at the end, not both. Better yet, don’t say this prissy phrase at all. Just ask me what my name is, please.

“I will be more than happy to help you.”

‘Happy’ would be more than happy enough. Don’t tell me you’ll be happy to help me. Just help me.

“I know exactly how you feel.”

No, you don’t. Anyway, I’m not asking for your empathy. I’m asking for your help. You don’t need to say, “I know I would be really frustrated if I couldn’t get on the Internet, use my apps, or make phone calls and text.” What I really feel you are doing with these empathic paraphrases is subliminally reminding me how much I need my cell phone and your service. Thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that you have me by the balls.

“Definitely / Absolutely / Fantastic / Perfect”

Few things in this world are definite, absolute, fantastic, or perfect. You are using empty superlatives. And it really bothers me when you use them in every sentence. “I can definitely help you with that. I can definitely understand your concern. I can definitely get you over to another representative who can help you with that.” You know what? That’s not communication. It’s interference.

“Just give me a moment…”

Believe it or not, I am relatively patient. Ask me to hold and I’ll hold. But ask me to bear with you every 15 seconds and you try my patience. Just put me on hold, do your thing, and get back to me. Every moment you ask me to give you another moment is a moment you could solve my problem while I chill out.

“My computer’s running slow today… I need to get to another screen…”

Really? A slow computer? That is so last century. Another screen? I don’t care how many screens you have to get to. That’s your business. I don’t need to know how you do your job. I just need you to do it.

And finally… “Is there anything else I can help you with before I transfer you?”

No! 99.9% of the time, no. Your question presumes that you helped me with anything in the first place. If you have to transfer me to a higher level of tech support, you obviously couldn’t help me. I know you tried to help me, but you didn’t help me. And if I asked for your help before but I didn’t get it from you, why would I make the same mistake twice? Just transfer me so I can get the help I need, thanks.

Here’s what you can do:

Here’s what you can do, reps: tell your bosses that your customers aren’t happy with the scripts. Yes, I know you have scripts. Everyone has scripts. Don’t tell me you don’t have scripts. Tell your higher-ups that those scripts are tired, old, and irritating (to the customers, that is; you don’t have to tell them you you really feel). Tell them your customers are asking for plain English, short scripts, and real help. And when you don’t have a script telling you what to say, don’t say so much.

Here’s what you can do, customers: tell your reps what I just told them to tell their bosses. Ask to speak with a supervisor and tell them how you feel. Share this on Facebook. Retweet it on Twitter. Print it and mail it to your granny; that is, if she isn’t on Facebook already.

Here’s what you can do, bosses: listen to your reps and your customers! If you are a process designer, systems engineer, customer satisfaction specialist, or what-have-you, then you are a highly-educated, well-intentioned person. So take note. Things were better when people talked plain before you taught them to talk pretty. Let your reps keep it short and sweet. Keep their scripts to a minimum. Teach them succinctness and simplicity.

Drop the nonsense. You could boost customer satisfaction and efficiency by talking less and doing more. You could serve more customers in less time. And you could seem smarter doing it.

Talk to me

What are your pet peeves? How do you want to be helped? Do you have any ideas on how to give good customer service without talking so much? Leave a comment, and if it’s not spam, I’ll allow it.

Sure, it was fine to say “two-thousand.” No problem. I was great with “two-thousand-nine.” But that decade is over, and time’s a-wastin’.

Let’s look forward. Ten years from now, are you going to say “two-thousand-twenty”? God, I hope not. It takes too much time. And the unity and brevity of twenty-twenty is so much cooler. Well, so is twenty-ten.

Don’t let ten years of starting years with “two-thousand” stand in your way. Break out, baby. Try something new. If you don’t start pronouncing your years with “twenty” now, you’re going to sooner or later. Might as well be among the cool people who do it right from the start.

Here’s to 2010. Make it a good one.

Betcha said twenty-ten!

I could really use your help to find one word — and it has to be a NOUN — for this facial expression people use in both English and ASL (American Sign Language) when they’re using Vague Language (VL). Maybe my facial expression / noun pairs will help you. Now maybe you can help me… thanks!

There would be no World Wide Web without hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are what allow us to add photos to web pages, link from one page to another, etc. These days, much of this hyperlinking is done for us automatically on sites such as Flickr. But Flickr also allows you to create hyperlinks yourself in many areas of the site, including photo descriptions, comments, and group threads. I create links between photos and members all the time, and it’s easy for me to do so because I’ve memorized the HTML. Once you learn the HTML for a hyperlink, you can be a hyperlinker yourself!

An HTML tag begins with a less-than sign, created by holding down the shift key while you tap the comma key. Then you type “a” for “anchor” and “href” for “hypertext reference”. Then you type the equals sign (=) followed by a quotation mark. This quotation mark is the beginning of a “container” for the URL, or “uniform resource locator.” The URL is the “web address” for the object to which you are linking. As a mnemonic device, I think of this opening tag as the English phrase, “Anchor hypertext reference is…”

Recently, I posted a photo I took of a fellow Flickrite at a FlickrMeet. I wanted to link to her photostream so that other people could appreciate her photos. This is a way of showing respect and giving credit, similar to the citations used by academic writers. So, what did I do? Well, first, I wrote the text, “katdavis kindly posed for a portrait.” Then, I decided to make “katdavis” (her username) into a hyperlink. In order to do so, I found her photostream and copied and pasted the URL from my browser’s address bar above the first page of her photostream (the URL being www.flickr.com/photos/katdavis/ ). Then, I returned to my photostream— specifically, the photo page containing the portrait of her (the URL being flickr.com/photos/danielgreene/2100926688/ ). I clicked in the description text so that I could edit it, and I placed my cursor just in front of her username. There, I inserted the magic of the Web: I typed <a href= and I pasted the URL I had copied from the first page of her photostream. The “aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash” is absolutely essential to the HTML expression. Immediately following that URL, I typed a closing quotation mark (a.k.a. “close quote” — same as an open quote in this case, since HTML uses only the “inch mark” type quote, not “curly quotes” or “typographer’s quotes”). I then completed my opening HTML tag by typing a greater-than sign. The greater-than sign signifies the end of an HTML tag.

But the tag would not be complete without the link text being bracketed by the closing HTML tag. So, after I typed the opening HTML tag and typed the link text “katdavis” I enclosed the link text with the closing HTML “anchor” tag which is a less-than sign, slash, a, and a greater-than sign. As you can see, enclosing HTML tags are bracket by less-than and greater-than signs. The slash mark represents a closing HTML tag which marks the end of an HTML expression. You can think of the end of the anchor tag in English as “end of anchor.”

The resulting hyperlink looked like so when I finished editing it:

What the visitor to my pages sees is a hyperlink they can follow to jump to katdavis’s photostream, like so: katdavis

Hyperlinking creates virtual connections that can lead to or supplement the actual connections we have with each other in the real world. Hyperlinks are the sine qua non of the World Wide Web, and are even more important in the social, democratic "Web 2.0." Learning the HTML for creating hyperlinks is one of the steps to joining the ranks of the digerati and harnessing the power of the Web for yourself.

Have fun, and weave on!

This was the first time I had photographed a presenter giving a workshop in sign language. Those who know American Sign Language (ASL) can guess what Dr. Dennis Cokely was talking about. Those who don’t know ASL– well, they can have even more fun guessing. I don’t want to give away the content of his workshop to those who know ASL; rather, I encourage them to take his workshop themselves! As for those who don’t know ASL, there would be so much lost in translation if I simply said, “Dr. Cokely is signing X,” that I would be guilty of oversimplifying his message. And his workshop “Interpreting Culturally Rich Realities” is all about not oversimplifying any interpretation! I thank Dr. Cokely for his permission to photograph him as he worked.

While I don’t want to give too much of his workshop away, I do want to use these photos to help myself and others who took his workshop recall some of this repeated points. One of the things Dr. Cokely repeatedly discussed was having multiple lexical items in one’s “mental files” to choose from when confronted with signs or words that represented “culturally rich realities,” or words that are not easily conveyed from one culture/language to another in a 1:1 ratio.

As a photographer of a speaker presenting in ASL, I used the textual analysis and predictive skills I’ve developed as an interpreter to study Dr. Cokely’s rhetorical devices so that I would be prepared with my camera to capture him at the very moment when he would repeat one of his themes. As an instructor, he was very deft at using repetition to drive home a point.

It seems to me that the only message hearing people are getting about the protests against Jane K. Fernandes (JKF) as the incoming president of Gallaudet is that she is “not deaf enough.” I would like you (my fellow American who can hear) to put yourself in the shoes of those deaf students and ask yourself not “is she deaf enough” but “is she one of us?” And ask yourself, would you want a leader who’s not one of you?

Perhaps we must begin with the understanding that the main criterion for membership in the American Deaf culture is the use of American Sign Language — not one’s degree of hearing loss! There are plenty of people — particular senior citizens — who are stone deaf, but they do not use American Sign Language, and they do not identify themselves with the Deaf culture. In light of the imperative that one reach out to other users of American Sign Language and make themselves understood in that language, my opinion as someone who has been trained for many years at communicating fluently in ASL is that JKF fails this primary criterion.

I have watched JKF communicate in videotapes that were carefully scripted, rehearsed, and professionally produced. Even in this promotional video she made, Open Letter to Campus Community, she has almost no facial expressiveness — and specific facial expressions are actually a crucial part of the grammar of ASL! — and she handles signs as if they were foreign objects. One can even detect a disdain, I would hazard to say, in her regard of these signs that she deigns to use in order to offer the slightest appearance of effort to make herself understood to deaf people who rely on visual language for communication. My educated opinion is that the messages JKF puts out in written English (as seen in the captions of her videos) and the messages she puts out in ASL (including facial expression and body language) and NOT the same. Now, please, my hearing compatriots, put yourself in the shoes of a student at a university that is supposed to be the seat of your culture: would you accept a leader who not only showed disdain for the language that is at the center of your culture, but more than that, didn’t even bother to make herself understood in your language of necessity? I firmly believe that you would reject that person as a leader. Enough people already complain that our current U.S. president, George Bush, pronounced “nuclear” wrong and bungles the English language. Let me assure you, as someone who knows both English and ASL intimately: JKF is far worse than George Bush when it comes to not speaking the language.

But the issues are deeper, even, than linguistic. They are political and cultural. Imagine that you are a member of an oppressed minority. Maybe you, my dear reader, already are. Maybe you are gay, or black, or Mexican, Native American, Jewish, or Muslim. Do you not feel a oneness with other people of your minority? Do you not expect — take for granted, even — a certain mutual respect, understanding, equality and fraternity with others in your minority? Yes, I know that in-fighting occurs even in close-knit communities, but isn’t it considered the exception that proves the rule? Now imagine that you have a leader who is not warm (fraternal), respectful (treating you like an equal), and understanding. Suppose that you have a leader who has a long history of being cold, unapproachable, disrespectful of those who she should respect as “peers” because they are members of her culture. How would you feel? Would you accept this person as your leader, or would you and your fellows roundly reject her? I think you would reject her just as the Deaf students at Gallaudet have rejected JKF ever since she was appointed provost of Gallaudet, not to mention president.

I have discussed the linguistic and cultural reasons the students and faculty of Gallaudet have rejected JKF as their leader. The other reasons are political, although the linguistic and cultural are woven into the political. JKF, from what I have read in several letters from faculty members and students, has a history of claiming to support “dialog” and “working together,” yet her actions in board meetings and other political arenas have belied her words. She has repeatedly rejected the input of others, and she has repeatedly seized and maintained control by rejecting not only the input, but the pleas, of many. She does this now by refusing to step down as president, but from what I have heard from the Gallaudet community, this stubborn arrogance is nothing new.

I hope that I have shed light on the darkness of what is, to many hearing Americans, an unknown and incomprehensible cultural struggle. I hope that you have put yourself in the shoes of those deaf students and faculty of Gallaudet university and have at least a slightly better grasp on the issues. Of course, you are free to come to your own conclusions. I just felt I had to say something about this important crisis and share the perspective of a linguistic community that I have spent many years learning from and understanding. Thank you for taking the time to listen.

First of all, my sources for the bylaws were the RID bylaws, the RID Affliate Chapter Handbook Sample Bylaws (pp 238–257), and the AzRID bylaws (which link will probably be broken soon when they upload the new ones). I also consulted Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised when I was writing the SDCRID bylaws. I pretty much followed the Sample Bylaws except when I felt the RID bylaws were clearer or more up-to-date. I also, of course, checked the AzRID bylaws for any special bylaws that needed to stay. That takes care of the bylaws part of it.

I also had an interesting challenge and a gratifying success with writing the bylaws in a plain-text editor (BBEdit) using XHTML 1.1 and CSS. I did this because I wanted tight control over sectioning and listing. Bylaws documents need to be very structured. One can write in all the sections, subsections, and list numbers, but that is a waste of time, especially if one ever wants to rearrange the order of sections and list items. If one does use styles in a word processing program, sometimes formatting can become corrupted during routine editing operations such as cutting, pasting, deleting, etc., and then one can lose the document structure. Besides, I enjoy the challenge of hand-coding HTML and CSS, and I like to demonstrate the power of these structural and presentational markup languages working hand-in-hand.

For those that are interested in such things, I am posting some of the source code below so you can see how it’s done. Below that, I will include a screen shot of how this code is rendered in the Opera browser— the only browser I know of (for the Mac platform, anyway) that renders CSS counter properly.

Here is the AZRID Bylaws HTML+CSS, so you can look at the code.

And here is what it looks like in Opera 9.01 for Mac OS X:

Note that I never actually wrote the words Article or Section except in the CSS, and I never explicitly numbered any of the articles, sections, lists, or sublists except in the CSS. The CSS elements content and counter took care of that!

Reading Finnish Rhapsody in particular reminded me of watching a live sign-language interpreter while listening to a live speech. I experienced this while at a convention when one of the ASL interpreters was often more dynamic than the speaker in her communication. I do not know ASL and I was listening to the speaker, however I found that the way in which the interpreter communicated was much clearer on an emotional level. And even though she was obviously quite skilled, I was pretty certain she didn’t interpret the speech word-for-word.

Even though interpreters are charged with “render[ing] the message faithfully by conveying the content and spirit of what is being communicated,” (RID Code of Professional Conduct Section 2.3), sometimes an ASL interpretation is just more poetic and expressive than the English source message. Sometimes this is because there is an inherent passion in the words that is missing from the speaker’s facial expression and body language.

I remember one time interpreting for a reverend who was giving a sermon that had something to do with a “journey of a thousand miles and countless aeons.” When I conveyed the spatial and temporal aspects of the story by using intense facial grammar and gestural grammar that involved repetitive and circular motions, my deaf client said, “Sign Smaller!” I suppose she was embarrassed, fearing that I was calling attention to myself, and by association, to her. I didn’t argue with her, but in my defense, I was interpreting an “epic” tale, and I believe that my ASL facial and gestural grammar was appropriate to the story. If it seemed grander than the story the speaker was telling, perhaps it was only because the speaker’s subtle affect did not betray the grandeur of the message, but ASL, being a visual language, simply made the imaginary more visible.

On the other hand, it could be argued that I was enjoying myself a bit too much and getting carried away with the story, in which case, allow me to pull out my wallet and show you my poetic license! Just kidding. In addition to interpreting faithfully and conveying content and spirit, interpreters must “conduct themselves in a manner appropriate to the specific interpreting situation” (RID Code of Professional Conduct, Section 3.0). It just goes to show what a fine balancing act interpreting really is. And who knows? What was too much for this one client might have been just right for another client. Go know!

I also found a new blog out there. Welcome to the blogosphere, Erica! Her first post is a paper on what it takes to become an ASL interpreter.

I’d like to start off with the assertion that, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Many of the sentences that Deaf people sign, either in ASL or some form of manually (and orally!) coded English, follow the same syntax as regular, spoken English sentences, and should be voiced exactly as they are signed. This means that we, as interpreters/transliterators, must constantly assess the speaker’s syntax and encoding system to ascertain whether each particular word, phrase, and sentence should be interpreted or transliterated. We must ask ourselves, “if I say exactly what they are signing (and mouthing), will the Hearing audience receive the same message as the Deaf speaker intended, or must I change the wording and/or phrasing in order to produce an equivalent message to the speaker’s intent?” My assertion is that, more often than some would have us believe, transliteration is the way to go.

It is important that voice interpreters/transliterators not only be fluent in both ASL and English, but also skilled at lipreading. Despite what some ASL textbooks would have you think, many Deaf speakers mouth and sign a great deal of English, especially in the formal situations that interpreters are assigned to. Yes, Deaf people conversing at a social event may do a lot of ASL storytelling, but Deaf teachers, presenters, panelists and board members often use an English discourse style. Notice I said “often,” not “always.” It’s still very important to know ASL facial and manual grammar and the Deaf cultural discourse style, because our clients often switch back and forth, depending on the topic at hand (no pun intended).

How are we to know when the speaker is using ASL or English? The first place to look is the face! Is the speaker mouthing English or using his/her mouth and face to produce ASL morphemes? Is she signing and mouthing, “I WORK(ed) REAL(ly) HARD AT THAT FOR (a) LONG TIME?” (lowercase words indicate those mouthed but not signed) or “ME WORK+++ (stah, stah, stah) FOREVER (fluttered lips)”? While you might voice both of these phrases, “I worked really hard at that for a long time,” what you see on the speaker’s face clues you in on which “code” they are using it the time, be it English or ASL. These clues provide the context you need to determine whether the speaker is communicating in a mode which lends itself to interpretation or transliteration. It gives you the springboard you need to make predictions about whether upcoming phrases will allow you to transliterate them verbatim or require you to create English equivalents to very non-English phrases. I have seen very good interpreters flub up because they were not able to ascertain the encoding of the source message. They may try to “interpret” something that is already in English, thus causing themselves undo aggravation and producing a message that falls far from the mark. Conversely, they may try to “transliterate” something the Deaf person said in ASL, thus producing a message that makes no sense to an English speaking, Hearing audience.

One example that comes to mind is an interpreter in a videotape I once watched about Deaf people in 12 step recovery. The interpreter voiced standard “glosses” for ASL signs in the phrase, “WHEN ME BECOME STRAIGHT…” The interpreter voiced, “When I became straight,” but the Deaf person very obviously mouthed, “When I got sober,” which made a lot more sense within the context of recovery. This is one of those examples of the importance of both good lipreading and good discernment of message encoding. The Deaf person was encoding her message in signed English, and was mouthing every word. A more appropriate interpretation—transliteration, really—would have been achieved by recognizing the encoding and the mouthing, and then simply voicing exactly what the Deaf person mouthed. Also key in this instance was knowledge of the context. An interpreter familiar with the way people speak about 12 step recovery would know that the phrase that fit was, “When I got sober…”

It seems that so much is taught in interpreter training programs about ASL and interpreting, and so little is taught about Signed English (I’m talking about PSE, not SEE) and transliteration. In much of my work, however, and I’m sure in much of of our work, we must transliterate, not interpret. I have often seen interpreters voice incorrectly because they thought the source message was in ASL, and they were trying to “interpret” it into English; I have rarely seen interpreters err by thinking that the source message was in English and simply transliterating. That is not to say that going for voice transliteration is a safe bet; it’s just that so many interpreters (see, there’s that word again, not “transliterators”) are practically brainwashed into expecting to interpret from ASL to English rather than being receptive to either interpreting ASL or transliterating signed English. I believe that when interpreters/transliterators are open to recognizing both ASL and English when they are voicing, they will have a much easier time of it.

I wrote this article because I felt something must be said about the validity, importance, and downright efficiency of voice transliteration. As I said at the beginning, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Why turn a perfectly simple signed message into convoluted English when the signed message would transliterate beautifully into English as it is? The more we transliterate—provided what the Deaf person is signing makes sense in English and is what you would expect that sort of speaker to say if they were Hearing—the less we take away from the Deaf speaker’s own eloquence. The more we let the Deaf speaker’s words stand, the less work and frustration for us. By all means, if your Deaf client is using ASL both manually and orally, then knock yourself out and do your best interpretation. I’m just suggesting that we be a bit more open to recognizing clear and coherent signed English when we see it, and be willing to leave well enough alone. It matches the speaker’s intent and affect, it is culturally appropriate, and it’s a lot easier than trying to “reinvent the wheel” with elaborate interpretations!

This article was originally published in InTouch, the newsletter for the San Diego County chapter of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, in January 2000.

My grandmother, Helene Kupferman Greene, lived to the age of 88, and is survived by her husband, Ernest Charles Greene (my grandfather); her two sons, Ernest Charles Greene, Jr. (my uncle Chuck) and Andrew William Greene (my dad); her two grandsons, Daniel James Greene (me) and Benjamin Furman Greene (my cousin); her dog, Whiskey II, and close friends and family members, most notably Elaine Patterson, who has cared for my grandparents ever since my grandfather’s stroke in 1985. Elaine became like an adopted daughter, and her two daughters, Michelle and Marta, became like granddaughters. Granny was so happy to finally have some girls in her family!

My grandparents would have been married 65 years this February 2000. In addition to being a superb wife to her husband, and mother to her two boys, Helene Greene was a model, saleswoman, real estate agent, award-winning painter and interior designer. She was a woman of great passion, creative talent and patriotism. She loved her country, family, pets and friends dearly. She had a soft spot in her heart for animals and contributed generously of her time and money to organizations such as The Humane Society and many others.

Granny had an uncanny memory for the lyrics of songs. She wasn’t the best singer in the world, but when she half-spoke/half-sang a tune, her face lit up, her outstretched hands swept the air, and her enthusiasm for the song filled the room with “razzle-dazzle.” I remember when I was a small child she would tuck me into bed and sing to me, “Sweetest little fella / everybody knows / ain’t no use in telling you / he’s mighty like a rose.” I will always remember Granny’s love for me. Believe it or not, I have a few vivid memories of my infancy, and I recall how she doted on me from day one. When I was very little, Granny used to bathe me in the deep brown porcelain laundry sink in her house on Kensington Court. I also remember the interest she took in encouraging my artistic development. When I was about 5 or 6, she enrolled me at the Arts Academy in Kensington, where I learned acting, movement, and creative arts. Granny also helped me financially when I first went to UCLA right out of high school. When I was young, Granny took me shopping for clothing when she knew my mother couldn’t afford to get me new clothes, and she sent me to summer camp in the Adirondacks when I was 8 and again when I was 10.

Granny didn’t have to take to me the way she did. When my mother met my father (adoptive father, technically), she had given birth to me a few months prior, as Granny would say, “out of wedlock.” My biological father had disappeared. Granny didn’t feel my mom would be right for her son. As she put it in her own words, “we did everything we could to fight the marriage, but once our son decided to marry, we did everything we could to support it.” I believe this is true. I remember how gracious she and Grandpa were, and have always been, to my mother. Granny was passionate about either approving or disapproving of what anyone did. I remember when I was about 4 years old, my mom and Granny had a fight on the phone, and Granny got angry with my mom and shouted, “Well then you’re a bad mother!” But it wasn’t 30 seconds later she called back and said, “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a bad mother at all.” My mother has her faults, but has been a marvelous mother to me. Granny and Grandpa were probably right about the marriage, though. My mom and dad used to fight so much, I remember (and Granny remembered too) that, when I was about 3 or 4, I asked Granny, “If Mommy and Daddy keep fighting, can I come live with you?” Luckily, my parents divorced when I was five. I went off to live with my mother, but my dad, along with Granny and Grandpa, remained true to me as ever.

Skipping ahead several years, I came out to my grandparents when I was 16. Within a year or two of receiving the news, Granny started going to the Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays group at the Unitarian Universalist church. She eventually brought Grandpa and helped to bring him around to accepting me as well. I am eternally grateful to Granny for this. I’m also grateful that, soon after I told her I was gay, she showed a bold and loving interest in my health. One day, as we were out for a ride in the golf cart in Sun City, where Granny spent the last 19 years of her life, she said, “you know there are kinds of sex that are safe and kinds that aren’t, right?” I said yes, and she just took my hand in hers and said, “Good. I just want to make sure you’re having the safe kind.” For several years now, Granny’s farewell to me has been, “Be good! And if you can’t be good, be careful!” I’m happy that, with my family’s love and concern, and my own self-protection, I have indeed been careful and have not only been blessed to have a grandmother at the age of 32, but also—thank God!—to be able to bury her, rather than vice versa as happens too often these days.

Granny was up front and demonstrative with people, for better or worse. She could be a terror with waiters! I do recall, however, that she made friends everywhere she went. Whenever she took me with her on her errands, the shopkeepers who knew her would light up and shout, “Mrs. Greene!” The ones she didn’t know, she got to know. Speaking of errands, Granny used to keep her entire household in mint condition. The moment a button fell off, or a bit of yarn became unraveled, or she realized a lamp needed a new finial (I never even knew what a finial was until Granny showed me)—off she would go on her errands. Whether it was a chestnut brown leather button to match the buttons on a cashmere cardigan she had bought in London or a piece of lavender wool thread to patch up a needlepoint pillow she had made, she was one of the most resourceful and optimistic people I’ve ever known. She would either find it, find out where to order it from overseas, or she would invent a brilliant alternative. The words “shy” or “quitter” never, ever applied to Granny! In terms of her love, she was always demonstrative of that with me. I can’t count the times she took my hand in hers, and looked me straight in the eye, locking in on my gaze, and smiled, saying, “You know I love you very, very much. You know that, don’t you?” I’d always say, “Yes, Granny, I know. I love you too!” Because of these many expressions of love, I feel complete about Granny’s death. I spoke with her on the phone a few weeks before she died, and we once again expressed our love for each other. We had our share of “bones to pick” over the years, but we always picked them clean. I have no regrets.

I have Granny to thank for instilling in me a love for foreign languages and a respect for the proper use of my own language. Granny and Grandpa traveled all over the world, and they studied the languages of the places they went before they went there. One time, when Granny and Grandpa had traveled from France to Italy, Granny ordered a piece of cake after dinner in a fine restaurant. The only problem was that she used the French word for cake, “ gateau”, which sounds just like the Italian word for cat, “gato”! I wish I’d been there to see the horrified look on the face of that waiter! Granny once told me a joke about cats and dogs: a mother cat is walking down an alley with her three little kittens. Suddenly, from around the corner bounds a bulldog, baring its teeth and growling at the cat and her kittens. The mother cat, wise as she was, opened her mouth and bellowed, “Woof! Woof!” The bulldog put its tail between its legs and went running away, yelping. The mother cat turned to her kittens and said, “Now, children, you see the advantage of learning a second language!” Not only did Granny love foreign languages; she loved her own. Hardly a soul in her midst could escape her grammatical corrections. If anyone were unsure as to whether to use I or me, he would be sure to find out the right way when Granny intoned, in a dignified and certain voice, “them and me,” or “they and I.”

Last but certainly not least; I must mention that Granny was very patriotic. She lived through the depression and both World Wars. In her last years, she had extreme difficulty moving around, sitting down, and getting up. She also lost a lot of her short-term memory and her ability to discern the past from the present. The last time I was over for a visit, we were watching a videotape of songs from the WWII days, and one of the clips showed an announcer introducing Kate Smith, “singing a new song!” Granny beamed with glee, watching the black-and-white television screen, and exclaimed, “Oh! A new song!” The song was “God Bless America.” Before Kate Smith could finish belting out the third word—America—Granny stood bolt upright with her hand over her heart, matching Kate word for word! This is my last vivid memory of seeing my grandmother in person, and it is one I will cherish forever.

Those who would like to make a donation in my grandmother’s name should send a check to their local chapter of The Humane Society. Or volunteer!

Here is a list of some of Granny’s favorite things:

• Scottish Terriers (she had four in a row: Meg, Tammy, Whiskey, and Whiskey II)
• Frogs (she had an extensive collection of figurines, including the Lalique frog and the Waterford frog)
• Tab and Cheez-Its (a favorite afternoon snack)
• Bagels and cream cheese with Nova Scotia smoked salmon, capers, lemon juice, and freshly ground pepper
• Tanqueray and Tonic (in a restaurant, she would order a shot of Tanqueray gin, a small bottle of tonic water, a tall glass with ice, and “lotsalime.”)
• Häagen Dazs coffee ice cream
• Show tunes and pop songs
• Hawaii
• Navy blue

(These are some of my favorite things too, only I’m not partial to Scotties, and I don’t drink cola.)