FrankSentThis_Nov2_2015 - Monday Morning Memo

If you read the wizard’s rant last week, you’ll remember his response to the guy who foolishly claimed, “It’s been proven that we remember more of what we see than what we hear.”

The wizard asked, “Would you be willing to trust the opinion of Professor Steven Pinker whose research on vision, language, and social relations was awarded prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Psychological Association? Would you believe Pinker? He’s also received eight honorary doctorates, won several teaching awards at MIT and Harvard as well as numerous prizes for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature. Prospect magazine listed Pinker among ‘The World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals,’ Foreign Policy named him in their ‘100 Global Thinkers,’ and Time magazine put him on their list of ‘The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.’ Would you be willing to trust the opinion of Steven Pinker?”

Pinker’s seventh (and newest) book, The Sense of Style (2014), is a general style guide for writers. He does an elegant job of explaining why academic and popular writing is difficult for readers to understand, and then he explains exactly what you need to do to make yourself more clearly understood. Click the book if you want to buy it on Amazon. Click this link to buy Russell’s book.

“Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains.
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways.
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests.
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans.
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it.
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’.
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’.
I saw a white ladder all covered with water.
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’.
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’.
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’.
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’.
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter.
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony.
I met a white man who walked a black dog.
I met a young woman whose body was burning.
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow.
I met one man who was wounded in love.
I met another man who was wounded with hatred.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’.
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest.
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty.
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters.
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison.
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden.
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten.
Where black is the color, where none is the number.
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it.
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’.

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”

- A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, written by Bob Dylan, Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music