There's no such thing as a split infinitive

I am so tired of politics. And religion. Especially when they crawl into bed with each other and start shouting. So today I'm going to forget about them altogether and revolutionize English grammar instead. English-speaking friends, it is impossible to split an infinitive.

Not that most of us care. If asked what's wrong with Star Trek's aim, "to boldly go where no man has gone before," we're likely to point out its sexism, not its placement of the word "boldly." But if you harbor any residual guilt about split infinitives from long-ago English classes or from several decades of of copyediting, here's good news.

Structurally speaking, it makes no sense to say that the infinitive in Star Trek's mission statement is "to go." Nope. The infinitive is "go." Just plain "go."

In other European languages, the infinitive is one word, not two. "Go," for example, is aller in French. "To go to France" is aller en France. But the French, like the English, often use little words like the English "to" when a sentence has two verbs. "He begins to read" is il commence à lire, and "she decides to leave" is elle décide de partir.

Why then do English speakers say that the infinitive is "to read" and "to leave," while French speakers do not say it is à lire and de partir?

Well, one explanation is that in French, depending on the sentence, the same infinitive may require "à" or "de" or no preposition at all. In English, by contrast, the "to" is always required ... except that it isn't.

Yes, we always say "I want to go," never "I want go," and even though le prince du Danemark said "être ou ne pas être," the original Hamlet said "to be or not to be."

But we never say "I must to go" or "I can to go" or "I may to go" or "I had better to go" or "I should to go." And in all of these sentences, the second verb is most definitely an infinitive.

So why should even the most rigorous grammarian have "to go boldly" when he or she "can boldly go"? No reason at all : the infinitive, even though often coupled with "to," is simply "go." You can split it from its preposition, but you can't split the infinitive itself.

Blair Shewchuk, CBC News Canada's Senior Editor of Journalistic Standards, would probably disagree with my analysis (everyone does). He quite cheerfully approves separating the "to" from the verb, however, and that's what counts. In "To Boldly Split Infinitives," a delightful summary of the debate, he tells of one author with the right spirit:

In a letter written in 1947, U.S. author Raymond Chandler put it this way: "Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split."

I like that. It's bold.

A different idea for Ground Zero

Here's an idea for people who are unhappy about having an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center, especially if those people are Bible-believing Christians and/or defenders of the U.S. Constitution. What if American Christians got together and offered to build an interfaith memorial instead?

Since we follow someone who suggested loving our enemies and forgiving seventy times seven (which we tend to ignore when we rant against the Islamic center), this would allow us to be more literal about our faith. And since believe in our Constitutional rights of religious liberty and freedom to assemble (which we might jeopardize by refusing to allow the Islamic center to be built), this would allow us to be more traditional about our politics as well - all without making the Muslims pay for the building.

See, we could pay for it ourselves. It would be cheap: only 50 cents from every American Christian would do it. We probably wouldn't want to call it Córdoba, since that brings to mind a city where medieval Muslims gave a fair amount of religious liberty to Christians (something Christians at the time were not doing for Muslims in neighboring cities). But we might call it something like The Reconciliation Center - a very biblical term that evangelicals should like.

We could include separate worship rooms for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and every other faith held by victims of the 9/11 attacks. We could also include a multifaith meditation room for everybody, with pictures of the deceased and symbols of hope and peace.

Just as important, we could use the memorial to bring the community together now and in the future. I don't know what the neighborhood needs - apparently it's rather rich in strip clubs and sex toys - but how about a gym where kids of all faiths could play together? A food pantry staffed by and serving all people? A library with great works from many traditions? An auditorium where speakers, films, and concerts promoting reconciliation could be featured? A clinic offering free medical care for the homeless?

The only drawback I can think of in building such a center is that terrorists would absolutely hate it. They're already upset at Sufi Muslims such as Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Córdoba Initiative.Think how mad they would get if Christians co-opted his idea, improved it, and invited him to join them. They might even bomb the place!

But as Jesus said, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake."

Righteous imports: why it's OK for California food to travel to Illinois

"More evidence links pesticides to hyperactivity," says a headline from yesterday's Los Angeles Times, with similar articles in newspapers all over the world. Yet another good reason to be careful what we eat - and yet I've got to say it, righteous eating can be crazy making.

Going to the farmers' market isn't good enough : we have to ask every farmer where the food is grown, what fertilizers were used, whether it was sprayed with pesticides.

Just shopping at Whole Foods isn't good enough either (though it's generally more righteous than, say, Jewel)  : not all of their products are organic, locally grown, wild-caught, or whatever else we're told we have to look for. And we even have to be cautious at Trader Joe's, my favorite grocery store in the world. Thank goodness they are starting to stock a lot more organic foods.

Which is why I appreciated Steven Budiansky's op-ed piece in this morning's New York Times : "Math Lessons for Locavores." Budiansky, bless him, holds that

eating locally grown produce is a fine thing in many ways. But it is not an end in itself, nor is it a virtue in itself. The relative pittance of our energy budget that we spend on modern farming is one of the wisest energy investments we can make, when we honestly look at what it returns to our land, our economy, our environment and our well-being. 

He gives the numbers to back up his assertion, too.

Budiansky is not in bed with Big Ag. He's a historian, journalist, and mathematician who blogs at Liberal Curmudgeon: Who Says You Have to Be a Conservative to Be Pissed Off? I like the way he thinks.

After reading his article, I feel much better about buying (organic) California strawberries and (wild caught) Alaska salmon, though slightly guiltier about driving to the grocery story four times already this week to get them ("A single 10-mile round trip by car to the grocery store or the farmers’ market will easily eat up about 14,000 calories of fossil fuel energy," says Budiansky).

Guilt is OK, in small doses : it's the manure of the soul. I'm just glad I don't have to spread it on my (organic) New Zealand apples.

BFF - 50 years and counting

Kathy and LaVonne, c. 1961

As of today, Kathleen and I have been friends for 50 years.

Our mothers were close friends before we were born, but Kathy lived on the east coast and I lived on the west so we knew each other only through Christmas letters. We finally met on my 12th birthday, in Kathy's aunt's house, and we talked all afternoon.

We never stopped talking, though the topics keep changing.

Back then we talked about boys and parents and our impending move to Michigan - she from Washington, DC; me from California. We spent the next four years (grades 8 through 11, when we lived four houses apart on the same street) arguing about which coast was better, confiding about the boys we had crushes on, sharing books (which our strait-laced teachers sometimes confiscated), complaining about our unnecessarily restrictive parents, and dreaming about what we would do when we grew up.

Then I moved to France, California, Michigan, Washington state, and Illinois; while Kathy lived in Michigan, France, California, Indiana, and Maryland. Except for a few months in Michigan when we were in our 20s, we never lived in the same place again. But together we've toured vineyards in Napa Valley, shopped for curtains in Indiana, and groaned about loud American tourists in Oxford.

Over the years we've talked about boyfriends (several ) and husbands (one apiece), dogs (mine) and cats (hers), sex, food, wine, friends, and travel. We both left the conservative denomination of our youth and became Episcopalians. We both spent many years caring for aging parents. We consoled each other as our parents died.

Kathy and I don't get together all that often: she's back in DC, and I live near Chicago. After 46 years apart, our lives are quite different, and we don't know most of each other's friends. But we stay in touch through email and Facebook and telephone. Just yesterday, in fact, we discussed Social Security and buffalo mozzarella.

My granddaughters, who are older than Kathy and I were when we met, talk about their BFFs - best friends forever. Everyone should have at least one. Forever isn't nearly long enough.

BOOK REVIEW ALERT

Starting now, my book reviews will appear on the new blog Mr Neff and I have launched, The Neff Review. We've already posted nearly 100 reviews there. (The one that appears in the box on the right is the most recently posted, but it may not be the most recently written.) Check it out!

Saving marriage

A longtime friend recently posted this as his Facebook status:

I really don't want to get into an acrimonious debate but I wonder if anyone, liberal or conservative, can calmly, and without inflamatory or deprectory language, explain to me why some people feel that same-sex marriage threatens or undermines heterosexual marriage?

Right after reading his question, I read an article by a conservative Christian leader who felt extremely threatened by the San Francisco federal court judge's ruling against Proposition 8. "The central institution of human civilization suffered a direct hit, and its future hangs in the balance," he wrote, but he offered no reasons for that belief that would persuade anyone who did not already agree with him. His reaction was typical in the conservative Christian blogosphere, and I figured my old friend was not likely to get a reasoned answer anytime soon.

But finally this morning comes an intelligent commentary in defense of traditional marriage: "The Marriage Ideal" by Ross Douthat, who is conservative, Republican, and Christian.

Douthat begins by demolishing the usual anti-gay-marriage arguments. He then offers his own description of what he calls "a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation, and supplemented by later ideas about romantic love, the rights of children, and the equality of the sexes":

This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.

He allows that this understanding of marriage has been on its way out for quite some time, having been replaced by "a less idealistic, more accommodating approach." "If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal," he concludes, "then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary."

Douthat is not happy about the fading of the older marital ideal. Still, I don't expect most conservative Christians to love his op-ed piece. While affirming the value of the traditional Jewish and Christian definition of marriage, he points out that this definition is not necessarily held by other religions, other cultures, or even many contemporary Jews and Christians.

One could argue that in a diverse, democratic society, the state's duty is to ensure that people of all religious traditions - as well as people with no religion at all - are left free to practice their own beliefs. While a religious group could marry or refuse to marry according to its doctrines, civil marriage should allow for varying traditions.

If the older marital ideal really is, as Douthat believes, "one of the great ideas of Western civilization," then churches who share his view would do better to stop fighting gay marriage and instead turn all their attention toward fostering lifelong fidelity among the already and about-to-be married. Marriage will not be saved by a legal definition. As Douthat points out, "the lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights."

If anything can save marriage - traditional or contemporary - it will be the witness of married couples - straight or gay - who are getting it right.

Clarification: What I meant to say about Missouri

When my previous post about Missouri's health-care insurance vote and obesity rates was re-posted on Sojourners' God's Politics blog, commenters told me I was "a little unfriendly," "insulting," "trashing obese people," and lacking compassion for the poor. Among other things.

I went back and reread my post, and I wish I hadn't used the word "fat." My "good luck, Missouri" remark was meant to be sarcastic, but not all readers saw it that way. I am sorry for my insensitivity and have made a few changes to the post.

In addition, I discovered that some important text had been inadvertently dropped. I would like to blame blogpost, but I suspect the fault was my own. The WSJ quote was missing, which meant much of the rest of the article made less sense. The stats on health-care costs were then wrongly attributed to the WSJ, whereas the report actually came from Trust for America's Health. I got it right in the first draft, but somehow the published article was incorrect. I have no idea what happened in the meantime. I have made more changes to the post to fix these errors.

Here's what I meant to say, with a few points of added clarification:

Every year, more and more Americans cross the line into obesity. Obese people, on average, have lots more health problems than normal-weight people. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be obese. (This is partly because the government subsidizes corn, which is turned into high-fructose corn syrup, which is especially prevalent in inexpensive junk food.) When health insurance is not mandatory - and subsidized for people who can't afford it - a lot of poor people suffer unnecessarily. They have more health problems than their richer neighbors, and unless they have Medicaid or health insurance, they have fewer resources for treating them.

I strongly believe America needs a mandatory, not-for-profit health system that provides basic health care for everyone in the country. I also strongly believe our agricultural policies have led to eating habits that are harming us all, but especially the poor. I found it ironic that last Wednesday's news included both Missouri's vote against mandatory health insurance and Missouri's joining the list of states with obesity rates of over 30%. I do not think either of those facts is going to be good for the poor.

And I would like to add a P.S. I am not putting down on obese people. I am not unaware of eating disorders (I wrote about my aunt's experience here). There are lots of theories out there about why Americans are getting heavier every year, and about why countries that adopt American eating habits are also getting heavier: some of them are probably right. But that's not my point. My point is this: we need to provide basic health care for everybody - especially since we appear to be getting less healthy every year.

Missouri's health-care dilemma

Yesterday, by a 3-to-1 margin, Missouri voters passed Proposition C: "No law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system."

From the New York Times:

“This really wasn’t an effort to poke the president in the eye,” said State Senator Jim Lembke, a Republican. “First and foremost, this was about defining the role of state government and the role of federal government."

On the same day that Missouri voted against mandatory health insurance, the Center for Disease Control released a study listing Missouri  among the most obese states in the union. From the Wall Street Journal:

Ten years ago, 28 states had obesity rates of below 20% of their adult population, the CDC report said. In the latest survey, Colorado is the only state, along with Washington, D.C., that fits that description. Also, no state had an obesity rate above 30% in 2000, whereas nine states are above that threshold today, the report said. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Obesity is often a sign of ill health, and our country's increasing obesity rates go hand-in-hand with increasing medical costs. Here is some date from a report released last month from advocacy organization Trust for America's Health, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010,” page 107:

• Obesity-related medical costs total $147 billion a year, or nearly 10 percent of all annual medical spending (based on 2006 data).
• Of the $147 billion, Medicare and Medicaid are responsible for $61.8 billion. Medicare and Medicaid spending would be 8.5 percent and 11.8 percent lower, respectively, in the absence of obesity.
• Obese people spend 42 percent more on health care costs than healthy-weight people.

 Ironically, when you compare obesity rates by state with how states voted in the 2008 presidential election, you discover that all nine states with over 30% obesity rates voted Republican. By contrast, eight of the nine states or districts with the lowest obesity rates (Colorado, District of Columbia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Oregon, Montana, New Jersey) voted Democratic. Does this mean that the states most likely to try to opt out of the federal health-care program are the states most likely to have high medical costs? And if so, what does that mean for those states' budgets - or the health of their residents?

This is no time for people in blue states to crow, however. Here's more grim news. The CDC report says that "in 2000, [alarmed by our nation's obesity rate of 19.8%,] a Healthy People 2010 objective was established to reduce the prevalence of obesity among adults in the United States to 15%." Instead, we gained more weight. Lots more.

Not one state achieved the goal of a less-than-15% obesity rate by 2010. Whereas in 2000 28 states had an obesity rate of  less than 20%, in 2009 only Colorado and the District of Columbia had a rate that low. In 2000, no states had an obesity rate of more than 30%; in 2009, nine states do.

When all the states are put together, our average obesity rate is 26.7% - almost 7 percentage points higher (and about 27 million more people) than nine years earlier. And since weight and height were self-reported in the study, many analysts believe our true obesity rate is even higher than the study indicates (be honest now: is the weight on your driver's license entirely accurate?).

With or without federal insurance mandates, we are seriously weighing down our nation's health-care system. If Missouri successfully challenges parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act - and it may not, because federal courts are likely to disagree with their election results - then Missouri lawmakers had better start thinking about what to do with their citizens who are too rich for Medicaid but too poor, too optimistic, too negligent, or too stubborn to pay for health-care insurance.

ZOO STORY: Life in the Garden of Captives by Thomas French

I like zoos. Good ones, anyway. When our children were very small, we lived near the San Diego Zoo and went there nearly every week. We now live within visiting distance of the Brookfield Zoo, where we used to take our grandchildren and where we once celebrated our anniversary, and the Lincoln Park Zoo, which we haven't visited in too long a time (anyone for a trip to the zoo this weekend?). Until I read Zoo Story, though, I hadn't really given much thought to what goes on behind the scenes.

Thomas French was a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times when he read Yann Martel's Life of Pi and decided he wanted to learn all about zoos. That was in 2003, just as four elephants from Swaziland were about to take up residence at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. Zoo Story begins with the arrival of the elephants, now the zoo's most physically powerful creatures, and continues with Herman the chimpanzee and Enshalla the Sumatran tiger, king and queen of their own domains. No matter how strong, dominant, or popular they may be, however, all the mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians in the zoo are under the control of an even more powerful alpha male - Lex Salisbury, CEO, known to his employees as El Diablo Blanco.

Through fast-paced, absorbing stories, French depicts power struggles on many levels. Demonstrators from PETA and other animal rights groups oppose bringing in the elephants. Bamboo the chimp dethrones former alpha Herman. Enshalla refuses most suitors and outwits her keeper. An elephant tramples an employee. Zoo employees grumble about their tyrannical boss. Lex tangles with the mayor, the zoo board, and the press. Who knew that zoos were such hotbeds of dissent and intrigue?

Underlying the stories is an ethical question: should zoos even exist? Obviously zoos with small, dirty cages and scruffy, frightened animals should be revamped or closed. But what about zoos like Lowry Park that have created natural looking, cage-free environments, that attempt to breed endangered species, and that even return many of their animals to the wild after training them for independent living? And what makes anyone think that nature, "red in tooth and claw," is a better place for animals than a commodious zoo?

On the other hand, can large wild animals ever live normally in a confined area? Are endangered species, rather than being preserved, being domesticated to the point that they can no longer survive outside a sheltered environment? Do even the best zoos really care about animal welfare, or do they exist to make a profit?

French never answers these questions, but they preoccupy him right from the epigraph:

"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces.

Religion faces the same problem.

Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."

--Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Zoo Story makes me want to spend a day at the zoo. It may make some readers want to shut the zoo down.

Understanding the immigration debate: the necessary context

If I hadn't just read Moving Millions, I might not have noticed how many of this morning's news stories relate to immigration.

Jeffrey Kaye, a freelance journalist and special correspondent for The PBS NewsHour, subtitled his book How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration. It's a book that goes way beyond what I'm used to reading in news stories or op-ed pieces about Arizona's new law. Kaye looks at immigration around the world, not just in America. He frequently puts today's stories in historical context. Most of all, he looks at business practices and government policies that either entice or drive people to leave their homes in search of a better life.

There's a lot of data in the book, and Publishers Weekly called it "a dense read." It isn't, really--Kaye injects enough stories and interviews to keep eyes from glazing over. If I sometimes found it hard going, it was because each chapter examines a different facet of immigration, and sometimes the evidence seems to lead to contradictory conclusions. In the final chapter Kaye ties things together and clearly states his own views, though he offers no policy recommendations. Since it majors on information, not advocacy, Moving Millions will probably appeal more to wonks than to activists.

But back to this morning's news stories, and how Kaye helped me understand them:

"Immigrant Maids Flee Lives of Abuse in Kuwait." Indentured servitude seems to be par for the course in some Middle Eastern countries where the elite have an obscenely luxurious lifestyle and immigrants, whose passports are confiscated so they can't run away, are forced to do all the work. Moving Millions includes a damning chapter about immigrants in Dubai.

"U.S. Official Boost Efforts to Protect Immigrant Crime Victims." Good enough - but why should immigrant laborers, whose work keeps our food prices low, need special visas in order to have basic human rights? Is it really necessary to be mugged in order to seek justice?

"Christiane Amanpour Takes On ABC News' 'This Week.'" Immigrants contribute to the American economy at all levels, as you've no doubt noticed if you've looked for a doctor lately. Amanpour, a British citizen, is the daughter of an Iranian named Mohammad and a British Christian. She is married to an American Jew and recently moved from London to New York.

"Border Deployment Will Take Weeks." Yup, and it's not going to accomplish anything except possibly help re-elect politicians who should know better. Fences and guns don't keep people out when businesses lure them in. And if businesses stop hiring illegal immigrants, expect the American cost of living to skyrocket.

Interestingly, some companies are trying to have it both ways. According to one Arizona politician quoted in the book, "Many of the companies that made a profit off the backs of migrant workers were the same companies donating money to anti-immigration proponents." See my April 29 post in which I suggest that many businesses want immigrants here, but they want them scared. They are so much easier to exploit when they're terrified of being sent home.