just when you thought it was safe to stop arguing about e.e.

Squeila@aol.com
Mon, 12 Jul 1999 22:47:49 -0400 (EDT) 

     Ok, there's been so much tension over this capitaliz(s/z)ation, e e 
cummings, etc issue that I feel the need to lighten the mood with a little e 
e cummings anecdote.  For the purposes of my story I will do my best to obey 
all grammarical rules known to me, in hopes that I will not offend Scottie 
(our resident demi-god), or anyone else for that matter.
    I have a friend name Joseph, and he is exceedingly brilliant.  He has two 
older brothers named Ari (middle) and Daniel (oldest), who are exceedingly 
brilliant.  Joseph is at Stanford, Ari is at Yale, and Daniel graduated from 
Harvey Mudd.  I'm not sure why I used their schools as evidence of their 
brilliance.  I guess that in my young mind it means something, though I 
understand that it may mean nothing at all.  These boys are much more than 
we-got-into-good-schools brilliant.  They really are.
    So, I was corresponding via email with Joseph, and he commented on my 
lack of capitali(s/z)ation or major punctuation, and references were made to 
none other than (you guessed it) e.e. cummings.  Joseph then proceeded to 
tell me that when he and his brothers were younger, Daniel ran into a wall in 
their house producing a sort of hole.  (The circumstances surrounding the 
incident were not made clear to me.)  Before the hole in the wall could be 
fixed in a usual way, Ari (aged around 14 at the time) produced a poster that 
he had made to cover the whole.  It was made with construction paper, and on 
it was written e.e. cummings's anyone lived in a pretty how town.  The poster 
was chosen as the preferred solution, and the poster is there to this day, 
(and the hole still...in tact).
     I was quite found of the story, myself, and actually found the action of 
poster-making-to-cover-a-whole-in-the-wall quite Glass.  And now, as you will 
notice, that I have so tactfully segued into Salinger, I would like to tell 
all of you that may not know that I am reading The Complete Uncollected Short 
Stories of J.D. Salinger for the first time, as I have located them in rare 
books and manuscripts library.  And, as I am reading them today, and I begin 
crying like a stupid girl, right in the middle of the rare books and 
manuscripts library, and I am hoping nobody is looking, I just wonder "How 
come they're so good?"

Leila

Pardon the tense change towards the end of the last paragraph.