Connie Schultz Isn't a Dumbed-Down Parade Writer

  As I clean up and organize things for class, I come across things like a page I tore out of Parade magazine, where Connie Schultz has her weekly article or column.  I'm grateful to her because of something she wrote about Agent Orange about the time I was returning from our education-tour of Vietnam.  Before I throw out her column, I wanted to make a note of what I underlined:

"We can't let others define us.  Figuring out who we are has to be an inside job."

Talking about the word bossy, she says, "It never occurred to me that this particular B-word could be an insult.  In our family, it was a positive job review."

"I can see how some people--let's call them troglodytes--use the term bossy to shame a woman into being a lesser version of herself."

"We've all known someone eager to tell us who we are.  The key is to be just as eaager to set the record straight."

She talks about the editor who reduced her to a minion--a word I'm sure that I don't use enough.

But this also goes to illustrate the deviations in our hour.  Long before 2:00 AM I came to the study to get things organized for ESL 140 and our midterm materials-list.  I've responded to e-mail and updated my reading diary and now I need to get back to the assignment I gave us.