THE ART OF BUILDING BLOCKS: A LOUSY METAPHOR

A book I'm reading called "Microstyle: the Art of Writing Little" by Christopher Johnson is complicated but encourages any writer to concentrate on short messages. (Hold your applause, and please remember that sarcasm is perceived as a sign of anger.)

Admittedly, the book is a little too technical for this old guy who still does not understand the concept of electricity - and why it works.

I also still don't know the difference between "Rango" and "Rambo" but still believe Judy Garland performed the best version of the latter.

Finally, I have never successfully answered all the questions on any one show of "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" I now understand what makes a teacher of kids an expert on so many subjects.

My goal is to continue the challenge of addressing Mr. Johnson's book. But, like the game of "Mother, May I?" I suspect there will be a lot of "pee-pee steps" mixed in with a few awkward "umbrella turns."

I will hold off on reading Chapter 22 "Establish A Relationship" - until my wife reads it first.

However, the book is full of hints and examples of what makes good communication. Unfortunately, due to it's many references to highly technical communication advancements I can only do a chapter at a time.

Last evening during one of my all too frequent "sleep breaks" I took on the chapter entitled,"Tap Into Metaphor" but resisted the temptations of the following chapter: "Use Ambiguity For Good, Not Evil".

I kept thinking of a book from the 80's by E.D. Hirsch, Jr, now gathering dust on the lanaii back in Florida and hope my recall is accurate.

Hirsch resisted the theory of experiental learning and leaned on the learning of cultural terms such as "1776" and "John Brown" as the means for providing the gateway to Cultural Literacy and an accelerated acquisition of knowledge.

The premise is very simple: learning requires a specific touchstone or reference to which you can recall in order to master something more complex.

It is a building block theory. I don't recall the entire topic but will "bet the farm" I have the right book in mind as I write this.

The latter is a much easier building block to understand unless you're a former Mossad agent working for NCIS.

For example, if the writer of the book you're reading or the lecture you're attending, makes repeated references to a specific subject, noun or verb, etc with which you have no familiarity, your progress in advancing your knowledge is going to be impeded.

If you don't understand what the "base" means and it's relationship significance to the current challenge you're studying, it will avail you little as the writer or speaker continues to drone on.

It's like missing the previous Geometry class and failing to get someone's notes about the last Therom.Such is my dilemma in attempting to read this book.

The irony is that this is the same criticism of me I have occasionally received from some readers of this blog.

They say that by failing to explain a prior building block reference, or by using some unfamiliar polysyllabic term, I have obfuscated their ability to enjoy my blog.

For the life of me, I can't understand what the problem is.

Our Dad was a man with an extensive vocabulary who often refused to define a word he used. Instead,he encouraged us in a less than sympathetic tone, and with obvious disdain to "Look it up!" .

Dad was a very bright man who, early on in his life, had on his own mastered complicated accounting and legal terms and procedures as well as their meanings and application. A failing memory stole much of that knowledge from him later in life.

His one regret was that he had never finished college. My attendance at Grove City College, with the understood goal of being the first one in the family to graduate, ended up as sort of a "push-pull" for Dad. To this day,I believe he was conflicted.

As a result, reading his letters to me in my Freshmen year required that I keep both a Dictionary and a Thesaurus handy. Dad was not about to allow me to think I was the leading linguist in the family. I still ain't - in a well deserved bow to a younger brother.

But, when I was in college and taking one of about "eleventy-seven" lit based classes, including "The Art of Communication", the vocabulary books assigned to me and my classmates caused me to develop an appreciation for his teaching methods.

Books like "Word Power Made Easy" and "Thirty Days To A Better Vocabulary" - both required readings - were not as much of a challenge to me as they might have been had I not been such a pansy when an opportunity to disobey my Dad was presented.

So, what's the message here?

"Hell, I don't know. That's why I'm reading the freakin book!"