Is it gauche to post photos of your own Christmas haul? Of course it is. Of course I must.
I was floored & delighted with my son’s family’s gift of the latest edition of the Associated Press Stylebook, an indispensable aid to anyone who writes, a tool I’ve relied on since the mid-1980s. In fact I still have my 1984 edition, which is a lot thinner than the new one. I took a quick look inside each, comparing then-and-now coverage of two topics, gender/sex and race.
- 1984 edition
- 296 pages
- Gender: not addressed
- Sex Changes: 1 paragraph
- Race: 1 paragraph
- 2022-2024 edition
- 611 pages
- Gender (includes Sex/Sexual Orientation): 6 ½ pages
- Race: 9 pages
If nothing else, these AP Stylebooks, published nearly 40 years apart, show how the things we think, talk, and write about change. I can’t wait to start using the new one!
 |
 |
Donna’s cough, which started Tuesday, has gotten worse. She took a Covid home test after we got home that evening, and it was negative. After she coughed all day and night Wednesday, I talked her into taking a 12-hour Sudafed. The cough mostly went away during daylight, but came back overnight and is still bad this morning. I think she should test again but I’m not going to nag; she knows she should and probably will sometime today. What surprises me is that I haven’t caught whatever she has. This is the first time either of us has been sick in nearly three years, since the pandemic kicked off in March 2020.
We had to back out of our friends’ New Year’s Eve murder mystery party. We feel bad for Cheri and Dave, the hosts, who were counting on us to play specific roles. I, for example, was slated to be Benoit Blanc, and had been working on a cornpone accent.
Donna almost certainly picked up her cold at our son’s house on Christmas day. Lots of family and friends visited during the evening; one of them, unknowingly, must have been a Typhoid Mary. Well, at least we won’t be disease vectors at our friends’ New Year’s Eve party — we’re staying isolated at home.