The next Schmoozefest is Thursday, March 29 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Community Theatre of Greensboro at 520 S. Elm St.
Free snacks, beer and wine will be provided to all business professionals who sign in and get a name tag while supplies last.
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When I started covering local government there was no security. I don’t remember when Greensboro started having security guards at the meetings but I believe it was after 9/11.
For years before that there was one undercover police officer who attended meetings. They weren’t very undercover because they always sat in the same seat.
Now City Council meetings are staffed by security guards and police officers. If there is any indication that there will be protestors at the meeting, there is also a special police team sitting in their black combat style uniforms downstairs.
Times change. The question people should be asking is not whether or not schools should have security, but why don’t they all have security.
Then again, if you have law enforcement like the deputy in Parkland, Florida, who stayed safely outside the school with his gun drawn while students and teachers were being shot inside, you might as well not have any.
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Orson Scott Card’s column on pronunciation, or mispronunciations that are becoming common, reminded me of a student I had in Lisbon who had taught himself to read English. His reading comprehension was excellent and he wrote well. The reason I was tutoring him in English was that he was a professor of engineering. He had been asked to present one of his papers in India and he was concerned about his speaking skills.
He spoke English as it is written. The word that stuck with me was “know,” which pronounced ka-now as in “I ka-now I don’t spee-ack English well.”
It was a fascinating exercise to figure out what he was saying. Even when I told him that the K in know was silent, he insisted that it should be pronounced “now.” I agreed, but pointed out that it wasn’t.
Fortunately, we had a speech to work with, so I didn’t have to try and convince him of the wisdom of not pronouncing the gh in through or in pronouncing it as an “F” in tough. He kept wanting a list of rules for pronunciation that he could study. As near as I can tell, the pronunciation in English follows rules only when it wants to. There are exceptions to the exceptions and some words are in a class by themselves. I will say that after a few weeks, when he read his speech, it was understandable – or it was if you had a copy in front of you to follow.
