Hi, James!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  I didn't get the info. from a chemistry textbook
AH>  or a home ec. textbook, but from the GAGE CANADIAN
AH>  DICTIONARY....  :-))

JB>  Oh ya, well I've *seen* a good dictionary once! O-8*


          Typical SP... [ROFL].  More about that later....  :-)



JB>  On the dictionary front, I found a New Webster's
JB>  for cheep,


          Oh, it sold for a song?

              Let's all sing like the birdies sing,
              Cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep....  

Seriously, I think you meant "cheap" as in "a cheap
trick"....  ;-)



JB>  a Roget's Thesaurus, plus a brief medical dictionary
JB>  (Little did I know how much I'd need *that!*)


          Yup... [wry grin].



JB>  and secretary's guide....

JB>  (I'll bet I should have gone to "secretarys'" there
JB>  right? OPPS! I just noticed the section on grammar,
JB>  and punctuation. "Let me get back to you on that."


          Well, uh... how does the dictionary spell it??  I know.  You'd
rather ask your buddy across the aisle.  That's okay as long as you're not
in my grade eight English class & you're not depending on somebody
who's flunking!  I think either the singular or the plural would work
here... but the singular is easier to handle because you don't have to
remember to change the "-y" to "-ies".  ;-)



JB>  "What's this? Carbon was discovered as an element
JB>  in the time BC, but Nitrogen didn't make it to the
JB>  table until 1776!" (Ya, it's got a lookup sheet of
JB>  the elements, and when they made their debut. |-)


          Traditional grammar is simple, compared to chemistry!  There are
only eight parts of speech, nobody has discovered any new ones since you
& I went to school, and if you forget you can look them up in any good
dictionary....  :-))



JB>  That's pretty sweet music, isn't it? I never quite
JB>  equated the two, but that's hugely successful at
JB>  bringing in the image!


          Thankyou....  :-)  :-)  :-)



JB>  There has to be a conductor/leader, and as in
JB>  politics, that's often up to competition.


          Dallas & I had a clarinet teacher... also a conductor... who
was fond of saying "music is not a democracy".  That's how it
works when one is teaching beginners.  When I'm conducting more experienced
players it's still up to me to make the final decision.  But IMHO it would
be foolish not to accept input from other people who can play rings around
me on piano, drums, or trombone....  :-)



JB>  I often find it's the lowly drummer that sets the
JB>  tome of the bunch. She/He isn't always the most
JB>  accomplished player, but if (s)he can only hit
JB>  hard, you have to make it a rock band.


          That's pretty much how I see it too.  As I used to say... the
drummer is the conductor's right hand man (or woman).  If the two of them
are trying to go in different directions the band will invariably follow
the drummer....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+