Separating Siamese twins from Nepal

The Associated Press news story out of Baltimore reported that a scheduled execution of a man convicted of two murders in Maryland and one in Maine had been put off indefinitely because of legal wrangling involving lawyers about the constitutionality of Maryland’s death-penalty standards in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a New Jersey hate crime case.

Death by lethal injection is final, and the folks down in Maryland want to get it right. Nothing wrong with that approach. But this line (italics are mine) fairly jumped off the page, provoking me to hoot and reach for my ever-ready yellow fluorescent marking pen: “State prosecutors say the death penalty is the maximum allowed under Maryland law, and the New Jersey ruling does not affect Maryland cases…”

I’m sitting there thinking that it must be comforting to Maryland’s death row inmates to know that the state draws the line at going beyond death to extract its pound of flesh. And I’m also thinking that the AP writer might like to have that line back for reworking, as, on occasion, do we all in this business in which the land mines of convoluted phrasing, temporary brain-lock and misplaced modifiers lurk to trip the unwary. Alert readers can find some strange things on the printed page, to be sure.

Alfred Webster of Carrabassett Valley can be counted on to do just that. In a recent e-mail he targeted a Bangor Daily News story headlined “Siamese twins’ operation under way in Singapore.” The eyebrow-raising sentence in that story for him, Webster indicated, was the opening one: “A risky operation to separate 11-month-old Siamese twins from Nepal was taking longer than expected and might stretch into a fourth grueling day…”

Separating anyone from Nepal could be difficult, Webster supposed, never mind trying to tear Siamese twins away from the place in just four days. “And the article referred to an operation, but didn’t mention if this was an undercover operation,” Webster wrote. “If it were, that would explain some of the delay – trying to circumvent an encounter with what might be some hostile Serpa guides and all, especially while hauling a couple of twins over those rugged mountains…”

An anonymous reader – one of those who clips things from the paper and writes stuff all around the edges so you have to stand on your head to read it – sent a clipping of a BDN house ad which shows a young chap holding a ruler and pointing to a blackboard. On the slate are the equations: “3×3=6” and “4×4=16” adding up to 22. “Count on Us” the ad is headlined. “Should we?” asks my unidentified pen pal, pointing out that only in places such as Augusta and Washington, D.C., does three-times-three equal six. Obviously, something doesn’t add up here, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous wrote. And we’d do well to smarten up, along with the kid in the ad.

Someone equally as shy about signing his mail, sent along a clipping from our paper last winter that began this way: “CHICAGO – Chicago officials shut down the historic Biograph Theater, where gangster John Dillinger was gunned down, for failure to pay taxes…”

“Was he eliminated by the FBI, or the IRS?” the writer wanted to know. (My anonymous correspondent was a tad off-base on that one, methinks, since the saving grace is the comma at the end of the phrase “where gangster John Dillinger was gunned down.” Had we dropped that comma, his observation would have been valid. Close, but no cigar).

Television can come a cropper and provide a smile on such matters, as well. Reporting from Jackman last weekend as the overhyped much-ado-about-nothing free trade/free love protest fizzled at the Canadian border, a perky young reporterette from a Portland television station eagerly informed readers of conditions outside the “city” of Jackman. The poor lass might as well have had “From Away” tattooed across her pretty little forehead, and things went downhill from there…

My file of such nit-picks fairly bulges. The pick of the litter, though, is an e-mail message last fall from Florrie and Dave Randall of Skowhegan, referring to a unique employment opportunity offered in our classified ads under “Help Wanted.” An area doughnut shop had advertised immediate openings for counter persons for its morning and evening shifts. Unfortunately, the typesetter had dropped the “f” in both shifts – a crucial letter under the circumstances, if ever I’ve seen one – and it apparently was the proofreader’s day off.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.