Opinion

‘Time’ for remedial grammar lessons

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Also by Lars Russell:

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If August was about communication and September understanding, October conflict and November legitimacy, what is one to make of this month? It is a parting of ways for some and reconciliation for others.

Here, where December means the interruption of the school year, we welcome the change if not the finality of, say, finals. Like any moment, this is a departure from the past and a step onto the plane of the future. It is an important transition, not just because those classes next semester will bring you so many more credits closer to graduation, but engaging in the future is the mark of our generation.

The newspaper, apparently a pedestal for history and a record of that-which-was (or sometimes not-quite-so), is also a vehicle for this transformation. The expression of time in language is not simple — “time” can be a noun as in, “At what time will we go?” and an adjective, a description of the state of being, “It is time to go” — and is still more complicated when considering that language may be time itself.

Maybe newspapers known as “Times” are on to something. Words are often the measure of change, the tool for destruction or advancement, the fabric of any conception of time.

By January, who knows what the storm we call progress will have wrought? At the precipice of war and the edge of a new year, our generation now has a month to lie on the couch watching bowl games and basketball. Sleep, and it will be tomorrow, or engage the future and write time as it propels you backward.

Pardon the interruption, because a semester change is just an opportunity to notice this shift.

Cordially,

Lars Russell

Editor in Chief