The independent., January 02, 2003, Page 2, Image 2

Page 2
The INDEPENDENT, January 2, 2003
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INDEPENDENT
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Serving the upper Nehalem River valley. Published twice
monthly, on the first and third Thursdays of each month,
by Public Opinion Laboratory Ltd., 725 Bridge Street, Ver­
nonia, OR 97064, as a free newspaper. Editors and Pub­
lishers, Dirk & Noni Andersen. Phone/Fax: 503-429-
9410, e-mail: noni@vernonia.com
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The first editorial of the year is very important and is
given considerable thought. This year seemed like a
good time to explain the process used by good writers.
So, here is a brief lesson in writing.
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B u y t N is H C A .Ï
V E H IC L E .. .
How To W rite G ood
(and avoid using adjectives as adverbs)
Here are several very important but often forgotten rules of Eng­
lish:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
Always avoid alliteration.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Utilize the vernacular.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unneces­
sary.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Contractions aren’t necessary.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos, though they
do add a certain je ne sais quoi.
One should never generalize.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said:
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Don’t be redundant: don’t use more words than necessary:
it’s highly superfluous.
Be more or less specific.
Understatement might help.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
One-word sentences! Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
While a transcendent vocabulary is laudable, one must
nevertheless keep incessant surveillance against such
loquacious, effusive, voluble verbosity that the calculated
objective of communication becomes ensconced in
obscurity.
In a sentence, the nouns has to agree with the verbs.
Don’t use no double negatives.
In writing, few things are, so to speak, more infuriating,
than, say, commas, at least when there are too many of
them, or when they should be, say, semicolons.
Proofread your work, so you don’t leave some out or for­
get to finish
Run-on sentences are really bad because the reader satu­
rates and what you really should be doing is using
commas and semicolons and even periods to break the
sentence up into more digestible chunks.
To have been using excessively complex verb construc­
tions, is to have been bopping the literary baloney.
A friend I spoken with recently told me he been forgetting
his helping verbs.
Finally, all at once, I suddenly remembered - avoid tautol­
ogy.
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.......................
Bea Says..
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter Izaak
Walton League
Happy
N e w
Y e a r!
Well, we
s u rv iv e d
a n o th e r
one.
I
w a s
home for
the wind­
storm that blew in after Christ­
mas; it was fun to watch. Isn’t it
interesting how dependent we
are on electricity? I kept flipping
the light switches when I
walked into a dark room. It sure
makes you think about having
emergency supplies, just in
case things got really bad and
we didn’t have service for a
week, month or longer.
In the last column, I talked
about the West Nile virus and I
have since learned a little bit
more information. I talked to an
official with the National Wildlife
Health Center (I didn’t even
know this critter existed). While
they did not have all the an­
swers I was looking for, they
did have some good and bad
news. The good news is that,
while migratory fowl can be in-
II
fected with West Nile virus,
they have a very high resist­
ance to it and probably a very
low mortality if any. The bad
news is that America's raptor
populations may be in trouble
from this disease. While the ev­
idence is not totally in and this
official would not give a mortal­
ity rate, he stated that the Mid-
West suffered a high raptor
loss last year. What is not
known, at this time, is if birds
infected, but not killed by the
West Nile virus will build immu­
nity and if this immunity will car­
ry to their offspring. I recently
read in the Capitol Press that
mortality in crows was running
as high as 90 percent of infect­
ed birds. It would be a shame
to watch as our Bald Eagles,
Osprey and Hawks of all kinds
disappear from the sky. Let’s
hope it is not as bad as it ap­
pears it may be. If the raptors
decline, the vermin on the
ground will increase rapidly and
may cause whole new prob­
lems that we have not seen in
years. We may very well get a
front row seat for a look at an
ecosystem totally out of bal­
ance.
We finally got our rain and,
boy, did the Coho Salmon take
advantage of it. I happened to
----------- 1
_______I
be off work and was able to
catch the salmon jumping the
falls at Anderson Park and
swimming over the concrete
apron at the City swimming
pool. I made a twenty-minute
count at the swimming pool
and got a rate of 70 fish-per-
hour. All of these fish were dark
and, I would bet, have been
hung up in the river for quite
some time. Dennis Nelson and
I had kayaked down the Ne­
halem from Anderson Park to
the Green Steel Bridge the
week before and had seen both
dead and live fish. It appeared
that a lot of Coho had spawned
in the main stem of the Ne­
halem. Dennis said he had
watched fish spawning behind
his house, which he noted was
a rarity.
I added up my kayak
mileage the other day and
came up with 135 miles of river
running. I definitely hope to sur­
pass that this year. My son,
Michael, and I made a trip
down Rock Creek from the
Flack Road bridge to Hawkins
Park. This is a pretty mellow
run for me now but, since Mike
has been out of his boat for six
months, we wanted a safe and
dry trip. There is still one port-
Please see page 3