Speling bee

Bet that bothers you, doesn't it? Maybee you didn't knowtice. Yup, it's January when sports turn indoors, and around these parts, those that rein supreme are speling bees and "letter writting." I'm actually writting a column which profiles one of the premiere letter writers in the Daly Bee Show. It'll be showing up next week in The River Journal.

So, I won't say to much about letters-to-the-editor stars, except to let folks outside of Sandpoint know that the opinion stars do some extraordinary output during January and February, and those of us who read our morning papers looking for dirt just love to see the letters and to see who flung the most flames about the Byway, the tunnel, upcoming school levies, murdered elk, or even George Bush---W, that is!

Now, speling bees are realy on my mind this week. I got a note yesterday saying we should be down there at Community Hall this Friday night to cheer on the Keokee team who will be dressed in their wishful- thinking Hawaiian garb while they compete in the Winter Carnival's adult speling bee. I just don't know if I'll make it cuz I may be just plain spelled out by the time the adult contest starts at 6:30 p.m.

That's cuz earlier in the day, I have to pronounce words for the fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School. Or, is that Stidwell-Farmin? Whatever the case, it's a school named after two Sandpoint legends L.D. Farmin, the Great Northern railroad agent who platted out Sandpoint, and Charlie Stidwell, who paddled half of Sandpoint's rear ends during his years as principal at Farmin School and the old junior high, formerly known at the high school, later known as the Ninth Grade Center, now known as the Sandpoint Events Center.

Well, don't let me lead you astray on Charlie. I don't know if he used his paddle nearly as many times as I've heard, but to hear tell from those folks who went through his school in the '40s and '50s and early '60s, you'd think they ALL got a paddling for something naughty they'd done. My latest oral deposition came from Larry Van Gundy who said he got it from Charlie for teasing some girl. Larry's now a retired teacher himself, and I'd be waging he never got to use a paddle during his career.

Anyway, off topic: I have to pronounce words this Friday so I've been studing my rules and regulations. Didya know that they even have a rule saying that participants cannot have flunked a grade on purpose just to remain eligible for the National Spelling Bee? And, there's one contestants just standing in front of the microphone mumbling gibberish too.

I don't know what the organizers of the Farmin-Stidwell contest are going to throw at me since that "thong" debacle last year where I pulled out the word from their big jar of possibilities. I had to think fast on my feet, so to speak, and I kept the word associated with the "feet" rather than the "seat." I said afterward---when everyone but the kids who didn't understand the humor of the situation---chuckled out loud, to please don't do that to me again.

So, this year those speling words that have been copied off that list so many times they're blurry, are being replaced by crisp new lists form the Scripps National Speling Bee center. I have not seen "thong" among the possibilities of any of the three lists for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Probably the kinkiest of the lot is "barnacled." You can think what you think about that one, but I'm not too worried cuz at least I'll know it's there; besides, the crisp new list has everything you ever wanted to know about the word and then some.

I can cheat on sentences, derivation, part of speech but not on pronounciation. I'm not to tell what their root meanings are, however. That's reserved for the big time at the National Speling Bee.

Now, I do beleive speling is important, especially when your writting for the paper. In the past couple of weeks, I've read a sentence where Clark Fork got complemented for being recognized by U.S. News and World Report as an excellent school. This was in one artical, which was sitting on top of another artical talking about how Coldwater Creek's current financial slump wasn't going to effect the local enonomy too adversely.

I was talking about those speling oversights----both of them homonymaloidal problems---to someone at a restaurant Friday night when he brought up another oversite he'd seen in the paper recently where people were "poring" over documents. He was kind of embarrassed, though, when I told him the paper people were correct on that one.

I quickly quelled his embarrassment by telling him the story of how embarrassed I was years ago when I learned that "poring over" documents is correct. I learned it from my student Kenda Kellogg, daughter of Nova Jo, granddaughter of legendary elementary teacher Marguerite Judy.

Could be I might have marked it wrong on her paper when she pulled out the dictionary and pointed out to me that you don't "pour over" documents----you "pore over" them. I never forgot that moment and am terminally appreciative to Kenda for setting me strait and allowing me one more reason to feel arrogant whenever I see the english language and it's speling so abominally desecrated. And, that seems pretty often these days.

Well, I'd better shut up and get back to my speling list cuz I have to know my pronounciation realy well by Friday so those kids can spell their words write.