What He Did in the War (World War II)

Ryan Petty

The other day I stopped at a Tacoma, Washington, McDonalds (the one on W 6th) for breakfast. 

There were several old men having coffee and I got into a conversation with them. One of them was an old guy in a WWII Veteran ball cap. 

As I prepared to leave, I asked him about his service, wanting to thank him for it. 

I asked where he’d served .

In the fashion of the Greatest Generation, he said only, “Europe.”

Then I asked him what he’d done there, if he didn't mind telling me more.

He said, “Omaha Beach.”

Quotation from J. K. Rowling - From Her Harvard Commencement Speech, Published as a Book Titled VERY GOOD LIVES

Ryan Petty

There’s been a spate of commencement addresses, repackaged and sold as hardcover gift books. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

The best of them are inspiring, as they should be. Certainly, this includes VERY GOOD LIVES: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown and Company, 2015).

Here's my favorite quote from her speech:

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.”

J. K. Rowling has, of course, demonstrated her capacity to help readers do this. 

It's a power writers have, when we do it right. 

George Orwell on the Losses We Suffer from Pretentious, Unexamined Phrasing

Ryan Petty

George Orwell’s posthumous collection of essays, WHY I WRITE, is a marvel, published by Penguin Books in its Great Ideas series. 

Here’s a passage I marked from the title essay:

“It is easier - even quicker, once you have the habit - to say In my opinion it is a not an unjustifiable assumption that rather than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.”

-George Orwell