Show me numbers

Good to see my hometown making the news for relatively positive reasons.  A few quick points: 

First, I admit that I haven't kept up on Rochester news since moving (both to college, and with my parents) 5 years ago, but I don't know how "many" people think East High is the most troubled in Rochester.  It has its fair share of problems, to be sure, but it also has one of the few IB programs in the county (suburban or urban) and as a larger school, has a fair amount to offer in terms of co-curricular activities.  Its mascot is also the Orientals, so by that measure, it's probably the most troubled.  

Second, the article seems to be more interested in writing creative nonfiction.  Sure, it traffics in innuendo about the tough halls of East High-- "ambulance attendants were rolling out a young man on a gurney and wearing a neck brace."  Insinuendo, we called in it college: no actual reporting on what happened to the young man--Heaven forbid a good image get ruined by a phys. ed. accident--just a tantalizing hint at the problems at East.  Insinuation + innuendo.   Same with the 5 person calculus class.  "Not normally enough to justify a class."  Well, why aren't there more people in calculus at East? The author lets our minds wander.   No supervision at home.  Too many kids taken out on gurneys.  Wait, I thought small classes were a good thing?  It's an interesting gambit (particularly by playing against popular conceptions of class size), but I'd prefer to see some numbers about the apparent disconnect between Rochester schools' success and their teachers' salaries.  

Banal Articles about Lunch and Oliver Wendell Holmes

Example: this article about lunch in the Washington Post.

Bemoaning his lunchtime doldrums, the author writes: 

Far too often, the most uninspired meal of the day is the one I eat sitting at my desk, juggling a Cosi sandwich, napkin and computer mouse as I try to eat while writing or editing.

 I'll tell you what's uninspiring: the quality of this article.  I'm pretty sure he wrote it while juggling a Cosi sandwich, napkin, and computer mouse.I sincerely doubt that this has been edited, what with its four rhetorical questions, disjointed topics, and lack of description regarding the taste of the recipes.   

I understand that different sections of the newspaper employ different voices to tell their stories. Yes, the article speaks to a daily question that many of us face: "What's for lunch?"Who knows, maybe the author is tyring to be a New Journalist, putting himself at the center of the story, helping us understand our own quiet culinary desperation through his own stream-of-consciousness search to answer that existential noontime question.

But clear communication skills don't become less important when talking about lunchtime or when they're on page F01.  In class today, my property professor read a passage from Oliver Wendell Holmes's concurring opinion in International New Service v. Associated Press, where Holmes's language is impenetrable.  After letting the fog of the passage envelop us, my prof yelled, "Holmes! A verb!"  

After reading this, I wanted to yell, "Post! Some structure!"  In that sense, the author here is keeping good company; I doubt he intended this article to draw him a comparison to Oliver Wendell Holmes, but here it is, out there on the intertubes, ready for someone to do a "Google" and repeat it.  

But the point is this: it doesn't matter if you're writing a Supreme Court decision or a food column: the ways in which, and the ability with which, we communicate with one another dictates how we fare, both individually, and as a society.  Write a mediocre, mid-week column on homemade lunches, you'll get by well enough, but don't expect to become the next Anton Ego.  Write poorly in a judicial opinion, and expect attorneys, state agencies, law students and faculty for the next century to be debating your meaning.  Tell the nation that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" the day that two Wall Street giants bite the dust, and you'll lose your campaign for the presidency.*

* I hope.