In my words, July 29 – August 4

If you were going to teach English to someone who didn’t speak it, what would be the first thing you’d teach? There is a game I sometimes play with beginners, a kind of bingo with a die and some beans for markers. Call it Syntax. Student One rolls and everybody puts a bean on the subject chosen by the throw. Then Student Two rolls and we get the verb with object or adverb. Students Three and Four get us where and when.



The sentences are often funny and that’s the point: English makes sense as long as the syntax is correct.

My mom laid an egg under the bed this afternoon.
My goldfish hid ten dollars in the mud on my birthday.
Her dad swallowed a fly in the fish tank last Friday.

In English the subject goes first and the verb comes next: “I bake.” Adverbs and helping verbs will go between the subject and main verb: “I can bake a chicken. I often bake one.” Everything else follows after: “I usually bake a chicken for Dad on Friday.” Direct and indirect pronouns always follow the verb as well: “I bake it for him.” In Spanish that’s not the case; you’d say: “For him it I bake.” And that’s why English isn’t Spanish.

Where I grew up, the Pennsylvania Dutch sometimes spoke with German syntax throwing the cow over the fence some hay and Papa down the stairs his hat. I’m an ESL teacher, but that doesn’t mean I think everybody should speak perfect English. Let’s hear it for the dialects! And if you grew up saying, “I seen it” instead of “I saw it,” by all means say that. Ah, but if you’re learning English, then you must learn the rules.

I often tell my students, as a joke, when they are going home from class, standing on the subway platform or waiting for the bus, they should say to those who are waiting with them, “Excuse me, but could somebody here please tell me what the twenty helping verbs in English are?” Although helping verbs are the foundation of the English language, it would be the rare native speaker who would know them or could tell you that the most important one is do. People who speak a language don’t need to know the rules; the people learning do.

I often tell my students, as a joke, when they are going home from class, standing on the subway platform or waiting for the bus, they should say to those who are waiting with them, “Excuse me, but could somebody here please tell me what the twenty helping verbs in English are?” Although helping verbs are the foundation of the English language, it would be the rare native speaker who would know them or could tell you that the most important one is do. People who speak a language don’t need to know the rules; the people learning do.

I often tell my students, as a joke, when they are going home from class, standing on the subway platform or waiting for the bus, they should say to those who are waiting with them, “Excuse me, but could somebody here please tell me what the twenty helping verbs in English are?” Although helping verbs are the foundation of the English language, it would be the rare native speaker who would know them or could tell you that the most important one is do. People who speak a language don’t need to know the rules; the people learning do.

The helping verbs in English, in case you’re wondering, are in the following four families:

Do: do, does, did
The Modals: can, will, shall, could, would, should, must, may, might
Have: have, has, had
To Be: am, are, is, was, were

Every main verb in English needs a helping verb to put it in time. The principal parts of a verb have no time in them. They just are what they are full of themselves. Look at the verbs in the syntax game, all simple past: baked, laid, hid, swam, swallowed, and read. Main verbs in English have three principal parts: the base form, the ing, and the participle.

bake, baking, baked
lay, laying, laid
hide, hiding, hidden
swim, swimming, swum (I find the participle swum a weird word to pronounce)
swallow, swallowing, swallowed
read, reading, read

The Do family and the modals (can, etc.) help the base form:

I could read a book. Do you read books?

The Have family helps the participle and gives us time in the past, but not specifically; we know that it happened, but we don’t know when:

I have read Wuthering Heights.
I have baked a chicken.

The verb to be (am are is was were) can do three things. It is the only helping verb that can help the subject describe itself:

I am not a chicken.
This is a good book.

The verb to be can help us describe a duration of time using the ing:

I am reading a book.
I was reading the book when the phone rang.
I will be reading this book tomorrow on the plane.

And the verb to be is used in the passive with the participle:

Is this book read by a lot of students?
Chickens are baked in the oven.

Now a student might say, “Teacher what about the simple past, where is swam in your principle parts?”

Swam, the simple past, is ruled by the Do family just like swim is, the simple present.

The simple present gives us the simple truth: I swim at the Y.
The simple past gives us the simple truth specifically in the past: I swam last Monday.

“Teacher, in the two sentences I see the main verbs swim and swam but where is the helping verb? You said there’s a helping verb in every sentence. Where are they?”

“Well, if you make these sentences negative or ask a question, you will see that do, does or did do appear with the base form.”

I don’t swim at the Y on the weekend.
I didn’t swim last Monday.
Did you swim yesterday?
My mother swims on Tuesdays. (Does is hiding behind swims. You can see its S. The S on swims disappears when does appears.)
My mother doesn’t swim on Tuesdays.
Does your mother swim on Tuesdays?

“Remember, students, it is the helping verb that asks the question and says no in English. If all you see is a main verb then do, does or did is hidden because every sentence has a helping verb in it.”

Dogs hide bones. Do people hide bones? No, they don’t. People don’t hide bones. They hide money. That they do.

Well, English class is over. Perhaps some of you native English speakers understand your own language a little better, but probably not as well as the English learners do.



This week was cooling rain, some sunny days, and cooler unairconditioned nights. And that was great. Saturday afternoon I walked through Central Park with my friend, Tom, who is just about ready to give up cigarettes. Monday’s the day. After the rains, the ponds had little algae, and everything was as green and as full as it was going to get. Nature was stretching out her arms and fingers as far as they could go. The cicada’s humming in the lush growth added to Tom’s optimism, and the swallowtail on the Joe Pye Weed, the loon in the lake, the young lovers in the sun-splattered shade, and the helmeted five year olds on their bikes riding off for the first time before their watchful parents were fun to watch and follow. I used the camera on my iPhone for the first time too, a little like a wobbly five year old, and these are those photos, Central Park in high summer.


There’s a sonnet I’ve been working on that has a butterfly in it just like the one above on the Joe Pye Weed. I’ve written dozens of versions over the years thinking it was finished, but after another look the next day or the next, I could see, could feel, just knew it wasn’t done. There is a poem by Emily Dickinson that goes

I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away—
As Wrecked Men—deem they sight the Land—
At Centre of the Sea—

And struggle slacker—but to prove
As hopelessly as I—
How many the fictitious Shores—
Before the Harbor be—

That is how I often feel when writing sonnets—Emily nailed it—and even in her poem above, I want to change the last line to

Before the Harbor lie—

That’s how I would have written it if I were Emily Dickinson rhyming “Before the Harbor lie” with “As hopelessly as I,” not “At Centre of the Sea” with “Before the Harbor be”. There is always another word, some other darned perspective. Perhaps what follows is finished. I’ll let you know next week, but honestly I am beginning think that it finally is what it is.

I see how strong a fragile thing can be.
Look! A butterfly comes fluttering
over its own reflection hovering
out in the middle of a pond so deep
and close you’d think no insect strength could last
the distance needed to reach land, yet up
it goes above the wide-mouthed bass that jumps
and Death itself waits for it to stick fast
soggy and drown. Like a visible song
singing against all odds in gusts of wind
that ought to knock it down, it’s carried in
every breath beyond the half sunk log
and comes to spread its beating wings and soar
vanishing in the branches on the shore.



Sonnet 5 by Shakespeare is like Central Park in high summer; you can feel autumn in the sunny breeze and know that the ripening and the harvest are coming, that the food will be stored in jars and cellars for winter when the Queen Anne’s Lace picked in August remains in a vase on the mantle much like it was although it is dry.


Sonnet 5 by William Shakespeare read by Simon Callow from Don Yorty on Vimeo.


Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’ersnowed and bareness everywhere.
Then, were not summer’s distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.




There is so much beauty in the world, you’d think if everybody just stopped and looked, there’d be world peace. Let’s hope it’s helped my friend Tom quit cigarettes.



Three Drawings by Akram: Happy Fish, Fish Hello, and Caught

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