Jon,

    You made a direct hit on the hubris at the heart of the New Yorker.  It 
is the provincial journals that make grammatical and factual mistakes, not 
the linguistic 'journal of record' in the true cultural capital of the 
English speaking world.
    New York's saving grace is that it is two cities.  The City is in 
Manhattan below 96th Street with perhaps a branch in Brooklyn Heights. 
Fortunately, in the neighborhoods, you find just folks, like in Richmond; 
well not quite.  The neighborhoods are a great city of immigrants where 
kudzu is unknown but the Nem tree, bamboo, and sugar cane are well know. 
And quiet as it is kept, above 96th Street in Manhattan, as in the farm 
country of the Southside, you can still buy live poultry for your kitchen.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jon Kukla" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:24 AM
Subject: kudzu


>>> On Mar 27, 2007, at 8:08 AM, Brent Tarter wrote:
>>>
>>> Any reference librarian or good historian is aware of numerous
>>> instances in which such ill-informed publications generate myths or
>>> misstatements of fact that work like just so much kudzu, clogging up
>>> understanding of the past and leading future readers astray.
>
> Many of us enjoy The New Yorker's bottom-of-the-column news excerpts and
> wry comments. Well, several years ago I noticed a simile in a New Yorker
> article that described some kind of clog or bottleneck as "like kudzu in a
> southern waterway."  I clipped it out and mailed it to The New Yorker with
> a note suggesting that perhaps the clog was more like water hyacinth
> blocking a southern highway.  Never heard a word in response.
>
>
> Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
> Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
> 1250 Red Hill Road
> Brookneal, Virginia 24528
> www.redhill.org