Written Word

TEST ROBERT Mueller's reading skills by the usual, timed methods and you will conclude, as many of his teachers surely did, that he isn't very smart.Now 44, Mr. Mueller had his reading abilities tested again in 1994, and found that he landed in the bottom 5 percent of college seniors in his reading comprehension. Untimed, his scores soared to the high average and superior range.Should he be denied the opportunity to practice law? The New York Times reported last week on Mr. Mueller's case against the California committee of bar examiners, one of many such lawsuits that are helping redefine the nation's approach to disabilities -- and, not insignificantly, also expanding its understanding of diversity.

Some 50 years ago, the great poet Theodore Roethke wrote "My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely swung." And so it is here in Baltimore that the community of poetry keeps a continuous open house, its doors widely swung to an ever-swelling audience of practitioners, participants, readers and listeners.A couple of years ago, Joe Somoza, a professor at New Mexico State University, traveled America, reading his poems. At the end of his year-long tour, he concluded that the most receptive cities to the charms of poetry were Portland, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Baltimore.

OVER THE YEARS, Baltimore has produced an impressive array of writers, ranging from poets and novelists to scholars. That's why the Baltimore Book Festival -- Saturday and Sunday around Mount Vernon Place -- is such a wonderful concept. The free program will feature readings by local authors, a wide variety of music, cooking demonstrations and, of course, victuals of various sorts and imagination.For more than eight years, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has touted Baltimore as "The City That Reads."

Beginning Nov. 2, parents will be able to watch PBS with their children in the afternoon, then hustle on down to the library that night and help them read more about it.If spending more time with the characters and concepts introduced daily to kids on public television is a good thing, then Maryland Public Television's new "Ready to Learn Library Reading Project" is just what the doctor -- or the educator -- ordered.Presented during a luncheon at Baltimore's Clarion Hotel Wednesday as a groundbreaking partnership between MPT and Maryland's public library systems, the project will place reading stations at branches in Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore City.

Like it or not, we are writing more than ever at work these days. Faxes often require written responses. Computers, which many people thought would lead to the paperless office, have just made it easier to churn out reams and reams of memos. Even e-mail, a chat in cyberspace, depends on the written word.Much of what comes across our desks (and computer screens) is aimless, wordy and boring. To help you look better in writing, follow these 10 commandments:1. Be brief. Whether you're sending an official memo or --ing off a quick e-mail message, start with a clear statement of why you're writing.

MOSCOW -- President Boris N. Yeltsin's state of the union address yesterday might better have been titled: "What's Wrong with Russia."In an hour-long speech to a joint session of the Federal Assembly, or parliament, Mr. Yeltsin touched on all the major ills of a nation in serious trouble.Crime, pervasive bribery, corrupt and smothering officialdom, capricious taxation, the power of lobbies, inflation, deficit spending, a decline in the arts, a lack of respect from other nations -- they all demand action, Mr. Yeltsin said.

Ninety million adult Americans are pronounced deficient in reading and writing skills, and we're shocked? Not me. I think I knew most of those Americans when they were in college.For much of a decade, I taught mass communications at a local university which shall not be named here, except to say it's located on York Road in the heart of Towson. I don't blame the school. I'm not sure I blame the kids, either. But the simple truth is: They had literacy skills which made me fear for the future of the written word.

Three signs the written word is not dead: You're reading thi column, Vic Gold is screaming about "videocy" -- rhymes with "idiocy" -- and some third-graders in Massachusetts have become authors.First, about the kids. During my recent vacation, I was invited to their school to answer questions about writing. Their teachers had given them hardbound blank books with clean, white pages between clean, white covers, and ordered them to write. And the kids went nuts on the project, trying to outdo one another with story line, character development, plots and illustrations.

LONDON -- While both sides of the Atlantic are gripped in recession, Dr. Lynne Agress' small but profitable Baltimore-based company, Business Writing at its Best Inc., is busy dotting its i's and crossing its t's.The recession has motivated Dr. Agress to "reach out more" for clients. In the decade she has been in business, the former college English professor has expanded about half of her business beyond the Baltimore region. She is hiring two managers, one for New York and one for Washington, D.C., where they will hire instructors and sell the program.

Words are all we have.-- Samuel Beckett THE MECHANICS of reading follow roughly along these lines: The cones and rods of the eye are struck by photons of light reflected off the words on the page. This activity, transmitted by way of the optic nerve, is received as a hail of electrical blips somewhere in the lobes of the brain. A neural string of cells explodes, registering and triggering a response. Somehow, understanding, or cognition, results.That, of course, is an approximate rendering of the process.

Where do they find the time? My colleagues here and elsewhere undoubtedly have the talent, but I'm most amazed that they can carve out the time to write thoughtful, revealing sports biographies. A decent-sized sports biography is going to run about 80,000 words - that's about 79,250 words longer than a typical newspaper column. It's just not fathomable to me how they find the time to research and construct thoughtful prose in a big, beautiful 80,000-word package. Luckily, I no longer have to worry about that.

Where do they find the time? My colleagues here and elsewhere undoubtedly have the talent, but I'm most amazed that they can carve out the time to write thoughtful, revealing sports biographies. A decent-sized sports biography is going to run about 80,000 words - that's about 79,250 words longer than a typical newspaper column. It's just not fathomable to me how they find the time to research and construct thoughtful prose in a big, beautiful 80,000-word package. Luckily, I no longer have to worry about that.

In the commercial, local musician Jenn Wasner stands in front of a superimposed photo backdrop of a bonfire, stares straight into the camera and says: "I'm going because I believe in the power of the written word ... on fire." Got your attention yet? Conceptualized and written by local musician Jason Dove, the roughly minute-long film featured a cast of Baltimore bands tearing pages out of books and lighting them on fire. It was shot strictly for Internet viewers - uploaded onto YouTube and posted on a few local bands' Web sites.

One can understand why Howard Dean feels that the world would be better off without the press, as he suggested recently to a group of bankers. Mr. Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, was responding to a banker's complaint that candidates speak only in sound bites. His solution: "Have candidates in to meetings like this and bar the press." Now there's a concept from a man who should know. Few have benefited less from media exposure than Mr. Dean, who will be forever remembered as "The Scream" for his war whoop during his 2004 presidential election bid. Then again, Mr. Dean of all people should also know that citizen journalists are everywhere, even at banking conventions, and that nearly everybody has a videophone and access to YouTube.

WASHINGTON - Dear Chris Cecil: Here's how you write a newspaper column. First, you find a topic that engages you. Then you spend a few hours banging your head against a computer screen until what you've written there no longer makes you want to hurl. Or you could just wait till somebody else writes a column and then steal it. That's what you've been doing on a regular basis. Before Tuesday, I had never heard of you or The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville, Ga., where you are associate managing editor.

THE NEWS ABOUT Bibelot books arrives like a death blow to the culture. The area's biggest independent book and music seller files for bankruptcy and its owners announce they will close all four stores within 90 days. But any autopsy should include this inquiry: Is this another death blow for literature, or merely for business? In either case, it hurts. It hurts any time a business folds, because it means people are losing jobs, and once-hopeful owners are losing an investment, and every home and every business in the surrounding neighborhoods ultimately feels some fallout.

WE WENT to New York the other day to look for a community of words. The New Yorker magazine was celebrating its 75th anniversary, so we figured this was a good place to get up a search party, since the novelist Salman Rushdie would be around, and the musician Paul Simon and the critic John Lahr, plus Broadway types such as George C. Wolfe and Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Oh, and Tom Stoppard. If half those names throw you, that's part of the problem. Words are the front men for ideas, the signals we send out that a brain is in motion.

TEST ROBERT Mueller's reading skills by the usual, timed methods and you will conclude, as many of his teachers surely did, that he isn't very smart.Now 44, Mr. Mueller had his reading abilities tested again in 1994, and found that he landed in the bottom 5 percent of college seniors in his reading comprehension. Untimed, his scores soared to the high average and superior range.Should he be denied the opportunity to practice law? The New York Times reported last week on Mr. Mueller's case against the California committee of bar examiners, one of many such lawsuits that are helping redefine the nation's approach to disabilities -- and, not insignificantly, also expanding its understanding of diversity.

Beginning Nov. 2, parents will be able to watch PBS with their children in the afternoon, then hustle on down to the library that night and help them read more about it.If spending more time with the characters and concepts introduced daily to kids on public television is a good thing, then Maryland Public Television's new "Ready to Learn Library Reading Project" is just what the doctor -- or the educator -- ordered.Presented during a luncheon at Baltimore's Clarion Hotel Wednesday as a groundbreaking partnership between MPT and Maryland's public library systems, the project will place reading stations at branches in Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore City.

OVER THE YEARS, Baltimore has produced an impressive array of writers, ranging from poets and novelists to scholars. That's why the Baltimore Book Festival -- Saturday and Sunday around Mount Vernon Place -- is such a wonderful concept. The free program will feature readings by local authors, a wide variety of music, cooking demonstrations and, of course, victuals of various sorts and imagination.For more than eight years, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has touted Baltimore as "The City That Reads."