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9
Jun
2019
Robert Mueller produced a 448-page report. U.S, Attorney General William Barr cut it down to four pages, of which only two actually dealt with the content of Mueller’s report.
When Congress insisted on seeing more than Barr’s brief summary, Barr produced a “redacted” report, with large portions of Mueller’s text blacked out. Some pages had not one readable word remaining.
A friend asked me, “What does ‘redact’ mean?”
I gave her a dictionary definition -- to edit, to prepare a manuscript for publication.
That definition illustrates how definitions themselves can and must change. Because what Barr did to Mueller’s report is an utter contradiction of editing. Any definition is -- by definition, if I dare use that term -- the way a word has been used up to that time. It is a snapshot, an understanding frozen and preserved. It cannot define how a word will be used in future.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: editing, redacting, William Barr, Robert Mueller
25
Apr
2018
My father was a pretty good painter. While at university in Toronto, he took lessons from A.Y. Jackson and others of the famed Group of Seven. But as the years passed and his life got taken over, more and more, by academic studies in psychology and religion, he grew more and more cautious in his use of paint.
One day, a friend who was also a painter dropped in. She watched him working with fine brushstrokes and tiny dabs of paint. She squeezed flaming magenta onto his palette. She took his brush. She slapped a blob of magenta onto his canvas.
It stood out like an erupting volcano.
“There!” she commanded. “Paint to that!”
To his credit, my father did. A single blob of vivid colour changed that painting. And all the paintings\ he did thereafter.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Group of seven, painting, editing, value