By Beth Quinn

Well, fellow fussbudgets, here we are together again.

You may recall that, back in 2004 (Holy Hyphenator! – Was it really that long ago?), I formed the Hudson Valley Chapter of the Apostrophe Preservation Society. Membership was open to anyone who sent me an apostrophe error spied in a public place, and I occasionally compiled the submissions for the edification of the uneducated who, no doubt, didn’t care a whit.

But WE did. WE cared. The Apostrophe Posse grew to be 150 members strong (a good number for such a thankless task, really), and we gradually branched out. A Spelling Sub-Committee was formed and ran wild, pointing out spelling errors on signs all over the mid-Hudson. (Frute for Sale was among the most memorable.)

Another loosely organized crowd concentrated on finding random acts of quoteness, such as this one, which appeared at the entrance of a Middletown restaurant: Restrooms for customer “use” only. (One shudders to think what the customers were actually doing in there.)

This was a tough crowd, whose members often had to turn on their own loved ones to rid the world of unnecessary quotation marks. I’ve done so myself, with the result of losing a friendly correspondent who always began her letters to me by writing Dear “Beth.” I asked her what she thought my real name was, and I never heard from her again.

Well, somebody has to maintain standards by losing friends, and the Apostrophe Posse has never shirked its duty. Therefore, today I renew the call to arms for my fellow picky punctuators. Come one, come all – the depostrifizers and the repostrifizers, the dequotifiers and the … well, I don’t know … shall we call them the spellies?

We are needed now more than ever. While we were all looking the other way this past year (on account of my being laid off – or, more formally, lain off), terrible things have been happening over in England where, as you might recall, we obtained all of our words (until lately when we got hola from Mexico).

First, there has been a major assault on the apostrophe in the city of Birmingham, England’s second largest city, where the queen’s English is now the queens English because the decision has been made to drop all apostrophes from street signs.

City officials claim that the apostrophes are confusing and old-fashioned, and they have been quietly removing them for decades, really. But it’s now official – no more apostrophes.

Said Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city’s transport scrutiny committee, “Apostrophes confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don’t want to need an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.”

What a champion of morons! While it’s true that even the ignorant deserve to eat a meal in a restaurant, it just doesn’t seem fair to blame the

The sad result of de-apostrification.

apostrophe for its misuse. I suppose if some drivers got confused about the speed limit, we’d just get rid of it?

Worse, educators in England are now jumping on the anti-rules bandwagon. Last month, it was announced that the entire United Kingdom is going to get rid of the “i before e except after c” rule because there are too many exceptions to it.

With this opening of Pandora’s box, people are practically pouring into the streets of London to throw their spelling books onto large bonfires. There are those who want to overhaul the entire English spelling system to get rid of its difficulties. Before you know it, text messaging will be setting the new standard in spelling, and we’ll be c-ing the last of tough homonyms, such as see and sea.

As you might expect, this has caused near apoplexy for traditionalists – myself among them – who fear we’ll soon be reading books with titles like 4 Hoom the Bell Toles.

So please, help me in this entirely futile endeavor of saving our punctuation and spelling rules, however confusing those rules may be. If we wanted things to be simple, we’d all be speaking French. (They hardly have any words in France but communicate, instead, through tone of voice and murmurs.)

If you spy an error, send it to me at beth@zestoforange.com. If you can, take a picture and send that to me, too. There’s lots of room on the Internet for pictures.

And if you care to risk arrest, take along a magic marker wherever you may roam in order to fix offending punctuation, spelling and grammar. (You might consider keeping an extension ladder handy, too, for tall signs and billboards.) After your arrest, keep your eyes open for errors at the police station – and let me know how the officer takes it when you try to straighten him out. What fun we’ll have!
 
One last thought for today. The following poem will, no doubt, cause all purists to wonder what IS the world coming to, anyway, with the apparent and inexorable extinction of grammar rules. The poem first appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian.

Windows Is Shutting Down

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,
Proving the only one in step are you.

Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.

The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,
But evolution do not stop for that.
A mutant languages rise from the dead
And all them rules is suddenly old hat.

Too bad for we, us what has had so long
The best seat from the only game in town.
But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

 Just when I think I’m out, they drag me back in. (Hey, if it’s good enough for Pacino, it’s good enough for me.)

 When I retired from the Times Herald-Record, I wrote a final editorial decrying our desensitized, argumentative society that constantly looks for fault and someone to blame rather than working together for the common good we so loudly proclaim to want. I put politicians squarely in the bull’s eye of this farewell and committed myself to not being part of this problem in the future. To look for ways out of the confusion, or at least to not add to the noise.

 With that in mind, I fully intended to write a (probably) sentimental piece about a brief visit to the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. My sons went to a lacrosse camp at the University of Massachusetts last week and, since one of them had to come home early, I decided to stay over and  take a brief vacation from my retirement. Nice, huh? And it was. I got to watch them play and explored a bit of what is really a lovely, laid-back area of colleges, farms and artsy stuff. 

 But no sooner do I get home and prepare to write about Historic Deerfield and Amherst and a butterfly conservatory than the headlines bring that angry, desensitized world crashing back into mine. Sarah (yes her) Palin, whose campaign for the vice presidency was all about responsibilities (she insisted she had had a lot of them) says she’s quitting her job as governor of Alaska with a year and half left in her term because, well, I’m still not sure why. But she blames the mainstream media for, you know, asking her questions.

 Then The New York Times tells me that Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, told Congress that some of his employees told him that way back in 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney told them not to tell Congress about a secret counterterrorism program the agency began developing in the aftermath of 9/11. This admittedly not shocking news comes a day after reports that Cheney also ordered a lid placed on knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants. Ah, liberty.

 Now, as it turns out, these are two of my least favorite people in the world, not because they are Republicans, but because they are examples of that political world I have come to despise. Cheney takes no one’s counsel who does not agree with him, sees no approach but the one he prefers and arrogantly ignores the laws he swears to uphold. Palin hasn’t got a clue on solving any problems, hypocritically ignores the personal values she extols on the stump and unfailingly blames others for her misfortunes, which, by the way, she is parlaying into a small fortune.

 You want Democrats? Take the New York State Senate — as Henny Youngman would say — please! Start with Pedro Espada, the turncoat from the Bronx (maybe) who defected to the Republicans with a buddy who is charged with beating his girlfriend. They brought state government to a grinding, shouting, Marx Brothers-like halt for nearly a month. Why? So Espada could blackmail both parties into electing him majority leader of the Senate. He says it was about institutional reform. When he was with them, Republicans — who had 40 years to reform the rules but never did — agreed. They still insist it was worth punishing state taxpayers for this political power play.

 Espada has now created a Democratic Senate majority with so many factions it will be a miracle if it lasts until the next election. There is a Hispanic faction, a black faction, a combo city faction, a combo city-suburban faction, a combo suburban-upstate faction. None of these factions talks about what it wants to do in the Senate. The members just want to be the ones to decide. The ones with the bigger offices and staffs. It is about politics, not governing. No one in Albany talks about governing except occasionally the governor.

 That’s the whole deal here. Palin doesn’t care about governing. If she did, she’d stay on as governor instead of giving speeches to people who don’t blink when she says Alaska is a microcosm of the United States. Maybe if you count moose as minorities. And Cheney, well, he doesn’t want so much to govern as to rule the country. And nothing, but nothing, that happened in the eight years of his reign is his fault.

 And finally, as I am still entertaining notions of recounting the pleasures of three carefree days in the Pioneer Valley, comes the coup de grace. With a sneer no less. A story in the Record about the nation’s economic recovery includes a comment from Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. Cantor happens to be the House GOP whip. That means he’s supposed to make sure his party has its votes in order on whatever business is being conducted. Thus far this year, his job has been easy. Republicans just vote no on every proposal put forth for President Obama.

 In the newspaper article, Obama argues that his economic stimulus package needs more time before its impact on the economy can be felt. House Republicans, who offered no alternative, simply call it a failure. Cantor, whose accompanying photo has him sneering almost in joy, if that’s possible, says simply, “This is now President Obama’s economy.”

 Now there they go again. Obama inherited the worst economic situation in 70 years from George W. Bush, along with two wars and a world of international ill will. Obama has had all of six months to try to fix what Bush took eight years to break. But, Cantor says, this mess is now Obama’s, without even knowing if the programs will work. And if they do work, the GOP will probably try to claim credit for something for which it has offered no support. They have not tried to help Obama govern; for the most part they have stood bye, hoping for him to fail. That is a political strategy of a sort. It substitutes for actually having ideas, but it is not governing. It is not helping to find solutions.

 And it is not limited to Republicans. Some of the president’s supporters have expressed displeasure with him over different issues because he has not held firm to what they thought were liberal positions he possessed. But Obama’s campaign was always about forging bipartisan or even non-partisan solutions to lingering questions. He is liberal, yes, but he is also a pragmatist. By definition, seeking consensus requires occasional compromise. It’s how you govern effectively. Bill Clinton recognized that when he was president and it served him well. It’s easy to criticize and hold out hope for better days when campaigning for the presidency, but when you get elected, the hard part begins. For Bush it was the other way around.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

Chapter 6

By Carrie Jacobson

The story so far: James Dunning worked at the Record for more than 20 years before his job was eliminated. He and his wife had to leave their home and James had to take their little, blind lhasa apso to a shelter. He tied Zoe to the gate of the Pike County Humane Society in Shohola. In the night, a big red dog named Kaja came along and untied Zoe. The two have set out to find Zoe’s home.

Kaja and Zoe have reached the end of the road. Now, there is only woods.

Kaja leads the way into the underbrush. The soil beneath their paws is sandy and soft, with layers of leaves and pine needles to cushion their steps. It’s quiet, too, and shady, and cool, even though the day has grown warm.

They’re heading for the river, and it’s a route that Kaja knows. But she’s never traveled it with another dog, and never thought about leading one who is blind and old and small. The little dog wants to find her human, though, and all that Kaja knows now is that he is on the other side of the river.

Zoe has no idea of rivers or of roads. She knows about houses and humans and cities, but she doesn’t know about the woods. She knows that James and she had driven over water, but she doesn’t know what that means.

Kaja knows what it means. She knows about the river. She knows that sometimes, she can go in the water and get cool, and that at other times, the river is too high and too fast and too dangerous.

She knows that in the winter, she can sometimes walk on the river, at least on its edges. And she knows that in the summer, there are lots of people on the river, in boats, and swimming and fishing. People mean danger, she knows that, too. They will have to be careful.

But first, they have to get there. They scramble through the brush, and into the deeper woods. Kaja sniffs the air, focusing on the scent of the water, walking so the scent gets stronger and stronger.

They scramble down a small hill and Kaja sniffs the air and stops. There’s something ahead. She can smell it and she can hear it. She and Zoe drop down, bellies on the ground, and Kaja sniffs the air again.

Then, in a clearing, she sees a mother deer and two spotted babies. They’re eating ferns, and the mother is pulling berries off a bush in a splash of sunlight. The babies buck a little then and one snorts, and they prance around the mother deer –

And then she freezes. The babies freeze, too. They stand absolutely still, stiller than the trees and the branches and the bushes. In the sun and the shadows of the woods, it’s almost impossible to see them. The mother tenses, her eyes wide, turning in her head, and then she gives some sign and the three of them explode into action, leaping up a hill and vanishing, just like that, into the woods.

An instant later, a coyote angles into the clearing. He is smaller than Kaja, but he looks taut and tough and mean. She trembles. She hears Zoe sniff the breeze beside her, and before she can do anything, Zoe starts a soft, small growling, deep in her throat.

The coyote’s eyes turn toward them. He drops his head and curves his body and sinks into his legs.

Kaja watches. Zoe growls again, and Kaja knows the coyote knows the little dog is there. She’s not so sure he knows she’s there, though, and so she gathers her feet under her, and just when he’s ready to spring at Zoe, Kaja leaps from the underbrush, with a wild, raw growling bark, and lunges toward him.

There’s a moment when he thinks about attacking. She can see it in his yellow eyes. She can smell his raw breath and the oily stink of his coat and she can see that one of his teeth is broken. She gathers her courage and her strength and she bounds right at him, and she is ready to bite him and rip at him if she has to, to save herself and Little Zoe, but he sees her, a giant, wild, red, snarling beast and he sees his defeat, and he turns and runs away into the woods.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Many of us have watched our utility bills triple in the past few years. This can be a real problem, especially for seniors and those living on fixed incomes. But there are ways you can level off your utility bills and green your home at the same time.

“About 30-35 percent of your home’s utility bill goes to maintaining a standing tank of hot water that you use only a few times a day,” notes Patrick Gallagher of Gallagher Solar Thermal. “Solar hot water eliminates up to 70 percent of that part of your energy bill.”

Recent incentives and tax credits eliminate about half the upfront costs of a solar hot water system, putting it squarely within any homeowner’s reach. Unlike solar electric panels, you do not have to have an energy audit or upgrade your appliances to take advantage of solar hot water. It is the simplest and least expensive green energy upgrade you can make.

Warwick, N.Y., residents Jerry and Lucy Fischetti had Gallagher install a typical two-panel solar hot water system on their beautiful Victorian home. The system cost about $9,000, but more than half the cost was defrayed by tax credits and incentives. The installed price was closer to $4,000. If this cost were paid by a low-interest loan over a 10-year period, the savings on the Fischettis’ monthly utility bill would be greater than the cost to pay back the loan.

A solar hot water system could have you pocketing part of the money you would have paid your utility company. “We are already paying for the cost of a solar hot water system through the recent increase in our utility bills,” notes Gallagher. “Why not do the planet and your bank account a favor and have the installation?”

Summer heat is upon us, and the last thing you want to do is waste your money adding more heat to your home through inefficient lighting. If you have traditional incandescent light bulbs, 90 percent of the energy you are paying for is heat, warming your house rather than lighting it. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, are the brightest idea since Thomas Edison’s electric candle.
These are the squiggly tubular bulbs, which last up to 10 times longer than their egg-shaped counterparts. If you replace every light bulb in your house that you turn on for an average of five hours a day or more with a CFL, you will save about $45 per bulb on your yearly electric bill, equaling about $50 per month for the average household.

If all the households in America replaced even just one highly used incandescent light bulb with a CFL, we would save 20 percent of our energy consumption and be able to close down many coal-burning plants. “Lighting a whole room so you can see what you’re doing is similar to refrigerating a whole house to preserve perishable food,” notes energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Our food system is a highly subsidized network of environmental disasters. The average bite of food we eat has traveled 1,500 miles from the farm to our fork, according to “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” author Barbara Kingsolver. Those “food miles” add up to about 18 percent of our carbon emissions as a nation and about 20 percent of our families’ budgets. Eating locally, especially if you convert your perfectly manicured lawn into an edible garden, can save you money on your food bills, doctors’ bills, and the costs of maintaining the perfect lawn.

If you are an apartment dweller, eating locally means buying in season from the farmers market and preserving part of the harvest for the winter. Local food purchased in season is always less expensive and is of higher quality than its mass-produced counterparts trucked from commercial farms across the country.

Doing these three green things right now will help your family weather the recession and better the environment at the same time.

Shawn can be reached at Shawn@zestoforange.com

Shawn’s Painting of the Week  – 07/12/09

PIne Island Onion Fields

By Beth Quinn

Barack Obama proved, finally, that anyone can grow up to be president. Sarah Palin, however, proved him wrong. Happily, lunatics are still not able to win the White House.
 
Sometimes presidents turn into lunatics while living in the Booby Hatch Capital of the World (Richard Nixon is a case in point), but Americans are still reluctant to make a national leader of someone who proves herself bonkers before even running.

She certainly appeared to be a certifiable maniac last Friday when she

announced that she was quitting her governor job because … well, basically because she’s not a dead fish:

“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she explained at her hastily called press conference. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow. Nah, only dead fish go with the flow. No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time … to BUILD UP.”

Among the many mysteries as to what she meant by this, I confess I wasn’t aware that dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ I thought they kind of ‘float up to the

Sarah Palin says she's no dead fish, which she claims is why she can't be governor anymore. Or something.

surface and stink.’ But then, I am not a fisherperson. Perhaps it’s common in tackle shops to say, “Only dead fish go with the flow.”

Perhaps there are even little wooden signs with those words carved into them that the rod and reel crowd hang on the wall in their fishing huts. (If any of you are in the know about  this, please tell me. I’d hate to be unfair here.)

But I digress. The speculation, of course, is that Alaska’s rogue maverick diva is stepping down in order to make a full-time job of preparing for a presidential run in 2012. For Tina Fey’s sake, I hope so. She must be devastated.

But on the off chance that anyone who isn’t a comedian thinks electing a President Palin is great idea, a little review of the past eight months might be in order:

She trotted her children, all named after imaginary things or sporting events or math functions, onto the public stage at the Republican Convention, where they sat, glassy-eyed, looking like refuges from the Village of the Damned. And that high school hockey player dude was sitting there, too – Levi Johnston – almost visibly praying the rosary that Sarah the Lunatic would lose the election so he wouldn’t have to marry the very pregnant Bristol and have Sarah for a mother-in-law. Then, of course, the vice presidential hopeful got upset when the press wrote about her kids. Children should be off limits! she screeched. Indeed they should, Mom.

In an interview on CNBC last July she announced her confusion about the duties of the job she was aspiring to: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?”

Speaking to students in Wasilla last June, she revealed her understanding of God’s role in our invasion of Iraq: “Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.” She was sort of right about one thing. It would have been useful if there had been a plan.

When asked by Katie Couric during that disastrous interview last September what newspaper or magazine she reads, she was unable to name a single periodical: “All of ’em, any of ’em that have been in front of me over all these years.”

She also revealed to Katie that she has a lot of foreign policy experience due to being able to see Russia on a clear day. And, who knew? She revealed at a fundraiser last fall that Afghanistan is also located pretty close to Alaska: “They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan.” (Apparently, she can see bin Laden’s former cave from her house on a clear day, too.)

Then there’s her lack of clarity on the abortion issue. She THINKS she’s against abortion, but in fact she’s pro-choice. At a recent Right to Life fundraiser, she described in great detail the fact that she considered an abortion when she found out she was pregnant at the age of 44, then again when she learned the baby she was carrying had Down syndrome. In the end, she chose to have the baby, not abort it. Bully for her. That was, apparently the right choice for her. But, oh Saaaarah … that’s called Choice. My two kids could be named Choice One and Choice Two. The fact that I chose to have them doesn’t make me anti-abortion, you moron. It just means I chose to have them – just like you.

There is so much more, but I’ll move on now to last Friday when, in her rousing Tour de Force of Incoherence, she further explained her reason for quitting Alaska by announcing: “I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity. I choose not to tear down and waste precious time, but to build up this state and our country and her industrious, generous, patriotic free people!!!!!”

Evidently, this fruitfulness can only happen if she’s not a governor.

Now that I think of it, perhaps we should encourage her to run for president in 2012. Having Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate might well be the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic party. And it would sure keep Tina Fey happy.

p.s. If you haven’t already done so, read Maureen Dowd’s July 8 column, Sarah’s Secret Diary. Very, very funny. And scary.

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

So Palin leaves when she ought to stay, and Sanford stays when he ought to leave.

In Alaska, Sarah Palin said she would quit the governor’s job in one month. This so she can be free to travel and presumably light the spark under her corner – it’s not actually a wing, is it? – of the GOP. She didn’t exactly say she would stump the nation in preparation for a 2012 presidential run. She didn’t exactly say anything else either.

Instead, during her not-quite-coherent announcement and a subsequent entry on her facebook page, she chanted familiar lines – “I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint” – but didn’t offer a single suggestion for, say, ensuring greater energy independence. This omission from the governor of oil-sodden Alaska. 

She scolded the press and the Establishment. “How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country,” Palin said. In other words, only she – and not all those suspicious reporters, editors, elected officeholders and appointed officials in Washington – knows what “it’s about country” means because, she suggested, she’s the only real patriot.

But she failed to address an obvious question: If resigning as governor in the middle of your first term is “about country,” what about Alaska, the state that trusted her to do a job?

If Palin quit to get a jump on going after the 2012 nomination, she’ll have a problem with voters, who actually expect governors and other elected officials to carry out their part of the bargain and finish their terms of office. It would have been difficult enough for her to run as a one-term governor from a small state. Now she opens herself to the derisive charge that she’s a half-term governor.

And just think, Sarah Palin, who quits when the spirit moves her, could have been that heartbeat away from an Oval Office occupied by a man in his 70s.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Governor Love says he’s staying put. That would be Mark Sanford, whose story of the heart is known to everyone who can read a headline or watch a newscast.

You know this sordid jumble. He went missing. Then his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail trying to clear his head. But he was really in Argentina, having a week with his “soul mate.” Then he returned and was trying to learn to love his wife all over again. Then he quit as head of the GOP governors association. He might have been a candidate for president in 2012 and on and on.

In any case, he’s staying on as governor even as Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, Whigs and Tories, Socialists and anarchists, agnostics and saints, church people, unchurched people, ice cream salesmen, farmers, chicken pluckers and minor league ballplayers ask – demand, actually – that Sanford take his apologies, his heavy heart and his Peyton Place life and go elsewhere.

Such as Bosnia or Nepal. Or at least over the state line into North Carolina.
 
Not the Honorable Mark Sanford. After disgracing himself, humiliating his wife, exposing his lover, embarrassing his four children, and playing the fool before 4.5 million South Carolinians, Sanford decided to stand on principle.

He won’t go, he says, because he was elected to do a job for the people though lately he’s doing a job on the people.

In Palin and Sanford we have a pair of pols who don’t know when to stay and when to go. Here’s how to figure it out. If you haven’t been indicted and you’re still breathing you stay. If the people, especially if led by those of your own party, say it’s time to go, recite a nice speech and vanish.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

With healthcare reform on more people’s lips these days than Botox is in them, it seems fitting to share a few observations based on my experience as a medical writer and reporter. This thought was triggered by the recent report that Arnold Klein, a dermatologist in Beverly Hills, is the biological father of two of Michael Jackson’s children.

Dr. Klein is known within his specialty as an expert in performing aesthetic procedures (including those involving Botox) and his seminars and workshops are always jam-packed with clinicians eager to learn his latest techniques. I witnessed this phenomenon a few years ago while covering a meeting of the Hawaii Dermatology Seminar in Maui.  I know, it was a tough job but someone had to do it.

I’ve been connected with dermatology since the late 1970s, when I began a nine-year stint as editor of the Dermatology News. As such I was on hand for the first presentation on the cosmetic use of botulinim toxin (Botox), the first on topical minoxidil (Rogaine) to regrow hair, and the first in the United State on liposuction, given by Pierre Fournier—the French inventor of the procedure. The latter was memorable for a mind-numbing series of slides featuring before-and-after photos of numerous bare buttocks of female patients. “Here are zee saddlebags,” Dr. Fournier would say, aiming a laser pointer at the offending derriere. “And here are zee buttocks after zee procedure.”

In March I covered the 67th annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology as a freelancer. My assignment was to comb through the voluminous material presented at the five-day meeting in San Francisco and gather information on promising new drugs and products in development. Much of what I needed could be found among the several thousand scientific posters displayed. But the poster that grabbed my attention most was one on gentian violet, an old standby that has been around since the late 1800s and was used worldwide for decades to treat a wide range of infections.

It is rarely used for that purpose today in the US. At first it was nostalgia that drew me to the poster. Seeing the words “gentian violet” for the first time in decades brought back warm memories of my mother applying the purple stuff to a myriad of childhood cuts and scrapes. I liked that it didn’t burn like iodine and I thought the purple color was kind of cool. Who cared if it was greasy and stained the bed sheets?

As I read the abstract and the rest of the poster it became clear there was a lot more than nostalgia that made it worthwhile. Researchers from the Department of Dermatology at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn had evaluated the ability of gentian violet to kill seven strains of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria obtained from skin wounds of patients at the medical center.

You remember MRSA. Before the swine flu stole the headlines, it was one of the biggest public health scourges since AIDS. In 2005, 19,000 documented deaths were attributed to MRSA, even more than the number of deaths caused by HIV/AIDS. “School closings from fears of infection are now commonplace across the country,” says Michael Berry, MD, a dermatology resident at Downstate and lead author of the poster.

Moreover, the rise in the number of cases of MRSA has been accompanied by its resistance to commonly used antibiotics. “MRSA is becoming an ever-increasing problem to treat,” says Dr. Berry. “Resistant strains are commonly encountered in post-surgical sites, superficial skin wounds, and leg ulcers.” And, he explains, resistance to mupirocin, the most commonly used topical antibiotic, is rising, as is resistance to other often-used topical antimicrobials. The Downstate study confirmed earlier findings of several small studies carried out in Japan. Gentian violet is 100% effective in killing five of the seven strains evaluated, and nearly 100% effective against the other two. What’s more, it is inexpensive and readily available without a prescription.

“Mupirocin costs approximately $40 for a 30-gm tube,” says Dr. Berry. “A 2-ounce bottle of gentian violet can be purchased on line for $1.99.” He and his colleagues concluded that gentian violet may be “one of the more useful drugs for the treatment of skin lesions infected with MRSA.” Its effectiveness and low cost compared to other agents, Dr. Berry says, “might make people willing to accept a little purple discoloration on the bed sheets.”

Of course people would have to know about it first and despite the best efforts of Dr. Berry and his colleagues, few do. Only three people were on hand for his oral presentation—and I was one of them. The other two were his parents. A few weeks later I had an appointment with my dermatologist. He had not heard anything about the Downstate study and was grateful for the information, saying, “I will use it in my practice.” But he was not surprised the word has not gotten out. “There is no money in it,” he explained.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.