Postage Madness

Who would have thought that a little postage stamp could produce such huge headaches? In the grand scheme of wedding planning, I considered postage stamps to be a fairly small consideration--not worth a great deal of thought. I was pleased with myself a few months ago when I discovered the Website zazzle.com, where it is actually possible to purchase customized postage stamps. For not much extra money, I purchased some lovely "G" monogram stamps to use on thank-you notes, wedding invitations, and RSVP cards. And I was especially pleased because they were forever stamps, purchased at .41 cents each but useable even after postage rates went up.

However, I am quickly learning that in wedding planning, you really never can get too far ahead. This weekend as my mom, sister-in-law, niece, Katie, and I were collating and stuffing envelopes with invitations, I noticed a little suggestion from the makers of the invitations that I have the invitations weighed before mailing them out. I thought for a moment how embarrassing it would be if people had to pay extra postage to receive wedding invitations and quickly decided that it would be worth a quick trip to the mailroom at work to find out if my G stamps would do the job.

As Teresa, our expert mailroom person, took the invitation in hand, she knowingly commented that the invitation was probably going to require more postage than a typical letter, and weighing it only confirmed that reality. I told myself that we could still use the G stamps--on thank-you notes, on anything, really, that needed to be mailed. They were not a loss. I'd just head out to the post office at lunchtime and get what I needed, and the invitations would be in the mail by this Friday--right on schedule.

Who can fathom the reasoning of the US Postal Service, however? The postal clerk weighed the invitation, told me that it would cost .59 cents to mail each one, and I observed a poster with a wedding stamp on it. I said, "Can I get 70 of those?"

"No," she responded, "those won't be available till mid-June." Hasn't the US Postal Service heard of June weddings, which would require wedding postage stamps to be available by late April to early May? At this point, I decided to exhibit my maturity by finding out my other options. There was probably a pretty flower stamp or something attractive that I could use to mail my lovely invitations.

I discovered that the US Postal Service is charging us all .59 cents for mailings of two ounces, but does not yet have stamps available. One option was to purchase the above shown 2007 wedding stamp and add a .01 cent stamp with a Tiffany lamp on it. I would have to go downtown to the post office there, however, to purchase the dated wedding stamps. Another possibility was to use the .42 cent G stamps and add a .17 cent blue stamp with a ram's head on it. Then there's always metered postage, which the clerk told me I wouldn't want to do. I could have purchased stamps that cost .63 cents that were some kind of an orange shade, and there was another stamp in the .60-.70 cent range (the options began to blur after a while) of a river cutting through a hilly area, but for the extra cost, neither of them said anything of elegance, love, marriage, or romance.

Of course, the Friday deadline loomed ever before me, but I turned again to zazzle.com. In hindsight, I had decided that even though the G stamps were classy looking, they probably weren't the best choice, since I had G monogram seals for the envelopes, and the fonts really didn't match. So this gave me the opportunity to select an image that would be even more attractive and eye catching than the G.

This whole experience leads me to several questions, to which I do not have answers. Please, please leave your theories in the comments, because I really want to know.

~Why, in the grand scheme of things, do I care whether there's a blue ram's head stamp accompanying a G stamp on my invitation envelopes?

~How was I ever able to convince a man with Henry's maturity level to drop what he was doing to surf zazzle.com to find a suitable replacement for the G stamp?

~Has anyone ever really noticed the postage that came on a wedding invitation? Did it ever affect anyone's decisions on whether to attend?

~Will this be the biggest crisis Henry and I will ever face together?

~Who is the genius behind the US Postal Service who increases the rates yet makes it impossible for customers to buy postage?

~Why do there have to be so many pieces that go into the wedding invitation envelopes, making them too heavy to require regular postage, and is the CIA somehow involved in this?

~Have you ever considered fonts on a postage stamp before reading this blog posting?

Anyway--I paid extra postage to zazzle.com so that I can receive new postage in a couple of days to replace the inadequate postage I originally purchased because I was unable to purchase adequate postage from the post office. Hopefully this is the only glitch in the wedding planning, and things will all resolve so easily, at so little cost. And the invitations will go out on time. And from here on, let us all pay attention to the stamps that come on wedding invitations; some bride (and groom, possibly) has thought longer and harder than anyone ever should about it!

Publishing House News

Exciting news for Discovery House Publishers and one of our authors, Shelly Beach, this week! We learned that Shelly's book, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, is a finalist in the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) book awards. Shelly's book is a collection of devotions/meditations for caregivers based on her own experiences caring first for her ill father-in-law for several years before his death and then for her own parents. Her mother has Alzheimer's and her father has a variety of medical issues that make him unable to care for Shelly's mom.

It's one of my favorite DHP titles--Shelly has great insights and a gift for expressing them--and I'm so glad this book will get the attention it so deserves. While Shelly writes out of her experiences of caring for elderly parents, the book is a great read for anyone, especially anyone who finds themselves in the position of caring for a loved one who is chronically ill. You can order the book from the DHP website listed above or probably can get it from a local Christian bookseller.

This is Shelly's first publication with DHP, but she also published a novel with Kregel this past year, Hallie's Heart, which has also been nominated for a Christy Award, the prestigious award for Christian fiction. It's been quite a year for Shelly! Shelly lives in Sparta, and the story is set in West Michigan, a place she knows quite well. You can read more about Shelly at her website.

The following is a press release that explains it all:

One of DHP's 2007 publications, Precious Lord, Take My Hand by Shelly Beach, has been nominated as a finalist in the "Inspiration and Gift" category for the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Christian Book Awards competition. The press release from ECPA states, "Presented annually to the finest in Christian publishing, the Christian Book Awards honor titles in six categories – Bibles, Bible Reference & Study, Christian Life, Fiction, Children & Youth, and Inspiration & Gift.

"The Christian Book Awards, established in 1978 as the Gold Medallion Book Awards by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, recognize the absolute highest quality in Christian books. Based on excellence in content, literary quality, design, and significance of contribution, the Christian Book Awards are the oldest and among the most prestigious in the religious publishing industry.

"The winner in each category will be announced at the CBA & ECPA Awards Celebration to be held opening night, Sunday, July 13th during the International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, FL. "

May Happenings

This was just one of those weekends that was just jam packed with activity and excitement at the Selden house! The action began Friday night when Katie and friends attended South Christian's Junior-Senior Event [the nice word Christian schools use for prom]. Here she is all glammed up for the big night in her yellow Belle-like dress. She and several of her friends enjoyed sophisticated dining at TGIFriday's downtown and then attended the event at Grand Rapids Public Museum.


And while Katie was enjoying the South event, Henry and I were just around the corner at DeVos Hall in awe of the Grand Rapids Symphony and guest artist, pianist Andre Watts. It was quite an evening, with pieces by Ravel, a piano concerto by Grieg (featuring Watts), and a Tchaikovsky selection. What an evening of music, and Watts was excellent. From our seats in the mezzanine, we could actually watch him playing, and as someone who had piano lessons from third grade to college, I marveled at his technique and skill.

And it all peaked on Sunday with Mother's Day. Our little dining area was filled with mothers and the people who love them. Our celebration included the three of us, my parents, Henry, and his mom. It seemed appropriate that I, a mom, actually prepared a pretty good meal, something I know I'm capable of but rarely happens. We feasted on that great traditional Mother's Day favorite, lasagna, and for dessert we savored my best-ever homemade cheesecake.

And in the few down moments, I continued reading the sleeper surprise that is currently topping the Christian bestseller lists: The Shack. There will be a review when I've finished reading it--I promise! But this is probably enough excitement for now.

Do Your Modifiers Dangle?

I think that in the year and a half that I've been blogging, I've avoided one of the subjects most dear to my English-major, editorial heart. But just recently, I've been seeing too many subjects violated--yes, violated--by what is commonly called a dangling, or misplaced, modifier. I can no longer remain silent! If I can help just one of you not to commit this subtle, yet devastating, error of grammar, I will have done my part, and this blog will have served a mighty purpose.

So what, you are asking, is a dangling modifier? Perhaps the best way to explain is to illustrate. So I will pick up my figurative chalk and move to my blogospheric chalkboard and demonstrate:

Driving down the street, Taco Bell looked like a good place to go for dinner.

Besides the obvious issues many of you will probably have with the notion that Taco Bell looks like a good place to go for dinner, there is something much more basic wrong here. So let's back up a bit. Those of you who did briefly pay attention during Mrs. Johnson's eighth-grade English class probably remember that a modifier is something that describes, or qualifies, a noun or pronoun. Modifiers can be a word or a phrase. Usually, in the case of a dangling modifier, a phrase has been badly placed, so that it's not modifying the word it is intended to modify. But a single-word modifier can be misplaced as well.

In our sample sentence above, the modifying phrase is, "Driving down the street." The writer intended to modify, or describe, someone or thing, but the way he or she has written this seems to be suggesting that Taco Bell is driving down the street. Taco Bell is the noun nearest the phrase, and whether we intend it or not, modifiers modify the noun they come closest to. I think that what the writer really intended to communicate was that as a group of people were driving down the street, they saw a Taco Bell, and they determined it would be a good place to go for dinner.

So how do we fix this? One possibility is this: As we drove down the street, we decided that Taco Bell looked like a good place to go for dinner. The phrase has been turned into an adverb phrase that modifies, answering the question "when." If we want to keep the phrase a phrase that modifies a noun or pronoun, we could write it like this: Driving down the street, we decided that Taco Bell would be a great place to go for dinner. Probably the first option is better stylistically, but at least this is grammatically correct.

Here are some humorous examples of what can happen when writers carelessly dangle their modifiers.

Having finished my dinner, the waitress offered to bring out the dessert tray. (That's service! Not only does she bring the meal, she eats it too!)

Removing each other's fleas, the zoo workers watched the monkeys intently. (Kind of makes you wonder what the monkeys were doing.)

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges. (Either it's a miracle that brother brought oranges up, or he badly needs a shower.)

Finally, what does the picture of the house have to do with Taco Bell or modifiers--placed or misplaced--or rotting brothers? Nothing at all. And yet one more correctly written sentence will explain: Having considered several houses, Henry and Annette decided that this lovely colonial style would be the best for their family.

And who said grammar is boring? Not me, or I, or . . . I didn't!