For example, we didn’t understand the driver who evidently thought it appropriate to park his or her car at the eastern end of the stretch of 15-minute parking spaces located in front of the Key Bank Building. The driver seemed to understand that the car was not actually in a real parking place, positioning it in such a way that it partially blocked both the east bound lane of Main Street and the entrance to the alleyway between what we would refer to as the two bank buildings.

In fact, it almost appeared that thought was given to the inconvenience the vehicle might cause, although it was obvious that the inconvenience was not deemed nearly enough to prevent the parking of the vehicle. Nor did it seem that the driver had any inclination to make whatever errand was being run a quick one as the vehicle was there when we went into the bank to make our somewhat complicated deposit and it was still then when we emerged. In fact, there was nothing about this parking job which made any sense to us. But, we did jot down the license plate number, thinking that should we ever encounter the driver of this vehicle, we might just ask what on earth the thinking was since it has obviously escaped us.

Likewise we also found ourselves wondering about the fact that our polling place has been moved back to St. Mary’s on Elm Street. We used to vote at St. Mary’s but at some point in time, it was determined that it made better sense to move the polling place from one which sported parking to one which didn’t offer parking, namely the village fire hall, because it was determined that the handicapped accessibility was better. And while that may have been true, it always seemed to us that the handicapped had to first find a place to park their vehicles, something which we thought was a rather large problem at the fire hall.

Now, however, we are going back to St. Mary’s which not only sports parking but also a lovely, handicapped accessible ramp which we have been told was built with a grant that the board of elections secured from the federal government, a fact which, of course, has also bemused us.

And finally, in the bemusing column is something we learned while reading "The More a Word is Used, the Less Likely It Changes," by Robert C. Cowen. This particular article appeared in the Oct. 25, 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor. According to Mr. Cowen, as languages evolve, "Oddball past tenses of irregular verbs morph into the regular form." This means that there are verbs out there which have up until now had irregular past tenses which are now, through common usage, being made regular. Two specific examples were given.

The first is the verb "wed" which, up until now, had a past tense of "wed." However, we gather that "wedded" is now coming into favor. Quite frankly, we don’t think it falls trippingly off the tongue to say that "John and Jane Doe were wedded last month." Of course, the wee-we would not be big on saying "John and Jane Doe were wed last month." He far prefers "John and Jane Doe were married last month." Be that as it may, we think we would only use the word "wedded" if we were to say "John and Jane Doe are enjoying wedded bliss."

The second verb in line for change is, evidently, "forecast" the past tense of which is becoming "forecasted." Again it sounds very strange to us. But we guess it would be possible to say that "Yesterday we forecasted a rapidly deteriorating use of the English language." And we would probably be correct.

In closing, it was pointed out to us in no uncertain terms that while it was nice that we promoted the Oktober Fest at St. Mary’s, we got the date wrong. Instead of writing Oct. 26, we wrote Sept. 26. Should anyone have been confused by this and thought they had missed the Oktober Fest, we do apologize. It is the type of error we do not like to make although we willingly admit we are human and thus fall short of being perfect. It is not the first time we have made such a mistake and we seriously doubt it will be the last. Unfortunately, it is the type of error which tends not be caught as we read it the way it should have been written as did our proofreaders. We will of course try to do better in the future although we certainly can make no guarantees.

We remain,

In these Otsego hills,

The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y., 13326, by telephone at 547-8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny.rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you.

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