Past or Present Perfect?

Here is favorite trick question I like to ask people in my writing classes: 

If you were writing to your manager about completing an assigned task, which is sentence correct: I completed the task or I have completed the task? 

The answer: Both are correct. It depends on the impression you want to give your manager. Let me explain why I prefer I have completed the task. 

The first sentence, I completed the task, is in the simple past tense, indicating a past action; the second sentence, I have completed the task, is in the present perfect, indicating an action started in the past and just completed. I would want my manager to know that I haven't wasted a moment from the time of completing the task to the time of alerting her about it. That's the value of the present perfect: its immediacy. 

Think of the importance of reporting to management in the present perfect tense in these cases:

• I have started the investigation.
• You have used an expired password.
• The client has contacted me about her concern.

In all three cases, you do not want management to think you're wasting time in updating them about the issue at hand. So use the present perfect to express that urgency.

BOOK BRIEF: Thinking About It

Woo-kyoung Ahn. Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better (New York: Flatiron Books, 2022). 284 pages.

The mantra over the past decade for most of us sounds something like: "I can't believe he just did that ... Did she really just say that? ... What were the thinking when they ...?" The shock value never seems to subside when we hear the words said or see the actions taken by politicians, pundits, other so-called celebrities, and those closer to us: our teachers, managers, coworkers, teammates, friends, and family members. In her first book, Thinking 101, Yale professor Woo-kyoung Ahn dissects not only the flawed thinking of such pronouncements and positions but the reasons behind them. 

Ahn observes with detailed personal, professional, and historical examples that faulty causal attribution often leads to rash judgments. She asserts that we can avoid irrational judgments by adhering to three concepts: the law of large numbers ("in most cases"), regression toward the mean ("forget the outliers"), and Baye's theorem ("experience tells me"). She deliberates on each of these principles in depth to underscore their usefulness in critical thinking. 

Ahn devotes a good part of the book to confirmation bias, a reflexive tendency of judgment that has contributed to many deaths, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. and negativity bias, our natural inclination to skew our thinking away from positive outcomes. She explains the value of these propensities when quick-thinking under pressure is essential, yet she does not stray from their often-disastrous consequences. Ahn insists that delayed gratification, while hard to achieve, is vital to cultivating advanced thinking and career development. 

Readers looking for theories and applications of critical thinking may ask for more from Thinking 101, but this book serves as a useful guide to why so many of us these days ignore facts underlying contemporary issues and, worse, distort them.

BOOK BRIEF: A Sacred American Text

Martin Luther King, Jr. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches. James Melvin Washington, editor (New York: Harper Collins, 1986). 729 pages.

When considering how much Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, we can easily forget that he died at 39. Looking at his short, historic life, not as a civil rights leader with a global reach in the infancy of globalization, not as a Baptist minister leading a devoted congregation, not as a husband and father of four children, but simply as a writer, even accomplished writers feel humbled. King completed nearly all his writings in the last decade of his life while relentlessly travelling the world, organizing boycotts, leading marches, and doing time in various prisons in America's South for speaking up and acting out for equality.  

A Testament of Hope is a must-own book for anyone interested in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, indeed of the American scene during this period in United States history. The book collects 58 of King's most notable essays, speeches, sermons, and interviews, including his nearly 7,000-word "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," dated April 16, 1963, an extraordinary reflection blending philosophy, theology, and politics in response to for clergymen who voiced concerns about King's engaging in civil disobedience. Also included is his nearly 1,700-word "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered to 250,000 people from the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. This metaphor-abundant address perennially appears at the top of lists ranking the greatest speeches in American history, at once a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation centennial, a tribute to the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, a sermon on social justice deeply rooted in Scripture and Black spirituals, and much more. These two documents alone serve as singular synthesis of not only King's times but of American history and the human imperative to strive for the common good. Readers will learn a lot by comparing King's works created for the listener, rich with repetition and soaring imagery intended to induce action, and for the reader, replete with rhetorical devices reserved for prolonged contemplation. 

A Testament of Hope has much more than these two masterpieces. Read in it his brief but powerfully unifying 1958 "Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools," delivered to 10,000 students, and his 1967 "A Time to Break the Silence," delivered at Riverside Church in New York as a moral protest against the Vietnam War. Regard the intellectual and moral challenge King lays down merely by titling a 1961 speech "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience." Worth the price of the book are just the final prophetic words of King's "I See the Promised Land," his April 3, 1968, speech in Memphis hours before his death: "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Recent Course Offerings

In response to numerous requests, I am listing my Top 25 Courses I have offered recently, online and onsite, synchronously and asynchronously, and in group and coaching sessions. 

1. Business Writing for Results – Using standards of business writing across and outside the organization.  
2. Technical Writing Essentials – Writing in an audience-appropriate style for IT specialists, engineers, scientists, architects, and accountants.
3. Advanced Writing Skills for Experienced Professionals – Developing a multidisciplinary toolbox in writing all forms of business messages. 
4. Using Principles of Critical Thinking in Writing – Adopting time-tested reasoning techniques in speculative and analytical messages
5. Writing Effective Business Reports – Producing descriptive, analytical, and persuasive reports by building a useful library of templates
6. Business Grammar – Covering tricky grammatical rules, their exceptions, and the most common word and sentence errors
7. Business Writing for Multilingual Professional – Communicating for nonnative English speakers in formal and informal writing styles
8. Writing High-Impact Executive Summaries – Summarizing lengthy documents and experiences with precision and power 
9. Persuasive Writing – Wooing readers by studying and practicing the principles of influence
10. Proposal Writing – Creating internal and external pitches to get your readers to yes
11. Perfecting Procedural Writing – Generating instructional documents in compliance with organizational and regulatory standards
12. Writing Effective Email – Hitting the high points in emails and messaging to save time for your readers and yourself
13. Writing Powerful Slide Decks – Designing memorable slide content that brings home your key points
14. Writing with Respect – Crafting acknowledgments, appreciations, and apologies to deepen positive relationships
15. Revising, Editing, and Proofreading – Protecting your REP (Revise content and structure, Edit expression, Proofread for errors).
16.  Writing Fast Under Pressure – Employing the writing process necessary for efficiency.
17. Customer Service Writing – Winning customers and business through reader-focused writing
18. Writing in Plain Language – Translating jargon and legalese for a general audience, especially for government workers
19. Blogging for Business – Capturing online audiences with compelling content.
20. Designing and Presenting a Business Case – Cultivating an authoritative, evidence-based, results-driven business case for upper management
21. Audit Report Writing – Applying the hallmarks of exceptional audit reports
22. Writing Root-Cause Analyses – Composing scientific-based, exhaustive, credible causal analyses 
23. Evaluation Report Writing – Assessing business situations accurately, from performance appraisals to project assessments 
24. Investigative Report Writing – Completing comprehensive, objective incident investigations
25. Resume and Job Application Writing – Representing yourself professionally in the job application process 

If your organization or team would benefit from these training opportunities, please reach me at Phil@PhilVassallo.com. 

13+ Reasons to Look Forward to 2023

My last post offered 13-plus reasons for remembering 2022. On this day, the eighteenth anniversary of this blog, I give 13-plus reasons for anticipating 2023 with delight.

1. Work. I have a nearly completely booked schedule through the first half of this year and a promise to see more of the same as the year progresses. Work keeps me motivated to stay at the top of my game as I research developments in rhetoric, business, and communication.

2. Nashville. I have never been to Nashville, but I will correct that miss in the early spring, visiting the Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium, Country Music Hall of Fame, and Honky Tonk Highway, among other places of interest.

3. Cuba. Another place I have never been to, which I will remedy in late April through Road Scholar. I'll stop by Havana, Cienfuegos, and Trinidad. I look forward to hearing the music, watching the dancing, doing some of my own dancing, tasting the cuisine, learning the history, practicing the language, and meeting the people.

4. Upstate New York Theater Tour. I plan to take a 1,300-mile, mid-June car trip through the towns of Ithaca, Syracuse, Utica, Cooperstown, Saratoga, Schenectady, Albany, and Woodstock. All of them are homes to summer theater or music festivals, so I'll have a lot to see besides the verdant countryside, which is a deep pleasure in itself. 

5. Deer Isle. In mid-July, I will attend the annual family reunion in Deer Isle, Maine, where we will head to Arcadia National Park, Isle au Haut, Stonington Opera House, and 44 North Coffee.

6. New England Theater Tour. On both ends of the Deer Isle trip, I will go on a similar theater tour that I took in 2022, covering the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vermont; Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut. This year, I will add the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Hopefully, I will meet up with friends along the way.

7. New Jersey Shore Theater Tour. Theater tripping continues in late July on the Jersey Shore at Cape May Stage, West Cape May, Long Beach Island, and Long Branch. This trip is part beach and part playhouse.

8. Berlin. This city with a remarkable heritage has something for everybody, whether it's art, music, dining, history, or architecture. It is definitely a checkoff item of most bucket lists. I'll be there in mid- and late-August

9. Malta. My island, my people, my roots. This will be my tenth, and maybe my last trip there, in late August for the Mgarr festa, my parents' village.

10. New York City. I'm fortunate (I owe it all to my parents) to be living so close to such an exciting city, rich with culture, art, music, literature, history, fashion, international cuisine. Since I work in the city so often, I'll probably extend my stay with trips to Smalls and Mezzrow, Birdland, Dizzy's, MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the New York Public Library.

11. Friends. For all the first 10 events, I will likely connect with family and friends of like-minded interests. In these cases, I benefit from their unique perspective on whatever we are seeing or hearing. enhancing my own experience. 

12. Reading. I have a feeling that 2023 will send me to more books on culture and creativity, my current interests. For starters, I expect to read works of Geert Hofstede, Joe Henrich, and Woo-kyoung Ahn.

13. Writing. All of these experiences will lead to more playwriting, essays, and poems.

Look ahead. Plan like you'll live forever; live like you'll have only today.

13+ Things That Made 2022 Memorable

For the first post of this year, I'll take both a look back, followed by a forward-looking post on the eighteenth anniversary of WORDS ON THE LINE on January 5. A special thanks to Ian Denning, whose post inspired this one.

Remembered 2022 Pleasures

1. In January, I continued four sets of Zoom meetings with family and friends, thanks to my sister, niece and husband, daughters, and their husbands, childhood friends, work friends, and associates. These chats opened me to bountiful creative ideas, led me to new adventures, checked my phobias, and reinforced my better angels.

2. In February, I continued my never-ending quest of experiencing international cuisine by picking up Haitian patties and eating djon djon with my younger daughter's Haitian in-laws.

3. In March, I finally visited Miami Beach, dancing to Latin jazz at Ball and Chain in Little Havana, viewing local Latinx art at Vizcaya Museum and Perez Art Museum, cruising Little Haiti, and checking out the Everglades, because in America, there is nothing else like that blend of Latin culture and nature.

4. In April, I spent a few days in Maui, specifically Kaanapali Beach, with my older daughter's family, obviously to get a respite from the northeastern cold, but also to appreciate the wildlife (whales and turtles) and the splendorous landscape.

5. In late April throughout May and part of June, I began an eight-week writing course for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, a wonderful organization of committed employees. The course was so successful that it repeated later in the year, and a third offering will roll out later this month. 

6. In May, I started regular post-pandemic dinner dates at New Jersey restaurants with friends, feeling invincible with my multiple covid vaccinations and craving outdoor activities. From my friends, I always pick up new ideas about popular culture and vital reading material.

7. In late June, I headed to Cocoa Beach for a weeklong family reunion. I'll usually pick up some medical knowledge from my West coast daughter and her husband, both doctors, and musical wisdom from my East coast daughter and her husband, both musicians and music teachers. Being with the five grandson, ages 2 to 12, was equally educational.

8. In July, my wife and I took a cool theater tour through New England, going to Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vermont; Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut. During this tour, we saw the great Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Anna in the Tropics, about connections between the dignity of manual labor and the imaginative power of literature, and Kim's Convenience, the comedy that led to the television sitcom. The best part of this trip, however, was meeting up with three different groups of friends in each state.

9. In August, we hung out in Oakland, California with my West coast daughter's family, where I picked up Collected Poems, 1974 - 2004 by Rita Dove Poems, 1962 - 2012 by Louise Gluck, and Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, inspirational reading material for any time or occasion. 

10. In September, I visited the Warner Gallery at the Mamaroneck Public Library to see Robert Mucci's premiere art exhibition, Out of Silence, a collection of some 30 abstract paintings and multimedia pieces that was both visually appealing and life-affirming.

11. In October, I had dinner at Queen of Sheba Restaurant in New York City with Charles Lynch, Brooklyn poet and my English professor during my undergraduate days. Any meeting with Charles leads to an adventure in learning and laughter.

12. In November, I attended a concert of the Jubilee Singers at the Liquid Church in Princeton. The Jubilee Singers comprise African American singers (and others, as my younger daughter is a proud member) performing traditional spirituals. Their soaring music is heaven-bound. 

13.  In December, I closed the year by spending some time in the Monterey dunes and on the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, visiting Dracena Park, Huckleberry Botanic Regional Park, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as  rereading my favorite memoir, Music Is My Mistress by the inimitable genius composer, pianist, and bandleader Duke Ellington. Duke reminds me that creativity is a 24-7 endeavor.

All of these events kept alive my desire to work and write and share ideas.

Anticipated 2023 Pleasures

To be continued.