In Which We Learn the Agony of Defeat

"We'll wake up again."

Cold weather returned, and the pretty little spring beauties and shy trout lilies closed up their petals and went back to sleep. My dreams Friday night kept me busy setting up a straw bale garden and even refinishing old farmhouse floors, and in the morning out came the winter jacket again to keep me warm in the woods with Sarah. 

Friday was the annual spelling competition on Friday afternoon at Gilbert Lodge on (one of the) Twin Lakes west of Traverse City, and once again Marilyn Zimmerman, Trudy Carpenter and I were the the bookstore team. Is it our sixth year? Marilyn and I were by ourselves the first time, and Trudy has been with us ever since.

Well, the Dog Ears Books team did not cover itself with glory this year at the Senior Spelling Bee. Perhaps, as one member remarked, we had become overconfident and needed a little reminder from Fate. Be that as it may, we went down in Round 7 when the three of us agreed to spell ‘vendible’ (the correct spelling) with an ‘a’ in the middle syllable. WRONG! Rather than stretch out the suspense, in case you’re wondering about a rule for –able and –ible words, here and here are links to the answer. We’ll know better next year. Of course, there are many exceptions to the so-called rules....

But oh, the words that appeared when the Bee Master went to his second box! Words no one present had ever encountered in a lifetime, and recall that contestants must be 55 years of age (or is it 50?) to participate! When one team went down on ‘exsert’ (it’s the opposite of ‘insert’), there were only two teams left of the seven who had begun, and when the Bee gets down to the last two teams the rules change. 

Bee Master Michael Sheehan and last two teams

If one team then misses a word, the other team must spell that word correctly and spell a second word correctly to validate their win. If the second team misses either word, it’s on to a new round. This Bee went 35 rounds, due to words such as these: farraginous, aichmophobia, rhonchial, zymurgy, ochlesis, obvallate, oneirodynia, sagittiform, roscid, agrestic, blennoid, and sybotic. How many of those do you think my spell-checking program accepts? It’s entirely possible I’ve made a mistake or two here, but I don’t think all but two are incorrect, as the program is telling me.

Bee Master consults with judges when a challenge is issued

In the end, the father-daughter team took first place this year, and they deserved to win. Second- and third-place teams also put up good, long fights. Maybe next year my friends and I will be back in the top three (where we've always been up to now), but we had a good time despite our loss, and as one team-member whose grandchildren come to watch her spell remarked in e-mail to me this morning, “I had the chance to show my grandchildren that grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.”  An important lesson, I think we can all agree.

There was irony for me in the word that toppled us, as I have been reading William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, and had noticed his spelling of ‘vendible’ but had thought it must have changed since then. It hasn’t. But did you follow the links above? If you did (and even if you didn't), of the following, which spelling would you choose as correct –

COLLECTABLE

           or

COLLECTIBLE

-- and why?

Come to think of it, I probably got a much better night’s sleep refinishing floors in my dreams than going through another spelling bee. But if you take any little bit of wisdom away from today's blog post, let it be this:

“Grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.” - Trudy Carpenter

Saturday morning fiddleheads

Another Very Challenging Contest Event

Gilbert Lodge, Twin Lakes Camp, Traverse City

I took this first picture and am including it primarily for my mother, Mrs. Gilbert. Not that our family has any connection to this lovely building. Coincidence, is all. But kind of fun, eh? Gilbert Lodge is the setting for Traverse City's annual Senior Spelling Bee, sponsored by Comfort Keepers. Entrants (who must be at least 55 years of age) pay five dollars each to participate and compete on teams of two or three members. We arrived in the rain, had a wonderful time, and emerged afterward into bright sunshine.

Laurie makes sure everyone is relaxed and has a good time. She makes us all laugh, sometimes at the expense of the good-natured Bee Master, Michael Sheehan. Here's Laurie introducing everyone on Friday, May 4.

Laurie

Besides being fun for the competitors, the Bee generates spending money for the Traverse City area school spelling champion on his or her trip to the national competition in Washington, D.C. That's where those entry fees go. This year's TC area contender in Washington will be Jack Pasche from Suttons Bay, and here he is with the giant check presented to him from the event sponsor, who has spread the Senior Spelling Bee idea--with connection to the national student contest--far and wide across the country:

Headed for the Nationals

This was a very tough Bee, especially after the Bee Master decided we all needed harder words, or we would be there all day. Dipping into the "more difficult" group, he came up with some doozies. Our team had to spell 'autochthonous' in Round 12, and we were given 'vichyssoise' for Round 13. By the time we got to Round 15, where another elimination left only two remaining teams, ours deliberated so long over the spelling of 'diptych,' and I, the pronouncer, was in such a tizzy over which syllable got the 'i' and which one got the 'y' that I left out one of the consonants! Fortunately for us, the other team misspelled that word, too, so we were still in the game. 'Imbroglio' gave us pause the next time around, but we did it justice. 'Ennui' was a snap. In Round 21, we looked to  the retired lawyer on our team for the correct spelling of 'rescission' after the other team had gotten it wrong, and Marilyn didn't let us down. Our confirming word, the one we had to spell correctly to cement our win, gave us fits: 'eucrasia' was the challenge. We got it! Oh, and did I mention (no, but I will now) that another word earlier in the Bee was 'echidna,' an Australian mammal? Luckily, my teammates had seen this animal recently on the Discovery Channel! For the entire list of words in this year's Bee, see Michael Sheehan's blog post on Wordmall.

Liz, Donna, and Martha

This year's third-place winners were a team always in the top three, with whom we have traded the Bee back and forth several times. Liz Bannister, on the left, 95 years old, is a spelling champion of many years. These ladies are tough competition and great sports!

Kay and Ann

The team coming in second kept us hopping for seven rounds, back and forth, back and forth. They are crack spellers, too. This was their second Bee.

Trudy, Marilyn, sponsor, bee master, and me

And here's my Dog Ears Books team, competing for the sixth consecutive year. Trudy Carpenter, Marilyn Zimmerman and I keep each other on our toes, and we enjoy our annual expedition from Northport to Twin Lakes. There was a team all the way from Antrim County on Friday, so obviously word is getting around. Gerry, doesn't that make you want to get a team together for next year? Road trip, road trip! 

The Competitive Side of My Life, or, How Could This Possibly Happen?

“Who helped you study for a spelling bee when you were a kid? Your father or your mother?” David asked last week. Both my parents were sticklers for proper English, but it was my mother who grilled me on spelling words. (My father got stuck trying to help me with math, a very different story.) My spelling fame peaked in sixth grade, however, when I went down on the word ‘hypocrisy.' Never having heard the word, I used the word ‘democracy’ for a model and got as far as H-Y-P-O-C-R- before going down in flames. But that was after all the other sixth-graders were already down, so although I was not recognized as such, I do feel I was the All-City Sixth-Grade Spelling Champion for Joliet, Illinois. Some eighth-grader must have won the crown--I mean, title.

It was in 2007 that I heard about the Senior Spelling Bee in Traverse City, in which teams rather than individuals compete. Each team member must be at least 50 years old. It sounded like fun, and I was surprised how many people turned down my invitation in horror and fear, throwing up their hands and stepping back from the very idea of a spelling bee, until my friend Marilyn agreed to join me. The next year Trudy signed on, and we were three. And we have a good time at the Bee every year.

That’s not to say there isn’t a competitive element, however, and as the Dog Ears team has always finished in the top three, when the field had been whittled down to four teams last Friday I felt a slight quiver every time the Bee Master called, “Team 7.” My teammates are—it’s true, my friends, and you can’t deny it—more competitive than I and would not be happy to finish “out of the money” (no, there’s no money involved), and so I relaxed when the fourth team was spelled down after ten (!) error-free rounds. We’re home clean, I thought then, because whatever happens now is no big deal. We finished third in 2010, and we were fine with that.

So what happened in 2011? The third team went down, leaving us to face off against last year’s 2nd-place team. Okay. Do you know how that works? When a spelling bee gets down to the last two contestants, be they individuals or teams, the rules change. After an error is called, the competition must first correct the error and then correctly spell a second word to win. In principle, many errors might be made without ending the bee, if you can imagine how that might go. Well, in this case, when the Bee Master told the other team they had incorrectly spelled a word our team went with the only possible alternative spelling we could muster up, though it was not the first spelling two of us had come up with. We were told we were correct, and we were given another word. We spelled the next word correctly, were acclaimed winners and were congratulated by the team we had beaten. Ordinarily, this would be the end of the story.

But at home that night I looked up the word that had knocked the other team out and discovered that their spelling (the way I would have spelled it, too, had the word come to us first) had been correct! K-O-H-L-R-A-B-I. Oh, good heavens, now what? I called the Bee Master on the phone, and I think it’s fair to say he was flummoxed. (‘Flummox’ was another word in the Bee that day, one that put a team out of play.) “I think they won!” I told him, “they” being Team 1, Nancy and Cornelia. But no, said the Master, neither team had a clear win, since the winning team must (1) spell correctly a word missed by the other team and (2) spell correctly an additional word. In fine, the Bee had never finished!

And so it was that an impossible outcome came to be declared—a spelling bee ending in a tie! Any other ruling would have been a miscarriage of justice. And here they are, our fellow champions:


“Oh, well,” one of my teammates said, “our win was great while it lasted. And next year the competition will really be intense!”

I think the pressure on the judges will be intense next year, as well. All in good fun, of course.

Kathy from Australia asks me if adult spelling bees are a national phenomenon in the U.S. I don't know. If they're not, they should be. I can imagine independent bookstores starting up bees in towns where they don't exist, book clubs putting teams together--all sorts of good fun and brain calisthenics. Did I spell that word correctly?

Mom and the Grade School Spelling Cards

My sisters and I came naturally by our spelling skills and love of language. Our mother skipped over a semester of high school with high grades; our father was the only one in his Ohio State engineering class to take English required not required by the College of Engineering. Both of them, long before they met, had compiled little bound books of their favorite poems. My father helped me with math--or tried while I cried. My mother didn’t understand my tears at the sewing machine. Dad with his slide rule, Mother with her Singer: why didn’t I love these things, too? [Correction: It wasn't a Singer but a White.] But books we all loved, and I woke this morning, Mother’s Day, remembering my mother “giving me,” as we said, my spelling words.

The spelling card was a stiff, ivory-colored trifold. Each of its six sides contained a list, so each card lasted for six weeks of grade school. New cards were crisp and sharp-edged. Older ones, cards that had gone through several previous classes, had soft corners and the occasional underlined word or check mark. These battered, creased cards never wanted to stand up straight like the new ones when held from the bottom by the word-giver, but they were more interesting for of the traces of history they bore.

I suppose, though it never occurred to me at the time, that my satisfaction from the clear right-or-wrong of spelling gave me something of the comfort other people found in math--except for alternative acceptable spellings, but then, I liked those, too. Another way to look at the word! Another, different answer that was also right! Yes, that was fine with me, too. I’ve always though most of life is too complex for only one right answer.

But my mother went by the card, by the list. We sat at the dining room table, she held the card in front of her and pronounced the words. Because I was not only doing homework for the weekly test but also practicing for the annual spelling bee, I probably replied in the classic pronounce-spell-repeat pronounce form. I see her smiling, probably at my goofy earnestness. She was cheerful, encouraging and patient. It was one of those little things we did together that both of us enjoyed.

My mother would have been a good teacher. She wanted to teach English, but even with an academic scholarship to cover tuition her family could not afford to send her to college, and she became a secretary instead. When my sisters and I were in our teens, she went back to secretarial work, and years later she had a terrible time retiring. Her employers could not seem to replace her to their satisfaction, and they kept calling her back. She must have retired three times and even then worked part-time to cover absences and emergencies. My mother was a legendary speller everywhere she ever worked.

Back when my mother was in school, teachers gave good students personal gifts as prizes for outstanding work. One of my mother’s prizes had been Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, inscribed to her by her teacher. It was a hardcover copy with an illustrated pastedown on the front board. My mother and I and my two sisters—how many times was that book read in our house over the years and where is it now?

When you’re raising children, there is no way to predict what they will remember. I’ll talk to my mother later today and remind her of our spelling sessions and the Anne book. Through the telephone I’ll feel her smile, the same one I remember from years ago.

Did We “Kick A**? No, Not Exactly

Cold wind and heavy rain did not stop the annual Traverse City Senior Spelling Bee from taking place today at Gilbert Lodge. When a friend learned that Dog Ears Books was sending a team, we were offered encouragement in the form of hopes we would “kick ass.” Well, we only came in third (but, as one of my team-mates put it, “still in the money”); considering the stiff competition, however, we felt we acquitted ourselves well. Here are the two teams that whupped us, six women who earned our profound admiration:


First place went to Martha Vreeland, Liz Bannister and Ronnie Green:


Coming in second place were Nancy Pihlcrantz, Cornelia Hart and Frances Figurski:


Someone from one of defeated teams (“You’re not losers, just dropouts,” said Beemaster Michael Sheehan consolingly) asked, “Do we have to wait until we’re 90 to win?” Surely not, since Dog Ears Books managed victory in 2008. This year's victorious trio did have a few years on us, but they had more than that on their side, obviously. These ladies can spell! Congratulations, winning spellers! Thanks to Beemaster, Senior Center and Bee sponsor, Comfort Keepers.

The best part of the annual Bee is that it is great fun. A day to play! It’s also inspiring to be around older men and women who make us sweat. Yes, sweat. No, we were not cool as cucumbers. Daunted? Somewhat. But there's always next year. Next year, we vow, we will practice ahead of time.