Elocution. What is it?
Some say it is the art of speaking clearly and with proper diction. Others say it is a lost skill. I say both things are true, which is more than most columnists in Moose County would bother to say. You’re welcome.
My moustache began tingling this morning while I was eating a complimentary breakfast at the Old Stone Mill—complimentary because I mentioned their crab cakes once in 1994, and I believe in honoring debts. That tingle told me it was time to write about elocution. The moustache is never wrong. It has solved more crimes than the entire Pickax police department, which, given that we average roughly four murders per fiscal quarter in a town of three thousand, is not the boast it once was.
But back to elocution. Do people speak well anymore? No. They do not. Koko, of course, is the exception. Yesterday he said “YOW” with such precise tonal variation that I immediately understood he was commenting on the declining standards of public discourse. Or he wanted his dinner. Either way, it was profound. Yum Yum, meanwhile, sat on my manuscript and purred, which I took as editorial approval. These cats are geniuses. I have considered listing them as consultants on the K Fund payroll, which my accountant assures me is perfectly legitimate for tax purposes.
Why don’t more people practice elocution? Is it laziness? Is it apathy? Is there a difference? I wouldn’t know. I haven’t left the barn-apartment in three days because I suspect the squirrels are organizing a coordinated raid on my birdseed reserves. Someone has been tampering with the feeders. In Pickax, tampering has a way of escalating into arson, and arson has a way of escalating into something worse, and somehow I always seem to be nearby when it does. Coincidence, naturally.
Polly Duncan once told me my own elocution was “adequate.” I found this insulting. I have a magnificent voice. Everyone says so, by which I mean Koko tilts his head when I read aloud, which is basically a standing ovation.
Should elocution be taught in schools? Probably. Will I volunteer to teach it? Absolutely not. I am far too busy, and besides, the K Fund already donates generously to education, or at least to things I have classified as education.
Elocution.
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