Who says one cannot survive an execution?

Apr 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The past week was exciting in more ways than one. To begin with, I had gone to Trinidad for the Fifth Summit of the Americas and with the hope that I would see the man who turned the world upside down. This man is Barack Obama who is more popular than the Queen of England — certainly the most popular man on earth at this time.

It is now history that I never laid eyes on him but I had yet another chance to commingle with media colleagues from every corner of the Americas. Above all, I saw what a media centre should be. I had seen a few set up for summits but this one took the cake and it has to do with the advance of technology.
Of course these days, anything that happens in one country is transmitted across the globe in a flash and that is how I came to take notice of a group of Guyanese who set about criticizing a headline that appeared in the Friday April 17, issue of Kaieteur News.

I saw one fellow, a former student of President’s College, writing in a blog to challenge the headline that screamed ‘Maria van Beek survives execution’.
I was surprised at the number of people who decided that the headline was wrong. And there was more. My staff at Kaieteur News called me to complain how the wider society was taking them to task. They even told me that reporters from the Stabroek News, a sister newspaper, had tried to wipe the floor with them over the headline.

I need to go back some 40 years, back to my days in the Government Training College for Teachers where I met two women, Mrs Belle Tyndall and Mrs Carol Bishop. Later in life I met two others who were probably just as good, Ms Patricia Persaud of the University of Guyana and Mrs Joyce Jonas.
These four women have combined to make an indelible mark on my life because they taught me English. They made me realize that although the language is supposed to be the official language of this country, there was a dire need to keep teaching people to speak, to read and to write it. Last weekend their words came forcibly back to me.

Language is changing but some things never change. These women taught me that English is like Mathematics and perhaps that is why so many people have trouble understanding it.
It was Ms Persaud who taught me that people needed to beware of the word ‘and’. Instead of using ‘and’ to link sentences, use a full stop, she said. Mrs Bishop said that one should write as one speaks although I shudder to contemplate the result in these days. I write short sentences because we naturally speak in short sentences.

That is an exercise I conduct with people to whom I lecture whenever the opportunity arises. Try it some times. Say a sentence and write the words. Or better still, let someone say something to you and write the words. One will find that there are often no more than nine words in any spoken sentence.
Another lesson involved the use of the dictionary. To convince the staff at Kaieteur News I opened the dictionary and did not have to say another word. One young staff member then said, “You mean that there are so many illiterate people in this country?”

Execution is defined as the act of putting one to death, particularly by judicial means. Execution is not the final thing as those who called to condemn the headline believe. Mrs van Beek survived the act. Plain and simple. Would it have been better to say ‘escapes’? That is another story, although if execution is this final thing, then one could not escape.

I heard that some said that the headline should have read ‘Maria van Beek survives execution attempt’. I suspect that would be redundant. Of course there are successful attempts as in the case of high jump or broad jump. “He cleared it at his first attempt.”
The child was successful at the first attempt at the examinations.
And so it is that I posit that anyone can survive an act. The process of judicial execution begins with an announcement to the victim, a walk to the place of execution and final the act.

In Russia, a judicial execution is performed in a chamber with a bullet to the back of the head. One can survive although I have heard no case of this. I have heard, though, of a young man who survived execution by electrocution. He later spoke of tasting nut butter. He was later put to death and this time the executioner did not fail.
The gunman walked up to Mrs van Beek, pointed his gun and pulled the trigger. He failed and she survived. This is an indisputable fact.

There is more to the language. As a child I learnt that gay meant happy and in the playfields I saw many gay children in my day. Not so today. Language is specific and keeps changing but through reading and with the help of a dictionary many of us would avoid pitfalls, the likes of which sparked the brouhaha over a simple headline. I heard that teachers also called to complain and to protest. How sad.

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