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EditorialsA Fine Holiday GiftBrooklyn h oasts several neinhhnrhnnrls that are on the National Renjster of Historic Places and so many of us might be a little blase about an effort to add a mere three more of Brooklyn%u2019s thousands of brownstones and a tree to this national landmarks registry. But there are some special reasons why these three particular buildings and the 90-year-old-plus Magnolia grandiflora tree that stands in front of them should receive support from each one of us.When Hattie Carthan of Vernon Avenue started her campaign to save a lone Magnolia tree on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant from demolition, many people thought she was just a crazy old lady tilting at windmills. But years later Mrs. Carthan and her Magnolia Tree have come to stand for the kind of re-birth that is going on all across Brooklyn. She and the hundreds of neighbors and supporters who have rallied to the cause have not only saved this tree, but have created a spirit that is helping renew not just her block but entire neighborhoods. One product of the campaign to save the tree and its neighboring shelteringbrownstones has been the Magnolia Tree Earth Gerber whnsp motto. %u201c Save a Tree, Save a Neighborhood%u201d plainly states the aim of Mrs. Carthan and her neighbors. To this end the Center has created a program of training and activity for youngsters in tree care, gardening and even enlisted their help in keeping Prospect Park green and clean in the summers.Now, to mark what has started from this lone lady and to qualify the Earth Center and its programs for special funding support, Mrs. Carthan is trying to have the Tree and its adjacent buildings entered on the National Register of Historic Places. For this to happen requires the recommendation of Commissioner Orin Lehman, who is also New York State%u2019s Historic Preservation Officer. A letter of support, urging a state recommendation of National Registry status for the tree and the buildings would be a fine holiday gift for the Magnolia Tree group. Send letters to Lehman at NY State Department of Parks, Empire State Plaza, Albany 12238.At Large b y L . J . D a v i sBoyz W e In Trubble If W e Can Read No Good, Or Talk EiderBY L.J. DAVISNot to steal a leaf from the book of Professor Noam Chomsky, but the word %u201c fulsome%u201d doesn%u2019t mean what you think it means. It means nauseous and disgusting. And that%u2019s only one of the words that you don%u2019t know the first thing about.I suppose I ought to pause before launching into this little essay and offer both an apology and a short warning not unlike that affixed by the Surgeon General of the United States to the sides of cigarette packages. I realize that probably seems a little footling of me to propose to discourse on the subject of language in a paper reknowned for its quota of malapropisms, misplaced modifiers, dogberryisms, unintelligible sentences, sentences in which the subject and the verb are not on speaking terms, sentences that are not sentences at all, sentences that are not even decent clauses, headlines that enrage readers of Oriental extraction, typos, overstrikes, and foobars.1 know I will probably cause the editor to blush and scuff at the earth by saying so, but this is the result of a deliberate policy. The publisher, inspired by the example of the late Horatio Alger%u2019s work among the homeless newsboys of the metropolis, has gone out of his way to hire illiterates, callow youths, potheads, aging neurotics recovering from nervous breakdowns, alcoholics, mental outpatients, imbeciles, and Republicans%u2014in short, the sweepings of the city. He has done so out of the goodness of his heart, for otherwise theseunfortunates would join the vast army of the unemployed, and become wards of the state. You aren%u2019t reading a newspaper; you%u2019re reading a noble work of charity.ANCIENT AXIOMSAs for my explanation, I propose to lecture on language today because everybody else and his brother seems to feel qualified to lecture on it, including William Safire, and there must be some money in it. It is an ancient axiom of journalism that everybody wants to read about how miserable they are; there is no mileage in a headline like BOY SCOUT HELPS OLD LADY ACROSS STREET, SAVES CAT FROM TREE. Until recently, because everybody used it and most people who could read knew what it was, language came under the heading of goo or at least un-news. True, we have always had signs in the windows of greasy spoons boasting of their lintel soup, and a handyman%u2019s truck has long prowled the streets of Brooklyn emblazoned with the motto: We Dali Kinsa Work. These were sports of nature, and honored as such.Recently, however, certain ominous signs have appeared on the horizon, at first no larger that a man%u2019s hand, indicating that something was going strangely awry with the tongue of Shakespeare. First, a study revealed that the most commonly reprinted sentence in the American language was %u201c Close cover before striking.%u201d Then word reached us that even this simple phrase%u2014 and others like it, on the labels of patent medicines, on boxes of soap, on aerosolcans%u2014was being reconsidered by the executives responsible for such things, because a big hunk of the consuming public could no longer read with underWilliam Faulknerhimself invented aword once possiblybecause he couldn%u2019tfind his dictionary, and25 years later I used itm an essay.standing. While we were digesting this hair-raising news and pondering the possibility that our shaving cream can might soon come equipped with the instructions \item in the press revealed that the instructions for flying the F-15 fighter aircraft were being rewritten in fifth-grade English. (%u201cTo make the guns go rat-a-tat-tat, put your thumb on the little thingy.%u201d )LUDICROSITYThis is not to say that dislexia andaphasia have not always been with us, even in the highest chamber of the ivory tower where we writers sit counting our ill-gotten gains. The great William Faulkner himself invented a word once, possibly because he couldn%u2019t find his dictionary, and twentyfive years later 1 used it in an essay. The word was %u201c ludicrosity%u201d %u2014something, if 1 may coin a phrase, of a ludicrosity itself. My editor, who had grown up in the hard school of Burton Rascoe, Don Marquis (and, for all I know, Finley Peter Dunne, Mark Twain, and Ben Franklin; he must have been at least fifty)...my editor was not amused. 1 explained that Faulkner had used it, sir. %u201c Faulkner,%u201d he thundered, %u201c was a dope.\Then there was the blurb writer at Pocket Books who, for reasons that remain obscure, was enamored with the word %u201c turgid.%u201d For years it was virtually impossible to buy one of his employer%u2019s products without finding %u201c Turgid!%u2014St. Louis Gleaner.%u201d shrieking at you from the back cover. 1 understand that the poor chap was eventually taken out and shot.I was going to lecture on language today, but 1 sec that my time is up. I%u2019ve run out of space, and I have to take another trip south. I wish I could say that 1 was going to Fort Lauderdale to watch the girls disport hcmsclves on the beach in their trim bathing costumes, but my destination is Washington again%u2014a place where you can hardly find anybody to dall kinsa work, but where the prose can, with perfect justice, be described as %u201c turgid.\N . Y . P . D .POSSESSION OF POT: Officer Dominick Maddalena of the Narcotics Squad arrested Luis Arroyo, 17 of 85 Myrtle Ave., on Nov. 28 at 2:05pm in a variety store at 66 Myrtle Ave. Arroyo is charged with the criminal sale and possession of marijuana, which he inadvertantly sold to an undercover police officer.TRUCKS AWAY: After he allegedly drove Daily News trucks illegally out of the News Garage on Sept. 24 and again on Oct. 31, Anthony Jackson was arrested by Detective Louis Failla of the 78th Precinct at 5:15 pm on Nov. 29. Jackson is charged with grand larceny of trucks.TRIPLE BUST: Officer Raymond Smith of the 78th Precinct and Officer Richard Brew of the 111h Narcotics Division arrested three men on Nov. 29 at 1:25pm for possession of alleged marijuana. Kenneth Baldwin, 20 of 440 Lenox Road, Tony Nelson, 22 of 760 Rogers Ave., and Harrington Young, 21, of 555 Ocean Ave., were all charged with possession of two pounds of alleged marijuana; Young was additionally charged with two counts of sale and of the substance.HANDBAG GRAB: A thiriccnycar-old and two twelve-year-olds were arrested on Nov. 29 at 8:30pm after they allegedly tried to steal a purse from a 24-yearold woman on Lincoln Place between Seventh and Eighth Aves. 78th Precinct Officer Hector Perez made the collar, charging the three with attempted robbery.STEAL AND ASSAULT: After two men allegedly attacked a 29-year-old women at 12:15 am Nov. 30 and pushed her to the sidewalk at Berkeley Place between Sixth and Seventh Aves. stealing her handbag, Detective Herman Every of the 78th Precinct arrested the pair. Wade Woollard, 17, of 66 Seventh Avenue and Mike Howard, 18, of 15 Berkeley Place, are both charged with robbery and assault.TRIPLE DRUG CATCH: Officer Kenneth Trcpeta of the 78th Precinct and Officer Decio of the Brooklyn South Neighborhood Stabilization Unit arrested Vincent Harris, 18, of 186 bond St., a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old minors at 10:35pm on Nov. 29 after ihev allegedly broke into 58 Fourth Ave. All three are charged with burglary and criminal possession of stolen property, with the 14-ycarold additionally charged with resisting arrest.INVESTIGATION: Police Officers Walter Willczar and Benny Pipitone, through an exhaustive investigation, nabbed Fernando Polanco 25, of 277 Washington Ave., on Nov. 27th at 12:30pm, after he allegedly sexually abused a high school student on Nov. 6. The sutdent was sitting on the steps of the St. Marks Hall when Polanco grabbed her from behind saying that he had a knife and, %u201c I%u2019ll cut you if you don%u2019t let me touch you.%u201d Polanco was charged with sexual abuse in the 1st degree and possession of a dangerous weapon.Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold announced that thirteen men, two from the downtown, area, Hazen Moorer 51 of 342 Lafayette Avenue and Angello Cortiella 22 of 646 President Street, have been indicted in connection with a massive rip-off of the New York State Department of Labor by the submission of fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, most using false identities and claiming employment at several bars and paper enterprises. Using dummied baptismal certificates and phony identification the 13 allegedly received 1577 benefit checks worthabout $185,000 between March 1976 and December 1978. Based upon the testimony of about 150 witnesses, the thirteen have been indicted on 176 counts of conspiracy, grand larceny, forgery and possession of a forged instrument, and related charges of tax fraud.FOUR TO ONE: OfficersHoward Hoffman, Hector Perez, Jerry Orlando and Jack Kelly of the 78th Precinct arrested Michael Swindell, 18, of 921 Washington Ave., after a lengthy chase following an alleged pursesnatching. Swindell is accused of stealing a woman%u2019s handbag at Plaza St. and Vanderbilt Ave.; he was then pursued by the police, who eventually caught up with him at Underhill Rd. and Eastern Pkway. When nabbed, he fought against handcuffs by pushing and shoving the arresting team; he is charged with robbery, criminal possession of stolen property and resisting arrest.SEXUAL ABUSE: For allegedly slapping and punching an 18-vcar-old woman in front of 455 Bergen St., and trying to force her to have sex with him Jose Torres, 18, of 446 Bergen St., was arrested on Nov. 30 at 7:15pm by Officer Robert Zurzolo of the 78th Precinct.Torres is charged with sexual abuse and assault.TRUANTS: Police Officer Neilson reports that the 84th Precinct is cooperating with the Board of Education in checking youngsters during school hours who are wandering in the downtown area. Last week 24 youngsters were rounded up and taken to a cental location where parents and school authorities are notified of their failure to attend school.KNIFEPOINT MUGGING: OnNovember 28 at 10:20am, an 18-year-old man was approached by four assailants who cornered |im at Fulton and Jay Sts. and *sked him for all his money, folding a knife to him. After he ^Drrendered $125 in cash and the pandits fled, he pursued them up Jay Street to Tillary shouting for help, until Officer Ralph Millard of the 84th Precinct, working on police scooter patrol, came to his aid and nabbed three of the four. Identified as Miguel Vasquez, 18, of 427 Fort Washington Ave., Miguel Irizarv. 19. of 344 Greene Ave. and a 15-year-old minor, all are charged with robbery, criminal possession of a dangerous weapon and criminal possession of stolen property.December 13,1979, The PHOENIX, Page 9