Ella Minnow Pea: List 1

Much has happened during your one-month sojourn off-island. Perhaps your Village neighbors have apprised you.

On Monday, July 17, a most intriguing thing took place: one of the tiles from the top of the cenotaph at town center came loose and fell to the ground, shattering into a good many pieces.

Olive, whom the laundress corps elected to attend as our representative/observer, given the need for a nearly full contingent of workers at the launderette on this particular day, returned much later than expected to report the have-and-say of the lengthy session, specifically with regard to the aforementioned issue and question before the Council.

This explanation seemed quite the logical one to me, as well as to my fellow laundresses, with the single exception of one Lydia Threadgate who holds the Council in bloated esteem due to a past bestowal of Council- beneficence, and who would not be dissuaded by a healthy dose of our dull-brass-and-pauper’s-punch brand of logic.

However, in the end, our assessments and opinions counted for (and continue to count for) precious little, and we have kept our public speculation to a minimum for fear of government reprisal, so charged with distrust and suspicion have the esteemed island elders (and elderess) become following last year’s unfortunate visit by that predatory armada of land speculators from the States...

With the Council in high conference for the succeeding forty-eight hours, the washboard brigade made at least two pilgrimages to town center, there to gaze up at the much revered cenotaph and its salt-wind-eroded statuary likeness of our most venerated Mr. Nevin Nollop—the man for whom this island nation was lovingly named—the man without whom this shifting slab of sand and palmetto would hold paltry placement in the annals of world history.

How different the world would be today if not for the sentence which the lexically gifted Mr. Nollop issued forth! How we cherish his contribution to the English-speaking world of one short sentence that employs with minimal repetition each of the twenty-six letters of our alphabet!

Yet remember that here we made up for the lack of global acclaim by honoring him with this imposing statue.

Pop volunteered to repair the tile and return it to its rightful place. His offer was summarily rejected.

There was, without doubt, purpose to the tumble: this event constituting, in my belief, a terrestrial manifestation of Mr. Nollop’s wishes.

Mr. Nevin Nollop speaks to us from beyond the grave, my fellow Nollopians. We will listen with open ears, discern his intent, and follow those wishes accordingly.

On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter “Z” constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter “Z” should be utterly excised—fully extirpated—absolutively heave-ho’ed from our communal vocabulary!

On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter “Z” constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter “Z” should be utterly excised—fully extirpated—absolutively heave-ho’ed from our communal vocabulary!

On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter “Z” constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter “Z” should be utterly excised—fully extirpated—absolutively heave-ho’ed from our communal vocabulary!

Henceforth, use of the arguably superfluous twenty-sixth letter will be outlawed from all island speech and graphy.

They are as follows: to speak or write any word containing the letter “Z,” or to be found in possession of any written communication containing this letter, one will receive for a first offense, a public oral reprimand either by a member of the island Law Enforcement Brigade (known with trembling affection as the L.E.B.) or by member of its civilian-auxiliary.

That having absented himself from the lives of his fellow islanders for lo these one hundred and seven years, the Great Nollop now rouses himself briefly from his eternal snooze to examine our language and our employment of it, and in so doing rouses us from our own sleepy complacency by taking this only marginally important letter from us.

For, with the exception of the use of the letter in reference to itself and its employment in the word “lazy” affixed in permanence to its partner “dog,” I have, in scanning the text of my epistle to you thus far, discovered only three merest of uses: in the words “gaze,” “immortalized,” and “snooze.”

The edict is to take effect at the moment of midnight cusp on August 7/8.

What it holds for us, I do not know, but I shall give this thing the benefit of cautious initial fealty.

The Council, in its ridiculous wisdom, will be assigning to dust bins and community pyres centuries of the finest examples of sapience and sagacity—volume upon volume of history, literature, and thought promulgated through the medium of this cherished language of kings and knaves, scholars and clowns, to be replaced, dear Cuz, by the anemic and uninquiring ramblings of this flock of humans-become-ground-pecking sarilla geese...

The Council, in its ridiculous wisdom, will be assigning to dust bins and community pyres centuries of the finest examples of sapience and sagacity—volume upon volume of history, literature, and thought promulgated through the medium of this cherished language of kings and knaves, scholars and clowns, to be replaced, dear Cuz, by the anemic and uninquiring ramblings of this flock of humans-become-ground-pecking sarilla geese...

For unlike our feathered neighbors who protest the tiniest importunities against their dignity, we will keep our beaks clamped tightly shut, not emitting even so much as a peep of dissatisfaction.

For it stands to rob us of the freedom to communicate without any manner of fetter or harness.

We are a well-educated, well-versed, and well-spoken people whom Mr. Nollop has taught to elevate language to a certain preeminence unmatched by our vocabu-lazy American neighbors across the sound.

Installed for life, with complex legal procedures for official recall, copies of which will soon be disappearing from the shelves of our island libraries (if they haven’t already!), this council has set us up for a most difficult period without any avenue for redress.

Nollop “Im”-Pass is mired again from last week's heavy rains, and the Littoral Loop has yet to be reopened following the early summer inundata. (I would avoid the Littoral Loop, in any event, as it is, while scenic, the longest distance between two points known to man.)

And please understand my unwillingness to trespass upon the Pony Expresspath; the sprinting Pony brother-couriers are Mercury-swift these days, and I would prefer that my obituary not read, “She was ingloriously run over by a fleet-footed fourteen-year-old. ” If I am to have any choice in the matter, I would choose a less pedestrian death, thank-you-very-much.

You will notice that with the exception of the use of the letter “Z” in the anserous term “vocabu-lazy, ” the affectionately familiar “Cuz,” and the mischievously manufactured “bezide,” the letter is employed nowhere else in this missive.

I trust that having read it, you will put quick flame to it for it will have been received after the onset of this peculiar prohibition, and I do not wish to place you or your mother in any jeopardy whatsoever, for I understand there will be no moratorium, and no lenience shown any offender over the age of seven.

It has been an odd gathering—a warm confluence of kindred souls—yet in terms of the pervasive atmosphere, conversely, even perversely funereal.

His jocular carpenter-mates Buzz and Zeke ask that they now be called, respectively, Lil’ Tristan and Prince Valiant-the-Comely.

Hundreds of words await ostracism from our functional vocabularies: waltz and fizz and squeeze and booze and frozen pizza pie, frizzy and fuzzy and dizzy and duzzy, the visualization of emphyzeema-zapped Tarzans, wheezing and sneezing, holding glazed and anodized bazookas, seized by all the bizarrities of this zany zone we call home.

For we cannot even write of its history. Because to write of it, is to write it. And as of midnight, it becomes ineffable.

As your family’s parties go, I’m sure it was a memorable one, although the hovering pall must have sent folks home a little earlier than usual.

Mother spent much of the school day in halt and stammer lest she speak the proscribed letter and find herself brought up on charges.

Perhaps they will eventually disappear altogether, and the accompanying halts and stammers as well: those troublesome, maddening pauses that at present invade and punctuate through caesura all manner of discourse.

I understand his hives will soon be destroyed, his livelihood ripped from him. For the bees speak the offending letter as their wont.

Such a perturbulent distraction it is to a community attempting to follow edict with obeisance!

Use of such asterisk will carry the same penalty as would use of the prohibited letter itself, for one is blatant stand-in for the other with meaning wholly transparent.