Lars Peterson Editorial Services

My explanation of Southern California’s June Gloom didn’t shed much sunlight on why it has become the June-July-August Gloom. Last week the National Weather Service released a brief statement explaining why: cooler than usual waters in the Pacific Ocean and a persistent “upper level trough” in the atmosphere above the coastline. That upper level trough — or low pressure system — has helped keep the air cool. Together, our cooler water and cooler air have prompted the formation of the clouds and fog that creep inland overnight. This combo has also kept monsoonal moisture at bay. So while the American Southwest is enjoying afternoon thunderstorms, Southern California’s mountains and deserts have not.

All that was supposed to have changed this weekend. Temps were up inland and slightly higher here at the beach. And this morning’s bright sunrise, among a handful of fogless dawns this summer, promised a scorcher. But by noon today dense fog had tumbled in from the harbor. If you listen, you can hear the ships’ fog horns booming in the distance, heralding the end of the heatwave that wasn’t.

Last time we looked at the figure of speech chiasmus and how it might be used as a tool for generating memorable or effective copy. Here’s the short version: Chiasmus is the reversal of words in successive, balanced clauses or phrases. We came up with a keeper out of that exercise (“Finding perfect words and perfecting words found”).

Today we look at another figure of speech — antithesis, which is the juxtaposition of opposite concepts in successive, balanced clauses or phrases. As with chiasmus, clauses and phrases are generally parallel, but not always.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. — Abraham Lincoln

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. — TS Eliot

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken. — Frank Perdue.

Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven. — Pillsbury Doughboy

and, finally:

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

In the spirit of that last example comes my first:

A Poet thrills the Soul, but a Copywriter sells one.

Maybe the simplest way to use this figure is to begin with a statement, then turn it on its head:

You can pay more for copywriting, but you won’t get more.

Continuing the value pitch:

First class copywriting on an economy ticket.

You could use that one over and over. Just swap out the industry.

Top shelf copywriting for the price of well.

or

Ferrari copywriting that won’t cost you a Corolla.

But maybe I don’t want to compete on price. Maybe I want to compete on erudition.

Erudite copy by a writer who knows what’s wrong with this pitch. Instinctively.

I’m not sure what erudition* is, either, but it sounds good.

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*Looked it up. My instinct was right!

Copywriters have been using figures of speech in their work forever. And by figures of speech, I don’t mean idioms or euphemisms, I mean figures from classical rhetoric. These are well-defined shapes and patterns in language. For classical rhetoricians, such patterns start at the highest level of organization and reach all the way down to sentences, clauses, phrases and words.

Let’s look at one.

Parallelism is the repetition of patterns of words, phrases and clauses. It adds rhythm, clarity and coherence. Chiasmus is the anti-parallelism. It reverses the order of words and phrases. Rhythm is preserved, but intriguing new meanings and connotations erupt. This discussion by the guy who wrote the book on it is tops.

The classic example of chiasmus comes from Mae West:

It’s not the men in your life that matters, it’s the life of your men.

There are others you may recognize:

Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

I am stuck on Band-Aid, and Band-Aid’s stuck on me.

Sorry, Charlie. Starkist wants tuna that tastes good, not tuna with good taste.

How about a couple for Lars Peterson Editorial Services?

Dr. Mardy Grothe, linked above, used this line from the Bible, “Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed,” as an example of chiasmus that reverses more than one or two terms (there’s no limit, by the way). Let’s use it as a model.

A Copywriter who pens words that sell must first sell himself with words he pens.

That sounds heavy and old timey. And the rhythm is not quite right in the second clause (“himself” messes it up). Worse, it’s not specific to me.

Let’s start with another truism, in tighter, brighter language, and reverse it somehow in the second clause.

All copywriters think they write like Hemingway. He wouldn’t have thought to write like me.

Better! Self-deprecating humor can work (“With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”), but I don’t want to give clients an easy way to pass on me. And it’s not tight and bright enough.

Let’s keep it under ten words, for both clauses or phrases, and make it specific to what I do (writing and editing).

Finding perfect words and perfecting words found.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Still a little stuffy, and not easy to say aloud, but definitely one for the keeper file.

What’s an Ecoregion?

The WWF, which takes the lead in categorizing and describing such things, tells us that an ecoregion is:

a large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that

1. share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics;
2. share similar environmental conditions, and;
3. interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence.

The WWF recognizes 825 terrestrial ecoregions, 426 freshwater ecoregions and 200 marine ecoregions. From these, the WWF has identified 200 priority ecoregions. The Global 200 are the planet’s most biologically distinct regions; conserving these would preserve the broadest possible diversity of plants and animals. The California coastal sage and chapparal ecoregion is one such ecoregion.

The ecoregion encompasses 14,000 square miles of Southern California and Northern Mexico coastline, as well as the nearby Channel Islands. The Santa Rosa Mountains, northeast of San Diego are included, but the San Jacinto Mountains a bit further north and east are not (they’re part of the California montane chaparral and woodlands, instead). The climate is Mediterranean, which means cool wet winters and hot dry summers. Rainfall ranges between 6 and 20 inches a year.

So. What’s here?

If we weren’t here there’d be lots of coastal and valley oaks, groves of California walnut, lots more sage, of several varieties, coastal grasslands and vernal pools, salt marshes along the coasts and manzanita and toyon up in the foothills. There’d be a lot more California gnatcatchers. There’d be plenty of kangaroo rats, legless lizards and rosy boas. There’d be more butterflies (150-200 different species) and there’d be a bunch more spiders.

We still have all those things — and more, including plenty of endemics* like some of the aforementioned and the horned lizard and the Cactus wren. Out on the islands we have some relicts, too, which are species that are holdovers from long ago. Locoweeds, buckwheats and oaks are relicts out there. The Catalina ironwood used to be everywhere around here, but now it’s only found on Catalina Island. Of course, we’ve tilled under and paved over most of the places those things lived. Just 15% of the ecoregion is intact. The whole ecoregion is practically a relict.

Large swathes of the original habitat are protected within the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of San Diego. The Torrey Pine State Reserve protects one of just two stands of that tree. Other bits of the habitat are intact here and there at parks and reserves in the Santa Monica Mountains and in Riverside County and in stretches of still undeveloped Irvine Company inventory in Orange County. A little bit more has been set aside recently in Crystal Cove State Park, with hiking trails that used to be roads and holiday beach house rentals that used to be homes, more relicts from another time.

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*An endemic species is one that is only found in a particular place and habitat and no place else.

June Gloom is the phrase many Southern Californian’s use to describe the generally overcast skies that hang over the region in late spring and early summer. The gloom is deepest just after dawn and heaviest near the beaches. But by midday — earlier over points inland — the clouds burn off and the basin’s familiar over-saturated sunlight washes over all. Well, the sunlight washes over all except those of us who live within a mile of the shoreline, where the overcast may linger deep into the afternoon.

The gloom and overcast are a result of the marine layer, which is a kind of temperature inversion layer. Normally, higher air temperatures are found near the ground and cooler temperatures are found aloft. An inversion layer sees this relationship turned upside down: cooler temperatures are found near the surface and warmer temperatures lie above. One effect of an inversion layer is a “capping” of normal convection currents — the rising and falling of air due to thermals — which traps dust and other particles under the inversion layer. LA’s famously bad air quality is partly a result of this meteorological quirk.

Our local inversion layer is generated by the especially chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean. The California Current carries frigid sea water south from the Gulf of Alaska to the tip of Baja. The sea water cools the air above, creating a temperature inversion. If there is enough moisture in the air, and the cooling effect is strong enough, then clouds and fog are generated within the marine layer. Depth of the marine layer is affected by the movement of much larger weather systems in the atmosphere above. High pressure systems squish the marine layer so that only coastal areas lie under the gloom. Low pressure systems allow the marine layer to expand upward and outward; fog along the shore rises and pushes inland.

It’s just after 2:00 pm PDT here in Long Beach, CA, and the sun is just beginning to burn through the clouds above. June Gloom has stretched all the way through July. But when the alternative is thunderstorms and sweltering heat, I don’t think many of the locals mind.

Breakfast most days is half-a-cup of nonfat plain yogurt mixed with a quarter-cup of granola chased with half-a-pot of coffee.

I buy Trader Joe’s French Village Nonfat Yogurt in the 32 ounce tub* (good enough for fourth place!). About a day after opening a fresh tub, a thin milky liquid rises to the top. It’s yellowish and unappetizing. Every morning I pour it down the drain before scooping out breakfast.

Not anymore. That stuff is whey.

Whey is a dairy byproduct usually associated with the making of cheese or butter. Old time cheese makers added rennet, a soup of enzymes found in mammalian stomachs that aids in milk digestion, or an edible acid such as lemon juice or vinegar to milk to begin the process. The additives cause the milk to curdle, or separate into solids (“curds”) and liquid (“whey”). Today cheese makers use a genetically engineered rennet substitute to induce curdling.

Whey is filled with protein and amino acids. It is used to fortify all sorts of food products, from Oreo Cookies to KFC’s coleslaw. It is fed to farm animals. It is powdered and poured into bulging plastic bottles with label designs that promise potency, power and vitality. Whey protein is popular with bodybuilders.

Yogurt is produced by introducing bacteria to heated milk. As the bacteria consume sugar (lactose), they release lactic acid, which causes the curds and whey to separate. When the right pH level and consistency are reached, the product is cooled quickly to stop fermentation. The whey is “immobilized” within the curd globules before it has a chance to get away. These globules of curd are not robust. Temperature changes weaken the bonds and allow trapped whey to escape curd’s milky grasp. Gravity, too, can overwhelm the curds’ ability to hang onto the whey. Such mechanical curdling is called syneresis.

Because most consumers don’t like the appearance of whey in their yogurt, producers add a variety of thickening agents — fruit pectin, various starches — to toughen up the curd. But now that I know whey is okay, I don’t think I mind.

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*The tubs, after a turn through the dishwasher, make great paint or varnish pans. Or you can use them in the pantry to store granola.

He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know about it, and so copywriting may become a rich source of Now I Know mini-essays. I do know a few things about writing, in general. Here are some of the pearls I frequently share with my writing students, in no particular order.

• Show don’t tell;
• Be clear and concise;
• Choose the right word;
• Write active sentences;
• Understand parallelism;
• The most important part of the introduction is the hook;
• OK, I lied: the hook is the most important part of the introduction that comes before the thesis, which is the most important part of the entire thing;
• (Still, come up with a good hook, otherwise nobody will read your thesis);
• Think about your audience, but don’t pander to them;
• If you imagine that your audience is *this much* dumber than you are, you will write with more clarity and coherence. This is not pandering;
• Don’t use “you”*;
• You can begin a sentence with “Because”*, but only when “Because” is used in the sense of “Since”;
• When in doubt, describe;
• Revise as many times as time allows;
• Proofread at least once more than you think you need to.

A copywriter who added some tricks from Classical Rhetoric to that list could do pretty well. But that’s a topic for another day.
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*Here my experience as a writing teacher bumps up against my experience as a demographic target and a copywriter. One would be hard pressed to find ad copy that does not rely heavily on both “you” and “because” (and not in the sense of “since”).

Now that I know what causes thunderstorms here in Southern California (monsoon moisture + heat + topography), and despite this weekend’s return of the marine layer and the subsequent end of the thunderstorm cycle, I wondered: what causes lightning?

Updrafts and downdrafts in the thundercloud cause water and ice particles to collide and take on positive or negative electrical charges, much like a balloon will take on a negative electrical charge when rubbed with a woolen sock. For reasons not well understood, lighter, positively charged ice droplets migrate toward the top of the cloud formation and heavier, negatively charged ice droplets and rain settle toward the bottom of the formation. Eventually this separation creates electrical potential between the negatively charged part of the cloud and the positively charged part of the cloud. Lightning occurs when the electrical charge on both sides overcomes the resistance of the air between them. These “intra-cloud” strikes are the most common type of lightning. “Inter-cloud” strikes, or strikes between clouds, have similar causes. Cloud to ground strikes work somewhat differently.

As the negatively charged part of the cloud moves over the earth, the ground below becomes positively charged by induction. You have seen induction if you have played with magnets and noticed how one side of a magnet attracts its opposite and repels its like, or if you have replaced the batteries in your Wii controllers and noticed the “+” and “-” symbols telling you how to arrange everything. Under the storm cloud, positively charged ions in the earth are attracted to the negative ions accumulating above and negatively charged ions in the ground are pushed away. As with intra-cloud strikes, when the charge on either side becomes strong enough, resistance is overcome, electricity flows and shazzam! lighting strikes.

As for thunder, that’s easy. A bolt of lightning is fantastically energetic and it generates terrific heat, singeing the surrounding air to 30,000 to 50,000 degrees Farenheit. The Crack! you hear is the sound of the explosion made as super-heated lightning strike air expands, rapidly, into the cooler air around it.

Southern California’s monsoon and thunderstorm season got underway last Monday, and if you were paying attention, you felt it. At dawn the sky above was dull and gray — the so-called June Gloom — but by 10:00 am the marine layer had been beaten back out to sea. High altitude high pressure air had slipped in from the deserts to the east, sending the cooling gloom away. Temperatures have risen steadily since and everyday thunderstorms form over the mountains that ring the Los Angeles basin (such as seen from the beach, here).

Thunderstorms require three things to form: moisture, air instability, and a lifting force.

Moisture can come from oceans or from remnants of hurricanes or other storms.

Air instability occurs when a cool dry pocket of air rests over a warmer, wetter pocket of air; given a sufficient nudge, the warm, moist air will rise.

Lifting force usually comes from heat, whether by temperature differential (uneven heating of the ground, which creates thermals) or by boundaries between pockets of air (warmer air will rise over cooler; the heat differential between drier and wetter air will force the wetter air up; and the outflow boundary, on the edge of a thunderstorm, is cooler than the surrounding air, creating more thunderstorms). Lifting force can also come from topography — wind moving up mountain slopes and through canyons will provide the push the moist air needs to get aloft.

Once aloft, the air rises and cools, condensing its moisture into water droplets, which form clouds. More rising air pushes some droplets still higher, where they continue to cool and grow. Some fall as rain. Some freeze and fall and melt back into rain. Some freeze and fall and stay frozen and fall to the ground as hail.

The high pressure that arrived on Monday gave the thunderstorms two of the three necessary ingredients: air instability and lifting force. Without the marine layer to keep us cool, temperatures began to rise (in Downtown LA it was 75 on Monday, 86 on Tuesday, then 94, then 92, and 93 today). While heat differentials promote thundercloud formation, our topography probably plays a larger role. The Los Angeles basin is ringed with mountains — the San Gabriels to the north, the San Bernardinos to the northeast, the Santa Anas to the southeast. Air moving onshore from the ocean rises up the slopes and through the canyons, pushing warmer, moister air up. Upslope thunderstorms are common in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas and they occur here, too. We also have several convergence zones — regions where breezes, after having diverged around mountains and through canyons, collide and force air upward. One such convergence zone is near Lake Elsinore (the Lake Elsinore Convergence Zone), on the eastern side of the Santa Ana Mountains, where this supercell thunderstorm and funnel cloud was videotaped.

For the third element — moisture — we return to the opening line of this post and that word “monsoon”, which seems out of place when discussing Southern California. The North American, or Arizona, or Southwest monsoon occurs when high pressure moves over the southwest from the south and intense summertime heating of the desert creates rising air and low pressure. The monsoon takes place between June and mid-September. The result is a change in direction of prevailing, low level air flow that brings moisture up from the Gulf of California and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. This moisture is then forced up by heat differentials and upslope winds to form into water droplets and clouds and eventually thunderstorms.

Other than that, all I know about our monsoon and thunderstorms is that mid-September is a long way off.

No, not that Bleach. I want to know about the common household bleach one adds to the laundry to whiten whites and bust up stains or sprays on countertops and tub floors to kill germs.

Household bleach is a 3-6% solution of the chemical sodium hypochlorite. The municipal water system chlorinates city water with a 15% solution of sodium hypochlorite and the city parks department chlorinates the public pools with a 30% solution of sodium hypochlorite. The chemical was discovered by a French chemist in 1787. Another French scientist, Louis Pasteur, discovered its disinfectant properties about a hundred years later.

Sodium hypochlorite is an oxidizer, which is a chemical, usually containing oxygen, that readily shares oxygen with another compound. Once on the loose in the wash, sodium hypochlorite attacks the stain in two ways. First, it combines with pieces of the stain and breaks it down into smaller, water soluble bits, much like standard laundry detergents do. But sodium hypochlorite gets its shine as a stain fighter from its second line of attack. Molecules get their color from chromophores — which are arrangements of atoms that absorb most colors of light and reflect back the color we see. Bleach messes with the structure of chromophores and reduces their ability to reflect light. Whatever bits of the stain that remain after the first attack lose their ability to reflect visible light. After a good bleaching a stain is not necessarily gone; it’s invisible.

Unfortunately, sodium hypochlorite does not distinguish between stains and fabric dyes. Colorsafe bleaches, on the other hand, contain much weaker oxidizers (hydrogen peroxide or sodium percarbonate) which, given enough time, are strong enough to tackle common stains but are over matched by durable industrial dyes.

Pasteur figured out how to use sodium hypochlorite as a disinfectant more than hundred years ago, but why it is so effective at germ killing is only now coming to light. Recent research has shown that sodium hypochlorite causes proteins that bacterial cells require for growth to lose their shape and clump into large, insoluble aggregates. The cell cannot make use of the larger, flatter proteins, causing the cell to die. Human immune systems, it turns out, produce hypochlorite when battling bacteria infections. As with shirt stains, hypochlorite attacks healthy cells along with bacterial cells, leading to tissue damage in areas of inflammation. Maybe our immune systems can be encouraged to switch to cell-safe bleach?