A and E

I never realized there was a Canadian way of spelling the word gray. It seems they spell it grey, which is how, for some reason, I like to write it. Spellchecker flags grey, but I don't listen to Spellchecker if I don't want to

Perhaps I saw the word grey spelled with an e when I helped my father paint the shutters with a grey Dutch Boy paint. Let me tell you, those shutters over the years were more colors than Dolly Parton's famous coat.

They were at first green, then grey, yellow, black, and eventually red, the color my father settled on, and the color they were when the house was sold. I painted shutters a lot.

To be it's like when vice-president Dan Quayle was excoriated when he spelled potato potatoe. The media went  nuts. Here's the vice-president (a Republican) and the guy can't spell.

Growing up I always seem to remember that potato was, or could be found to be, spelled potatoe. Maybe that's how it was spelled on the bag of potatoes I always saw on the pantry floor.

Dan Quayle was eventually exonerated for his potatoe spelling, with the e, which was considered an acceptable version. But not until he was labeled as a permanent dunce.

It seems now Canada is annoyed at the spelling of the bird they would like to anoint as the national bird of Canada. The gray jay was chosen to be Canada's national bird. The twists and turn of the story are well laid out by Ian Austen, in Wednesday's NYT.

It seems the American Ornithologists' Union, AOC, holds sway on North American bird names. The Gray Jay was third in online voting for national bird, but a professor of emeritus of wildlife biology at McGill University (Montreal) lead the charge to pick the Gray Jay, a bird found mostly in Northern Canada. Think of how cold Northern Canada can be.

As pictured, the bird is a cute, furry looking little thing that no doubt is headed for a stamp. The professor's name? You won't believe it. David Bird. Yes, Bird picks bird.

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