The National Spelling Bee – Liveblogged

“Throwing things,” is currently liveblogging the national spelling bee. It’s a really an enthralling read, if for no other reason than they have a former national finalist among their cohort of live bloggers (Shonda Rhimes -creator of Grey’s Anatomy), as well as a bunch of finalists and possibly a former winner commenting on the site. It may be the only blog on the planet where you can read sentences like:

The spelling wheat has been separated from this year’s chaff, and Round 3 has begun, with 286 spellers now reduced to 107 . . . ding!, 106, as the fear of poisons, TAHKS-uh-FO-bee-uh, has infected one of the spellers.

and

FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS: If there is a villain in this first two-thirds of the second round of the Bee, it is the evil lawyer. Contestants have been dismissed, summarily adjudged, vacated, and remanded to the crying room with such every-day lawyer parlance as “privilege,” “notarize,” “concede,” “debtor,” and “felony,” each of which I have used in a brief in the last six months

and Sports Center doesn’t can’t top this type of commentary

I’m glad this round isn’t on TV, because it makes the kids empty vessels into which we can hypothesize a personality and backstory to match their geography, sponsorship, and the words with which they will forever be associated. Did Theo Terry of Victoria, BC, slip out of the prelims transposing vowels in distracted, sweaty-palmed, palpitating infatuation with Hailey Ungar of Vancouver, BC — a girl who lives but a ferry ride and a world away. Wait for him, Hailey — spelling can be your bridge across the Straits of Georgia and Haro. And what potent concoction of boldness, understanding, and precocious (or precocial) mustacio was it that crowned subcontinental Prateek Kohli as king of the Long Island Jewish World? When will Dr. Bailly finally inform Kate Weir of Wellington, New Zealand, that while she is a speller par excellence, she stinks at geography, because this is the national spelling bee and New Zealand is neither a territory of the US nor a suburb (unlike the provinces)?

Yet, the education wars haven’t receded for the competition either.  A friend who works nearby the site of the National Spelling Bee emails to say:

Interestingly, The contest has drawn a good sized crowd of protesters who are demanding an increase in the number of words that are spelled phonetically. I kid you not.

Congratulations to all the kids as well as their parents and their teachers for making it this far.

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