In article >, Margaret Suran
> wrote:

> For decades, some very wise and prominent English speaking men and
> women have proposed a more phonetic spelling of this difficult
> language. Sooner or later this will happen, at least to some extent.
>
> Remember the old puzzle, speaking English, how do you pronounce GHOTI?
Fish.
Fishy, fishy, in the brook
Daddy catch him by the hook
Mommy cook him in the pan
Baby eat him like a man.

I'm partial to this poem:

Reading

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I'd learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to read it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.


Author unknown.

From Beacons, (an elementary school reading book), Houghton Mifflin
Company

OB Food: Grilled chicken breasts, couscous, cherry chipotle sauce atop
the birdy; green beans for Rob, asparagus for me, big mixed greens
salads. Could've been worse. Could've been better.
--
-Barb, <http://www.jamlady.eboard.com> Updated in late-April.
"I read recipes the way I read science fiction: I get to the end and
say,'Well, that's not going to happen.'" - Comedian Rita Rudner,
performance at New York, New York, January 10, 2005.