"Lolly, Lolly, Lolly,

Get your adverbs here."

I was reading the New York Times online this afternoon. For some reason, this sounds somewhat pretentious...like I'm the kind of person who would eschew pickup trucks in favor of a Volvo. Yes, okay, we own a Volvo. Anyway, I was reading the New York Times when I came upon this headline: "Woman Reportedly Found Alive in Haiti Wreckage." Which is wonderful. And remarkable. Even miraculous. All sorts of positive adjectives.

Then it struck me. "Reportedly found." Now that's an odd state of being, right? Not "actually found," but "reportedly found." According to this headline, this poor woman is in a state like Schroedinger's cat, in a superposition of found and unfound.

The Schoolhouse Rock lyrics kept running through my mind:
"An adverb is a word
(That's all it is! and there's a lot of them)
That modifies a verb,
(Sometimes a verb and sometimes)
It modifies an adjective, or else another adverb
And so you see that it's positively, very, very, necessary."

This is the point at which I gave myself a headache. Two Tylenols later, grammar quibbles aside, I pray that this woman was actually found. And that unlike poor Shroedinger's cat who suffers in a sad limbo, she is indeed alive. Even the tiniest glimmer of hope is something to be embraced.

Here are some links, in case you haven't already given, to organizations who're working in Haiti. Donations are not reportedly needed. They're urgently needed.
Partners in Health
American Red Cross
Doctors without Borders