Let's Review Grammar

I received today an email. The email requested that I donate money to a certain organization. You will find an excerpt below.

It's day 5 of our 2006 StrawBale.com fund raiser to raise money
for an organization called "Save The Rain", who are traveling
this November to a remote village called Namballa in Tanzania to
build rain catchment systems to bring clean water to hundreds of
needy children, who have to walk 3 hours every day just to drink
from a disease-ridden muddy stream.

As I read the email, I am taken back to fourth grade. At that age, my classmates and I had not yet learned the art of ending a sentence. Mrs. Valadez would tongue-lash us (it was a Catholic school) because, in our zeal for the written word, we would cram all posible information between every capital letter and period.

I remember one fine morning. Mrs. Valadez sat on a stool at the head of class and reviewed with us an essay assignment that we had completed the day before. Poor Beth Foble. She had been particularly liberal in her vision of all that a sentence could be. Mrs. Valadez called her out by name and proceeded to count the words contained in her "sentence."

She reached twenty words and I became excited. Thirty and I sat up and grinned. Forty and the joy was palpable. Fifty and I was ecstatic. The count ended somewhere near 53. I loved it. How in the world, thought I, could someone write a fifty-three word sentence? What nerve! What genius!

Today, Beth Foble has lost her place in my heart. Strawbale.com has written a 62 word sentence. Applause.