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But you should know!  Otherwise you become one of those imbecile English 'teachers' who take points of for "He was late,"  because it 'is passive.'  That is not in the passive voice.  It is not in the active voice.  There is no voice.  The sentence's predicate is a copula with a predicate adjective ('late').

Grammar explains how the Legos of our language go together, just as structural mechanics explains how a building stays up, or cost accounting explains how a business pays its bills.

Irving Berlin never learned how to read music.  Only a genius could succeed as he did without learning the formalities of the craft.  But John Williams, an inspired workman, gave us the Star Wars music, using what he learned from predecessors greater than he.

Oh, and you should see how I just ripped up Amy_s's recent chapter in Dictates of Faith.  And after she took what I suggested, I did it again!  My excuse is that I was telling her how I read the story: not as it was written, but as it lay latent in her first version.

Regarding blanket advice about copulas, 'ing'-uffixed words, and such: it is important to understand the grammar they represent.  Ignorance leads to 'English teachers' marking down auxiliary verb constructions and copulas with predicate adjectives as passive constructions.  Such people do great harm.  Knowing the words that describe the grammar lets you discuss it, but first you must learn to see the 'logic' that it follows.

But something does happen.  Alda shrinks away from the question and tries to turn away from it.

More to the point, rat poison must take more than about 8 hours to kill, because other rats will smell what the rats ate recently and avoid it.

Rats in cities have become resistant to warfarin and rat control has had to go back using zinc chloride, which is an irreversable liver poison.  There's also the mitochondrial poison that Tomcat uses.  Nasty stuff.

Coumadin taken regularly is scary.  Patients on it ought to be informed of which varieties of clotting bandages will work in spite of it and which won't.  The good part is that Coumadin's effects can be reversed rapidly with vitamin K.

Cats aren't fully domesticated either.  They've only been living around us for four thousand years or so, since we started domesticating grains.  The New World was ahead of the old here; it took over 10,000 years to domesticate maize to the point where it cannot survive without cultivation, but the house cat came out of Eurasia.  What did grain have to do with it?  Grain stores attract mice and rats in a way that gourds and roots do not.

Not allergic to wine, but my palate is not well educated.  That's a pity, since I probably have the talent for it.

Janet:

There are only two critters in North America that can face the grizzly bear without firearms.  One of them is the polar bear.  The other is the cat-sized, malodorous, chemical-weapon-equipped skunk.

In case you--or a household animal--should become the recipient of this nocturnal rodent's hindside blessings, you should know the remedy: bathe in fresh, cold tomato juice.  I'm not kidding.  You can look it up.

I''m allergic to Wixxel Grease, I'm afraid.

Vegemite: the Aussie verion of Poiled Slurgs.

Yeah ... but it was funny.

Aside: what sort of project could put Brian Eno and Jeff Bezos on one team?  Google 'clock long now'.

I've heard the bugs aren't bad so long as you don't try to order a drink in their bars.

Janet's characters would think a tutu was an oversized neck ruff.