Well Put!
I want to share with you an excerpt from English Prime, the idea of eliminating the verb "to be" from conversation and writing. All your English professors have bugged you with it (mostly in the name of sloppy passive tense or "action" verbs) for no good reason, but this site gives a very clear explanation of its advantages.
"English Prime means English without the verb "to be" or any of its forms. These include: is, are, were, am, be, been. You may, in using this language, use forms of the verb "to be" as helping verbs when the main verb describes action such as "been running" but not as a state of being verb such as "been sick."
The idea for English Prime comes from a concern that "to be" verbs tend to mislead our thinking. They do this in two ways: "to be" suggests an equation, that saying "John is a football player." sounds like "John" and "football player" equal one another, while in reality John has many more categories in which he could fit; calling John a football player sounds like you now know everything that can be known about John.
The verb "to be" also tends to suggest a frozen, static condition. The universe constantly changes, but saying something "is" can lead us to ignore changes. I like the comparison semanticists make between "maps" and "territories": maps do not change as fast as the territories they represent change. Using "is" reinforces the mistaken idea that the territories-words represent continue on with no changes..."