They say things happen in threes

...but in the past few days four prominent celebrities from the world of entertainment have died:

• Ozzy Osbourne, British heavy-metal rocker, 76.
• Malcolm-Jamal-Warner, American actor (can you say Theo Huxtable?), musician, and poet, 54.
• Hulk Hogan, professional wrestler, 71.
• Chuck Mangione, jazz trumpeter, 84.

The causes of their deaths were said to be Parkinson's disease (Osbourne), drowning (Warner), cardiac arrest (Hogan), and natural causes in his sleep (Mangione).

I'm sure Mr. Mangione's 'natural causes' included a cardiac arrest similar to Mr. Hogan's. The only difference seems to have been that one was awake and one was asleep when his heart stopped beating.

I don't mean to be macabre but I found the reportage interesting.

At my age I find everything interesting.

Tomorrow is Mrs. RWP's 90th birthday and the celebrating has already begun. A neighbor threw a surprise party yesterday that included two bouquets of a dozen roses, a gift certificate to a restaurant, home-made pizza, and a rasberry white chocolate mousse cake from the best bakery in the county. On Wednesday another friend took us to lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Tomorrow our immediate family members are coming over to celebrate and cook for us too, but they decided not to surprise us.

I'm glad. We wouldn't want their showing up at our door unannounced to trigger a cardia arrest.

There I go being macabre again.

A thousand pardons. I'll take your shocked looks under advisement for composing future posts.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!

Happy Bastille Day!

Look it up.

After not having seen Jeopardy! at all in several months (can you say 'cold turkey'?), I watched an episode on Friday and knew three answers none of the contestants knew, namely:

What is Bewitched?
What is Bonanza?
What is (are?) the New York Mets?

The three contestants were all Gen Z'ers, and host Ken Jennings said they made him feel old.

Me too.

Of course, I am old, but that is beside the point.

Or maybe that is the point. At least I know what Bastille Day is.

Seacrest out.

It drives me crazy

...when place names are mispronounced by news readers on television.

For example, yesterday the small town of Alvarado, Texas, was in the news. This town is very close to Mansfield, Texas, where I was raised or reared or grew up or however you think I should say it. Amost everyone who mentioned the town on television news broadcasts mispronounced it. For the record, even though in Spanish Alvarado rhymes with bravado, and even though the town was named after Alvarado in the Mexican state of Veracruz, the correct pronunciation of the town in Texas rhymes with Play-Doh or Day-Glo or Laredo, take your pick. All day long on the news channel the people were saying 'al-vuh-RAH-doh' until 4 p.m., when Will Cain, a man who actually is from Texas and broadcasts from Texas, said 'al-vuh-RAY-do' and I felt vindicated. At 7 p.m. I heard Laura Ingraham say it correctly too, but everyone else was back to 'al-vuh-RAH-do'.

I have friends from California who become agitated when people say Paso Robles wrong. Robles does not rhyme with 'go blaze' but with the English word 'nobles'.

I guess it depends on whether you aim for Spanish purism or go with the flow of the local populace.

There is Spanish and then there is Spanish.

In Texas, the San Jacinto monument near Houston is pronounced 'san juh-SIN-toh' or even 'san juh-SIN-tuh'. But actress Betty White, who lived in California, referred to it once as 'san hah-CHEEN-to', which I guess is technically correct but made Texans everywhere roll their eyes.

I have the strange feeling we have discussed these things before, but I may be mistaken.

Waxahachie (another town in Texas) is not WACKS-uh-hatch-ee, it's WALKS-uh-hatch-ee.

The G in Nacogdoches is not pronounced. And the word sounds nothing like the town of Natchitoches a few miles away in Louisiana even though they are named for the same Native American tribe (I think). In Texas it's 'nack-uh-DOH-chiz' and in Louisiana it's 'NACK-uh-tish'. I'm not even kidding.

The Brazos River in Texas is 'BRAZZ-us', not 'BRAH-zose'.

People in Illinois do not pronounce the S in the name of their state but a lot of other people do.

In Florida, Boca Raton is not 'boh-ka ruh-TAHN', it's 'boh-ka ruh-TONE'. Trust me, I lived there for six years.

Don't even get me started on Mackinac Island, Michigan, or Sault Ste. Marie (also in Michigan), or Dahlonega, Georgia, or Poughkeepsie, New York, or Puyallup, Washington.

In North Carolina, the town of Beaufort is 'BOH-fort' but the South Carolina town of the same name is 'BEW-fert'.

Call me anything you like (and I've been called a lot of things), just don't call me late for dinner.

What place-name mispronunciations get your knickers in a twist dander up?

It's funny (funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha)

...how some facts stick in the brain and others don't. Take addresses, for example. I know that my aunt lived at 405 West Avenue in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, before moving to 403 Linden St. and I know that her telephone number was TUrner 6-9280 before there was ever such a thing as an area code. She has been dead since 1987.

My grandfather lived at 321 Runnymede Avenue in Jenkintown for many years before moving to my uncle's house at 325 West Avenue, a block from my aunt. My grandfather died in 1970 and my uncle died in 1983.

I remember that after Mama, Daddy, and I moved from 61 Larch St. in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to Fort Worth, Texas, on a train (it took three days) in August 1947 (I was six), we stayed for a few days at the Majestic Hotel, then rented some rooms in the Arlington Heights section of the city, and eventually rented a whole house at 2332 Chandler Drive East. Had we stayed there, I would have eventually graduated from Paschal High School, but we didn't stay there. A few months later my parents bought an old house on three acres of land outside of Mansfield, Texas (population 774). Our address was Route 1, Box 59. A few years later, without ever having moved an inch, the countyside around Mansfield had grown so much that our address was changed to Route 1, Box 92.

Our first telephone in Mansfield was mounted on the wall and did not have a dial. It was equipped with a hand-operated crank on the side to ring the operator, who completed the connection through, I suppose, a switchboard. Our number was 157J-3. The -3 meant that because we were on a "party line" of at least eight families the indication of an incoming call to our house was three short rings. That operator really earned her money. The telephone company eventually replaced the crankbox on the wall with a phone that sat on the desk; it had a handset we picked up to talk through and listen with but it didn't have a dial. The operator came on the line when a person lifted the handset from its cradle and would complete the connection. Eventually we got still another telephone with both a handset AND a rotary dial. Our telephone number was not nearly as long as my aunt's TUrner 6-9280, no sir, it was short and sweet, 4726. As fans of Hee-Haw will remember, that is an even shorter phone number than Junior Samples had (BR549).

Nowadays we enter numbers into our smartphone's directory and just press the name of the person we want to reach. Or we can simply say, "Siri, call Grandma." As a result, I don't know anyone's telephone number any more.

We've come a long way, baby.

I think.

In the U.S., people say "Hello?" but in the U.K. they say "Are you there?" (or used to). Someone I know used to say "It's your nickel, start talking" and someone else said simply "Speak." It takes all kinds.

I will now close this fascinating post (I can hear you yawning) by telling you the first words spoken into a telephone mouthpiece, according to what I read. In a demonstration to others of his new invention, Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, who was in another room, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." It happened in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1876.

You may also learn something about vegetables

In a comment on the preceding post, kylie (a longtime reader who lives in Australia) asked, "How on earth does one diagram a sentence?"

Two things about kylie became immediately obvious to me:

1. She is much younger than me.
2. She never studied English grammar under Mr. D.P. Morris in Mansfield, Texas, USA.

i did a little searching online, and out of all the tutorials I found I like the following article best:

Diagramming Sentences 101: Step-by-Step Guide

If anyone out there is wondering, like kylie, how on earth one diagrams a sentence, click on that link and you will find out.

You may also learn something about vegetables.

Much ado about nothing

I have been posting to this blog for nearly 18 years now. I have published so many posts and discarded so many potential posts that it is difficult to remember what I have actually told you versus what I may have intended to tell you but thought better of and discarded before it ever saw the light of day. Adding up all of the yearly totals in the archive list over there in the sidebar produces the number 2,286 posts, and doing the math (British, maths) reveals that my average annual production of blogposts is 127 posts. Some years are higher than others, of course, and some are lower. In fact, dear reader, that is the very definition of average.

For a while I included Feedjit in the sidebar and enjoyed keping count of the number of countries from which readers came and seeing the little flags Feedjit displayed. If memory serves (and it obviously doesn't), the country count was either ninety-something or one hundred thirty-something. After a while the little game I had invented lost its attraction and I deleted Feedjit from the sidebar.

For a long time I didn't include labels in my posts, then for another very long time I did, then for a third very long time I didn't again, and now I do when I remember to.

Please don't tell me I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. Someone once criticized Winston Churchill for doing so and he replied that that was the sort of criticism up with which he would not put. I think that people who never end sentences with prepositions don't know what language is all ABOUT, and don't know what prepositions are FOR.

You may try to diagram the sentences in the preceding paragraph if you care to, but no extra credit will be given.

Why am I telling you all this?

I don't know, but a shrink (British, psychologist) could probably give you reasons. I could even recommend one, my first cousin, Dr. Philip F. Caracena, but since he died in 2016 at the age of 81 he probably isn't taking new patients at this time.

I am in rare form this afternoon.

I think the reason is that I am composing this post on my desktop computer's keyboard rather than on my smartphone, and my fingers can almost keep up with my mind on a full-sized keyboard. They lag disappointingly behind my mind when I'm using my smartphone keyboard. Ergo, I am somewhat giddy at being able to keep up with my thought processes (I am a fast typist) and am capturing all the flotsam and jetsam along with the pithy stuff.

If you have encountered any pithy stuff so far, please let me know where it is.

I will now close and post this, my 2,287th post, because Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I have to get ready to go to our friend's house later today for homemade pizza and root beer floats. The basic food groups are so important, n'est-ce pas?

Truth in posting: No alcohol was consumed during the creation of this post. I'm just happy to be alive.

Ah, yes, I remember it well

Whether you know it or not, June 23, 1969 was a very important day. On that day IBM (International Business Machines) "unbundled" its software and services from its hardware. Up until that day, if you bought IBM hardware, you also were required to buy IBM software. With a stroke of the pen at IBM's corporate headquarters in Armonk, Westchester County, New York, and a little help from a lawsuit initiated by the United States Department Of Justice, the computer software industry was born.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

I thought you would want to know.

After being honorably discharged from a four-years-and-nine-months stint in the United Stated Air Force, during which time I had received training as a computer programmer, I was hired by the IBM Corporation on November 1, 1965, and began working for it/them in Poughkeepsie, New York. Almost exactly three years later, the company transferred me to its brand new faciliy (evidence: we were housed in temporary trailers for months until the new building was built) in Boca Raton, Florida.

On February 1, 1969, I flew to Stockholm, Sweden, and worked at the IBM facility on Lidingö until March 1, at which time I flew back to Boca Raton (and, boy, were my arms tired).

The next big date in my work history for I've Been Moved is the "unbundling announcement" (as it was called) on June 23, 1969. Later events inclue my transfer to Atlanta, Georgia in 1975 and my resignation from the company in 1978, and my re-entrance into the company in 1997, and my retirement from the company in 2000. None of this is probably of any interest to anyone but me.

As a matter of record, I also posted about the unbundling in two other posts, in 2014 and 2016. You can read those posts if you type "unbundling" into the search box at the top left of the blog's header. You may even learn what a troglodyte is.

Onward and upward to more important things, or as Buzz Lightyear often said, "To infinity and beyond!"

That is, Ta-Ta For Now.

Nostalgia Porn, anyone?

I am not a fan of "country music" because I often find it twangy and nasal and performed poorly. But I heard a song recently that has been around since 1972 that I really like. You may have known it for years but it was brand new to me.

Someone said many years ago that a great country song consists of three chords and the truth. That phrase is now inscribed on a wall of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.

When brothers Harold Reid and Don Reid wrote the words that became "Class Of '57" they documented truth.

"Class Of '57"

Tommy's selling used cars, Nancy's fixing hair
Harvey runs a grocery store and Margaret doesn't care
Jerry drives a truck for Sears and Charlotte's on the make
And Paul sells life insurance and part-time real estate

Helen is a hostess, Frank works at the mill
Janet teaches grade school and prob'ly always will
Bob works for the city and Jack's in lab research
And Peggy plays organ at the Presbyterian Church

And the class of '57 had its dreams
Oh, we all thought we'd change the world with our great works and deeds
Or maybe we just thought the world would change to fit our needs
The class of '57 had its dreams

Betty runs a trailer park, Jan sells Tupperware
Randy's on an insane ward and Mary's on welfare
Charlie took a job with Ford and Joe took Freddie's wife
Charlotte took a millionaire and Freddie took his life

John is big in cattle, Ray is deep in debt
Where Mavis finally wound up is anybody's bet
Linda married Sonny, Brenda married me
And the class of all of us is just a part of history

And the class of '57 had its dreams
But living life day to day is never like it seems
Things get complicated when you get past eighteen
But the class of '57 had its dreams
Oh, the class of '57 had its dreams

(end of song)

Truth in blogging: I was not a part of the class of '57, I graduated in the class of '58. But the song resonated with me nevertheless. Apparently I have reached the age where what might be described as Nosalgia Porn is attractive. My date on the night we graduated actually was named Brenda, but she didn't marry me.

No matter when you graduated, I think every class has had its dreams, and every class looks back with a combination of fondness, accomplishment, failure, and regret.

What thinkest you?

To hear the song performed, and performed well, enter Class of 57 Brothers Of The Heart into your favorite (British, favourite) search engine.

Food for thought, episode 17,643

I have wondered about something for a long time that I think we have never discussed on this blog. Let's discuss it today. It's the little word 'as'.

Say what?

Let me explain. I'm referring specifically to the word 'as' found in the middle of a particular sentence in the middle of what Christians call The Lord's Prayer. If you're unfamiliar with that prayer, it's the one that begins "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be The mame."

Here is the sentence I'm talking about:

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Some traditions use this wording intead: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

But what does that 'as' mean exactly? Here are some possibilities:

1. Because.
2. Only to the same extent that (and not one whit more than).
3. At the very same instant that (and not one second sooner than).
4. At some future unspecified time, possibly just before I take my last breath or even later such as on a Day of Judgment).
5. Inasmuch as (that is, since).
6. For it is our intent to (even if we never actually get around to).

My mother would often say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let that sink in.

Perhaps I am overthinking this. Perhaps it is enough simply to note that immediately following the 'Amen' on that prayer in the sixth chapter of Matthew's gospel are the following words:

'For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive your trespasses: But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you.'

It is sobering to contemplate on a day when a great deal of so-called "mostly peaceful" but often quite violent "protest" is being predicted and even encouraged in some quarters.

Perhaps we ought to stop saying 'God bless America' so much and start praying 'God save America' instead.

P.S. - Today is (a) Flag Day, which commemorates Betsy Ross presenting George Washington with the first American flag on June 14, 1777; (b) a military parade in Washington D.C. in observance of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, which the Continental Congress in Philadelphia established on June 14, 1775; and (c) the 79th birthday of President Donald J. Trump, who was born on June 14, 1946. These are apparently occasions of either pride and happiness or hate and disgust, depending on one's political views.

Today is an important anniversary

(Editor's note. This post from the archives was originally published in 2009. --RWP)

On June 6, 1944, D-Day went forward as planned, World War II eventually ended, and names like Eisenhower and Churchill made their way into the history books.

On June 6, 1958, in the early afternoon, on the soap opera As The World Turns, Claire finally married Dr. Doug Cassen. Claire was the mother of Ellen Lowell who was a friend of Penny Hughes who...it really is too complicated to explain.

I don’t remember the former event (I was only three) but I distinctly remember the latter because at seven in the evening on the same day, my dad and stepmother were married in one of the smallest churches I ever saw (Methodist, before they merged with the Evangelical United Brethren and started calling themselves United Methodists) in one of the smallest towns I ever saw (Coppell, Texas, population approximately 600). Dad was 52. Mildred was 43. I was 17. Two weeks earlier I had graduated from high school in a town 30 miles away. Two months before that my dad and stepmother had been introduced by one of her brothers-in-law who worked at the same aircraft plant as my dad. Five months before that, on October 4, 1957, the day the Russians launched Sputnik, my mother had died after an eight-year battle against cancer.

Suddenly I was no longer an only child living with a widowed father, I was the middle one of five children. Suddenly I had two new older siblings (Bob and Ed) and two new younger siblings (Patsy and Billy). Suddenly I had a new name to avoid confusion (Bob Jr.). Suddenly I was no longer two thousand miles away from any aunt, uncle, or cousin. I had four new aunts (Cleo, Margaret, Faye, and Sue) and their husbands (Romie, Fritz, Oliver, and Jack) and five new uncles (J.D., Russ Jr., Marvin, Billy, and Freddie) and their wives (Ovaline, Dorothy, Thelma, LaWanda, and Martha) and an endless supply of new cousins (Kenneth, Janice, Jerry, Jimmy Wayne, Mike, Gary, Helen, Carol, Libby, Danny, Larry, Daisy, Ray, Brenda, Connie, Cindy, Barry, Terry, Jeff, Paula, Russ, and a few I have probably left out). And even though both of my grandmothers had died before I was born and one grandfather whom I had never met died in Iowa when I was seven and my other grandfather whom I had seen only once when I was 14 lived far away in Pennsylvania, I had a brand new set of grandparents (Russ Sr. and Virginia). And every last one of these new relatives lived nearby, and they were used to getting together often. It felt a lot like this:

...only bigger. Don’t bother clicking; it’s futile.

All of my new ready-made family absorbed my presence rather easily (what's one more among so many?) but for me it was a real culture shock at the time.

Eventually I adjusted and life went on. Sometimes my dad would call my stepmother Ruth by mistake and sometimes she would call him Clarence. My dad lived for nine years after that eventful day in June 1958. My stepmother eventually married again to a man named John and they were together for nearly thirty-five years, and I said all that to say this:

You can get used to just about anything if you put your mind to it.

Eventually I even had sisters-in-law (Linda, Judy, and Beverly) and a brother-in-law (Clyde) and lots of nieces and nephews -- Stacy, Sam, Donald Bruce, Pam, Penny (who is named, and I’m not kidding, after Penny Hughes from As the World Turns), William, and Sandra. And now there are even great-nieces and great-nephews.

But it did take some time to get used to being called Bob Jr.

The two men in the photo above are not Bob and Bob Jr., they are Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

(Editor's note. Coppell, Texas, is not so tiny any more. According to the U.S. Census Bureau folks, it had about 42,000 residents in 2020. That fact will take me more time to get used to than being called Bob Jr. --RWP)

Sic transit gloria mundi, memento mori, and other Latin expressions

The following three sentences did not originate with me but they provide a good jumping off place (translation: inspiration) for what I want to say today:

In my 20s, I spent a lot of time wondering what other people thought about me.

In my 40s, I didn't care at all what other people thought about me.

In my 60s, I realized that other people were not thinking about me at all; they were much too busy thinking about themselves.

I want to add a fourth item to that list:

In my 80s, I have realized that most of the people I ever thought about or who might ever have thought about me are dead.

One day I will be dead too.

And so will you.

Everybody dies eventually. The mortality rate is 100%.

I hope this hasn't come as a shock to you.

Actress (or more linguistically preferred nowadays, actor) Loretta Swit (Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in M*A*S*H) died this week but Margaret O'Brien is still alive.

If you don't know who Margaret O'Brien is, look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.

Dick Martin of the comedy team Rowan and Martin used to say "look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls" on Laugh-In. Today he would probably say to google it. If you have never heard of Rowan and Martin or Laugh-In you are probably a member of Gen Z or Gen Y or Gen X or even possibly a Millennial. If so, you should stop reading the blogs of old people and find a more productive way to spend your time, preferably on something that pays well.

P.S. - Fortunately, for Christians there is the hope provided by the resurrection of Christ. Look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.

Artificial Intelligence is not perfect quite yet

My desktop computer's screen saver or wallpaper or whatever it is informed me this morning that May 29th is World Otter Day. I don't know why otters would even have a day or why it would fall on May 29th and I'm in no hurry to find out.

Instead, I want to continue a variation of a pet peeve we have discussed in a few previous posts. We talked before about the sometimes laughable, sometimes infuriating inaccuracies that closed captioning produces on one's television screen. Today we will look at a couple of examples that happened on my smart phone when I asked for the lyrics to a song.

From some of the output I received I gather that someone or something (voice-recognition software?) listens to a recording of the requested song and produces a printed copy of what he, she, or it thinks he, she, or it heard.

Here are two sets of lyrics that happen to be gospel songs. One was written by Bill and Gloria Gaither several decades ago as a song for children. The other is a fairly recent song written by their adult daughter Suzanne. I have highlighted the boo-boos (by which I mean obvious errors if one knows the songs) in red:


1. I Am A Promise

[Chorus]
I am a promise, I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital P
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learning to hear God's voice
And I am trying to make the right choices
I'm a promise to be anything He wants me to be

[Bridge]
I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything that He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountsin
I can cross the White Sea
I am a great big promise you see

and then the Chorus is repeated. There is actually an area on Russia's northwestern coast that is called the White Sea, but it has nothing to do with this song. Instead of 'White Sea' the transcription should have read 'wide sea'.


2. Jesus Is Everywhere

[Verse 1]
In the coldest part of Scotland
The darkest night of the year
I found a church where the lights were dim
And I sat out in the rain
And we sang about a baby
Angel voices filled that place
I could feel the love of Jesus
And the tears ran down my face

[Chorus]
Jesus is in the water
Jesus is in the wine
Jesus is standing next to us
In the noisy Starbucks line
Jesus is in Manhattan
Jesus is in St. Claire
He's waiting around the corner
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere

[Verse 2]
On a winding street in Venice
On the sunny side of town
Church bells rang out in Saint Loco
So we went in and sat down
We forgot that it was Sunday
The priest was hard to understand
But we heard the word for Jesus
Holding waivers in our hands

[Chorus]

[Bridge] In the darkest hour of nighttime
In the dark night of the soul
In the balmy heat of summer
In the bitter winter cold
In the halls of every mansion
In apartments where you sleep
if You've never gone too far
And you're never in too deep

and then, surprise, the chorus is repeated. Here are the corrections to the red lyrics:

'I sat out in the rain' should be 'I sat down in the rear'.

Anybody with half a brain or any familiarity with either Venice or Christianity would know (or could guess) that church bells rang out in San Marco, not Saint Loco (seriously, Saint Loco?) and Suzanne and her companion were holding wafers, not waivers, in their hands.

Apparently AI doesn't have half a brain just yet.

I am feeling so superior to AI at the moment, but it is probably a bit premature of me to do so. I've heard that AI is a fast learner.

A word to the wise: Hold the gloating until a date to be announced later.

Things that make me go Hmmm #17,643

Some people's identities change more often than I change socks. I'm serious. My friend Patty B____ is now Patty P____ M____ on Facebook. How can anyone find her? My friend Terri H____ is now Terri R____ C____. My friend Clara L____ has changed the most and is now Clara A____ S____ M____. One woman at our church, Paula M____ J____, has an adult son whose surname starts with T. As hawkers often say at sporting events, you can't tell the players without a program.

My wife was never given a middle name, so she started using her maiden name as her middle name after we were married. Both my mother and my daughter dropped their given middle names (one was E____ and one was R____) when they married and, like my wife, began using their maiden names as their middle names. This used to be common for married women to do.

Nowadays there are no rules. One of our daughters-in-law still uses the old method, dropping her middle name T____ and using her maiden name P____ as her middle name and initial. Our other daughter-in-law has always gone by her middle name and never used her first name at all. On social media she is known by her middle name and her married name only, with no reference to either her first name or her maiden name. Among our granddaughters-in-law (we have five), three use the 'first name'-'maiden name'-'married name' pattern, one uses the 'first name'-'married name' (no middle name) pattern, and one uses the 'first name'-'middle name'-'married name' (no maiden name) pattern.

When I worked in Florida years ago, my colleague Frank L____ and his wife divorced and Mrs.L____ was awarded custody of the children. Then my colleague Pete Z____ and his wife divorced and Mrs. Z____ was awarded custody of the children. A little while later, Frank L____ married the former Mrs. Z____, and Pete Z____ married the former Mrs. L____. All of the children attended the same elementary school and some were even in the same classrooms. So the report cards for the Z____ children were sent to the L____ home, and the report cards for the L____ children were sent to the Z____ home. Parent-teacher conferences must have proven interesting for the faculty and administrators at the school.

If you are completely confused at this point, join the club.

I hope this post has given my American readers something to ponder besides our fallen military heroes on this Memorial Day. I further hope that it hasn't given any of my readers, American or otherwise, a headache.

Round and round she goes

Tonight we (Mrs. RWP and I) watched Jeopardy! for the first time in several monhs and the crickets (no buzz-ins from the three contestants but I knew the answers) were out in abundance on the following:

Who is Richard Nixon?
Who is Robert Louis Stevenson?
What is live oak?

The clues were (1) he appointed William Rehnquist to the United States Supreme Court, (2) his poem "Requiem" included the line 'home is the sailor, home from the sea', and (3) a photograph of a tree in a category entitled "L.O."

We also watched an episode of Finding Your Roots, another program we hadn't watched in several months.

Either we have regressed or everything that goes around comes around.

We have two more graduates in the family as of last week. One of our grandsons received his Bachelor's degree and another grandson received his Master's degree. We have no buttons left.

More memory lane memories

Children can be bullies, and childhood taunts are often cruel and unkind. Here are a few I remember hearing back in the 1950s:

Fatty, Fatty, two by four,
Can't get through the kitchen door.

Here comes the bride
Short, fat, and wide.
Can't get through the church door
She'll have to stay outside.

Happy birthday to you
You live in a zoo
You stink like a monkey
And you look line one too.

That last one was particularly popular in 4th- and 5th-grade during recess.

Mrs. Rhymeswithplague (the lovely Ellie) remembers choosing team members or "It" during playground games by saying "Ink, skink, sky blue, all out but you." In my part of the world (Texas) we were more crass:

Eeny, meany, miney, moe
Catch a [n-word] by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny, meany, miney, moe

After my time, the vile n-word was replaced by 'tiger' and God was in His heaven, all was right with the world.

Not.

My theory and observation is that childhood bullies left unconfronted and uncorrected grow up to be adult bullies.

My parents taught me that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

With all due respect, I think they were wrong.

Before endinng this post I want to wish all mothers everywhere a Happy Mother's Day even if it is not Mother's Day where you are, and I also want to tell you that tomorrow, May 12th, is the 119th anniversary of my dad's birth in 1906. Unfortunately, he died in 1967.

A trip down memory lane

When I was young there was no internet, no X (formerly known as Twitter), no Instagram no Snapchat, no online shopping, no online banking, no Zelle, no Venmo, no Paypal, no electric cars, no hybrids, no bitcoin, no AI, no Apple watch, no Ring doorbell, no cell phones, no anything almost.

What there was was blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Young folk, Winston Churchill said that.

Things have changed massively in my lifetime, not necessarily for the better, even though many labor-saving (British, labour-saving) devices have been invented.

I'm so old I can remember playing with a slinky, a hula hoop, roller skates, a Viewmaster Stereoscope, and pick up stix (little girls played jacks, hopscotch, skipped rope, and pushed dolls around in small baby carriages (British, perambulators).

I can remember gasoline (petrol) costing 17.9¢ per gallon.

I'm so old I can remember when Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen Degeneres were funny.

I remember Dr. Jonas Salk. I remember Betty Furness, Ish Kabibble, S&H green stamps, Kay Kyser's College Of Musical Knowledge. I remember the bouncing ball on Sing Along With Mitch. I remember Jerry Lewis's annual telethons to raise money to find a cure for muscular dystrophe. I remember Ozzie and Harriet.

I remember Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier. I remember Mark Spitz. I remember Olga Korbut. I remember Torvill and Dean in lavender costumes dancing on ice skates to Ravel's Boléro.

I remember Roy Rogers and Trigger.

This little trip down memory lane has been provided by a person who in less than two weeks will have been married to the same woman for 62 years. They have gone by in a flash.

Life now includes aches and pains, I am old and wrinkled, and a stranger looks out at me from the mirror.

How to tell if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome

This is an important public service announcement regarding Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

In a nutshell, when President Donald Trump is being serious, people with TDS think he is joking; and when he is joking, they think he is serious.

People without TDS know intuitively when President Trump is being serious and when he is joking.

Then there are the people like me who cannot tell but believe that on any particular day and any particular subject President Trump is fully capable of either joking or being serious, and possibly of doing both at the same time. His modue operandi seems to be to run it up a flagpole and see if anybody salutes it.

Here is a self-test to determine your TDS status/susceptibility:

Make Canada the 51st state (joke or serious?)
Buy Greenland (joke or serious?)
Become pope (joke or serious?)
Run for a third term (joke or serious?)
Send U.S. troops into Mexico to destroy drug cartels (joke or serious?)
Take back the Panama Canal (joke or serous?)

If you haven't been paying attention or if you live in another part of the world, these are all topics that have been floated in the first 100 days of what is being called the Trump 2.0 administration. FYI, only 1,361 days remain in the Trump 2.0 administration, including the Leap Day in 2028.

Let the celebrating begin.

It’s Star Wars Day

May the fourth be with you.

Not original with me, of course, but I couldn't resist the urge to say it.

Potpourri #17,643

Today I heard a man on television speaking about deportees say "approximately about 576 people"; a couple of minutes later he said "about 1,154 people" and I felt myself turning into my old high-school English teacher, Mr. D. P. Morris. First of all, the phrase "approximately about" is redundant and should never be used. Say one or the other, but not both. In addition, please don't use the qualifiers except with a non-specific, inexact figure. It is okay in the examples I cited to say "approximately 600" and "about 1,150" but neither "approximate" nor "anout" is appropriate with such specific numbers as 576 or 1,154. It's too bad the man on television couldnt't hear me. He might have learned something. I'm just saying.

Speaking properly used to be the mark of an educated person but those days have gone with the wind. Swearing in public used to be the mark of an uncouth lout but nowadays even our elected representatives in suits and ties do it without a second thought. Interesting. Sad, but interesting.

Someone has said that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. I guess the ability to grow a beard and having the urge to, um, procreate are of no consequence.

On another newscast today a woman said, and I quote, "In 2023 California's budget deficit was $32 billion dollars. In 2024 it doubled to $46 billion dollars." I found myself yelling at the television screen that 32 doubled is 64, not 46. Did the printed copy she was reading contain a typo that she read faithfully without thinking about it or was the copy correct and the reader was dyslexic? We'll never know because the reader didn't correct herself and no one else on the set asked a question or made a comment about the discrepancy.

Today is May 1st, which I just learned is the mid-point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. There are three other such mid-points during the year: between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, and between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to learn the dates on which these mid-points fall and report the information in a comment.

This post will self-destruct in five seconds.

I'm kidding, but didn't it make you think of Mission Impossible?

Two negatives make a positive

That's what I was taught back in the Dark Ages. The word "ain't" was verboten. However, with the continued decline in Anerica's education system and the general dumbing down of the American public over the last several decades, more and more the English language is spoken and written improperly, or if that is too strong a word, without regard for rules.

Instead of saying, "He and I are friends" people will say, "Me and him are friends" (that is, they use objective case when nominative case is called for).

Instead of saying, "The big dog chased her and me down the road" people will say "The big dog chasd she and I down the road" (that is, they use nominative case when objective case is called for).

People who should know better say "ain't" instead of "am not" or "isn't" or "aren't". Grammar teachers shudder.

Double negatives are everywhere, invading even gospel music. Here are four examples that make me cringe:

1. "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down"
2. "I Wouldn't Take Nothin' For My Journey Now"
3. In the song "Rise Again" one line says "ain't no power on earth can tie me down"
4. "He Ain't Never Done Me Nothin' But Good"

To give secular music its due, "Ain't misbehavin', I'm savin' my love for you" goes back generations. George Gershwin put "It ain't necessarily so" into Porgy And Bess.

Some people just don't know better, their schooling having gone in one ear and out the other. Some people know better but just don't care. And neither do they care, apparently, how they might be viewed by others or how unlikely they are to advance in their careers.

Am I being a snob? I hope not. I don't want to be. We strive to be a classless society in the United States, where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. Nobody should have anything to prove. But maybe one of this country's greatest assets has produced an unfortunate effect. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Telescopes and microscopes are both very useful for seeing, but they look at different things.

On the other hand, the New Testament was not written in classical Greek but in koine Greek, the common language of the streets. Also, St.Jerome's updating of an earlier Latin version of the Bible became known as the Vulgate because he used the most common dialect among the people.

Is it important or unimportant? A linguistic scandal or much ado about nothing as long as a person can be understood? One wonders. Let me know in a comment what you think.

Krishti u ngjall! Vërtetë u ngjall!

(This post has appeared on this blog twice previously, first on April 12, 2009, and again on April 5, 2015.)

The title of this post is in old-style Albanian, the language my wife’s parents spoke.

Every year, on a certain day, when Mom and Pop were still alive, we would call them in Florida or they would call us in Nebraska or New York or Florida or Georgia (we moved a lot) and whichever party said “Hello?” heard the words, “Krishti u ngjall!”

The response was always immediate from the other person: “Vërtetë u ngjall!”

Phonetically, it sounded something like this:

KRISH-tee oong-ee-AHL! vair-TET oong-ee-AHL!

What a strange thing to do, you might be thinking.

Not at all. If you’re curious what those strange phrases might mean, here is an English translation: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

The day, of course, was Easter Sunday -- Resurrection Day -- and we were simply doing what Christians have been doing in various places and in various languages for two thousand years.

After Pop died in 1983 and Mom died in 1986, we continued the traditional Albanian Easter greeting with Mrs RWP’s aunt in North Carolina. Now she is gone, too. There is nobody left in the family to speak Albanian to.

So, very early this morning, as the day was beginning to dawn, I said to Mrs. RWP, “Krishti u ngjall!” and she replied, “Vërtetë u ngjall!” Some traditions are worth preserving.

This was not only an Easter greeting, it was something like the communion of the saints, I think. Some of them on earth, and some of them in Heaven. But all in agreement.

In many places around the world, in many languages, many people said these words today. We said them at our own church (Pentecostal, not Albanian Orthodox) this morning. The pastor said, “Christ is risen!” and the entire congregation replied, “He is risen indeed!” The pastor said it three times, and after the third response, spontaneous applause broke out in the choir and among the congregation.

As I said, the communion of the saints.

This afternoon I found on the Internet a photograph of the interior of Saints Peter and Paul Albanian Orthodox Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the church Mrs. RWP attended as a child with her mother, father, and brother. It was the first time my wife had seen this church since 1946. The church is decorated in the photograph, not for Easter, but for another Christian holiday.

Christmas. You may have heard of it.


I thought it would be interesting to post the comments from 2009 and 2015 as well. Here are the ones from 2009:

13 comments:

Reamus said...

We should all keep such traditions alive, Mr. RWP, thank you for sharing a fine post.

April 12, 2009 at 11:32 PM

Pat - Arkansas said...

Alleluia! Alleluia!

April 13, 2009 at 9:52 AM

bARE-eYED sUN said...

beutiful tradition, sentiment and photo. :-)

thank you

April 14, 2009 at 2:10 AM

Jeannelle said...

Oh, Rhymsie, this is a wonderful post! What a treasure to know those ancient Easter words in a unique language! Yes, keep the tradition alive of speaking them.

I woke up too early and decided to change my blogpost to publish on April 15, but after seeing the CHRISTMAS photo on your post, I'm leaving it for today, the 14th.

A belated Merry Easter to you!

April 14, 2009 at 5:25 AM

Egghead said...

What a beautiful gift you gave your wife. That is the sweetest thing I have heard in a long time.

April 15, 2009 at 6:28 PM

rhymeswithplague said...

Thank you to everyone who commented:

Reamus - This tradition will probably end in our family with the two of us. Our children don't speak Albanian, let alone their spouses. Perhaps we can teach the grandchildren, though.

Pat - Arkansas - So you liked it then....

bARE-eYED sUN - Welcome, first-timer! I'm glad you enjoyed the post. Come back often.

Jeannelle - And an even more belated Merry Easter to you!

Egghead (Vonda) - We've been doing this every Easter for 46 years now.

April 15, 2009 at 10:01 PM

Anonymous said...

Krishti u ngjall!

April 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM

A Lady's Life said...

Very beautiful church.

April 21, 2009 at 7:23 PM

RachelS. said...

Dua kishën aq shumë! se foto e kishës është e bukur! Unë jam shqiptare si ju!Kristi Ngjall!

April 14, 2012 at 8:00 PM

rhymeswithplague said...

A Lady's Life, I think so too!

RachelS., thanks for commenting! I used translate.google.com to learn that you said, "I love church so much! that picture of the church is beautiful! I am Albanian like you! Kristi Risen!"

April 14, 2012 at 10:10 PM

Qafzez said...

Krishti u ngjall! Albanian American from Philadelphia and I attend this beautiful Church. I don't speak much Albanian either but we are Albanian Orthodox and its in our soul. Important to pass these traditions on to future generations. Come visit!

May 5, 2013 at 7:24 AM

rhymeswithplague said...

Welcome, Qafzez, to this little corner of Blogworld. Ask some of the very oldest people in your church if they remember Jim and Carrie Cudse (Dhimitri and Ksanthipi Kuci) or Nelson and Christine Pitchi. The names of the children in the two families were Mike, Eleanor, Nancy, and Johnny. These were Mrs. RWP's parents and uncle and aunt. They all moved to North Carolina around 1946.

May 5, 2013 at 8:29 AM

Klahanie said...

What a wonderful, thoughtful tradition to be upheld.

I sense the ambience.

Thank you, my kind friend.

Gary

April 7, 2015 at 10:50 PM

...and here are the comments from 2015:

4 comments:

All Consuming said...

A lovely tradition indeed, and educational for me as well. Do teach the Grandchildren yes! ? And does Mrs RWP speak Albanian too? Or have you said that and I missed it, (brain being slow as it is at present).

April 5, 2015 at 1:54 PM

Yorkshire Pudding said...

Like other Christian festivals or special days, Easter has its origins in pagan history. Oestre was a goddess of the springtime and of hope for the future. (RWP cage now rattled. The beast within growls. Grrrr!)

April 6, 2015 at 6:41 AM

rhymeswithplague said...

All Consuming (Michelle), Mrs. RWP understands spoken Albanian but never learned to speak it (or read it or write it) herself. She and her mom would have the most unusual bilingual conversations, her mom in Albanian and Mrs. RWP in English. It was strange to behold. I have managed to learn a little bit on my own. For example, Mirë mëngjes (Good morning), Unë të dua (I love you), and of course, Krishti u ngjall! Vërtetë u ngjall! (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!)....

Yorkshire Pudding (Neil), au contraire! I regret to inform you that the beast within is not growling and the RWP cage has not been rattled. Of course Oestre was a goddess of springtime and there is also Ishtar and Astarte and Ashtoreth (some of them are even fertility goddesses). My post was not about them. We didn't wish one another a "Happy Easter"...my post is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, not green grass or baby chicks or bunny rabbits. I cannot explain Jesus any more than someone in the dark can explain a flashlight. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said 700 years before Christ, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. " And that much, as pertains to me at least, is true.

April 6, 2015 at 9:27 AM

Hilltophomesteader said...

Well said, Mr. RWP. My prayer is that all in the darkness will see the light. Sorry to be late, but He is, indeed, Risen, and I am glad.

April 7, 2015 at 1:02 AM

More evidence I am slipping

...can be found in the sad fact that April 18th is now 21/24ths over in my time zone (Eastern Daylight Time, EDT) and I have neglected to tell you that today is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride, an event that inspired the 19th-centuy Anerican poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) to write a very famous poem called, what else, "Paul Revere's Ride" which begins:

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year."

The poem went on to tell of the expected British invasion of the American colonies and how Paul Revere on the opposite shore would be, ready to ride and spread the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm, for the country folk to be up and to arm if his friend would climb to the belfry of North Church and signal him via lantern light whether the invasion was by land or by sea, specifically, one if by land and two if by sea.

You ought to read it sometime.

Revere was a silversmith in Boston, Massachusetts and a member of the colonial group The Sons Of Liberty at the beginning of the American Revolution.

Another 19th-century American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), wrote another poem to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord that took place the following day. The poem, called "Concord Hymn", begins:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."

I end this post by telling you that a word that means 250th anniversary is semiquincentennial (literally half-500th).

I will sleep well tonight.

What’s in a name?

William Shakespeare had Juliet Capulet say of Romeo Montague, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"; Robert Burns wrote, "O my Luve's like a red, red rose that's newly sprung in June"; William Faulkner gave us A Rose For Emily; Gertrude Stein repeated herself with "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" (not "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" as some erroneously think).

Would it make a difference if Shakespeare had decided to have Juliet say gladiola instead? What if Burns said his Luve was like a yellow dandelion? What if Faulkner had written A Chrysanthemum For Emily? If Gertrude Stein said "Aster is an aster is an aster is an aster" would it have been an unmitigated disaster?

I jest, and yet names, which are thought to be important, are changed all the time:

• Denali in Alaska became Mt.McKinley in 1896, then Alaska changed it back to Denali in 1975. The federal government still referred to it as Mt. McKinle until 2015, when it agreed with Alaska and began calling it Denali as well. Now President Trump wants it to be Mt. McKinley again.
• Cape Canaveral in Florida was called Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, when it became Cape Canaveral again.
• George Washinton's cabinet included a Department of War. In 1947 it was renamed during President Truman's administration and became the Department of Defense.
• Speaking of Departments at the Federal level, there was a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) until President Carter carved out a separate Department of Education. What remained was not called the Department of Health and Welfare (HW) but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
• Terminus, Georgia became Thrasherville, Georgia, which became Marthasville, Georgia, which became Atlanta, Georgia.
• Hot Springs, New Mexico, changed its name to Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico.
• Fort Christina, New Sweden is now called Wilmington, Delaware.
• Burma is Myanmar, Siam is Thailand, East Pakistan is Bangladesh.
• A whole post could be devoted to the name changes of countries in Africa. Today's map looks nothing like the one of my youth.
• The Gulf of Mexico is now being called the Gulf of America. For how long, nobody knows.

None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See Department: This is not about name changes, just names in general. When I lived in Bellevue, Nebraska, in the 1960s, I could look across the Missouri River and see Pottawattamie County, Iowa. I thought at the time that the name Pottawattamie was very funny. It is, of course, the name of a Native American tribe, not funny at all. It never occurred to me until today that Bellevue is in Sarpy County, Nebraska. (Moral: When you point a finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.)

Civil War Week

My all-time favorite joke is this one I heard Red Skelton tell on his television show 50 years ago:

A spaceship from Mars lands on earth. Two Martians get out, look around, and start walking up the street. They see a parking meter, and one Martian turns to the other and says, "Do you have change for a hern?"

Maybe it's an acquired taste. I think it is hilarious, but then I am weird. I like weird movies, too, really quirky ones like Harold And Maude and Big Fish and Raising Arizona, and I like weird television series like Twin Peaks and Six Feet Under and Northern Exposure..

Younger readers, if there are any, have no idea what I'm talking about. Suffice it to say that I told you I am weird.

I have dubbed this week Civil War Week because (a) 164 years ago today on April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina; (b) 160 years ago this past Wednesday on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Appomattox, Virginia, bringing an end to the Civil War; and (c) also 160 years ago this week, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.

In between were famous battles and sieges with names like Manassas (Bull Run), Vickburg, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Atlanta, and on and on. Over 698,000 Americans lost their lives at a time when the nation's population was 31,443,321 according to the census of 1860. Some modern research concludes that a more accurate estimate is closer to 750,000 with a range from 650,000 to 850,000. According to the National Park Service, there were 642,427 Union casualties, including 110,100 killed in battle and 224,580 deaths from diseases like dysentery and typhoid, and that there were 483,026 Confederate casualties with 94,000 killed in battle and 164,000 deaths from disease. Whatever the actual numbers were, around 2% of the total U.S. population at the time perished in the Civil War.

By contrast, the U.S. casualty figures for World War II are 416,800 military personnel killed and 671,278 wounded. More than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War II. Since the U.S. population in 1940 was 132,164,569 the deaths of Americans in World War II represented 0.003% of the nation.

World War II casualties in the United Kingdom were 383,600 military deaths and 450,700 civilian deaths according to one chart. Germany's figures are staggering, 5,533,000 military deaths and 6,600,000 to 8,800,000 civilian deaths. A very large proportion of the civilian deaths were victims of the Holocaust carried out by the leaders of the Nazi regime. In the Pacific, Japan's figures are 2,120,000 military deaths and 2,600,000 to 3,100,000 civilian deaths, of which several hundred thousand perished when the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Yokohama and Nagasaki.

As General William Tecumseh Sherman once said, "War is hell."

I love the old spiritual song that goes, "I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside, ain't gonna study war no more."

I can admit it when I am wrong

Somewhere I read or heard or latched onto the idea that Donald J. Trump's mother had been involved in a well-documented and fairly lengthy religious revival that had occurred on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I was wrong. She wasn't.

Mary Trump neé MacLeod was indeed born in the village of Tong, four miles from the town of Stornoway (home of blogger Graham Barry Edwards) on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland in 1912. In 1932 she emigrated to the United States, met and married Fred Trump, and bore several children, the youngest of whom, Donald John, was born on June 14 (Flag Day) in 1946. President number 45/47 took the oath of office in 2017 with his hand placed on his mother's Bible. For some reason, I was under the impression that the fairly well-known revival involving Duncan Campbell took place in the 1930s when two elderly sisters, aged 82 and 84, began praying. I discovered only recently that the revival in fact occurred during the years 1949 to 1953, long after Mary MacLeod was no longer there. I do think her Scottish upbringing accounts for the fact that Donald called himself a Presbyterian when he entered the political arena. He no longer does, by the way.

All of which is neither here nor there; I just threw it in as an interesting factoid. Here are two more [factoids]: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon's mother was a devout Quaker. Dwight Eisenhower's mother was a River Brethren pacifist whose son became a five-star General and Supreme Allied Commander Europe before he was elected president.

Sometimes, apparently, the apple manages to distance itself from the tree.

Wikipedia states that Eisenhower's mother joined a Bible study group that later evolved into the Jehovah's Witnesses. Although her home became a meeting place for the group, none of her children ever joined it.

As I said, sometimes the apple manages to distance itself from the tree. I will now quote from the song "Some Enchanted Evening" by Oscar Hammerstein II: "Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try."

Let's move on.

Time, as you undoubtedly have noticed, marches on. People come, people go, and so do words. Some words remain in use for a very long time but some become archaic. Here are a few English words that you will probably not be hearing any time soon:

anon
forsooth
odd's bodkin!
daguerrotype
stereopticon
nickelodeon
lavaliere
antimacassar
floppy disc
eight-track tape
reel-to-reel
pompadour

Can you think of other words that have fallen by the wayside?

You’ll never count sheep again

The other night when I couldn't go to sleep I passed the time with a new time-waster of my own invention, which I now pass along to you for using whenever you like, not just during periods of insomnia. It could prove very useful while waiting in a doctor's office, for example, or when sitting for hours in an airport.

What I did was simply go through every pair of letters in the entire alphabet systematically and tried to match each to a real-world entity. Starting with AA, AB, AC and going all the way to ZX, ZY, ZZ you will consider 676 pairs (26 times 26). It is interesting to see how many answers you can come up with, and also how many you can't. I'm sure every person's list will be different. Here's how mine started off:

AA - American Airlines, Alcoholics Anonymous
AB - Alberta (province of Canada)
AC - air conditioning, alternating current
AD - Anno Domini (Year of our Lord)
AE - initials of the poet A.E. Housman who wrote "When I Was One And Twenty" and "Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now"
AF - Air Force
AG - Attorney General
AH - Anno Hegirae (Year of the Hijrah), the Islamic calendar which commemmorates the beginning of the Prophet Mohammed's journey from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD
AI - artificial intelligence

and so on through AZ (Arizona) and on to BA (Bachelor of Arts), all the way to ZZ. It may take awhile. Several days. Several months. Knowing the periodic table of elements helps (AU is gold, FE is iron, HG is mercury, PB is lead).

The only rule is that each answer must come out of your own memory banks spontaneously without referring to anything in a book or on your phone or computer.

It won't put you to sleep, though. Just the opposite, actually. It will keep you awake. To go to sleep, try doing something really useful like praying for your family and friends. It works every time because our old enemy doesn't want us to do that, ever.

This has been another fun suggestion great idea annoying contribution to humanity blogpost from (who else?) moi, the one and only rhymeswithplague.

P.S. - PB is also peanut butter.

A whole lot of nothing sets one to thinking

In the last 24 hours alone, my email inbox received 172 new messages, 171 of which held no interest for me. All but three or four of them were political in nature (enough already, the election was nearly five monhs ago). and the remaining except for one were hoping to interest me in their products or services for an exchange of money from my pockets into theirs. The lone email I considered legitimate and not junk was a receipt for an onlne payment I had recently made.

There were also 17 new messages in my email's "spam" folder. I could detect no discernible reason why these particular incoming missives were singled out for this special treatment. All of the 171 mentioned in the preceding paragraph could have been designated as spam as far as I'm concerned.

i deleted the 171 and the 17 and continued with my day. I think all of the continuing political folderol is generated based on the fear that the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is true. Someone should remind the senders that there is also truth in two other old sayings, namely "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "don't wear out your welcome."

How one is to achieve a balance between the conflicting truths in a myriad of old sayings is an ongoing, nay, a never-ending task.

If there are any old sayings you have found to be either true or false in your own life, please tell us what they are so that we may benefit from (or avoid the pitfalls of) your experience.

The birdies that sing 🎶 in the spring, tra la

...may commence as of 5:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) today, as that is, or was, this year's moment for the vernal equinox to occur. It is one of two days each year -- the other is the autumnal equinox in September -- when all latitudes have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of datkness, and an egg set on end will not fall over.

I wonder if people in the Southern Hemisphere call this the vernal equinox too when it is so clearly autumn there. Kylie, please let us know.

When I was a boy we called March 21st the first day of spring. It also is, or was, the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Nathan Silberman (1875-1970) of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, who would be turning 150 tomorrow.

I wonder if he was one of the 2.8 million people who, according to Elon Musk at the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), were shown in the Social Security tecords as being over 120 years old, still alive, and possibly (if not probably) still being paid monthly benefits. Until this week, that is, when their status was changed to deceased.

I hope not.

I do know one thing for certain. His money wasn't coming to me.

Maybe life is not like a box of chocolates

The most stupid thing I've seen in a very long time is a comment someone left on someone else's Facebook page a couple of days ago. It is so stupid that I have put it in a special box composed of asterisks to highlight just how stupid it is:

**************************************************************
* As Forrest Gump said, stupid does as stupid is. *
**************************************************************
Speaking of Forrest Gump, did you know that the actor Tom Hanks is a third cousin, four times removed, of President Abraham Lincoln? Well, he is. Lincoln's mother was Nancy Hanks. Also, singer Pat Boone (remember him?) is a great-great-great-great-grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. I'm not claiming that there is any connection between Tom Hanks and Pat Boone.

That would be stupid.

84

Today is my 84th birthday, which Wikipedia tells me is the number following 83 and preceding 85. I go to great lengths to bring you such invaluable information.

I didn't need to go to Wikipedia to know the following facts:

• 84 has 12 divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84)
• George Orwell wrote the novel Nineteen Eighty-four (not 1984) in the year 1948 and just inverted the last two digits of the year in which he wrote it to come up with a date in the not too distant future for his title
• It takes 84 earth years for Uranus to make one trip around the Sun (please, no wisecracks from readers in Yorkshire)

Having been trained as a computer programmer since 1962, I also know that 84 decimal is 1010100 in binary (base 2), 124 in octal (base 8), and 54 in hexadecimal (base 16).

I figure that most of us know that 84 in Roman numerals is LXXXIV or lxxxiv. I have no idea when uppercase or lowercase is appropriate to use, or whether it even matters.

One thing I did learn from my foray into Wikipedia is that 84 in Greek numerals is ΠΔ or πδ (take your pick).

And now you know it too.

Bonus factoid: Greek numerals are also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals.

You are most welcome.

To be precise, today is the 84th anniversary of the day I was born. Yesterday was the last day of my 84th year on earth so far. Today is actually the first day of my 85th year.

Let the festivities begin!

Put them all together, they spell MOTHER

In alphabetic order, here are the 2-character abbreviations that are recognized by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the 50 states of the US:

AK AL AR AZ CA CN CO DE FL GA
HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD
ME MI MN MS MO MT NC ND NE NH
NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC
SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY

I will not identify them all here, but can you name all 50 states from their postal abbreviations only?

Here are six more 2-character codes for one district and five territories that also are part of the United States:

DC AS GU MP PR VI

They are, in order, the District of Columbia (the national capital city of Washington); the three Pacific territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands; and the two Atlantic territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The people of both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have voted to become states but to date the US Congress has not agreed to let them do so.

Here are the 2-character postal abbreviations for the 10 provinces and three territories of the nation of Canada, which if Donald Trump gets his way (I hope he doesn't) would become the US's 51st state:

AB BC MB NB NL NS NT NU ON PE QC SK YK

They are Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territorirs, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.

I know very little about Mexico, our neighbor to the south. At one time its capital, Mexico City, was called Mexico DF (for Distrito Federales) but I believe that is no longer the case. According to various sources there are 30 or 31 or 32 states in Mexico. I can't begin to name them all but I can tell you a few of them: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Sonora, Veracruz, Yucatan.

You are hereby invited to share with your fellow RRs (rhymeswithplague readers) some equally boring but potentially fascinating details about political subdivisions or postal abbreviations in your vicinity in the comments.

How not to win friends and influence people

I remember watching television in 1968 as anti-Vietnam War protesters yelled, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill toda?"

In 2025 we watch television as pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, antisemitic protesters yell on university campuses in New York, "NYPD, KKK, IDF, they're all the same."

Really? The New York Police Department, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Israeli Defense Forces are all the same? I think not. And this ridiculous statement comes from antisemitic cowards who cover their faces with masks to hide their identities. I think it is clear who is most like the Ku Klux Klan in the current scenario.

Here's something else to think about:

In "Song Of Myself" (1892 version), poet Walt Whitman said, "I am large. I contain multitudes". In the New Testament books of both Mark and Luke, a Gadarene man who cut himself and lived among the tombs naked said, "My name is Legion, for we are many". In the former case the world applauded. In the latter case the world shuddered (except for Jesus, of course, who commanded the unclean spirits to come out. The expelled demons entered immediately into a herd of swine which promptly ran violently down a steep place into the sea and were drowned).

On the surface, the two statements are eerily similar, the obvious difference between them being that Walt Whitman was merely expressing his identification with humanity at large and the man from Gadara was possessed by demon spirits (and there are such things) that had taken up residence in his body and were controlling his actions.

It took the presence and power of Jesus Christ to put and end to the Gadarene man's torment and bring calmness to the community. In my humble opinion, that is the only thing that will end the torment in the present-day cities of America.

You may not agree with me, but I do hope you will continue to read my posts.

Deep in the heart of somewhere

I grew up in Texas. I had to. My parents moved there from Rhode Island when I was six. In other years I have posted about March 2nd being Texas Independence Day (from Mexico in 1836) and about March 6th being the anniversary of the battle at the Alamo in San Antonio where nearly 200 people were slaughtered, including such heroes as Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B. Travis.

This year it never crossed my mind until today. I must be slipping. Senility must be rearing its ugly head. Already I am drooling occasionally.

I do apologize to lovers of bluebonnets everywhere.

Say what?

The following commercial currently appears on television in the US:

"Hi, folks, your buddy John Rich here, and if you love God, family, and America as much as I do you should be doing all of your online shopping at MammothNation dot com, and while you're at MammothNation be sure to get some Redneck Riviera whiskey, 100% blended right here in America and proudly supporting Folds Of America. God bless you and God bless America."

If that is not an exact quote of what Mr. Rich said, it is close enough that I don't hesitate enclosing the statement in quotation marks (British, inverted commas).

To my way of thinking, loving God and America has absolutely nothing to do with buying a particular brand of whiskey or even any whiskey at all, for that matter.

An old spititual song comes to mind:

I got shoes, you got shoes
All God's children got shoes
When I get to Heaven gonna put on my shoes
I'm gonna walk all over God's Heaven
Heaven, Heaven
Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there
Heaven, Heaven
Gonna walk all over God's Heaven

In a second verse of the song, the singer gets a robe and looks forward to shouting all over God' Heaven, and in a third verse the singer gets wings and looks forward to flying all over God's Heaven. However, after receiving shoes, a robe, and wings and rejoicing at the prospect of walking, shouting, and flying all over God's Heaven, the subtext of the song remains clear: Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there.

I do understand that "loving God" might not be the same thing as "talkin' 'bout Heaven" but my point is this: What does buying (and, one supposes, consuming) 100%-American-made Redneck Riviera whiskey have to do with one's patriotism or eternal destination?

Exactly nothing, that's what.

If you think otherwise or wish to rake me over the coals for having a Puritanical streak, please leave a comment.

It has ever been thus

In the previous post I expressed shock that Ron Howard who as a child played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and as a teenager played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days is now 71 years old.

i suppose it has ever been thus, the shock I mean. In my parents' generation, one minute Shirley Temple was singing "On The Good Ship Lollipop" and the next minute Richard Nixon was appointing her to be a delegate to the United Nations and Geral Ford was appointing her to be ambassador to Ghana and George H.W. Bush was appointing her to be ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

One minute Mrs. RWP and I were walking down an aisle at our daughter's wedding to light our family's side of the unity candle while Alan Payne and Lisa Klausman sang "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler On The Roof:

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday
That they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

and the next minute the bride and groom have been married for almost 33 years and not only have two grown sons but also have two grandchildren.

Time indeed marches on, and I am told on good authority that it waits, along with tide, for no man.

Case in point: Czechoslovakia does not exist any more. It split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, not to be confused with Slovenia, home of Melania Trump.

Speaking of Trump, here's your factoid for the day: Calista Gingrich, third wife of former Speaker of the House of Representatives during William Jefferson Clinton's administration Newt Gingrich, was appointed by Donald Trump to be ambassador to the Vatican during his first term and ambassador to Switzerland during his second term. I thought you would want to know.

When I first typed the preceding paragraph I mistakenly wrote Calista Flockhart. What a boo-boo! Calista Flockhart is the wife of actor Harrison Ford, not the wife of Newt Gingrich. Appointing Calista Flockhart to be an ambassador two times over would make about as much sense as appointing, say, Shirley Temple.

Tempus, as the Romans used to say, fugit. Time flies. And I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the older you get, the faster it will fly.

I remain, as ever, your roving correspondent,
Rhymeswithplague

Time marches on

Yesterday was the birthday of Ron Howard, the actor-producer-screenwriter-director who played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and sang "Gary, Indiana" in The Music Man.

He is now 71 years old.

I am in a state of shock.

"Mormors lilla kråka"

...is a children's song/game played in Sweden. According to what I read, "It can be played as a Lap Rhyme or a Circle Game. It's also sung while going around the Christmas tree or Maypole. At the end, everyone crouches down."

I don't know about you, but I don't go around the Christmas tree. I know what a Maypole is but I don't think I have ever seen one in person. Everyone crouching down sounds like our "Ring Around The Rosy". The song and accompanying movements for the Lap Rhyme version that my children enjoyed were taught to me in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1969 by Swedish couple Conny and Yvonne Evborn. Conny is a man's name in Sweden; he and Yvonne were husband and wife. I met them earlier that year when IBM sent me to Stockholm for the whole month of February to learn about the IBM 1130 computer. IBM Sweden sent Conny to Boca Raton for several months and he brought Yvonne with him. In December we invited them over for dinner around Christmas and after dinner we sang "Silent Night" together, Mrs. RWP and I in English, Conny and Yvonne in Swedish. Then Conny taught us the game to play with our children. Around the time of the great Y2K brouhaha I also played it with my grandchildren. I am waiting for our great-grandchildren to get a little older so I can play it with them. Anyway, here are the words to the song they taught me:

"Mormors lilla kråka"

Mormors lilla kråka
skulle ut och åka,
men ingen hade hon som körde.

Mormors lilla kråka
skulle ut och åka,
men ingen hade hon som körde.

Än slank hon hit,
Och än slank hon dit,
Och än slank hon ner i diket.

Än slank hon hit,
Och än slank hon dit,
Och än slank hon ner i diket.

Here is an English translation:

"Grandma's Little Crow"

Grandma's little crow
Wanted to go for a ride,
But she had no one who drove.

Grandma's little crow
Wanted to go for a ride,
But she had no one who drove.

Then she slipped here,
And then she slipped there,
And then she slipped into the ditch.

Then she slipped here,
And then she slipped there,
And then she slipped into the ditch.

The Swedish language has three extra letters after z, namely å, ä, and ö. The å is pronounced oh, the ä is pronounced eh, and the ö is pronounced like the oo in book.

Furthermore, k is sometimes pronounced like sh and sometimes not, and sj is sometimes pronounced like kw and sometims not, at least it sounds that way to my ears. For example, the word körde in the song above is pronounced sherda, and the number 777 which spelled out is sju hundra sjuttio sju sounds an awful lot like kwer hoondra kwerty kwer, especially when older Swedes say it. Younger Swedes say shoo hoondra shooty shoo instead, go figure. I find esoteric details about language fascinating and I'm sure you could not possibly live one minute longer without knowing what you learned in this post.

You are most welcome!

I, Don[ald J.Trump] Quixote

Dear Reader,

Enclosed please find for your consideration and entertainment a completely unauthorized ramble through the gray matter of the 47th president of the United Stats, a peek into his psyche, a glimpse of How He Probably Sees Himself, in two parts.

A. Part 1.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a Heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unteachable star.


B. Part 2.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
jLike a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that I find in the windmills of my mind.

Like a tunnel that I follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that I find in the windmills of my mind.

Keys that jingle in my pocket, words that jangle in my head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that I said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of my hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When I knew that it was over I was suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that I find
In the windmills of my mind.


[Editor's note. My apologies to (1) Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author of Don Quixote, (2) Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, composer and lyricist respectively of the 1965 musical production Man of La Mancha, (3) composer Michel Legrand, French lyricist Eddie Marnay ("Les Moulins De Mon Coeur", 1968), and English lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman ("The Windmills Of Your Mind", 1968. For this post I have changed the perspective from second person (you, your) to first person (I, my) in an attempt to get inside the head of Donald J. Trump. I do want to point out, solely in the interest of accuracy, that the French lyrics speak of the windmilles of my heart while the English lyrics speak of the windmills of your mind, which may or may not be significant. I'm not sure I achieved what I set out to do, but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless. --RWP]

Of the people, by the people, and for the people

Today is what used to be celebrated in this country as Lincoln's Birthday because Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States from 1861 to 1865, was born on this date in the Year Of Our Lord 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky. The anniversary of his birth now receives scant attention, if any in the media and among the populace. How soon we forget. I mean come on, people, he freed the slaves.

In addition, the birthday of George Washington, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, used to be observed on February 22nd. But both Lincoln and Washington have been relegated to the ash heap of history and replaced in our national conscience and calendar by something called Presidents Day that occurs on the third Monday of February so that federal employees could have yet another three-day weekend. That's not according to me, that's according to Lyndon Baines Johnson. This year the date is February 17th and all US presidents will be remembered as great citizen-patriots, every last one of them, or so we are encouraged to think.

This post is (a) deadly serious, (b) mildly iconoclastic, (c) excuciatinly accurate, (d) a pathetic attempt at humor (British, humour). Pick one.

More completely unrelated ABCs

A. The English language contains lots of words from other languages. Many of them are food words found in restaurants (quesadilla, tortilla, taco, enchilada, coq au vin, beignet, croissant, filet mignon, wienerschnitzel, ravioli, spaghetti, fettuccine, tiramisu, teriyaki, hibachi, won ton, wok, I could go on). Wines come to mind also (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet blanc, pinot noir, chardonnay, champagne, chianti, zinfandel, rosé) but many ordinary, everyday words that have nothing to do with food or drink have been absorbed into English from other languages as well. Such words are referred to as loanwords. Here are a few of them:

shampoo
khaki
hula
sombrero
karaoke
salsa
chutzpah
dinghy
banana
penguin
divan

Can you think of others?

B. On January 1, 2023 at phrasedictionary.org, writer Chris Drew wrote, "Similes are like little linguistic gems that help us vividly describe the world around us." I would delete the word "like" (thereby turning it into a metaphor) and just say that similes are little linguistic gems that help us vividly describe the world around us. At least, they can be if they are fresh. Sometimes, though, they grow stale. Sometimes they become clichés. Here are a few that come to mind:

as cool as a cucumber
as cold as ice
as hot as hell
as warm as toast
as soft as a baby's bottom
as hard as a rock
as quiet as a mouse
as high as a kite
as drunk as a skunk
as happy as a clam

I have no idea how happy a clam is or how drunk a skunk can be.

Again, can you think of others? Remember, this is a G-rated blog, by and large. Yorkshire Pudding, this means you.

C. For the last six weeks, Storyworld has been sending me one question a week as a prompt for writing pieces that will be compiled into a book at the end of one year. As you may remember, our oldest son subscribed to this project for me as a Christmas gift. That is the reason my blogposts have slowed to a crawl. I'm not going to share what I have written but I thought I would let you see the questions that Storyworld has sent to me so far:

1. What's something you've made that you feel especially proud of?
2. What was your mom like when you were a child?
3. How did you get your first job?
4. How did you meet your spouse? When did you know that you wanted to marry them?
5. What song always brings back a particular memory?
6. Where were you when you found out that JFK had been assassinated? How did it affect you?

It's going to be interesting just to see what questions I will be asked as the weeks go by. I hope they don't interfere with my blogging to any great extent.

D. February is a big birthday month in our clan of 22 souls. We have birthdays on the 4th, 6th, 9th, 18th, and 20th, and by "we" I mean (in no particular order) my son, my grandson, my great-grandson, and the wives of two grandsons. I have always been a card sender but the world is working against me, both by increasing the size of my family and by increasing the cost of a postage stamp. Seventy years ago a first-class stamp cost 3¢ but now one is 73¢.

On that happy, clamlike note I will bring this post to a close so that we can ponder the great mystery of life together.

The ABCs ain't what they used to be

A. Which one of the following phrases is not like the others? Give reasons for your answer.

Every Good Boy Does Fine
All Cows Eat Grass
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Good Boys Do Fine Always

B. I have begun carrying a dime and two pennies with me at all times. I carry the dime because John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), who was a multi-billionaire, gave away dimes to people for many years and a popular song during the Great Depression was called "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" I hope to be able to say, "Why, yes, I can" if anyone ever asks. I carry the pennies in case anyone ever says to me, "You aren't worth two cents" I will be able to reach into my pocket and prove them wrong. Am I losing my mind?

C. I learned a new word today. Acyrologia. It means the inexact, inappropriate or improper use of a word. Malapropisms, which we discussed in other posts, are examples of acyrologia in speech but acyrologia also occurs in writing, often in the form of homonyms (words that sound alike but are spelled differently) of the word intended. Here is a wonderful piece on acyrologia I found on Facebook that is itself an illustration of acyrologia.


acyrologia
"An incorrect use of words -- particularly replacing one word with another word that sounds similar but has a diffident meaning -- possibly fuelled by a deep-seeded desire to sound more educated, witch results in an attempt to pawn off an incorrect word in place of a correct one. In academia, such flaunting of common social morays is seen as almost sorted and might result in the offender becoming a piranha. In the Monday world, after all is set and done, such a miner era will often leave normal people unphased. This is just as well sense people of that elk are unlikely to tow the line irregardless of any attempt to better educate them. A small percentage, however, suffer from severe acyrologiaphobia, and it is their upmost desire to see English used properly. Exposure may cause them symptoms that may resemble post-dramatic stress disorder and, eventually, to descend into whole-scale outrage as they go star-craving mad. Eventually, they will succumb to the stings and arrows of such a barrage, and suffer a complete metal breakdown, leaving them curled up in the feeble position." (author unknown)


I spotted 23 instances of acyrologia in that paragraph and listed them in the first comment. Before peeping, how many instances did you find?

Happy end of January to you. In China, it is now the year of the snake. You have been warned.

One can only hope

I have noticed in news stories lately, whether on radio, on television, on websites, or in print, that every time someone's death is announced, one of three words is invariably used. Everyone, it seems, is iconic, legendary, or beloved nowadays. Some of the announcements manage to work in all three adjectives. Why is that, I wonder? Is anyone with the least-bit recognizable name or who has achieved some measure of popularity in life automatically iconic, legendary, or beloved? I think not, but then I am not part of Generation Alpha, Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen X, or even the Baby Boomers. No, dear reader, I am an official dinosaur, and having been born before World War II began (at least on this side of the pond) I am therefore a member of what is called The Silent Generation.

As you may have noticed, I am anything but silent.

Members of my generation are shuffling off this mortal coil at what seems to me to be an alarming rate. I hope I am going to be around for some time yet. One day last week I realized that my 83rd birthday was exactly 10 months ago and my 84th birthday was exactly two months hence. My mind went into overdrive and I suddenly realized that my age in the decimal system that day was 83.83, which I found satisfyingly symmetrical.

No, I am not weird. Why do you ask?

I further hope that someone, if only here in blogworld, will remember this post and refer to me after my demise as--wait for it--iconic, legendary, and/or beloved.

Maybe I am a little bit weird.

Closed captioning is still cuckoo

We talked in a post not too long ago about the deficiencies of the current state of the art of voice recognition software (VRS) and closed captioning (CC).

This post's title is not strong enough in my opinion. Actually, closed captioning is getting worse with the passage of time. Things I see displayed on my television screen make me want to scream, to pull out what hair I still have, to throw a brick through the set. Fortunately, to date I have managed not to succumb to these urges. My self-control know no bounds.

I will give you three examples from this evening's viewing alone. Two of them are from Donald Trump's remarks at tonight's pre-inaugural candlelight dinner and one is from Sean Hannity's nightly news commentary program.

When Mr. Trump said, "We're going to be so successful. We're going to have so many successes," the closed captioning showed "WE'RE GOING TO BE SO SUCCESSFUL. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE 70 SUCCESSES."

Referring to his plans to issue 200 Executive Orders on his first day in office to undo damage done by the previous administration, Mr. Trump's statement that "By the end of the day a lot of it will be null and void" became "BY THE END OF THE DAY A LOT OF IT WILL BE NOLAN BOYD."

Sean Hannity said that when he began pointing out President Biden's cognitive decline a couple of years ago, "I was excoriated and had the crap kicked out of me by the whole Biden administration" but the closed captioning put it this way: "I WAS EXCORIATED AND HAD THE KOEPKA ACADEMY BY THE WHOLE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION."

Perhaps I shouldn't be so chagrined. Perhaps I should try to look for the silver lining. Perhaps the universe is sending me prompts to write a novel about Nolan Boyd, a student at the Koepka Academy.

Nah.

I just feel sorry for people who have to rely on closed captioning.