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.

Truth is stranger than fiction

What I am about to tell you is true. Or was at the time, as best I remember it. I looked at Google's aerial map of Arlington, Texas, just now and what I'm about to tell you doesn't appear to be true nowadays. Street names have been changed, some streets no longer exist, new streets have been added, and the whole area has been reconfigured due to Arlington's growth. But it was true when I experienced it, so I will forge ahead with this post.

I attended Arlington State College (ASC) in 1959-1960, the year it changed from a two-year junior-college institution to a four-year senior-college institution. It was part of the Texas A&M University system, an arch-rival of the University of Texas (UT) in Austin. So it seems odd that ASC was later absorbed into the University of Texas system and became the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) just as Texas Western University in El Paso became the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and several other schools underwent the same transformation, which is neither here nor there. Well, actually one is here and one is there. I don't want to go down this rabbit trail further.

Downtown Arlington in those days was centered on a town square. It was so long ago (65 years, God help us all) that I cannot remember whether the square held a park or the city hall building. You would think that I would remember a detail like that, but I don't because we mostly stayed on or near campus except to splurge occasionally and eat at a restaurant. That's not important. What is important and what I'm trying to get to as fast as I can (not fast enough, I can hear some of you saying) is the scheme Arlington used for the naming of streets. It was very confusing, at least to me.

The street along the north side of the square was called North Street, the street along the east side of the square was called East Street, the street along the south side of the square was called South Street, and the street along the west side of the square was called West Street. So far so good. No problem, you say. I continue.

If you think about it, you will probably realize (British, realise) that North Street was an east-west thoroughfare, East Street was a north-south thoroughfare, South Street was an east-west thoroughfare, and West Street was another north-south thoroughfare. Things get interesting from there. I will use abbreviations from here on because that's what was on the green and white street signs at corners throughout the city.

The city planners in their wisdom extended these streets so that in addition to the one-block long North Street there was an E. North Street running eastward and a W. North Street running westward. Using all of the gray matter available to you, you can guess that there might be (and there was) a N. East Street and a S. East Street running northward and southward respectively from the one-block long East Street, an E. South Street and a W. South Street running eastward and westward respectively from the one-block long South Street, and a N. West Street and a S. West Street running northward and southward respectively from the one-block long West Street. Thus the whole city of Arlington was divided into four quadrants (how many quadrants were you expecting?). I found four particular intersections particularly mind-blowing:

• The intersection of E. North and N. East
• The intersection of W. North and N. West
• The intersection of E. South and S. East
• The intersection of W. South and S. West

and trying to give directions to people became problematic at times and even downright silly.

In closing, I also need to tell you that Mrs. Ella Willis, the staunch Baptist landlady of the boarding house I chose to live in instead of a dormitory, attended a big Baptist church on the west side of town, and some of my friends attended another big Baptist church on the east side of town. Interestingingly enough, and this is also absolutely true, the pastor of the Baptist church on the west side of town was named Reverend East and the pastor of the Baptist church on the east side of town was named Reverend West.

I swear or affirm that all of the foregoing is true, so help me God.

This post makes one thing perfectly clear.

It is a slow blogging day in Canton, Georgia.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Just what you've been waiting for, a weather report from north Georgia.

Yesterday our specific part of north Georgia experienced the coldest morning of the season so far, 17°F (-8.3°C). This morning, the first significant snow (translation: other than a trace or a few flurries) in five years has been falling. It is, to coin a phrase, a winter wonderland. Local children are ecstatic because all of the schools are closed. Many members of the workforce are ecstatic as well because their places of employment are also closed.

This circumstance contributes to the northern states' continued feelings of superiority over the southern states. If the people of the midwest (Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, etc.) and the northeast (New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, etc.) stayed home every time a little snow fell, no work would take place for months on end.

In other news, I have now completed and submitted to Storyworth my responses to the first two of their 52 questions. So far it is a lot of fun as well as a lot of work.

If you have a lot of time on your hands -- maybe you're snowed in and can't get out and about -- take a look at this list of 25 Of the Most Inspiring Books Everyone Should Read that popped up on my computer today. Sad to say, I have read only one of the 25, The Count Of Monte Cristo, #16. How many have you read, or even heard of?

I have concluded that with every passing day I am more and more out of touch with what is going on in the world. It is a startling revelation, to say the least.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day

...to the last syllable of recorded time. A man named William Shakespeare wrote that more than 400 years ago and put it into the mouth of Macbeth, who was thane of Glamis and thane of Cawdor if memory serves. The entire speech is rather depressing, a real downer. The whole play is not exactly a comedy either.

Fast away the old year may indeed have passed, but the new year (2025, if I'm not mistaken) is getting off to a slow start, postwise. It's already January 4th and I haven't written a single thing. Well, I did put a grocery list together, but I don't think that counts.

The young'uns tied the knot on New Year's Eve right on schedule and headed off to Florida the next day. Now that the hoopla has died down, nothing suitable for blogging has presented itself. I refuse to blog about terrorist attacks in New Orleans or cybertruck explosions in Las Vegas or behind-the-scenes arm-twisting that made an almost failed election of a Speaker of the House of Representatives into a rousing victory for truth, justice, and the American way.

Yesterday our younger son brought over a pot of homemade soup for us that contained chicken, kielbasa, carrots, onions, celery, collard greens, and as Andy Griffith used to say, I don't know what all. It turned out to be delicious!

I will have even less time to compose blogposts this year because of the gift I received from our older son at Christmas. He gave me a one-year subscription to Storyworth. I will receive an email asking me a question every week for the next 52 weeks; I am to write a story from my life in response to the question and email it back to Storyworth. At the end of the year, a book containing all of my responses will be created. I am looking fowatd to doing this but am also a bit intimidated.

I think I am afraid it will be a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.