A day like all other days, except...

First, today happens to be Friday the 13th. Second, today is also a full moon, the Strawberry Moon, to be exact. Third, today is also the day when Private/Sergeant (pick one) Bowe Bergdahl, former prisoner of war/deserter (pick one) captured by the Taliban, who played soccer with him/kept him in an iron cage (pick one), returned to U.S. soil from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. He is now in San Antonio, Texas, at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston.

Everyone knows -- at least everyone who is superstitious -- that Friday the 13ths are unlucky. Everyone also knows -- perhaps a different set of “everyones” -- that during a full moon more babies are born, more crimes are committed, the tides are higher, and more loonies are out and about, doing their thing.

Which reminds me to say, “Welcome, Lord and Lady Yorkshire Pudding, to our shores!”

As always, my timing is impeccable.

Moving right along, it is therefore with joy and pride/fear and trepidation (pick one, er, two) that I am now able to present to you a link to an article by Kimberly Dozier in The Daily Beast wherein two letters that Bowe Bergdahl wrote from prison and that were delivered by the International Red Cross to his parents have been made public today for the first time.

The article contains fascinating stuff, not least of which is Bergdahl’s innovative spelling. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that one had to have graduated from high school to be able to join the military, but perhaps spelling is not taught in our schools any more. Wait, I believe I remember reading that Bowe Bergdahl was home-schooled. As a little girl named Alice once said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

I’m sure we'll be hearing much more about Private/Sergeant Bergdahl and the Taliban in the days ahead, Friday the 13th or no.

Stay tuned, come hell or high water.

The Greeks had a word for it.

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). This is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen, and is also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia. The term triskaidekaphobia was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953.

So says Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

So the Greeks didn’t have a word for it. They had two words for it, paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia.

But wait. That can’t be right. One of those words, I think, is not legitimate Greek.

Do you know which word is not really Greek, and why? Hint: It has nothing to do with the fact that the term triskadekaphobia was not derived until 1911. You’ll need to think again, a little harder.