Putting the 'MOVE' in 2016

Peacock--the symbol of 'joy' in India.

This is my third year participating in One Word, an alternative to New Year's resolutions.  I kept 2014's word thru 2015 mostly because 2013 was more than half gone when I signed up but also because I felt I still needed so much work on that issue.  The same is true now so I was tempted to stick with 'joy' for another year.  But I decided instead to find a word to focus on that contributes to or is a component of 'joy' for me.  As of late last this week I'd narrowed it down to a handful of possibilities: accomplish, spontaneity, passion, breathe, belong and home.

While talking via vid chat with my husand the other day he asked if he could make a suggestion.  There was a word, he said that fit the criteria of being a component/contributer to 'joy' in his opinion and it was something he wants to encourage me to include in my life plus it could be said to subsume all six of my possible words:

One Word 365

MOVE

accomplish = move toward my goals
spontaneity = move on a whim
breathe = moving air in and out of my lungs via exercise or meditation
passion = the energizing emotion that 'moves' one to act on desires
belong = to acquire my longed for sense of 'belonging' requires me to move out of my comfort zone
home = to move back 'home' which is not a building but wherever my husband is and to live with him and be homemakers together again that is my top priority for the year as it has been for two years running.

I will be doing a followup post or posts to explain the meaninfulness of each of those six words.  But one more thing I can say that is true of each of them (besides contribuing to 'joy' and involving some kind of movement) is that they each represent a particular challenge related to how the autism spectrum manifests in me.

My diagnosis in September has been both disconcerting and a relief.  Why it was disconcerting is probably obvious--it would throw any fifty-something for a loop.  But a relief?  well after several months of reading, research and processing of information and emotions I realized that so many of my shortcomings are not character flaws, were never about will power.  Many otheres were imaginary based on unrealistic images of unattainable perfection.  And yet others were never shortcomings in the first place.

Now that I've had time to process the diagnosis I'm starting to sense a direction in which to move in order to accommodate this reality.  I'm hoping that means I will be ready to blog more regulary again.  And not just about autism/Aspberger's but about all the things I used to blog about: reading, writing, research, videos, music, fiber art, crafts, LOLs, ideas, spiritual path and Joy's story.  And let's not forget words!

Best Boy
by Eli Gottlieb

My first book of the year i Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb.  it was one of the titles that came up when I put autism in a search box.  It was one of the few novels I found that way and I'm very interested in seeing how autism is represented in fiction.

I've not finished it yet so this is not a review and I'm adding this commentary as a post script to this post because of the 'First Book of the Year' meme at Sheila's Book Journey.  A bit of a last minute thing as it isn't even still January 1st where Shelia lives.

I also added it to this post instead of in a separate post because images from the story kept intruding as I was writing about 'move' above.  I realized that the narrator/protagonist in Best Boy, a man in his fifties who'd been committed to an institution at age 11 after his autism diagnosis, had been on the move from page one.  He was moving both physically and emotionally, including in both cases outside his comfort zones.  He was moving into new social circles and he even moved off the compound property (ran away) and walked the highways toward 'home' his single minded goal.  The courage he exhibits through all this is amazing and something I aspire to.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: TED Talks on Words

I'm a lost in my favorite jungle today.

Words Words Words playlist at TED Talks

13 Ted Talks that explore language concepts like:

Why is 'x' the unknown?
What do our language habits reveal about us?
Is the paper dictionary dying?
Ode to Envy: How does fiction help us understand better than exposition?
What can you learn by tracking a word across centuries through 5 million books?
A plea to Non-Native English speakers to continue to honor and cherish their mother tongue.
Is texting killing language skills?
How did language transform humanity?
What makes a word 'real'?
What if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?
Why do legal documents need to be so long and obfuscating?
What is Duolingo?
Why do we need poetry?

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How Helen Keller Found Her Voice

What a YouTube Treasure!

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on a newsreel

demonstrating how Helen learned to speak.

Her first spoken sentence was a gem 

I have been fascinated with Helen Keller's story ever since 6th grade when I read her autobiography.  Which was long before I'd seen either of the Miracle Worker films.  Maybe visual impairment was already on my radar because of growing up watching my grandmother deal with hers but I don't have a specific memory of that being why I picked up the autobiography.

I do remember how enthralled I became with her story of coming out of a cave-dark, chaotic and silent world ruled by fear and anger into a love-bright, word-ordered world rooted in companionship, gratitude and hope.

That book may have also been the beginning of my obsession with words and language--their meaning, etymology, grammar, origins, translation, language acquisition and so on.

Imagining that little girl unable to see or hear and having no vocabulary had me thinking at age 12 about the role words have in the creation of reality.  What was a thing or an action or a thought if it had no name?

That Zen Koan I encountered much later asking if the tree falling in the forest where no ear could hear made a sound, probably had less of an impact on me after having contemplated whether things without names had any thingness at all or whether the namer and the named had a special bond or whether the namer created the thing by naming it?

Except that didn't fit the Bible story of Adam naming the animals after God created them.  But still I wondered how they could have been nameless from the moment of their creation until the moment Adam named them.  How could their creator not know their names? Which led to wondering whether God's name for them and Adam's had been the same one.  Then there was the concern that they might have their own names for themselves...

Yes, I often turn my brain into a pretzel with thoughts like these and experience it as pleasure.  Go figure.

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Sometimes You Just Gotta

Oxford English Dictionary

2nd Edition 

Version 4.0 [CD-ROM]

For several months I've been returning to the amazon.com page for the OED on CD-ROM to watch the price fluctuate, drooling as I gazed.  I told the story here about my unquenchable lust for words and their stories so I won't reiterate.

The OED has been on my wishlist for decades and the electronic version for nearly half a decade but recently my wish for it got so intense the term wish list seemed too wishy-washy so I started calling that upper tier of the wishlist my lust list.  

The OED was usually at the top but occasionally it would shake hands with one or another item that climbed over to perch on its head.  Lately that has been the Nexus 7 which I want for my primary e-reader and to give me back the portability for writing, posting and surfing that I lost when switching from my elderly netbook to this 15in ASUS Windows 8.

Well, as of this afternoon, the Nexus 7 has no competition.

Since Thanksgiving I've returned to check on it and watched the price rise and fall between $247 and $207.  I had even put it in my shopping cart when it hit $207 but I dithered over it for the next 24 hours and by the time I refreshed the page the next day it had gone back up to over $233.  I felt like kicking myself but at the same time I knew my reservations were sound--I don't have the time to install and learn my way around and my funds (back pay from SSI) are fast depleting so I set myself a limit on what I could spend per month and that Joanne.com purchase last week had reached it.

So when I found the price at $205 yesterday I actually started to pound my forehead with my palm, a bad habit I'm intent on breaking. I managed to just cover my eyes and bow my head asking silently Why couldn't you wait five days?. 

Both those reservations were still active: no time and low funds.  But on the other hand I knew I'd still feel like kicking myself when I saw it go back up above $220 in a day or three.  And on yet another hand: Sometimes you just have to make the time for the things that are that important to you.

The clincher hand that allowed me to justify taking the plunge today was that this was not a frivolous purchase.  It was much closer to a need than a simple want as it will be key in several ways to my business plans.  Besides the writing itself from posts to poems to copywriting to stories, there are the word games I intend to create and publish electronically. 

Now watch the price drop down to $197 or lower before the month of February is over.

It's suppose to arrive Saturday.

And this one is supposed to arrive middle of next week:

Encyclopedia Britannica
2009 Deluxe

In for a penny, in for a pound.

This was listed in one of the related lists on the OED page and at the price of $7.99 I couldn't resist.  For most of what I would use an encyclopedia for I don't need up-to-the-minute information.  

Plus mostly I don't use encyclopedias anymore for just looking up quick facts.  The Internet and search engines have filled that role.  

I have just always enjoyed reading the articles in encyclopedias especially the long ones on technical topics and the biographies and those for each country and state/province.  

Besides just reading articles for fun, I use them as jumping off points into topics I have only glancing knowledge of.  The encyclopedia article is just the first stop in a research project.  It gives me an overview of a topic and a list of words or phrases I can take to a search engine or library card catalog or to find my way to related articles in the encyclopedia.

So I grabbed this on my way to the checkout.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

...iz gotz powyr pawz! Y ai needs powyr wurdz?

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Word Wonderlust

Oxford English Dictionary - 2nd Edition
Version 4.0 [CD-ROM]

I love words.  That's no secret.  But it's maybe not so well known that I can get lost in a dictionary or thesaurus as easily as in a story.  Maybe it is because every word has a story and every word is a story seed.  I love learning a word's whole story--its part(s) of speech, its plural/singular modes, its past/present/future tenses, it's pronunciation, its usage history, its etymology, its synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and anagrams.  Most dictionaries and thesauruses have only 30 to 50% of all that for only 40 to 50% of currently existing words and most severely neglect the archaic and obsolete words.

There is only one dictionary that does it all for every single English word they have been able to discover going back as far as the written record goes.  That is the twenty volume OED which I've lusted after ever since I encountered it on the reference shelves at Southern Oregon University (then Southern Oregon State College) in the mid 80s.  With every volume worth over $100 it was clearly out of any price range I could hope to reach in the next decade.

Then I discovered the compact two volume boxed set with the magnifying glass for reading it.  As they didn't make it compact by eliminating words or information.  Rather they shrunk the text and enlarged the pages to cram several pages on each page.  That was still well into the triple digits then but seemed reachable.  But in the nearly 3 decades since I never quite reached it and by the early 2000s my vision had degenerated so much I feared that I would need a microscope rather than a magnifier to read it.

A few years back I was excited to read something about the OED keepers embarking on the project of digitizing the OED.  When it finally became available it was still out of my reach and customer reviews were not exactly raving.  Search and navigation was clunky  But with the recent upgrade to 2.0 they seem to be doing better.  There is also the online version available for subscribers.

I put it in my wishlist at amazon.com mostly as a way to bookmark it so I could follow the reviews and price changes.  Recently there have been significant price drops from some sellers that have me almost seeing myself reaching it if I were to stand on my tippy-tippy toes and stretch my arm until my joints pop.

Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
2 volume set [Hardcover]

I've been over to drool over it a lot lately and one of those times I discovered this Historical Thesaurus of the OED which focuses in on the usage history of the words.  And it would have to be blue!  I am picturing it sitting on my desk so vividly right now I'm almost surprised I get nothing but air when I reach for it.  It is very new and it will be some time before it goes digital.  And as you can see if you follow the link below the picture it is quite pricey.

Recently I saw a quote from Stephen King saying that no word you find in a thesaurus is the right word.  No exceptions.  I agree with the spirit of that comment in that I do believe using a thesaurus while writing the first draft is quite questionable.  But I do think it has a role in the planning and research stages and the rewrite stage.

The first in order to learn about the difference in usage between one era and another, one country and another even one city and another, and one social class and another, and one ethnic group and another.  Also to collect jargon word specific to the professions, hobbies, jobs, and such of each character contemplating what their vocabulary is likely to contain.  This would save a lot of time during the first draft by priming the pump with the knowledge

In the rewrite it would be useful for finding more precise words when you have overused a general word like blue, or peace, or sunny, or bright.  And also for finding the right word for a character when there is a glaring discrepancy between their life experience and the words you put in their mouth on the fly.

For example a 30-something woman who dropped out of school in 9th grade and has raised two kids into their late teens in one shoddy, tiny, pest infested apartment, house or trailer after another while working multiple part time, back breaking, seasonal jobs like a fruit packing plant, tree planting for the Forestry Service, landscaping, motel maid, the shipping dock during the month or so before a major holiday, and drive-in janitor would not be using the same vocabulary as the 30-something woman ahead of her in line at KFC dressed in a power suit who had graduated from Stanford with a Master's in Marketing and Promotion and is currently doing contract work for politicians, writer's, public speakers, and media and sports celebrities while her nanny is raising her kids in an 8000 square foot 3 story McMansion.

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Book Review: The Three Sisters by Bryan Taylor

The Three Sisters
by Bryan Taylor
Publisher: Dragon Tree Books (July 23, 2013)
Available in: Print & ebook, 401

Let me begin by saying this book is not safe for reading in bed when the room is shared with another who's sleeping--in a dorm, hospital, classroom, prison cell, church pew, board meeting, bedroom, car or mass transportation seat, with a spouse, sibling, friend, offspring or (as in my case currently) your mother.

Especially not your mother.

This is because your irrepressible laughter will wake them.  Even if you are able to laugh silently there is the shaking of the bed or seat and the physical and facial contortions.  And of course those inevitable questions:

• Are you OK? *gasp* Yes
• Why did you stop breathing? Laughing too hard.  Trying not to wake you.
• What are you reading? A novel called The Three Sisters
• That sounds nice. What's it about?  Three nuns fresh out of the convent on a road trip looking for fun, got a ticket for speeding, got arrested, escaped, and are now three fun nuns on the run.
• What's so funny?  What? That wasn't enough?
• What happened to set you off?  Um.  Urm. Uh.  Well.  That would take a long explanation including definitions for obscure words that obscure the puns and punch lines.
• Well maybe you can read it to me after we finish Jan Karon's Father Tim book.  Urmm.  Wellll.  Ummm.  We'll see.  *praying this is one of those conversations Mom doesn't remember the next day*

OK that totally didn't happen anywhere but in my imagination. But it was so vivid it now feels like a real memory. *shudders*

Next I must advise anyone who dislikes reading books with unfamiliar words to not let that stop you as there is plenty of fun in reading about the antics and adventures of Coito, Theodora, and Regina.  Just be aware that by skimming over the strange words you will be missing a good portion of the funny--puns and punchlines.

But if like me you are one who loves to encounter new words and look them up to learn every thing about them--synonyms, antonyms, etymology--be aware you will be spending a lot of time looking up those words because many of them are no longer in the average dictionary.  Not even collegiate dictionaries nor 'unabridged' dictionaries.  Searching the web for definitions of those words might elicit dictionary entries asking if you are sure you spelled it correctly or apologizing for the missing entry, explaining it had been deleted by request.

What?!!  *screeching in my head*  Are there words they are hiding from us?  Forcing into obscurity?  Making illicit?

It seems so, considering that I finally found the definition of one word in The Endangered English Dictionary: Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot by David Grambs.  This is a book I am now lusting after.  Luckily the word I was after was on one of the pages in the  Google Book preview.  That word happened to reference a body part that parents, priests and prudes want all under age 18 to believe doesn't exist except at bath time.

So.  They fail at taking the books off the shelves so now they are after taking the words out of the dictionaries?

As a book blogger who participates in Banned Book Week every fall and is already alarmed by the insidious efforts to remove from public shelves all books with material offensive to any group small or large but never a majority of citizens this is beyond alarming, it appalls me, fills me with trepidation.  For what better way to insure that certain things can't be discussed than to take away the words themselves?

But, I digress.  With reason.  It's an effort to procrastinate having to confess that I got so lost in looking up words I didn't even reach the beginning of the road trip so I feel a bit of a poser calling this a review.  Although I can say that I'm having a rollicking good time with it, I love Coito who reminds me so much of myself except braver and more audacious.  (Well actually there are a number of big differences. Basically it was her talent for autodidact learning--the voracious reading across the Dewey Decimals from grade school on--that I was thinking about.)

So if it continues to deliver the antics of Coito and Co., the humor, puns, irreverence, satire, culture commentary and spoofing, a well told story and words I've never before met to the end I will continue to be as thrilled as I am to this point.

And I'll be looking for more such stories by Bryan Taylor.



From the Publishers:

Nuns just want to have fun! But when three former Catholic nuns, Coito Gott, Theodora Suora and Regina Grant have too much fun and get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run.

Driving back to Washington D.C. where they work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts, the three sisters are arrested in Tennessee. After defeating the local deputy in strip poker, they escape from jail, and are pursued by the zealous Detective Schmuck Hole, who has personally offered a $10,000 reward for their capture on the 700 Club. Little do they know that when the three sisters visit the Washington Monument, their lives will change forever.

Set in 1979, The Three Sisters is a humorous, adult satire that skewers not only organized religion, but the government, the media, intellectuals, corporate greed and every other part of the establishment. Maybe not the greatest story ever told, but possibly the funniest.
“Blessed are they who read The Three Sisters, for they shall inherit eternal laughter.” — Matthew 5:66

What they are saying:

“This may sound odd but I never thought of myself as a big fan of religious satire…until I read this book. I was caught right away by the three sexy nuns on the cover. A friend recommended it to me and I didn’t think I would like it so I ventured to “skim” the first chapter. I must say that first chapter wowed me with excitement and I became so intrigued…I ended up with finishing it in two days.

If you’re looking for a serious study of religion or to explore the depths of the human condition, this book is probably not for you. The whole point of it was to be a roller-coaster of a ride – sexy naughty nuns running amok in 1970′s America and not looking back. Heavy on wordplay, allusions, and references to famous philosopher’s such as Voltaire, Taylor thumbs his nose at the common institutions and over-used plots.  So if you’re not afraid to ruffle some religious feathers, this might be the book for you.”-Joshua Silverman, Author of  The Emerald Tablet (Legends of Amun Ra, #1)

“This book is a hysterical read–not for the faint hearted or the easily offended. I thoroughly enjoyed Taylor’s sense of humor, writing style, and his use of innuendos, pun, satire, etc. He is a master at intertwining historical events of the Bible, church history, and religious stereotypes along with history in the 1970s. More than half way through, the book has a great surprise that I cannot say more about without giving too much information. I can only say that I laughed for two days. The character development of each of the three sisters (and some of the other characters such as Victor) is superb.”- Maureen Burton, Amazon Reviewer

“Reading The Three Sisters May Add to your Years in Purgatory, but It’s Worth It.  After reading The Three Sisters, I realize that Taylor has made the ultimate sacrifice. He is definitely going to Hell for writing this book, or if he is lucky, he’ll probably spend about five trillion years in Purgatory. But hey, his loss was my gain.I really liked this book. It was witty in an Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain sort of way and made me laugh throughout. Not only is the main character highly sacrilegious, but the plot itself is about as sacrilegious as you’ll get. But the book is as much satire as sacrilege, and the sacrilege just lays the foundation for the rest of Taylor’s skewering of society.The book is set in 1979, and only after you finish the book will you realize why (no spoiler here.  I found myself pulling for all the three sisters to overcome their predicament. Consequently, I couldn’t put the book down.”- S. Zehntner, Amazon Reviewer

“I took one look at the cover and thought to myself, I don’t remember any nuns looking like that in Catholic School. So I decided to read the book and was glad that I did. Not only was the book very funny, but the plot went in directions I wasn’t expecting. As I read on, I didn’t want to put the book down until I found out what the final fate of the three sisters was.Though the novel was set in 1979, all of the satire applies to today just as easily as it does to 1979. The book reminds us that the Catholic Church, self-righteous evangelicals, corporate greed, self-interested politicians, and the self-obsessed media haven’t changed all that much.Few novels provide illustrations, but The Three Sisters includes several very funny illustrations, including ones for Virgin Mary Milk and The Spanish Inquisition Toy Set. Too funny.

Though the book is sacrilegious, the author doesn’t get heavy-handed about it. Taylor keeps the satire fun and rolling along until the very end. I only wish I could have attended the Festivities in person.

So if you want to see what happens when a pleasantly twisted mind writes a novel instead of going to therapy, read The Three Sisters.”- So. Cal Book Worm, Amazon Reviewer“Simply divine! The plot: naughty nuns conquer America! Set in a mythical past, this satire is truly one of a kind. The author has a wicked sense of humor and an imagination that defies description. The more offbeat your own sense of humor is, the more you’ll appreciate this book. I highly recommend this for anyone who’s looking for something unusual.”-Mari Trevelyan, Amazon Reviewer

Bryan Taylor is a double PK, a preacher’s kid of a preacher’s kid. With that legacy he faced two destinies, being an unhappy triple PK (Jubilees 17:23, “He that is born unto the son of a preacher and himself preaches shall be miserable until his dying day and suffer eternal damnation.”), or being sacrilegious and happy.

He decided to forsake the Southern Baptists for Catholicism, but when he applied to join a convent, he was rejected (sex discrimination!), so he decided to do the next best thing: write a novel about the three nuns he would most like to meet.

Bryan Taylor was born in Louisiana, grew up in Michigan and Texas, went to school in Tennessee, South Carolina and California, taught in Switzerland for a year, and has traveled to 50 countries, more than any Pope except Saint John Paul II. He now lives in California, which is one of the few places with people crazier than him.

The Three Sisters Website
Bryan Taylor Facebook
Bryan Taylor Pinterest

Follow the blog tour for more reviews, giveaways, author interviews and guest posts: 

So Many Precious Books Nov 8 Interview & Giveaway
Joy Story Nov 12 Review
Carole Ramblings Nov 13 Review
Books, Books & More Books Nov 14 Review
Books, Books & More Books Nov 15 Guest Post
In This World of Books Nov 18 Review
A Chick Who Reads Nov 19 Review
Most Happy Reader Nov 20 Review & Giveaway
Paperback Writer Nov 21 Guest Post
Deal Sharing Aunt Nov 22 Review
Rose & Beps Blog Nov 25 Guest Post
Sweeps 4 Bloggers Nov 26 Guest Post & Giveaway
So Many Precious Books Nov 27 Review
Romance & Inspiration Nov 30 Review  

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

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A Word Wrangler's Lasso

 Masterwriter 2.0 is a suite of word-finding tools assembled into one package:

Word Families

A unique and revolutionary reference dictionary, that will open up a new world of possibilities for descriptive words and ideas.

Parts of Speech

A comprehensive list of descriptive words, with various filters including alliterations, that allow the writer to be more specific.

Phrases

A collection of over 33,000 phrases, sayings, idioms, and word combinations.

Rhymes

The ultimate Rhyming Dictionary with over 100,000 entries, 36,000 Rhymed-Phrases, and the most comprehensive list of Close Rhymes ever created. Rhymes from our Pop-Culture Dictionary are also included.

Pop Culture

A Pop-Culture Dictionary with over 11,000 icons of American and World Culture.

Dictionary

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 165,000 entries, 225,000 definitions,
and 10,000 new words and senses.

Thesaurus

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Thesaurus. Over 340,000 synonyms, antonyms, related
and contrasted words, and idioms.

This isn't a review as I've not actually used the software yet which is why I took the tool descriptions off the MW site overview page and put them in quotes.

Not sure what to call this.  A wish-upon-a-far-flung-star?

The software was designed by songwriters for songwriters, lyric writers and poets but it looks equally useful for any kind of writer.  On the Amazon site there were two versions this one and one for the Creative Writer that did not have the Rhyming Dictionary or the Audio features that allows import of music tracks but on the MW site there was no mention at all of the Creative Writer version.

More mystifying than that was the fact that the two versions on Amazon were the same price though value had been removed and not replaced with equivalent value..  At nearly $200 with no upgrade support, a fairly steep price at that.

For unlimited upgrade support you need to lease from MW for a monthly ($9.95) or annual ($99) fee.

To further my confusion there were differences in the description of the tools between the Amazon site and the Masterwriters site.  On Amazon the dictionary and thesaurus were listed as American Heritage and Synonym Finder which I think are better choices.  Especially the Rodale Synonym Finder with its nearly one-million words which I have depended on for three decades and have long desired a searchable electronic version.

Both Amazon and MW call it version 2.0.  So the question becomes which site has the most up-to-date information?

Since I do write poetry as well as stories, essays, blog posts and the current training in copywriting, I would want the songwriter's package.

I think that pop culture dictionary and the phrase dictionary would prove invaluable for copywriting.

Besides the steep-for-me price and the wondering which thesaurus and dictionary is really on board the requirements paragraphs on both Masterwriter and Amazon lacked clarity.  I had to search out and read nearly a dozen online reviews before I was able to learn that yes, Masterwriter will run on Windows 8 tho XP is recommended.  Hmmm.  Gives me more than a bit of pause.  No explanation as to why.

Then there is the issue of the small font.  Always a concern for my visual challenges.  But I use other aps with that issue and have workarounds.

A lot to give me pause.  And yet...

And yet I still yearn.

Because the ability to search such a huge collection of words and phrases and filter by connotation, part of speech, alliteration, rhyme, intensity, number of syllables and positive/negative attributes then save them in favorites lists and collections attached to projects is the equivalent of a cowboy's lasso for the word wrangler. Not just invaluable but essential.

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At a Loss for Words

LoL by: Joystory
yep I made this one.  You can vote for it a cheezeburger.com.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed today.  I lost three days to the Read-a-Thon and then yesterday happened my mood mirroring the impending storm until it broke.  So now I'm way behind on just about everything except reading.  Script Frenzy script, book reviews, house work, exercise, crochet (gifts for imminent events) and sorting/unpacking from December's move all jostling for head of the list.

So pardon me of I don't spend all my words and time on this post tonight.

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A Vocabulary Lesson

Kitteh Misunderstood.  I think so.

Learning words eliminates misunderstandings.  Kitteh would not be so scared if he knew 'pedagogy' has nothing to do with stoking a dog.

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Words Matter Week 2012

Leave it to me to discover a week long event on the evening of its last day.  This is a yearly event for bloggers held the first full week of March each year.  Each day M-F a prompt is presented and anyone wishing to write on its theme may and then link back to the hub blog.  There are prizes too.

This year the prompts were:

Monday:  Writers craft words into memorable phrases, stories, poems and plays.  What writers make your heart sing?  Why?

Gabrielle Garcia Marquez because his stories are like waking dreams that seem to arise out of my own dreams or maybe it is truer to say that my dreams rise up to greet his stories as long lost companions.

Maya Angelou because her poems and stories are the fruit cultivated in the soil of pain and despair fertilized with hope and courage.  Her words teach me the meaning of 'overcome'.

Flannery O'Conner because her stories confront me with the damaged aspects of my psyche and their propensity to commit terrible acts of violence against the spirit and body of self and other.  Forewarned is forearmed so many such acts can be avoided but her stories also speak of the power and hope in redemption for those occasions when failure to heed the warning leads to the inevitable gross acts of unkindness towards ones self and those lives interacting with our own.

Tuesday:  What word, said or unsaid, has or could change your life?  How?

Forgive.  Because whether it is I who has offended another or they who have offended me, the word forgive spoken from the heart has the power to mend fractured relationships and strengthen the fabric of family and community.  We all offend in many large and small ways every day and without the ability to forgive others and ourselves and to accept the forgiveness of others the weight of guilt, shame, resentment  and anger would crush out souls and smother our sanity.  Living with the habit of forgiveness makes living in joy and harmony possible.

Wednesday:  Communication breaks down when words are misused.  What is the funniest or worst breakdown you’ve ever observed?

The words were misheard rather than misused but just this evening I thought my mom asked me to turn the light out here in her bedroom and in a bit of a shocked tone I told her the light was already out and was about ask if she really couldn't tell as I wondered if this was what she meant when she complained the last few days that her eyes were going fast.

But before I could voice my jumbled thoughts she spoke again, enunciating carefully with her dentureless mouth through the apnea machine mask, saying that she meant it was OK for me to turn the light back on if I needed to while I cleared off my side of the bed.

That may not be the funniest instance I've ever observed just the most recent.

There have been a number of challenges to communication with my mom in the years since her stroke what with her issues with mild aphasia and both hers and my hearing loss and vision loss.  Some have been as amusing as this one.  Some not so much.

Thursday:  What Person in your life helped you understand the importance of choosing words carefully?  What would you say to them if you met them today?

My great aunt who had been a teacher and a teacher of teachers in her day once caught me with a thesaurus at the tender age of thirteen and she was dismayed.  She said one didn't have the right to use words one found in such lists of synonyms without knowing them already.  She stressed that it wasn't safe to just plug in any word in the entry as there were subtle and not so subtle differences in meaning and it was the writer's responsibility to know those subtleties and select the word best suited to the thought they are trying to convey.

I am totally paraphrasing as her actual words are vague in my memory.  Still vivid tho is her disapproval.  And even though I didn't really get all the subtleties of her points then it primed me for later understanding.  And over the several years she had left to influence my life she took every chance to share her love of words with me.  Playing Scrabble was one such way.  But she also introduced me to crossword puzzles and the stories of individual words in their etymology and history of use.

If she and I could speak today I'd tell her thank you, many thanks, much obliged, so appreciated, I'm so grateful, gramercy, thankee,  thank you kindly, merci, merci beaucoup, danke, danke schon, gracias, grazie, spasibo Auntie Rie.

Friday:  If you had to eliminate one word or phrase from the English language, what would it be?  Why?

Indifference.  Because, assuming as Orwell did in his novel 1984 that elimination of the word eliminates that which it references,  then indifference itself would be history.  And it is my belief that indifference is the root of all evil not the love of money.  For indifference is the polar opposite of love and passion.  It is worse than hate in that it cannot be moved and while hate is to be eschewed its presence bespeaks the capacity of its bearer for passion and thus also for compassion.  While indifference stands by as vile acts are perpetrated upon the innocent, weak and vulnerable, making no effort to alleviate distress since the distress of others cannot touch one who can't be stirred to care.

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