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My parents subscribed to the Readers Digest for YEARS! And they saved every issue, and took the back issues down to our lake cabin to store them, I guess. During long summer afternoons I read those old magazines and took lots of quizzes that were in them. We were not allowed to swim between noon and 2pm because the sun was at its hottest and we could burn. The Readers Digest taught me vocabulary in the form of a quiz, read the word and pick the correct meaning from the 3 choices given. Since I was an avid reader it was a good source for me to pick up new words. Of course, then supercalifragelisticexpalidiscious came along. Who but Mary Poppins could spell that one? Lonnie loved "autumnal" and "celebratory" and others he could rattle off. I blame my Southern upbringing for my inability to hear the different vowel sounds. When I hear a word I have to take it in context to know if it is A or E or I, they all sound the same to me. I can't tell if a person is asking for a pen or a pin. As a result I am a really lousy speller and have to have lots of helpers to get thing right. Thank goodness for Spell Check on the computer and on my phone. And we have Bill Clinton to thank for bringing "Abeyance" into our everyday lives. That's about as good as the Ladies of the Delta offering to "Put a Patch" on your drink. My favorite word or idea is "New", probably due to my ADHD inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds. --donna
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When we lived in Hawaii from 1973-1975 we rented a house on the north end of Oahu, right on the ocean. We had our own beach, and had 31 palm trees in our yard. My Pascual, a 5 foot elderly native Phillipino, came with the house. He would come around every other day to trim the trees and make sure none of the tall branches fell on little Britta. What was amazing is that he would shimmy up the tree barefoot, some of the trees being 10 or more feet tall, and pick the ripe coconuts, before they too fell to the ground. He taught us how to open the coconuts, and how to know when they were ripe. We had a community of Hare Krishnas that lived a block away, and often came to pick the green coconuts for their milk. However, we knew that the green milk would give us diarhea, and wondered how they could drink it. It was interesting to get to know them, because they were all young guys just out of the military. What I discovered is that they missed being part of a group of men, and the Hare Krishna group filled the void. They liked being different, dressing that way, and eating only vegetarian, but underneath they were just young boys searching for an identity. I loved the beauty of the palm trees, how they swayed with the strong Pacific winds. After the tsunami that attecked the island while we lived there, the only trees surviving were the palms. It must have been fun to wave whole palm branches for parades such as Jesus entry into Jerusalem. Truly a wonderful way to celebrate. --Cynthia As soon as palms were mentioned in our Zoom time, I went straight back to my early childhood in Lyford, Texas. We lived in the parsonage behind the church. Across the street from the church was the city park. I don't remember people being there very often, but it was a long time ago. What I do remember is all the date palms that were planted in the park and very tall by my childhood stature. I remember seeing the dates hanging from the trees and did eat them from time to time. When I think of seeing palm trees now, I don't remember seeing dates, just like the new mulberry trees have no mulberries or cottonwoods have no cotton. My memories from that time are almost all really good, even though I know we stayed with other people, at times, when my mother was ill. The area around the church was quite large and we were free to roam. We played in the sand that was not only in the yard, but also what the street was made of. I could go into the parish hall which was separate from the church and cool off on the concrete floor in the summer time. We played under the oleander bushes that were by the parish hall. We had lots of places to visit and little or no restrictions. How different things are today! I can't imagine the response to Jesus perhaps riding in a motorcade or the Popemobile and having people spreading palm branches. How would he be received today! --Carolyn When we decided to write about vocabulary, the first thought was of my husband. He had a humongous vocabulary (admittedly, this is from a person whose knowledge of words is not so amazing). He read voraciously. Most of those books were nonfiction on a myriad of topics, therefore he was exposed to many unusual words. When our sons were younger, we banned him from playing the game Boggle with us because we could not match his ability to quickly form words. On occasion, I could beat him in scrabble since points were sometimes due to strategic position, and not the word itself. But my favorite game was trying to come up with words that he did not know, and that only happened a few times in our 43 years of marriage. --Jeanette I thought I would write about the word hubris which someone I have been acquainted with lately uses frequently. It's a word I thought I should know and now I do. However, this evening I am reading a book about addresses, how they came to be, their purpose at times and what they might tell us about people who reside at certain addresses. I ran across the word cadastral and to be best of my knowledge I have never seen it before. It is showing or recording property boundaries, subdivision lines, buildings or related details. The next new word for this evening is semiotician who is a person who reads too much meaning into things. I think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but there are tons of words out there that I am sure I have no clue about. That means to continue to live and learn! --Carolyn I've been a little stymied about what to write this week, not because I don't have anything to say about words. I LOVE WORDS! Words are my currency! My brain can't remember names or places without seeing them written. I can't pray without a steady stream of words running through my head. My dilemma: how can I possibly choose? Instead, I'm going to riff off of Terese's post. When I searched Google for an image associated with "braggadocious," Google images presented page after page of pictures of Donald Trump, interspersed with a few of him debating Hillary Clinton and a few of Pee Wee Herman (???). I'm not kidding! Check it out here . So I did some research on Donald Trump's vocabulary. According to Newsweek, Trump speaks at about the fourth grade level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Assessment. In fact, 14 presidents spoke at a higher grade level. The top three: Obama, Carter, and Hoover. This is not surprising to any of us. Remember his bragging that his success in life was the result of "being, like, really smart"? Or that he was "a very excellent student"? "I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star."? Donald Trump is a master at speaking to the elementary school crowd! I guess he's grooming his 2024 base already. Who knows? It might work, unless more salacious gossip makes the rounds during recess between now and then. We can only hope. And in case you were still wondering what braggadocious means, according to Google, it means Donald Trump! --Janice Not to be braggadocious, but I believe I could be called a paradigm of splendiferous behavior when it comes to my predilection for the meticulous arrangement of my house. Although enervating, my assiduous efforts indubitably give me utmost gratification. Others in the household may see me as persnickety and even remonstrate loudly in a querulous manner, but I bear these pernicious reproofs with equanimity, knowing that my propensity for maintaining an immaculate milieu is unsurpassed in guaranteeing the felicity of all. --Terese From the Latin, meaning to seize or grasp: originally quick to seize new ideas, perceptive, intelligent. (I liked that definition!) Later in the 1600’s it evolved to mean: to grasp mentally a fear of what is to come. A good word for this week. On Monday my breast started aching. I called to schedule an overdue mammogram. The woman at Hillcrest (where I’ve had them done for 2 decades) asked if I had any pain. I answered yes, and she told me I had to get a doctor’s order to have a diagnostic mammogram. So I called my doctor and she told me she had to see me first, because a few weeks ago I also had some leakage. But I wanted to have this done right away, so she said she’d send the order right away. The next afternoon, as no one had called me for an appointment, I called Hillcrest 3 times and finally found out that they never received it. I called my doctor, and the nurse had sent it to St. Francis instead of Hillcrest. Then I called Hillcrest back, and that scheduler actually called my doctor and got the order. But here’s the problem: They couldn’t get me in for 2 weeks at Hillcrest. So I called my doctor back and had her send it again to St. Francis to see if I could get an earlier appt. Can you hear behind the words that I was a bit APPREHENSIVE? My sister has had breast cancer twice, 2 different kinds of breast cancer, and my mom had breast cancer at the age I am now. So I called St. Francis and they gave me an appt for the next morning. I didn’t sleep well that night, and I got to the appt early. I knew I would be getting a mammogram, smashing my sore breast against the xray machine. No problem. I knew I’d be getting an ultrasound, wondering all the time what she was seeing. No problem. I knew the doctor would have to come in the room and look for himself. No problem. I figured I’d be getting a biopsy. No problem, I’d done that before. But both my doctor and my husband told me I’d probably have to have a ductogram, where they would inject dye into the breast to see where the leakage came from, or if they were clogged. APPREHENSIVE! So the doctor comes in the room and tells me it is not cancer. It is a very large cyst, and he needs to squeeze it hard all over to see if any more fluid comes out. It does. No problem. I was so relieved it wasn’t cancer I didn’t care what else they did to me. Doctor tells me he needs to insert a syringe and draw out the fluid in the cyst. Ok I said. Just do it. Only needed a few shots of lydocaine, and then he did the job, which took only a few minutes. And it was over! Still sore, but who cares. I fought the APPREHENSION at every level by singing “Jesus the Light of the World” in my head. And at one point I even felt surrounded by the light. --Cynthia The last couple of time changes have been really different. I've always loved the fall change because I could sleep in and hated the spring change because I had to get up an hour earlier. I always griped that it took me weeks to adjust. But now that I'm retired I can get up whenever I want to, and I don't have a dog who gets confused about breakfast time. It's a real marker of how much my life has changed. For some reason that doesn't feel too good. --Terese I have little to say about this, except that I do not like it. I am not a morning person, and I need the sun in the morning to help me wake up. It was just right yesterday, but not today after we switched the hour. When I was a Mom in Minnesota, I hated DST. My kids couldn’t get to sleep until after 10 in the evening. That’s it. We should get rid of it. There’s no good reason for it. --Cynthia |
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January 2022
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