Open Window

Vocabulary

Building a Vocabulary

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know that I truly enjoy words. Selecting the right word can add color to a description and clarity to a position, and in some cases both.

Over the past four years, my vocabulary has expanded into topics and areas that I would never have considered part of life in the United States, let alone any vernacular. Sure, I'd heard some of these words from time to time, but infrequently, such that I had no true familiarity with how they would be used to describe or identify people, places or events.

Allow me to give you a taste of what I've been coerced into learning. In some sense of misplaced fairness, I've listed these in alpha order.

Authoritarian - of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

Antithetical - being in direct and unequivocal opposition

Autocrat - a person (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited power

Bigot - a person who obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices

Despot - a ruler with absolute power and authority; a person exercising absolute power in a brutal or oppressive way

Disenfranchise - to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially: to deprive of the right to vote

Fascism - a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forceable suppression of opposition; a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Ineptitude - generally incompetent : bungling

Hyperbolic - of or relating to, or marked by language that exaggerates or overstates the truth

Hypocrisy - a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel

Illiberal -  not broad-minded: bigoted; oppose to liberalism

Imbecile - a person affected with moderate intellectual disability

Narcissistic - extremely self-centered with an exaggerated sense of self-importance : marked by or characteristic of excessive admiration of or infatuation with oneself

Nepotism - favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship

Misogyny - a hatred of women

Plutocracy - government by the wealthy

Scientifically illiterate - showing or marked by a lack of acquaintance with the fundamentals of a particular field of knowledge, in this case science 

Sycophant - a servile self-seeking flatterer

Totalitarian - of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy; Authoritarian, Dictatorial, Despotic

Xenophobia - fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

I love learning and always have. I only wish learning this vocabulary had not been forced on me over the past several years, just so I could understand the news.

Daily Ray of Hope

The Sierra Club has a website called the Daily Ray of Hope, a link to which was forwarded to me a few weeks ago by a very encouraging friend. She described these rays as a "bright spot" for her in box and a "potential photo exhibition space" for our photography. Once you sign up, the Sierra Club sends out "images and inspirational words" every day. Any one can submit images and you never know which image is selected until the email arrives.

I found yesterday's "Ray" particularly poignant as Peter and I continue to pursue and grow with our passion - photography. So I thought I'd share it with you too.

"It's actually a rare and precious thing to discover what it is you love to do, and I encourage you to remain unapologetically consumed by it. Be faithful to your gift and very confident in its value."  Jonathan Ive

Now if you, like me, have no clue who Jonathan Ive is, he's the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, Inc. According to Wikipedia, he is the principal designer of the iMac, MacBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad. How could I have never heard of this man because he's materially changed our lives? Peter and I converted to the world of Apple a year and a half ago and have at least one of each of these hardware products, and we find we couldn't live without them, especially in support of our photography. So thank you Mr. Ive for your passion and your encouraging words.

This is my submission to Daily Ray of Hope today.

Photo by Claudia Ward ©2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Who's Walking Whom?

Even now I find that little grammatical pixie sitting on my shoulder saying, "Don't do it, even if it does sound better. It's Who's Walking Whom not Who's Walking Who." "Do it right or don't do it at all." Gee, that pixie sounds a lot like my father.

Either way, I did ask the question when I saw these four characters on the beach yesterday. It was breezy but you didn't have to fight the wind to stand. It looks to me like everyone had been penned up inside for way too long.

 

Signs

I love signs, especially those that strike my funny bone or "speak to me" for one reason or another. Generally speaking, signs are intended to identify or advertise a place or an event, or to command your attention and influence your behavior. I find the latter particularly entertaining. On safari in Kenya many years ago I found it funny to read a sign on the path to our tent that announced that the path was for "humans". Who was the sign meant for, the humans or the animals? In Trenton, Tennessee there are signs along local roads that read "Speed Limit 31", not 30 0r 35 but 31! What's that all about?

A friend of mine sent me a photo of a sign she saw in Florida last spring, knowing that I "get a kick out of signs" and that poor grammar drives me around the bend.

Do we really need to drive home this message with a sign, let alone one that is written in poor English. It is downright wrong to use "good" as an adverb after action verbs, and, trust me, Drive, Ride and Walk all qualify as actions. I believe the only behavior this sign influences is the incorrect use of the word good as an adverb. How does such a sign ever get approved? 

My apologies, I'm hijacking my own blog ... this is a subject for another post, let's get back to signs.

On a recent trip, Peter and I came to these crossroads and as the photo was taken I chuckled and thought out loud, "What a wonderful place to live!" 

I'll close with one last photo which is not technically a sign but is something that touched by funny bone and made me chuckle.

I hope you found this post entertaining and that it starts a series on Open Window, because signs can be quite humorous and we all need to laugh more. Have you found any funny signs lately? Share them with us. Send them in and I'll post them as long as they aren't too off-colored and/or hurtful.

Boredom

"Boredom: The state of being weary and restless through lack of interest". In French, the word is "ennui' which is derived from Old French enui - annoyance. 

A short while ago, I mentioned that I’m on Grand Jury Duty and did a post explaining what that means. When I wrote that post, I had just learned what a Grand Jury is and does, and I won’t repeat those basics here. What I had no appreciation for at the time was how much “down time” there is when you’re serving on a Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is an arm of the court and needs to be available to the District Attorney’s office to further the process of juris prudence. When the Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) are ready, so must the Grand Jury be, BUT until they’re ready, the Grand Jury must wait. 

There have been days in the last three weeks that we were in court no more than 31 minutes! The rest of the day we 23 jurors are sequestered in a long, narrow room in the center of which are two tables end-to-end. Together they are probably 2.5 feet by 14 feet in dimension and accommodate 14 of us at any point in time. Six more chairs line an inside wall and straddle a water cooler, and there are ten chairs lining the outside wall with windows. Thankfully, there’s plenty of light because without it, this would feel much like a dungeon of sorts. There's a micro wave oven but no fridge, and a bookcase full of magazines and games.

The 23 of us range between the ages of 19 and 69 (or so) and have varied backgrounds. The one thing we all seem to have brought to this service is a sense of humor – thank goodness! As we sit here waiting to be called in to hear the next case, we muster all our resources to fight the boredom. 

Boredom, in the adult form of our species, is quite interesting to watch day after day. It appears to be mildly uncomfortable at best, spawning some entertaining behavior, and painful at its worse, truly testing patience and common courtesy. Some fight off the boredom by reading, others listen to music on their iPods or play games on their PCs. Some play solitaire or poker, another teaches cribbage, several assemble jigsaw puzzles, and others sleep. 
In the past three weeks, I've even seen boredom reduce grown men to lads once more coloring car characters with crayola crayons. Small circles chat about everything from tugboats to T.J.Maxx, and jokes pepper the conversations more and more each day. 

But, as the days and weeks pass, it takes more and more effort to be patient with the process and each other. By now we know the Grand Jury process and are more than familiar with most of the law that we need to consider for the crimes being brought before us, but read it they must "for the record". And, every day we get to know one another a little more. What we found entertaining in someone one day may become mildly annoying another day. St. Augustine wrote in the 5th century, "It is a common proverb that too much familiarity breeds contempt”. Let me not mislead you, it certainly has not come to that but frustrations ebb and flow depending on the day, the hour, and the case load.

Our group is a good group, a favorite of the ADAs and court staff - our collective good nature, and sense of fun and humor, gets us all through. Despite our exhausted patience, our naturally good intentions show their faces nearly daily ..... when one of us sneezes, in unison 22 others say "God bless you"!

Independence Day

Some of you think that Independence Day is the 4th of July and you'd be right, but my independence was conferred upon me one year ago today when The Bank of New York Mellon terminated my employment with their prodigious organization. I didn't know then how truly liberating this experience would be.

According to Merriam-Webster, independence is "the quality or state of being independent" as in:

1. "not subject to control by others", i.e. having control or rule over oneself, and 
2. "not affiliated with a larger controlling unit".

There can be great comfort in being affiliated with a larger controlling unit. Responsibility and accountability is generally shared which can defray some of the risks that come with employment of any kind. The rub however can be that you relinquish your rights to a truly independent voice and path, and submit to corporate control of your actions in business. I always enjoyed collaborating with colleagues, working toward a common goal set by management, but now I adore collaborating with my husband in our own endeavors working toward our goals. The risks are all ours and not defrayed in any way, but so are the rewards.

Many things have changed in the past year, I no longer do many things but rather do other things instead, for instance:

I no longer:

• Set an alarm to wake up and dread the sound of that alarm.
• Wonder if I can learn fast enough to do my job well.
• Dread going to work, because there's just too much of it.
• Lay awake in the middle of the night for an hour or two watching television in order to divert my mind from the business matters darting to and fro.
• Carry around a 5 pound Franklin planner scheduling and recording my every move.
• Wear contacts, make-up, business clothes or a watch.
• Go to a concrete office building everyday and sit in a box, commonly referred to as a cubicle.

I do:

• Wake up early on my own (generally with the sun) eager to get out of bed, wondering what I'll learn that day.
• Love getting to work early each day, hoping to pack as much as possible into every hour.
• Sleep through the night, nearly every night, for the first time in nearly 17 years.
• Check the date and time from time-to-time on my iPhone.
• Wear glasses, no make-up, and comfortable, casual clothes every day.
• Go to the beach, farm fields and gardens to photograph all that I see and then sit at the island in my kitchen happily doing the work at hand.

I don't recall being quite this content in recent history and truly feel that this event has been a wide open window for me. At first, I cautiously looked through, apprehensive about the unknown. After about eight months, I was standing firmly on the sill, leaning in to see what more I could see and do. And after about 10 months, I jumped through the window embracing these new circumstances, excited about where they may take us. I haven't closed the window, I still need to see where I've been from time to time - besides that would be like "burning the proverbial bridge" and we know what "they" say about that.

Twelve months after one of the major deciding events in my life, one over which I had no influence, I'm excited and enthusiastic about the future and what we can make of it for ourselves.

Cheers!

"Proud as Punch"

As I was thinking about my nephew's upcoming graduation, I was also thinking of how proud we are of all of his accomplishments, but especially this - a PhD in Mathematics - Wow! The expression "Proud as Punch" came to mind which then began to ruminate in the "little gray cells" - what in the world does that really mean? This time the research revealed a disturbing origin for the expression which may lead to my striking it from my daily use forever.

"Proud as Punch", also expressed as "Pleased as Punch", means to be openly and proudly pleased with oneself or a particular outcome. It refers to Punch of the Punch and Judy Show, a traditional English puppet show, and the pride and pleasure he derived from murdering all the other characters in the show - a fact with which I was not acquainted.

According to The Phrase Finder, 

 

In this puppet play Mr. Punch, left to mind the baby by his wife Judy, kills it; then, when Judy returns, bludgeons her to death as well. He is arrested and thrown in prison but escapes, and proceeds to kill a policeman, a doctor, a lawyer, the hangman, death and the Devil. He does all this with immense glee, each time crying in his traditional squeaky voice, "That's the way to do it!"

Mr. Punch derives from the character called "Polichinello" in the Italian commedia dell'arte; these puppet plays were introduced to England in the 1660s ... They are still popular as wholesome entertainment for children, especially at the seaside.

 

Did I read that correctly, "wholesome entertainment for children"? How could this be true in any generation? What an example! Does anyone other than me conjure a bit of Sweeney Todd, when you read this?

If you know more or can enlighten us more positively on this expression, please do so by leaving a Comment here.

Participles and Prepositions

I struggled with English in high school and college, much to the surprise of many who know me today. For the life of me, I couldn't execute the basic principles of grammar - my participles dangled dangerously and my prepositions far too frequently found themselves hanging off the end of sentences.

In days of yore, I would have written about yesterday's walk on the beach ... Walking along the beach, Christmas trees littered the shore for as far as the eye could see, which of course would mean that we have walking Christmas trees on the east end which I assure you we don't. Those pesky participles just attach themselves to the first element in a sentence that they could possibly modify, even if it creates nonsense. So today I'd scribble, Walking along the beach, we found Christmas trees littering the shore for as far as the eye could see. 

You might be asking about now, how, in heaven's name, did she even think to write about this today? Well you can blame Winston Churchill. Today's quote, delivered to my homepage, was:

"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."

I certainly recognized the grammatical crime having had teacher after teacher drum into my head, "Never end a sentence with a preposition!" But what did Churchill mean? In what context did he say this and to whom? And most importantly, was Churchill advocating exceptions to the rules?

Meaning first: Pedantry is "pedantic application of knowledge" according to my good friends at Merriam-Webster. Defining a word with a derivative of the same word makes me want to scream, but press on I did, so: pedantic means "of or related to being a pedant". There they go again! Finally, all is revealed, a pedant is "one who makes a show of knowledge, ... [and] who unduly emphasizes minutiae in ... the use of knowledge". I'd paraphrase and say a pedant is a snobbish stickler for the rules.

Well, as the story goes, a civil servant wrote a memo to Churchill objecting to ending a sentence with a preposition and to using dangling participles in official documents. Churchill's arrogant retort, wrapped in succinct superiority and penciled in the margin was, "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." Ouch!

So does this mean I can or can't end a sentence with a preposition and dangle a participle or two upon occasion? Churchill obviously took the position that he could. Where do you weigh in? Are rules rules, unbendable and rigid, or can we bend them and allow one or two of these infractions from time to time?

Enunciation Eradicated?

According to Answers.com, enunciation is an "old fashioned term" and "when it was in vogue, it referred to saying sounds correctly. Mumbling, slurring and lisping were examples of poor enunciation." They make it sound like enunciation was some Victorian-type of fad that has been eradicated - gone the way of the dinosaur! Not so fast there; I beg to differ and let me tell you why.

Recently my husband and I bought the new 3Gs iPhones and I can honestly say it's changed my husband's life. It's as if he's just discovered the internet, and it's right there in his hand! He hardly ever uses it for its phone features but rather has app after app for everything including (but not limited to) taking photographs, making shopping lists, catching up on news and gossip, checking prices with bar codes, playing poker, finding movies, getting the weather forecast, learning how to grill red snapper and finding his current location.

But I digress, how does this tie in to the eradication, or not, of enunciation? Peter's favorite feature of this iPhone is the Voice Search feature of the Google app. If and when any question crosses his mind, he picks up "the most intelligent friend I know" (his words not mine) and asks! And here is where enunciation is resurrected. This "friend" of his will never give a good answer if he doesn't enunciate his words. Time and time again, Peter has had to resubmit his question when he slurred or mumbled in haste. This "friend" demands a clear, crispness to the words in order to understand any question and if they don't get served up that way, it will make him do it again ... and again ... and again! 

Here in the 21st century, more and more of our technology is being "voice activated" and thus driven by the spoken word. Once again we must enunciate to be understood ... this time by our machines!

What do you think on the topics of enunciation, articulation, pronunciation or anything else crossing your mind this Saturday morning? Leave a comment and let us know.

 

Enunciation

When we were young our parents would drill in to us the need to enunciate our words so that we could be clearly understood. Slurring words, which is "entirely unacceptable", is also a clear sign of laziness "and you wouldn't want to be thought of as lazy ... would you?"

So drill they did to ensure any lazy streaks were completely expelled. When I would say "I dunno", the halls would ring with "You what?" and the silence would hang there deafeningly until I filled it with the properly enunciated "I don't know!" According to them, I should have been "going to my friend's house" and "rowing the boat". Surely I wouldn't be "goin" and "rowin", who would want to do that? And the one that was guaranteed to get a rise out of my father every time was "I'm gonna do it", to which he'd reply, "I'd prefer if you were going to do it." Those "ing-s" really got his goat. But it appears that the years of repetitious teasings by dear old Mom and Dad paid off as lessons learned if I'm quoting them here so many years later.

Now why, oh why, has she gone off on this tangent you're probably asking. Well this is part one of a two part post, so stay tuned until tomorrow. Until then share some of the expressions your parents harped on until you got them right. I'm sure they'll take us all down memory lane. 

Journey Proud

JOURNEY:  An act or instance of traveling from one place to another. TRIP

PROUD:  Feeling or showing pride: as a: having or displaying excessive self-esteem b: much pleased : EXULTANT :  Filled with or expressing great joy or triumph: jubilant 

"Journey proud" was an expression my mother used to describe how she felt as an impending trip or journey was approaching.  Given the definitions above, I'm a bit perplexed about how those two words came together to describe the sense of anticipation and excitement she would get before embarking on a trip.  Butterflies in her stomach and a sleepless night before the journey began were the usual symptoms of this condition.  The genuine excitement and anticipation of new experiences to come is a wonderful feeling, and I have it in spades!  In the middle of my sleepless night, my husband roused from his sound sleep and asked, "Journey proud?"  The answer must be yes.

We fly this morning via Los Angeles to Maui, HI where neither of us has been before.  We're staying with friends in their timeshare in Hana, for one whole week.  We've heard such wonderful things about Hawaii, but especially Hana and its beauty.  We're laden with every piece of camera equipment we own, a few good books and a bathing suit or two, ready and open for any adventure.

Safe travels to us all today, no matter how near or far we go.