The speck in your own eye

I see a certain arrogance from time to time from people who consider themselves better than most in the use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  These people usually memorize rules governing the three areas and then expect all people everywhere to do the same.  At least one website is dedicated to these rules so people can memorize them.  And, those who memorize the rules condescend or browbeat others who choose not to.  It's and its are the two spellings that I encounter the most as being misspelled, but according to a list put out by Dictionary.com, the words your and you're are misspelled more often.  Ever feel judged for using it's in place of its or your in place of you're?

When I was twenty-something, I played this arrogance game with language rules when it came to holding others to the notion of standard English, but then I found that people could challenge my own notions of language that I had no answer to.  So, I quit playing language games with others.  Making people feel inferior is far from the acceptance I desire to have for others.  Far beyond the games people play with spelling and punctuation, some syntactic constructions defy memorization and require a deeper knowledge of when something appears in language, and I was unprepared for that requirement.  Who was I to hold someone accountable when I couldn't do the same in the same language game just a different area?

Why would someone say, for instance, We were given tickets for the concert, rather than (Name of party) gave me the tickets for the concert?  I didn't know at that time.  Or, why would someone who had influence on teachers of English in schools want to perpetuate the idea that action verbs, such as A key lay on the table, make a "stronger" sentence construction than a verb form of BE with a "dummy" subject, like There was a key on the table?  I didn't know at the time how to discount this self glorified "writing guru's" arrogance.  Is there a definition for "strength" in sentence construction?  Does a graduated continuum exist for a "weak to strong" verb or sentence construction?  I understand "style" and "sentence variation," but "strength?" Never. Strength is a nebulous, immeasurable term in syntax.

Then there's my favorite, the "phrasal verb."  Coined by Quaker religious essayist Logan Smith in 1925, the term didn't catch on with linguists after Chomsky in the 1950s.  Grammarians who taught ESL used a variation of the phrase beginning in the 1960s, but the base term fell into disfavor because of its ambiguity.  However, some teachers of foreign languages still like to use this old term in verb phrases such as If you will put out the money for the venture, I will run the operation.  Not many people feel the need to analyze the phrase put out because of its complexity.  They just use it, as did I when I was twenty-something and arrogant.

Working with ideas in syntax and semantics, discourse and conversation analysis, and phonology have changed every smidgen of arrogance away from memorizing a few rules.  Memorizing rules is really, really easy comparatively.  Imposing a few rules on others who can outstrip my knowledge in many other areas of life, like writing software programs, negotiating business deals, and making money in the stock market seems ludicrous.  What is the real point to an education?  To make it work for you in your endeavors in life, or show how you memorized something important to yourself and not to most other people?

English grammarians need to get over feeling smug and superior for learning well one tiny speck of knowledge in the much more encompassing field of language use.  Someone might ask them to explain the literary term synecdoche or the phonological principle of obligatory countour principle someday and their arrogance will disappear with the embarrassment they should feel for only knowing one small corner of rules in a very broad, well established academic domain.

Caught in the middle

Last Friday I lived in a time warp.  I was alive, of course, in the present.  But, I went in the early afternoon to the show "Passengers."  It was a well done, well written movie, redeeming hope in people.  The whole movie was set in the future and both settings and characters' actions were appropriate for future happenings.  For 2 hours I soaked in the time many years beyond my present.

In the early evening, I sat down to watch another movie on television from 19 years ago, "Seven Years in Tibet."  It was set in the three-year period 1947-1950.  All the action and other props corresponded to that time period.  People wrote in longhand, for instance, in leather-bound journals.  Clothes were not made from lighter fabrics, but coarser, heavier ones.  Although motorized vehicles were present in the world, the setting of Tibet showed a world of walking everywhere across harsh terrain, giving a sense of 100 years earlier in time.

The day marked, I think, the microcosm of the brain.  We have hopes and dreams, so some of our actions are ones that are carried out in hopes of future outcomes and what they will yield for us.  We also realize we are trapped in the present moment.  We get to the future by steps, but the future is really just imagination and desire.  And then there's the memory track we reflect on from time to time.  It helps us see retroactively with 20/20 vision, or at least vision with more perspicuity.

Closing out the year, I hope for a clear and plausible glimpse of the future with the right steps in line to achieve it, satisfying moments of the present, and a lucid interpretation of past events with full enjoyment of the sacred moments that flash across our minds from time to time.

Transformative

On June 29, 2007, the world was transformed.  Onto a stage in California Steve Jobs walked out to introduce the world to a way to communicate not only with people, telephone-style, but with websites all over the planet.  Also a person could choose from an array of games to play.  A person would no longer have to use separate devices to talk, listen to music, or surf the net.

On July 15th, 2008, the iphone was discontinued.  But, the iphone had not failed.  The second edition of the phone was put out.  Thus, was born a transformative way of talking, using the web, playing games, taking pictures, listening to songs, and much, much more.  Apps began with about 25,000 to use, but soon proliferated.  At present, who could really live a quality life without a "smart" phone as they are now called.

It's time again.  It won't be Steve Jobs walking out on a stage, but someone with just as much drive and vision.  It won't be a development of a device to integrate tools, but something much more powerful and forward thinking.  The world of the hololens was introduced in March of 2015.  Its applications are only now being explored.  The one above is for education.  NASA already uses it in exploring and understanding Mars virtually.  Applications exist for taking virtual, holographic expeditions in Macchu Picchu, and the Roman Colliseum.  Archaeology and history have truly come alive, not in name only.  These applications will proliferate until babies born in this year will grow up knowing two worlds - virtual and real.  They will be seamless.  One will travel between the two without thinking twice about it.  They will enter one, leaving the other, as easily as a person taps on an app today to leave the real world for a moment with a screen.

I hope to live to see it.  It will be so exciting!  I am ready to be transformed.

A little understanding goes a long way

"Sheesh UPS AND USPS I know your busy but you could have rang the doorbell so I knew my stuff was here."          
(Written by a doctor of pharmocology working as a pharmacist, graduate of Oklahoma University, age 31)

The above was a caption written to a picture of boxes delivered and stacked next to this person's front door.

I learned in school that any generation could change the language to fit their needs and preferences.  There is no amount of cajoling (or grade punishment in school) that will change what a generation decides to do with the language they speak. 

I went to school in the 20th century.  My English is different from the people who learned their English in the 21st century in certain usages for pronouns and verbs (and a few other items) as exhibited in the quotation above.  I don't lament the differences.  I know what is inevitable.  The principle of language change is continuous and constant.  After all, I really wouldn't want to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the English of that day.  (Line 1 - Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, 1387 C.E.).

If I live to see my great grandchildren, I know they will add some nuances of their generation to the language.  And, if I wake up in two hundred years from now, I would probably struggle to keep up with the conversation.

All of this is to say that we don't have to like or accept change in any facet of life.  But we do have to recognize differences and causes.  A lack of that makes us arrogant or bitter or both.  It seems a more satisfying principle to acknowledge or understand diversity.

Who's in the mirrror?

 I walked into a restaurant last week and looked up at the monitor near the table we were being seated at.  I couldn't hear the TV at all, but the deaf captioning was on, so I could follow what was being said.  The first thing I read was, "I knew the note was from him because there was grammatical mistakes in it."  I laughed out loud and couldn't help but comment on his statement.

I find this a real problem in the world I see everyday.  Not the grammatical error part, but the fact that someone wants to make an observation by criticizing the very thing they themselves are doing - sometimes in the very same way.  I am usually amazed at the blindness of the speaker.  I'm not perfect at doing this either, so I am criticizing myself.  I do, however, try to keep it to a minimum, and I try to rectify matters when I realize I did the very thing I don't like.

This Christmas season, my priority is to be a whole lot more accepting because when I talk about someone else's errors... there's grammatical mistakes in my own.

What does "time spent" give you?

Learning a language can be rather challenging at times.  When people learn English, for example, they, at some point in their intermediate path, encounter that words spelled the same have different grammatical categories in usage.  Program is one such example.  The word can be be used as a verb and a noun.  The question always arises, "How can you tell the difference?"  This allows for the discussion on whether an article or determiner precedes the word or whether it shows a verb suffix or verb auxiliary.  Of course, an article or determiner is not always present when used as a noun, and a suffix or auxiliary verb is not always used when used as a verb.  That, in turn allows for further discussion about the location in a sentence a noun can be placed or the location of a verb after a subject in a sentence.  Of course, counter-examples to that rule abound as well, such as the use of the verb as an imperative where no subject to the verb appears.

In my few years on Earth I have found living about the same as learning a language.  First we learn something like lying is bad, then we find that lying has degrees to it, like white lies and black ones.  Then we find ways not to state the truth exactly, but to "fudge" the truth or become silent about something so that the absence of the truth is evident, but it's not lying.  Then we find ways to say what happened in such a way as to hide the lie.  "Dancing around the truth" it's called.  Of course, there is the expression, "glossing the truth."

It takes time, but eventually, experience tells you both how to speak a language and how to filter out lies from truth.  Fluency in one gives fluency in the other,  I like being around people who have time both in language and living.  I trust them a little more.  They know how to tell the difference - in verbs and nouns and in living decently.  Viva "time spent."

Giving ourselves destiny

Who's writing history textbooks these days?  Not just these days, but in my lifetime too.  Abraham Lincoln gets treated incredibly well in the books I have ever been exposed to.  It's not easy to figure out why this is so.  The U.S. had a slavery issue at the time.  Lincoln's solution was a decisive one and the fastest solution to accomplish.  The political establishment after the war campaigned long and hard (and rather brutally) to ensure that the issue of slavery would not reappear.  Part of doing this meant that they needed to treat the leader of the war to free slaves in the best light possible.  So they did.  Lincoln was a hero, a decisive man who pushed for right to be done.  He was wise and led the country out of a dark chapter in its history.

The other side of the coin is not bright and shiny like history books tell it.  Lincoln was an on again, off again politician, losing in as many races as he gained office.  He was elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.  He wasn't even on the ballot in 10 of the 15 states that formed the southern slave states.  In his own Republican convention before the election, Lincoln obtained the Republican party nomination on the third round of balloting.  In the main election, Lincoln's position on slavery was the most divisive, stating that if war was necessary to end slavery, then he would wage it.  The other three candidates had more diplomatic stances, such as allowing each new state in the Union decide its status of slave or free, having an alternating pattern of free-slave-free-slave status as they entered the Union, or trying to bring pressure on the South through economic modifications.  When Lincoln won, the Southern states wasted no time in seceding, nine of them before Lincoln was inaugurated.

The most divisive president in U.S. history is remembered kindly.  He has books published about him touting how he lingered long on his decision for war, concerned about the great lines of division that would be caused.  He has movies made of how he labored with Congress to win their support for getting Black Americans to have the right of citizenship.  Modern books contain the wit and wisdom of Lincoln.  It's one of the greatest sell jobs ever.

We all have a choice on which voices we choose to hear.  We all decide how we want to interpret the world around us.  We all select which details to remember and drop from memory.  And we all elect to act and react in ways we deem consistent with all the details.  That's what gives us individuality.  Even those we love choose, decide, select, and act according to a little different line of thinking than we have.  It's what gives us our destinies.

Hanging around

I hear NFL commentators use a phrase nearly every Sunday as they narrate a game that is close.  The phrase is used when a team is ahead most of the game and in the fourth quarter, the other team is still within striking distance to win.  That's when I hear, "if you let someone hang around long enough, they will beat you."

I have seen that principle happen in life more times than not.  That has made me adopt the philosophy of hanging around.  Even if I didn't think I could actually get a job or get a job I wanted, I would try to hang around to see what would happen.  That philosophy has not worked for me in the two things in life I wanted the most, but it has worked out in many other arenas of life.

The NFL has other philosophies of life worth adopting.  Another one I have adopted is that from time to time, you will lose even if you are winning more than losing or if you have a winning streak going.  Losing is part of the game, but it doesn't have to keep you from having a winning record.  But the main thing to remember in every game that is played is that if you can hang around long enough, you can beat the opposition.  I love that that is true.

Dying satisfied

I watched a number of Science channel episodes on the universe yesterday.  They were all quite enlightening.  Not all the information was new.  However, the information turned my mind to how majestic the universe is all over again.  Several of the pictures delivered to us from the Hubble telescope amaze with their clarity of many of the nearby galaxies and galaxy networks.  The number of stars represented in the skies outside the Milky Way is boggling.  The number of planets circling those stars make the mind spin with calculations.

So, when I look up at night from my humble home on Earth and peer through a haze of an atmosphere, my mind goes wild with imagination.  What life is peering back at us outside our galaxy?  Where is that life?  What form does it have?  Have they been around longer than humans?  Are religions the same on all planets?  Does intelligent life have governments like Earth's?  Is there love and marriage and sex on those planets?  Can others exist outside of the three dimensions humans exist in?  What do they know that we don't know?

I feel a little trapped, being here on Earth.  But one day, before I die, I hope to see at least the planets up close and personal in our solar system in all of their holographic beauty.  I would love to simulate walking on Neptune or flying past Pluto.  I can die satisfied whenever that happens.

Flags we see

Life many times unfurls like a flag.  We have been told by those older than we are what the flag looks like, but we are only able to see the flag for the first time as it unfurls.  We make our plans based on what we have been told that the flag looks like, but really, we shouldn't.  The flags are sometimes similar, but at least half of the time, the flags are unique.  And, we don't know during which unfurling the flag will be the same or different.

I say this because I had counted on the flag being the same as I was told when I embarked on adulthood.  As it stands now, my flag has only been similar in some instances as my former generation's flags.  It also has been true that the older I get, or the more the flag unfurls, the more different it appears from what was told to me or what I had expected.

I have noticed that some people hate their flags as they see it for the first time, seeing what they expected.  They were hoping to see something they didn't expect.  I also have noticed that many think they can predict accurately what they will see as the flags new portions appear to them.  Satisfaction in life is based on reactions to the flags they see.  I am working on my reactions.  I have been sorely mistaken at times.  I know I can't predict accurately, so I am left with molding an attitude of satisfaction as I learn to react with a beautiful spirit.

Spending money

I'm one of those that doesn't spend my leisure moments performing manual labor if I have made the money to pay for a service.  I would rather spend leisure time doing hobbies I like or going places that give me pleasure.  One of those jobs I freely entrust to other hands is mowing my lawn.

Each Saturday I count out the money for my lawn mowing person and put it into an envelope with his name on it.  My granddaughter, who spends most Saturdays with me,  either watches or helps me fill the envelope.  When it comes time to pay the person, I let her hand the envelope to him.  She takes great pride in helping to pay for the lawn.

A week ago, I was about to go for groceries at the store.  I was rounding up my money from wallet and the place I empty my pockets.  My granddaughter saw me and wanted to help pay for the groceries.  she went to the place we had envelopes, then to her little money box that she keeps because she is learning how to save and how to count money.  She put a fair amount of change of different denominations, which she thought was a lot of money, and handed it to me.  "Use this."

I smiled really big, told her thanks.  It took me a couple of minutes more to round up my keys and get ready to go, and as I was leaving, she said, "Don't forget to spend my money."  I thanked her prolifically.

My granddaughter is 4 years old.  I was humbled at what a child works hard at contributing to a larger cause.  Somewhere up the path of life that principle gets reversed.  I love her purity of heart, singleness of purpose, and all-for-one attitude.   Life taints I know.  But what a crystal clear memory I have of a time when her heart was pure beyond belief!

Options

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He received his education there, and was in the U.S. to try to start studying at a university here.  My job was to ask him a question to help him practice his English.  So, I asked him, "Do you believe there is life on other planets?"

The answer was simply an opinion question.  Mainly I was listening for grammatical structure of his utterances to check for his understanding of ideas from the question.  In the course of his answer, he said that the sun was the only light in the universe, and that other stars were not suns with light and heat of their own, but reflections from the Earth's sun.  Therefore, there was no life elsewhere, only here with our sun.

Grammatically speaking, everything was fine.  Semantically speaking, there was a great amount of entanglement with his answer.  I didn't question what he was saying.  I listened only, which was my job.

However, if the young man learned this kind of science in his country, I know he is not ready for an education in the U.S.  I did ask as my last question to him if it would matter to him that other explanations of the universe existed.  He said, "No."

Education is a wonderful thing in that it expands one's horizons.  This young man will find that is true if he really does continue with his education.  I'm not overly concerned with his answer.  People either opt in or out of an education.  He will get to choose if he will allow evidence to develop his future thought.  If he opts out, of course, he will fit in better with the world he left behind, and will probably rejoin them.  If he opts in, he will love what enlightenment has to offer in this and a thousand other matters.  He will be in for the trip of his life.  I hope he opts in.

On the canvas of darkness

Night has fallen.  It's a little earlier than it has been falling because summer is in its death throes.  The readout on the clock is still approaching 8:00.  It's a sign that my time of day, the cover of dark, is kicking in for 6 months.  The night soothes my mind, allowing it clarity to see my path clearly, and invites me to imagine what lies ahead so I can save steps during the day.  Darkness is the canvas on which I can produce pictures of possible outcomes given certain scenarios.  Night is my close friend.

Life's colors

Our kitchen is filled with pictures drawn by our little granddaughter.  She colors everything, always trying to color a picture in rainbow colors.  I think she has a robust enough personality that she herself will have a colorful life when she learns how to start coloring life.

And it is that principle that allows me to admire people who know how to turn their environments into bursts of their colorful personalities.  There aren't many who can do this, but I know a few.  They fill the room around them with rainbow colors, no matter what is happening in their worlds.

This is not a standard personality type with standard types of jobs.  It is any job with people who want to add a touch of laughter, a talent of art, a background of music, a picture of serenity, a record of steadiness, or a well of knowledge to their other amenable habits.  These kind of people usually don't flag in their energy or their gift to the setting.  It's a pleasure to work with people like this.  I tip my hat to the color-filled people who have touched my life.

Seriously different advice

Life is funny like that.

A woman I have known a long time got married right out of high school.  Her marriage lasted 2 years and ended.  She didn't waste too much time getting a second husband.  She married again within 6 months.  She had two children, then when they were 2 and 3 respectively, her husband walked away and divorced her.  She spent a 3 year period of time wandering, so to speak.  In this time, she lived with one man, left him, went to bars every Thursday for a year carousing.  Finally she moved to a different city, found a man to marry and raise her children with, and 28 years later she is still married to him.

Now my daughter is dealing with single mom issues.  Who wanted to enter the picture as advisor?  You guessed it.  The above mentioned woman.  Even if the woman finally settled down, I can't imagine the type of advice she will give.  I would bet my life that it will be different from mine - seriously!

An even older path

I was raised in a way very different from the ways that I have adopted now.  I didn't know how I would exactly react when  I went this weekend to a place that I knew had kept those time-honored ways of the all the restricted forms of discipline I had kept in my very young years.  I anticipated that I would have some nostalgia, and then be appreciative of my current lifestyle and move on.

But my mind couldn't really comprehend what I saw.  It was so far removed from my current ways that I had no nostalgia whatsoever.  I  actually found myself pitying the ones who were still engaging in these retroactive habits.  I felt nothing for myself because I had escaped the slavery of such a lifestyle.

It was dream-like.  I could see what was happening, but could not engage.  I found myself as a spectator only.  At the end of two timeless hours, I was finally able to get in my host's vehicle and leave the scene.  When asked what I thought about the experience, I used the word that normally I use for thoughts that have to be masked.  "It was nice," I said.  But nice and numb have the same feeling to them (really a lack of feeling).

I am writing from a comfortable distance from the scene of that window to the remote past place in my life.  I am only thinking thoughts like that of the old Pink Floyd song.

Jump right in

I have learned both in classes and in experience that for every collapse of some business, there is a golden opportunity waiting in the wings for someone to discover what it is and turn a golden opportunity into gold.

I have just encountered such conditions.  A particular business that had been operating for a decade or so has collapsed through gross mismanagement.  The golden opportunity hasn't appeared yet, but it is there waiting to be discovered. 

It always takes time to develop something, but the currency at this point is ideas.  That's my longsuit.  The second part, negotiating the deal, I'm not quite as efficient in, but it is the last part, turning the idea into a lucrative business, that I don't do well in at all.  I am hoping this turns out different.   But, I have to try it.  It's entrepreneurship 101.  Get in on a groundfloor opportunity, build it, reap the benefits.  I will be working diligently this time to make it as easy as entrepreneurship 101 makes it sound.

An old path

I had been acquainted with the town for a really, really long time.  Today, I had an occasion to visit it.  I stayed in a modern hotel, but when I stepped out its doors, the town's old, old way of conducting business hit me in the face.

I went to watch a movie.  I drove into the parking lot to park, and the cars were jammed into parking spots that had been striped for cars of the 1950s.  They were not wide and the slant of the lines reminded me of the way striping had been done in small towns right after WWII.  But, I found one of those narrow spaces and parked.

I got out and joined a line in front of a ticket office, box-office style.  The line had about 50-60 people in it.  Only one person was issuing tickets at the box office window, so it was going to take about 15 minutes before I was going to be served.  I had not seen that arrangement since I went on a date in my high school years.

After the line to get tickets, I went inside.  Yep, another single-file line.  I snaked by the popcorn counter, the drink counter (where a person took my order and filled my drinks for me - now how many years ago was self-service phased in?).  It went by the candy stand and finally ended up at the cash register.  I paid, went in to the show.  At least it had stadium seating.  But the seats were the two-piece kind where the seat part was separate from the back part and folded down by sitting on its edge to get it to move.

The show I was seeing fit the decor.  It was a movie set in the 1970s but many of the buildings were in the architectural style of the 1950s.  On the way out, I stopped into the bathrooms.   I flushed my own toilet used a push button soap dispenser and crank down towels from a front loaded lever.

I had experienced a time trap.  I really had not been ready for it.  I certainly didn't appreciate it.  And it reminded me of times that were not some of my best days.  I guess I needed that reminder.  Life is still not easy, but it is so much better now than it had been then, that I actually felt kicked and bruised from having visited the theater.  I made note that I didn't need such a visit to appreciate what I have now.  The visit had certainly been a stark reminder of some rugged days passed and to which I hope never to return.

Strong vision

The moment had a solemnity to it.  I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I spent about an hour there.  But, I found myself looking around the place, and unpleasant memories filled my mind.  So much so that tears welled up in my eyes, then trickled onto my cheeks.  I wiped them away only to have second round of the same.

After those moments, tears came and went in the bottom lids of my eyes but did not leave my eyelids to stain my cheeks.  The strong vision of my son in a place that couldn't help him, that should have helped him, flooded my mind and triggered the sad wetness.  Imagining the procession to his casket caused me to short-circuit at that point.  What remained was just the feeling of sadness.

Moments like that don't happen, but then again, I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I should have left, but I would have to have brought attention to myself by excusing myself and climbing over 4 others seated next to me.  So, I brought out my phone and begin reading from it something that I had been concentrating on earlier that day.  It helped and soon returned me to normalcy.

I didn't think I was vulnerable to that train of thinking anymore.  But, I found that I was.  I don't like working through the depths of death again.  But for a moment in time, I felt again the same chilling, hopeless feeling that I had had 13 years ago.  I'm good to go now.  My flashback moments have taught me something about myself.  I'm ready to move forward now.

In a moment's notice

Recently, I observed a man about 35 in a role playing game who didn't like the way the game went.  The value of his cards changed from one round to the next and he went from successful to struggling in one fell swoop.  He argued how unlike life that was.

Well... maybe his life hasn't had that experience yet... but I doubt it.  Life has more than a few twists in it where it is different from before in the flash of a moment.  This weekend I received just such an email.  Life was rocking along like I wanted it to, but now, I am going to have to make some adjustments.  And it happened in the length of time it took me to read a short email.

When I play the currency market, money is lost or gained in a one second time span.  About two years ago, I had to completely rearrange my life for a two-month time period because my mother fell, broke her kneecap, and had to have 'round-the-clock care.  Her fall happened in less than a second.

I have had people people decide things for me that I didn't like and wouldn't have done.  I have had friends to tell me things or not tell me things in a short conversation or email that affected where I lived and worked and what my productivity level would be.

Yes, all the above and many, many other very important occurrences have happened to me in one fell swoop, without notice, without my approval, with indifference and insensitivity, with not a second thought about what would change for me.  In one fell swoop!

So, to the man who made the statement about life and immediate changes, "Hang on because one day the floor below your feet will disappear in a moment's notice and you won't be ready."

Life's contents

I watched the War Dogs movie today and heard a really true line from it.  The setting was a funeral in the movie.  The priest conducting the funeral began the graveside speech with "Life does not come with a table of contents.  Each new chapter is a gift."  The priest went on to describe the man's chapters of life.

Well said whoever the script writer was.  I didn't stay to see the credits, so I don't know who to give credit to.  I like the analogy because some changes in our lives are abrupt, so the chapters come to an end in the same manner, and it is easy to see the next chapter.  Other parts of our lives blend more naturally into each other, but still chapters are discernible because some of the characteristics of the chapters change only slightly.

And the part about each new chapter being a gift is really true because the events in our lives define us.  They become who we are, how we identify ourselves.  Those changes are gifts to us, and we impart that gift as we see fit to the people in our worlds.

And how true is it that Life doesn't come with a table of contents?  Absolutely right.  I haven't ever thought to do it, but I might someday.  I should sit down and write the chapter titles to the chapters of my life and create a table of contents.  It just might help me see the gifts that have been delivered to me by life.

Good performance

Finding a good plumber and a good car mechanic are two of the very hardest searches you can make.  They have a less than decent reputation.  There's a reason for that.

Over the last 5 years I have had to locate a mechanic and plumber because I lost the ones I had been using.  I have been to 6 mechanics and finally I have found one, two actually, but one is farther from my house than the other.  I have this rule when I take a car in.  If I have a mechanical problem that I didn't have before taking the car in, I will not return.  Even if the problem that surfaces is related to the one I took the car in for, I still don't return.

I have had less luck with plumbers.  My rule is the same, so the fact that I still am looking for one tells me that that profession my have fewer honest souls working in it.

I think there are several factors that make the people in professions the way they are, but one is the level of incentive to work.  Plumbers seem to be in a perpetual state of "just passing through" and they need their jobs just to eat for the time being.  I haven't ever met one who really liked what he was doing.  Even the plumbers who have their own business seem to have resigned themselves to doing what they know to do rather than enjoying what they do.

I appreciate more and more the people who do what they both know and enjoy.  People are good at what they do when they enjoy solving all the problems that crop up while they are performing their profession.  I truly hope that people see in my work both the knowledge it takes to perform it and the enjoyment I get from sharing that service with those who need it.

Cutting out paths

What do most people really choose?  Paths that lead to success?  Hardly.  That is because there is challenge, hardship, long hours, inconvenience, sacrifice, and willingness to trade off important times and events.  Most people will go only so far down the road to success.   At some point they turn back since they follow the path of least resistance, not the growth characteristics listed above.

People who do choose success know the path by heart.  They spent night hours to accomplish some of the tasks along the way.  They gave up a weekend or two of leisure to make the next goal.  They traded off some of their children's activities for a time to totally enjoy them at a future point.  They didn't shrink back from chores that were more than difficult in order to learn how to clear the next hurdle.  They know how to lead because they can tell you where the mines are along the path that can kill you.  They also know that you can't get where they are because you are unwilling to go very far down the path.

My admiration goes out to people who know the way.  Frauds and wannabes are easy to spot.  They turn from inconvenience and sacrifice at the drop of a hat.  Those who have been halfway can only rise to half of the challenges.  And conversations with the uninitiated to provide insight, get put off because the foundation for such insight is lacking.  I will walk with those who glide ahead providing light for my path.

Raging storm

I don't think that anyone expects to hear a grown child angrily yell at his or her parents that they are responsible for the messed up life they live or hear specific charges in the crassest terms available that the parents failed at some of the basic duties in his/her upbringing.

The scene was a storm of words by the child - total outrage.  The father tried to speak to say that the memories presented didn't represent his own memory of the particular situations.  The mother was taken completely off-guard, but managed to say she was sorry the child felt so strongly about her bad memories and apologized for the less than 20/20 vision in raising her child.

Storms pass, most of the time without damage, and usually come again from predictable directions.  But it's still a shame that a child would vent such venom against those who so lovingly cared for her during the time when a child has little memory.

I still play it

Growing up, I heard the word ain't very little because it was stigmatized speech.  English teachers actively taught against its use, even saying that it wasn't listed as a word in the dictionary.  Twenty years later I began hearing it more often.  I think there were two reasons for that, one of them not being that English teachers had destigmatized it.  First, my circle widened greatly, and I was exposed to a greater diversity of people.  Second, there was a movement among linguists against the prescriptive nature of language and in favor of describing the varieties of language found.  Sociolinguists in particular began referring to standard English as presitge English.  The war was on.

I still don't hear it that often so when I do hear it, ain't is noticed.  I take note of the people who use it and the situations in which it is heard.  As far as memory goes, the amount of use and the situations of use are the same as when I was growing up.  I also understand a language principle much better.  Whatever our speech was as a youth tends to return after age 40, after one's ambition in the workplace has begun to subside.  The term "linguistic marketplace" was coined in the 1970s to speak of the effect of marketplace on one's economic situation in society.  By the time the next decade arrives there is a comfort level in life that one has achieved about all that is going to be achieved in a person's economic circumstances.  It is then, when people regress to using ain't if they used it as a child and teenager.

I never used it in my youth, so I still don't.  It's not a part of my psyche of being comfortable, and I never had to fight against it during my most ambitious years to get ahead with my money.   So, when I hear it from adults, I know it marked them in their youths, and it helps identify them as being from certain areas and educational levels.  Language is still a game, you know.  And I still play it.

"Place" for learning

There is so much available on the internet that it has become a virtual world log of everything that happens (and that has happened).  It has much to offer for any profession that to ignore it would be certain death of the profession.

And if I were a student in this modern world, I would seriously consider the handicap that a schoolroom represents.  I can find anything I could possibly want to learn in the virtual world.  Some might say schoolrooms offer the teacher/student relationship as a way of providing guidance and discipline.  I would like to see a study on that because I think it is not true.  They might say that schoolrooms offer the core body of knowledge by way of a textbook as a base for progressively learning what lies at the heart of being a good American citizen.  That statement is false on its face since textbooks are the most restrictive way to learn the basics, and the discipline of the student is relied upon to read it.  And some might say schoolrooms put in place the social development necessary to relate well to others in the world.  Given the fact that the wealthy don't follow this advice, that the poor don't follow this advice, that immigrant children don't follow this advice and that military "brats" don't follow this advice, it seems narrowly applicable to middle class families who live in one place mostly.

I would seriously consider, and probably would follow a path of meaning to me so that I could accomplish my desired goals.  The internet would provide unrestricted access to my desired goals, would change as I change or as my goals would change, and would allow access to many who want the same for themselves from any country in the world.

Really, what is a schoolroom for?

Pesky comments

I find it always amazing the types of matters people divide into male and female characteristics.  Yesterday I submitted some paperwork for a report to be compiled.  The papers weren't divided the way the woman taking the reports was thinking they should be divided.  There were not any instructions on how to submit the papers.  I didn't really know the woman other than to have seen her a few times in passing.  I couldn't read her mind.  So, I just divided the papers in the way I thought they should be. (This would have been a perfect environment for an experiment, but it wasn't one.)

The comment I received from the lady was "You need to divide the papers into two groups."

"I did," I said.  I explained the way they were divided.

"Men!" she replied.  The aide that worked with her took the papers, handed them back to me, and asked for me to clip the papers together that belonged together.  Who would've known!  Simple solution, but one that was customary to her, not to me.  I have never thought of, mainly because I haven't seen evidence for, a man's characteristic to be associated in any way to how groupings of papers should be divided into two recognizable stacks.

Language - yes.  Language has features that men and women used separately from each other.  Society's assignments of expected roles in social groupings - yes.  Role assignments are common across the world.  Types of jobs women and men decide on - yes.  Jobs can follow society's expectations or typical interests of men and women when a majority follow those featured interests.  But how papers should be divided - never.

I guess I should take the woman's response and just answer with "Women!" But I won't because how papers are divided is more relevant to personality, experience, formality level, and incentive than to gender feature.  So, I'll chalk the experience up to a difference in our experience of life, setting, and incentive level.  I'll be able to let the matter go without another thought.

Nothing but expletives

My sister-in-law wanted me to meet a new acquaintance of hers for all her own reasons, but because she thought her friend was similar in her approach to analyzing people's motives.  So I went.

The conversation went well through the greetings part.  We sat down at a table and began to talk.  I thought we would be having a collegial time to talk, but within the first 5 minutes of the conversation, it became clear that my sister-in-law's friend wanted to analyze me.

I have a standard MO for those who desire to do such a thing, so I went into that mode immediately.  I also decided to redirect at the first available opportunity.  When I did so, I did it by trying to identify with her through knowledge of someone of notoriety at her university.  She began to deemphasize the man's importance and to once again try to initiate analyzing me.

I soon excused myself.  My sister-in-law and I haven't spoken in the nearly 3 months from that time for deliberate reasons on my part, but when that dialog happens to spark itself again, I have something I want to offer her before we carry forward our own give and take.

Expletive is the word I'm thinking of starting with.

Nothing but decaying dung.

Together one

Brave New World was one of the first fiction books to incorporate the idea of a one world government.  Since that time the idea has surfaced many more times, and increasingly so in books of the last 25 years.  I am an advocate of such a thing happening, and I try to speak about it on every occasion that halfway presents itself.

About a month ago, I couldn't help but notice an information system for students of a political science class that included a whole section on globalization.  I say information system rather than textbook because the section was in an online, app controlled section reachable by phone, tablet, or computer accessible for students by a school offering the class.  Nothing was offered to the students in the way of paper and print, only online sources and resources.

If anything can begin to bring about a global civilization, it will be the internet for sure.  It allows immediacy and a degree of transparency and authenticity.  The world would have to be seen as one place before anyone would consider coming together.  The development of seeing such a section in a political science class information system encourages me.  It may take another 75-100 years.  But, I'm optimistic.  The young people over the last year that I have talked to from about 20 different countries have certainly bolstered the idea as well.  Viva the planet coming together!

One-up

It was an unprecedented phenomenon for me.  I went to a taco place today about 3 miles from my house at 7 in the evening.  It was still registering 100 degrees on my car thermostat.  That's not the phenomenon, though.  Many days are 100 or more  in Texas.  However, it was 7:00.  I was there for about 10 minutes, then made the trip home.

Now a person would think that, if anything, the temperature would take a degree south the longer time went by into the evening.  Oh, no.  As I went the three miles home, the temperature moved north to 101 degrees.  No joke.  On the way down - all the same temperature.  On the return trip - up one.

If I apply this to life, I know there's a direct analogy.  Often at work just when you think some crisis or pressurized matter is just about over - it's in the waning stages - then, yes, something prolongs it and you enter the one-up phase of the issue.

I remember a time when a man wanted something for an individual that I had denied to that person.  He came into my office wearing a gun around his waist, which he had never done before.  He asked that I change my mind.  A few days passed.  I thought the whole episode was over.  But no, I was directly accosted by the person I had denied earlier in a place where he had about 120 seconds to do anything before people around would notice anything out of order.  Close call.  He backed down after a minute (literally) and left.

Things can heat up in a hurry, but it generally takes a while for heat to subside.  I learned that then.  I still know it now for there were other times.  But the unexpected one-up phase from something intense is rare.

Another viewpoint

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He was proud of his heritage and wanted to return in the near future to help his country.  He really missed his way of life there.  Mostly he missed the slower paced way of life.  He mentioned that he didn't want to try to keep up with the frenetic workday pace of the U.S.

Among other things, he also mentioned that young people here were on their own way too early in life.  Young people in Nepal stay with their parents into their early 30s.  That way they are sure to have a stable life when they leave home.  The young man thought the family structure and the work world would be better off if people didn't feel pressure to leave their homes at age 18.

The Nepali young man, 23, had already received his university education in his country, but the U.S. doesn't accept foreign university work as a general rule if a student arrives and wants to take graduate work here.  So, the young man was having to start again with his education in the U.S.  We talked at length.  He was good-hearted since he took an overnight train to the earthquake area of Nepal to help people there rebuild their earthly possessions and their lives.  He had already participated in government primaries for elections at his young age.

I try to learn things from people from other countries.  From this Nepali young man, I learned that there was a way to conduct one's life in a fashion that was slower-paced, yet enough to get things done.  And, perhaps, that family expectations about children shouldn't have to be drawn from what is the norm in a country.  I have not worried about that too very much after age 40, but to the extent that I ever did, I have learned that the U.S. norms shouldn't rule my own expectations.

Sounding wistful

There's a song I heard recently called Dear Younger Self.  I remember seeing a book title about a year ago with about the same title.  I guess the thought has a good sentiment.  But, it sounds to me to be a bit wistful since the impossibility of this thought cannot be overcome except in science fiction.

The song goes into how the composer should inform himself of how the world really works and of true values masked by a hurried life.  I don't know why such a person wants to settle for writing a song to a younger self when he has about 30 years left on his full life.  He might want to wait until he has gained about 20 more years of wisdom before he write that letter.

Maturity is a process.  People have tried to speed it up.  The phrase wise beyond her (his) years exists because of the rarity of seeing such a thing.  People can't really circumvent it.  Even for those wise beyond their years, the wisdom is usually not followed by matching actions.  They turn out to be people who know platitudes, but don't have the life's story to support their so-called wisdom.

You just have to wait for it.  Maturity is beautiful to see when it happens, but pushing it or imagining to see it won't allow for it to happen.  Embracing each phase in the maturation process is what everyone does naturally, so to expect otherwise is nothing but vanity, perhaps self-aggrandizement.

That makes the Beatles' song of old pretty accurate, "Speaking words of wisdom - let it be."

24/7/365

NASA released a one-year continuous time lapse of the Earth from a point approximately 1 million miles from the Earth between it and the sun.  They spliced together 365 days worth of time lapse from shots of the Earth taken every two hours.  It was fascinating to see the cloud patterns and the wobble of the Earth slightly from the video.  The Earth didn't look quite as vibrantly blue as the famous picture taken from the Apollo 11 in 1969.  But, it was still noticeably blue against the backdrop of the blackness of space.

I am always amazed at the different look of the Earth in space as opposed to the shots NASA releases of other planets by space probes.  Anyone arriving in our galaxy from elsewhere would certainly notice it too.  It is inviting to see such vast blue oceans, cloud patterns, and land masses.  And I can see why the area of the Egyptian pyramids would have been singled out after looking at the planet from a million miles away.  It is a center point on the Earth that is almost always visible.  Clouds rarely cover the area.

The video, I'm sure, will spawn many thoughts after getting to see it.  I'm glad to be alive at this time and place in space/time.

Vintage

I read an article about 5 years ago by a History scholar.  The article wasn't about history, however, but about teachers of history.  He had conducted research and was reporting on the way history professors presented their material in the classroom.  Particularly, he compared the organizational patterns of their material as it was presented to students.  He found that professors with 10 years or more could easily move between the connection points (the episodes making up an event) than the professors with fewer years.

That finding seems like a no-brainer on the surface.  However, one reason he used professors in his research and not other kinds of teachers, such as high school teachers, is that the university teacher is considered an expert in the field.  They should be the ones to make connections within an event with ease because of the sheer amount of information they have at their disposal.  It would appear that more information would translate into ability to make connections that less information would prohibit.  Not so.  The experience of using the information in different settings, over time, with different kinds of personalities, and in repetition after reflection influences the effectiveness of the types of connections professors are able to make.

I thought of that study when a language teacher I spoke to last week mentioned that she had a student learning English who could not understand the Subject-Verb-Object order of English enough to produce grammatically correct sentences.  She was frustrated with him and offered expletives about his personality, which she had attributed to the reason for his lack of understanding.  As it turns out, the teacher was one without 10 years of teaching experience, less experience with a variety of languages (even though she was bilingual), and without exposure to the backgrounds of people from the area of the world the student was from or to the nature of the language the student spoke which used a reverse phrase order in use of headwords.

What is true with wine is true with humans, too.  The flavors of new wine and vintage wine are very different.  Vintage wines are so robust with flavor.

Date stamped

I remember talking with my college roommate about a decade or more ago about some research in my field that applied to his profession of counseling.  The published articles were about gender and language.  We specifically talked about the feminine characteristics of the "counseling session" as it existed at that time.  Years have intervened since then, so I thought that maybe the ideas from that time had been thought about more by those teaching counseling in the universities.

Until today... I saw a man who has been peripherally involved in counseling.  He filmed an interview with a female author because he liked a book that she had written.  His introduction to the filmed interview included a comment for men to listen because this woman was saying things that would help both men and women.

First, if a man interviews a woman and feels the need to tell men in his audience not to tune out a message because the messenger is a woman, I know his psyche is stuck somewhere in a world before 1975.  That's never a good sign for up-to-the-minute information.  Second, if a man feels the need to suggest to other men who are already voluntarily listening to a filmed video clip that they need to listen, the man has a control issue or a low self esteem without going further.  I listened critically from that point on because his issue is not mine.  Third, if a man recommends a book that is based on anything close to a psychological premise and is written by a woman, I know he is thinking that the information is differently formatted from a male's general organizing pattern.  It is a signal that information is going to be based on personal experience without taking personality into account, and and it pervades what will be said.

My expectations didn't let me down.  I heard the woman speaking give a lot of personal experience, make mostly generalizations about transferrence of her experience to the audience at large, and no allowances were made for differing personalities among people.  The experience left me high and dry. While I am pretty sure universities have moved down the time continuum in how they teach psychology today, it was clear this man and woman were stuck in a time zone prior to the modern age.  Language acts as a date/time stamp on an event.  Fortunately, for this one, the amount of time was short, considering the context.  I escaped with my life this time.

Tentative assertion

What I absolutely eschew is a person who doesn't think something is true because he or she hasn't thought through the issue enough to consider the possibility that what has been said can be true.  I think it is also true that a certain failure of exposure to scientific inquiry makes one a little arrogant in what he or she does know.

The discussion was about the typologies of the world's languages.  Mostly it is true that about any aspect of a language that a person could think of in communicating to someone else in a standard way has been tried and/or is represented in the world's languages.  Typology is about the patterns of a language, generally speaking.  While it is true that languages have a dominant pattern for making statements, there are a number of different combinations languages have to do the work of questions, negation, emphatics, and other aspects.  In English S(ubject)/V(erb)/O(bject) is the dominant pattern even though other patterns do exist.

So, when I made the statement that Spanish had an OSV pattern in it, a person said he knew Spanish fluently and it wasn't so.  Well, you know what my next move would be.  And as it turns out, there are examples of and OSV pattern said as acceptable Spanish.  What the person didn't know were the principles of language.  He knew Spanish very well without a doubt because he was married to a native Spanish speaker.  He knew German well and had exposure to Vietnamese, so he had a good sense of language.  But, studying languages more analytically could have helped his cause.

Yo no voy a comer las naranjas, pero las manzanas, si, mama va a comer.     SVO + conj + OVS
I won't eat oranges, but apples, yes, mom will eat.     SVO + conj + OVS

He seemed a little surprised, but acknowledged the pattern's grammaticality.  I used to find myself in his position more times than I would like to admit when I was younger and had less ability to analyze language.  I am still wrong sometimes even now, but the difference might be that if I know I am on shaky  ground, I am much more tentative in making assertions.  I know the difference between when I have science on my side and when I don't.

In the shadow of bravery

I admire bravery wherever I see it.  I spoke with a woman from Pakistan today who had come to the U.S. (legally) to get her education.  She wants to become a teacher because she hurts for her country's female population.  She knows that her countrymen routinely ignore half of their population when they educate their young people.  She wants things to be different.

That's not the bravery part.  The courageous act she wants to perform is to return with a highly respected education from this country and teach young women and girls about math, science, commerce, economics, and other subjects that would enhance their understanding of quality living.  She knows that many of the men who run the country don't share this vision in the least.  And she knows those men would kill someone who tried to change the status quo.  She still wants to educate young women because she has daughters herself and wants them to have a better life.

I don't know if I possess this kind of bravery.  I try to take new paths sometimes, but I usually try to work within a framework to get things done diplomatically or politically.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have been courageous about going against the status quo.  And that makes me genuinely admire this woman who might have to face down an imminent threat on her life one day in the not so distant future.

Billboard words

I was getting my hair cut.  The stylist in the neighboring chair was carrying on a conversation with her customer.   I wasn't paying attention too closely, but I did overhear her say, "He's my kind of people."  I hadn't heard that in a while.

I used to hear, "He's good people," a lot.  I didn't hear that expression until I was in my 30s.  I grew up in a different part of the country than where I lived for 30 years of my adult life.  At first, it didn't make good sense to me.  I had heard, "He's my kind of person," and "He's from good stock,"  but never the two expressions so common to the region I lived in for 30 years.

I finally understood the expression, "He's good people."  I don't live in that region of the country any longer and haven't heard the expression since leaving - until today.  It turns out the stylist was from the region I had lived in so long.

Dialect features mark us all in in our view of life.  It doesn't matter if expressions of a dialect fit the grammar of the mainstream language or not.  The features are said, often, over several generations, and mark the people from the area.  I have my own set of dialect features.  They mark who I am.  I could work to remove them (and I have removed some of them because they don't exude the image I want to have), but in some way, I want them to show.  They're a type of billboard saying, "This is me."

Yes, but partly no

Independence Day: Resurgence was exactly what one would expect from a sequel.  It was done well enough, built carefully on the first movie, and phased out the characters from the first movie that would not be acting any longer for the second sequel.  But even if it was predictable, it was suspenseful in all the right parts.  It maintained and heightened the conflict between the alien force and the human race.  It elevated the stakes by making the aliens' ships and weapons better and bigger than before.  It was a good way to spend time with characters who acted nobly to save the world.

One part that people might have expected to reach a heightened and even better level than the first movie would be the speech to save the world.  The first movie featured the U.S. president quoting Dylan Thomas at the climax of his inspirational speech, "We will not go quietly into the night" [at time stamp 1:43 of the video clip].

People were stirred to action and nobility.  The president's speech in the sequel in light of this first speech was an enormous disappointment.  The character chosen to be president was gruff in appearance and in speech manner.  He gave a terse, monotonous, uninspirational speech to rally the troops.  Fortunately, the president from the first sequel decided at that point to make the ultimate sacrifice to take out the queen mother of the aliens.  If it had not been for that, the movie might have failed in reaching the goal of maintaining the Independence Day spirit.

When the sequel leaves the cinema, compare the two speeches.  Anemic will be one of the words that comes to mind when you hear the speech to rally the forces.  It should be one of the lessons every communications teacher uses to give a non-example of motivational speeches.

What I'm used to

I remember well reading the introductory matter to a dictionary for the first time.  I know, no one really does that.  But, I decided to since most people haven't.  I found a number of interesting facts, but what intrigued me the most was the make-up of the committee that decided what entries to put in and how to rank and cut the information gathered to make the book that people use so authoritatively.  Intrigue was the right word at first because I had never read about that before, but as time went on, my intrigue turned disbelief at the liberties they took to conform the book to their own standards, ignoring some of the usages of some of the people surveyed.

I still recall reading about the word access.  In the 1980s, people began to use the word as a verb, especially when it came to accessing their money in their accounts.  However, the dictionary committee didn't care that the nature of the word had begun to change.  They made the decision to reflect only its noun use, so that people could only have access to their accounts.  That was unbelievable and unwarranted since so many people had begun to use access a verb.  I felt betrayed by the committee.

So, today as I was reading in USA Today about the orbiter Juno that had successfully been inserted into Jupiter's orbit, I came across something like access in the last sentence of the article.  The article said, "The information stream will end 19 months later, when NASA purposefully plummets Juno into Jupiter, Green said."  In my head I thought, there's something wrong with the two words used in the alliteration of the verb phrase.  Purposefully, for one, seemed like the wrong word.  I think the author meant to say the orbiter would intentionally be driven into the planet at the end of its mission.  In that case, the word to use would have been purposely.  I used to work with a colleague who never was able to see the distinction of the two words, so she settled on purposefully as her word to use and hoped no one would ever notice.  The verb, for two, also seemed different in its use than how I was normally used to hearing plummet used.  Some verbs in English don't take objects, called intransitive.  A little trip to the dictionary showed that the verb was intransitive.  But the author ockalf this article used "NASA purposefully plummets Juno" using plummets as a transitive verb.  Juno is the object.  

Many times people get words mixed up because they don't use them enough to remember the differences.  Pummel and plummet look and sound a lot alike.  So, I am thinking the author merely confused the two words because of lack of use, forgetting that pummel is used transitively and plummet is not.  Sometimes, journalists use a thesaurus to get words and so they don't always know how words are used.  Sometimes, their brains merely confuse words.  And sometimes, people are writing out of their field of expertise and try to apply words they see in a completely acceptable context to an unfamiliar context and fail in their attempt at transfer.  Who knows what happened here?

But, of course, dictionaries don't always report what is acceptable, which is why I started the blog with the story of access.  Maybe, the verb plummet is changing.  Maybe I ride with the crowd that hasn't picked up on the change yet.  Maybe it's a dialect feature of the writer, past or current, with which I am not familiar.  Maybe it's the dictionary's fault for not reporting usage that the younger generation has begun to use.  Maybe it's the writer's background of not having or not remembering the grammar that's taught in schools.  Or maybe it's just a confused writer who didn't have enough time to revise before a deadline.

Whatever.  It seems like I am hearing and reading a lot of really different communication these days from what I am used to.

[The USA Today article in general is very informative and reported what happened in a professional manner.  You can find the link to the article by clicking here.]

Oh, that younger generation

I don't always get to see language changing right before my eyes, but I have noticed that the generation of millennials and a lot of (maybe majority of) generation Y have decided to add s to the words of motion such as backwards and forwards, and somewheres and nowheres.  Today I overheard someone say, "It came out of nowheres."  I didn't even have to look up to know the relative age of the person speaking.  When I did, sure enough, it was one of those people in the cusp of generation Y and front end of millennials.  It's one of their trademarks on the English language.

No one my age would say nowheres, only nowhere and would not add s to any of the words mentioned above.  In fact, those words were taught in school as having the stigma of non-standard speech.  But the sands of time have poured through the hourglass and a new generation just now filling the ranks of the workforce have decided to make a change.  Of course, none of them orchestrated the change, and none of them is really trying to make the change.  It happened when they were in 8th grade and high school.  It was their mode of communication to be different from the adults.  It became habit.  It stuck.  Now they continue to speak the same way.  They weren't educated out of it.

And that's how change happens most of the time.  From about 450 ACE until now, changes have filled the English language.  And the language we speak marks us all.

Sold

It was a real treat today.  I walked in, looked for a couple of shirts in a clothier store, located my purchases, was about to collect what I had scouted out to pay for them when he walked up.  He said something pleasant to strike up a conversation, introduced himself, and begin to do what he was very, very good at - sell.  But without you minding that he was working at selling you something.  It was a work of art.

He never created overt pressure.  He laughed at remarks that I made.  He made a joke or two of his own.  He had the perfect follow-up for whatever was said.  And, he knew the point - exactly - when I was finished with looking and buying.  He cheerfully closed the sale, told me his name again, and welcomed me back whenever I chose to return.  It could not have been a more aesthetic experience.  What a work of art.

I will go back.  They had the kind of clothes I like to wear, and if his treatment is the kind I will receive there, I will return soon.  I will definitely ask for Ed, salesman extraordinaire.

Did I hear what I think I heard?

No, I did NOT just hear that?

Yes, for sure I did!

I heard a public speaker today, in front of 1000 people, say something that was unfathomable in the not-so-distant past.  I had read this kind of thing in a textbook once about 20 years ago, so I should not have been so totally surprised.  But, it's not that common yet.  I have only heard this kind of utterance about 4 times in the last 20 years.

The text book I read 20 years ago used an example of some people's dialect changing the accepted form of a possessive phrase.  The example was to replace the pronoun her with a more identifying phrase.  To do that, a person thinks first of the phrase like The woman who lives down the street.  A person would next place the noun being possessed after the identifying phrase, in this case, dog.  Finally, the person places a possessive punctuation mark, an apostrophe at the end of the phrase to show that the whole identifying phrase shows possession of the dog, that is, the woman who lives down the street's dog.  That's a big mouthful to say, but it's certainly one way of having a possessive phrase.  It's such a mouthful, in fact, that it is seldom used.

Now about that public speaker.  He used the pronoun we to begin the sentence.  The natural and long-standing way to form the possessive of first person plural is to change we to our. However, the speaker wanted to further identify the two groups making up we, so he used you and I for emphasis of the two elements.  The more standard form of We brought our lives (the phrase he used) was changed to We brought you and I's life.  I was paying only casual attention to what was being said to that point.  But, when I heard the possessive phrase, I had to look full-faced at the speaker to see if he was trying to make a joke.  No, he wasn't after checking facial expressions and noticing the pacing was the same as what had been uttered before.

Amazing!!  He was a young man of 25 with a bachelor's degree, having grown up in a university town.  So, it wasn't as if he had come from the Appalachian outback area of the country.  I know; It's a language principle that any generation can change anything it wants to about the language it uses as a group.  It happens all the time.  Very effectively and consistently the generation of those below 40 have changed the subject pronoun use when using two pronouns as a subject of a verb, such as, Me and him went to Pittsburgh  in the place of  He and I went to Pittsburgh.  The politeness rule of putting a third person pronoun in front of the first person pronoun has also been retracted in favor of speaker first and third person second.  So, when it comes to using a possessive phrase instead of a single pronoun, I know that it can be done any way speakers want to.  I just wasn't ready for it.  And to me it would be an outrageous change if such a change were to take root and spread.  But, every generation has its day in the sun to live how they want, speak how they want.

Maybe it will take another 10 years to take root.  Then, I will have heard the phrase more times, and in that repetiveness I will be better able to accept something that now carries a huge stigma.

Rhythm of the rain

We didn't receive 10 inches of rain or anything.  Far less.  But, it was a flash flood.  The area between my house and my neighbor's was completely underwater.  In fact, it was about 3 inches above the grass level and above the level where the foundation meets the brick side of the house.  I couldn't help but recall an old, old song.  So, I found it on YouTube and listened to it as I sat on my patio watching the clouds, sheets of rain, and lightning, and listening to the rumble of the sky.

Yep, an olden goldie.  But, the rhythm of the rain matched the rhythm of my heart and days gone by.  I never get tired of hearing a steady rain and all the accompanying sky activity.  Never.  And I know why.

No cigar

I have heard about this, but never experienced it.  A lady from the northeast had come to Texas and boarded a room in a house.  She told the family that she knew how to "read" people.  The family believed her and the credentials she said she had.  Each one of the family and some of her extended family decided to talk to her.  They would tell her things and she would give a psychological evaluation of why they did what they did.

The family said she was amazing, that she had helped them so much, and that talking with her was life changing.  I didn't want to, but I relented to go see her to keep peace.  She showed her true colors toward me right away.  She denigrated someone who was well known in her own field and in my book.  As she continued talking with the person I was with, I could see that she was "reading" based on what was told to her, and giving a few well memorized root causes for certain behaviors.  She went out of her way not to use psychological jargon (perhaps she was limited in how much jargon she actually knew).  She lead the entire way, not allowing for a person to go off task without her bringing the person back to the topic she wanted to discuss.

I just as easily could have been at a palm reader's session or a tarot card reading.  She kept insisting that she was not conducting a counseling session (reminding me of the Shakespearean quote about protesting too much).  Although I engaged her on a casual conversational level, she tried to direct me into her questioning of my intentions or telling me what I was thinking because she could read me.  Although she read the body language correctly, she provided no motivation for the thoughts.  She wanted me to provide that.  I was not there to engage her in anything but casual conversation, so she failed at her attempts.

I chalk this up to one of life's experiences, interesting, but no cigar.