"Wise Saws and Modern Instances"*

       I came up with a bon mot or "wise saw" last week when I heard grandson Micah responding to his mother's question whether or not he was going to choose to do something.  The restaurant we were in was so noisy I couldn't make out exactly what it was.

       Micah thought a second or two before responding.  I was expecting to hear a yes or no; what I heard was, "I don't know."

       Thinking he might not be comfortable giving an indefinite answer, and remembering I was once his age, I said, in defense of a 15 year old's rights, "To not know is also to know your mind."

       Michael, the other grandpa at the table, smiled and assented to my gnomic wisdom.

       Our grandson, I think, felt supported.  We grandpas had done our job.

       *Jaques in As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7 ("All the World's a Stage")

Micah, Meet Micah

       Grandson Micah was in town before the first night of Chanukah.  We lit the first candle, of course, Micah saying the prayer over the light along with Connie and our daughter Elizabeth.

       Since Micah's 15 now, I thought I would tell him my favorite quote in the Bible from Micah the prophet, I reminded him, for whom he's named.  I made a kind of greeting card out of it with the quote clearly typed and which he could take with him--

       What the Lord requires of you:
       Only to do justice
       And to love goodness,
       And to walk modestly with your God.

       It appeared Micah was touched after reading it, and gave me a very big hug, which was returned.  He has been becoming an adult in several encouraging ways in the last two years, and somehow this felt to me like a seal upon it. 

Apple Incorporated's Advanced Knowledge

       For some reason, my iPhone, with its new System 10, has felt compelled to tell me that on Tuesday, December 27th, this day, there are

       "No Upcoming Events, Reminders, or Alarms."

       You cannot realize how warm and wonderful I felt to see those words.

Who's the Animal NOW?

       Where would we and our language be without animals to compare our behavior to?

       Somebody's playing "possum" because a possum can appear dead and then all of a sudden become very active instantly!  Sloths hang upside down by their claws and remain inert for a long time--hence certain people are "slothful."

       Ferrets are great little hunters, as of rabbits; so humans "ferret out" things.  Someone who likes to repeat whatever he's just heard is "parroting."

       Why do we say a woman has cuckolded her husband when she has an affair outside the marriage?  Because the female cuckoo frequently lays her eggs in other birds' nests.

       So don't be too "cocky" about our animal friends; we humble ourselves when we choose their behavior to name our own. 

       

"Sortation"

       "Sortation Center"?  Why not "Sorting"?  I'm reluctant to use this recently new word because it might help normalize an abomination.

       Have you heard of it?  I hadn't.  But now I learn Amazon started such in Seattle in 2014.  No grabbing and packaging of products at these centers, just sorting the already packaged and addressed boxes in enormous buildings with thousands of workers (at Christmas time) to get the product one step more quickly to a recipient.

       OK.  But "sortation"?  Trying to glorify or inflate the task? 

       Well, I suppose.  If you're already grabbing and packaging at a place they call a "Fulfillment Center" with overtones of life's dreams attained, why not up the ante on "sorting"?


       

"Solstice(s)"

       Shortest day of the year.  But that means they'll be getting longer day by day, which will please my wife especially:  "Can't we speed it up, say, two days' worth each day, at least!"

       From Latin, "solstice"  means "sunstand."  The sun stops on a dime and turns around to head north.  The day is so short, I hurried up my afternoon shopping at Ralphs to get home before dark. 

       I guess I figured with Rudyard Kipling's "If,"

       If you can fill the unforgiving minute
       With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
       Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

until Earth turns another 6 months or so and Connie and I can laze forever on a "Summer Afternoon."   

      

Crazed by the Winds

       The Santa Anas have got us.  Those dry mostly hot but can-be-cold winds off the desert.  Blow loud, blow long, blow things over.  And boy, they can also drive you a little nuts.

       There are the Mistrals in France, the Siroccos in Libya, the Khamsins in Egypt, the Chinooks in the Rocky Mountains.  We in Southern California have Santa Anas, or, as I say, they have got us.

       I am about to enter my local weather prediction in the Local Conditions website.  It's probably safe to say what I'm predicting will happen.  But they may think my forecast frivolous, pedestrian, or just not a real weather prediction.  This has only stopped them once from accepting my contributions:

       "Forecast:

       "Santa Ana winds followed by wakefulness, agitation, and slightly crazed behavior."

"Ambience"

       Eating at a place near the movie theater we'd just attended, Connie, David, and I listened to the chatter amplified by hard surfaces everywhere and squinted at the bright nondescriptness about us while downing our ordinary hamburgers, and after my mentioning that this is a non-five star restaurant, I added "except for the ambience."  It got laughs.

        The word is of French root but goes back to Latin.  I wondered if the root is as I suspected.  It is.

       "Ambi" from the Latin means "on all sides" (think of "ambidextrous," both left- and right- handed).  And "ire" means "to go."  "Ambience" is what's "going all around" you, in your surroundings.  It's the mood or feeling of a place.

       Add some nasality to that "m" and "n," and you've heightened your Continental snootiness: [ahn-byahns].
     

"Free Knowledge"

       I made a contribution to Wikipedia for the many times it has served me and read the Wikipedia aspiration and so far successfully obtained goal:  "free knowledge" to anybody anywhere in the world.

       As my eyes hit "free knowledge," I kept reading it at first as "tree of knowledge."  Of course, Wikipedia does "branch out," way out!

       "Tree knowledge" used to be true in the sense that trees were cut down to supply the books that held our knowledge:  I grew up reading the encyclopedia called Book of Knowledge--reading it alphabetically every day at noon during lunch time.

        But "free knowledge" is some kind of aspiration; it almost seems like a contradiction in terms, yet it's happening online.  May Wikipedia hold fast to spreading its "branches" in ever widening circles of service. 

44 Years and Counting . . .

       Something I read in last Wednesday's paper struck me as ironic on the face of it:

Jerry Brown will depart his governorship in 2018 due to term limits.

       If you consider he was elected governor for a first term in November 1974 and will have to depart at the end of his fourth term in 2018 . . . I think you'd say, "Yes, maybe his terms should be limited."

Who Says Cartoonists . . .

       . . .don't like to fool around with words?

Scott Hilburn fools around on this website.

That Word "Ark"

       We come upon the Hebrew word that English translates as "ark" a couple times in the Bible.  First is what Noah builds for his family and for the multitudinous animals to be saved two by two, a vessel and protector for all of them.

       And again we meet it as the transporting, sort of, and protecting basket of bullrushes (papyrus) for the baby Moses.

       Later, although a different Hebrew word, "ark" is borrowed for "Ark of the Covenant," which carries protectively the Ten Commandments through the desert in a chest.

       And later yet, the "Ark" in synagogues holds and keeps:  the Torah Scrolls!

       Ironically, the Oxford Living Dictionary online says the meaning "a ship or boat" for "ark" is "archaic," which only shows we can't have archaic and eat it too.      

"Nice Talking with Me"*

        I am a great talker to myself.  Probably because I miss so many opportunities in real life to say something worthwhile--I think of it LATER.  So I say it to myself.

       Or, I imagine what I will say to someone and REHEARSE it, but still may not say it when I'm with them!

       Garry Moore had a wonderful bit in radio days.  He would come up with the greatest lines "I Shoulda Said" (but didn't) in an embarrassing or confrontational situation.  He lived, a hero in his own ego...after the fact.

       I identify.  But talking to oneself is better than none.  And your repartee, and great put-down, and wonderful toast, and words of wisdom and clearheadedness and intellect and snide dismissal will be forever engraved in the annals of unspoken eloquence.

*Title of an op-ed piece by Charles Fernyhough in the L.A. Times of Dec. 5, 2016.  It inspired this post.

All Right, "ITS," Be Careful What You Refer To

       A problem has been showing up more often in the L.A. Times:  the word "its" appearing without a clear and definite referent.  In an article with the headline "Putin's goal:  R-E-S-P-E-C-T," this sub-headline follows:

"Russia's leader wants new U.S. administration to recognize its might"

       What is the referent for "its"?  The grammatical expectation is that the immediately preceding noun be what "its" refers to.   Now that doesn't work with "administration" nor "U.S." nor "leader," which leaves "Russia's."

       But the writer of the sub-headline didn't want the whole word, just "Russia" to be the understood referent for "its."  You can't have a word with an apostrophe "s" be the antecedent noun for the possessive "its."

       This is at best awkward, at least confusing, and plain grammatically wrong.

        

       

"May You Live in Interesting Times."

       I've heard several reporters recently ending a discussion of their reporting with the remark, "It's going to be interesting."  The statement comes from not knowing what's likely to happen, and president-elect Trump is often the unpredictable ingredient in attempting to know what IS likely to happen; hence "It's going to be interesting."

       It brought to mind the supposedly Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."  For many people, at this moment, life is uncertain, tense, worrisome.  Interesting?  Maybe.  But moreso--scary.     

Flossie Lewis to the Rescue

       If you're starting to feel too old even for the Holidays (or especially for the Holidays!), these words of wisdom could pick you up for another go'round or two.
 

"Slit," "Slip," "Slim," "Slight"; "Brusque," "Brisk"--Wha?

       "Slit," "slip," "slim," "slight."  We know the words have similarities.  But is it accidental that they are words about thin things?  It's not onomatopoeia in the sense of words imitating sounds.  It's words imitating thinness.  Even the lips uttering them are a very thin space apart from one another saying them.

       "Brusque," "brisk."  Oh, yes, they come from words in French and Italian, both going back to Latin bruscus butcher's-broom, a plant with bristly twigs, and isn't that exactly what you'd expect would apply to short, abrupt, blunt manner or speech ("brisk" deriving from "brusque" but less negative in connotation)?  And don't those words  befit the meaning they go with in all four languages!  Yet it's not onomatopoeia; it's imitative not of sound but of behavior.

       OK.  Let's give this language credit!!