Today is Sunday, June 28.  There are only 150 days left until Christmas, so go buy your Peeps and let them start hardening.  It is the birthday of Thomas Heyward, Beatrix Potter and Bill Bradley.  On this day in 1586 Sir Thomas Harriot introduced potatoes to Europe.  In 1866 the Metric System became a legal measurement system in the US.  In 1962 Mariner I was launched to Mars and fell into the Atlantic Ocean (oops).  In Bermuda it is Admiral George Somers Day, in Peru it is Independence Day and in the US it is Joseph Lee Day, the day that honors playgrounds.

Let me start out by apologizing for not posting last week.  I had a technical problem – my computer was not working.  I had to purchase a new tower and my IT person (my son) was not able to get me set up until Sunday afternoon.  By then I did not have the opportunity to put anything together so you were left with a repeat of the week before.  Sorry, Sean, I hope this did not spoil your omelette.

One thing I want to discuss is the new fad of wearing shorts, black socks and flip flops.  The lovely Elaine asked what that was all about.  We noted that in the past, these people would have been shunned for looking that way.  Now all the young guys seem to think they look great.  When Elaine asked me, I told her I thought they did it so they could see what they will look like when they are 70.

Speaking of which, I saw a family out shopping the other day and I was bothered by the gentleman’s attire.  He appeared to be in his 70’s or 80’s, he was wearing a striped shirt, plaid shorts, mid-calf black dress socks and dress shoes.  The woman who appeared to be his wife was dressed nicely  with slacks and a blouse that seemed to match.  The daughter (I knew she was the daughter because she called him Dad) was also dressed nicely.  My question is why would they let him go out looking like that?  Obviously they had some sense of style and what goes well together.

Did they really think he looked okay?  Did they think that by letting him go out that way it draw attention away from the fact that they could stand to drop about 15 pounds?  Was this some kind of revenge thing for some mistreatment in the past by him?  Or did they just not care how he looked as long as they looked okay?  Maybe they thought he made them look better in their somewhat mundane outfits because he looked so bad.

The lovely Elaine and I were lucky enough to get away for a couple of days to go down the shore to visit our friend Pat.  We always have a good time with her and this most recent foray was no exception.  Elaine and Pat were able to solve most of the thorny issues confronting the field of education without ever having to leave the confines of the dining room.  They did not listen to most of my suggestions, believing that shooting people was not a satisfactory solution to any of the problems they were discussing.

We worked hard to support the wine industry and were quite proud of our accomplishments.  We had breakfast one morning – Taylor pork roll sandwiches – sitting out on the deck watching a crew build a modular home.  If you have never had the opportunity to do that, you should try it.  It was fascinating!  I meant watching them build the home, not eating on Pat’s deck.

Then, all too soon, it was time for the drive home.  In case you did not know, summer is one of the busiest times for the parkway, so it makes sense that this would be when all the construction is being done.  There are several things that bother me about this.  One I have mentioned before is why they feel it necessary to do road work in patches all along the highway.  We passed at least 5 different sections where work was being done (a phrase I use loosely) and traffic was slowed as a result.

What gets me is that you see the cones telling you that you are in a work zone.  You drive for several miles without seeing anything or anybody other than the cones blocking two of the four lanes and restricting traffic to 45MPH, not that anyone slows down at all.  I always wondered why they had to put the cones out so far in advance of the actual work site.  My father used to say that it was because they did not have room to store the cones anywhere, so they just put them out on the road.

After three or four miles, you come upon two guys standing around smoking and one guy going off to the bushes, probably to pee.  A couple miles further, you come to a huge amount of equipment and bright lights.  In the ultra daylight of these lights you see one or two guys working and seven or eight people “supervising” the job.  After a few more miles, the cones stop and the road opens up, again.  But don’t get too excited, there will be another construction site soon.

My dilemma is that I am unable to figure out what they are trying to do at some of these sites.  In some cases it looks like they are just redoing something that was already there.  What is worse is that it looks like they are making it exactly the same as it was!  But ours not to reason why, ours just to keep paying taxes and tolls so we can support these projects.

This week’s fact tells us that 1/3 of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper.  And people think I am weird because I want a New Orleans style band at my funeral. 

It is Sunday, July 14.  There are only 164 days until Christmas so you had better start creating your Christmas letters and writing out your cards.  The way the post office has been functioning lately, they may get delivered in time if you have them in the mail by next week.  It is the birthday of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Florence Bascom and Tom Carvel.  In 1850 there was the first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration.  In 1951, CBS had the first color telecast of a sporting event when it broadcast a horse race.  In 1975 Epcot Center plans were announced.  In France, Guiana, Polynesia, Guadel and Martinique it is Bastille Day and it is African Community day in Senegal.  Tomorrow is Reed Dance Day in Swaziland.

 

I want to spend a little time discussing our language.  I know English can be difficult.    There are rules, but they only hold true some of the time.  There is the old rule of i before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor or weigh.  How do you expect people from other countries to learn a language when you have something as confusing as that for a simple letter combination?  For that matter, how do you expect children in our own country to learn the language with that kind of foolishness?  

Another example is words that look like they should sound the same but do not.  I am not talking about homonyms. I am talking about words that look alike, but do not sound alike.  Take for example the word laughter (laf ter).  If you put an s in front of that word it becomes slaughter (slaw ter).  Why?  I thought maybe it was because of the double consonant, but then I thought about daughter (daw ter) and realized that was not the case.  What it comes down to is the language is screwed up.

Now add to the mix the way people mispronounce words.  One example is the word comfortable.  Let’s look at this word.  Com-for-ta-ble.  It seems fairly straight forward.  So why is it that people leave out the r, shorten the word by a syllable and make it comf ta ble?  This is done in commercials all the time.  Since most of today’s children spend a good deal of time in front of the TV, you would hope that they would hear the language spoken properly, at least during commercials.  Another word that is constantly chopped is recognize.  It usually comes out this way, “Shirley, OMG, you got a haircut.  I almost didn’t recanize you.”

A few of the other words we tend to screw up are words like impordent, jewlery and realators.  For those of you who may think these are the correct words, they are not.  The real words are important, jewelry and realtors.  We do other things like when we see an announcement for a sporting event that states the two teams and says Yankees v Boston.  The correct way to read this would be Yankees versus Boston, not Yankees verse Boston or Yankees v Boston.  I’m sorry but that is a pet peeve of mine.

Another thing that is happening lately is that we leave words off the ends of sentences.  John said, “I have to go to the store for some things for dinner.”  His friend Betty said, “Do you want me to come with?”  Was Betty so exhausted that she was unable to put the word you on the end of the sentence?  If so, it might be better if she stayed home.  I particularly have a problem with the way people describe something as so fun.  I suppose in the strictest sense, there is nothing really wrong with that, but it just sounds wrong.  I wanted to give an example of what makes that wrong here, but I am unable to come up with something that I think would be effective.  Spend a minute or two thinking about it and add your own example.  This helps make the blog an interactive experience.

You want to make things even more confusing?  Add the numerous regional accents that we have throughout the country.  Then add the way the same item has different names depending on where you are in the country.  A sub sandwich can be a hero or a grinder depending on where you are.  A bag can be a sack or a tote.  There are a lot of ways to confuse people when it comes to the English language.

There are a number of other issues I could go into here, but I won’t for two reasons.  One is because after a while it just becomes tiresome listening to someone rant about the same issue in different ways and B is because I can save some things for another time when I need a topic to write about.

One more quick thing is the use of letters to say things like OMG, LOL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, and other gems like that.  The problem is that not everyone knows what these things mean and they sometimes lose the train of a message as a result.  I got a message once with ROTFLMAO and wondered what Reading On Trains Feels Like Many Angry Otters had to do with anything.  But that is an issue for another time.

This week’s fact – The Chico California City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500.00 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.  Have a good week and stay out of Chico if you have nuclear capability.  Those fines can add up quickly.

This Week

Well, half the year has passed by and here it is July 7.  There are only 127 days until my birthday so you still have time to buy a card.  Today is the birthday of Joseph-Marie Jacquard, George Cukor, Cree Summer and my older brother, Jack.  On this day in 1846 the US annexed California, in 1898 the US annexed Hawaii and in 1958 President Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill.  It is Guru Rinbochy in Bhutan, Star Festival/Tanabata in Japan and Independence Sunday in Iowa.

I want to start off by talking about a wonderful experience the lovely Elaine and I had on July 4^th.  We were invited to a family gathering.  The family belonged to my dear friend Virginia.  I worked with her before the bitch who was my boss lied and had me fired (do I still sound bitter?). Virginia’s daughter has a family get-together every year on the 4^th of July and she invited us to join them this year.  Since we had no other plans we accepted the invitation.  We joined a group of people, most of whom we had never met before.  These people made us feel welcome right away and we had a great time. 

The house was situated in such a way that we were able to see most of the fireworks display for the town.  What made it even better was that one of the people, Christina, had set up a sound track to play during the fireworks and that made the event even better.  I am pleased that they thought to include us, even more pleased that they made us feel like we belonged and happy to say that we met some very nice people that evening.  Thank you Ann Marie, for allowing us to be a part of your family for the evening.

Now, in case you think that I am getting mellow, I assure you that I am not.  Let me state how much it bothers me that the 4^th of July is not what it used to be.  There was a time when the 4^th was a day of celebration.  It was a day that represented the declaring of independence from the tyranny of England by a small group of people who felt that there was a better way to live life than by paying taxes and homage to the crown.  Among other things, the Declaration of Independence states that we were endowed by our creator “with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  If you have never read the Declaration, you should.  The men who put this document together had cojones the size of a VW.  You do not put yourself in jeopardy the way they did unless you absolutely believed in what you were doing.

What bothers me is that we do not celebrate this holiday the way we should.  Most towns do not have fireworks displays on the actual day.  Many have fireworks the weekend before, in conjunction with some other event.  Some towns do not even bother recognizing the day at all.  A number of people complained that they had to go to work the next day and some wondered why we did not just make it a Monday holiday.  For those who wonder that, the answer is simple – BECAUSE THEN IT WOULD NOT BE THE 4^TH OF JULY!

That is the day the document was signed and made official.  It was the day the United States declared its independence.  It was not done on the first Monday in July.  It was done on the 4^th of July!  I fear that too many people do not even understand what the holiday represents.  They see it as a day off, but do not realize the importance of the day.  

Many people sacrificed their lives so that we could be free to do the things we do.  If it were not for them we would still be under British rule.  We would not have some of the freedoms we have today.  We would still be eating things like bangers and mash and steak and kidney pie.  We would be drinking our beverages without ice and we would be driving on the other side of the road.  The people who signed that declaration put themselves in harm’s way so that we could all have a better way of life.  Stop crying about having to work on the 5^th of July and be happy that we have a reason to celebrate on the 4^th.

Just one other brief comment before closing.  I read an article recently that stated that the facts of some issue had been debunked.  To debunk something means to expose or ridicule the falseness or exaggerated claims of something.  My question is if we prove the facts to be correct, does that mean that we have bunked them?

This week’s fact  - Thomas Edison designed a helicopter that would work with gunpowder.  It ended up blowing up and also blew up his factory.  I guess that was one “light bulb” he should have ignored.