~Words Matter~

Ordinarily, I'm an optimist, but I confess to near despair for the English language.

It isn't bad enough that a generation starts sentences with "Me and"or misuses "lie" and "lay." Never mind that "them" has replaced "those" in front of "things." The final blow to correct usage may have come from the proliferation of texting.

I really try to keep up with the trends and times, but seeing "how r u?" on the screen of my cellphone gave me verbal indigestion.  What next?

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Once in a while, when situations in my real world become heavy, I pick up a good mystery and lose myself in it. I tend to choose what's known as a 'cozy', more of a puzzler, with not so much blood and guts. Escape reading.

Then there are books like The Kite Runner and Tracy Kidder's almost unbearable The Strength in What Remains, that are important to read because they challenge me to appreciate the lives and struggles of others.

A book I return to for hope is Richard Rohr's Everything Belongs.

To overcome her grief over the early death of a sister, Nina Sankovitch decided to read a book every day for a year. The experience led her to write Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. It's a reader's/thinker's book. Check it out.

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E. L. Doctorow - "Writing a book is like driving a car at night; you can only see to the end of your headlights...but you can make the whole trip that way."

Peter Mayle - "Best advice on writing I've ever received. Finish."

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CBS Sunday Morning did a feature on Jewish stand-up comedy and what used to be known as the Borscht Belt. I was reminded of a Yiddish quote on a ceramic plaque I have. It says "From concert of life nobody gets a program." People either get it or they don't.

A couple of movies I saw recently illustrate two different kinds of humor. Bette Midler and Billy Crystal's "Parental Guidance" is slapstick. Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" is tickle-your-funnybone funny.

Either way, laughter is good for the soul. They say it's good for the body, too.

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Have you ever seen a word used and thought you knew is meaning? Not long ago I was asked the definition of what I considered a fairly familiar word and found myself fumbling to come up with a satisfactory answer.

Consider things we say without thinking. Take 'kith and kin.' We know, of course, that kin is short for kinfolks or relatives. But what exactly are 'kith?' According to the dictionary: friends or relatives. I hadn't given thought to that before.

How about the expression 'flotsam and jetsam?' Did you know that jetsam is cargo thrown overboard to lighten a vessel (i.e. jettisoned) while flotsam is debris of any kind on the water?

These are not earth-shaking matters, but they remind us to say what we mean and know what we're talking about.

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