Compassion . . .

. . . another of the MANY English words of which this man does NOT know the meaning . . .



(https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/las-vegas-shooting/trump-meets-shooting-survivors-las-vegas-hospital-honors-their-bravery-n807441)
". . . President Donald Trump met Wednesday with surviving victims of the Las Vegas shooting at University Medical Center in the city and hailed their heroism for trying to save others even as their own lives were in danger. . . Trump also credited the bravery of law enforcement members and honored the professionalism of doctors and other medical staff for their response to the massacre.
. . "I have to tell you: it makes you very proud to be an American when you look at the job that they’ve done," he said. . . When asked at University Medical Center his message for those impacted by the shooting, Trump said, "We're with you 100 percent," adding that he had invited some victims to the White House. . . "And believe me, I'll be there for them," he promised. . . Asked about gun violence in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, Trump deflected, saying he wouldn't talk about that today.

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Epitaphs . . .

My epitaph, which I would have if I chose a traditional burial, and which I could not bring myself to write as an assignment in Miss Simon's tenth grade English class at Dundalk Senior Hight School in 1973, based strictly upon philosophical principles, I have now decided should be:

  "He Wasn't Too Bright
  But He Cared"

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Slough, Dough, Cough. . .

(from The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs The Dough by Dr. Seuss)
". . . Dearest creature in creation, study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy, make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word, sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you with such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery, daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar, solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral, kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind, scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet, bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food, nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad, toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK when you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, friend and fiend, alive and live. . ."


. . . and oh yeah. . . another take on Mr. Graboski's
Slough of Despond
written by John P. Graboski
(OHO rehearsal recording-
Jay Graboski, David Reeve and Ray Jozwiak are OHO)





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The Grass. . .

. . . is always greener. . .

(from Wolfgang Mieder)
". . . This proverb certainly belongs to one of the most commonly used proverbs in the English language. This should not be surprising since it expresses the only too human idea of discontent, envy, and jealousy in a metaphor which is easily understood. Interestingly enough, the proverb is also literally true as has been demonstrated by James Pomerantz in a scientific article on "'The Grass is always Greener': An Ecological Analysis of an Old Aphorism" (1983).3 This scholar proves that optical and perceptual laws alone will make the grass at a distance look greener to the human eye than the blades of grass perpendicular to the ground. The "truth" of this metaphorical proverb can, of course, also be observed often enough in the countryside when a cow or a horse is trying to get at that juicy green grass just on the other side of the fence. And since people are equally dissatisfied with their lot in life, it should not surprise anyone that a modern psychologist has spoken of "the 'greener grass' phenomenon"4 by which modern individuals continually evaluate supposedly better alternatives for themselves.

The proverb thus expresses a basic behavioral truth in a rather universal metaphor - after all, grass and fences aren't exactly anything new. This should imply that the proverb belongs to those ancient bits of wisdom that everybody knows, but when one consults the standard paremiographical works, it comes as quite a surprise to see that the earliest recorded reference stems from 1957! This appears absurd, and there are bound to be native American speakers who will instantly claim that they have heard or even used this proverb long before the 1950's. But that claim needs to be proven in light of what Archer Taylor has called the apparent "incompleteness of collections of proverbs". The following remarks will present a few precursors to this proverb as well as some synchronic variants, and it will be established that the "grass is always greener" proverb is at least a bit older than proverb collections would have us believe. In addition to tracing the lexicographical history of the proverb it will also be studied in its traditional and innovative use as the title of novels, plays, and magazine or newspaper articles. Its iconographic depiction in cartoons, caricatures, comic strips, postcards, and photographs will also be analyzed with a special emphasis on modern parodies. . ."

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Slough. . .

Ough is a letter sequence often seen in words in the English language. In Middle English, where the spelling arose, it was probably pronounced with a back rounded vowel and a velar fricative, e.g., [oːx] or [uːx]. It is by far the sequence of letters with the most unpredictable pronunciation, having at least six pronunciations in North American English and over ten in British English. A few of the more common are these:

    /oʊ/ as in "though" (cf. toe).
    /uː/ as in "through" (cf. true).
    /ʌf/ as in "rough" (cf. ruffian).
    /ɒf/ as in "cough" (cf. coffin).
    /ɔː/ as in "thought" (cf. taut).
    /aʊ/ as in "bough" (cf. to cow).


Slough of Despond by John P. Graboski
Performed by Oho (rehearsal recording)





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The Point . . .

 

. . . of view of an atheist . . .

(From God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens)
". . . This raises gigantic objections to the argument from "design," whether we choose to call that design "intelligent" or not.  Clearly, the human species is designed to experiment with sex.  No less clearly, this fact is well-known to the priesthoods.  When Dr. Samuel Johnson had completed the first real dictionary of the English language, he was visited by a delegation of respectable old ladies who wished to congratulate him for not including any indecent words.  His response - which was that he was interested to see that the ladies had been looking them up - contains almost all that needs to be said on this point.  Orthodox Jews conduct congress by means of a hole in the sheet, and subject their women to ritual baths to cleanse the stain of menstruation.  Muslims subject adulterers to public lashings with a whip.  Christians used to lick their lips while examining women for signs of witchcraft.  I need not go on in this vein: any reader of this book will know of a vivid example, or will simply guess my meaning. . . "

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