Repost: Words Meant Things

Every other week my blog will feature a reposted work. I had been a contributor on two different sites that have since closed or no longer include blogs. I will be reposting pieces that had originally been featured on one of these two sites.  

This was originally posted June 20, 2011

My past three posts have been about how we use language in America.  I shared some reflections I had while reading a book titled, Language in America (1969).  Coincidentally, last week I observed an example of our modern polluted semantic environment.

Read more »

A Well Coiled Life

Back in my community college days I attended a rather large college church group. I’m sure there were good lessons taught there on community, and morality, and Christian living, and connecting with God. I know the worship music was well done as far as late 1990s church music goes.

But the lesson that has stuck with me from those days was a time that I helped a friend put away the sound equipment.

My friend ran the sound for the evening meeting. This included guitars and other instruments, and vocal microphones for worship music and the speaker. One night I offered to help put away cables, speakers, monitors, and other equipment. I probably started wrapping up a cable lengthwise around my forearm.

Wound Up Right

My friend stopped me and she patiently taught me the correct way to wind up a cable.

Essentially, every cable is designed to wind up in a particular orderly manner. If you hold one end in your hand and then lightly twist a short section of the cable between your fingers you will feel the cable line up as it’s supposed to. Turning or twisting the cable between your fingers will not merely twist it; it will begin to wind into a coil. It will “give way” to an order as though it desired to be orderly. Continuing this, in an over/under pattern, will result in a cable, neatly wound up right.

Read more »

Repost: Language in America - 3

Every other week my blog will feature a reposted work. I had been a contributor on two different sites that have since closed or no longer include blogs. I will be reposting pieces that had originally been featured on one of these two sites.  

This was originally posted June 10, 2011

This is the third installment of my review of the book Language in America published in 1969.

As I said in my first reflections on this book:

I’d like to encourage you as my reader in the ways that I was challenged through reading the book.  That challenge is, to pay attention to the words you use.  Take care to mean the words that you say in the way that you say them.  Be aware of the implications of the slang you use and what it might indicate. 

Read more »

Secrets, Identities, and Power

One Halloween, when I was in middle school, I was trick-or-treating with my brothers and some other kids stole our candy.

My brothers and I were about five blocks from our house, walking up a street between neighborhoods, away from any houses. A car pulled up next to us, older kids jumped out, there was a scuffle, and they took our bags of candy. My brother had been picked on at school; it may have been those kids and their older friends and brothers. It may have just been a random act of meanness. 

We walked and ran the five blocks home.

I was scared. I was frustrated. And I was angry.

I was scared.

I open with this story because I want you to know that I have very vivid memories of being scared walking home at night.

Read more »