Real estate and rental property ads. Those who write them should accommodate or at least consider the learning styles of those of us who take things literally.
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Che! This Pope!
Say what you will about him, but this pope seems to be shaking things up. Seems like every time he opens his mouth, he symbolically knocks over another money-changer’s table in the temple! He has a way with words. In his first public address he caught everybody by surprise by deviating from the traditional script and speaking directly from the heart. Soon after we learned, that, naturally, as a Porteño, i.e., someone from Buenos Aires, Argentina – and a Tano to boot, a Porteño of Italian descent – he even threw out a word in Lunfardo for Christ’s Sake, Porteño street slang! He said, “God nos primerea!” which draws on a fútbol reference to convey the notion that God firsts us, bests us, will always have a hail mary pass up his sleeve! Che, and that was code for something bigger, something more generalizable! You name it, think of anything, and all of us, everybody, todo el mundo, we are all tied for second place, at best!! What a refreshing solidarity. “Who am I to judge?”
Sources close to Pope Francis recently reported that one day he looked out of his simple apartment’s window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, saw the multitude gathered there against the backdrop of the world he has been asked to shepherd, and uttered another common Argentine expression in sotto voce:
Imagine the pope looking out his window and seeing all of us. For those who don’t already know what ¡Qué quilombo! means, check out Item #3 here. It’s no big, mysterious deal. It means something like, “What a mess!” Or my favorite translation is “What a shitstorm!”
Over time I’ll tell the story of how the pope used to be my boss…indirectly.
Deere Santa
I believe that even Santa fantasizes about cutting loose on a John Deere, no GPS, on the open field.
SAD NOTE: I used to sell a small greeting card featuring this image on my Redbubble page . Pretty sure I sold 11 copies…worldwide! No, just checked: I sold 14 greeting cards and one t-shirt!!! Earned $11.74 (USD)!! On April 4, 2019 Redbubble notified me that they received a complaint from Deere & Company alleging my artwork violated their rights; consequently, Redbubble removed it. A spokesperson from Santa Clause declined to comment.
Merry Christmas, hear!
Reflecting on Winter Solstice
Dear friends of ours organized a Winter Solstice Feast last Saturday to honor the longest night of the year. Invited guests were purposefully asked to show up before nightfall to enjoy what remained of the afternoon’s daylight. Libations, delicacies, introductions, and dialogue intertwined, and before we knew it, daytime had become nighttime, and we were partially marinated and satiated works in progress.
We had been given a few questions in advance to reflect upon and instructed to bring a candle. The questions amounted to an invitation to embrace the winter solstice and to consider harnessing it as a potential turning point. The candle, my favorite part, served to dramatize the extinguishing of what hasn’t been working so well and the ignition of what might work better. This is how I recall it.
We have two lives – the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
Bernard Malamud
So much so
So many people nowadays begin their sentences with so! So much so that it’s almost easier to count the number of sentences that don’t begin with so. So what? So here’s what I think. So some time back in the 1980s, somebody got fed up with processes, declared them to be wasteful, and decided it was time to accentuate products over processes. So that was fine for a while, but it quickly caught on, and by then, naturally, people got carried away. So eventually it wasn’t enough for folks merely to favor products over processes; no, they had to declare their complete displeasure with all processes and be associated with nothing but products, results, and outcomes.
So at the same time scientific illiteracy was on the upswing because of all the frivolous emphasis on stuff like the scientific method, which everyone knows is just a fancy name for just another process, which in this case is nothing more than an unnecessarily elaborate and expensive gotcha game that elitists like to play to make hard-working Americans feel dumb. So it’s like logic or something. So in order not to sound dumb or liberal and end up wasting everybody’s time beating around the bush instead of making a point, folks started beginning their sentences with SO, which is a conjunctive adverb like THEREFORE that pretty much used to be reserved for introducing the juicier clause in a compound sentence that delivered the intended, targeted punch line. So it’s like a preemptive strike this starting a sentence with so. So it’s like starting off with therefore. So it helps everyone jump right to the conclusion and appear more scientific, more results-oriented without wasting all of their good moves on foreplay.
So I believe there was an actual turning point in the 1980s when society as a whole came to the collective realization that accountability – as we knew it – was at stake and that each of us, each and every one of us, needed to take personal responsibility to say what we mean, mean what we say, and get to the point. So all it took was a simple, cost-effective, time-saving, performance-enhancing conjunctive adverb: so. So this turning point, this moment of truth that I’m referring to came to life in the form of a simple question that continues to resonate in the hearts of genuine leaders:
More on Language and Grammar
I love language even though it’s my back-up medium; and even though I’m fascinated by grammar, what I love even more is how language keeps trying to escape from grammar, i.e., langue here parole there (See Ferdinand de Saussure). We’re all sorta’ bilingual in this regard. We’re code switchers, better yet. Under certain circumstances our grammar can let its hair down and play it by ear; but occasionally we gotta polish it up, comb its hair, and hope it’s as compliant as possible.
It’s like it is the way it is when the way it is says so, which means it could be this way or that way or this way and that way both rolled up into an overarching it is what it is-ness!
Hit it Duke! Listen to a 1943 recording of It Don’t Mean a Thing, Duke Ellington (1931)
Remember Diagramming Sentences?
It took some real carpentry skills to diagram sentences back in the day, didn’t it? Not only did you need to know grammar, but then you had to build a contraption on which each and every part of speech could rest in suspended animation indefinitely, correctly, and comfortably! It wasn’t easy. Imagine building this one!!!
I added this image/poem on Dec. 18, 2024 because I believe it helps deepen our understanding and appreciation of grammar and the architecture of expression.
“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”
― Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (1935)
Moving toward Moving
You will undoubtedly recall that the other day, I posted Our Place in the Country, a tribute to the contemplative lifestyle and excessive stuff. Well, when Ann texted me yesterday from California and confirmed that we would, in fact, be moving there in a couple of months in connection with a job offer that she accepted, I thought to myself, among other things, “Good Lord, what about all our stuff?!?” Perhaps I’ll make a mini pilgrimage to our secluded stuff shrine in the next few days, reflect on the words of George Carlin, reacquaint myself with our special collection of enshrined stuff, consider its earthly value, and fashion a few next steps if not a complete plan of action. Or maybe we’ll decide simply to walk away, and as my sister suggested, make an anonymous call to the reality TV series, Storage Wars!
Whew! Random TSA Pre✓™
Cowboy and I have been dropping Ann off at the Des Moines International Airport (DSM) pretty frequently over the last few months. This morning was no exception; although, we had a few extra minutes to gulp down coffee at home because she was somehow randomly selected for TSA Pre✓™, i.e., expedited screening. It’s the little things in life that make the biggest difference.
Actually, she wasn’t dragging a wheeled tote, because today’s round trip will end before midnight, theoretically.
Ann’s definitely no stranger to the friendly skies as illustrated in the following documentary from September 2011 of her first flying lesson:
Our Place in the Country
I refer to our suburban storage unit as our place in the country. Lately, I’ve been thinking about all the stuff we’ve practically forgotten about, stuff we continually pay rent to store. That makes it relatively expensive stuff that we don’t use and probably don’t need. I come here to clear my head once in a while.
portfoliolongo 