Category Archives: Words

2023, Uncategorized, Words

What A Difference A Word Makes

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The regulatory board I am a member of is governed by two legal documents, the North Dakota Administrative Code and the North Dakota Century Code. The difference between the two is that only the Legislature can amend the Century Code, and we as a board can amend the Administrative Code after we jump through a bunch of hoops.

Our board needs to make some changes to the Administrative Code because of some things that occurred during the last legislative session , and I am sure glad we have an attorney to help us with the language. Saying that the board “shall” do something, as opposed to the board “may” do something makes a difference in how we can apply rules and regulations to individuals and circumstances. We want “may” more than we want “shall”.

I was really surprised to hear our lawyer tell us that the reason he didn’t capitalize abbreviations for entities such as APA (the American Psychological Association) in the language for our administrative rules changes is that the Legislature doesn’t allow capital letters for entities’ abbreviations in laws. I found that so odd. He had no good explanation for it.

Once the Legislative Rules Committee (note the capitals) approves our Administrative Code changes, we have to pay to have an announcement in all the newspapers in North Dakota that changes to our Administrative Code are being proposed, and that there will be a hearing for public comment on the changes. That means that Husband and I will sit in some room in our town either at my work, the public library, or some other room I can rent for an hour for no one to show up and make comments. After that, it becomes law.

Have you ever protested proposed legislation? When has a word made a difference for you? What kind of a lawyer would you have wanted to be?

2023, Kids, Nature, Poems, Words

Shadows

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My kitchen windows look out over my neighbors’ driveway, so I often get a front row view of the comings and goings.  Yesterday I saw the youngest (she’s almost 5) dancing with her shadow while waiting for the car to get loaded for the day.  She was completely entranced, lifting first one arm and then the other, then pointing one toe to the side followed by the opposite toe.  She shimmied and wiggled and eventually began to sing.  It was charming.

It reminded me of a favorite childhood poem, My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets to little that there’s none of hi at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nurse as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleep-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

I still have this poem in The Illustrated Treasure of Children’s Literature.  There are several poems in this collection that I remember and treasure.  I didn’t have a huge number of books when I was little but this was one of them and I had my mother read to me from it quite a bit.

Do you have any favorite childhood poems?

2023, Food, Media, Nature, Words

Peppered!

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One of my friends, Julie, is a freelance writer. She writes about a wide gamut of topics and she appears on the Eating Well site quite a bit.

Last week she penned a piece about why there aren’t ever green peppers in the multi-pepper packs you find in grocery stores. It’s a great bit (well, I think all her columns are great) and it included some fun facts about green peppers. This is quoted with her permission:

Fun Fact One: Peppers botanically are considered to be fruit, because their seeds are stored inside, but they’re culinarily considered a vegetable, like cucumbers.

Fun Fact Two: You can tell which peppers are male and female just by looking at the outside. “Males have three lobes, and females have four, sometimes five,” Schueller says. “The females produce more seeds, and that tends to make them less sweet. So if you like sweeter peppers, look for fewer lobes.”

Fun Fact Three: The peppers we call chile peppers all have spiciness, measured in Scoville units from mild to very spicy. But bell peppers don’t have any heat, and they ended up being named “bell” because a) they aren’t chile peppers and b) they’re shaped like a bell.

I had no clue that there were female and male peppers – not sure it will make me happy the next time I’m dicing up peppers for some dish.

If you’re making stuffed peppers, what do you like to put in them?

2023, Travel, Uncategorized, Words

Message Board

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We drove to Brookings, SD yesterday, a 500 mile trip. There was lots of road construction. I also noticed a few electronic message boards that the various Departments of Transportation entities had installed. The SD message boards won the prize for cuteness with “Be a thinker. Use your blinker”. I was greatly amused last winter to hear a rather conservative member of the ND Legislature wonder if the ND DOT was sending subliminal messages to citizens on the boards. He was quickly shut down.

Son found some messages on-line that I liked:

Get your head out of your apps.

OMG are you texting? I can’t even.

100 is the temperature, not the speed limit.

Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late.

Texting and driving? Say it: I am the problem. It’s me!

What would you like to see on electronic highway message boards?

2023, books, home, Mysteries, Words

Bookmark That!

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Last week when I stopped at the library, I noticed a basket on the little table inside the door, filled with bookmarks.  A sign on the basket said “A Year’s Worth of Bookmakrs. Please take one.”   Turns out it was a collection of all the bookmarks found in returned books over the last year.  Apparently they do this every year; I must have just missed it before. 

There were a good 40 bookmarks in the basket and I was tempted to look through them all to see if any of them were mine.  I expect with the number of library books I borrow that one or two bookmarks might have found their way to the library!

I have a cannister on my dresser that is filled with my bookmarks.  I will always pick up a bookmark if one is being offered.  (Ask Chris, I have several of his!) One of my latest favorites is a cutout of Smokey the Bear that I got at the state fair last year. 

You’d think that with at least 25 bookmarks in my cannister that I wouldn’t need to take another one from the library basket.  Well, you’d be wrong, I flipped through them all and picked out a striking one from a publisher with brightly colored book spines on it!

Do you have bookmarks?  Do you have a place to keep your bookmarks?

2023, Art, Poems, Words

Spring Haiku

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I was browsing through my poetry binder last weekend and, of course, came across my favorite haiku:

Fan Piece for Her Imperial Lord

O fan of white silk,
Clear as front on the grass-blade,
You are also laid aside
Ezra Pound

It made me wonder if I could find some fun haiku for spring.  There are actually quite a few but I like these two:

Rise from winter’s nap
Stretch to feel the sun’s warm rays
Spring is among us
Shannon Schofield

The temple bell stops.
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
Basho

Any spring poetry that you like?  Written any haiku lately?

 

2023, Automotive, Media, Mysteries, News, Words

Vanity Plates

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AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

I read a funny story online a couple of days ago.  Apparently the State of Maine has recalled 274 license plates because they were deemed inappropriate.  “How did they GET these inappropriate plates in the first place?” you may ask.  I certainly did.

Until the last few years Maine has been one of the few states that didn’t seriously police their vanity plate program.  In fact about 7 years back, they did away with the review process for vanity plates.  If you asked for it and it wasn’t taken (and you were willing to cough up the fee), it was yours.  As you can imagine, some very interesting plates were issued.  VERY interesting.

Maine decided it had gotten out of hand, so now they have re-instituted a review policy AND recalled 274 plates that crossed their new, arbitrary line.  Including the one in the photo above.  The family with the plate are vegan.  It’s hard to tell in the photo but there are other tofu- and vegan-related stickers on the car.  But because the word tofu ends in FU and the phrase is “suggestive”, Maine says they can’t drive around town with this plate on their car.  They appealed and lost their case.  In fact, no one who has appealed has gotten their questionable plates restored.  The next step is to file suit in the Maine Supreme Court but nobody has gone that far yet. 

Seems like a big kerfuffle for me after being a vegetarian for 50+ years, I would certainly read it correctly.  Part of me thinks so what if somebody has a blatantly foul license plate and part of me thinks I might not be too happy to stuck in traffic behind someone with a racist or outright pornographic plate.  Aah, the dilemmas of our modern age.

If you had to design your own license plates (no cost to you), what would you want on them?

2023, Family, History, Uncategorized, Words

A Slight Misunderstanding

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Wednesday night Husband and I were talking about a recent complaint that my regulatory board received about a licensee, as Husband is the new Board Investigator. It is an unpaid position that I volunteered him for because he is semi-retired and very fastidious in his work and there wasn’t anyone else to do it and he is my spouse.

He said we would need to finesse the written response to the complaint. I thought he said defenestrate the response. I was confused. Once we got that cleared up, we had a good laugh and both did some research on The Defenestration of Prague. What a strange word and even stranger concept!

What have you been “volunteered” for something by virtue of being related to someone? Have you ever wanted to be an investigator? Who or what have you wanted to throw out of a window?

2022, Family, Food, Media, pets, Uncategorized, Words

Favorite Words

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I look up lots of recipes on-line, and I somehow got signed up for the free delivery, multiple times a day, of recipes from a German-based Instagram site that sends me baking recipes. The recipes show up in German, and then are translated into English when I click on them to read them. The site is called Einfach Backen, which means Easy Baking.

I love the German descriptions of the recipes. One yesterday was:

Kirschpfannkuchen-Wie bei Oma. Soo fluffing & aromatisch!

I think that means cherry pancake just like grandma used to make, light and tasty. I don’t speak German, but some of the words are easy to figure out. I have never made any of the recipes. I just like trying to figure out what they are before they are translated into English.

The other day, one of the recipes was described as being blitzschnell, which I take to mean lightening fast to prepare. I just love that word! Our terrier is very blitzschnell, Husband less so. He is amused when I say “Mach Blitzschnell!!” when I want him to speed it up. I love it!

What are some of your favorite non-English words? What are your favorite English words or phrases? Learn any new words lately!

2022, animals, Family, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

Euphemisms

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Our puppy needs a haircut, and is a very fuzzy boy. I noticed that he had two rather large dried on pieces of poop on his rear end, stuck to his fussy hair. I told husband that he had to help me with the “clinkers”, as we have called such things since we got our first dogs many years ago. I started thinking about the word and the euphemisms that we use. I am not talking about hurtful or derogatory ones, just interesting ones.

I suppose many euphemisms stem from talking about body parts or functions. Many of my child/adolescent clients are embarrassed to death to have to refer to body parts by their proper names. A good friend had a daughter who referred to boys’ parts as “hoses”, which I thought was a pretty good descriptor. I don’t know what she calls them now that she is a grown woman.

What are some euphemisms that you use? What words are hard for you to say in public?