Miscarriages of Linguistic Justice

"Oh, wasn't that pizza awesome?" Use "delicious" instead. Shouldn't we reserve such an expensive word for Someone whose value is beyond calculation?

"The Yankees s_ _ k. Instead of using what is becoming more and more the acceptable four letter word (which is one of the ugliest words---except in its proper context, i.e. a mother nursing her child.) Then it is one of the more beautiful English words. As to the former, use "stink" instead. Or better still use a word that shows you have read Joyce's Ulysses and say something like, "Yeah, the Yankees are the least salubrious team I ever saw."

"The third base person blew his or her knee out." Be brave and resist and say instead "The third baseman blew his knee out." Don't be afraid of being called a name because of it.

And never say, "The ballerina twisted their ankle" instead of making a gender mistake with a singular possessive pronoun which may give away one's terrible sexist unforgivable grammatical chauvinism, say without fear, "The ballerina twisted her ankle."

---so you in all likelihood just nixed your going to Princeton or some other Ivy League of Higher Learning. Look at it this way: you will save a lot of money, and won't have to go through months if not years of deprogramming.

"They did it, literally." Cut literally. "They did it" says it well enough.

"Wasn't that ballgame epic?" "Great" or "entertaining" will do nicely. I don't think a ballgame is a long poem from an ancient oral tradition. (Thanks to my friend, Helen, for pointing out "literally" and "epic" as two that she has noticed.)

And how many exclamation points does one need now to show you agree? More than a dozen all stacked next to each other? If we keep progressing this way a hundred exclamations will appear only apathetic. No, fight this trend and employ only a solitary exclamation, and even consider whether an ordinary period is sufficient enough praise.

Wenham Woods

Wenham woods. A pair of snakes, black water snakes and their little one coiled up beneath some dead leaves by the water's edge. I watched their inactivity for some time. Then another high point: a great egret keeping pace with me as I bicycled along gull pond. Finally, just having the strong April light bringing even the drab gray of the trees to a kind of color that reflects off the still water intermingled with hillocks of marsh grass. Can't ask for more gifts on a ride than that.

Starbuck's Unstaged

 Get it out of your head all you conspiracy theorists that the Starbucks situation was something an Obamian community organizer would have staged. All it did was point out the uncontestable irrefutable truth of uncompassionate/undiverse/intolerant Trumpian America. It was a Rosa Parks moment. How can one doubt it when two men of color walk in to a Starbucks (which after all is on our side in all our social justice) and, ask politely or beseech humbly (can there be any doubt how they asked?) to use the restroom? It just so happened that they were refused by the manager in a flagrantly intolerant, perhaps even belligerent, tone (can anyone doubt the rudeness of her tone?), as they hadn't bought anything (how fascist can a store manager be that she demand a purchase, even a cup of coffee---which at Starbucks, by the way, isn't so an inconsequential a purchase?)? And further, it just so happened they both wanted to use the restroom (certainly this liberty must be granted in the dynamic-equivalence reading of the Constitution)---and not only was this intolerance suffered but it just so happened that a man of non color just happened to be leaving the restroom and just so happened to say that he was given the restroom code and hadn't bought anything either---not so much as a cup of coffee---I ask you, isn't this what people of non-color say to people of color when they just so happen to leave the restroom and the others seek to enter it?

And then the men of color had the police called upon them for simply staying and refusing to leave---certainly a prime example of intolerance and bigotry and lack of diversity sensitivity. The two men later claimed they were waiting for their friend to perform a real estate deal. Of course the Starbuck's manager must have had in her mind more the scenario of a drug deal given her proneness to stereotyping. (How narrow minded can you be in the city of brotherly love that drugs and deals would ever happen together.) Much more realistic to take their word for it, to be sensitive to real estate transactions when a cup of coffee isn't even purchased and the bathroom is sought to be used. Well, of course the friend did arrive and just so happened to have a camera---they are quite handy documentors these days to enforce all the social justice we seek to accomplish. And of course it just so happened there was already a sensitivity training for the police officers that came to arrest the victimized and traumatized men as well as the Starbuck's employees who sought to exercise such a response to those who would resist a purchase. And it just so happened that the mayor came out to mandate the use of sensitivity training for all those who participated in this outrage of social justice and the ludicrous infringement of anyone's rights to loiter.

Eventually everything will work out I hope. We'll have to have more "NO PLACE FOR HATE" signs picketing the lawns of those of us who know we are the socially just and the tolerant and compassionate. We really have to seek to have such signs to lecture those who pass by so that their hateful right wing agenda of "Making America Great Again" will have no place in our borderless globe. And certainly we must be grateful for this really remarkable event that it brings to light what our schools have been teaching us about America for a couple of generations now. And may we be grateful too to the mainstream media and their truth telling---of course this story is supremely important and we can look to it to be the lead story until some other revealing scandal that places our country and her president in any kind of news worthy calumny---after all such cataclysmic revelations of conservative's deeply entrenched obsessions with race deservedly will enjoy a longer shelf-life than a package of Hostess Twinkies. Yes, certainly no doubt can be entertained as to the fact that this event was not staged but was completely unarranged in an America that is being continually revealed to us by the truth/compassion/diversity/tolerance-tellers. But a question still nags me: given such an uncompassionate/non-diverse/intolerant country one wonders why we are having anyone who wishes to immigrate here? That certainly is a conundrum that seems to need a social justice warrior to figure out. One must wonder too how such a compassionate/diverse/tolerant cooperation as Starbucks is not immune from the virulent epidemic white privilege that plagues this Caucasian country? At least we have the curricula nowadays at places of higher and lower learning seeking to get us thinking broadmindedly. And also, these sensitivity sessions will transform us to be at last truly tolerant of everything, and assuage our ancestral guilt that seems especially to burden us as the years go on.

No, such a choreography couldn't have been staged. I look at the news cycles and I don't see any precedents to such Tony Award stagings. It certainly, without an iota of deplorable doubt must have arisen organically from the toxic ground of Trump's White House lawn.

A Good Day in the Woods

A good day in the woods. Saw some of the usual: robins, cardinals, chickadees, a brown creeper zigg-zagging up a tree lined with a 'dormant' poison ivy vine.These sightings would be enough to have me call it a good day. But then I noticed a red breasted 'robin' perched high up on a limb as I was well in the center of Steer Swamp. When I got the binoculars on him, he no longer looked so robinish. Rather, a raptor of some kind. And he wasn't just taking in the sights but his was a focus concentrated on something in his grip. Yes, this was a dining experience. And it looked to the best my eyes could make out was maybe a meadow vole. The bird didn't seem to mind a human observer of his supper. I had never seen a falcon this small. I observed and jotted down the various markings, the most characteristic was a facial marking of what looked like war paint---two vertical black stripes running vertically on each side of his face. It was the kind of blacking football players often use under their eyes. Well what was this bird, about the size of a robin, maybe just an ounce or two larger? It had a lot of the similar spotting on the feathers that many birds of prey have. But it was the black stripes that would be the tell-tale clue. Ah, yes. American Kestrel. A first for me. And for him, it looked to be a good day in the woods too.

The Once Popular Expression "Global Warming"

I've noticed that this spring here in New England anyway, the once popular expression "global warming" has devolved into disuse. I rather think given the current climate change that has happened, those on board with this very settled science are actually praying for it and secretly hoping for a bit more of a carbon footprint to help things along and thaw the permafrost that keeps even the crocus chilled and regretful they came up so soon.

Hamlet's Hunch on Syria

Just a few comments on Syria which I give the caveat that they proceed from not being as versed in World Affairs as I could be. That being said, I still can't shake the hunch concerning this new hostility with Syria. It smells as Hamlet might say, of a decaying Denmark. Could there be some kind of frame up of Assad and a way for the globalists to irritate both America and Russia into a war? After all both the US and Russia are both under nationalist presidents and each country presents an obstacle to the globalist agenda. Another curiosity that I have noticed was how the peacemongering Left doesn't seem as displeased with the antagonism between America and Russia. This I find plays against their peace-sign creed. Has the Left's psyche changed this much since the tantrums against our war with Communist Vietnam and George W.'s assault of Iraq and Sadam Hussein? And most recently I began to see how hawkish Hilary Rodham seemed against Russia during the campaign. Then in this latest move against Syria I found it especially curious that the typical hateful invective against Donald Trump was missing from the Democratic news outlets, specifically the commentary on NPR after the strike. It appeared to be curiously objective, even mildly in favor of the President. The doves didn't even seem to mind at all the prospects of escalation with Russia. This struck me as remarkably unexpected. I guess the Left is perhaps more hawkish than I thought---especially when it favors the agenda.

Syria

Of course I have not been briefed on Syria. I have no inside information. I have no CIA reporting to me and I don't have generals providing military strategy, and I don't have ambassadors to Russia relaying the Russian possible response to an airstrike at one of their allies. Thus I speak with a bit of ignorance. Yet, my gut feeling is that there are powers that be that seem to seek to irritate Russia into a war. First there is this whole facade of Russian collusion that seems to act as an irritant to what I think should be warmer relations to a country that we have endured a long cold war with. In fact this antagonism seems ironically to come largely from the Left. I have to wonder at this once tight comradeship. Then again Russia is no longer the USSR and they seem to be moving away from their Marxism as we in the West seem to be moving toward it. They also seem to be moving toward Christianity with a pace that is about equal to the West's fleeing of the Faith. And I just have to wonder at what motive could Assad have in the use of chemical weapons that he and Russia must realize would irritate relations with the West. Could the entire scenario have been orchestrated by folk that wish to see nothing better than friction at the least between a country that should be our ally against both the formidable foe of ISIS and the debauchery that we in the West seem to be welcoming?

FBI or KGB?

Where is the ACLU when you need them? Or the Attorney General? Or the Press? The President's own personal lawyer's office was broken into and searched? Have we become the Soviet Union so quickly? Believe me a Police State is no fun for anybody---even those of a liberal persuasion should be concerned when a president is harangued for any breach of conduct over his lifetime. It could someday happen to you. This abuse of power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation should remind us of KGB tactics. Come up with a crime and then fit the man to it? How long shall we put up with this?

The Pronoun Police at Your Door

Okay, so friends I need to begin learning English all over again. This is really going to make teaching English as a second language a bit more difficult. And this is only the beginning of course. You certainly can expect someone to be offended that Ze and Zer, Xie and Hir, doesn't cover them. They will need another set. I mean can't you see genders proliferating to the point that there will be hundreds if not thousands of new pronouns to learn. And not only that but then one has to decline them. Use the proper pronoun for the proper function in the sentence. My brain dizzies at the thought! And what happens when a German with a German accent refers to an orthodox gender as "Ze" just because of his accent when he really was referring to a "He"? Could he be imprisoned? Could he be taken to the pronoun reeducation center? Will he or ze or xie or countless others unnamed presently have to have mind comforming conditioning? I imagine all the books will have to be rewritten as well because do we really know whether Oliver Twist was a boy or something else, or Jane Eyre perhaps wasn't a girl? And since the authors are no longer alive we will have to cover all the bases and include the unabridged politically correct gender diverse editions of all the famous classics. Won't they be great reading after the pronoun police have confiscated them and had them revised. Can't wait to read them.

Phone Control

Having noticed that there have been some fatalities resulting from the use of phones while driving I am now advocating (too bad I don't have political pull like say, a State Attorney General) the first step in a ban on phones. It will only, at first, result in the banning of the latest technologically most sophisticated phones---but not to worry---as long as the precedent is set, as long as we were able to pry the lid off Pandora's Box just a little we will inevitably come to the point where all phones will be criminalized. (After all isn't it just plain old fashioned to criminalize the criminal?) I certainly expect all on the Left who are so concerned with children---and these days it seems especially fashionable to be in adoration of high school children---that they on the Left will surely be backing me on this. Maybe we can get our Constitutional scholars, Mr. Hogg for one, to be my eloquent and judicious advocate.

State Attorney General Maura Healey First Step in Her Erosion of the Second Amendment

This is quite a bad precedent. That the State Attorney General can make legislation with the snap of her fingers and the shopping around of a sympathetic judge. And that the second amendment can be so easily amended should be something that should make us realize of the Statism that has infected this country. Where is the outrage? Our Constitutional Framers would have had no difficulty in seeing a perilous corruption of the balance of powers when the legislative branch is bypassed with such ease. Remember, dear citizenry, that Mao's China, Adolph's Germany, Josef's Russia all began disarming the populace until they had not a peashooter of resistance. It was only then that their totalitarianism could triumph. And isn't anyone sick yet of the plastering the background with kids? If you wish to push the Leftist agenda have the backbone to stand there without these kids as propagandic props.