In 1840, Roget retired from a successful career in medicine and spent the rest of his life working on Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. The work was the result of decades of collecting lists of words and categorizing them, much like a scientist would collect specimens. In Roget’s case, he collected words. He first published his thesaurus in 1852. And it was more than a book of synonyms – it was a complete categorization and organization of each word by meaning.
Since then, poets and writers have used the thesaurus to help make their writing come to life. However, the thesaurus also has its detractors. Some say the thesaurus weakens language and destroys it.
Whether you are looking for a more accurate word or trying to improve your writing, the thesaurus can be your best friend. Expanding your vocabulary increases both written and spoken communication skills, creative writing abilities, and can be helpful in advancing your career.
I have to mention that on their official BlueSky account, those good folks at Merriam Webster posted:
Today is National Thesaurus Day.
Personally, we find these made-up holidays contemptible, abhorrent, nauseating, repugnant, and unpalatable.
I loved that.
My only question?
Did those good folks at Merriam Webster use a thesaurus to find the words, contemptible, abhorrent, nauseating, repugnant, and unpalatable?
age is an issue … mind over matter – don’t mind … it doesn’t matter
Check the world wide web and ask who said, Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter, and you will find lots of those meme graphics that attribute the saying to Mr. Mark Twain.
But ask for a citation and you go down that rabbit hole that conveys the information super highway to nether regions of obscurity.
I turned to my favorite website for attribution, Quote Investigator, to learn that the first recorded use of “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” was in in 1968 and Mark Twain, died in 1910.
According to Quote Investigator, the earliest evidence appeared in an article about aging that was published in multiple newspapers in 1968. The saying was attributed to an anonymous scientific researcher. The prefatory phrase was somewhat shorter:
As one government researcher puts it: “Aging is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
That line, according to QI appeared in the June 28 1968 , Statesville Record and Landmark, in a story headlined Facts Listed On Aging (Quote Page 7-A, Statesville, North Carolina).
Once, said, the line took on a life of its own and it appeared in print over and over through the years, attributed to Jack Benny, Satchel Paige and Muhammad Ali as well as Mr. Twain.
Just think of what you could get away back when attribution of almost anything wasn’t a few clicks away.
Regardless or iregardless* of who said it, I say it again, Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter and I am saying it to say, Happy Birthday today to my wife.
I hope you don’t mind and it doesn’t matter to me as we battle that issue of mind over matter together.
Love you!
*Use regardless, as irregardless is a nonstandard, redundant word considered incorrect in formal writing, though dictionaries acknowledge its usage to mean the same as “regardless” (despite everything) due to a double negative (ir- + -less) and confusion with “irrespective”. While some find “irregardless” acceptable in very informal speech, sticking to “regardless” avoids criticism and ensures clarity in professional or academic settings, as it’s the universally accepted, standard term, but I digress.
my hope this tragic incident will strengthen the determination
stand firm for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent
This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.
It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the Nation’s campuses-
-administrators, faculty, and students alike-
-to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.
I have questioned in the past whether such a thing exists and the answer I got from my brother who teaches poetry, which you can under the heading, What is a Haiku?, and he said I could name anything I wanted to a name a haiku … not that it made a haiku.
Which is good enough for me so today’s haiku has two stanzas.
Some time ago I was talking with another one of my brothers, I have 8 so I guess I am always talking to a brother about something, and I worried about the state of affairs impacting our country.
I felt the country was teetering on the edge of the abyss.
He countered that when he was in college, the prevailing discussion was pretty much the soon.
Protests, riots and dissension were tearing the county apart in the 70’s.
Leaders from the President to Civil Rights icons and Senators were being gun downed in city streets.
And students had been shot and killed by the National Guard.
At that time, he put forward that the county came through that period of history.
And I shut up and pondered.
I was 9 years old when on May 4, 1970 when a troop of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of Kent State University Students who were protesting the expansion of the war in Vietnam by US forces moving into Cambodia, killing 4 people and wounding 9.
I don’t remember it.
Two of my brothers were off in Ann Arbor (someone in my family was always off in Ann Arbor) and I don’t remember my parents talking about it.
It took a long time for the news and the information and the images to filter out from Ohio.
I recently read that to slow down the spread of information, Kent State asked Bell Telephone to turn off the phones in student dorms.
There were photographs that appeared on the TV news.
There were stories on the radio news.
But it really wasn’t until Life Magazine arrived in mail boxes and news stands across the Nation that story hit home.
Not in the split seconds of today but 11 days later.
And it wasn’t in a message on a phone or email, but in a magazine that demanded that you stop and take time in absorb the images and the story.
A question was asked by the father of one the student who was killed, “Is this dissent a crime? It it a reason for killing?”
We are asking that question again.
Bernard Miller, the father of Jeff Miller, the student lying dead in the famous Pulitzer prize winning photo, said in the Life Magazine article, “But shooting into a crowd of kids – THAT is violence. They say it could happen again if the Guard is threatened. They consider stones threat enough to kill children. I think the violence comes from the government.”
What do I remember about Kent State from back then?
I must have heard stories and such that come down to a 9 year old and I was inquisitive and at sometime I came across the Reader Digest magazine with an article about the shooting.
I read it and tried to understand but what stuck in brain was the story related by a Kent State student.
The student told how Kent State shut down for 6 weeks and all the students were sent home.
Traveling with his friends on the Ohio Turnpike he told how a toll booth operater leaned out to take their money, noticed their Kent State parking sticker and held up four fingers.
They asked why the four fingers?
And the toll booth operator said something along the lines of, “We got 4 of you this time.”
if not enjoying a volume, put it down and move on to the next
Don’t force it: If you’re not enjoying a volume, put it down and move on to the next. “I am a huge advocate for not finishing a book,” says Menzies. “If you don’t like a book, no one’s judging you. You’re not failing.”
Ms. Aggler is quoting a Morgan Menzies, who is a literary curator and social media influencer.
I am not sure exactly what a literary curator and social media influencer is or does but there you are.
Ms. Aggler closes withMake it fun Finally, make sure you’re having a good time.
And again quotes literary curator and social media influencer Menzies who says, “Reading is something that should bring you joy. There’s a lot you can gain from it.”
Make it fun?
Far be it from me to differ or question a literary curator and social media influencer, but how does one MAKE something FUN for someone else.
I recall a passage in the biography of Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., where the author states:
The men who came to the Holmes house to tea, to dinner — Emerson, Dr. James Freeman Clarke, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Appleton — never read a book because it was the thing to do. They read with passionate interest and with passionate interest discussed what they had read.
Passionate interest.
I put it to you that if you are passionately interested in something, reading about it, be it fishing, football or how coffee was brought to the US Army on France in World War 2 (and a history of the US ARMY Coffee Service in WW2 is fascinating), will be FUN.
I started reading right off.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t passionately interested in EVERYTHING and I wanted to read everything.
My parents bought the 1st and 2nd grade readers (real Dick and Jane books) when I was in kindergarten.
When I got to 1st grade, I asked the teacher, what else you got?
I remember in 8th grade I had to take a reading comprehension test and got called into the hall to be asked if I cheated as I scored higher on the test than mathematically anyone should have been able to score.
I will say that early on I also learned to start a book and say NOPE.
Sometimes it’s the opening language.
Sometimes the story doesn’t make it to the land of suspension of disbelief.
Sometimes it’s factual. I recently picked up a new book on the Nuremburg Trials after WW2 ( a book maybe prompted by the recent film) and on page two the author pointed out that the United States would be represented by Chief Justice Robert Jackson.
Well folks, it was Associate Justice Robert Jackson in Nuremburg and Chief Justice Harlon Fiske Stone stayed happily in Washington during the trial and that was as far as I got into the book.
So it was with some wonder when back in sixth grade I got my report card from Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary school.
The report cards at that time had three rows for marks.
Above expectation was row one.
Satisfactory was row two.
Unsatisfactory was row three.
We just used the short hand of saying did we get row 1 or row 2 or the dreaded row 3.
My Mom came home from Parent / Teacher conferences and handed me my card from Mr. Vanderwheel.
Behavior and all that was pretty much row three but the classroom work, English, Social Studies and Math were all Row 1 and Row 2.
At the bottom was one heading that was circled in red.
Reading.
I got a third row.
Mom let me look at at for a bit.
Then she said, “Mr. Vanderwheel says you spend most of the day with you nose in a book.”
I held out the card with my face one big question mark,
“But,” she said, “You have yet to turn in any book reports.”
Book reports?
We had to turn in two book reports a marking period.
One pagers with title, author, short synopsis and what you learned.
Well, what did that I have to do with reading I wanted to know.
It wasn’t my first time my lack of devotion to just-do-the-work and my outlook on education came into conflict.
All a book report, a REQUIRED Book report, did was rob my reading of all passion and made it work and took all the fun out it.
By this time I had read Tom Sawyer and when Tom whitewashes the fence and Mr. Twain wrote, ” … he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” I knew exactly what Mr. Twain was saying.
If the point was reading, what more did Mr. Vanderwheel want?
I mean, boy howdy.
From then on, once a month, I would grab the first book I found in the library, get a piece of paper and as fast I could, write the title, author, a paragraph about what the book looked like it might be about and what I liked about it.
Meet George Washington by Joan Heilbroner – this book was about George Washington and the many things he learned while growing up in Virginia and building his home at Mount Vernon that helped him as he fought in the Revolutionary war and was the 1st President. My favorite part was when he took his army in boats across the river to attack the Hessians at Trenton and Princeton. It is a good book and we should all read it.
I got 1st rows in reading.
There was something to be learned from this and I learned a lot in school but often the lessons I learned weren’t in any lesson planner.
much emotional content occurs before we are nineteen, twenty
Probably everyone feels this on their first true flight from whatever nest, but it is no less real for being so universally shared!
We all have mothers and fathers, and what sweet anguish, sometimes terror, there is in those names.
If you give it much thought, the skeleton of life is stupendously ordinary.
So much of the emotional content of our lives seems to occur before we are nineteen or twenty, doesn’t it?
After that, especially by our age, we seem like stone walls, mortared together by scar tissue.
The whole point is not to be.
From all my reading done in construction camps throughout the world, the main point or challenge is to stay as conscious as possible, absurd as that seems.
Sundog: a novel : the story of an American foreman, Robert Corvus Strang, as told to Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Washington Square Press: New York, 1989).
No Haiku For You 