1.19.206 – unpalatable

unpalatable
abhorrent nauseating
and contemptible

Yesterday, January 18th, was National Thesaurus Day and it honors Peter Mark Roget, the author of Roget’s Thesaurus, who was born on this day in 1779.

According to The National Day Calendar website:

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?

1.18.2026 – experience taught

experience taught
auxiliary precautions
a necessity

Adapted from the New York Times Opinion Piece, An Old Theory Helps Explain What Happened to Renee Good, by David French where Mr. French writes:

We trusted that presidents would impose accountability on the executive branch. We trusted that presidents wouldn’t abuse their pardon power — or, if they did, then Congress could impeach and convict any offenders. And so we manufactured doctrine after doctrine, year after year, that insulated the executive branch from legal accountability.

It’s hard to overstate how much this web of immunities — combined with the failure of Congress to step up and fulfill its powerful constitutional role — has made the United States vulnerable to authoritarian abuse.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote some of the most famous words of the American founding. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison wrote. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

This is a version of the ancient question: Who will watch the watchers?

Madison’s next words were crucial. “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

I want to take just a moment to comment on the line, “… the failure of Congress to step up and fulfill its powerful constitutional role.”

My study of US History has been filled with the jealous, selfish and defiant protection of the power of Congress BY CONGRESS.

The question, “How will this play on the Hill?” has been asked by every Executive administration since 1787.

Jimmy Carter realized it was pretty much over for him when a Democratic Congress over road on his vetos.

Nixon claimed his loss of a congressional legislative base made it impossible to stay on as President.

Theodore Roosevelt said something along the lines of, “If I could only be President AND CONGRESS for 10 minutes.”

Today we watch the worst example of Congressional action and leadership in the history of this nation and the worst dreams of the founders are not dreams but fact.

We depended on Congress as representatives of the people.

We depended on congress because a dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.

But experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Sad to think about.

Sad to watch.

Sadder to live through.

Mr. French writes:

In the Trump era, those auxiliary precautions have utterly failed.

They’ve been undermined to the point where the reverse is now true.

Rather than providing additional precautions against the rise of authoritarian rule, American law and precedent seem to presume that angels govern men, and those angels would be free to do even more good if only they possessed a free hand.

We are witnesses to what authoritarian rule looks like.

1.17.2026 – he added, we take

he added, we take
the world as it is – not as
we wish it to be

Adapted from the article, Mark Carney in China positions Canada for ‘the world as it is, not as we wish it’ by Amy Hawkins and Leyland Cecco in Toronto.

The story has the slug line of “PM’s visit to Beijing seen as a welcome reset to relations in a ‘new world order’ but critics worry what trade deal could mean for Canadian workers”.

It closes with this line.

Carney also spoke of “red lines” for Ottawa, including concerns about human rights and interference in Canadian elections. But : “We take the world as it is – not as we wish it to be.”

This poll was NOT a part of this story but it goes to the point of the world as it is.

I am aware that this plays right into the hands of those who feel that the USA has not part to play on the world stage.

There are those who feel that the USA has no role in world events.

There are those who says that the USA should stay home and take care of itself.

So how has they been working out you ask?

Somehow how we got a president who does not care about right or wrong, who treats truth as a tool, who shows little interest in a coherent world view, who dismisses the struggles of poor people as inconveniences, who treats the Constitution as an obstacle, who mocks rules of decency as weakness, and who bends or breaks the law whenever it serves his ego, because power and attention matter more to him than principle, responsibility, empathy, or accountability, leaving supporters and critics alike to confront a politics driven by grievance, spectacle, and self interest rather than justice, shared norms, or democratic restraint.

GOSH!

I admit, I asked Chat GPT to describe that current mad in office and that was the response.

Gotta agree with but thinking of famous story of Ben Franklin telling Thomas Jefferson about the man with the sign saying that the man made hats. The sign was cut in the shape of a hat and also had the man’s name on it. Franklin show Jefferson that all that was needed was the sign in the shape of the hat and the man’s name and cut all the words about hats for sale and such.

With that in mind can we work on what Chat GPT wrote?

How about we get by with saying just, we got a president who does not care about right or wrong.

Thinking about this some more, all we really need is, we got a president who does not care.

1.16.2026 – waves and gray-white beach

waves and gray-white beach
salt, monotonous, senseless
subtler than poems

The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore!

How one dwells on their simplicity, even vacuity!

What is it in us, arous’d by those indirections and directions?

That spread of waves and gray-white beach, salt, monotonous, senseless —

such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance —

so indescribably comforting, even this winter day —

grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual — striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read, seen, heard.

(Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read those poems and heard that music.)

From A Winter Day on the Sea-beach by Walt Whitman as published in Complete prose works: Specimen days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy by Walt Whitman (D. Appleton and Co: New York and London, 1910).

1.15.2025 – age is an issue

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.