Lower Lights Christmas

Hey Steph,

I'm going to see the Lower Lights--a group that focuses on hymn revival--at a Masonic Temple (how cool is that!). So, I'm going to keep it short and sweet today, partly because I won't have time tonight and partly because Lower Lights music speaks for itself.

Cheers,

Amanda Kae

Mandela and Columbus: It's Complicated

So my degree says History, but really I studied the phrase “it’s complicated.” What caused The Great War? Did it make WWII inevitable? Were the European missionaries in colonial Africa a force for good or bad? Was daily life better in Athens or Sparta?

Recently, I’ve been a little overwhelmed with the response to the passing of Nelson Mandela. A lot of deifying. And a little hate. And I find it all frustrating. People are complicated. There are bad habits in heroes, and virtues inside of villains.

There is so much to admire in the life of Nelson Mandela. Honestly, there are few people who have ever been born that have influenced as many as he did. He had passion, dedication, and a singular focus on the goal of equality. It is easy for me to say that history will mark him as a force for good.  

Source

But he was just a guy. And I say that in the most respectful way possible. Because it is good to have role models and it's bad to have pedestals. He made mistakes. Shoot, he led a guerrilla group that planted bombs and killed civilians. And the reason those mistakes are important is because imperfect people are attainable role models. In effect Nelson Mandela chose to be Nelson Mandela. There was nothing supernatural about him. He was violent in his middle-age, but committed himself to peacemaking and reconciliation in the evening of his life.  It's within our capacity to have the same dedication and drive as Nelson Mandela. To be passionate and forgiving. To be eloquent and frank. And most importantly to change for the better. We can choose to be like Nelson Mandela too. We're made out of the same stuff, Mandela just did one heck of a job with it.

Similarly, Christopher Columbus wasn't the spawn of Satan. I’m a little passionate about this, so just bear with me for a  moment. Yes, Christopher Columbus did some super scumbaggy things, but  Christopher Columbus didn’t think he was a scumbag. Honestly Columbus thought he was a good, God-fearing man. And a lot of people think that makes him a bigger scumbag, but what that really makes him is a cautionary tale.

Relief of Columbus and Queen Isabella in Madrid (Source)

See, Christopher Columbus grew up on the Italian peninsula, but he wasn’t Italian because that concept hadn’t been invented yet.  He was Genoese, and he grew up inheriting a blood-feud against the Venetians (who had trashed the Genoese in a series of wars). Seriously.  The Genoese and the Venetians were dyed in the wool enemies--in the space about the size of Wyoming. These are people that look just like Columbus, have essentially the same culture as Columbus, and speak essentially the same language as Columbus.

Also, at this point in time it is legal to neglect and abuse children up until the point of death under the apprenticeship system.  The streets were filled with human excrement. The chicken for your dinner was most likely bled out in front of you. And serfdom was still a thing.  

Columbus’s sense of morality is not the same as yours. He didn’t have circle time at preschool.

So how do you know that your sense of morality is better? Most, likely, you think you’re a good person. And you probably are. But what makes you good? Is it staying true to your own spectrum of morality or is it staying true to some absolute scale of goodness? And are you held accountable for doing things you didn’t know were bad? Are the civil war surgeons in hell for killing thousands of people, carrying blood from one wounded soldier to the next?

In my personal opinion, Columbus isn’t evil. Certainly he did evil things. But he didn’t find them evil, and his mother wouldn’t have found them evil. So he wasn’t choosing to be evil.  Being evil is knowing and doing anyway. Columbus just unfortunately inherited the crappy morality of his era.

So, to sum up.

It’s complicated.

A Few Christmas Season Realizations

Hey Steph,
  Early on in this Christmas season, I've realized a few new things about Christmas traditions.

Like, the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is not really a romantic song--it's kind of creepy if you listen to the words. This video helps you out:

And take a look at the kid from All I Want for Christmas.

Now take a look at him now.

Yup, that's the guy from Sweet Home Alabama and more recently the dude killed off in Once Upon a Time. 

Mind blown.

Also, instead of standing over the stove furiously scraping the bottom of the sauce pan while making homemade caramels, I found out you can pop them in the microwave for 6 minutes and get the same results. Never making them over the stove again.

Random gems of knowledge? Absolutely. It's snowed all day long, and I'm feeling a bit under the weather. That's the best I got for ya today.

Love ya!

Amanda Kae

Henry and the Craziest Family Tree

(Just an FYI: Mormons are encouraged to fill out a 4 generation chart, hence the joke. It's sort of like the cheesy line from Cars, you always know where your going if you know where you've been. This is doubly true for Henry Swann-Fire and I think he should really start asking some questions about Cora's parents because his great grandmother will probably turn out to be Evil Winnie the Pooh)

Cruel Hope

Hey Steph!

Sometimes it is easier to walk around suppressing your deepest desires. Peace and happiness is found in the here and now. And focusing on your desired but seemingly unattainable future can be torturous.

When I was a young girl, all I dreamed about was holding babies and being in love. When I was a teen, my life's ambition was to be a wife and mother. When I was in college, I nervously lived day to day hoping for these dreams to be realized. They weren't. Heartbreak happened and to cope with it, I clung tight to what I could rely on: my family, a few friends, my job, my status as a student. I went back to school, and I found a version of myself I didn't know before. I had a lot of dreams that were hidden away. I wanted to be a musician, and a hiker of mountains, a runner of 10Ks, a voice for women, and a person full of service in her hands. I even wanted to be successful professionally as an editor. I had no idea all of that was in me. I had had tunnel vision all my life on those two goals: marriage and motherhood.

The knowledge of being a more complex being than I ever realized is priceless to me. I wouldn't trade it for the world. But part of that coping has been pushing aside the deep and fervent desires for a family of my own. A friend told me recently that hope is bittersweet. Opening yourself to hope is a test in vulnerability. It is putting your emotions in an unfulfilled future--a future that may never be. When it comes to me and hope, at times I look it in the eye for a split-second than turn around and run cowardly away. I'm not sure I have the emotional stamina to dream (at least about romance and motherhood). Instead, I focus on right now, on how to live my life each day better, on how to achieve all the other dreams I can make happen. And I'm happy.

And then I saw this video:




Wow! Motherhood is beautiful. It is something I still want. And sometimes it's okay to pull out those desires and just let it hurt.

Cheers,

A dreamer if only for today

The Care and Keeping of Extroverts (A Poorly Drawn Comic)

Hey Amanda,

So I dunno about you, but my internet life has been filled with counterintuitive declarations of introverted pride. There was this fantastic TED Talk going around, and about three million personality tests. And I dunno. I was feeling like Extroversion was getting maligned and vastly misunderstood . Everyone needs some alone time to recharge. Everyone hurts when their needs aren't met. No one likes meaningless conversations about the weather. No one likes huge crowds of people they don't know.  So if that's your definition of extroverts, yeah, definitely, those people are overrated. But more than that, no one is an extrovert or an introvert 100% of the time.

So in response to this webcomic....I drew one of my own for extroverts. (I had a super difficult time getting the comic to both be legible and not be so mammoth-ly big that I I had to scroll right to left to read it...so here's my hack. Do it with me. Find the ALT button. Hold it down. Now find the + on your keyboard and press it a few times until you can read the text. YAY! You can let go of the ALT button now)

(To right your screen, hold down ALT and press the - key (that's the minus key) on your keyboard until it's normal)

Extroverted: adj.  doesn't mean annoying and bombastic. Doesn't even mean you value social interactions, because that's everyone. If you don't occasionally crave human interaction, you aren't called an introvert. You're called a sociopath. 

Extrovert,
Stephanie

A Look into God's Mirror

Hi Steph,
  I believe in the power of our thoughts. The way we think determines the way we see the world, ourselves, and our choices. For example, a person that sees themselves the victim of their circumstances will see their choices as limited to what happens to them rather than what they can do. When I was a little girl, I learned a song about our thoughts:

If on occasion you have found

Your language is in question,

Or ugly thoughts come to your mind,

Then here's a good suggestion:

Just hum your favorite hymn,

Sing out with vigor and vim,

And you will find it clears your mind.

Hum your favorite hymn.

It's a simple child's song, but I still on occasion mentally hum a song when a gossipy or mean or sexual thought comes to my mind. Beyond being a good way to distract myself of these negative thoughts, it also serves as a label and a reminder: these thoughts are not appropriate, are not helpful, and are not godly. 

In regard to our thoughts, we often talk about thoughts and images of a pornographic nature. We talk of pornography as an epidemic, as an addiction, and as an imprisonment. But I'm not going to write about pornography today. I want to discuss a different epidemic of our thoughts that I see again and again, particularly among women. 

The epidemic is negative self-talk.

negative self-talk: the pervasive need to regularly think mean thoughts of oneself, often related to physical appearance but can also be related to any part of one's being. 


I hear my dear, amazing friends and family members say things all the time that make me want to scream out: "That is a absurd lie!" They'll say things like, "Man, I'm really fat" or "Why would any guy want to date me?" or "I'm too ugly for anyone to notice me." If these things are coming out of their mouths, how many other mean things are they thinking inside their heads?

I hear a lot of people speak to women about how wonderful they are. It's true. Women are wonderful! Sometimes, I think this is done to build up women and boost self-esteem. While I think this approach can be beneficial, I'm not going to sugarcoat anything with this post. 

Ladies, these negative thoughts are evil. They are not appropriate. They are not helpful. They are not godly. These thoughts are from the Adversary. Plain and simple. If we suggest to men (and women), that they should remove an unclean, immoral thought or image from their mind immediately, then we women (and men) need to remove these negative, self-degrading thoughts from our minds just as rapidly. Both these type of thoughts--the immoral and the self-degrading--come from the same source: the Devil. 

My friends, my sisters, you are capable of so much more than a brain filled with thoughts of inability, inadequacy, and inferiority. Your brain was meant to be used for so much more than that! Think of all the energy you could reroute to other things. Instead of being consumed by how you looked at a party, you could be consumed by how to befriend others at a party. Instead of letting your voice go quiet in insecurity, you can let your voice rise in words of comfort and love. You are the hands of Christ. Why are you throwing away that ability by focusing on what you think you can't do? It's selfish. 

All of these negative thoughts keep us focused on the wrong thing--ourselves. There's a world of people around us just hoping for someone to care for them, but most of those someones are too caught up in thinking they are worthless to notice. Just like pornography, negative self-talk hurts our relationships.  The resulting low confidence of this self-bullying does not allow friends and partners to truly address problems in order to protect weak self-esteems. Open communication and solutions are stopped at the mirror of lost potential that your wife (or husband) stares into all day.

Several years ago, I had an awakening to my own negative self-talk. A wise professor explained that this practice was simply a habit. It was not an inevitable, insurmountable condition. So, just as I had set other goals to brush my teeth everyday and clean my room regularly, I set the goal to remove the negative thoughts from my head. The first thing I had to do was label it: this thought is leading me away from my potential and from what God wants of me. In that sense, it is a sin. Once labelled, it was easier to want to quickly replace it. Sometimes I would hum a song, but more often than not, I would think of something else, like school, work, or what was going to happen in the last Harry Potter book. And then I repeated this process again and again and again. And again. Like any bad habit, it was extremely hard to break. Thinking negatively of myself was such a common practice that it seemed a part of my personality, something impossible to truly remove. But I kept working at it. I failed many, many times, but instead of giving in to those thoughts of inability--"You're weak. How can you win this battle?"--I kept going. 

It took a long time, but years later, I can say that negative thoughts are uncommon and passing for me. They sometimes come into my mind, but I pay them little attention. They no longer are the natural route for my mind to go down and focus on. And the fight has been completely worth it. I am free. 

To anyone reading this, imprisoned by a constant barrage of mean thoughts: you can be free of them too. If you're out there thinking, "But it's true, I am fat (or ugly or stupid or socially awkward or whatever else it may be)," I would reiterate that these thoughts are lies that are not from God. Jesus would look at you and see not a fat or stupid or socially awkward person but a complex being full of individual potential to fulfill His needs. He would see a worthy disciple to do His work. He would see someone He died for. That's what you are. Don't loose sight of that mission by only seeing all that you think you aren't. You are worth fighting for, so start the fight.

A look for truth in God's mirror.

With sincere love for the divine beings around me,

Amanda Kae

Create Your Own Religion: A How-to

Hey Amanda,

The Twenty-Something Crisis of Faith should be a thing. Because at the time you are completely convinced that you are the only one going through it. You have the uneasy feeling that if a diabolical entitiy exists he is laughing at you. And in the back of your mind is the growing surety that no matter how hard you try, you can never go back to the way things were before.  And you'd be right. You can't.

You can't have the faith you had as a child again. "Jesus said love everyone" won't be enough to guide you through the morally ambiguous world you navigate. The aphorisms aren't always true.  And the elegant simplicity of your childhood religion reveals itself to be a complex balance of opposing mandates and your worried you can't trust it.  But this isn't the time panic. I know you want to. You feel guilty and scared. But don't worry.

Your religious life is about to get awesome.

Because when you were a child, you needed the hand-holding, someone to tell you what God wanted from you. You needed those aphorisms. But not anymore. It's time to draw up the blueprints for your own understanding of God.

Don't worry, I'm not encouraging moral relativity.  I am completely convinced that there are some absolute truths in this world. Nor am I suggesting that organized religion is bad. Or even that orthodoxy is unimportant.

What I'm saying is that within all religions there is a built-in seam allowance, and it can  be tailored to your soul. Because Jesus of Nazareth talked about sparrows with compassion (Matt. 10:29) and He also whipped the sacrilegious (John 2:13-17).  Tender kindness, and fierce devotion. They are both Christian ideals--which one would you emphasize? Which one do you need more of?

Jesus is complicated. WWJD?  Isn't that the question of a lifetime?
Temple Incident by Cosmas Damian Asam

So here's the how to:

1. Read for yourself everything you've been used to getting second-hand. Get your hands on a bible and read it. You don't need anyone to tell you what Jesus taught (or Buddha or Muhammad for that matter). Read it yourself or you'll never know know what it teaches you.

2. Embrace what makes you a better, happier person. And accept that that won't necessarily be the same thing that makes your mom a better, happier person.  Many different fruits have the same vitamins. Just because something inspires you, it doesn't make it inspirational to others. It doesn't make it wrong either, and the inverse is also true. You don't have to worry when something doesn't speak to your soul like it does to someone you care about, because...

3. We are Individual, with Individual Worth. God made all of us, and He made us dissimilar. The variety of godly virtues are  taught by the various passions that drive all of us. Some are more committed to Justice, Compassion, Stewardship, Obedience, or Sacrifice than others, and its the plurality of  living examples that makes us all better people. As we share what God looks like through our eyes, we gain a fuller, more beautiful rendering of who He actually is.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know [Him] even as also I am known. (1 Cor. 13:12)

And just as a reminder to those in the throes of a crisis of faith- sometimes you only have to figure out what you want to believe. Hang in there.

-Stephanie











 

Giving Up on Getting 100% on Life's Test

"This life is a test." I heard this phrase over and over at Church growing up, but I feel like I'm just getting the concept. I've always been someone who really enjoyed learning, and I was lucky enough to test well at school. In a way, I enjoyed taking tests. They were often like games to me, and I got excited about figuring out the right answer. To be honest, I still like tests. (Nerd alert!)

So, when I learned that we were sent here to be tested, I naively thought of that as a series of choices.

True or False:

1. It is appropriate to use foul language.
2. You should study scriptures everyday.
3. Telling lies is all right, but only if you have a good reason to do so.

I knew all the answers! 1. False! 2. True! 3. False! Though I could answer correctly all these questions of morality and righteousness, I didn't always act in accordance with what I knew was right. That is where I saw the importance of the Atonement come in. When I made a mistake, the Savior was there to correct the missteps.

The last few years I've realized I'm actually a really slow learner. Yes, the Atonement covers our sins and makes up for the times we use our actions to incorrectly "answer" choices of good and evil. But life isn't just a test of choosing good from evil. It is a test of faith, a test of hope, a test of endurance, a test of courage, a test of character, a test of limits. But the word test still doesn't work for me here. All the tests that we have here on earth just don't equate to the test administered by Deity. The best we can do is use metaphors.

crucible: a pot which can withstand high temperatures in order to test materials at high temperatures

In chemistry, a crucible is used to heat elements to extreme temperatures. All other substances are burned off, leaving only the pure element. Then the element is cooled and weighed at room temperature. Special tongs are used to move the crucible because even fingerprints can add mass to the crucible and element weight! This method helps provide accuracy of atomic mass up to six figures. To put this in academic test terms, this is like asking when the Civil War ended, and not only looking for the day the treaty was signed in Appomattox Courthouse, but the hour, the minute, and the second it was signed. This is precision.

The catch here is that we are the element being brought to extreme temperatures. Our test isn't to know exactly how much we amount to in the crucible but to go through the crucible itself. We are heated, or tried, until our purest form remains--who we are when brought to our limits. If we are going through a crucible testing patience, we will be "heated" for the longest period we can think of and then longer. If we are going through the crucible of faith, we will be "heated" to a place where we feel we don't know anything, until only faith remains. And then we are measured and our true weight is found.

I've found that our perceived level of strength is no where near where God knows it to be. So these experiments in crucibles are often longer, more extreme, and more exhausting than we ever thought was possible. Only the omniscience of God could create such a perfectly personal test of our character. And because we are highly complex beings, one bout in the crucible can't fully measure us. We will be tossed back in to test all our attributes.

The beauty of being tested in the crucibles of life is that the test itself changes us and strengthens us because we are here not just to test well, but to become like God. Once again, only an all-loving, omniscient God can create an assessment that simultaneously measures and teaches His pupils.

Just a few of my thoughts.

Cheers,

Amanda

Real Halloween Animals that Look like they Shouldn't Exist

Hey Amanda, 

Here's some real animals that remind us that not all monsters are fiction. 

Painted Bat---A creature so fake, I had to check the edits page on its wikipedia article.

 (Source)

Blobfish---to get a more self-explanatory name you'd have to watch Pokemon

(Source)

Myrianida pachycera --- Like a video game boss,  pachycera spawns clones of itself on its own body which then split off  to swim away and lay eggs. Better go back and look for a 1-Up

(Source and a really awesome blog)

Pacu Fish --looks like a necromancer stole a man's jaw and frankenstein-ed it into a fishes face

(Source)

Glaucus Atlanticus-- ...the alien invasion started in the ocean. 

He's actually pretty cute. (Source)

Goblin Shark-- my brain has never invented a nightmare creature more frightening. 

Shudders. (Source)

I'd include a definition of reality but it's been thrown into question.

Happy All Saints Day/ Día de los Inocentes,

Stephanie 

Wordsmiths

Hey Steph!

This week I've begun to wonder if I've mislabeled myself. I've always seen myself as a writer, but I started questioning whether I really had talent there or not. I spend the majority of my day writing. Writing magazine articles and social media updates for work. Writing academic jargon (that I try not to be jargon) for my thesis. Writing music lyrics for my soul and my acoustic guitar, Declan. Oh, and writing attempted profundity for this blog. Lots of words, but I'm not so sure their all worth reading.
               At work I've been writing an article about a band in my area. As I've immersed myself in their music, I've become more and more aware of the triteness of my own musical lyrics in comparison to their simple and emotion-filled lyrics. The more I learn about the group the more I want to do a good job on their article. I want to do their music and their goodness justice. I want to mirror their art with my art of journalism. And this desire pretty much paralyzed me at the keyboard. I wrote a sentence and deleted a sentence. Over and over, until I was left at the end of the work day with a blank screen.

Source

               Writing is hard business. I started to wonder if I just didn't have the talent for it, and if I should give up. (Quick time out: I freely admit now that this was a bit over the top. Please bear with me while I get to the point.) Who am I to call myself a wordsmith?

wordsmith: a master craftsmen of eloquent and profound writing

               There were people with broader vocabularies and more creative syntactic play. As I toyed around with the idea that I might not be cut out for it, a thought from a previous article I had written came to my head. The subject of the article was a painter. He told me that it bugs him when people come up to him and say, "Man, your work is beautiful! I wish I had that talent!" as if it were a compliment. He said that he's sure they are trying to be nice, but he always hears the idea that he didn't work hard to be a great painter. He said growing up he wasn't very good in art class, that his brother always did a better job than him. But he just kept painting and drawing and working. And he got really good at it.

Source

               As I recalled this conversation, I started wondering why I would ever think that writing should be easy. Olympians aren't amazing athletes because they were born that way. Concert violinists aren't masters because they picked up a violin a played it perfectly. They worked at it. We have this idea in Western culture of being blessed with the Muses in our creation of art, but I think we also need to be blessed with hard work as well. Just like a blacksmith must first master the art of making a symmetrical horseshoe before he can create a beautiful suit of arms, so must a wordsmith build one skill at a time before she can write her magnum opus.

Source

               November is the start of National Novel Writing Month. I know there are friends of mine out there that want to write a novel but have trouble pushing through the rough times. Let's consider this our first horseshoe: Get something out on the page. Once the words are living there in black and white, then we can craft them into a suit of arms. And if novel writing isn't your thing, pick something else. For me, I'm going to work through two songs that are presently musing around in my head unformed and unmetered with the goal of of leaving no lines of lyric behind that just kind of landed there because they rhymed and fit the musical cadence.
               There's a reason that libraries aren't just one shelf big. There's room there for the masters and the hard-working apprentices.

Cheers,

Amanda

Feminism and a Definition of Motherhood

There is a list of feminist quotes from Caitlin Moran going around the internet lately. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read it here.  I don’t hesitate to call myself a feminist, and lots of those quotes were really awesome... until this one:

“If you want to know what’s in motherhood for you, as a woman, then — in truth — it’s nothing you couldn’t get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.”

Don’t get me wrong. Childless life can be just as amazing and fulfilling as having children, (see Mother Teresa). Happiness is always within your grasp if you’re willing to take it, regardless of your circumstances.  However, I will definitely claim that a childless man has missed out on something.

A portrait of my family as illustrated by Robby Cook.
Because Awesome is what being a parent feels like

I’ve always believed that with enough dedication, I was capable of anything. And yet becoming a mother has made me feel, simultaneously, infinitely more competent and completely inadequate.

Motherhood is having a pair of small yet impossibly strong arms clinging to your neck with the knowledge that you could save them from anything, and it is the euphoric rush  of feeling like you could. Having access to another realm of instinctual ferocity inside of you, yet outwardly more tender than you’ve ever been.  Brushing the tears off your child’s cheeks with an angel’s touch and a lion’s soul.

Motherhood is meeting the dark side of yourself, of knowing what your spirit desires when you haven’t slept or eaten. It’s holding a fragile baby over your shoulder while their cries bore deep into the prison that houses your inner demons, and meeting with horror the solutions your mind brings up to make the noise go away. Motherhood is telling yourself that you can only stand 15 more minutes and then you will abandon your baby while you roam the 3 am streets like a werewolf, and then somehow finding the inner fortitude to stay for an hour more, only to find yourself sleeping upright in a rocking chair when the respite comes. It’s being a well of strength tapped to the last inch, yet when two is required, finding it. And knowing  that all of that strength was inside of you all along, because your baby isn’t even capable yet of smiling to reassure you. Motherhood is becoming intimately acquainted with yourself and discovering that the carat weight of your soul is much higher than you had anticipated.

Motherhood is seeing the world with new eyes, greeting with gratitude a multitude of minuscule miracles you had never noticed before. Being forced to acknowledge the fascinating physics of an ant crawling up a wall, or the mysterious and earth-shattering skill that it is to be able to read.

But motherhood is not everything I will ever need. Motherhood gives and motherhood takes away, and my heart still looks forward to the experience of  those 100 greatest books and winter river swims. Motherhood however, unique in all that I have studied or done, accomplished or endured, has given me a spectrum in which I will experience them.

My heart and mind are vast. Motherhood isn’t the masterpiece of my life. It is the Smithsonian. There is room for many canvases.

For the record, I asked my husband if there was anything I should add about what being a parent means to a man. His response: "No. That was beautiful."

-Stephanie

Lexicography 101

Hey Steph,
  Welcome to Lexicography 101--the practice of defining words! I feel like I live a good portion of my life within the 8 point font of dictionary definitions. My master's thesis requires a lot of time in the hallowed pages of Webster's magnum opus. For the most part, this is one of the most boring things you could do with your time, but there are a few instances that get me excited in the glimmer of our language. These glimmers are the focus of this lexicography lesson today.

But first a sweet, Sherlockian story about dictionaries--and it's true! In April 1898, the Merriam-Webster offices received a telegram from Bridgetown, Barbados. The telegram read:

page 1543 third column count down 22 page 1377 third column count four Barbados page 1501 third column count four page 911 column three count 12 page 637 count 31 third column page 982 count 17 first column page 761 first column count 15

This cryptic message meant nothing to the desk-dwelling editors, but they pulled down the newest dictionary (1890) but found no meaningful message. They repeated the process in the 1884 and the 1879 edition. No success. And then they dragged out the 1864 whopper of a dictionary. Success! Herein lies your first homework assignment: click this link and use the 1864 dictionary to figure out the answer yourself. Your only hint is that Barbados was battling with Spain at the time. Go ahead and check it out, and leave your answers in the comment box below.

Within the dictionary are a lot of boring words like the and apple. But there's a lot of really interesting words that wow you with their odd spellings or interesting meanings. Here's ten to get you started in the fascinating world of lexicography, taken straight out of the 1864 Merriam-Webster dictionary.


buck: v. (Mining.) to break up or pulverize, as orcs

Yes, m'Lord. Who knew that 80 years before Lord of the Rings and 130 years before Warcraft there were orcs pulverizing in mines! Source

calipee: n. that part of the turtle that belongs to the lower shell, containing a gelatinous substance of a light yellowish color

So apparently, calipee is a delicacy made from the fleshy inside of the turtle. I figure you'd just want a picture of a sea turtle. Source

dulciloquy: n. a soft manner of speaking

Can you imagine if Hamlet simultaneously delivered a soliloquy and a dulciloquy? That would be intense. Source. 

dzyggetai: n. the Equus hemionus, a small Tartarian horse, of the size between the horse and the ass

Since I don't know what Tartarian means (ok, I looked it up: Tartar is a region southwest of Russia), here's a picture. Source.

gyve: n. A shackle, especially one to confine the legs; a fetter
         v. to fetter; to shackle; to chain

This one made me happy because it is an example of my thesis research: verbs that were originally nouns. Source

hallage: n. toll paid for goods sold in a hall

Apparently, this is a term for an Old English law. I feel like it has to do something with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Source

mett: v. to think during sleep; to dream [Obsolete]

This word shouldn't be obsolete. Too much to think about while asleep. Source

pyxidium: n. a pod which divides circularly into an upper and lower half, of which the former acts as a king of lid, as the pimpernel

Pimpernel! Ok, so I'm not sure how the Scarlet Pimpernel flower has anything to do with this, but that's what the definition says, and dictionaries never lie. Source

stee: n. a ladder [Obsolete]

Also a good name for a member of a boy band. Source

virose: adj. having a nauseous odor; poisonous

Finally, some love for the adjectives out there. I'm thinking there's a connection between virose and virus. What do you think? Source

Bonus: gaol: n. a place of confinement or safe keeping of persons legally committed to it for crime, or of persons committed for trial or for failure to recognize in criminal cases, or for contempt of court, and of others in the legal custody of the sheriff or other officer of the law; a prison.
[That's right, kids. Next time your bored of using the word jail just switch it out for the alternate spelling of gaol.]


Don't forget to turn your homework assignment.

Cheers,

Amanda

Bravery: Irena Sendler

Hey Amanda,

I am honored to introduce you to Irene Sendler. 

Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw during WWII. She joined the Polish Council to Aid the Jews, an underground resistance group, and led their children’s division. She volunteered as a nurse in the Warsaw ghetto and smuggled infants to safety, sedating them and packing them in crates. She trained a dog to bark when a baby cried so that he could ride in the back of her truck and protect the babies from discovery if the children awoke. She arranged for Catholic boarding schools to shelter children, and when she could she would find hiding places for their mothers. She forged documents to give the children new identities, carefully archiving their real names for return back to Jewish families after the war. 

She risked her life every time she entered the ghetto. She personally carried 400 infants to safety and saved some 2,100 other Jews through her work.

Eventually Sendler was reported. The Gestupo tortured her to find the locations of the hidden Jews, breaking the bones in her feet, but she never gave in. On the way to execution her friends bribed the guards, taking her to safety.

When asked about her wartime service, Sendler said “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth and not a title to glory.” She died in May 2008.

Bravery: n. an act of endurance, of following the moral dictates of your conscience. An act of doing what no one would blame you for not doing. see also Sendler, Irena

For the memory of Irena Sendler, and the kind of person we all hope we would be under similar circumstances, please share her story-- here are some links.

-Stephanie

My Voice

Hey Steph,
I'd like to introduce you to a girl names Malala Yousafzai. Maybe you know of her, but in case you haven't, here's a little bit about why you should. Malala was born in Pakistan, where during her youth, the Taliban took over her town and banned girls from going to school. Following after her father, Malala spoke up against this injustice. She was only 11 years old when she began to speak out. In 2008, she started writing a diary for BBC under a pseudonym. She spoke on radio stations in Pakistan decrying the Taliban ban on girls' education. By the summer of 2012, Malala had gained notoriety in Pakistan and abroad, and the Taliban began to fear her influence. Just over a year ago, on October 9, 2012, Malala was shot through the head, neck, and shoulder by a member of the Taliban. But Malala survived.

Picture Link. 

        And her voice hasn't gone quiet. On July 12--her 16th birthday--she spoke to the United Nations about education for all children. You can watch her speech here. (It's well worth your time.) Just last week, she appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where again she spoke with eloquence on why she did what she did:

"Why should I wait for someone else? Why should I be looking to the government, to the army, that they would help us? Why don't I raise my voice? Why don't we speak up for our rights? The girls of Swat [Malala's home region], they spoke up for their rights. I started writing the diary. I spoke on every media platform that I could, and I raised my voice on every platform that I could."

This young girl has every reason to not speak up anymore. She has every reason to not share her opinion. But she continues to proclaim the power of voice--of using it and not being afraid to stand.
           In this world of political correctness and respect for others opinions, I sometimes fill imprisoned. I am constantly aware of what everyone else is thinking, constantly aware of how I'll be interpreted and judged by the things that I say, constantly aware of how I might not be able to fully express acknowledgment of the wide variety of logical viewpoints of an issue and show respect toward them. I'm so worried of offending that sometimes I don't speak at all. I don't want to come off as rude. I don't want to come off as ignorant. I don't want to come off as non-empathetic. And so I'm left not saying anything.
          As I heard Malala speak a year after she'd been shot, proclaiming with eloquence, clarity, and wisdom in a language that was not her first, I thought, "She got shot at for her opinion, but she still keeps speaking. Can I not speak and be unafraid of far-less-terrifying consequences?"
          And even with that emboldening question pulsing through my brain, quickening my courage, and forming words in my mouth (or key taps in my fingers, as the case may be), I'm still nervous to speak. It is only when I consider a topic that I'm extremely passionate about, that the words seem to loosen in my mouth and fingers. As you know well, Stephanie, I feel deeply the importance of empowered women. My mind is often caught away with wanting women to see themselves as more, as powerful, as movers in their own lives. And if I'm going to work for empowered women, I need to be an empowered women myself. So these words must flow. They must be spoken. My voice must be heard. And if I can't find the courage to do it for my own empowerment, I can find power in doing it as an example to empower others.
          If only to help me overcome all the mental hurdles of being misinterpreted and misjudged in my expressions, I'd like to share a few foundational elements of all my future writing that may not be explicitly expressed in every post.

1) I write out of love. I try my hardest to view others around me with love first. If anything I write comes off as offensive, it is not intentional.
2) I write out of respect. I know that one person cannot agree with all the different views out there in the world, but I do respect others's rights to their viewpoints. If I write firmly, it is not because I believe other opinions are invalid or worse than mine.
3) I write seeking understanding. I do not know all, and I do not know much. I write from where I am in my life and that means I'm ignorant of a lot of different ways of seeing things. I welcome discussion that augments my current understanding.

          Phew, I feel a bit more able to write and speak now, to cast aside the laryngitis of fear that has imprisoned my voice. I've taken my voice back from the sea witch, and I'm ready to use it.

Cheers,

Amanda