The 2022 Word is Creating

I made my decision yesterday. When I think about creating, I usually think about writing. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about art journals. I want to do more with my art. (I still feel odd talking about my "art.") I chose "creating" over "create" because it connotes a continuing process.

Creating also extends to all areas of life. I can create a better home, better friendships, a better life. 

That's a lot. I need to get started. 

A Word for the Year

I was intrigued by this recent newsletter in The New York Times about selecting a word to capture your values and intentions for the new year. The idea is to focus on the things most meaningful to you and the positive changes you'd like to make in your life. 

My first thought was the word "create." Then I looked at synonyms for create and came up with "acutalize." Now I wonder if that's just a fancy and/or pompous way of saying "create."

I'll sleep on it. 

Top of the List

Several weeks ago, I put myself on the Norwalk Library's waiting list for The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. 

As I waited, I re-read The Handmaid's Tale and caught up on some magazines. Last Monday, I picked up two books at the Norwalk Library book sale. I started to read one, Wait Till Next Year: Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir of growing up in Brooklyn as a Dodgers fan. At that time I was number three on the waiting list, I had only moved up one place since the previous week.

In effect, Goodwin's book was my pinch reading, until I could get The Testaments.

I love baseball terms.

Back to Winning Ways

I'm happy to update my results with the Spelling Bee puzzle in the Sunday Magazine of The New York Times. I'm back--genius two weeks in a row. Today I took the magazine with me to the gym and worked on it as I rode the stationary bike.

I look forward to this puzzle every Saturday.

The Streak is Over

I've written before about my love of Spelling Bee, a game published in The New York Times Magazine. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I usually reach genius level.

When I first look at the puzzle, I find many words that don't count because they don't include the center letter. Then I'll find several words in spurts. I'll often put down the puzzle or hours or even days before I get to genius level.

I started last week's puzzle last Saturday. I picked it up a few more times over the week. One day I suddenly saw "mantilla." This morning (my last chance to increase my score) I found "inimical." Then I looked at the answers; I can't believe I missed mammal, mammy and llama. For the record: I scored 30 if "manana" counts. I needed 34 to be a genius.

This week's puzzle is waiting for me outside our front door. Time to start a new streak.

A Post of Miscellany

First, a few clippings:

The New York Times Book Review October 8 2017 Our Back Pages:

Larry McMurtry said that "writing is a way of herding words..." I love the image.

Time Magazine, This Just In (not sure of the date)

A finding from International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health that people walking dogs because they think it makes their dogs happier, are also happier. I could have told them that. I've often written that I've enjoyed my walks with Spike and Lola. That there are only a handful of days each year where it is horrible to walk a dog. 

The New York Times Book Review November 5, 2017. I was skimming through and saw an illustration of George Washington. My first thought was that he looked just like George Tobias. I probably first saw George as the neighbor in Bewitched. But he was a Warners Brothers actor so I saw many of his films.

I returned to the gym today It had been a week-and-a-half since my last visit for no good reason.Will I be sore tomorrow?

60 Years Ago Today...

Nikita Khrushchev first uttered the phrase: "We will bury you" to western diplomats.

I remember seeing a commercial which replayed those words--it had to have been years later, but I was young enough to take it literally. I was afraid of being buried alive.

Words can hurt.

A Discouraging Word

I get two emails every day with vocabulary words: one from Dictionary.com and one from Wordsmith.org. It started because the SAT had so many vocabulary questions. Actually Wordsmith.org didn't have the best SAT words, but it was still fun anyway to get those daily messages.

Yesterday's Dictionary.com entree was logophobia--an obsessive fear of words. As someone who loves words--this is both inexplicable and frightening to me.

Today is the first day of nanowrimo and nablopomo, National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting month respectively.

I briefly considered nanowrimo, but rejected it. I've barely been writing lately--50,000 words was just too much. Can I have an obsessive fear of putting words together? I hope not; I hope it's just a dry spell.

Four of the past six years I've managed more than 30 posts in November.

This is doable; let's go.

Word Play: Spelling Bee

When I was in law school, I heard that law students were into crossword puzzles. I wasn't one of them. I'll do an occasional crossword puzzle, but don't seek them out. A former co-worker used to do The New York Times crossword each day. He'd often leave them on my desk when he needed help with the film or television questions.

I'm more of a trivia fan (guess that's why I try to get on Jeopardy) and word search games like Boggle. I'm also a big fan of (the non-word game) Yahtzee.

My new favorite game is Frank Longo's Spelling Bee in The New York Times Magazine. It took me a few tries to warm up, but I now look forward to it every Saturday. It's something that I do over a number of days. My results have been classified as genius for the past few month or so.

I've been enjoying that.

Word Choice and the Writer

Yesterday I wrote in my journal that I was riddled with mosquito bites. I wondered if that was the right word. Usually when you hear the word riddled, the context is a body riddled with bullets or cancer. In contrast, a person is covered in mosquito bites.

I wondered if pondering correct word usage made me a writer. I decided no, that made me an editor.

Silencing the editor (or the censor) is a big part of writing. Editing is crucial but it has to be at the right time--the right time is NOT during the first draft. The first draft is about getting the words down, getting into the flow. You can--and should--always go back to fix things later.

Then I started thinking about blogging and writing. I loved this line from the movie, Contagion. I remembered conversations and this post.  I have questioned whether I am "really" a writer many times. I remember how psyched I was when my friend Annette said she always refers to me as a writer regardless of how I'm making a living.

I write. OK, so I'm a writer. Maybe not your kind of writer, but I'm my kind of sporadic, half-assed writer.

By the way, "riddled" is pierced with many holes. So riddled works with mosquito bites.

Word Play

This morning I was lying in bed in that state halfway between dreaming and waking. Someone--a woman--in my dream said something about a stoic lyric. Because I was in the half-way state, I was watching or listening and thought there was something contradictory about a stoic lyric.

 Later I was thinking that a lyric could be stoic or a person could sing lyrics stoically. I liked the sound of the phrase too.

Maybe someday I'll figure out how to use it.

Medicare Miasma

OK, a slight exaggeration, but I love hyperbole as well as alliteration.

Yesterday, I discovered that my mother couldn't get a nasal spray that will help her hearing because all her medicines have to be authorized by Medicare. My attempts to order a prescription renewal were doomed to fail. One of the nurses told me she would have to take care of this.

The nurse said I would either be hugging her at the end of this or throwing tomatoes at her.

We'll just have to wait and see, but she was really pushing for the former.

Miscellaneous Musings

Business Names:

When we were visiting Jeff's parents a few weeks ago, I saw a truck for a company called Quinn-tessential Floors. I told Jeff that that person had the same sense of humor as I did; maybe it's more accurately called a sense of wordplay. After all, this blog is called Coll-ection.

Quinn-tessential definitely beats the Honey Do Man. I don't like the idea of a honey-do list. It reminds me of the stereotypical nagging wife, who's always after husband with a list of chores.

Destiny vs. Dynasty:

Apparently Jeff and I were in the minority; we watched the World Series (at least part of every game.) I love baseball and liked that the series went to seven games, but couldn't get too excited. Despite my disdain for the designated hitter, I found myself rooting for the Kansas City Royals. Game 7 was a bit of a disappointment. I've no use for dynasties unless the Mets can manage one.

Another Mets Silver Lining:

There was a lot of coverage about Jacob deGrom winning the Rookie of the Year Award. But I missed the announcement of the Gold Glove winners on November 4. Congratulations center fielder Juan Lagares.

Thursday Night Television:

Jeff and I have been watching Elementary since the beginning. We started watching The Big Bang Theory after it went into syndication.Tonight we watched the line-up between those two shows.  Well, we half -watched--while doing other things. The shows were pretty poor. Glad to know we haven't been  missing anything.

Freudian Slip?

On Tuesday I wrote in my journal about the government shutdown. But I wrote "government shitdown" instead.

Maybe I'm on to something.

Primaveral

I get two words emailed to me daily; one from dictionary.com and one from wordsmith.org.

Primaveral is today's word from dictionary.com: of the early springtime. I haven't heard the word before, but do know primavera (as in pasta.)

It's a great word for studying roots with my SAT students. But more importantly, it's a beautiful word. I have to write a poem around it.

Unfortunately, it's hard to feel springlike when I see snow on the lawns and the temperatures can't get out of the thirties.

Mining my Journals

I've started writing about home renovations here.

What do home renovations have to do with journals? Well, since we worked in every room at one point or another, we had to empty every room and look at what we would put back in every room.

I've been keeping journals for over 20 years. Some are daily musings, some are records of trips, some are related to classes, retreats or writing books, and some are miscellaneous. I would probably keep every journal if I had a large storage area. Since I don't, I occasionally read through them, saving pages that are somehow relevant or meaningful to me, and tossing the rest.

This time around, I've read through about four journals. Frankly, they're a bunch of drivel. I found nothing worth saving.

If an outside observer were to read my journals, he or she would think I was unhappy. Pages are filled with lists of things to do, things I didn't do, things I should have done. The negative pages outnumber the positive.

But I don't remember these days as unhappy.

The main reason is that many of my journals are modeled on Julia Cameron's morning pages. She often describes these as brain drains. By getting frustrations out on the page, they may not mess up the rest of your life.  

I still hope to find something---an idea, image or phrase worth saving--worth mining.

Wordplay

Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine had an article in the series, "Who Made That?" about spray tan. At the end of the article appeared the line"...the bottle tan...tends to brassier and Snookier than the real thing."

Snookier? Well as a lover of words and a SAT tutor, I love thinking and talking about words--what they mean--how they evolved.  As a Jersey Shore viewer, I know about Snooki. One of my favorite Snooki lines is,"I like being tan, bitch." That was Snooki's response to Angelina who said she was too tan in Season Two, Episode One.

Snookier. Snooki now joins an elite group whose name has evolved into a word. Time will tell if it lasts.

Words of Inspiration

44 years ago, he was silenced, yet his words live on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98k-pjN6nl0&feature=related

Here is U2:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcP4MWABGY&ob=av2e