Blessings.

That is an old-fashioned sounding word, isn’t it?

We heard—and spoke—and sang—this word a lot when I was a little girl growing up in the South.

There was the promise of the words of that old Civil-War-era hymn:

There shall be showers of blessing,
Precious reviving again;
Over the hills and the valleys,
Sound of abundance of rain.

And the plaintive request of the hymn’s refrain:

Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need;
Mercy drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.

And there was Granny Leach with her answer to every knee scrape or bump on the head or fright from a rooster chase in the chicken yard : (more…)

Living in London for two plus years was a wonderful experience for my husband, Jerele, and me. Among the many pleasures for me in particular-whose very work is words-was adding some British English to my vocabulary. There were many new uses of English that I heard in the U.K.; but two new words, in particular, became a permanent part of my personal lexicon.

One of those words was whinging. To say that someone is a whinger is to take our American English word whining to a whole new level. If a person is whining, that’s one thing. But if a person is whinging…now that moves complaining to a ludicrous level!

A second word that I added to my vocabulary while living in England was gobsmacked. The word is a combination of gob, which means mouth, and smacked and means “utterly astonished, astounded.” Gobsmacked is much stronger than just being surprised. The word is used for something that leaves you speechless or, otherwise, stops you dead in your tracks. It suggests that something is as surprising as if you had been suddenly hit in the face. When you are gobsmacked, you are completely dumbfounded, shocked.

Well, this week I was completely gobsmacked. Gobsmacked by a website. A new website called WolframAlpha. (more…)

A few days ago a close friend of mine died. John and I first met in 1967 in the office of the president of Cleveland State Community College. Each of us had come to the office that day to sign a contract to teach at this new school, the first community college established in East Tennessee. For the forty-two years since that afternoon, John and I remained close friends, never losing touch, never going very long without visiting in person, talking, writing, and/or emailing, although we ended up living more than a thousand miles apart for many decades. I’ve inventoried the friendships in my life since John died; and the forty-two years of friendship with John is the longest active friendship I have been privileged to have in my life. 

This long friendship-and now the loss of that dear friend-was on my mind one day this week when I saw an article in The New York Times about friendship. The journalist described a study done last year with thirty-four students at the University of Virginia. The students were taken to the base of a steep hill and fitted with a weighed backpack. The students were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the experiment, and some stood alone. (more…)