Weather is like my dog

We had a ferocious storm with 70 mile an hour winds, more than 20 inches of snow, and huge snow drifts relentlessly covering the streets, driveways, sidewalks, as soon as we cleared them. The skies were gray and nasty looking and snow was everywhere. Then the day ended, and Thursday greeted us. It was bright, sunny, with glossy white snow. It was calm and clear out and the sun seemed to be smiling at us. 180 degree turnaround.

It reminded me of something.

Then I remembered...just like my dog. She can be so bad, climbing up on the counter, eating everything, and then slinking down to the mudroom, with her tail between her legs. Soon, she brightens up and tries to get me to like her again. She jumps up on me, wagging her tail, as if to say, " I am sorry. Do you still love me?"

Just like the sun!

Life is rather circular

"Back in the day," as my dad would say, we had more extended families. Grandparents lived with their children and grandchildren. Aunts and Uncles took care of nieces and nephews on a regular basis. Indeed, my grandfather and grandmother lived with us (in a separate part of the house) as we grew up, and my other grandparents were right down the road.

Then I grew up as a baby boomer, and all we heard from the media was how life has changed. Kids move out at 18 never to return. "We have a mobile society," the media worried, "and kids aren't connected to their families!" Psychologists predicted an isolated generation with lack of nurturing, and who knows what that might bring. More violence. Suicides. Divorces. A "me generation" attitude (indeed, baby boomers are often described that way). End of the world?!

Well, folks. What has happened? Now we have complaints of parents who hover too much...the "helicopter generation." Kids are coming back home after graduating from college. We are nurturing our kids too much. They're not gaining the independence they need to get through life. And...as far as "connections," we have way too many. Between Blogs and texts and Facebook, etc., we communicate too much! We baby boomers have, once again, created chaos.

You know what? The "authorities" (and that includes the media, as well as the psychologists, sociologists, and other "scholars") don't know what they're talking about. They just enjoy predicting doom and gloom. I have never agreed with all that generational balderdash. People are individuals...and generations are too. There are many baby boomers who are just like Generation X or Y or Z. And vice versa. We are all different, and that's good!

Changes

I've been spouting off a bit on my Facebook, not necessarily about words (though sometimes), and certainly not about "epicaricacy." But I decided: 1) Facebook isn't for spouting off. First of all, there's no real place to do it. The whole wall scenario just isn't right, and there's not enough space anyway. I got cut off the other day! 2) I have too many family members there. For example, I wrote about the Bears game, and bam! both my sisters aren't speaking to me now. Heck, one of them posted, "You suck!" on my wall. I couldn't believe it, and, honestly, I don't think she was kidding. I just don't like the Packers. Does that mean I suck?

So...I am going to keep this Blog, but expand it. I've been trying to keep it about "epicaricacy," but let's get real. There's hardly enough about common words to keep a Blog current, much less that one! I am, therefore, going to write about other things here, too. Anything that comes to mind. If I want to complain about the Packers, I will. If I hear a funny joke, I'll write about it. It's a little tougher to keep it about words and language because I also have Wordcraft, but a little redundancy isn't bad, is it? Besides, it might bring some of you wanderers back to Wordcraft.

And, my saving grace here is that nobody reads my Blog so I can rant away without pissing people off!

Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

This article highlights what is wrong when researchers overplay their results, or, worse yet, when politicians or the media get hold of results and start pontificating. Reports of associations or relationships (correlations) are not reports of cause. But often they are reported as such. In this article, for example, the association between poverty and not being married was interpreted as: If we can get these people to marry, they will no longer be in poverty. There was a relationship, that is all. We can go on all day and try to explain it, but that would only be subjective surmising. We'd have to conduct further research to see what is going on.

I like the author's explanation: "People tend not to marry if they are financially unstable. They tend to break up due to poor relationship skills. Work on both these factors, and we might just see our poverty rate move in the right direction." But we'd have to research it.

This is really weird...

While I know that I am, by far, not the least Internet savvy person around (some I work with can hardly email, much less use a Wiki or post on a forum), I am not an Internet guru...or geek. Therefore, it is posts like this (which came up on my Google Alerts) that perplex me: Link

Wordcraft and Epea Pteroenta are listed as well.

Very Strange.

We're getting out the word

We seem to be getting out the word about epicaricacy. They are quoting "Kalleh," and yet the links don't go anywhere. Have you ever heard of that Love to Share Blog?

Similarly, it was used in the comments section of the Huffington Post: Link.

I am thinking it should be the word of the year for 2010!

So clueless

Ah, some Web sites can be so clueless.

Interestingly, my google alerts for "epicaricacy" are becoming much less frequent these days. Is there anything we can do about this? How about a word of the year designation?!