Mostly about my backyard chickens. (Boring, I know), but there are a lot of us out here. Mine are only kept as pampered pets. I could eat a neighbor's chicken, but not MINE. There may be a comment on current events only if I get riled up enough. And there will always be a cartoon or a joke to cheer us. I promise to try my very best to respond to comments. Now I have to figure out how this blogger thingy works....
... around here in Coopville. Not too much to do outside, so Hubby hooked the cart to the tractor and gathered a bunch of sticks to burn.
It's surprising how much heat it throws! Should be nice when everything is covered with snow.
We'll be able to stay outside longer. Gotta get another bag of marshmallows!
Would you believe the email spell
checker did not
recognize the word murgatroyd?
Lost Words from our
childhood:
Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really! The other
day a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about driving a
Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is a Jalopy?
OMG (new phrase!) he never heard of the word jalopy!!
So they went to
the computer and pulled up a picture from the movie"The Grapes
of Wrath." Now that was a Jalopy!
She knew she was old but not that
old...
I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and
chuckle...
*WORDS AND PHRASES REMIND US OF THE WAY WE WORD*
by
Richard Lederer
About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions
that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.
These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound
like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry." A bevy of readers have asked me
to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to
oblige:
Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our
best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right.
Hubba-Hubba!
We'd cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and
smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot
rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers lane.
Heavens to Betsy!
Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!
We were in like Flynn
and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of
being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in
China!
Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last
time anything was swell?
Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys
and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and
pedal pushers.
Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't
anymore.
Like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut's
Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely
has been just a short nap, and
before we can say, I'll be a monkey's uncle! or This is a fine kettle of
fish! We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed
omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues
and our pens and our keyboards.
Poof, poof, poof go the words of our
youth, the words we've left behind. We blink, and they're gone, evanesced
from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like Mickey
Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes,
little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinders
monkey.
Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have
all those phrases gone? Long time ago: Pshaw.
Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread
box. he milkman did
it. Banned in Boston. The very idea! It's your
nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a
grasshopper.
Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino
theory.
Fail safe.Civil defense. Fiddlesticks!
You look like the
wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties.
Going like sixty. I'll see you in the
funny papers.
Don't take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd!
And awa-a-ay we
go! Oh, my stars and garters! The Katz
Pajamas.
It turns
out there are more of these lost words and
expressions
than Carter
had liver pills.
This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the
words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart's deep core. But
just as one never
steps into the same river
twice, one cannot step into the same language twice.
Even as one enters, words are swept
downstream into the past, forever
making a different river.
We
of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeling times. For a child
each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other
end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering
there are words that once did not
exist and there were words that once
strutted their hour upon the
earthly stage and now are heard no more,
except in our collective memory.
It's one of the greatest advantages of
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking to you tonight at a very serious
moment in our history. The Cabinet is convening and the leaders in
Congress are meeting with the President. The State Department and Army
and Navy officials have been with the President all afternoon. In fact,
the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time
that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the
Philippines and sinking one of our transports loaded with lumber on its
way to Hawaii.
By tomorrow morning the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action.
In the meantime, we the people are already prepared for action. For months now the
knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads
and yet it seemed impossible to believe, impossible to drop the everyday things of life
and feel that there was only one thing which was important - preparation to meet an
enemy no matter where he struck. That is all over now and there is no more uncertainty.
We know what we have to face and we know that we are ready to face it.
I should like to say just a word to the women in the country tonight. I have a boy at sea
on a destroyer, for all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific. Two of my children
are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many of you all over the country have boys in the
services who will now be called upon to go into action. You have friends and families in
what has suddenly become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety. You
cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart and yet I hope that the
certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.
We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do the ordinary things
as well as we can and when we find a way to do anything more in our communities to
help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security, we must do it. Whatever is
asked of us I am sure we can accomplish it.
We are the free and unconquerable people of
the United States of America.
To the young people of the nation, I must speak a word tonight. You are going to have a
great opportunity. There will be high moments in which your strength and
your ability will be tested. I have faith in you. I feel as though I
was standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow
citizens.
Now we will go back to the program we had arranged......
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America".
