Notes - grateful for FB help / yard work + / linguistics

IMid-morning. Carol is getting ready for her community meeting and you are debating mowing the lawn – the temperature is right and it’s sunny, but the grass is still a bit wet from dew. Later last night you were invited, for the first time, via Facebook to an Occupy Cincinnati march and demonstration later today. You also notice you forgot to upload the rest of yesterday’s posting as it was late and your ‘mind’ was transfixed on other things. Who knows, as you might say, where your brain was.

         Here is where you were. You want to visibly show support for the principles of the ‘cause’ and you think Facebook would be a good place to do it, yet you want to express this as succinctly as you can because the space is limited. But, in process, you want to display your reasoning for support. You want the reader to know where you are coming from, that your decision is not made on a whim. How about something like this.

         I fully support the nonviolent principles of Occupy Wall Street. The heart and mind must speak for social growth and common justice and against excessive pride and greed that are enveloping and stratifying the economic classes of this country into a slavery chain of hopelessness, discontent and an uncommon level of prideful arrogance. Individuals have a responsibility to develop a society for the common good of all its citizens, young and old. We cannot afford to divorce from our bottom line, from our greater sense of human dignity, from our empathy, from our compassion and from our unselfish reason.

         You edited and revised along the way. It is less than a hundred words. Perhaps too many, but you’ve made your point. – Amorella.

         Carol is still at her meeting. The grass is still too wet to mow. You published your Facebook comment. And, as the mail came, you read Time with the 1984 Steve Jobs on the black and white cover.

         I am grateful for your help on the Facebook piece. I said what I had to say and I’m glad it is out there. I feel better. The Time article is good because it shows many photographs. People have used up their words; pictures soften the man but not his personality. We are going on our annual drive along the river as planned. I don’t feel the ‘need’ to go to the Occupy Cincinnati and perhaps another time. I don’t want the physical discomfort of walking in a march, not anymore. A rally, perhaps, if I can take a folding chair. We’ll see.

         Post. Later, dude. – Amorella.

         Mid-afternoon and a stop at Kroger’s on Mason-Montgomery Road on the way home from a picnic at Point Pleasant’s neat and clean rest area with picnic tables right on the low flowing Ohio River catty-cornered across from U. S. Grant’s birthplace. The fall colors were better coming and going to the river than following along it.

         Once home you relaxed then mowed and trimmed the grass and out for a snack at McD’s at dusk. You both caught up on a couple more TV shows, Carol is watching a third and you are tired and ready for bed.

         I have some more to re-read and add from Discover but tomorrow is soon enough. What do I do with what I should have added yesterday?

         Add it to yesterday’s post and let it go, boy.

          I have checked out my writing today on OWS and Occupy Cincinnati and have a couple of comments and some on Facebook. Just one of thousands of voices who have checked in. At least I added my two cents worth, and I feel better about myself for doing so. Maybe I'll write more tonight, maybe not. I'll take my MBA upstairs in case I do. 


          The Q/A article in Discover focuses on Noam Chomsky 'The Radical Linguist'. Towards the conclusion of the Questions and Answers one or two paragraphs struck me because they suggest we have a genetic language link that sensing there is more to world about us than just our physical selves. I have felt this way as long as I can remember, and perhaps it is because of the children's stories I first heard then later read when I was young. 

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         Q. . . . The classic stories that people retell from generation to generation have a number of recurring themes. Could this repetition indicate something about innate human language?

“In one of the standard fairy tales, the handsome prince is turned into a frog by the wicked witch, and finally the beautiful princess comes around and kisses the frog, and he’s actually a prince again. Well, every child knows that the frog is actually the prince, but how do they know it? He’s a frog by every physical characteristic. What makes him the prince? It turns out there is a principle: We identify persons and animals and other living creatures by a property that’s called psychic continuity. We interpret them as having some kind of mind or a soul or something internal that persists independent of their physical properties. Scientists don’t believe that, but every child does, and every human knows how to interpret the world that way.” NC

         Q. You make it sound like the science of linguistics is just getting started.

         “There are many simple descriptive facts about language that just aren’t understood: how sentences get their meaning, how they get their sound, how other people comprehend them. Why don’t languages use linear order in computation? For example, take a simple sentence like “Can eagles that fly swim?” You understand it; everyone understands it. A child understands that it’s asking whether eagles can swim. It’s not asking whether they can fly. You can say, “Are eagles that fly swimming?” You can’t say, “Are eagles that flying swim?” Meaning, is it the case that eagles that are flying swim? There are rules that everyone knows reflexively. But why? It is still quite a mystery, and the origins of those principles are basically unknown.” NC

From: Discover, “Q/A with Noam Chomsky,” November 2011, p. 71.

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         It seems to me that we are built to make metaphysical-like connections. I don’t think they have to be people or animals or anything living. A letter of the alphabet might have a soul and so might a piece of jewelry. The phrase, “a heart of stone,” might really mean, “a stone with a heart”. At least I can interpret this phrase as I have, no matter how improbable it might be.

         It is little wonder that you think me real one minute, orndorff, and a minute later you can just as easily deduce that I am entirely your imagination. -  Amorella.

         It is not a matter of belief, and my mind is self-entertained by such reflective questioning. Besides, once in a while, perhaps I am correct. There is the humor. Never being correct, what are the odds?

         Post, and get some sleep, boy.  – Amorella.