ivman's blague

A few weeks ago when my aunt and I were talking on the phone, she told me she didn't know the first name of her maternal grandmother who had died long before my aunt was born. I looked in my family history folder, found a family tree my uncle had made when he was in school, and sent a copy of it to his sister, my aunt. It was interesting to see some of the names on that family tree. It brought back childhood memories of family reunions on my mom's side of the family with a lot of people I didn't know, but who somehow knew me.

As I looked through that folder, I found all sorts of interesting things I had forgotten about. I found a post card that my Grandpa Loach sent from Paris to my Grandma Loach who was still in Calais, France, right before he came back to the USA on a soldier ship after the end of World War I. The post card was written in English and I'm sure Grandma must have had to get help reading it. She did not come to the USA until some time later on a ship of French war brides. It was here that she began the task of learning English, and of unlearning the English Grandpa's soldier buddies had taught her! In that folder I also found the French document from my grandparents' marriage and some post cards Grandma's mother sent her after she had moved to America. Fascinating stuff, really!

Anyway, I looked in my digital files and found some great one-liners about genealogies, family trees, and family heritage that I'm posting for your amusement today.

Theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.

Many a family tree could use a good pruning.

I trace my family history so I will know whom to blame.

Can a first cousin, once removed, return?

I checked out my family tree, and just as I thought ... poison ivy!

I found three good definitions for the word genealogy:
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One of the things associated with summer is construction, both road and building. Driving on nice roads is great, but it is also a pain to have to navigate slowly (read: stop and go ... mostly stop) through road work in heavy vacation traffic. Whenever I see signs that say "End Road Work," I usually say aloud, "Amen!" Our church is considering building a house on our property this summer to provide temporary housing for missionaries on furlough. I hope to have at least a small part in that project since, for the first time, after 39 years of teaching, I don't have a summer job.

With construction in mind, I'm posting several humorous things on that topic. The first story came to me with the word blond in it. I hope my fair-haired readers will appreciate the changes I've made to the original.

Two air-headed carpenters were working on a house. The one who was nailing down siding would reach into his nail pouch, pull out a nail, and either toss it over his shoulder or nail it in.

The other, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, "Why are you throwing those nails away?"

The first explained, "If I pull a nail out of my pouch and it's pointed toward me, I throw it away 'cause it's defective. If it's pointed toward the house, then I nail it in!"

The second airhead got completely upset and yelled, "You moron! The nails pointed toward you aren't defective! They're for the other side of the house!"

Construction Site: The Crime Scene?

After a workman was killed at a construction site, the police began to question a number of the other workers. Based on their spotted histories, many of these workers were considered prime suspects. They were indeed a motley crew:
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Becka posted a picture recently of our cat Adelaide "helping" her with an organizing project.

She gets into some of the craziest places in our house, and at the advanced age of 17 she keeps coming up with new ones! This got me thinking about some pictures in my files, not only on the computer, but also in photo albums.

Here are several pictures I had in my files. I have no idea where they came from. Speaking of organizing....
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My most recent blog post was about saving words from extinction. This post is about saving words from mutilation. A reader recently sent me a picture taken at a local high school her son was attending. Fortunately her son was quick about his work because the sign was changed in a very short time, after all the sharp teachers and students also spotted the error.

What's especially funny is that the word principle was also misspelled in the Braille on that sign - they accurately misspelled principle, but the Braille introduces a new misspelling of the word assistant. Here's what the Braille should look like, with only principle misspelled:

I don't read Braille, but I can tell that their rendering of assistant does not match the correct Braille spelling of assistant. Any Braille readers want to comment?

That e-mail reminded me of other pictures of signs with misspellings in or near schools.

This next one is a classic.
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Several TV commercials have recently reminded me of my ongoing mourning of the loss of some words from my native tongue. I decided to do a blog post about it. Each time a dictionary goes into a new version, in order to make room for new words that have been coined, the editors must consider dropping words that are seldom used by the public at large. The following are the kinds of words they look at:

vectarious = belonging to a wagon or carriage

jussulent = full of broth or soup

caliginosity = dimness

jollux = fat person

griseous = somewhat gray (Hey, I can now claim that word as my own!)

As I prepared for this post, I was surprised to learn about a website that's been set up to rescue words that may be dropped from dictionaries. The site is called Save the Words. On this site I learned that 90% of what people say is communicated with a total of only 7,000 vocabulary words. Below is a screenshot from that site:
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