Snollygoster

Snollygoster. This is something many people already call many politicians, but it happens to be a nicer sounding term. This refers to a politician who does or says things for their own personal advancement instead of following their own principles. Try saying this in your next political discussion and see people’s reaction.

Interestingly enough, I only chose this word because it was Monday.  I was bored and it sounded like a fun word to start the week with.  I had no idea that it would be a word that I, and everyone around me, has been sadly and uncomfortably living with for about a half dozen years now.  Every day in the news, every conversation, every event, every up and every down …. we are surrounded by snollygosters.

I don’t actually have any other thing to add to this. Except it does not just apply to politicians, it applies to anyone who acts in such a way.  Even though i was disappointed with the actual meaning of the word, i still like how the world rolls of my tongue.

It reminded me of my favorite words from Dr. Suess.  Even some of the definitions of the Seuss words match up with snollygoster.

Gluppity-Glup:

Gluppity-glup and schloppity shlop were the particular breeds of nasty pollutants ruining the town’s ponds in Lorax, but the oh-so-onomatopoeic words could definitely have a more positive spin by describing that satisfied sound your bathtub drain makes when it’s slurped up all the water or the sloshing noise your boots make in a hard rain. Oh the places we’ll all go with this word!

Word of the Day is ‘snollygoster’ (19th century, US): one who abandons all integrity in favour of power.

Jogg-Oons:

The jogg-oons of Seuss’s mind are things which “doodle around in the far desert dunes … crooning very sad tunes,” but we could totally apply this to those early morning rise-and-runners who are out and at it before we’ve even hit the second snooze.

Lerkim:

In The Lorax, this is the name of the scary beachside shack which housed the Once-ler (also a fun ‘lil werdy-derd) and has since been replicated to astonishing accuracy. Since the place actually looked like it was physically lurking over the town, it was the perfect way to describe the home. But the phrase could also easily apply to your loitering labrador who’s staring you down for every bite at dinner. Total lerkim, that one. Or maybe it’s the hovering dad who’s staring you and your date down through the window as you say goodnight. LERKIM.

Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz:

Dr. Seuss’s ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! introduced this three-Z creature of the wood at the tail-end of his vocab adventure, but we think “zizzer-zazzer-zuzz” can definitely sub in as the new “thingamajig.”

Snollygoster (noun)

snol-igg-ost-ah

An unprincipled but shrewd person.

One, especially a politician, who is guided by personal advantage rather than by consistent, respectable principles.

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

If you have been wondering what word to use to describe that good-for-nothing person — a neighbor, a colleague, or a president — you are in luck. Things are going to get colorful this week, linguistically speaking. We present you with five vivid, offbeat, American words — what you do with them is up to you.         snollygoster

ETYMOLOGY:

Of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of snallygaster, a mythical creature said to prey on poultry and children, possibly from Pennsylvania Dutch schnelle geeschter, from German schnell (quick) + Geist (spirit). Earliest documented use: 1846.

NOTES:

According to a Georgia editor, “A snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform, or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy.”

USAGE:

“Where do you find lawyers like this snollygoster?”
Malcolm Berko; Dunkin’ Donuts May Be Full of Holes; Herald Sun with Chapel Hill Herald (Durham, North Carolina); Jun 10, 2012.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (5 Feb 1900-1965)

words: zicharon; sherri; scott; oxfordeagle; richard; loriednil; reena; kathy; dale; kdd

Yoko meshi

Yoko meshi (noun) Origin: Japanese | The stress caused by speaking a foreign language.

Its hard translation is ‘boiled rice’ (meshi) and ‘horizontal (yoko) which will sort of mean as ‘a meal that’s eaten sideways’ — this metaphor actually refers to the fact that the Japanese write vertically instead of horizontally. Hence, the word yoko-meshi has a nice spin to it, doesn’t it?

An old topic for me.  I have nothing to add to this one-sided conversation except you should trust me when I say that I become super stressed when I have to speak in a foreign language professionally.  However, privately, learning bits of other languages has enhanced my life and travels to measures I cannot ever truly express.  The returns I have experienced by even knowing a few words in the language of the country I am visiting has caused laughs, misunderstandings, and deeper understandings and connections that have made my life so much better.  Connections I never would have made if I had let that yoko meshi steal my confidence and stress me out.  Push through it .. don’t give up.. make connections.

“A different language is a different vision of life.”
Federico Fellini

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.”
Frank Smith

“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”
Rita Mae Brown

“He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.”
Geoffrey Willans

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
Nelson Mandela

“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”
Charlemagne

“Change your language and you change your thoughts.”
Karl Albrecht

“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.”
Flora Lewis

“Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.”
Roger Bacon

“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club – the community of speakers of that language.”
Frank Smith

“Learn a new language and get a new soul.”
Czech Proverb

“A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.”
Gaston Bachelard

“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”
Chinese Proverb

“One should not aim at being possible to understand but at being impossible to misunderstand.”
Marcus Fabius Quintilian

“A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.”
Bob Dylan

Connections:  GSAL; Jan; Jo; OperationX; Lifestyle; Rivergirl; Nicholas; Ishita; James; Alina; Helen; Visha; Elizabeth

#notalwaysworkingfromhome

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
― John Bunyan

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reset

Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.  –Clint Eastwood

To be clear, I do not think I am old.  I also do not think I am “getting” old.  Age happens and everyone does it.  This is why I struggle with some of the things people say to me when they hear I have grandkids or when they hear how old I am.  Things like, “WOW!! You have grandkids, you do not look like you could.”  “Hey, you are 50!!! No way!!” “You do not seem to act your age.” “Incredible, I would not have thought you were older than (give any age younger than what I am)”  They say it like it’s a shame that I am so old. Or like I must be depressed about my end years.  I mean.. seriously, these days my age (51 now) is barely middle age.

Yeah.. yeah… yeah… my joints sometimes hurt, I am sometimes shocked when I think about my oldest child being 27 and my youngest being 25, and sometimes I forget that I am not the exact same age as everyone I am standing around.  However, I am not really old. Or at least I do not feel it.  I’m sure I felt the same way about the older generation when I was part of the newer generation.

My dad put it best about 20 years ago when we were sitting in a local dive.  He said to me, “Sami, you see that guy that just walked in here?  How old do you think he is?”  I looked over and nodded and said, “Well, he’s at least 21.”  Dad said, “Yeah, yeah, but how old do you think he is?”  I looked at him and the scraggly group he was with and said, “Well, he looks to be about 24-26 years old.”  Dad said, “Exactly… and that’s how old I think I am in my head!!! Then I walk by a mirror and I am absolutely shocked.  I can only think to myself, who is that old bastard staring back at me!!”

Well, I am now the age my father was then.  Even though I got it at the time, I really get it now.  I don’t give age a whole lot of thought usually.  But every once in awhile it sort of just hits me.  Lines around my face, grey hair coming in, the above mentioned joints giving out on me when I least expect it, and the amount of time I spend thinking BAAACCCCKKKKK on the follies of my youth.

About a year and a half ago, my younger sister was talking to me and indicated she was going to let her hair go natural and that I might want to join her.  I had been dying my hair since I was about 18.. just for the heck of it.  I no longer had any idea of what the actual color of my hair was but knew that over the past few years, I was starting to see some grey roots. I thought to myself, why not.  I was actually tired of dying my hair.  Further, living overseas it is often hard to find a quality product to use and it can get very expensive to go into a salon and pay someone every few weeks to dye your hair.

I’ve never been a patient person so I did the most natural thing for someone like myself and just bleached my hair white.  I really, really, really thought that it would grow out completely grey.  That is exactly what did not happen.  So for an entire year I looked..uh.. fresh.. recognizable.. kind of cool… and it WAS pretty cool for about 2 months.

Apparently I was not as old/grey as I thought I was and that unless I did something drastic, I would be bleaching my hair every 2-3 weeks for the rest of my life.  My hair was really being destroyed and the chemicals were actually doing more damage than any normal dye.  UGH.. what to do?  Well, not wanting to deal with the grow out and realizing that my hair was completely destroyed at this point anyways, I did the most natural thing for someone like myself… I had a friend shave me bald to reset this entire mad process and for the first time in over 30 years, I saw the true and natural color of my hair.

I’m not going to lie.  For the first 20 minutes it was shocking to see myself in the mirror.  After that, it was liberating.  I LOVED it.  Not always how I looked but how I felt.  I had several women say to me, “Wow.  You look amazing!!”  “At least you have a nicely shaped head.” “I could never do that, I sort of hide behind my hair.” “You will have to start wearing some bold makeup now.. or at least makeup, otherwise you will look like a boy.” Yeah, sometimes women can be harder on women then men.. but I understood the sentiment.

Well, it grew on me.  The look and yes, even my hair. It was a complete reset with my mentality, my awareness of self, and how much I had used my hair as an impetus for how I felt about myself.  Though I didn’t feel old, I guess I was sort of trying to hold back the years from the top down to the bottom.  The reset really worked.  I had not planned on a reset.  Didn’t even know I was doing it when I was doing it.  But I did it and I felt it.

Now, nearly a year later, my hair has actually grown back.  I was slightly concerned at times.  As liberating as it was, it was also a bit intimidating.  At this time, I mostly do not feel any different than I did before the bleach and the cut.  I sometimes miss having no hair.  I have not dyed my hair again and LOVE the look and feel and, to be quite honest, the cost and time saving experience of just being au natural.

I still do not feel like I am that old, despite my half century on the planet, but I accept that I am closer to a century than to zero.  I also feel the words my dad said to me nearly 20 years ago in a more profound kind of way.  Who is that ol’ lady staring back at me … and how in the hell did she become so… amazing… !!!

OK.. OK… sometimes I do end that thought with the word “old”.

I hope you enjoyed the read and the memories…

“It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old.”  ― Jules Renard

“Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It’s beautiful.”   ― Lynsay Sands

Peace out – age gracefully – live long and prosper! – lil ‘ol me and Spock

Other places to view aging gracefully

The first silver strands, As birthdays go, Beauty of aging, accepting, seniors in the garden, never too old, change, transilience, change the conversation, Let your wrinkles be your roadmap, fifty and vanity, self loathing to self love, Connected, graceful aging, change, blessings, come dance with me, reinventing ourselves

 

Smiles

A new challenge by Sally this month was to choose our own theme.  I chose smiles because that is my favorite thing to do and to see.  In every country that I have been blessed enough to visit I have found favorite smiles.  I sort of collect them.  When I feel down or angry, I can look back on some of my favorite smiles.  If you look past through my posts, you can see all of my favorite smiles so far.  Smiles from family.  Smiles from old friends.  Smiles from new friends.  I have found people who just look angry and annoyed and yet when I smile at them, they almost always smile back.  Sure there are those that do not.  But in my experience, for the most part they usually do.  I hope you enjoy my most recent collection of smiles from Egypt.

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts. Paramahansa Yogananda

 

From my last post. One of my favorite most recent smiles. My driver to the airport who got a call during the ride letting him know that his wife just had a baby boy. They had been waiting 5 years for this news.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Mother Teresa

On a visit to the Egyptian Museum, these adorable young kids visiting the museum asked if they could take their picture with me.  I in turn asked if i could take my picture with them.  I LOVE this picture and love that they wanted to take their picture with me.  How fun is this.

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. Henri Nouwen

Egypt

Egypt

A person is just a person.  A job is just a job.  We do not know why someone looks angry (Resting bitch face?  Maybe?) or sad (Really actually sad and alone?).  We will never know why unless we engage.  Maybe you will get a positive response or possibly just an angry grunt.  You will never know unless you engage.  Every single sad or angry looking face I encountered above eventually smiled.  Maybe I just wore them down, I don’t know.  But engagement brought life to the face.  To theirs and mine as well.

A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose. Tom Wilson

The tour we went on introduced me to a bunch of new smiles that still make me happy to look back on and remember.  What a great trip. Still smiling from the fun.

View other entries for this week’s challenge :

challenge-all-ears;  2016/11/28/-for-sally-ds-mobile-photo-challenge; the-tea-house-goddess; netdancer.com/2016/11/28; challengers-choice-landscape; chihulys-basket-series;  challenge-challengers-choice; 2016/11/30/the-fernery-2; challengers-choice-nature-of-flowers; zimmerbitch