WordWacky

I have often spoken about the gap between my taste as a reader and my ability as a writer. When you’re starting out in the arts (or, in my case, when you’ve been starting out for 20 years), you know good stuff when you read it, but there’s a painful lack of ability to reach that bar when you sit down to create. It can be career-killing, that gap.

Here’s Ira Glass, undeniably successful in his writing and his work, speaking about the gap and how to overcome it: [via Centrum]

Now whatever your creative pursuit, set some goals and get through it. I will be doing so, myself.

The word poverty originates comes from the Latin, paupertatem, via Old French, poverte. It is first recorded in Old English around 1225, as mentioned in a book published in 1868, Old English Homilies.

We use the word poverty, and its cousin, poor, casually, meaning broke, perhaps, or cash deficient. Yet we know true poverty when we see it, don’t we? In people who are homeless. Or people who debate between heating their houses in the winter and eating.

Growing up, I thought we were poor, my single mother and I, but she worked steadily, at the same job throughout my childhood, a good job by many standards — a job with the City that had good benefits. I didn’t have the same clothes or sneakers as some of my classmates, or a piano, and my mother slept in the living room of our one bedroom apartment in the Bronx. But in reality, by the definitions set out for us by the U.S. Government, we were not “poor.”

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines for 2008, a family of two, like ours, would have to be making less than $14,000 a year in the contiguous U.S. to be below the poverty line. We lived in New York City. It is unfathomable to me to think someone could live on that amount of money and still eat, get clothing, and use transportation to and from a job on that income in New York.

Apparently it is also unfathomable to the human services providers, too, because you qualify for food stamps at 130% of the federal poverty limit, for WIC at 185%, and often for Medicaid (depends on the state) at 200%. According to Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty, “Research suggests that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to meet their most basic needs.”  So if the guideline doesn’t even determine what we consider poor, why set it at falsely low levels? Seems to me there can only be one reason: to deny people benefits. (But I’m a cynic. If you can think of another, please speak up.)

I’m taking three steps against poverty, starting today. I urge you to find three things you can do to stop poverty, however you or the government defines it. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Donate. I’m going to take Brian from Copyblogger up on his generous offer to match 250% of my $10 donation to Save the Children! Unheard of, really, people. You should donate ten bucks, too.
2. Educate myself. In addition to the research I did for this post, I’m going to read a book that’s been on my to-read list for too long: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
3. Vote. You heard it here first. And I’m not a non-profit, so I can say vote for That One, please. If you don’t, please don’t tell me about it.

Last week the New York Times did an article about Palin calling McCain a maverick at the VP debates.

This word, maverick, derives from a surname — a surname that survives to this day.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

The rest of the article goes on to detail some terrific activities of this lefty family, including serving in the Roosevelt administration, defending draft resisters and atheists, attacking the Iraq war, and serving as a board member for the Texas ACLU.

Says Terrellita, “Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’”

There are lots of words that derive from names. Here are a few others:

Boycott - after Captain Boycott, an Irish land-agent who was shunned by neighbors — they would not speak to him, buy from him, nor sell to him — after refusing to lower rents for his tenants

Dahlia - from Anders Dahl, an 18th-century Swedish botanist who introduced the flower

Dunce - from John Duns Scotus, an unstupid philosopher whose ideas went out of fashion in the 16th century, and were from then on thought to be idiotic

Guillotine - after Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French assemblyman during the Revolution, who called for a universal method for capital punishment

Lynching - after Charles Lynch, a judge in Virginia at the time of the Revolutionary War who exacted strict punishment against English loyalists

Mausoleum - for the tomb of King Mausollos of Caria, a monument of such stature as to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Quixotic - after Don Quixote, the famous character in the Spanish novel of the 1600s

Tawdry - from St. Awdrey, who gave her name to a fair at which you could buy lacy clothing that was later deemed cheap and of poor quality

Maybe some descendants with these names also cringe when they hear their birthright misused, who knows?

One thing is abundantly clear, however: McCain is no Maverick.

When my wife and I were watching clips of Katie Couric and Sarah Palin, I commented that her responses were more like poetry than prose. They were non-linear, free association style riffs, and with her (affected?) midwestern lilt, it sounded like a spoken word performance.

Apparently I was not the only one who noticed. Slate writer Hart Seely added some line breaks to her quotes and came up with “The Poetry of Sara Palin”:

“On Reporters”

It’s funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don’t know,
You know …

Reporters.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

It reminded me of an oldie but goodie, the George W. Bush quote poem I had hanging in my cubicle for some time. It still gives me joy to read, so forgive me for reproducing it here. This one is slightly different than the Sarah Palin poetry, in that it is a multitude of quotes that are rearranged to create the poetry. But each one has been verified.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

Indeed. Let’s make the pie higher.