It’s tough to write a Thanksgiving column when the nation’s
economy is going so badly and so many of my fellow citizens are
hurting.
It’s tough to write a Thanksgiving column when the nation’s economy is going so badly and so many of my fellow citizens are hurting. The problem for me is that I don’t have the outlook of the politicians, they make their bones by being overly optimistic. I like to believe that I’m a realist, which also makes me a pessimist. I’m a firm believer in Murphy’s Law – anything than can go wrong will go wrong and at the worst possible time.
Therefore, as soon things start looking up, I start preparing for the worst. Nevertheless, there are always some things to be thankful for that we otherwise overlook and this is the week to address them.
First, we should be thankful for the underappreciated asterisk, the typographical symbol that looks like a little star. In fact Wikipedia says that the word comes from the Latin and Greek roots meaning “little star.” One way to remember how to spell it is to think of it as two words “aste” and “risk”.
I don’t know any meaning for the first part, but risk means, “exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance.” That’s the job of the asterisk, to deliver the bad news. When you hunt it down in the fine print, whatever follows is what you really need to know about that medication you’re taking or the credit card you’re using or the warranty you think you have. Sometimes there is so much risk they have to use two or three asterisks together. If it were not for the lowly asterisk, they would have to print all that bad news full size and we’d use a lot more paper or electrons and both of those are bad for the environment.
The second thing to be thankful for is that baseballs are white. Major League Baseball will do anything to make a buck, if they were allowed to make baseballs orange so you could see them in the snow like winter golf balls, then the baseball season would be so long they’d be playing the World Series in December and January. The way it is now, the “boys of summer” only play until the end of October or beginning of November. That’s a lot of additional sales for the makers of long underwear with team logos but they would not mind some more if they could get it.
We should be thankful that the English language has homophones, words that are pronounced the same as other words but have different meanings. Without homophones, half the editors and two-thirds of the English teachers in the world would be out of a job. I know the difference between their, there and they’re; between to, too and two; and between your and you’re, among others, but I often write the wrong word anyway. No, I’m not testing the editor or the reader, just being careless. However, my errors keep the editor busy and therefore homophones boost employment. These days we need all the employment we can get.
Most of all we should be thankful that major elections do not come around more often – they just lead to disappointment anyway. If I have to explain that, you don’t watch TV, own a phone or have mail delivered to the house – I envy you.
Happy Thanksgiving – Marty and Joyce Richman.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
