Category: Word Prompts

Social Fabric

by Innermost Being, posted in Word Prompts

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word fabric is the material used to make clothes or linens or other woven items. This kind of fabric is so much a part of daily life, I don’t give it much thought unless it is difficult to care for. But when combined with the word social, the word fabric becomes abstract and hard to define.

In its definition of social fabric, Business Dictionary lists a bunch of components that make up the “composite demographics” of an area – things like race, wealth, education level and regional values. This definition leaves me cold. You don’t weave a cohesive piece of anything with demographic statistics.

A company that uses Social Fabric as a name defines it in a way that makes more sense to me. It says that Social fabric is the glue that holds a society together. The glue is shared bonds that make it possible to “form a culturally rich and socially cohesive community.”

I see social fabric as people who are united by common values or purposes. The individual threads that make up the fabric can be quite different from each other. Some are quite colorful. Some are smooth, while others have a lot of texture. Some are more durable than others. But if the various threads agree on their mission and values, they can be woven into a cohesive whole.

Photo Credit – Engin Akyurt via Pixabay

via WordPress Daily Prompt: Fabric

Quietly Congregating

by Innermost Being, posted in Word Prompts

I’m not the kind of person who likes to congregate. Crowds are not my thing. If I know there will be a crowd where I’m going, I’ll wait until it is less busy.

I am not comfortable around strangers. I don’t know what to talk to them about. I don’t like it when people are loud. I don’t like it when one person dominates the conversation or when too many people talk at once. Too many people = too much stimulation.

You can’t avoid congregating when you are a member of a congregation, a group of people who gather to worship God. My church is too big for me to feel completely comfortable. So when I go to church, I stake out my space at the edge of the room where I can sit quietly and watch from a distance.

via Daily WordPress Prompt: Congregate

Assaying the Gun Culture

by Innermost Being, posted in Word Prompts

via Daily Prompt: Assay

The word assay is not part of my everyday vocabulary; it is usually used in fields related to chemistry like the pharmaceutical or metallurgy industries. To assay something is to analyze its components. On Vocabulary.com, I learned that “when you assay a situation, you look at all the elements that created the problem in order to come up with a solution.” With that definition and the recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in mind, I can think of a huge situation in need of assaying: America’s gun culture.

Gun violence is a hot button issue that has long divided this country. On one side are those who believe that the second amendment guarantees the right of all citizens to own any kind of weapon because the amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

However, the second amendment refers to a “well-regulated militia.” Those three words are very important to those of us on the other side of the issue. For the safety and security of all citizens, we believe that there should be sensible restrictions on the ownership of weapons.

I am not writing this short little essay to assay the problem of gun violence myself. I can’t claim that I know all of the elements that created the problem, as some people do. (For example, some people blame the problem on taking God out of schools. The issue is way more complex than that). Since I admittedly haven’t identified all of the elements that created the problem, I won’t pretend to have the solutions to the problem.

Having said that, I will not deny that there is a problem begging for reasoned solutions. Statistics prove otherwise:

So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

The scope of the gun violence problem is not limited to school shootings or shootings that are considered “mass shootings.” According to the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, nearly two-thirds of deaths from guns are suicides.

I will not put all the blame for the problem on the other side, though I won’t absolve them of blame either. There are reasons that people cling to their guns even if I do not understand their reasons.

I will never stop wanting a solution to the problem of gun violence.

I will never say there is nothing we can do.

I will never stop grieving the senseless loss of life.

I will never blame the problem on the mentally ill.

When you have a huge problem, you need assayers to analyze the problem from all angles. You need problem solvers. You need people who are not afraid to ask questions. You need people who are not beholden to a special interest group. You need people who will not give up until they get the answers.

Dare I hope that the young people of America will assay this problem?

 

Suspicious from A to Z

by Innermost Being, posted in Word Prompts

In response to today’s word prompt, I made a list of suspicious things from A to Z.

  1. Suspicious activity
  2. Suspicious behavior
  3. Suspicious circumstances
  4. Suspicious deaths
  5. Suspicious email
  6. Suspicious fire
  7. Suspicious glare
  8. Suspicious husband
  9. Suspicious incident
  10. Suspicious jealousy
  11. Suspicious kitten
  12. Suspicious lies
  13. Suspicious mind
  14. Suspicious numbers
  15. Suspicious observers
  16. Suspicious package
  17. Suspicious questions
  18. Suspicious reaction
  19. Suspicious sound
  20. Suspicious transaction
  21. Suspicious url address
  22. Suspicious vehicle
  23. Suspicious wife
  24. Suspicious x-ray result
  25. Suspicious You song
  26. Suspicious zodiac signs

There are a lot of suspicious things for a person to be suspicious about. But who exactly is a suspicious person? Is it the person who feels suspicious of someone or something? Or is it a person who engages in suspicious behavior? How can the same adjective apply to both?

via Daily Prompt: Suspicious

Roy G. Biv Lives On

by Innermost Being, posted in Word Prompts

I don’t know a real person with the last name Biv. You probably don’t either. But the name Roy G. Biv has occupied space in my head since I was a kid. I learned this simple mnemonic to remember the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I’ve known Roy G. Biv for so long, it is hard to remember who introduced us, but I think it was my science teacher, Mr. Rose.

I don’t remember using acronyms to help me memorize any other lists. My husband learned the mnemonic HOMES to remember the names of the great lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. When he told me the acronym, I was able to name all but one.

I asked my husband if he thought that “I before E except after C” is a mnemonic and he didn’t think so. But it is. A mnemonic does not have to be an acronym, although many of them are. It is just a technique to help you remember something. This particular mnemonic is flawed though because the English language is wierd.

A memory technique that I don’t practice but have read about is called the Method of Loci. If you need to remember a list of items to pick up at the grocery store, you could imagine each item in a room in your house. It sounds like a lot of preparation to me. But when I see a server take the orders of several people around a table without writing anything down, I think they must be using this kind of mnemonic device and I am quite impressed.

Mnemonic devices are kind of cool and I feel kind of cheated that I didn’t learn more of them. There’s still lots of useless information in my head so Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.

Memory is both fascinating and frustrating. It’s fascinating that I can remember a made-up name from the seventh grade but I won’t remember that I have an appointment unless I write it down.

via Daily Prompt: Mnemonic