Love, the love of the English language, Tim Shea to the rescue, and chorus delights
By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
Reading today’s title may trigger thoughts in two directions. The simple word “Flush” can have two interpretations and just adds to my wonderment and wondering about our English language.
And, even the use of the word “English” invites pondering. It’s the “English” language, but other than our roots back to England why is it called “English”? The following reference summary is condensed from several much more complicated explanations.
“Modern English English is derived from the “Old English Englisc”, which meant ‘pertaining to the angles’. In Old English this word was derived from Engle ‘Angles’ (the Germanic tribe who conquered the island in the 5th century). All invading Germanic tribes were referred to as Englisc.
It is assumed that the Angles got their name because their land on the coast of Jutland (now mainland Denmark) looked like a fishhook. Another source says that Proto-Germanic *anguz also had the meaning of ‘narrow’, referring to the shallow waters near the coast.”
That cleared it up like muddy water. And that brings me back to “either flushing or being flushed.” As usual there is more than one seemingly unrelated interpretation. Preface of what is to follow…Yesterday afternoon I went to the family room refrigerator to grab a beverage. As I walked, barefooted, into the cubicle where we have a secondary refrigerator and our chest freezer I was shocked to feel water soaking my feet. Our Scio town water source input into the house is housed in a small boxlike area in that cubical. I opened the enclosure door to expose the valves and plumbing that distributes to the rest of the house. Therein I discovered a very significant amount of water dripping from the fittings that preceded the pressure relief valve and the water flow meter. I closed the main valve and grabbed my phone to call Nate, our local water guru. Leaving a message on his answering device prompted a quick callback. He advised that he would be right over but that if the problem was on the water valves after the Scio Water Dept. inlet to the house, I may have to call in a commercial plumber. Within minutes Nate came to the house despite informing me that he had spent a good portion of the previous night working on another water problem in the area.
Upon inspection, the culprit from whence the water was escaping was in the fittings on our end and despite there still being some leakage still dripping it was likely just water that was draining out of the distribution lines upstairs in our main living area. Upon his suggestion that I contact a local plumber service he left, and I started calling around. I tried a couple of numbers with no success and upon calling Tim Shea Plumbing & Heating I was told they could have someone stop by first thing the next morning. They did, and he did, and within a couple of hours, even with the trip back to their shop for parts, I was all reconnected and water supply and pressure were great.
“Figuratively speaking” even as I write this, my doorbell just rang. I interrupted this writing to go answer the door. There in the driveway was a Scio Water department truck and Nate was coming to the door. He just wanted to check to make sure we had gotten the problem solved.
Many thanks to the Scio Water department and to Tim Shea’s for a problem taken care of.
I am now “flush” with relief and gratitude for the prompt and professional service provided by all involved. PS: I had told my wife yesterday that I could probably take the plumbing apart and fix it myself but her reply “No Way!” stopped me.
By definition, “Flush” or “flushed” can refer to: Color (of a person’s skin) red and hot, typically as the result of illness or strong emotion, or the emotion of a person excited or elated by something. How that all relates to the “straight flush” term in card playing of Poker is beyond me. I am now flushed with the emotion that I can again flush.
At the risk of over-using the same word, I have been flushed by emotion in a couple of ways over the past few days. June 24th was our 58th wedding anniversary. If you know or see my wife don’t tell her I mentioned that as she directed me “not to.” She is a very private person, and I am just the opposite. I guess, as in the “magnetic field” terminology, “opposites attract.”
More proof that I am a slow learner is evidenced by my not being able to recall the instructions for typing a number without an automatic “ordinal.” In the grammar world “ordinals” are such things as raising a number to a power, such as writing 4 squared (4 multiplied by itself) as 42. When I type “four and a half” numerically it puts the “1/2” in ordinals such as 41/2. You would think that after all these years and having to do a “help” search I would remember that: “Here’s how you can stop the automatic formatting by canceling superscript mode. Select File> Options. Select Proofing, and under AutoCorrect options, select AutoCorrect Options. Go to AutoFormat As You Type and clear the Ordinals (1st) with superscript to prevent the app from applying superscript formatting to numbers.” I guess my secretarial training and knowledge are deficient.
The second source of inflated emotion, albeit over a few hours ago, was the performance with the Genesee Valley Chorus (GVC) as we had been invited by event coordinator Norene Ferris to be a participant in a set of musical performances put on as part of the Bolivar Bicentennial Bash. Noreen had been the director of GVC formerly and now directs another of the performing groups named MOSAIC Women’s Chorus. I was, and anyone else would have been, amazed by the quality of the numerous groups that performed. There are too many others to identify but without exception the seeing and sharing the dedication and emotion on display Wednesday night was awe inspiring. GD (Dave) Toot was called upon to step in as a replacement director of the GVC, at the last minute and did a great job on very short notice.
As their closing song the Genesee Valley Chorus was joined by many of the former participants in the singing of the song “I Am But a Small Voice.” In the closing bars of the song, it was very much the opposite of a “small voice” as the music resonated throughout the building.
Hats off and kudos to all of the many talented people and groups that came forth to help in the celebration of Bolivar’s bicentennial observation. These things only come around every couple hundred years or so 🎶💕🎶.
With the semi-holiday Father’s Day having just recently passed by, I treated myself with a trip to Pete’s Stockworks in Bloomfield, NY. My former “varmint eliminator” has been a problem with a certain type of ammunition from “day one” of its acquisition. The ammunition used would not self-eject as the metal crimping on the end of the cartridge would swell and stick in the breech.
I would then have to use a knife to pry the empty cartridge out. If you are old enough to have watched the TV program The Rifleman, you would likely recall his lever action rifle that extracted the spent cartridge and loaded the next. I am now that guy. Beer cans and plastic bottles, my typical targets, are no longer safe.
Here’s my idea for an invention if you are so inclined to pick up on my idea and run with it. When a load of laundry has completed its drying cycle the low-level beep it may make is not loud (or piercing) enough to carry through the walls and floor to reach my ears. Washers and dryers alike should be sold with a remote “beeper senser” that you can attach to a wall, of your choosing, close enough for you to hear the “beep.” Unlike the “Beep, Beep. Beeping” I wrote about last week; this would me more help than irritating. That having been said, our oven and microwave both put out a “beeping” sound in a decibel or frequency range that I cannot hear. Same sound that my golf cart makes when I leave it in reverse prompting neighbors or my wife to notify me that I had left it in reverse. Doesn’t bother me…I can’t hear it. Same goes for the sound that a clicking turn signal indicator makes. If it wasn’t for the flashing green light in the dashboard display, I wouldn’t know my signal was still on. Hopefully I’m not the source of problems presented when a driver had previously signaled a right turn as they’re approaching an intersection, and you start to pull out in front of them “assuming” that the signaled turn was for that intersection and not the previous one. I leave you now inviting questions, comments, or concerns at IM.Wiserdad@gmail.com Here’s a repeat…
