365 Words Beginning with P

prolific: adj. producing abundant works, results, or offspring

prolix: adj. wordy and tedious

Since I began this blog April 6 of this year, I have created 81 posts. Whether I’ve been prolific or prolix is up to you to decide. I’m having fun and (almost) don’t care what you think.

My purpose in having a blog was/is to practice, practice, practice the art of writing. For years I’d been saying that writing was a priority, but I wasn’t doing it, so mission accomplishing.

Am I saner as a result of such prolific posting? Probably not. But evidently some people are.

Last week Newsweek reported that some mental health experts believe that the confessional blog has therapeutic power, and are incorporating it into their treatment plans.

They say that blogs are a step up from plain old diaries, chiefly because of the built-in audience. We feel someone is listening. Someone who sympathizes. Because of the anonymity, “It’s high intimacy with low vulnerability.”

This blog is definitely a step up from diarying for me. My diary is where I whine or process material not fit for human consumption. In fact, the other day as part of my paring down process I opened a box of old journals and came darned close to tossing out the lot of them. Such drivel.

Why do you blog?

Pellucid: admitting the maximum amount of light; transparent, translucent

It’s been HOT and sunny here for several days. The sun has been rare in the Pacific Northwest in recent months, so I hadn’t noticed how filthy my windows were.

I was blind, but now I see. Sort of. Pellucid they ain’t.

Feng shui doesn’t like dirty windows.

“Somebody has GOT to wash those windows,” I said to my staff, standing very close by.

“Yes, boss,” I replied, saluting smartly. “As soon as you pay me for fifty years of back wages.”

Potent: possessing strength or power

Poppycock: senseless talk (from Dutch pappekak, meaning soft dung, if you know what I mean)

Last week I was clearing out a drawer and came upon a small compact mirror for which I had no use. I was about to give it the heave-ho when I remembered that it could be used for a feng shui cure.

Here’s the feng shui cure: when you have negative energy coming at your home from outside (like from a problem neighbor, noisy traffic, etc), you tape a small mirror on the wall with the shiny side facing towards that negative energy with the intent of warding it off by reflecting it back out.

My next door neighbors to the south are perfectly nice people, but they are renting the house and the owners live up in Seattle. Neither the renters nor the owners seem to give a rip about the condition of the house or yard. For ten years the place has become increasingly unkempt.

I haven’t been in the house, but the shades are all wonky and the garage is stuffed to the rafters with cardboard boxes and garbage bags full of who knows what. That’s their problem.

My problem is that their yard is completely overgrown with noxious weeds – blackberry, dandelions, ivy and a big thicket of Canada thistle. All of them are getting into my yard. The thistle is the worst because it spreads underground as well as by wind-born seed – and it’s nearly impossible to kill.

Which brings me to yesterday.

I was sitting at my desk, with a view of the street, when suddenly I hear a fire engine rumbling up the hill, siren wailing. It stops at the end of my driveway. Then another one arrives. And three more! Within a couple of minutes the joint is jumping – I counted 23 firemen in full regalia at one point – some clambering over this neighbor’s house, some hauling hose, some standing around pointing or talking on a cell phone.

My neighbor was up on the roof with a puny garden hose, trying to douse the flames. It turns out he had been burning cardboard in the fireplace (WTF?? especially since we have curbside recycling). The chimney is uncapped and the roof is (old, dry) wood shake. A formula for disaster.

With 23 young bucks on the case (why are firemen always so cute? Is that a job requirement?), the fire was put out before it destroyed more than the attic and part of the roof. No one was hurt and no important belongings were lost.

I certainly meant no harm - I just want the owners to sell the property to someone who will care for it. They’re coming down from Seattle to assess the damage this weekend. Here’s hoping they decide it’s time to let it go…

Provincial: from the provinces; having local or restricted interests or outlook

Parochial: confined or restricted as if within the borders of a parish; limited in range or scope

I live in Vancouver, Washington – a city of 170,000 just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. (No, we are not in British Columbia.).

Many people in Clark County work in Portland, and vice versa. Many of us also like the cultural and shopping opportunities in Portland.

Our two communities are linked by two interstate highways that cross the river . I-5 is the main west coast interstate thoroughfare – running from the Canadian border to the Mexican one. I-205 is a 40ish-mile by-pass a few miles east of I-5. Both highways cross the big river on bridges.

The I-5 bridge is old, narrow, and not earthquake safe. And with the rapid growth in the region, traffic on the bridge at peak hours slows to a crawl, and the crawl times get longer every year. It is also a draw bridge: because of its low profile any tall boat traveling up or down river means the bridge is raised and traffic stops completely for about ten minutes.

For all these reasons a bi-state task force has been studying solutions to this problem for years. They call themselves the Columbia River Crossing. At this point they’re about to release their recommendation and are taking public testimony.

Last night there was a hearing in Vancouver and all the anti-Portland, anti-tax, anti-light railers were out in force. They fear that our taxes will sky-rocket, that all the Portland riff-raff will ride the rails to Vancouver in order to rape our girls and steal our cars, and they think that light rail is a socialist plot. “We don’t need no stinkin’ Portland…”

The challenge is getting the pro-light railers out. So tonight I went to the second hearing to testify – this one in Portland. Not surprisingly most of the speakers were in favor of the project and of light rail.

I love my town, but sometimes I just want to shake my neighbors. With gas prices going through the roof, oil only getting scarcer, air getting more foul, and federal money available for this project now it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Having lived in the Bay Area before and after BART was built, I know how fabulous light rail is. But these folks haven’t left the provinces to experience it for themselves.

Sigh.

Proliferation: to grow by rapid production of new parts, cells, buds, or offspring; to reproduce freely.

Proliferation was on my mind today as I forced myself to face my garden, where the weeds have been having their annual spring fling. The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the healthiest weeds I’ve ever seen. Dandelions are unusually vigorous this year – I’ve seen plants a foot tall, with a dozen huge cheery blooms from one deep root. Those spots of golden sunshine will soon be hundreds of tiny airborne seeds. Prevention by early digging is the key. I’m late.

Back inside, I discovered proliferation in the virtual realm:
I Googled myself.

Talk about reproducing freely!

The last time I looked myself up was maybe two years ago. Since then the search engine has found me in corners so dusty I’ve long forgotten them.

My current name, which I’ve had since 1982, has eight pages of listings. Of course some of those are for other people with the same name, and many of them are repeat versions of one or another thing I did or wrote or said in relatively public venues, but a surprising number are from sources that I had no idea would find their way to a Google search: a mass email address update from an acquaintance in 2001; comments I’ve made on someone else’s blog; contributions I made to political campaigns; annual reports from agencies where I’ve served on the board or some such.

So then I Googled my maiden name, a name I left behind in 1967. There were even a couple of entries there.

And I’m just a regular gal with a variety of interests. It’s troubling to discover how many threads of my life are out there for the world to follow (if they were so inclined). A private eye would find me in about two minutes.

How does one get rid of unwanted Google listings??? Or keep out of Google’s eye in the first place?

It must be possible, because recently I hit several brick walls when trying to track down a couple of high school classmates to invite them to a reunion. They were both fairly well-known in their fields; both men (so they didn’t lose their last names to marriage). One had a name that was so common as to be impossible to figure out which, if any, was the right one. The other simply wasn’t to be found.

I hate to stop doing anything public just because it adds to my already dubious dossier – what to do?

Pernicious, adj: causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful.

Pervasive, adj: having the tendency to spread throughout or permeate

Rupert Murdoch, the ambitious and avaricious Aussie is at it again, and I’m scared. If one filthy rich conservative can buy whatever media he wants, pretty soon it will be even more challenging to get the truth out than it already is.

This is where he started, from a NYTimes quickie bio:

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and controlling shareholder of the News Corp., is perhaps the preeminent global media magnate in an era of global media empires. After building a chain of newspaper and magazine properties in Australia in the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Murdoch expanded first to the United Kingdom and then the United States, where The New York Post has been the embodiment of his hard-charging tabloid style and his conservative views.

Worldwide, News Corps. is worth $60 BILLION. Here are just SOME of his U.S. holdings (Australia, UK, et al, NOT included):

• The New York Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Weekly Standard
• Fox cable stations (about a dozen)
• Fox movie companies (about a dozen)
• The National Geographic Channel
• HarperCollins Books
• MySpace

With the Post and the WSJ he already owns two conservative newspapers in the New York market. Now, he’s got a preliminary deal going to buy Newsday, which would be his third NY paper. Ultimately his aim is to take on (take down?) the New York Times.

Will the FCC allow this takeover of so many papers in one market??? One would hope not, but George Bush’s FCC has done worse.

Oh – and he’s also hot on the tail of Yahoo…

Pope Benedict made his first visit to America last week (New York and Washington, anyway). He’s been viewed as a very conservative pontiff, who would roll back the clock on a lot of recent papal edicts if he had his way. He even wears a tall two-pointed hat (miter) that is a throwback to earlier papal garb which supposedly sends a signal to his more fundamentalist Catholic followers that he’s one of them.

I’m not a Catholic, and don’t give a poop for the pope, but this visit offered a convincing example of the power of being with one’s accusers face-to-face, listening and apologizing. American Catholics have been pretty steamed up (to put it mildly!) about the pedophile priests who were allowed to continue in their parishes while their higher-ups pretended it wasn’t happening. It has cost the church dearly both in dollars and membership.

Benedict’s advisors had told him to steer clear of the topic, but instead he waded right in, saying repeatedly how ashamed he was, and he met with a group of men who had been molested to hear their stories. To hear the men tell it, it meant everything to them to be able to go to the top guy and really be heard. And in hearing, the pope said he felt moved to do something about it… of course, we’ll see.

When will America learn that the way to defuse volatile situations is to come together as real people and listen to each other? Works better than bombs. Hello… Mr. Bush???

On a much lighter note, Garrison Keillor did a funny skit on his show yesterday about taking the pope (disguised as a schlumpy New York baseball fan) for a sightseeing stroll around a neighborhood in New York. [Link to follow, once it's up on the Prairie Home Companion website.] The “pope” got into a whole alliterative P-word riff about going up to Boston for a gig with the Boston Pops, “Pope at the Pops with Puppets and Popcorn….”

Believe it - I’m onto something with P-words. You saw it here first!

If P is my favorite letter, periwinkle is my favorite color. It’s the color I painted my kitchen, the color I look best in, and the color that is popping everywhere in my yard right now. You could say it was a profusion of periwinkle.

Periwinkle is a desaturated color in the blue/indigo/violet family. The name is derived from the lesser periwinkle or myrtle (Vinca minor) which bears flowers of the same color. (Don’t ask me how a flowering ground cover got named after a brown sea snail…). This enthusiastic ground cover has escaped my neighbor’s yard and is now ensconced in mine. It’s pretty in bloom, but in my area it’s considered a noxious weed - a good plant gone wild.

I prefer the grape hyacinth (muscari), hundreds of which march across my front yard like tiny upside-down grape clusters (and smelling like grapes if you have the nose for them - some can’t detect any fragrance). OK the photo seems overly blue for periwinkle, but periwinkle it is.

More subtle, but no less thrilling, is the swath of anemone blanda (windflower) on my front hillside. They close up when the sun hides, but twinkle like blue stars in the Milky Way when it’s bright out. I especially love the way they cluster around my tulips.

After a day like yesterday, spent indoors trying to restrain myself from dropkicking my computer out the window, it’s good to spend time with these ephemeral things of beauty.

The Clinton and McCain camps like to say that Obama is young and lacks experience. Musician Tom Rush has some thoughts on that:

There’s a story I like about how Henry Ford wanted his engineers to come up with a certain carburetor design. They worked and worked, and reported that it couldn’t be done. So he took the job to two guys from the mail room, with no engineering training whatsoever, and they worked and worked, and did it.

They talk a lot about Obama’s lack of experience, but I’m thinking that, to the extent that it’s true, it might be a good thing. It seems evident that all of our current problems were carefully (or carelessly) crafted by people with lots and lots of experience. Tons of knowledge about The Way Things Should Be Done have led us into all kinds of very bad situations. Maybe we need someone who doesn’t know how it’s done, or that it can’t be done, to have a try at straightening things out.

Others say that a president must have had prior executive experience. Well, maybe, but if the current occupant is our standard, maybe not. It is important to note that it takes a skillful executive to run a grueling and costly presidential campaign, which involves policy, media, money, and a volunteer army, plus a good measure of damage control skill. For all her brains and experience, Clinton has managed her campaign very poorly and they’ve got serious financial problems. McCain barely has his act together.

Quite apart from his skills as an orator, Obama has run an extremely well-organized and executed campaign. He’s got foot soldiers on the ground all over the country, he’s raised beaucoups de bucks, and when the Rev. Wright issue exploded he faced it with grace and power.

Presidential qualifications? Vote Obama.