Alternatives

Alternatives is a recurring post in which I give synonyms for an over used word. Click on the tab above for a "complete" list of over used words. 


Depending on how you use it, this list may come in handy for finding another way to say the same thing.

Today's word is:  Beautiful

You can learn about its etymology HERE.


To me, there isn't anything that can adequately take the place of BEAUTIFUL. The word itself, the way it sounds, the way it rolls off the lips is... beautiful. Certainly, pulchritudinous doesn't cut it. Anyway, we can all over-use it and to that end I offer up this list of possible synonyms. 

A1, admirable, Adonis, adorable, aesthetic, alluring, angelic, A-OK, Aphrodite, Apollo, appealing, arresting, attractive, awesome

bang-up, banner, beaming, beauteous, becoming, bewitching, blooming, blue-chip, blue-ribbon, boffo, bonny, boss, brag, brave, bright, bright-eyed, brilliant, bully, bumper, butterfly

capital, captivating, charming, chocolate-box, choice, classic/classy, comely, cool, corking, crackerjack, cracking, cunning, cute

dainty, dandy, dapper, dazlious, dazzling, decent, delicate, delightful, desirable, dish/dishy, divine, doll, dope, down, drop-dead, dynamite

elegant, enchanting, engaging, enthralling, enticing, excellent, exceptional, exquisite, eye-catching

fab, fabulous, fair/fairness, famous, fancy, fantabulous, fantastic, fascinating, fetching, fine, first-class/first-rate/first-string, fit to be seen, five-star, flamboyant, flashy, flawless,

flower-like, foxy, frontline

gangbusters, gilt-edged, glamorous, glorious, glossy, glowing, gone, good-looking goodly, gorgeous, grace/graceful, grand, great, groovy

handsome, harmonious heavenly, Helen of Troy, high-class, high-grade, high-test, hot, hunk/hunky

ideal, immaculate, immense, in full bloom, inviting

jaunty, jim-dandy, Junoesque

keen, knockout

likely, lovely, lovesome, luscious

magnetic, magnificent, marvelous, mesmeric

Narcissus, natty, neat, nice, nifty, noble, nubile, number one, numero uno

ornamental, out-of-sight

par excellence, peachy, perfect, personable, photogenic, picturesque, pleasant/pleasing,

polished, premium, prepossessing, presentable, pretty, prize-winning, pulchritudinous

quaint, quality

radiant, radical, ravishing, refined, resplendent, rich, righteous, rosy/rosy-cheeked ruddy

scenic, seductive, seemly, select, sensational, sexy, shapely, shining, show-stopping, showy, sightly, sleek, slick, smart, snazzy sparkling, splashy, splendid/splendor, spotless,

spruce, statuesque, stellar, sterling, striking, stud/studly, stunning, sublime, superb, superior, superlative, supernal, swell, symmetrical

taking, tantalizing, tasty, teasing, telegenic, tempting, terrific, the Graces, tidy, tight, tip-top, toothsome, top/topping top-flight, top-notch, top-of-the-line, top-shelf, trim

undefaced, unsoiled, unspotted, unsurpassed

Venus,

well-favored, well-formed, well-made, winning, wizard (mostly British), wonderful

yummy

zingy




And I leave you with, "White Bird," by It's a Beautiful Day, a group from the late sixties. I think they were ahead of their time. 

Frogs in the Pump

When we first moved to St. John in 1955 we lived for a time in a little house in Cruz Bay call The Shell. It was small. One bedroom, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen and an open porch-like living room. My sister, Erva, and I slept in a double bed in a kind of narrow hall/breezeway off the bedroom and kitchen.

In those days electricity was provided from St. Thomas only a few hours in the morning and a few hours at night. Yet we didn't lack for amenities. We had a gas stove, a kerosene refrigerator, and running water.

It's how we got that running water that's the subject of this post.

Like most houses, The Shell had a cistern for collecting rainwater. But how to get that water to the kitchen sink, the toilet and shower when we only had electricity a few hours a day? An electric pump wouldn't work.

On the flat concrete roof of The Shell there was a 55 gallon drum turned on its side and mounted in some kind of cradle so it wouldn't roll away. A rectangular hole had been cut into the top and piece of wire mesh had been placed over the hole to keep out leaves and critters. Attached to one end of the drum and connected to the cistern was an old fashioned (well now-a-days it'd be old fashioned) hand pump. The kind you see in old westerns at the kitchen sink.

Every morning it was Erva's and my job to fill up the drum. Using gravity feed, that 55 gallons usually lasted us all day.

We had to take turns pumping because our arms got tired. And it probably would have been a chore we hated except for one thing.

E. anitillensis

Almost every morning, with the first whoosh of water, we'd flush out a few tree frogs who had found a nice moist place to spent the night.

We call them coquis, but they aren't the true coquis of Puerto Rico which get their name from the distinct CO-QUI sound they make. The "real" name for the singing tree frogs in the Virgin Islands is E. antillensis. At a little over an inch long, several could spend the night in the pump.

Erva and I took turns being the first one to pull water up into the pump and flush out the frogs. We kept count. I'd get four one day, she'd get three the next. I'd get two, she'd get five. If I recall the most  we ever flushed out was seven.

Ever used an old fashioned hand pump? How do you feel about frogs. Personally I like 'em.


Below is a little clip of the Puerto Rican coqui singing at night. Along with all the noises of other frogs, crickets, and geckos the coqui's clear voice stands out.

Puerto Rican coqui

From Jessica Bell - THE BOOK

Today I'm helping to promote Jessica Bell's new book, THE BOOK. It sound intriguing to me. Jessica is the author of String Bridge, a novel about relationship and two collections of poetry Twisted Velvet Chains and Fabric.

Ever wondered how a five-year-old girl perceives the world? Then you definitely need to get your hands on THE BOOK, a novella by Jessica Bell.

Check out these awesome reviews:

"Jessica Bell’s surprising risks with language capture a child’s clear vision in a world of adult heartbreak. Indelible. Courageous." ~Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger's Glasses and Enchantment

"THE BOOK is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It's going to rip your blood pump out of your chest, kick it around like a football, and then shove it back inside you, leaving you with a potently reinvigorated faith in humanity. A curiously captivating read that somehow manages to encapsulate the length and breadth of love and family in one slim volume." ~Josh Donellan, author of Zeb and the Great Ruckus

Here's the blurb:

This book is not The Book. The Book is in this book. And The Book in this book is both the goodie and the baddie.

Bonnie is five. She wants to bury The Book because it is a demon that should go to hell. Penny, Bonnie’s mother, does bury The Book, but every day she digs it up and writes in it. John, Bonnie’s father, doesn’t live with them anymore. But he still likes to write in it from time to time. Ted, Bonnie’s stepfather, would like to write in The Book, but Penny won’t allow it.

To Bonnie, The Book is sadness.
To Penny, The Book is liberation.
To John, The Book is forgiveness.
To Ted, The Book is envy.
But The Book in this book isn’t what it seems at all.

If there was one thing in this world you wished you could hold in your hand, what would it be? The world bets it would be The Book.

Intrigued?

Available at all major retailers in e-book and paperback, including Amazon US and Amazon UK.

***

I MUST send out my thanks to C. Lee McKenzie for having a contest that I won! I now have an ecopy of her book The Princess of Las Pulgas. I've been wanting to read this one for a while. Lee has worked a long time to get the rights back so that she can make it available to more people.

***

After her father's slow death from cancer, Carlie thought things couldn't get worse. But now, she is forced to confront the fact that her family is in dire financial straits. To stay afloat, her mom has had to sell their cherished oceanfront home and move Carlie and her younger brother Keith to the other side of the tracks to dreaded Las Pulgas, or "the fleas" in Spanish. They must now attend a tough urban high school instead of their former elite school, and on Carlie's first day of school, she runs afoul of edgy K.T., the Latina tattoo girl who's always ready for a fight, even on crutches. Carlie fends off the attention of Latino and African American teen boys, and one, a handsome seventeen-year-old named Juan, nicknames her Princess when he detects her aloof attitude towards her new classmates. What they don't know is that Carlie isn't really aloof; she's just in mourning for her father and almost everything else that mattered to her. Mr. Smith, the revered English teacher who engages all his students, suggests she'll like her new classmates if she just gives them a chance; he cajoles her into taking over the role of Desdemona in the junior class production of Othello, opposite Juan, after K.T. gets sidelined. Keith, who becomes angrier and more sullen by the day, spray paints insults all over the gym as he acts out his anger over the family's situation and reduced circumstances. Even their cat Quicken goes missing, sending Carlie and Keith on a search into the orchard next to their seedy garden apartment complex. They're met by a cowboy toting a rifle who ejects them at gunpoint from his property. But when Carlie finds him amiably having coffee with their mom the next day -- when he's returned her cat -- she begins to realize that nothing is what it seems in Las Pulgas.

Finding the Source: Writing What You Know

This article (sans pictures) was published in 2009 at the Institute for Children's Literature Rx for Writers. There are many wonderful blogs out there doing a fantastic job of passing on information about writing. I've never felt I had much too offer. But (there's that but...) I did have a few articles published, so I thought I'd share them. This is the second. You can read the first, Finding and Collecting Characters HERE.

Finding the Source: Writing What You Know

As writers we read and are told over and over, “Write what you know! Write from your life, from your experiences.”

           

In some cases this is easy. A particular memory stands out sharply and can be incorporated into a story. Perhaps it’s the memory of your first kiss or the first time you saw the ocean.

Age 6, a totally confident Mistress of the Sea.

      

But what about all other memories, the ones that aren’t as evident? How do we dig them out of the bedrock? How do we find them? How do we make them come to the surface so we can use them?

An alternative to the autobiography

Maybe, like myself, you have considered writing a memoir of your life. My problem is I don’t know where or how to begin. Suddenly I am thinking in terms of a linear time-line, in chapters and paragraphs. The very structure constricts and I feel penned in. I think and think, I try to outline, I scribble notes, but my attempts fall hopelessly flat. “I was born on….When I was five we moved to….When I was seven my sister and I did….In 8^th grade I saw….” All very boring.

           

One day, while doing some early morning journaling, a memory bubbled up of its own accord from that mysterious underground realm of hidden passage ways. It was of my best friend and me and a place we used to go where we played long involved imaginary games. It was an old abandoned rock quarry. What made it such a special place is that it was exceedingly eerie and spooky.

           

As the memory bubbled up I wrote it down. Descriptions, emotions, sounds, smells, all kind of stuff pored out onto the page and were exposed to the light of day for the first time in who knows how many years. Three and a half pages later I had a wonderful little vignette. Here was something from my past that could easily be expanded, embellished and incorporated into a story at some future date. Or, maybe it could become a story all by itself.

           

It occurred to me that I had just discovered a way to tap into and write about my life without the strictures of structure. I got very excited.

You are your own time machine

           

Instead of being stuck with a linear mind-set, I was now free to time travel. Instead of thinking; “On this date, this happened and was followed by…” I was now able to capture specific, individual memories, and, like a photographer take snap-shots using words.

At 15 or 16, a stranded mermaid.

           

You are your own time machine. You can write about any moment in you life. You can go into the far distant past of early childhood, or write about something that happened last week. No memory is too small or too large. Perhaps it will be only a line or two describing a tiny bit of conversation you weren’t supposed to overhear. Or maybe it will be long and involved and take several pages.

           

To prime the pump, think of the stories you tell your friends. Don’t we all relate certain experiences over and over? Write them down and a wondrous thing will happen. As I began to write up the story of the rock quarry other memories began to surface. I hardly needed to dig at all. Memories were lying all around, little gleaming specs of gold, each clamoring to be written. Suddenly, I had an infinite well from which to draw. And the by-product of writing down all these little stories is a collection, a source for future inspiration.

           

It also occurred to me that this would be a great writing exercise to get the juices flowing. It is something that can be done like journaling or while waiting in an office.

Organizing your memories

           

As I saw the potential I thought about how to keep them organized.

           

I decided to name each little story. My experience with my best friend became “The Rock Quarry.” You can decide on any number of categories. You could organize your stories by year. Or if you have (which you should) multiple memories of a particular place or person, you could put all the vignettes that relate to that subject together under one heading. If you wanted to get more specific you could subdivide a major heading into several categories.

           

As an example: one major heading for me would have to be my best friend. Under this I can subdivide further; by year or by categories like, “Games,” “Holidays,” or “Practical Jokes.”

           

If you want to get really organized you could begin indexing the titles and next to each title describe where it can be found. So, “The Rock Quarry” would be followed by the major heading “Best Friend” under the category “Games.”

           

In my 20s, still on the beach.

Each group of vignettes can then be arranged in an approximate linear order. You could even give them exact dates, if you remember, or just the year they happened.

           

Imagine, if you wrote down one small memory a day you might soon have…more than you realized possible. You will have more than an autobiography; you will have an album of pictures, beautiful, funny, sad and personal, all captured in words by Technicolor. And, you will have a source of inspiration from which to draw called, “writing what you know.”

           

Perhaps best of all, you will have an album of your life which could be passed on to your children and grandchildren.

The Ledgers

When I was about 17 I bought the first of these two large ledgers. At 12 by 10 inches, they were

expensive, paid for with hard earned money I made from babysitting and making shell and bead jewelry that I sold in few gift shops.

Up until I got them, everything I'd written was on loose leaf paper some of which I somehow managed to save.

Once I got the first ledger I transcribed, in my tortured handwriting and spelling, the pages of loose leaf. I was thrilled to have everything in one place with plenty of pages left over to fill up.

On the first page are two poems and some sentences.

I can hear Robert Louis Stevenson all over this poem.





The Moon

The moon climbs through my window,
And rests upon my bed,
Then crawls along the ceiling
'Til it is overhead.

It slithers past my mirror
And smiles as it goes,
Then leaves by my window
And goes where, no one knows.

Here's a sentence: The only way I can think of the earth in relationship to the universe, is to think of one grain of sand on a beach.

And another: All went well until... a flea jumped on her foot. Then she screamed and fainted.

And the second poem:

Because of You

You are the object of my destination.
Because of you I write down these thoughts.
Because of you, I get this strange sensation
That tells me to drive on.

Perhaps, from time to time, I will share a few horrible jewels. The struggles of a naive teen who thought she was a writer and a poet.

What about you? Have you managed to save any writings from when you were a kid?

Origins: It's Not Nice to Say Nice

Origins is a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.



Today's word is: NICE

I was a terrible, lousy, horrible speller all through school. Surprisingly with the advent of computers, I have become much better. You'd think spell check would have made me worse by making it easier. But the opposite is the case.

I now consider myself simply a lousy speller.

My family never gave in when I asked them how to spell a word. It was always, "Look it up in the dictionary." To which I always whined, "How can I look it up when I don't know how to spell it?" But they were merciless and stood their ground. It taught me how to look up all possible spellings until I got the right one. It also taught me to love words and their histories.

I was about eight, when I first discovered etymology. The word was NICE and yeah, I couldn't spell it. Those silent Es and essy sounding Cs gave me fits.

This is what I discovered. Nice comes to us from Middle English and meant foolish or wanton. The Middle English word came from Old French and meant simple-minded or stupid. And that comes from the Latin word "nescius" which means ignorant or not knowing. So, originally, nice was used to describe someone who was ignorant, unschooled or silly.

When I learned this I was totally shocked and totally hooked. I would never look at words the same way and I would never take them for granted. Now they were mysteries with histories.

It wasn't until Shakespeare's time that nice began to take on a new meaning. I can just hear those rowdy teens, those juvenile delinquents, those avant garde artist types turning it into slang, saying, "Thy doublet is NICE!" The same thing is happening today with the word BAD. "Bad jacket, dude." Maybe in a few hundred years bad will mean nice.

Anyway, if there's someone you really don't like and you want to let him know in a totally subtle way without being rude, you can tell him you think he's a really "nice" person. I betcha he'll never get the sarcasm.

Got a favorite word that's changed it's meaning?

Alternatives

Alternatives is a recurring post in which I give synonyms for an over used word. Click on the tab above for a "complete" list of over used words. 

Depending on how you use it, this list may come in handy for finding another way to say the same thing.

Today's word is:  BAD


BAD has been around since 1200 AD.  If you want to learn more about BAD check out it's history HERE. There are many different ways or senses in which we use BAD. As in feeling ill, "I feel bad." Or having an intuitive sense, "I have a bad feeling about this." Or in feeling regretful, "I feel bad about hitting my brother." And that's just three ways we use the word. To really confuse things, BAD has also  taken on the meaning of something being really cool or nice.  "Bad jacket Bro!" Maybe in a couple of hundred years the meaning will flip entirely, just like NICE did, a word that once meant wanton or dissolute.

This a huge list of possible synonyms and I didn't get them all! 

abominable, abysmal, addled, adverse, ailing, amiss, apologetic, atrocious, awful

banned, barred, base, bastard, beastly, bilious, bitchin’, bitter, black, blah, blue, bottom out, brokenhearted, brutal, bum/bummer, bush, bush-league

careless, cast down, cheap, cheesy, coarse, common, condemned, conscience-stricken,

contemptible, contrite, corked/corky, corrupt, counterfeit, crappy, crestfallen, criminal, cruddy, cruel, crummy, cursed, cut-rate

damnable, dark, debased, debauched, decayed, decomposed, defective, deficient, defiling

degenerate, dejected, delinquent, deplorable, depraved, depressed, despicable, despondent, detestable, diddly, dirty, disagreeable, disastrous, disconsolate, discouraged/discouraging, diseased, disobedient, displeasing, disreputable, dissatisfactory, dissolute, distressed/distressing, doleful, down, down in the mouth, downcast, downer, downhearted, dreadful, droopy

egregious, errant, erring, erroneous, evil, evil-minded, execrable

fake, fallacious, fallen faulty, fearful, flagrant, flawed, forbidden, forlorn, foul, frightful

garbage, ghastly, gloomy, glum, gnarly, godawful, grave, grim, grody, gross, grungy, guilty

hangdog, hard, harsh, hateful, heartbroken, heartsick, heartsore, heavyhearted hellish,

hideous, hopeless, horrendous, horrid

icky, ignoble, ill, ill-behaved, illegal, immoral, imperfect, in pain, inadequate, incompetent, inconsolable, incorrect, infamous, inferior, infernal, iniquitous,insufficient, intense, interdicted

joyless, junky,

lame, lamentable, lousy, low, low-grade, low-rent, low-spirited

mean, mediocre, melancholic/melancholy, misbehaving, mischievous, miscreant, miserable, moldy, mournful, nasty, naughty, nefarious, negative, not good, noxious

odious, of poor quality, off, outlawed

painful, paltry, pathetic, pernicious, pestilential, phony, poor, punk, putrefied, putrid

rancid, raunchy, regretful, remorseful, reprehensible, reprobate, rotten, rough, rubbishy

sad/saddened, scanty, scurrilous, seamy, second-rate, serious, severe, shabby, sham, shitty, shoddy, sick, sinful, sleazy, slipshod, snide, sordid, sorrowful, sorry, sour, spoiled

stale, stinking/stinky, suboptimal, subpar, substandard, sucky, synthetic

terrible, the pits, tough, trashy, troubled/troubling

ugly, unacceptable, unclean, uncongenial, uncool, unethical, unfavorable, unfortunate, ungodly, unhappy, unhealthy, unlawful, unloving, unpalatable, unpleasant, unpleasing, unrighteous, unruly, unsatisfactory unsavory, unskilled, unspeakable, unsuitable, unwelcome, unwell, unwholesome, upset, useless

valueless, vexing, vicious, vile, villainous, vulgar

wacked/wacky, wanting, wicked, woebegone, woeful, worthless, wretched, wrong

yucky

Just to make it interesting here are some overused phrases...

bad news

bad seed

bad egg

bad dog

bad blood

bad hair day

bad call

And of course... Bad to the Bone. Do you have a favorite bad ass word?

Epiphany

Yesterday was Three Kings Day, also known as the Epiphany, the day when the magi visited Christ and gave him presents.

Epiphany, a lovely word. It comes from Greek meaning appearance, manifestation, to show.

I like that it also means to have a sudden thought or idea.

I would like to say I'm back, but I really can't be sure. I still have a lot on my plate. I believe my eyes were WAY bigger than my stomach. However I intend to make an effort to visit around.

I'd also like to say I had an epiphany over the holidays, but I didn't. I've spent most of my time away working on my novel. Nine chapters and 17800 words have been sent off to my instructor.

My collection of Anansi stories lies dormant for the time being.

I still haven't managed to read 52 books (one per week) in a year. I made it 48 for 2012. I envy those of you who are able to read a book in a day or two.

On the one hand I feel motivated to continue on the other I feel uninspired. Maybe it's because I stayed up too late and woke up too early.

However I will push through. And there's nothing that helps boost the spirit than thinking about...

SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS!

Making pasteles with my mother and grandmother
Being given a pot of gold by a leprechaun
Flying like a bird (not gliding on nylon wings)
Having the powers of invisibility
Living in a world without plastic
Learning there really is a Shangri-la and living there

That helps!

And this does too.

Snow... on the 4th of January. It's almost an impossible thing.

Of course it was gone by the afternoon. That B in the rock work was not planned. It happened organically.

So, are you all fired up for the new year? How many books did you read in 2012? Did you know that calendars from 1985, 1991 and 2002 are the same as calendars for 2013? So if you saved your old calendars (like my Sweetie likes to do) and want to save a little money, hang up those old calendars. It's a good way to confuse people. I have a neat 2002 calendar up of The Beatles. What's your calendar's theme?