Month: January 2013

Some words fade gracefully from view. Haberdashery is a good example. A gentle word for gentler times. Some may bemoan its passing while others may see it as a relic best left behind. Whatever the point of view, the result is the same. The word is slowly going away. Some words need to be re-purposed. They have been morphed into meanings they were never intended to bear. One such word is sorry. As in “I’m sorry for your loss” or “I’m sorry for your difficulties.” Unless you poisoned my granny…

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Today is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Which, despite what you learned in school did not free the slaves. It freed the slaves in states that had seceded from the Union. Slavery was still legal in the North. But, what it did do was put a clear focus on the Civil War. Freedom became a rallying cry. Blacks were given clear rights, equal to those of white men. By the end of the war slavery was gone. That lasted … oh, a couple of years. Then the Morrill…

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