Listening to: Christmas Carols of all kinds
Reading: Jewels of the Sun Nora Roberts
Weather: 34, sunny and windy
Trivia: How many active languages are there in the world?
According to recent estimates, the number of actively spoken languages in the world today is around 6,000. More than 1,400 of those languages belong to the Niger-Congo family from Africa, and about 1,200 are in the Austronesian family from Madagascar,
Indonesia, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and New Zealand. Most of today's active languages are spoken by very few people, and many of them are losing speakers rapidly as the world becomes more and more connected. Half of today's languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and a quarter have fewer than 1,000. Thousands of years ago, there may have been as many as 10,000 active languages in the world. Within the next century, thousands of languages may be lost.
Cool word: pass the buck
To pass the buck is to shift responsibility or avoid blame by assigning it to someone else. Example: "Accused of eating all the cookies, Larry passed the buck to Joe, pointing out the crumbs on his chin." This expression originated in poker games in the American west. The buck was a token, usually a silver dollar or dollar bill, that was passed around to show whose turn it was. An alternate theory says the token was a buckhorn knife. How did a dollar come to be called a buck? The most widely accepted theory is that the word originally referred to a buckskin, which was used as a unit of barter between Native Americans and colonials. As the name of an animal, buck goes back to Old English buc (male deer) and bucca (male goat).
No Enthusiasm
I went to rehearsal tonight with a very heavy heart. Dee has decided to resign from the emcee committee. She has decided that she can’t live this way and isn’t willing to change who she is to fit the mold that someone else thinks we should.
I haven’t come to that extreme yet. I am first going to confront (ick) the director with the issues and let her know how unhappy I am and how close to quitting totally I am.
I called one of my friends on the management team to ask her if a statement made by Linda-the-bitch was true, and lo and behold it was not. I’m not surprise to hear that. Dee called the team manager and got a similar response that was far more horrified. Linda had no right to say what she did and it was pretty far removed from the truth.
The pain and control that this one person thinks she has the right to inflict is just staggering.
Rehearsal itself was alright. The only reason I went was because it was guest night and I’d agreed to help out if we were inundated with guests. I shouldn’t have worried.
There were hardly any guests, no more than a half dozen. It’s to bad, but I thought that the timing on this one was really bad. How many people want to go out to sing or investigate joining a chorus between Thanksgiving and Christmas? It’s all most people can do to keep their heads on straight and get all the holiday stuff done.
But there was no convincing the management team that the timing was dumb.
The rehearsal itself was pretty good, in that it was at least varied for a change. We learned some tags, sang some repertoire songs and rehearsed the Christmas stuff.
It wasn’t the same old drill and kill.
Now if only the hurt in my heart would stop and I could get back to loving singing and performing.
While I’m all in favor of non-violent public protest, I’m a bit puzzled by the one currently happening in Seattle. Can someone explain to me the point of storming Starbucks?!?!
What? Did they need a latte? Were they out of decaf? What is the point? From this coast it seems like a real idiotic thing to do…….
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