Wouldn't it be "grand" if we stopped dumbing-down the way we speak?

I've only been home a few minutes. Gratefully, I was able to get my perishables out of the car, and in to the apartment, just before a cloudburst of rain!! I've been gone almost all day and (wouldn't you know) rain on my windshield within a mile of home. We need the rain; we had two summers of draught.

Grocery shopping, and gas, at Sam's Club in Gastonia (30 miles from my apartment). A whole grain bagel and hazelnut coffee at Panera. There is always a variety of newspapers, at Panera, and I love to browse them (if I'm not using WiFi). I found an article that I appreciate--and want to share with you. Written by Pam Stone, in The Gazette, 8/16/09:

"Not too long ago, an old friend from high school days telephoned to chat and catch up on life in general. I asked how a recent trip to San Diego had been and she sighed rapturously and gushed, 'Oh, Pam, we had a grand time!'

"Julie's response made me smile. 'Grand'--what a marvelous word to choose. An old-fashioned word that conjures up pageantry and overwhelming pleasure. The sort of word one doesn't hear these days. In the era of email and texting, it's a rare treat. 'u no?'

"I consider myself privileged that my childhood contained more than a few dusty volumes of the classics and a mother who read chapters of David Copperfield as a bedtime story. In the years before this, it was Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh--beautifully written with economic simplicity: 'Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."'

"Perhaps it's the advent of reality TV with sordid, celebrity-seeking contestants or a lack of intellectual curiosity in general that leads to the abandonment of the English language. It might even be the humidity: Really. It's just too darn hot and muggy to make the effort to speak or write any more than absolutely necessary. 'I don't see the need to drive to the store' can quickly be pared down to 'I ain't gonna' in August. And 'She was exceedingly rude and quite threatening in her manner' is easily reduced to 'She was like, all up in my face.'

"Don't for a moment think I'm making this a southern thing. No one uses the English language with more vibrancy and color than those native to the south. What else is more descriptive and immediate to the point than, 'He's dumber than a sackful of hammers,' or ' She's so ugly, she'd knock a buzzard off a gut wagon.' Yet even these gems seem to be vanishing nowadays.

"Neither will I blame our lack of effort on the laziness of youth. Lord Byron was merely in his 20s when he wrote: 'She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright, meet in her aspect and her eyes..." while a couple of centuries later, a similarly self-indulgent Jimi Hendrix penned, '...this morning comes to me, with silver wings silhouetted against the glow of a child sunrise....' However, more recently, Paris Hilton, the globe-trotting fashion-plate with a multi-million dollar trust fund could only manage to famously describe anything of interest to her as "That's Hot" and actually attempted to trademark the phrase in 2004.

"We can do better. I know we can. Wouldn't that be grand?"

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The article reinforced my desire to write lengthy blogs with lots of descriptive words. I'm in the minority judging from the emails that I received that are brief and filled with abbreviations. Sometimes I can't even guess the meaning of the letters (abbreviations)!!