Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa, I want to end a sincere greeting of holiday cheer to each and every one of you. My time at Ohio State is nearing an end and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I thank each of you for making my life a bit more enjoyable and entertaining. To all or your love ones I extend a wish of peace, love, and joy and may your days be merry and bright while you keep the light on in your respective souls.
Art
The best to you and yours.
Take care and remember that we all miss you, good sir.
Art
Happy Holidays Dude!!!
May you also have the merriest Christmas and the happiest New Year. We hope to see you back on Blogstream soon.
Thanks so much. I wish the same for you and your family during this wonderful holiday season.
Art
Thanks so much. The same to you and yours.
Art
I miss that humor a lot. I still check you out from time to time. Last time I check you were on hiatus. Glad you are back. Take care my friend and the same warmest of wishes to you and the family.
art
Nice to run into you again also. I wish the same for you and yours. Don't eat too much fruit cake......it can be hazardous.
Art
Hope you stay on here, Art.
Secret
A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours also.
Art
And a very happy and bright holiday season to you too my friend. Thanks for keeping in touch.
Art
What an awfully nice thing to say. I enjoy you all immensely, especially good folk like yourself. Have a very happy holiday season.
Art
Pranka Claus
Same to you at this wonderful time of the year.
That suits you quite well. Thanks so much for the well wishes and the very kind words. Much cheer to you and yours during this wonderful holiday season.
Art
Lucy
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Good to see you back! You have been missed.
may all those that you cherish - live long and prosper
ice
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... though the winter days to come seem dark & cold, remember that from here on it all just keeps getting brighter ...
Here's wishing you a wonderful holiday!
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MERRY CHRISTMAS....
Have a wonderful Christmas Eve with your family...
I really hope you come back and blog...!
You are truly one of the blessings on blogstream....
This is a scene from my favorite holiday movie...
A Christmas Story...cracks me up everytime....
Enjoy!
Love Lucy
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Love Ya
I hope your holidays are filled with joy.
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LOVE ALWAYS MISTY
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Congratulations winners & honorable mentions.
And thank you to those who voted!
Love Lucy
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Jennifer, The blogger formerly known as Girlpreacher
Happy New Year! I hope 2007 brings you much prosperity and happiness!!
I will give you two possible future scenarios where things like racism are gone. Both take place in a classroom far off into the future.
Future One:
Billie:
Ms. Crump what is all of this about the “n” word in the history books? What is the “n” word? What’s it all about?
Ms. Crump:
Nobody knows what the n word was. All traces of it have been wiped out.
Billie:
Why?
Ms. Crump:
Because it was considered to be a terrible word. People way back in time used things like the n word to insult and hurt people. There were lots of bad words like that. The g word, the k word, the s word; all sorts of bad words that have been wiped out of human history and only the first letter of each word remains.
You see class way back in time people started to realize that those bad words were being used to hurt people and people needed a way to stop all of that hurtful stuff. Over time they hit upon the idea that people should stop saying the words; that nobody should use them because they were hurtful words.
Eventually people stopped saying them but the words were still around and still hurtful so people all agreed to stop writing them because they were hurtful words. And finally they began to wipe out all of the those bad words from the history books because if they did that then nobody could ever use them again to hurt somebody.
Billie:
Wow! That was really a smart thing to do. Now nobody can get hurt by the words and we don’t even have to look at those words.
Ms. Crump:
Yes. Billie it was a very smart thing to do.
End of future one
Future Two:
Ms. Crump:
Who here in this class is a crajee?
Billie:
I am Ms. Crump. Everyone in my family is a crajee.
Ms. Crump:
Does it bother you that I called you a crajee?
Billie:
No. I am a crajee. I know other crajees and it doesn’t bother any of us when people call us crajees because that is what we are.
Ms. Crump:
Did you know that there was a time when the word “crajee” was a terrible word? When if somebody called you a crajee they were trying to be mean and hurtful? Do you know the history of the word “crajee”?
Billie:
No. But that doesn’t make any sense. We are crajees how could that name hurt us?
Ms. Crump:
Let me tell you the history of the word and then you can tell me if it makes sense then.
Long ago people did all sorts of terrible things to each other. People from one group like the gadchies would be mean and terrible to people from another group like the crajees. And they were mean like that for no other reason than the fact that they were crajees. All sorts of terrible things were done because of what group you were a part of. It didn’t matter if you were a nice person or not. If you were a crajee people could treat you terribly and get away with it because there weren’t as many crajees as there were gadchies and that’s just how people treated them.
People weren’t all equal like they are today. Back then people from all sorts of groups would mistreat people from other groups just because of the group they were from. Way back in time people did all sorts of terrible things to the crajees and the very word “crajee” was a mean and nasty word. People would say, “You are not like us. You are just a worthless bunch of stupid crajees. We are better than you. You are crajees, you are nothing.”
Eventually the crajees started to be treated more fairly. Many people from many other groups helped in doing that; even some of the gadchies tried to help the crajees. People even died trying to help the crajees and many crajees died. It took a long time before the crajees started to be treated more like equals.
There were laws written to protect not just the crajees but also the people from all sorts of other groups. You couldn’t just go and kill a crajee anymore and not be punished. The crajees had rights too; they were supposed to be equals.
But there were still people who didn’t like the crajees and thought that they were better than the crajees. And they would still call them worthless crajees. And lots of good and kind people thought that they should all just stop using the word crajee because crajee was a terrible word. It was mean and nasty and insulting because of all of the terrible things that were done to the crajees back in the mean times. Back in the times when people would call them crajees and then do terrible things to the crajees.
Many people agreed with that and they would tell people that using the terrible word “crajee” was a mean and ignorant thing to do. And many people from all sorts of groups agreed that the terrible word “crajee” was a word that nobody should ever use. And more and more people stopped using it because it was such a terrible word.
Billie:
But if people stopped using it because it was such a terrible word how come I am a crajee? It doesn’t hurt me when people call me a crajee. I am a crajee. If people stopped using the word “crajee” it should be gone. How come the word “crajee” is still around? And why doesn’t it hurt me when somebody calls me a crajee?”
Ms. Crump:
Because among the crajees there was one who said, “NO!”
“You will not wipe out all traces of my history like that. Many crajees were killed because they were crajees. They were mistreated because they were crajees. I am an equal now and nobody will hurt me with that word anymore! I take that word from them and use it as my badge of honor. That name reminds me of my people and their struggle for freedom and equality. You will not take that history from me and from my children and wipe out all traces of the struggle.
The word “crajee” started as a mean word and many terrible things, many horrors were done with that word and nobody will ever take that word from me or from my people. I free myself from the tyranny of that word by embracing it. I am a Crajee and whenever somebody calls me that I say, “Yes. I am a crajee. It is my word now and you cannot hurt me with it. It is a part of who I am and a part of my history. I am one of a line of Crajees and in each generation we struggled to be treated as equals. Generation of Crajee after Crajee battled and that needs to be remembered. My children’s, children’s, children will learn the history of that word and how I took that word from my oppressors and freed all of the Crajees from the tyranny of that word. It is our word now. We are free!!”
Billie:
And that’s how I got the name. That man freed me too. So that I could use it and I could be a crajee.
Ms. Crump:
Yes. But he also free many people who were not crajees because once the people from other groups saw what he had done; saw that he had freed his people from the tyranny of the word “crajee” in that way they all started to do the same thing with their terrible words.
The pacras, the vigdos, the sagwees, all of them freed themselves from the words by embracing them and turning them into good names. And all of the histories of all of those oppressed peoples were preserved. The history of the word “crajee” is the history of the crajees themselves. It is a tale of oppression and the struggle to overcome it and the final victory was when one man stood up and freed himself and his people by embracing the word. He was the first truly free crajee.
Billie:
Who was that Ms. Crump? What was his name?
Ms. Crump:
I think it was “Art” but I have to check the history books on that.
Start of future two Art?
Just something that I think you might be missing Art. I really don’t know if I could start using the n word myself, not comfortable with it and I am not even black. And I think that getting people to embrace the word would be a hard sell at this point in history.
But you have to admit the crajees really turned the tables on their oppressors and that would be one for the history books.
With thought and respect,
Old Yankee
One more thing that you might not see as being a possibility after reading about the crajees.
More than one way to win a war of words Art. People have the option to add a new definition to the n word. We all do. New definitions get added to words all of the time. One reason people keep running into these problems is that they aren’t adding any positive definitions to the dictionary.
There are rules to the name game because a name is a word and the rules are that the most popular definition wins because it winds up being the first or preferred definition in the dictionary. Consider theses definitions of “crajee” from a future dictionary
cra-jee n. 1.a member of the crajee group 2. any person who overcomes great hardship and succeeds(see “history of the crajee people” for details) 3.archaic: a worthless person.(now rarely used)
Old Yankee
I should probably add something to the two future scenario things because there is a lot going on simultaneously within those scenarios.
Each scenario represents an extreme. The two extremes are in opposition to each other and people can choose which extreme they prefer or they can choose something in between the two extremes. Many people are doing things that are trying to move the nation closer to extreme future one for the n word and relatively few if any are moving us towards extreme future two with the n word. But people have already made future two a reality with the s word of “slave”. The word “slave” is not really a nice word either but people have embraced it and it is not one of the unutterable words on the nasty words list.
There are times when variations of either scenario could be effective but people keep choosing variations of scenario one whenever they encounter words that they do not like. However, there are times when a scenario two variation would be a more effective defense.
Old Yankee