Can We Use This Word? The New York Times and Wordle Say No But I Say We Must.

A lot of people are unhappy with the New York Times acquiring Wordle, the trendy daily word game. My great ChicagoNow fellow blogger Howard Moore reminds us that this is just a game, and not to get too worked up about how difficult the words seem to have become.

I ran into a different issue the other day. As one of my five-letter guesses, I entered the word “Slave.” The omnipotent Wordle moderator immediately informed me that my attempt was Not in the Word List.

Excuse me? The word is present in Merriam-Webster, with multiple definitions including “a person held in forced servitude.” Other definitions include the use of the word in tech environments.

But a little research indicates that certain words, deemed by the Times as offensive, have now been removed from the Wordle word list. “Slave” is apparently on the offensive list. Thou shalt not use it.

And in this case, I don’t get it. Which just shows my ignorance. Apparently, there has been a debate for years about whether the word should no longer be used. Former Trib columnist Eric Zorn devoted a column to the controversy in 2021. The word is a “needlessly dehumanizing word to describe a person who was in bondage.”

But isn’t that the point? Calling a slave a slave exactly points out the dehumanization that slavery was. Euphemistically dancing around it with terms such as “enslaved person” just doesn’t convey the horror of the stain on our history.

I have a second point of reference. Next month, I will be celebrating Passover. I will lead my family’s Seder, in which we will read from the Haggadah. After a few blessings, we will read (and chant) Avadim Hayenu. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt.”

The harsh words are blunt and are used with other symbols (charoseth–a chopped nuts and apple mixture representing the mortar used during forced construction work, maror–bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slave life) because we never want to forget. Indeed, the theme running throughout the Seder is to pass the history from generation to generation.

Just as the more recent ancestors of many of us who died in World War II concentration camps were not “people ensnared by a Nazi policy,” but rather murder victims, slaves were slaves. Let the horror of the word speak on our behalf, and may we never forget.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); ———————————–

A Morning Moon Prayer

Preview in new tab

The Morning Moon Glows Through the Clouds

On Mobile phone or Tablet, scroll down please!


















The morning moon glimmers so low in the West,
 Before the sun rises, the sky to contest.
 What will the day bring, the moon seems to say.
 As all ‘cross the world, do the herky-jerky ballet.

 Will Covid come lurking, waiting behind all our masks,
 And make us think twice before every day tasks?
 Or have all our jabs, and Ivermectin convinced us,
 That our worries are gone, no need for this fear fuss.

 Which Russian will step up, to grab our attention?
 The leader? The skater? It’s beyond comprehension.
 That a fifteen year old girl who’s charged with drug doping,
 Distracts us from Putin, while the Ukraine he’s groping.

 I read Trump’s finances might go down the toilet,
 We can savor the moment, and really enjoy it.
 But what does it matter when millions adore him,
 I’ll go look for a cave, to hide and explore in.

 The Senate and House, the foundations of Congress,
 Are masters of nothing, they really could care less,
 About all the aspects in which the country is lacking,
 They just want your dollars, they just want your backing.

 The Super Bowl’s over, the Rams are the winners,
 While the Bears here in town, just hire beginners.
 The half-time display was all hip-hop and glamour,
 Love Snoop Dog, Love Fifty, but where’s Kanye and Hammer?

 And baseball is stranded with no games approaching,
 The negotiating teams could sure use some coaching.
 When zillionaires squabble over dividing the big bucks,
 It’s paying fans in the stands who feel like the stiffed schmucks.

 We Wordle our way to achieve adulation,
 When our score is the lowest we post the citation.
 Do you start with "arise" or do you start with some other?
The Times of New York can now track like Big Brother.
 

 Well, the climate's still heating, there’s no easy solution.
 We’ve got crime, we’ve got hate, we’ve got water pollution.
 But the moon as it shines, on today’s early morning
 Says the sun will rise soon, let's pray a good day's aborning.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

A Valentine’s Day List So That I Always Remember

I celebrate my Valentine’s Day with…

A dog whisperer who can turn a 40 lb Labradoodle into a lap dog.
A friend who charges nothing for interior design advice.
A volunteer who can’t leave the healthcare environment behind.
A chef who knows how to complement a delicious meal with a colorful plate.
A Neil Diamond super fan, even if I am the only one who ever wears a Neil Diamond concert tee shirt.
A community leader, always striving for improvement and beautification of the world around her.
A needle-pointer extraordinaire, for whom the photographs of her handiwork above cannot begin to demonstrate the exquisite quality and magnificence of her work, or the love she pours into each canvas, each embellishment, and each and every stitch. (The hearts are from me!)
A Nana whose grandchildren adore her.
A mother who will drop everything to help her kids.
The woman who is my wife of 43 years, the love of my life, my soulmate, my duet-partner. The woman who shares my brain.

Just remember, through it all, I Got You, Babe.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Lights at the End of the Tunnel. Of Moon Shots and Medicine.

As I glanced through the obituaries the other day (yes, I have reached that stage in my life) I noticed a death notice with funeral arrangements for an oncologist I worked with twenty years ago. Of course I was saddened to hear of his passing, but what immediately came to mind was a conversation with a different oncologist that I overheard a long, long time ago–1976, to be precise.

It was the very beginning of my 2nd year at the University of Illinois School of Medicine. M1 Year had been spent buried in textbooks and anatomy lab, but with the onset of M2 Year, our class had (very limited) entre into the clinical world.

We were placed in groups of four, and each week every group had a pair of three-hour sessions in a clinician’s office. My group’s assigned physician was a busy oncologist who tolerated our being in his office but didn’t let us do much with his patients, and didn’t offer much insight either. But at least we got the vibe of being in the same general vicinity as living, breathing, patients.

At the end of one Tuesday session, our oncologist told us not to show up for that week’s Thursday session, as the office would be closed while he attended a funeral.

“Do you go to all your patient’s funerals?” the boldest of our foursome of M2s asked.

“I don’t go to ANY of them,” was the rather brusque reply.

A couple of that oncologist’s attitudes were transmitted to us in that brief exchange. “First,” he was conveying to us, “as a physician, you must keep your distance from your patients. Medicine is your occupation, maybe even your passion, but the patients are not your friends.”

“Second,” he seemed to be saying “I am an oncologist. All my patients die.”

As I said, that was a long, long time ago. I followed my talents to a medical field where I have so little patient contact that there is little risk of patients becoming my friends. Instead many of my friends have become my “patients”, the downside of being a 60-something prostate pathologist with a cadre of friends my own age.

But more importantly, oncologists no longer need to feel that their patients will die from their disease. Tumor screening (colonoscopy, mammography), leading to early cancer diagnosis, the use of genetic evaluation of tumors to guide therapy, the fantastic advances in understanding tumor immunology-these are wondrous tools that have made many cancers curable or converted them to chronic, treatable, conditions rather than rapidly lethal nightmares.

We aren’t at cancer nirvana yet. Treatments are still too expensive, life-style factors still put patients at risk. Some malignancies still baffle the best experts.

But perhaps in my lifetime, the Cancer Moonshot will succeed. And when an oncologist says “I don’t go to cancer patient’s funerals” it will be because there are none.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

We Save Lives (and I Apologize)

Words have an impact. Whether the speaker is a politician, an entertainer, or a blogger, they must think about the words they choose–and choose carefully. I try to do that, but despite my scrupulous care, I made a blunder in my word choices in a previous blog and I want to apologize for it.

You may recall my last posting conveyed some thoughts on my profession, ranging from Sherlock Holmes to surgeon’s “fingerprints. And in a section dealing with statistics, I said “Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death.”

I really should have known better. Within a few hours of posting, I received the following from Marty, a friend, and prostate cancer warrior:

What?

No, no. Better to realize you are giving these men (myself included!) a 2nd chance at life as they and their doctors learn that they now need to enter the “treatment phase” of their now discovered prostate cancer.
And B’ruch HaShem may that treatment extend their lives for many productive years to come!

We MUST stay positive.

Marty was so right. The diagnosis of prostate cancer is absolutely not a death sentence. By far, most men diagnosed with prostatic cancer will live long and fruitful lives, enjoying careers, family, and free time.

So instead of referring to myself as Dr. Death, I should have chosen an honorific like Dr. Decision Tree (I know, I know, it doesn’t have much zing.) My diagnosis is a key piece of the data set that guides the patient and his medical team as to whether to treat (surgery, radiation, hormonal modulation, immunotherapy) or not to treat (active surveillance) the patient’s cancer.

(And while we are talking about prostate cancer, here is my annual plug for PSA testing. Ask your physician if it is right for you and the men in your life.)

Marty, you have improved my mindset. I will watch my words with the focus of a laser beam. You reminded me that, as one of my previous partners used to say, “We are pathologists. We save lives!”

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name