Month: May 2019

Tongue Twisters

Posted on by Robert Eck

As a kid, I loved to practice tongue twisters — those difficult to pronounce expressions, supposedly designed to improve one’s speaking elocution.  Frequently, they used two consonants interchangeably to trip your tongue to misspeak, often with amusing results.   In addition to improving pronunciation, they were fun to recite and to listen while others bungled the lines.    

For example, try saying: “Big black bug bled black blood” three times without error.  With concentration, you may get through the first series, but invariably will say: “blig” or “blug,” or “back” or “bed” along the way to offend one’s ear.  After mastering that one, switch to a triple oration of:  “She sells seashells by the seashore,” or “He threw three free throws.”  What’s the matter: Did the cat get your tongue?

The “Sarah” song, always a favorite, sometimes was sung intentionally wrong to say the “forbidden” four letter words for fun.   It went like this:  “Sarah, Sarah, sitting in a Chevrolet.  All day long she sits and shifts.  All day long she shifts and sits.  Shifts and sits; sits and shifts” — difficult not to interchange the “sh” sounds.  But even more precarious:  “Sarah, Sarah, working in a tailor shop.  All day long she tucks and fits.  All day long she fits and tucks.  Tucks and fits; fits and tucks.”  Well, wash my mouth out with soap!

Lastly, I submit three well-known twisters:

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.  If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

“Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter’s bitter.  If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter; but a bit of better butter will make my batter better, so ‘twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.”

“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?  He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood, as a woodchuck would, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

Whoa!  And I thought you were on a roll.  

Nostalgia

Posted on by Robert Eck

Nostalgia defined:  

“A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”  (Dictionary.com.)  Some Examples: The smell of honeysuckle during a childhood summer, a popular song during teenage years, a old photograph of a loved one — each invoking a reflection of prior happiness.

Research suggests that reflecting on happy memories may bring “surprising psychological benefits, from boosting self-confidence to buffering against anxiety and loneliness . . . by bringing into focus the people and experiences that have mattered most to us in the past.”  (Wallace, J. B. Nostalgia’s Power to Shape the Present, The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2017, page C3)  

A Le Moyne University Professor of Psychology, Kristine Bacho, devised a questionnaire to measure “nostalgia” as a trait. The research concluded that those who value youthful memories scored higher, and “tend to value human relationships more and to be both more resilient and psychologically healthier.”  “The power of nostalgia lies not in just honoring the past but in bringing it forward to the present to make our lives richer and more meaningful: ‘it isn’t necessarily about wanting to go back’.” (id, quoting Dr Batcho)  

Isn’t that interesting?  Some well-known writers would agree, consider:

— “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”  Dr. Seuss (1904—1991)

— “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different.”  C.S. Lewis (1898—1963)

But nostalgia has had its critics. Up until the turn of the millennium, psychologists concluded that the habit of living in memory; i.e., comparing the past to the present, may be a root cause of mental illness.  In 1688, Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined the term “nostalgia” to define a mental illness in which people could fall into deep depression, like soldiers, who left home and became crippled by the sense of longing brought about by memories of home.  (Beck, Julie, The Atlantic Magazine, August 14, 2013.)

All in all, spending some pleasant moments with nostalgia may be beneficial for one’s overall health, provided one does not stay there too long.