http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/slate.truenames.html#2/4.2149/-6.3281
UPDATE (6-25-2024) TO LINK of Literal Meaning of Places of the World: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a7407362fe9749699703b5efc1a2d922
Comes from here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/06/literal_meanings_of_places_in_the_u_s_map.html , The literal meanings of places in the U.S., mapped.
Snow Fog
Branch, twig, and needle etched with rime,
Each tree white lace against cold sky,
The snow fog waits, a ghost upon horizon,
For noonday sun to turn its ice to liquid diamonds.
D. L. Keur, January 18, 2013
Every New Years, there’s this sense I feel among people around me of renewal, of hope, of cheerful expectation. This year was different. Maybe it was the fiscal cliff issue in Congress that changed the tenor. Maybe it was the Newtown massacre. Whatever it was, for most I met around town, this New Year’s lacked verve, that is, vigor, spirit, and enthusiasm.
I asked myself ‘why’, because, for me, I felt my rather usual sense of “time to plan and start anew.” My verve was not lacking, but this was not so among my compatriots–not among my neighbors, not among my associates and friends, not among my clients nor acquaintances. Instead, there seemed either a stoic sense of “trudging on” or a simple tiredness. And not all of my friends are antiques. In fact, most of them range from youthful to moderately middle age, and all of them are like me, self-starters and fiendishly energized. (Yes, I seem to know people who, like me, have that similar built-in drive to do things.)
I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. Many around me, even those who admit to lacking that New Year’s freshness in themselves, agree that it is observable among those in their circles, too. Whatever the cause, this lack of verve disturbs me. And them, even in themselves. It disturbs because a new start, a fresh beginning, a clean slate, has in its actualization an important, energizing effect upon life, projects, and, especially, spirit.
It really strikes me as odd that, while everybody is all upset about the folks killed by that disturbed guy over in Aurora, Colorado, they just can’t get worked up about worse things which happen all over the world by the hand of our own government–civilians killed, tortured, maimed, and, always, forgotten or, worse, dismissed.
So twelve people got blown away by a whacko, but thousands are suffering worse everywhere else, and we just shrug it off…don’t even give it a second thought.
Why is that?
Proximity?
I had to laugh this morning. Today’s Word of the Day from Dictionary.com is “dearth.” It means scarcity, lack…an inadequate supply.
Dearth: It applies to the economies of the world, including the U.S. and it’s job market. It applies to U.S. politics and the lack of common ground, common cause, and common sense. It applies to our species’ levels of tolerance–the lack thereof these days–from Western societies to Middle Eastern societies to Far Eastern societies. It applies to human-to-human and human-to-other kindness–severely lacking now in this our 21st century. In short, the word “dearth” applies to us as our socio-political reality.
Prior to 9/11/2001, that infamous day when the skies of New York City darkened with the World Trade Center disaster, and despite the stolen election of the U.S. presidency by the pretender G. W. Bush, there was hope; there was, in fact, a growing sense of peace, prosperity, and, yes, a kinder, gentler America…which would, in turn, one trusted, lead in time to a kinder, gentler, less selfish world.
That all changed in the moment whoever was responsible for the 9/11 attack on America instigated their act (…and I still suspect those who had to most to gain–the strongest motive). It stirred a sleeping dragon, a nest of hornets. America reacted to 9/11 with vicious determination, its people hurt and angry, the flames of their sorrow-born rage provoked and encouraged by a political agenda that desired nothing more than to feed the lucre of power and resources to itself via its industrial war machine, greasing greedy wheels with human blood.
Gone in that moment were all the gains toward a more peaceful, benevolent world–kindness, tolerance, economic prosperity, the hope of a better future for all of us. Instead, hate, intolerance, and fear dominated our national psyche, the result of which pitched us and the world to the brink of political and economic fascism–the dearth of billions for the enrichment of the few.
No longer do the voices of benevolence and kindness, of civility and tolerance, hold forth within the public ear. Instead, schisms between ideologies, theologies, and cultures, are cultivated and encouraged by gleeful profiteers, collapsing civility, solvency, and plenty, and replacing them with dearth–dearth for the poor and for the middle class, dearth for the general human populations, dearth that leads to further degradation of the world environment.
Hatred, fear and rage has replaced common sense and tolerance, a hatred and fear engineered using the power of influence to seed its seepingly insidious corruption into a vulnerable public mind that fails to grasp the agenda of the elite socio-political masterminds behind it who are bent on owning and controlling everything to the benefit of themselves–the mighty few–to the detriment and dearth of everyone and every thing else.
Dearth, a word to think on.