I was in bed Sunday night, listening to Latino USA on NPR. I heard an interview with Reverend Ignacio Castuera speaking about tolerance and how words, concepts and perceptions change over time. You can listen to an mp3 recording of the interview.

If you type the word "adopt" into Google, you will see that only half of the first 10 entries apply to children. If you add a dash and the letter "a" to create the ubiquitous "adopt-a-" you will see that only 2 mention actual adoption.

I was sitting at a table sipping tea when I heard a man say to another, “You know he’s a little b**tch, right?” Um, gee what was he trying to say? That the man was gay? That the man expressed feelings? Perhaps the person in question was on the rag, metaphorically speaking. Not the first time I’ve heard men using the B-word to refer to another man in such a manner. Dyslogistic speech is a word or group of words used to express disapproval or intended as an insult. Now any word could be a pejorative term so context is extremely important. Here is an example:

Cross Posted At Megan's Minute I'm baaaaaaaack! It's a New Year, a new day and today Megan's Minute is all about words. Yesterday I read this Reuters article via MSNBC.com about a "surge" of cliches that used to be "sweet" and "awesome" but which are now a "perfect storm" of bad "wordsmithing." An excerpt: "Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics. The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence" The complete list includes "under the bus," "back in the day," "it is what it is," and "give back." Though I agreed with most of the words on the university's list I have to admit a special fondness for the word "awesome" and the phrase "thrown under the bus." But the university's list got me thinking and I came up with some phrases I'd like to add to the their list:

The little angel recently started Spanish lessons. I'm not sure if we'll stay with them this year; she's only three. However, I took Spanish up through college and wish I'd stayed with it. I think having more than one language is a total blessing, and something not so possible growing up the child of two English-only speaking Iowans in a homogenous small town that didn't offer its only foreign