Sheem, shim, and hez

The English language is lacking three words. I have noticed this linguistic gap periodically over the years, and more so now that I am a blogger. But the other day it really came to a head. So I have decided to invent three new words to fill the gap. These new words are sheem, shim, and hez.

Let me explain.

As you recall, in my last entry I was talking about what you should do when approaching a door with a person walking behind you. At what distance are you obliged to hold the door for him or her?

Wait, stop! Look at the last four words of the question I just posed—“for him or her.” The proper construction of the question requires a singular personal pronoun because it refers back to the words “a person” in the previous sentence. Do you follow? Thus, it would be incorrect for me to say “for them” in this instance, because “them” is plural. And I can’t say “for it,” because “it” is not a personal pronoun—“it” refers to things.

I find that in certain situations (my last blog entry being an example), I am constantly having to write “he or she,” “him or her,” or “his or her.” The result, in my view, is writing that becomes repetitive, strained, and even awkward. Why must I continually have to insert two pronouns? Why isn’t there just one pronoun to account for this?

Let me sum up what I am trying to say by posing the problem like this: In the English language, there is no such thing as a singular, personal, but non-gender-specific pronoun. Again, if I am talking in a plural sense, I can use them or they. If I am talking about something that is not a person, I can use it. If I am talking about a male I can use he, and if a female, she. But if talking about a singular person where gender is not specified, I have to use two pronouns—“he or she,” “him or her,” or “his or her.” Are you still with me?

My solution to this problem is to invent three new words: sheem, shim, and hez. They sound funny when you first read or say them, I admit, but I suggest that the reason for this is because they’ve never been used before. Specifically, then, I propose that:

In instances where one would write or say “he or she,” the word sheem shall be used.

In instances where one would write or say “him or her,” the word shim shall be used.

In instances where one would write or say “his or her,” the word hez shall be used.

There are three reasons why I chose sheem, shim, and hez as the new words. First, any pronoun has to be short. Nobody wants to be saddled with pronouns that are two or three syllables, especially when we are all used to I, we, they, him, etc. Second, they need to have a “roll off the tongue” quality, much like our present pronouns. I believe that sheem, shim, and hez have that quality. I can picture young children quite naturally learning their pronouns—I, you, he, she, sheem, it, etc.—without skipping a beat. And third, the new words must have a similar sound to existing pronouns. I believe my new words do. In other words, sheem is a much better candidate to substitute for “he or she” than dup, or something like that.

As a quick example, you might recall that in my last blog entry I wrote the following sentence: “I think it would be nicer if the person just went on his or her way and did not hold the door for me.” Implementing my new words, this sentence would now be: “I think it would be nicer if the person just went on hez way and did not hold the door for me.” Much easier and less cumbersome, don’t you think?

So, do you like this idea? Would you be willing to accept and incorporate three new words into your daily vocabulary to repair this long-festering hole in the English language? I’m just asking you to think about it. Believe me, I wouldn’t force a person to do anything that sheem wouldn’t want to do.

I need a ruling . . . holding the door

I was surprised to have received quite a bit of feedback and conversation on my last “I need a ruling” segment. If you recall, that entry dealt with what to do when someone has a sneezing fit. Do you keep saying “Bless you” over and over and over? I continue to work on two strategies. One is to have a “two ‘Bless you’” limit, after which the sneezer is on his or her own. The other is to wait until the entire fit is over, then to give one “blanket ‘Bless you’” to cover all the sneezes in the series. I’m not sure which one I like better. I continue to experiment.

Meanwhile, here’s another one that drives me crazy (in terms of the inner torment I incur by thinking of seeming trivialities in such excruciating detail). In a nutshell, the question is: When entering the door of a building/office/store/etc., how far behind you must a person be in order for you to be obliged to hold the door for him or her?

The reason I ponder this is two-fold, really. First, I don’t want to be impolite and not hold a door for a person when I should. Second, though, is that people often hold a door open for me when I am far, far away from the door. I then feel an unspoken compulsion to walk faster to get to the door, grab hold of it, and thank the person. The thing is, I feel a little put out because I’d really prefer to saunter to the door at my own pace. But instead, I have to change what I am doing in order to accommodate someone who is trying to be nice to me. Do you see what I’m saying? In such an instance, I think it would be nicer if the person just went on his or her way and did not hold the door for me.

Think of it this way. If a person was walking three feet behind you, you would not think twice about extending the common courtesy of holding the door. But if a person was one hundred feet behind you, you would not hold the door—the thought of doing so wouldn’t even cross your mind because of the great distance.

Somewhere in between there exists what I call the “ambiguous zone.” For me, it is, say, about twenty to thirty feet. I often find myself approaching a door, knowing that someone is in that area of uncertainty. Questions begin to besiege my mind. Just how far back is the person? Are his hands full? Is he gaining on me, or am I opening on him? Should I ignore his presence back there and just blast through the door on my own? But I don’t want to be rude. If he thinks he is within a fair distance to receive such a courtesy, and I don’t give it, he might think I’m impolite. On the other hand, if I stop to hold the door, and he is further back than I thought, it could be awkward as I stand there, holding the door and waiting.

I have tentatively settled on a rule of thumb of about fifteen to twenty feet (five to seven adult paces) as the maximum distance for holding a door (barring any obvious extenuating circumstances). Anything less than this distance provides a flow of interaction where a courtesy and greeting can be naturally extended. Once you get beyond that distance, things become a bit strained, even awkward, and the courtesy you wish to extend may not even be wanted. But I must admit, even this tentative practice leaves me uncomfortable and uncertain at times.

Well, what do you say? I am overthinking the whole thing, right? There’s really no need to apply this kind of analysis to an event that lasts only a few seconds, is there?

Can I get a ruling on this?

Thirty years ago today

“What we have here is the rarest of sporting events,” said Al Michaels in his pre-game analysis of the 1980 Winter Olympic hockey game between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In more recent years, he reflected that the confluence of events leading up to the game was so extraordinary that something like it could never happen again. And I believe he is right about that.

In terms of the game itself, you had the Soviet hockey machine in high gear, mowing down opponent after opponent. A few months before the 1980 games, they came to America to play a series of exhibition games against NHL teams—and routed them. And in another exhibition game just three days before the start of the Lake Placid games, they crushed the U.S. Olympic team 10-3. The U.S. team, though playing in their home country, was not expected to win a medal. The Soviets were expected to win the gold and not be challenged.

But the U.S. went on a roll after a dramatic last-minute goal in their first Olympic game, tying highly favored Sweden 2-2. Buoyed with confidence, the team defeated Czechoslovakia and three other teams to advance to the medal round. Much to everyone’s surprise, they would play the Soviets on February 22, 1980.

Of course, this “extraordinary confluence of events” referred also to the world events that were going on at the time. The Iranian hostage crisis. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The American “malaise” and low national self-esteem of the late 1970s. The Cold War was as hot as any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and America seemed to be at its weakest. This hockey game just seemed like another area where the U.S. would be embarrassed.

But we all know the story. The U.S. would just not let the game get out of hand, and trailed by only one goal going into the final period. Then two quick goals halfway through the third period sent the Lake Placid crowd into bedlam. The team held precariously to a 4-3 lead to the very end, when Michaels bellowed what is probably the most famous broadcasting call in sports history: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

The victory, and the gold medal (clinched two days later in a victory over Finland) led to a spontaneous outburst of patriotism in America. As team Captain Mike Eruzioine has said, the gold medal didn’t make us win the Cold War, or get the Russians to leave Afghanistan, but it sure did help people to feel proud about their country again. Instead of the constant television images of Iranians burning American flags, we saw people—Americans—enthusiastically waving the flag.

This game took place when I was two weeks shy of my fourteenth birthday, and it has always had a very special place in my memory. I think this is because it happened when I was at an age where I was first “waking up to the world,” in a sense. I was alive during the latter days of the Vietnam War and Watergate, but I was too young to say that I experienced these in a personal way.

But for me, the age of thirteen was when I started to pay attention (a little) to what was happening in the world, and what it all meant for my country. I can remember that the Iranian hostage crisis was the first real international story that I followed on a day-to-day basis, and like most Americans, I found it terribly frustrating. If America was a powerful country that stood for freedom and liberty, then why could we not get our hostages home?

So, I look back at the Miracle on Ice game as the first (of many) real, personal memories of a rekindling of American pride during this era. And while I agree that it had no real effect on ending the international crises of the day, I fondly remember this game, and the gold medal in Lake Placid, as a turning point of sorts for our nation.

Both of my sons enjoy watching the highlights of that game, as well as the various retrospectives and of course the 2004 movie Miracle. One thing I cherish is that I do not have to go to a history book or a highlight reel to reconstruct the magic of the Miracle on Ice game. Rather, I had the privilege to have lived through it as it happened.

A few of my favorite movies, vol. 1

Thought I’d share a few of my favorite movies with you, and why I like them.

Rocky (1976) – I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and let me tell you, our boring field trips to the Philadelphia Art Museum were never the same after Rocky came out. All of a sudden, we all wanted to go out to the front steps, run up to the top, then strut around with arms raised high, just like Rocky. With all of the caricatures (“Yo! Adrian!”) and cheesy, plot-starved, commercially-driven sequels, it is easy to forget that the original was quite good. It’s hard not to get choked up when Rocky struggles with all his might to pull himself off the canvas in the 14th round.

Chariots of Fire (1981) – One of two movies that I have seen that immediately made me want to be a better Christian (Passion of the Christ is the other). Was there really someone who was so serious about his Christian commitment that he wouldn’t run in the Olympics on a Sunday? Some movies that are based on a true story employ artistic license, but as far as I know, Eric Liddle really did run the 400 meter race in the 1924 Olympics clutching a piece of paper that said “Those who honor Me, I will honor” (1 Samuel 2:30). Very, very inspirational.


The Untouchables (1987) – Great cast with Connery, Costner, DeNiro, etc. My favorite line is repeated throughout by Connery: “What are you prepared to do?” I think this is a question that Christians ought to ask themselves every day (about their Christian life, not about hunting down bootleggers in Chicago). This question was the title of the first sermon that I ever preached.

A Few Good Men (1992) – Okay, everybody together . . . “You can’t handle the truth!” This is a great based-on-a-true-story drama (the real-life lawyer practices in the Norfolk area and runs TV adds with scenes from the movie), with great deliveries by Cruise, Nicholson, Keifer, et al. I have always thought that this movie gives an outstanding portrayal of the institutional and cultural differences between the Navy and the Marine Corps. Many times in my Navy career, as I witnessed this or that situation, I was reminded of this movie while observing the interactions between Marines and sailors.

That Thing You Do! (1996) – Probably in my top 3 of all time. I love the funny little running jokes like the “Oneders,” the small town quaintness, the excitement of the rise of the band, the sentimentality of a first kiss, and the Beatle-esque music. A great depiction of the waning days of innocence before the country went haywire in the mid-late 60s.

Olympic update

So, are you catching much of the Olympics? I love the Winter Olympics. In fact, I like them better than the Summer Olympics. I think it is because the winter games have a lot of intriguing sports (and I’ll use that term loosely) that you just don’t see every day. Ski jumping, luge, and bobsledding come to mind.

One thing I realize as I watch some of these events is that I have no idea what is going on. But do you really need to know all the in’s and out’s when such riveting competition is taking place? Take the women’s curling competition last night. Now, if you are not aware, curling is a “sport,” fairly popular in Canada and now elsewhere, that combines the toughest and most grueling elements of shuffleboard, walking on an icy driveway, and trying to get a stain off the kitchen floor with a mop. The idea is to get the “stone” in the middle of the bullseye. I sat spellbound as the game between the U.S. and Japan came down to a measurement of which team’s stone was closest to the bullseye. As the judge proceeded to do the deed, one television announcer said to the other, “Now, tell us how they are going to do this.” I thought to myself, “No, first let me take a guess. They’re going to take some sort of ruler-like device, place it on the ice, and measure it. The measurement of lesser value will be the winner. Am I close?”

I also thought it was a lot of fun watching moguls the other night. I understood what the athletes were doing, but I had no idea what the commentators were saying. The course was pretty straightforward: lots and lots of moguls on a steep hill, with two ramps fairly evenly spaced, off of which the skiers would do some kind of spin-flip. Then they skied to the finish, raising both arms in victory regardless of how they did. Of course, I’d do the same thing if I was able to make it to the bottom of that hill. But as I said, the commentators lost me in a sea of euphemisms. Apparently several of the skiers didn’t “form it out” enough. Some “got big” while others needed to “get bigger.” Some of the best ones “got big” and “had a lot of heat,” while others performed with varying degrees of bigness and heat.

At some point I watched some luge, one of my favorites. It’s too bad that the Olympics got off to such a rough start on account of the luge tragedy. But as I watched, I chuckled as the commentator, as if trying to drive home a poignant observation, said that all of the competitors were within a few seconds of one another. Really? Let’s think about this for a second. Every luger (excuse me, “luge athlete”) wears a variation of the same silly, multi-colored one-piece outfit. They all lay flat on their back, on essentially the same device, and go down the same track. Why is it surprising that their times are all almost the same? I’m pretty sure that with a little practice, I could luge down that track and be within at least three seconds of a bronze medal. Except I wouldn’t wear one of those outfits.

Pretty bold claim, huh? Well, enough for now. I’ll keep watching . . . and listening to the coverage that makes it all so crystal clear.

Until next time, Go World!

President’s Day musings

When I think of John Adams (one of my heroes), I normally think of the John Adams of 1776. In the crucial days leading up to July 4th, he was the undisputed “voice of independence.” While other delegates strolled in and out of Philadelphia, Adams was a constant. His speeches were passionate and persuasive. His expression of thought was crystal clear. His work was tireless (he was on a few dozen committees). He was unflinchingly insistent that declaring independence was the correct course of action. It was no doubt an exhilirating time in his life.

But 1797-1801 was a different story. During these years, John Adams served as the second President of the United States. And what might seem to us to be a pretty nice gig for the Revolutionary era hero turned out to be more of a nightmare.

First of all, Adams had the dubious task of succeeding the enormously popular George Washington (who had been elected to two terms by unanimous electoral vote). Washington was for the most part above criticism. But by the election of 1796, factions had arisen—Federalists and Democratic-Republicans—and the next president would certainly feel the full brunt of the scrutiny and ridicule of his opponents. Adams, a Federalist, was that man, and he indeed felt the fury of Democratic-Republican attacks.

Second, Adams presided over the first major international crisis that the nation faced after winning its independence. And as is the case in many crises, he found himself bereft of friends.

Here’s the crisis in a nutshell:

1. Rival powerhouses England and France were duking it out in the Napoleonic Wars.

2. Both countries took advantage of our young nation by harassing American ships on the high seas.

3. President Washington had declared our neutrality, and dispatched an envoy to England to arrive at a treaty to stop British harassment of our ships (Jay’s Treaty, for all you history buffs).

4. This treaty upset the French.

5. As Adams entered office in 1797, the French stepped up their seizure and confiscation of American ships, and considered declaring war on us.

What ensued has been termed the “Quasi-War” with France, an undeclared war that lasted from 1798-1800. The quasi-war consisted of tit-for-tat harassment of ships between the two nations. And while Adams ordered a speedy ramp-up of naval ship construction and general war preparedness, he held tightly to one important conviction: A conventional, declared war with France must be avoided at all costs. All-out war would cripple our fledgling, infant nation. We were just too weak.

Sounds reasonable, right? Well, as it turns out, in the politically polarized atmosphere of the 1790s, Adams soon found himself very alone.

Consider first his Vice President and old “Spirit of ‘76” buddy Thomas Jefferson. They were friends, right? Well, not exactly. Not at this point, anyway. Jefferson was actually a Democratic-Republican who opposed Adams and the Federalists on practically every major issue of the day. What’s more, while serving as Vice President, Jefferson wrote some pretty nasty things about Adams in letters to friends, and with a hidden hand orchestrated a smear campaign against Adams in the press.

(By the way, notice how President Adams and Vice President Jefferson were of different political factions. This was the case because back then, when electing a President, the second-place finisher became Vice President. Fortunately that has changed. Imagine, for example, if President Bush’s VPs had been Al Gore and John Kerry.)

What about his own “party,” the Federalists? Well, as Adams tried to walk the tightrope of preparing for, yet staying out of declared conflict, Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, began to beat the war drums rather loudly. And they too began to skewer Adams.

What about the American public? Sometimes a President can take his case directly to the people. Well, for Adams, there was no such luck. War fever swept across the country with news of French provocations (remember the XYZ Affair?) and fears of a thousand French warships coming over the horizon to invade American shores.

So, everywhere Adams turned, he was opposed. The Quasi-War with France ended in 1800, and all-out war had not been declared. But the whole experience was an extremely unpleasant one for Adams. On Inauguration Day 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as our third President, Adams left Washington D.C. early in the morning, under cover of darkness, to return home to Massachusetts, miserable and dejected.

Oh—one more note about Adams and the Quasi-War. Nowadays, historians generally agree that Adams did exactly the right thing by avoiding war with France. By all reasonable accounts, a war with France—or any major world power—would have destroyed our infant nation that was just learning to crawl, let alone walk.

So, as they say, what does all of this have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, when I reflect on John Adams and the crisis with France in the 1790s, it reminds me that sometimes in life when you take a stand for what is right, you will be resolutely opposed from all sides. People who you thought of as friends all of a sudden won’t be. Those who you think would most assuredly agree with you don’t. Those who should be able to see the harmful effects of a bad course can’t. You stand vulnerable to undue criticism and even ridicule. And you suffer a lot of rejection and loneliness.

I admire John Adams for a lot of reasons. He was not a perfect man, nor a perfect President (the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 are a noted black mark on his presidency, for instance). But he certainly was one of the greats. This President’s Day, I am thankful that he was willing to “stick to his guns” under the most trying of circumstances, in order to, in a very real sense, save us from ourselves.

What do you know?

I left off the other day posing the question of whether bees eat honey, or if they merely make honey. The question was prompted by the James Taylor lyric, “How sweet it is to be loved by you . . . just like honey to the bee, babe.” I said that perhaps the lyric should be, “just like honey to the human.”

My sister, a budding bee-keeper, informed me that bees indeed eat honey in addition to making it. Thus it would appear that the lyric is okay. But in order to be fully satisfied in my mind, I have to ask one more question. Sure, bees eat honey. But do they think that honey is sweet? For if bees consider honey to be sweet, then the lyric of the song is totally appropriate—your love for me is so sweet, it’s “just like honey to the bee, babe.” But if bees don’t think honey is sweet, well, then the lyric just doesn’t work.

Now, here is where I transition from silliness to serious thoughts.

How can we ever know if bees think that honey is sweet? They can’t speak to us to confirm it. They have no other ways of direct communication. I’m going to suggest that we can’t know for sure if bees think honey is sweet. But I admit I’m not a scientist, nor a bee-ologist. I suppose it’s possible to run some scientific experiments, or make some inferences based on human or bee behavior, that could help us answer this question. But ultimately, we can’t get inside a little bee-brain and know for sure whether the bee thinks that honey is sweet.

Regardless of the answer to the bee/honey question, contemplating this idea led me to another thought, and admittedly, it is not original. That is, despite our high level of technology and advanced scientific know-how, there are some things that just can’t be known by way of science. The bee/honey situation is a silly instance, but let me give you another, more serious example of what I mean.

Suppose I were to ask: How did the universe come into existence? Many, perhaps most, might answer that a few billion years ago there was a “big bang” that set in motion the natural forces and processes that started the universe. I would then ask: Okay, well, what caused the big bang? And one might come up with an explanation. But I would then ask: Well, what caused that? And so on, and so on.

You see, scientific theories such as the big bang, evolution, etc., may or may not be true, but one thing they can’t do is allow us to know how it all started. We can always go back one more step in “history” and ask how that event occurred. (All this, by the way, is basically one of Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God, which he postulated back in the 13th century. God is the “first mover.”)

Obviously, science can be very useful. I tend to be a fan of science, especially when I have a bad headache and need to pop a few Tylenol, or whenever the use of a combustible engine makes my life easier. But it has its limits. There are some things that we just can’t know through science.

As you know from reading my blog, I am a Christian. I believe in God. I believe that God created the universe. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that in my life, I have spoken to people who do not believe in God, and feel that the idea of a supernatural creator is a fairy tale, or a crutch for intellectual laziness, or not in keeping with established scientific “facts.” But when I think about what honey tastes like to the bee, or what caused the alleged big bang, or the mysteries of the nonmaterial parts of a human being (like the soul), I come to the conclusion that science can give only limited answers. To me, it makes just as much sense, if not more, to think that there is a Creator who made the universe and governs and preserves it, than to think that a big bang just happened one day for no apparent reason.

Of course, if one believes in a God who created and sustains the universe, then there is another inescapable and sometimes uncomfortable question: If there is such a God, how should I relate to Him?