Wednesday, November 2, 2011

YEAR

A year is a periodic four letter word.

How do you measure a year?

31536000 seconds, give or take a couple of leap seconds?
8 million blinks of an eye, on average?
About 42 million beats of the human heart?

How many dreams?
How many wishes met and unmet?
How many goals made, achieved, or left behind?

How many words written?
How many stories told?  Or untold?

How many blog posts?  Shall we say... 200?  Sounds like a nice round number to me.

A year ago today was the Tuesday following the first Monday, election day, and people around the United States went to vote in our periodic display of democracy.    As people returned from the polls, they set "I voted" as their Facebook status.  When I returned from casting my ballot, I set my status to "Vote is a four letter word", reviving an old word game.  Two days later, I posted another four letter word status.  Eventually I moved it to this blog.  Over the past year, I posted four letter words commenting on holidays and personal events, words that were silly and serious, and thoughts that were insignificant or of great importance.  And today I'm posting my 200th such entry.

The 1934 edition of Webster's Second International dictionary had 5110 four letter words.

I think I have a ways to go.  

Good.

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