Nouning

All bad writers are in love with the epic.

― Ernest Hemingway

The English language isn't precious; but it has its charms.

So when self-proclaimed wordsmiths defile it, I get pretty sore.

Among the greatest defilers are consultants.

When they speak, gibberish bursts from their mouths like puss from a boil; and when they write—or, as they prefer, when they "wordsmith"—clear English turns into hooey.

Consultants love, in particular, nouning: deadening verbs by converting them into nouns.

Nouning, they believe, elevates their jejune statements—and justifies their fees.

For example:

We're experiencing a disconnect.

Watch for my invite.

I know a foolproof hack.

That was an epic pivot.

That was an epic fail.

Equally vile are headline writers. 

When they start nouning, you'd better reach for the kidney dish. 

For example:

AMC hoping sales reach $5.2 billion. Here’s why that’s a big ask.

Windows 11 preview: What’s in the latest build?

Dems put divides aside, rally behind Biden.

Need a good eat plan?

Feeling anxious? Declutter your overwhlem.

Nouns like these aren't just pompous. They're nauseating.

"Many of us dislike reading or hearing clusters of such nouns," says wordsmith Henry Hitchens.

"We associate them with legalese, bureaucracy, corporate jive, advertising or the more hollow kinds of academic prose. Writing packed with nominalizations is commonly regarded as slovenly, obfuscatory, pretentious or merely ugly."

Ugly is right.

So I ask—as your consultant—need a solve for this problem?

The next time you encounter a nouner, grab a hammer.

Day of Infamy

A malicious arson attack.

— Suzanne Scott

It seems the brutal War on Christmas came to Fox News this week when a vagrant torched the company's "All American" Christmas tree on New York's Avenue of the Americas.

Caught off guard, company executives immediately compared the incident to Pearl Harbor, even though police said the arsonist had no political motive.

In a memo to the staff, Fox News' CEO Suzanne Scott described the attack as "deliberate and brazen."

"This act of cowardice will not deter us," she said, promising a new All-American Christmas tree would be erected where the old one stood.

Within a day, one was.

At the relighting ceremony, on-air personality Jacques DeGraff told reporters, "These colors don't run," referring to the red, white and blue decorations.

Conflating Christmas with the 4th of July is classic Fox News.

But why network executives should get upset when a citizen then stages a fireworks show makes no sense.

On Top of the Hill

I feel a change comin' on
and the last part of the day's already gone.

— Bob Dylan 

Retirement guru Bob Lowry, whose wide-roaming blog I recommend, struggled this week to define "success in retirement."

Success before retirement is easy to define, he says. 

If you're an employer, success means you never need to shutter your business. 

If you're an employee, success means you never get fired.

Success after retirement, on the other hand, is much harder to define; so much harder, Lowry can't do it.

"The whole idea of success in retirement is so singular that I can't offer my opinions or thoughts on the subject," he says.

Lowry offers instead the well-known poem "What is Success?" as a working definition.

I'm less reticent to offer an opinion. 

I think success in retirement means, like a pippin rose, you just keep blooming.

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who studied personality growth in the 1950s, described retirement as the eighth and final stage of an individual's development, the stage of "ego integrity."

According to Erikson, in retirement, the healthy person, because he has "adapted himself to the triumphs and disappointments of being," blossoms in the fruit of experience.

As he mulls over his life—a compulsion at this stage of ego development—the healthy person enters into "comradeship with the ordering ways of distant times."

The healthy person comes to realize that, when all is said and done, he lived his life with dignity; served humanity in some small way; and did so to the very best of his abilities.

He realizes "it was okay to have been me."

The healthy person, moreover, accepts that he's near the end of life, and, satisfied with past contributions, seeks out ways to make new ones while he still has time, further increasing his satisfaction with life.

The healthy retired person, Erikson says, isn't over the hill, but on top of it.

How about you? Feel a change comin' on?

City of Brotherly Love

 

I'm glad I'm living in the land of the free, where the rich just get richer and the poor you don't ever have to see.

— Randy Newman

Two worlds were on view outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, host this week to Expo Expo, the tradeshow for tradeshow organizers.

One was the world of wealth and conspicuous consumption; the other, the world of poverty and homelessness.

Perhaps because we're aware of the coming holidays—an occasion to reflect on good fortune—more than one attendee mentioned to me that they found Philadelphia's efforts to hide the homeless from visitors' view wanting.

The homeless hovered in doorways and alleys around the convention center, and the streets were squalid, littered with their debris.

Meantime, the caviar and cocktails flowed at the Jean-Georges SkyHigh, atop the nearby Four Seasons Hotel.

This kind of dichotomous display isn't what you'd expect in the US, where we're adept at hiding poverty from visitors' view. In the Philippines, yes. In Indonesia, yes. In the US, no. 

But Philadelphia has bigger problems to worry about.

Visitors' discomfort be damned.

Learning the Lindy

In the mid-1980s, my ex-wife and I got it into our heads we should learn ballroom dancing and enrolled in a 12-week class.

The instructor was a world-class dancer, as graceful and lithe as Gene Kelly. He showed no sympathy or patience for plodding, lubberly clodhoppers like me.

He devoted the class to a single dance, the Lindy, insisting that, if you learned its steps, every other ballroom dance would come easily. 

(For you squares, the Lindy, named for aviator Charles Lindbergh, is a swing dance made popular during the Jazz and Big Band eras. It's better known today as the Jitterbug.)

The Lindy proved too much for me, as it turned out. 

By the end of the class, I not only failed to learn it, I failed to learn any discernable dance step—and nearly forgot how to walk.

Technophobic seniors—of whom there are millions—should heed my experience.

To participate fully in today's world, you need to dance with technology; but you don't have to master the digital equivalent of the Lindy.

For a tech clodhopper, that's a fool's errand.

Instead, just learn how to open a PDF, for example; download and install an app; click through a website; and post on Facebook or Instagram. 

Those steps will do nicely. 

Technophobic seniors are legion: one-third of American seniors—over 18 million people—have never used the Internet, according to Pew Research Center, and two-thirds have never used social media. Of those who do, one-third say they have little or no confidence in their ability to navigate digital technology.

I've encountered my share of these technophobes working as a volunteer for several nonprofits and can tell you their digital incompetence really gums up the works.

I can't imagine how it must gum up their lives, when you can't pay a bill, retrieve a document, order a prescription or make an appointment without using some company's portal.

Technophobic seniors say laptops, tablets and smartphones are too hard to use and that the Internet is an unfathomable labyrinth.

And there's truth to that.

But there are IT and digital literacy crash-courses galore for seniors at public libraries, churches, community centers, storefront academies, and two-year colleges; and, during pandemics, there friends and family members willing and able to tutor.

After all, you don't need Gene Kelly to teach you a few basic steps.

NOTE: If you know a technophobic senior, please print this post and hand it to him. You'll be doing all of us a favor.