Words go extinct just like rare animals, and it's a shame.

Whatever happened to "shall"? And "whom"?

When was the last time you used either one in conversation? I'm betting never.

When I was growing up, those words were common currency. They denoted a certain formality: "To whom do you wish to speak?" It has a deliciously pretentious air that instantly disarms the inquirer, lets him or her know that he/she is in polite company and should be on his/her best behavior.

And isn't it sort of grand how the Civil Rights anthem "We shall overcome" reflects the Bible?
What if they'd sung, instead, "We will overcome"? "Will" doesn't have the weight of "shall".

I'm not saying we ought not scrap certain words from time to time: "participle" is pretty much gone (any idea what it means?), as is "verisimilitude", a great old word that died, I think, pretty much because it had too many syllables. We're in a hurry these days and don't have time to mouth such a word -- especially since no one else knows what it means anyway.

A quick perusal -- uh oh, there's another one -- of the dictionary reveals words that, because they don't refer to anything relavant to modern life, have been more or less annihilated. (And isn't "annihilated" itself a splendid word?) On a single dictionary page, you'll find "crypt" and "cudgel" and even "cuff link". A few pages over, there's "cursive" and "curvaceous" and "cuspidor". All these words describe outdated customs or values, or stuff we just don't talk about any more (e.g., the cuff links) . . . or never knew about (e.g., "cudgels" and "cuspidor[s]".

But what about such wonderfully evocative words as "cur"? A great insult: "You, sir, are no better than a common cur." (Cur, by the way, is a mongrel dog.) It indicates not just contempt for one's adversary but also control over one's emotions. Consider this alternative: "I'm going to stab you to death, motherfucker!" Doesn't the second give you a chill? Doesn't the first, when you think back, calm you? The first guy may end up shooting you in a duel, but you know that he will first give you a chance to gracefully demur (another excellent word on its way out). The second guy doesn't want to -- and probably can't -- talk about it; he wants to kill you.

There are so many words that are going extinct -- because we don't use them, or even know them -- that it's worth noting. We shouldn't try to retrieve them all, but we should lament their passing.

Think of "curmudgeon". Don't we all know crusty old men, usually ill-tempered but sometimes surprisingly tender (e.g., with grandchildren or with memories), who could be called this? Can you think of a better word for these old guys?

One of my own personal favorites is "strumpet". The dictionary defines it as "prostitute", but you know as well as I do, just from looking at the word and letting it trip out over your tongue, that it means a lot more than that. It conjures a pretty and saucy girl who plays men like they were instruments. Sure she's loose and makes lots of mistakes, but wouldn't you like to spend a little time with her?

Ours is a living language, and we have to expect, even welcome, constant changes. For instance, I have no objection to "online" and "input" and "networking". They all reflect, for better or worse, who we are and what we're becoming. They're all related to the computer, and they're all here to stay, so get used to it.

But they don't have much music in them, do they?

Have you ever heard the word "fey" (pronounced "fay")? Probably not. It means anything from gifted to crazy to doomed, or even fated to die. It was never used more than sparingly, and it's not used at all anymore. Too bad.

Oh, and when (on the same dictionary page) was the last time someone called you "fickle"? Does anyone refer to a disaster of judgment as a "fiasco" any more? And what in the world is/was "fiberboard"?

Look 'em up. It's worth your time.

The most selfless act is cooking for your family.

I thought about calling this "The most selfless act is cooking for others," but I soon realized that such a title would include single people cooking special meals for their friends and even real chefs cooking great meals in restaurants. But those are lifestyle/career choices, with their own built-in rewards. No, what I'm talking about is cooking for a spouse and children. Year after year . . .

When I was a poor graduate student/father -- poor as in food stamps -- I made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for my kids day after day, to the point that they can't stand to eat either one now. But I was doing my best to provide for them and using up lots of time to do it -- time I could have spent reading books and studying.

Later, when I could afford better food, I tried to come up with a better menu: pot roasts and grilled chicken breasts and potatoes and veggie side dishes. The result? The kids pushed the food around on the plate, hoping for take-out. So once a week we went to McDonald's.

And then came the food problems. First it was a daughter who declared herself a vegetarian.
No more pot roasts. No more take-out. Not even fish ("They have faces, dad!"). Then a son who had acid-reflux, so that he couldn't eat anything fried. Again, nix the take-out. We were down to mashed potatoes -- but hold the butter. And, of course, no one, including the vegetarian, really liked vegetables.

What the hell did they expect to eat?

These children are now, more or less, out on their own and having to find their own ways in the world, including meals. But this begs the point, actually.

Suppose all your kids ate naturally, ate whatever was served, and had no eating problems. You gave them macaroni and cheese and hot dogs when they were little and packed their school lunches with sandwiches and fruit and a snack. Suppose you cooked your spouse his favorite meal involving meat and potatoes and maybe some hot rolls but not much else.

Did you get any credit? Probably not.

You may have gotten praise when you cooked a Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner, but what about all the routine meals you dished up over the years? What about all those school lunches? What about all the hours you spent in the kitchen when you could have been at the club or reading a novel or shopping or riding your bike or anything else? Any gratitude? I'm guessing not.

So why did/do you do it? It can't be because you're hoping for thanks, so what is it?

I think it's just a basic instinct to keep the damned family fed. Just as we try to keep our kids -- and maybe our spouse -- warmly clad in the winter and away from dangerous things (no sky-diving, dear), it's a natural thing to look after those we love. So much we do for them will never be rewarded, no matter how much we wish it would be. Which means, in the end, that we do it for ourselves. We feel better for having done it. We did what we thought was right.

On the other hand, it would help if one of the ingrates would occasionally say "Thank you."

Christmas is not just about Jesus -- but maybe it is.

I know that we all, as good Christians -- if that's what we are -- grew up thinking that Christmas celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ. It's the foundation of the Christian religion. But you and I know that it's gone way beyond that. Christmas has become sort of a national holiday -- a whole season -- of giving and receiving. It's grown beyond its religious beginnings to mean something more to the greater society, and, in the meantime, it's become more secular, meaning that Christmas, to most of us, means the buying and giving of presents. But I think the Jesus story is still in there somewhere.

We all have mixed emotions about the commercial direction Christmas has taken, but I don't think we should be so conflicted. Doesn't the original idea of Christmas involve the giving of gifts? The Wise Men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus?

So why shouldn't we all feel free to expand on that idea to include giving gifts to each other?

And isn't it convenient -- not just for us but for Best Buy and Walmart and Target and Circuit City, etc. -- that we have agreed to give our gifts at this particular time? We all value those who have given to us in so many ways, throughout out lives, so isn't it convenient that we're given this one day to thank them all? Shouldn't we be thankful that we can reward and recognize all those important people in our lives on this one chosen day? Christmas. The day we thank those who are important to us and accept gifts from those who consider us important. In a very real way, it's a special day. And very secular: like a big birthday for all of us at once.

But I don't think this has to leave Jesus out of the equation. "Do unto those as you would have them do unto you," he said. So what does that mean at this time of year? That we should give not just to each other but also to our favorite charity, whether it's our local homeless shelter or battered women's home or food bank or the place they keep all those animals that are about to be euthanized. There is much giving that can be done at this time of year, to each other and to causes we support, and I think Jesus would have approved of it all.

And maybe, while we're thinking about it, we should consider not rewarding ourselves and our loved ones quite so extravagantly. I gew up in a family that didn't have much, where I got one present on Christmas morning. But if it was the right present -- the one I'd asked for -- I was thankful and happy! (One year it was a football, and I played with it all day long -- Joe Montana threw me passes I threw to myself all day long!) My own kids get more presents every year than they can use or appreciate in a lifetime. Shameful, and I blame myself.

Still, I think we can balance the secularization of Christmas with the religion of Christmas, if we just realize that we've all adopted it as a special day of our own, for our own purposes. It is the
day of giving -- us to each other, and Jesus as our gift from God, to redeem of us our sins (or so we hope!). I don't see those as mutually exclusive concepts.

That means we can put up a nativity scene and a Christmas tree and sing songs about both.

And doesn't Christmas have all the best songs? Can you think of another holdiday with even a fraction of the great songs of Christmas? No way. And they are equally divided between the wonderfully religious -- "O Little Town" and "We Three Kings" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", etc. -- and the purely secular -- "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Chistmas" and all those songs about Santa Claus.

I think Christmas is all about giving thanks for our shared humanity and for the Great Whoever that made it possible. I celebrate the mystery and love the idea that a God I know is probably not the God who is. Come on, now: who would want to worship a God he/she really understood?

Love the season for what it is: a celebration of the mystery that is you and me and us and for our amazing need to give to each other, if just once a year.

And as Tiny Tim said in Charles Dickens' famous Christmas story, "God bless us one and all." Amen.

You're smarter than you think -- and dumber, too.

Let's suppose you work (1) cleaning houses or (2) teaching at a university or (3) selling real estate or (4) running a corporation or (5) collecting trash. I could go on and on, but the same principles apply, no matter what you're doing to earn your paycheck.

So you clean the houses of other people for a living. Maybe you do this because you didn't go to school long enough to get the degrees that would allow you to do other work, or maybe you do it because you're between jobs or looking for that first "good" job. Anyway, you're doing it.

You're smart. You observe every day how other people live their lives, within their homes.
You see how even the very rich can be sloppy and negligent, how even the most privileged among us leave wet towels on the bathroom floor and let their kids' rooms pile up with dirty laundry. You get a glimpse into what it's like to be so busy with social obligations that the ordinary day-to-day chores go undone -- which is why they hired you. You get an insight into that lifestyle you may covet but can't possess and how it all depends on you, the hired help.

You're dumber only if you think that the rich live lives totally different from yours. They
still have kids who act up, who go out of control. They have husbands who misbehave, wives who think that because they married wealthy men that they are somehow superior to you. The only difference between you and them is that they live in nicer houses. If you're smart, you go home and teach your kids how to pick up after themselves. It's a skill they will need later in life, regardless of who they grow up to be.

Or maybe you teach at a university. You don't do this because you're passionate about teaching freshmen but because you loved the subject of your Ph.D. and took all the classes your school had to offer until someone tapped you on the shoulder and said, "You'll have to leave now. We don't have any more degrees to offer you."

So you went on the market and got a job, and now you're teaching at Whatever College or University (or Community College, God help you). Being a new prof, you're assigned to intro level courses. You try to convey to your students the same interest you had in your Ph.D. subject, but they yawn and look at their watches -- maybe crank up their iPods -- and can't wait until the class is over.

You can overcome this, but it requires work. You're smarter than you think: you can make this work! But you're also dumber, if you expect your students -- who come from every ethnic and economic and otherwise background -- to be as interested in what you're teaching as you were when you were an undergrad and then a grad student. Well, they aren't -- duh! What you have to do is find a way to retrace your own thinking about that subject and re-discover what made YOU interested in it and then try to re-create that in your students. If you can re-connect yourself to your students, you'll be a great teacher.

Good luck.

Let's suppose you're selling real estate. You look at a house you're commissioned to sell, and you see that it's in a "hot" part of town: no problem. Customers are going to come in and put their money down, and you'll get your commission. No selling required. But what if you have a property that is rundown, or in a not-so-hot part of town? How do you sell that? You're smart, remember? You look at the people signed up to view it, and you decide which clients will be interested in "fixing up" the property because they like that part of town or because they don't have big money to spend, or whatever reason. You're dumber only if you try to push the property onto someone who is looking for something better. You're also dumber if you try to sell clients something they really can't afford and that will eventually go into foreclosure. You're smart if you accurately match your clients to the property; you're dumb if you just go for the sale. Your future is in past clients who trust you as well as future clients -- and those referrals and recommendations you get from satisfied customers. Right?

Now let's suppose that you've gotten your prestigious degree(s) and that you've risen through the ranks so that you're running a company. It doesn't matter what kind of company, as any good business student knows. Business is business: the basic principles apply, regardless.
And what are those principles? Number one, make a profit. Number two, keep your most valued employees happy. Number three, don't confuse your job with your life.

Everybody is depending on you to make the company not just profitable but attractive to future buyers/shareholders. What is smart? What is dumb? What is smart is to see where you are in the market and if you have a chance of expanding your share of that market. What is dumb is
to let opportunities slip away because you couldn't see beyond your own job security. Put the company's interests ahead of your own, however painful that may be in the short term.

Do not, however put the company's interests ahead of your workers' interests. It is inexcusably dumb to alienate your workers by not showing any sympathy/empathy with them. Did you take the heat from above and not let it all fall on your workers? Did you try to shield them from corporate wrath so that they could keep doing their jobs? And did you let them do their jobs without your constant micro-managing? Did you give them time off when they really needed it, to look after loved ones in need? Did you respect them as humans doing the best they could, under always difficult circumstances? If you're going to be hiring new employees constantly, that's not good for business -- and you're likely to lose them, too. Be a good and fair boss.

Oh, and don't confuse your job with your life, remember? You have a family, or at least those who love you and want to spend time with you. Don't short-change them. When your working days are done, you'll need them to be with you and remind you of who you were when you weren't chasing The Almighty Buck. If you lose them, you'll be forever sorry. And lonely.

Now let's suppose that what you do to earn a paycheck is collecting trash. How are you smart? How are you dumb? You're smart if you understand that your job is essential to the functioning of our society: someone has to collect that trash. You're dumb if you don't realize that many people who take this job are losers who had to take it because they had no other options. What can you do to make yourself stand out as smart? Do the job, without complaining -- even when it's bitterly cold outside, or it's raining, or you have a cold yourself -- and try to be cheerful. It's not easy, of course, but you're smart, and you know the boss is watching. Who do you think he/she is going to promote to driving the truck when the curent driver quits? Obviously the person who has been the least trouble to him/her, the person who has done what was required with the least griping, right?

And, in the meantime, you have gained useful information about what we, as a society, choose to throw away. Useful info for a future novel or non-fiction book about our disposable society.

We are as smart or dumb as we choose to be. I could go on and on about particular professions, but it all comes down to the same thing: observe and learn, and you'll succeed; go for the quick
buck -- at the expense of others -- and you'll eventually be looking for other work. Employers, on whatever level, look for employees who totally embrace whatever job they're given. When I was in the army, I once had the task of burning the shit of my fellow soldiers in big barrels. What did I learn from that job? That you can't give me a job I can't do. And do well.

Look at any job you're given as a learning experience. Absorb it and move on. You're smart, remember?