The Life in My Years

“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall.

The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. It’s the weatherperson’s currently in vogue term for what used to be called a gully washer, or a rainstorm, or raining cats and dogs. At the risk of sounding old and out of vogue, I think I prefer the latter terms.

“Out with the old and in with the new.”

Out with torrent and in with atmospheric river.

The vernacular goes through constant change. Words and terms are out and replacements are in. Sometimes the changes are necessary and other times change just guts our language of creativity, color and verve. It turns rich dialectical brioche into sterile, insipid, stale white bread.

Well meaning people make it their job, sometimes with unmitigated presumption, to legislate changes. They sit around a conference room table and sap the energy out of communication. Maybe they aren’t well meaning at all. Maybe they just figure they need something to justify being on the payroll.
“We’ve run out of things to do,” said Stewart.
Miles thought for a moment. “I’ve got it! Let’s sterilize the English language.”

To whatever end, some folks at Stanford University figured they would begin the New Year on a forward-thinking note by unveiling its brand new language guide which aims to “eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased … language in Stanford websites and code.”

That’s not an ignoble goal but the end result had Stanford, as the old saying goes, “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” Given Stanford’s new guidelines, tossing babies is not a good look, linguistically speaking.

As a writer, or someone who just occasionally plays at writing, I peeked at portions of the guide and was aghast. At some point one has to decide if a change is appropriate correction or ham handed mutilation.

The changes outlined in the new guide include replacing the term “Karen” with “demanding or entitled White woman,” and prisoner with “person who is/was incarcerated.” A homeless person should be referred to as “a person without housing,” as if that’s going to bestow some measure of creature comforts on someone who is, like, you know, without housing.
“I appreciate the new moniker — I guess,” said the person without housing. “But a dry place in which to lay my head would be more helpful.”

The old saying “beating a dead horse” is, according Stanford’s language police, now verboten, as it “normalizes violence against animals.” My dad often used that term and I can’t recall a single moment when it triggered in me some deep seated urge to grab a stick and hunt down a deceased equine in the suburbs of the Bay Area. Oh, and by the way, trigger is also a no-no.

I get it, some words and terms have rightly been put to rest and there are certainly others that should be on the chopping block (Chopping block is probably on Stanford’s taboo term list as it might normalize violence against vegetables. One doesn’t chop an onion. The recipe calls for one cup of an onion converted into smaller pieces).

It seems to me that the Stanford folks went a smidge too far. It’s just another of those instances that has other Americans (American is another forbidden word by the way) looking at the Bay Area as a haven for “fornicating people who lack substantial education,” known in the old lingo as “fucking idiots.”

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