4/01/12 WEVEGONEABOUTASFURASWECANGO

FORSYTHIA BLOOMS BRIGHTEN UP THE DINING AREA

EMPTY HUSKS OF AMERICAN CHESTNUTS...

LITTER THE GROUND

Palm Sunday, 8:30 AM.  46 degrees F, wind SW, calm.  The sky is overcast and there is fog over the water.  The humidity is high and it is damp.  The barometer predicts rain.  It is becoming an Ohio-like spring.
    The Forsythia is now in full bloom everywhere and I brought some in to brighten up the house.  A warm sunny day will make the daffodils begin to bloom.  The crocus are about finished. The American Chestnut tree on the corner of Tenth and Manypenny has shed all its chestnuts, the spiny husks lying mostly empty on the ground.  I assume the squirrels got them right away.
    I have always had something of a distaste for acronyms, such a the depression era WPA for Works Progress Administration, CCC for Civilian Conservation Core, the more modern EPA for Environmental Protection Agency, and on and on through all the military terms such as CENTCOM and all sorts of what is gobbledygook to the uninitiated.  I have wondered whether the German Army has acronyms; I bet not, and the run-on words are a foot long. Maybe something like CentralizenKomanderStatFurDerSoldatenUndDerKriegMitGemutlikchkeiteitEinProsit, or worse, so maybe acronyms might be in order when communicating in German. I guess my aversion to acronyms also comes from reading lengthy articles of one kind or another over the years that were filled with jargon to the point one had to have a glossary of terms  to understand what they all meant.  I have read lengthy papers by government agencies which were rendered utterly incomprehensible to the outsider by such verbiage, which one may correctly assume is written with the intent of obfuscating facts and confusing the reader.  I guess the trend should have been clear right from the start, when the United States of America started calling itself the USA, and that was a very long time ago.
    Keeping all that history in mind, I was still taken aback when watching the news last evening and the acronym SCOTOUS, for Supreme Court of the United States was introduced into my lexicon.  At least I had never heard it before, but it is rather a natural, I guess, since we have all become familiar with the abbreviation POTUS for President of the United States.  I guess the next step will be COTUS, for Congress of the United States.  Imagine our cleverness!  We have reduced the sacred three branches of our constitutional government from Executive, Legislative and Judicial to   POTUSCOTUSSCOTUS. 
    It seems to me we have become way to clever by half at least, and like Kansas City in the musical “Oklahoma!”, “They've gone about as fur as they kin go, they’ve gone about as fur as they kin go!
WEVEGONEABOUTASFURASWECANGO