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OPINIONOPINION

 Mountain Views NewsSaturday, August 17, 2024

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

STUART TOLCHIN

ETYMOLOGY…NOT 
BUGS…WORDS!

Anyone know what etymology is? And how is it different from entymology?

Etymology is the study of the origin of words. Look up entymology and suddenly you 
are studying insects. Yuck. The only good insect is a dead insect…right? 

Not so fast there, bucko. 75% of the world’s food crops are pollinated by insects. So, 
no insects and you can say bye bye to most fruits. Coffee would disappear. And the 
worst, say goodbye to chocolate. 

Let’s start our etymological excursion with a nickname I earned in all my years in school…

Dunce! Slow-witted and stupid. We can thank a Scottish theologian and philosopher, Father Friar John 
“Duns” Scotus. Moving on…

Saxophone! No surprise here. The saxophone got its name from its inventor, Adolphe Sax. But wait, 
there’s more. Adolphe also invented the saxotromba, saxhorn and saxtuba. Can the saxguitar be far 
behind?

Chortle! Lewis Carroll, writer of Alice in Wonderland, in his poem “Jabberwocky” describes a character 
chortle in joy. Carroll combined the words chuckling and snorting to come up with chortle.

Checkmate! From the Arabic word “al-shah mata” which means the king died. I guess that’s why you lay 
the King down when you lose at chess. I do that a lot when I play chess. Often my first move.

Plumber! From the Latin word for lead “plumbum” referring to someone who works with lead, a heavy 
metal denser than most materials. I often hear “get the lead out” from my editor.

Tycoon! From the Japanese/Chinese word “taikun” meaning “great ruler”. When Commodore Matthew 
Perry went to Japan in the 1850’s he wanted to meet the top dog, thinking he would be introduced to the 
Emperor. He was introduced to the real power at the time…the Shogun. You might think of Elon Musk, 
Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. I suggest more like Oprah. 

Muskrat A North American animal which had no name in English. So, the word is taken from the 
Algonquian language, musquash, changed into muskrat to describe the smelly (but cute) little mammal. 
No, not me, the muskrat.

Amateur! An amateur does something not for pay (like writing this column lol,) but simply because 
they love it. So, it makes sense amateur come from the Latin root, “amare”, “to love”. I hope you amare 
my columns.

Walrus! We can thank J. R. R. Tolkien for clarity in the origin of the word walrus. The writer of The 
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as a employee of the Oxford English Dictionary wrote at least six 
versions of the etymology of “walrus”. His favorite was the word came from the Dutch. “Walvis” which 
means “whale” and “ros” which means “horse. So, a walrus is, at its root, a “whale-horse”.

Female Most of us think the word female is simply an alteration of the word male. If that’s what you 
think you’re wrong…and undoubtedly a male. Female is the anglicization of femelle, a French word 
meaning “woman”. Male and female evolved separately…one without a brain.

Ostrich. Speaking of critters, I bet you wonder how the ostrich got its name. Tiny head, big, long legs 
and large fluffy body (sounds like me). Ostrich comes from the Greek word “strouthion” which means 
“big sparrow”. Really big!

Hamburger. Most of us neanderthals out here think the word hamburger comes from some combination 
of ham and burger. Don’t be silly. There’s no ham in hamburger. The hamburg steak was created by 
residents of Hamburg, Germany. It was not eaten as a sandwich over there. That would be verboten. As 
German immigrants settled in cities like New York in the 1800’s their Hamburg steak became popular 
street food. Some clever vendor realized you could sell more if you made it easier to eat on the run. 
Walla, add two slices of bread and you have a hamburger.

OK. You can pick your choice of the etymology of ok. Did it come from businessman Otto Kaiser, who 
signed forms ok? Or British sailors when they marked down that zero people were killed by writing 0k.” 
There are a few more claims but they weren’t ok. Ok? Ok!

Speaking of OK, here is another shameless plug for my rock and roll band, JJ Jukebox. The etymology 
of jukebox, by the way, is a machine that plays music when you give it money. Sounds right. We are 
performing Saturday night August 31st at Nano Café. 6:30 – 9:30. Rock and roll from the 1960s and 
1970s. 

Most people come for dinner, drinks, dancing and counting the number of mistakes the band makes 
per hour! Good fun. Nano Café is located in Sierra Madre at 322 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. Phone is (626) 
325-3334. Call to make reservations after 4:00pm Wednesdays through Saturdays.

We also celebrate my birthday every year with a concert. For those of you who don’t know, my birthday 
is, yep, you guessed it, Halloween, October 31st. In my honor people come, dressed as hideous creatures. 
The actual Halloween bash this year is early… on Saturday, October 26th.

Come one, come all. Or at least two.

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Michele Kidd

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee


PUT THE LIGHTS ON

IT’S YOUR FAULT!

Well, it can’t be my fault cause I never 
do nothin’ right? Well, you don’t have to 
agree with me, do you? I look around and I’m 
surrounded by books, thousands of books that 
have one thing in common. I never wrote any 
of them and even if I did read them, I have forgotten what’s in them. 
All I’m doing is WAITING, waiting for what I don’t know. But you 
probably know, remember I’m now 80 and just waiting around to die.

The whole idea is disgusting but then I realized that dying is 
probably the most important thing any living creature, plant or animal 
does. We dying creatures become the fertilizer which enables the next 
generation to grow, and they need us. Still, that’s not very satisfying. 
By the way, have you noticed that I continue to utilize contractions 
instead of full words. I blame this behavior on the computer I “utilize” 
as a result of the fact that the computer, by itself, underlines these 
words and tells me not to use them because it lessens the impact upon 
the reader.

Well. Too bad for you! Why should I care so much about you 
when you probably don’t read or never finish the articles in the first 
place. It’s the same thing about my previous use of the word “utilize” 
which drives my friend Gene crazy. He’s always harping on the fact 
that the word “utilizes” has no function and is just a bothersome and 
falsely erudite way of saying “use”. 

Well too bad for Gene! “Utilize” and I have a lot in common. 
“Utilizeness”. All right-both of us have limited “utility” (now that’s 
almost funny.) You and I want to be more than the manure of the 
future –but how do we do it? It is particularly difficult when one is 
old and has no particular purpose or responsibilities. This morning, 
at about 5 a.m. I dutifully pulled myself out of bed and climbed down 
the stairs to open the garage and put the trash barrels in front of the 
house so that they could be picked up later in the morning. I checked, 
and RATS, my wife had already done the deed. My efforts were 
unnecessary and that restates the problem. Being old makes it hard to 
find a purpose. Even when you find something to do somebody else 
has already done it. I know my wife is just trying to make it easier for 
me, or maybe she thinks that whatever I do I will do it wrong, so she 
cannot (I could have said “can’t” but now I am rebelling against my 
rebellion) so she cannot rely on me.

I realize now that I am attempting to describe a problem faced 
by all of us, not just “seniors” but all of us. As technology increasingly 
does things for us are we losing the ability to do things for others, or 
for ourselves? Appropriately my dog just came upstairs to remind me 
to feed him and check for the newspaper. Is he reminding me or am I 
reminding him that it’s time to go outside and see if the trash barrels 
have been picked up? Psychologists tell us that lacking a purpose 
leads to depression and difficulty getting along with others. In fact, 
that feeling may be a precursor to actual dementia and cognitive loss. 

 Come to think of it, what am I complaining about? So, 
let’s get along. I’m sorry you might feel that you have wasted your time 
reading this article but for me I realize that drafting my weekly articles 
is one of the most satisfying things I do, and I thank you perhaps 
imaginary readers for sticking with me. Let us enjoy what we do and 
not feel like we are just waiting around. Let us live as well as we can 
and not focus only on the end. It will come without any help from us. 
So, until next time, have a happy week and do you notice that I have 
abandoned contractions?

Until next time, assuming always that there will be a next 
time until there is not.

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TOM PURCELL

GOVERNMENT-
MANDATED VACATIONS

Sen. Bernie Sanders has sponsored a bill to mandate paid 
vacations for all employees.

Like so many of Bernie’s proposals, it sounds good until you 
get into the nitty gritty.

Look, it’s true, as Bernie argues, that the United States is the 
only advanced economy that does not require employers to 
provide paid vacation time.

It’s also true, reports CNN, that “not only do American workers 
get less vacation time than workers in other industrialized 
countries, but they also opt to take fewer days off.”

Consider: The average American worker gets about 18 paid vacation days a year 
and uses only 14 of them. Compare that to the French who average 37 paid vacation 
days a year and use nearly every one of them.

Bernie’s solution, reports MSN.com, is to “guarantee at least one hour of paid 
vacation for every 25 hours worked and ensure full-time employees two weeks of 
paid vacation in addition to paid sick or family leave.”

Though I don’t like the government telling any of us what we must and must not do, 
it is true Americans need to get better at freely choosing to vacation.

I’ve been self-employed for most of my career, and nobody has been worse at taking 
a break from their workload to recharge their batteries — but isn’t that a personal 
challenge I should work out on my own, without the government getting involved?

Back in 2014, I wrote about some interesting vacation insights shared by economist 
Stephen Bronars in a Forbes magazine article.

He said that, for starters, 91% of full-time private sector employees already received 
paid vacations. Those who did not were typically low-tenure employees at small 
businesses — and new government mandates would hurt, rather than help, such 
employees.

Bronars said that U.S. labor law is flexible enough to allow employees to negotiate 
fringe benefits that benefit them and their employers.

Perhaps some employees prefer higher pay and fewer vacation times, for instance. 
Maybe others prefer more flexible hours.

Paid-vacation mandates would eliminate such flexibility.

Plus, he continued, by forcing employers to give paid vacations to new or part-time 
workers, who may not currently be receiving them, labor costs will increase.

Bronars said that our current flexibility “is an advantage, not a weakness, of our 
system and leads to more employment growth and greater job security than we 
would have if we adopted European-style labor market regulations.”

In other words, the freedom of an individual and his employer to work out the 
terms of employment by themselves generally benefits everyone.

It incentivizes employees to demonstrate and improve their performance and 
value. And it incentivizes employers to reward employees with the fringe benefits 
they prefer — thus increasing employee morale and productivity.

Whatever the case, Americans need to get better at “vacating” more often.

TheStreet reports more than half of Americans who ARE on vacations continue to 
work on their laptops while they are away, because they fear falling behind at work 
and losing their jobs.

Look, if we Americans don’t get better at freely choosing to vacation, it’s just a 
matter of time before politicians like Bernie succeed in getting our ever-expanding 
government to manage that aspect of our lives, too.

Now turn off your digital devices and go for a long vacation walk!


Mountain Views News

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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com