On The "Decline" Of The English Language- With The English Writer George Orwell In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for George Orwell's famous essay, Politics and The English Language.

On The Pressing Issue Of The 50th Anniversary Reunion for the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964

Peter Paul Markin comment December 3, 2011:

Ya, maybe I am the only one who sees getting worked up about the 50th reunion of the Class of 1964 as a “pressing” life and death issue in the year 2011, a whole three years away, but there is something like a method to my madness beyond the points mentioned below. With the rise of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement this fall I have some added wind in my sails now that I have a chance to express some language, the language of class struggle, to a new audience. A language learned in my hard-ass, hard-bitten, hard-hearted, well, just hard everything, old North Adamsville working class youth. A language then not so much of technical terms of political struggle like vanguard party, workers party, and workers government but coming from a somewhat inarticulate sense of injustice in the world, that same unformed sense that I find when talking to today’s youth. Not talking our kids, the ‘missing’ generation, for the most part, unfortunately, but our grandkids, for christsake. But there is something of a disconnect between my language, a language reflecting a few hundred years of struggle and theirs, a bit-sized, heads down, fingers-tapping, text-squeezed language.

I have been for some time now holding forth in this space about the need for each generation to learn the lessons of history in their own way, create their own forms of struggle, and learn their own languages to set the framework of that struggle. Just like my generation learned, in the end and after bitter struggle, from the working class and socialist movements of our then past. And I still hold to that view with this proviso-precise political language is as important now as it has been for previous generations so learn the lessons of history- and listen, a little please, to the song sung by those previous generations. Enough said.
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From The North Adamsville High School website - Is there anybody on this site who is from the Class of 1964? Or has a parent (s) (Ouch!) from that class? Or a grandparent(s) (Double Ouch!)? The reason I ask this question is that now that both stands of that Class of 1964 (the North Adamsville Junior High, a.k.a., Middle School, Class of 1960 and the Adamsville Central Junior High, ditto on the middle school thing, Class of 1961, are safety past their respective 50th anniversaries of graduation from those hallowed institutions it is time to start planning for the Class of 1964’s 50th anniversary reunion in 2014. (1964 plus 50 equals 2014 for the Math majors out there)

What? In 2011, in the age of the Internet year 20 (or so), there is a pressing need to gather in the old geezers and geezer-ettes (sic, sorry) for an event three years away? Well, yes. Hear me out. See the Generation of ’68, the last generation to seriously try to put a dent in the way this society does its governmental business by attempting to turn the world upside down at the grassroots level, was just on the edge of the technological revolution so there are probably some classmates out there who will take some effort to reach. I know of one old geezer, who shall remain nameless for fear of legal repercussions, who I will only identify by zip code, 02152, who is still waiting, waiting patiently, a vice of old age, on his front porch daily for the post man to deliver his e-mail. So you can see what we are up against.

Moreover, since many of us have lost a step, or seven, to the ravages of time we need plenty of advanced preparation to make everything every possible way accessible. Of course this last comment does not apply at all to any female classmates as I do not need, do not need at all, any cyber-stones thrown at me. It also does not apply to any male classmate bigger than I am, especially those goliaths of the gridiron who did us proud in their senior football season capped by that great victory over arch-rival Adamsville High. But it is a consideration.

Needless to say the last two paragraphs are so much eyewash coming from these quarters. The real reason, the real, real reason, is that I am on a “crusade” to get classmates to write, old- fashioned write, a little something for the 50th reunion, say maybe a page of pithy things that will make us laugh-and proud that we survived 1960s high school. I figure that it may take that amount of lead time to make sure the job is done right. And definitely hear my motivation for this one out. We may be one of the last generations that still believes in (or knows about) complete sentences, paragraphs and the like. So if nothing else when some archeologists, in a thousand years, hell, in one hundred years, start digging out our current artifacts and come across our recollections in Olde English they will say btyomglolfyitmi. (Translation into Olde English: What in the world is this primitive gibberish?). Case closed.