What's In A Word

A book opens with the poem,

“Oh, fatal day—oh, day of sorrow,

It was no trouble she could borrow;

But in the future she could see

The clouds of infelicity.”

It goes on with other passages:

“He is the bird of ill omen. How harsh his midnight cry! It seems to shriek, in mournful sounds, Death! Death!”

“The Prince of the Air certainly causes them [destructive cyclones], since he has control of our atmosphere. They are displays of his wrath, Oh! eternal woes! Deliver us from the "Prince of Darkness." Deliver us from his fiery embraces. Rather fear Him that is able to destroy both soul and body.”

"In calling me by the strange name of 'Enola,' I wonder if my dear departed parents received a glimpse of the future life of their child in a camera, speaking to them of her life of loneliness," mused Enola, "for truly I am alone..."

[“Enola” is an ananym and becomes “alone” when spelled backwards.]

That poem and the selected passages were from a book titled: Enola; or, Her fatal mistake. It was written in 1886, by Mary Young Ridenbaugh. A man read this book in 1890 while his wife was pregnant and chose the name Enola for his fifth child. She would be Enola Gay Haggard, the future mother of Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., the man best known as the captain who flew a B29 Superfortress to drop the first atomic bomb used in warfare. That bomb destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. He named his plane after his mother, Enola Gay.

This is all just background leading us to the latest blunder to befall our lazy, ham-handed Commander-in-Chief. He is the same person I jokingly said had made Remedial English the official language of America. Apparently, I was not far from the mark.

You see, Donald John Trump is seemingly unaware that homonyms exist. Perhaps this is because the word homonym has the initial syllable, “homo” that means “man” or “human being,” but is also an offensive slang abbreviation for “homosexual.”

For our purposes the offending homonym is the word, “gay.” That word can mean lighthearted and carefree as in the popular Christmas song, Deck the Halls, where they say, “Don we now our gay apparel.” But, as that term and usage is a bit outdated, the more recent assumption is that it references people sexually or romantically attracted to people of one’s own sex.

So, with reckless abandon our President and his assigned wrecking crew, set out to purge all official records of words that offend them. Those nasty DEI words. Included in the terms that offended them was the word “gay.” It would be purged with great haste during a word search for this patently offensive subject.

Is it any wonder that war heroes and the “gay plane,” the Enola Gay would be flagged for removal in the Pentagon’s DEI purge. In addition to photos of the Enola Gay, service members with the surname “Gay” were also among the items set for deletion.

All references to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the 26,000 photos and online posts marked for deletion by the DOD. This purge could end up deleting over 100,000 such images and references in the rush to comply with Trump appointed genius, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Wednesday deadline.

Oddly included in this list was photos of an engineering project in California because an engineer in the picture had the last name Gay. Also flagged for deletion was a photo of Army Corps biologists, none of whom were named Gay, but because it was mentioned that they were recording data about fish that included their weight, size, hatchery, and GENDER. Oh no, not gender. Also on the list were some photos of BLACK military pilots in the segregated WWII unit, the Tuskegee Airmen. Another item included in the removal carnage was a photo of an “Engineering pioneer remembered during Black History Month.” Oh, the horror, Black History, get out the wooden stake.

How many of the over 26,000 references and photos were deleted before complying with federal archival laws is unclear. The Wednesday deadline is fast-approaching. Will our country be able to sleep more soundly now that DEI has been flushed from our military archives? The Trump Clown Car certainly has our national safety as its highest priority. The Attack of the Homonyms is almost over.

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I leave you with two additional passages from the book Enola; or, Her fatal mistake, which seem ominous in the context of the connection with the atom bomb.

“We have been discussing the "clouds of sorrow" that have obscured a bright and beautiful life, that afforded food for meditation. How many clouds have darkened the horizon of other valuable lives. There are clouds too real, not figurative, that we will now contemplate. ... The funnel-shaped cloud deals death and destruction to all that come within its whirling, deadly grasp. When seeing the approach of such a cloud, it sends an agonizing thrill of horror into the heart of the beholder...”

"...the vital question at issue now is, how to remedy the great evil that is about to engulf our moral law and prosperous government.

... I feel, that something should be speedily done to stem the tide of extravagance, threatening to ruin every civilized country on the face of the globe," said Mrs. [Enola] Dale.