[Oe List ...] Hooray!

Mon Nov 9 16:56:49 PST 2020

Thank you Susan for eliciting this conversation.

I might not have looked at the real numbers without your invitation. And
certainly after hearing a bit of Biden's speech from the weekend this
morning where he talked about *America *making it's choice, I might have
fallen into the reduction from which he spoke. At best, Biden was voted for
by 30% of the adults in the USA. The numbers suggest to me that more people
did not vote than voted for Biden or voted for Trump. And yes we finally
had a turnout where more than 50% of the adults in our country voted, just
barely.

Is it possible to have a consensus administration? Our colleague Ken Fisher
would point out our binary system prevents that from happening. And others
point out the more divided we become the quicker we will slide down the
slope into importance in our global village.

I feel our (O:E) long experience has only begun to offer up our
contribution to the conversation.

[And note to Jack Gillis, my colleague and friend, about the difference
between dialogue and conversation. Maybe JWM's narrative about the *artform
conversation* instead of the *artform dialogue* was his realization that
our current use of the word dialogue was mistaken for the word duologue and
he had a thing about the academic practice of criticism and the
accompanying dismissal. Who knows?

I learned in my reactivity from looking at the Online Etymology site (
https://www.etymonline.com/word/conversation) that dialogue in usage came
into being after conversation and fundamentally narrowed the meaning to the
exchange of speech. Maybe our artform conversation can encourage whole
communities, who indeed live with one another, to engage in creating a
shared future.]

dialogue (n.) <https://www.etymonline.com/word/dialogue#etymonline_v_8516>

c. 1200, "literary work consisting of a conversation between two or more
persons," from Old French dialoge and directly from Latin dialogus, from
Greek dialogos "conversation, dialogue," related to dialogesthai "converse,"
from dia "across, between" (see dia-) + legein "speak," from PIE root *leg- (1)
"to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak (to 'pick out
words')."

Sense extended by c. 1400 to "a conversation between two or more persons."
The mistaken belief that it can mean only "conversation between two
persons" is from confusion of dia- and di- (1); the error goes back to at
least 1532, when trialogue was coined needlessly for "a conversation
between three persons." A word that has been used for "conversation between
two persons" and cannot mean otherwise is the hybrid duologue (1864).
conversation (n.)

mid-14c., "place where one lives or dwells," also "general course of
actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world," both senses
now obsolete; from Old French conversacion "behavior, life, way of life,
monastic life," and directly from Latin conversationem (nominative
conversatio) "frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse,
conversation," noun of action from past-participle stem of conversari "to
live, dwell, live with, keep company with," passive voice of conversare "to
turn about, turn about with," from assimilated form of com "with, together"
(see con-
<https://www.etymonline.com/word/con-?ref=etymonline_crossreference>) +
versare, frequentative of vertere "to turn" (from PIE root *wer-
<https://www.etymonline.com/word/*wer-?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_52647>
(2)
"to turn, bend").

Sense of "informal interchange of thoughts and sentiments by spoken words"
is from 1570s. Used as a synonym for "sexual intercourse" from at least
late 14c., hence criminal conversation, a legal term for adultery from late
18c. Conversation-piece is from 1712 as "painting representing a group of
figures arranged as if in conversation;" 1784 as "subject for conversation,
something to talk about."

Don Bushman

(with deep gratitude for Susan and Jack and all O:E Saints)

On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 7:47 AM Lynn via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trumps-lawsuits-are-politics-disguised-legal-strategy/617022/
>
> This article sums up the situation beautifully. This is something I would
> have shared with mom (Marianna Bailey), so thanks for indulging me.
>
> Lynn
>
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2020, 6:46 AM Randy Williams via OE <
> oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
>> Tempting though it was, I decided not to take the bait, and let Susan be
>> Susan.
>> Randy
>>
>> On Nov 9, 2020, at 6:33 AM, Ken Fisher via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Sisters & Brothers,
>>
>> Thank-you, David.
>>
>> Enfranchise ALL the voters of United States, then it would be obvious
>> that Trump would be out.
>>
>> Voter repression and jerrymandering is so much a part of the American way.
>>
>> Here in the province of Ontario, the boundaries for Provincial and
>> Federal elections are the same.
>>
>> Prisoners vote.
>>
>> How long oh Lord, how long?
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> On Nov 8, 2020, at 4:51 PM, David Dunn via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Greetings colleagues.
>>
>>
>> It’s too soon and a bit uncouth to shoot “Hooray!” I *can* report a
>> great sigh of relief followed, however, by a deeply anxiety “Oh S**t, we’ve
>> got a lot of work to do.”
>>
>>
>> Two thoughts:
>>
>>
>> 1. I believe, on good evidence, that it is a statement of fact that, as
>> of last night, of the 146,361,058 ballots counted, 50.5% were for V. P.
>> Biden and 47.7% were for Pres. Trump. When we say President-elect Joe
>> Biden, that’s really shorthand for the more exact phrases like Joe Biden is
>> the "projected President elect" or the "putative President elect”?
>>
>>
>> 2. But to be honest, no matter the turn of phrase, it seems probable that
>> Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20.
>>
>> I base that faith statement on an experience of fact, namely, that my
>> colleague at Church of the Holy Family, Gayle C., who was an election judge
>> this year, is a no BS but good-willed and conscientious guardian of free
>> and fair elections. Gayle is the kind of woman, much like you, Susan, that
>> some might call a force of nature. It’s a compliment: people who are forces
>> of nature are the ones who get things done.
>>
>> Gaye has checked in with me regularly to report on how things are going
>> in Aurora where she is the Democrat on the Republican-Democrat team that
>> verifies signatures on ballots against the official electoral signature
>> books. She was also asked this year to be an adjudicator on a bipartisan
>> team of election judges that look at ambiguously marked ballots and discern
>> the intention of the voter when the markings are not clear. One by one,
>> Gayle and her Republican partner examine the unclear ballots with the aim
>> of forming a consensus about who that voter was voting for. As Gayle
>> describes it, such adjudication, though routine, is universally understood
>> to be a sacred trust and high honor to be entrusted with the adjudicator
>> role at the most grassroots level of our electoral process: the precinct.
>> Gayle and her Republican teammates do not mess around. They work long
>> hours, day after day, to be sure that they can vouch for the integrity of
>> the ballot process in their precinct. No one messes with Gayle.
>>
>> I can easily believe, with full trust, that the vast majority of election
>> workers across America are, in their own personal ways, like Gayle.
>> Scrupulous. That’s why it seems to me that our president’s court challenges
>> are the sideshow of a desperate man who is psychically unable to own the
>> fact of loss.
>>
>> I wish I could recall who said yesterday that we really just need to
>> relax and let the legal process play out in full expectation that the
>> judges in the courts will be similarly, as we would expect, scrupulous in
>> their devotion to fact and law.
>>
>>
>> That was rather long winded, but it boils down to this. Now I,
>> personally, feel the weight of this challenge: to support spirit journeys
>> that allow people to embrace both gain and loss as facts of life like birth
>> and death, not linguistic inventions like victory and defeat.
>>
>> It is so painfully obvious that our president, a manifestly broken man
>> from a widely noted broken family, has not gone on the spirit journey that
>> allows him to embrace what is real. His universe cracked when he was a
>> child and he has not been able to rise above that childhood death.
>>
>> Court challenges do not change the fact that our president has lost this
>> election, denies this limit in his life, and inflicts that denial on our
>> democracy.
>>
>> Individual sin has become social sabotage, which boomerangs back as
>> self-sabotage of a political campaign.
>>
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 8, 2020, at 10:43 AM, Susan Fertig via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> The world is not a monolith. 50% of the people did not vote for Joe
>> Biden. I am in that 50%.
>> He is not yet President-elect. There is still court challenges going on.
>>
>>
>> —
>>
>> <DMD email sig photo small-Nov2012.jpg>
>>
>> "Mystery, possibility, and the power to choose"
>>
>> David Dunn
>> 740 S Alton Way 9B
>> Denver, CO 80247
>> 720-314-5991
>> dmdunn1 at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>> <PastedGraphic-1.png>
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