Daily Word Prompt – Exacerbate – 06/18/19

A long time ago, when Garry and I still lived in Boston and both of us were working, we used to get both Boston newspapers delivered daily to our townhouse in Roxbury. I mostly scanned them and read Doonesbury, but Garry pretty much read both papers cover to cover, but always from the back to the front because the sports and entertainment were in the back. He was dedicated to the news in a professional way, but he was personally dedicated to sports and entertainment. So he started with the fun stuff and moved frontwards.

Happy kidneys

I was doing what I did for a living which was writing or editing manuals — or doing both — depending on the size of the project and how each job was defined. I was in “auto-correct” mode and often found myself unconsciously correcting errors in the newspapers. Usually, these were typos, misprints, incorrect tenses, or clumsy writing. I forgave most of it because people who write for the news — any news service be it TV, radio, or press — are under constant deadline pressure. They have to get it right and on time.

So there I was, reading the Boston Herald. Not my favorite newspaper, but it had better comics and a bigger sports section, which made Garry happy. The Boston Globe had better writers. Or, perhaps, they were encouraged to be better writers at the Globe, while the Herald prided itself on being “down to earth.”

There had been an unfortunate event. I think it happened during a police training camp for upcoming recruits. The weather was very hot and the training instructor refused to let anyone stop for a drink of water, even in nearly 100-degree heat.

One of the recruits had a kidney problem, unbeknownst to the drill sergeant and the heat and lack of water caused him to die of kidney failure. It was quite a scandal and it ultimately changed the way recruits are trained.

In the Boston Herald, they wrote: ” … and with the weather so hot, the young man’s kidneys, which were already damaged, became exasperated causing the recruit to die.”

Unhappy kidneys

I know it was a tragedy. Truly, it was. And I realized that this was probably an autocorret error. Autocorrect had decided the writer couldn’t possibly mean “exacerbated” and must have meant “exasperated.”

I had a sudden weird mental image of his kidneys throwing up their hands or whatever kidneys throw into the air and saying, “That’s it. I’ve HAD it. I’m outta here.”

The poor young man suffered from exasperated kidneys.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is except if you are writing for the news, you should probably turn off autocorrect.




Who knows when they will take that away, too?




Meaning of life



Are we learning? Is the world teaching everybody something?


Then I had an epiphany.















Anything that means everything means nothing.








Fortunately, I don’t believe it. Any of it.


You can now explain anything. Everything.








Share Your World 6-17-19


Empty pill containers, old connectors for devices I never used and probably don’t own anymore, a variety of odds and ends … who knows? Maybe old pieces of jewelry?

If I’m dead, I can’t think of anything less important than the contents of my night table drawer.

What keeps you going? 

My survival instincts. Garry. The dogs. Pure nosiness and a driving desire to see what is going to happen next.

Share a photo or a sentence about ‘your favorite thing(s). Credit to Judy Dystkra-Brown in response to this: 



I don’t know the song. Sorry!

What are you grateful for right now?

The usual stuff. It’s what we are all grateful for: being alive, having a life worth living, our dogs, cats, friends and an occasional day full of sunshine!


I need to go take some new pictures. I feel a bit lost without the birds. They have been my mainstay since last November and now, they are gone.

We’ve had a couple of beautiful days, but I didn’t get outside to shoot. Now, there are going to be three or four more days of rain coming up, so there aren’t going to be more pictures until the weather clears.

I might have to go and process a lot of pictures that are just sitting in folders, waiting for my magic touch.

Field of flowers
The dam at Mumford
More buttercups
If Rembrandt lived in Uxbridge
Painted dam on the Mumford
Spillway on the dam