Welcome to Alphaday 12, Season XIV. There\u2019s still plenty going on in our Alpha world and it doesn\u2019t really feel as if the end of the season is as near as it is. Nevertheless, with only two more Alphadays to go before we\u2019re off on our annual holiday (to get on with our exciting writing projects) it is time to do a spot of planning ahead for the September start of our next season. We have our habitual rituals which include collecting your opinions about the way we operate and how to improve as we move ahead. You can start thinking about it now, and I\u2019ll put together some specific questions for you to answer which I\u2019ll send out with the next bulletin.<\/p>\n
For now we have an interesting agenda which will keep us busy for a while \u2013 as follows:<\/p>\n
I think you\u2019ll find enough stimulation and enjoyment in that lot even though there are fewer items than when we\u2019re in full swing.<\/p>\n
Alpha news:<\/u><\/p>\n
You will find an additional attachment with this communication which Olaf has asked me to send out to the group. I know that Olaf is reluctant to retire from active participation in all Alpha activities. He ran the group single-handedly for the first couple of seasons before gradually handing over some responsibilities to other, trusted members \u2013 carefully supervised by Olaf\u2019s eagle eye. I\u2019ve always referred to his judgment in matters that weren\u2019t straightforward, and his mentorship helped me enormously. He can now retire with a good conscience from the responsibilities, but hopefully he\u2019ll never retire from following everything that\u2019s going on in Alpha.<\/p>\n
Take it easy, Olaf. We\u2019ll always be delighted to hear from you whenever you can\u2019t keep away from us.<\/p>\n
In my long experience with Alpha I have come to consider the upheaval of moving house as one of the hardest troubles to reconcile with the simple pleasures of keeping up with Alpha. I\u2019m impressed with Sarah\u2019s smooth transition from one house to another. There was hardly a glitch. I\u2019m now wishing Abigail a similar painless move from her present home to her new home near the NW corner of the Mediterranean. I believe she\u2019s perched on top of cardboard boxes and will be off in less than a week.<\/p>\n
General news:<\/u><\/p>\n
It\u2019s a long time since we\u2019ve marvelled at the way words are used. I\u2019ve come across a couple of gems that I\u2019ll share with you. Perhaps the rest of you have some equally interesting word news to share.<\/p>\n
There was a perfect oxymoron that emerged from the White House recently. With the lingustic elegance and finesse we\u2019ve come to expect from there, they\u2019d appointed a \u201ctemporary permanent secretary\u201d. Nice one.<\/p>\n
The word \u201cprotest\u201d has taken on new dimensions for me. Basically it shares a stress particularity with a number of other words such as \u201crefuse\u201d and \u201cconvict\u201d. As a noun the stress is on the first syllable; as a verb the stress is on the second syllable.<\/p>\n
I heard a news reader saying that a group of people had gathered to \u2018pro<\/strong>test against something. That jarred on my upbringing which is heavily influenced by quotes from Hamlet where Gertrude says that \u201cThe lady doth pro\u2019test <\/strong>too much, methinks.\u201d Verb, 2nd<\/sup> syllable stress. It appears that the verb \u201cprotest\u201d has been split into two separate semantic areas: one is about contradicting \/ arguing (pro\u2019test) <\/strong>while the other is about political manifestations (\u2018pro<\/strong>test).<\/p>\n To this one could add that the word \u201cprotest\u201d is also used as an adjective and as such it\u2019s stressed on the first syllable: a \u2018pro<\/strong>test march.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to keep protest<\/strong>ing or \u2018pro<\/strong>testing in a world that\u2019s in such a mess. That\u2019s why we\u2019d better learn to use the word in the latest, modern way.<\/p>\n Christine<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to Alphaday 12, Season XIV. There\u2019s still plenty going on in our Alpha world and it doesn\u2019t really feel as if the end of the season is as near as it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}