Word of the Week

I've happily reconnected with one of the folks I met when I attended The Cabaret Conference at Yale in 2006, and I've been following her blog: wendylanebailey.com/pages/blog/

She's started a "word of the day" thread and I like that idea, especially since I'm such a wordy person.  I'm definitely not organized enough to highlight a new one every day, though, so this will be a "word of the week" venture.  But how to decide?  I could open the dictionary and randomly pick a word, I suppose.  But that seems like cheating, somehow.  Should it be a word I know and love?  One I don't know?  Technical?  Poetic?  Archaic?  Funny?  English has something like a million words from which to choose.....the possibilities are daunting.

For today, though, I will go with a ridiculously simple word, one which encompasses what both you and I are doing right now.  Ready, set..........READ.

To read.  Such a simple verb.  The object of many hours of labor to learn; the gift of a lifetime.  Everything we do, every day, requires reading.  You can't drive, or cook, or do your job, or effectively manage your life, without reading.  Reading takes you from the mundane to the heavenly.  I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have the incredible luxury of losing myself in some kind of writing, be it in a book or a magazine article or a recipe.  To read is to open up yourself to EVERYTHING.

It makes me sad when I talk to people and they say, "Oh, I'm not a reader."  How much richness they must miss!

So, let's hear it for books, for newspapers, for magazines, for Kindles, for libraries, and even for blogs!  Read something wonderful today, and revel in where it leads you.