Tag Archives: parka

Arctic Circle

dictionary with letter A

Arctic: (adj) of or relating to the regions around the North Pole.

There is a rumor that the polar Arctic ice caps are melting.

I’m rather disappointed with them. Is it too much to ask the ice to remain cold? After all, we’ve given you an entire circle at the top of the world, to perform your job, and now you decide to give up on the idea of being frozen…and melt?

Worse yet, further rumor has it that I’m to blame. You can’t even accept the idea that you maybe got into a heated discussion, which caused your drippage.

No, it’s because I drive a car or have some sort of carbon footprint that somehow or another brings aggravation to your well-being and makes you want to get smaller and dribble down into my circumstance.

This is a further disappointment in my life, which I believed would never happen. There is a long list of them and I shall not go into the number lest I put myself in a bad mood on this particularly delightful day.

But especially since it’s Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is up there somewhere near that Arctic Circle, you would think some of his magic would cause the region to “chill out.”

All my life I have just believed that the North and South Poles would stay cold.

I understand you can’t go up there and sunbathe, but you should be able to don a parka and have Jack Frost nip at your nose as you peer with dreamy eyes at the icy sculptures.

  • Is there nothing sacred?
  • Is there no reason in the midst of the madness?

I would like to see the Arctic stay freezing. I think it will help us have a sense of balance and believe in greater possibilities like faith, hope and love.

So if this means I need to spread the toes on my carbon feet just a little bit less, I’m game–because I want some things in life to be white.

The Arctic Circle and polar bears would be among them.

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Anthropology

dictionary with letter A

Anthropology: (n) the comparative study of human societies and cultures

There is an abiding, if not persistent, inclination to believe that intelligence invokes individuality.

In other words, because the human race possesses greater brain power than, let’s say, the duck, we are segregated into a multitude of clumps that not only differentiate us from one another, creating chasms of separation, sprouting suspicion.

Anthropology would do a great service to humankind if it pursued the premise that we are much more like the duck. No one sits around and discusses how ducks from the south are different from ducks from the north. (Maybe it’s because they fly south for the winter and north for the summer. Of course, most of our aging human population has similar travel plans.)

It is ironic to me that a scientific community which fastidiously places us within the animal kingdom as brother and sister to our jungle family suddenly decides to separate us from that kingdom when it comes to matters of race and culture.

Is it possible that we would be better off if we punctuated our similarities instead of showcasing our differences?

  • For instance, does someone born in Siberia who is transplanted right after birth to Southern California still prefer to wear parkas?
  • Would a native of Africa, born in the Serengeti, if translated to London-town, constantly find him or herself pining to hunt with a spear?

Can we really continue to take the attributes that are engrained and nearly beaten into us by our families and pretend that they’re a part of our natural desire?

Very few people ever consider the personality profile of an individual chimpanzee. Yet in some sort of “Homo sapien silliness,” we think that each and every one of us is a snowflake falling from the heavens, with our own particular jagged edges.

Yes, I believe anthropology would provide a salvation to humans if the science explained how much we share in common.

We would certainly be more like the duck, and realize that our particular quack … is not that special. 

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