Word of the Month… A

One of the things I love about weekends are sitting on my patio, drinking my coffee, and watching the birds that bounce around the trees. Much to my horror, I came home one evening recently to find the four trees closest to my patio were gone. Evidently the storm that hit earlier in the day split one of them in half and they were concerned about the others. Whatever the reason, my mornings on the patio have been much quieter and Ginger kitty has had less live entertainment.

Quieter mornings aren’t bad. I read blogs, think about my day and week ahead, what I want to write about, and think how auspicious it is I have found the blogging community and friends in Memphis that have been such a great support to me.

Since I don’t have the trees directly outside my window anymore, the birds are coming up to the patio directly. As I sat reading the other morning, a hummingbird flew right up to me, hovered for just a moment, then flew off. In Ancient Rome, they would watch birds in flight to foretell the future and divine omens. The Aborigines believe that birds carry stories. Maybe the trees coming down were auspicious as well.

Merriam Webster defines auspicious as kindly patronage and guidance, and a favorable sign. It is derived from the Latin auspicium, from auspic-, auspex diviner by birds, from avis bird + specere to look.

I recently did the WordPress Blogging 101 workshop as a way for me to jump-start myself back into regular writing.  I find I’m not so great when I have an “assignment” and have to write on command.  But that just makes me stretch my wings a little more and grow.  A great result of the workshop, a group of us have stuck together to offer support and feedback.  After my post about ennui, I was invited to contribute to the word of the week to the alumni group.  I’m offering a slightly modified version of that post here today.

When I told a friend about this “assignment” for the weekly word etymology, she suggested the first word that popped into her head. I’d been trying for almost a week to find the right word, and it immediately came to her, not knowing our little band of bloggers at all. I am a firm believer that the universe will speak to us, we just have to be open to receiving the message.  My fellow 101’ers provide guidance to those who need it, and it is most favorable that we have all come together.

An assignment from the workshop was to come up with a recurring feature.  I was stymied.  I ramble, weave, and bob my way around the posts I write.  I’ve written about a few recurring themes, but not with any regularity.  Again, the universe spoke to me and being the word nerd I am, I’m going to do a regular series on words, starting with A and working my way through the alphabet.

Any ideas and suggestions for the letter B…