Here's a short story written by a child of the future:
Yesterday I went for a walk in the woods. I saw some water so I blogged about it with my broadband phone. Then I left because I am allergic to nature.
Thanks to Mon at Holistic Mama for pointing out that the Oxford Junior Dictionary is dropping all kinds nature, religious, and political words. I had a hard time finding the complete list, but here it is (thanks to a post on an interesting forum I'll mention below):
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe
Dwarf, elf, goblin
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
Adder, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow
Words put in:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph
Now the way I stumbled upon this complete list was through a forum for Kinism, which I had never heard of before. After reading an official website, I realized as much as I would like to give credit to the poster, I couldn't link back to the forum it was on. At first it sounded ok - a form of Christianity that believes people should live in tribes, an agrarian economy, etc. Then I got to the white supremacist part and decided I didn't want to read any more. Wow. What a smorgasbord of censorship against language from Oxford and blatant racism by religion.
Anyway if I could pick one word from the list of taken out it would be acorn, but blacksmith was a close second. Maybe it's because this year there was an extreme acorn shortage that made squirrels enraged, and because even though I've never really lived where there are many acorns, I still love them. They are cute, they have little hats, they are so useful, Native Americans would use them as a staple of their diet, and squirrels really need them. But now kids can't look that up in the dictionary?
Blacksmith bothers me for a different reason. In a world where there are very few blacksmiths anymore, any time a child reads classic literature they are going to wonder what that is. It's as if they are assuming that children won't read old books, which makes me sad. Old books are what made me who I am.
Coming Next Year!
Kinism - that's a totally new one for me.
That's weird they took out diesel.
My favourite is still newt. Don't they know the cult status of that word!? sheesh
You've obviously never heard of Hilaire Belloc, a rather famous writer known for his tracts on economy, and 'distributivism' which meshed Catholic Social Teaching with respect for the Earth, LONG before liberals and other brain-dead 'granola types' were alive.
Well, he sums up the Biblical construct of "Kinism" thus: Europe is the Faith; the Faith, Europe.
You can't have one without the other. and the other cannot exist apart from the one. This is called the "One and the Many" paradigm that suffuses Trinitarian Christianity. It's not 'white supremacist' to be Christian, just as it is merely being "Christian supremacist' to be Kinist. They believe in One God in Three persons, and Christ as Messiah. A definite 'no-brainer' if you are versed at all in Western culture and civilization... which clearly, you aren't.
-Fr. John
Priest (and Kinist)