"This I believe"

As a self-described wordsmith, I decided to get with it and submit a "This I Believe" entry for Shepherdstown and Shepherd University. Essay readings will be held on Nov. 21 and Dec. 8 in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies auditorium, so it's kind of a big deal for a local event.


Having written six essays, I premiered the one I like best here and got help from Loie and Juancho and input from Rita and Don and Suzi. Thank you all! So ... here is what I just submitted this morning:


I believe in the power of words. Before mass communications, advertising, TV pundits and texting, words were a valuable commodity. People were said to "weigh their words." A man was "as good as his word." Oratory was an art, and poetry was read aloud in ordinary homes. People took oaths and held them sacred; family letters were kept and cherished; and oral histories were handed down with ceremony and care. The Bible tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I learned early that words build bridges among individuals and cultures and developed an ease, whether talking to the old men chewing tobacco on “spit corner” or to professors in the college town where I grew up. When I was just 22 years old, I lived in a barrio in Panama, and there I used my best high-school Spanish to converse with my Colombian neighbor who would often yell, “Raton! Raton!” as she took a broom to the rats that were nearly as pervasive as cockroaches. She would speak English to me, and we became friends that way, she with her halting English and I with my awkward Spanish.

Ah, words! They comfort, soothe, stir to action, start and end wars, whisper of love and secrets, create poetry, songs and plays. For me, words are an artist’s palette. They hold endless possibilities for combining and blending to draw the pictures I see in my mind, and they hold the subtle shades of meaning implicit in every thought I convey. I love a good metaphor almost as much as a good story. And storytelling is in my DNA. My granddad told stories peppered with plenty of swear words, having been a coal miner and moonshiner; and my dad was an apple that didn’t fall far from that tree. Growing up, I heard people say that my great-grandfather was such a colorful storyteller that people looking for his home would be told to just drive out that road a ways and look for the house where there were a lot of people gathered on the front porch.

But words are also fun, tossed around like a Frisbee to bend the mind and stretch the imagination like a bungee cord. People can google, lollygag or dillydally. They can be scalawags or quidnuncs. Sometimes a word practically defines itself, and just the right word can land just the right punch.

To me, words are little time machines. They transport me to faraway places and draw me as close as breath. They connect me to my past, to my present, to my loved ones, near and far. I can still hear how my dad pronounced “creek” as “crick,” a telltale sign that he grew up in the Appalachians where language is often stretchy and homespun.

Great speeches, simple sermons and letters between friends can start movements, heal wounds and open hearts. These things called words are powerful, and best of all, they can express to an audience just what I believe.