Tag Archives: The Seven Words

Words Matter: The Seven Banned Words of 2017

“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.” — Yehuda Berg

“It’s a beautiful thing the destruction of words.” — George Orwell, 1984

Earlier in the week I began writing a blog post. Since it was the holiday season, I thought I would reflect on memories of the past and muse about what holiday traditions mean for me today. The draft I was working on was entitled, ‘Tis the Season: Memories and Musings. As sometimes happens, I couldn’t get in the flow of the subject, words and ideas were not coming to me, the proverbial writer’s block. Instead, I edited the opening paragraph three or four times without making any significant progress. Words and the messages behind them are important and matter. They are the tools of the writer and the fundamental way we all communicate to achieve understanding. Continue reading

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The Seven Words

This past week I read a poem at an open mic during a live remote radio broadcast. Before the show, the guest interviewees, musicians and writers gathered for a briefing to learn our place in the line-up, provide the emcees with our introduction, and receive a pink Post-It note. The pink slip contained seven words deemed  indecent or obscene by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Words we were asked to not say out loud on the show. I was curious, were these in fact the same seven words that helped launch George Carlin’s career to national prominence after he first uttered them in 1972 in his monologue, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.”  Continue reading

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