The Tenth Word
(Book One)
By Dumas fils
(Due-ma fees, close enough.)
Copyright © 2018 by Samuel Leon Dumas
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2018
A. Dumas and Associates Publications
6824 West 19th Street #289
University Place, WA 98466
www.emendel.weebly.com
Contents
Preface…………………
The Right Reason….
Reading To Know…
Of Money and Men:
Friend…………………
Respect……………….
Poking à Tigré………
Lord Jim………………
Carla, Forever Singing
Words From My Mother's House
Preface A
My mother used to say, “As long as you live in this house, you will respect me!”
She would scold this mostly toward my older brother and to my sister, almost as a mantra. What I never heard her communicate even once in my nineteen years at home was what respect meant and how to perform it. Out of eight children none of us completely complied. We failed—had a reason to succeed—but failed, and I saw her misery.
Word Miser
When I had finally gained a working definition of respect, I was twenty-one, returning from the killing-fields ward. By then I was really in love with the importance of a good working definition of a word. I had finally cruised past misery and now carried the money bag of Miser. I was, literally, daily succeeding in word knowledge and profitably accounting the next words to weave into my writing discipline.
So, I think of myself now as one who knows many, many things but who conducts affairs as one who knows nothing—Or one who must always be seeking (as writers must) how to completely, or partially explain one’s plot along its numerical story line for pleasure and educatorial reasons.
A Word as a Lifetime
My first understanding of one of the words I have chosen for these books began in ninth grade when, in passing, our teacher expressed that he thought we might want to know what it meant. The word was: maturity. His favorite definition for this word was simple and easy for me to check out. It was, I was surprised to discover, one of the first words that I knew would take me a lifetime to complete its math. It also prompted into my mind its own separate book for the writing.
My worlds have never been too dark owing to the details that I found in that working definition of maturity. I remember testing it casually at first, every chance I got, cautiously learning what all the nuances connected to this term truly meant. But by my second daughter’s second birthday I had learned The Tenth Word : what friend meant—and lo, what a measured man I was becoming as I began to feverishly perform these two words among the other words in my growing collection.
The Front Three
We all fail at life—all equals being at ‘play’—when we fail at performing essential words. And like the ‘front four’ in football (Think, Chicago Bears), there are three most essential words in the lineup to guard and rush for knowledge: (you may test them for their essentiality, if you really think you must.)
Reading, Writing, and Mathing.
When we fail at reading,
we fail at measuring.
When we fail at mathing,
we fail also at measuring.
When we fail at writing (conversing),
we again fail at measuring.
In the above representation, I have placed measuring as the key aspect of these front three. Therefore, I think it is most important for a person to develop a math skill level which is equal to the task which they are trying to accomplish during their day, their week, or any and all of their upcoming futures. This book will describe some of the deep places where this math resides, and describe where those of us who are at the heart of the educational society, have failed in adequately coordinating with our young that math is to be highly prized in everything we seek to be as humans.
Math Lanes
Wherever we are going in life, and no matter what we have chosen to do along the way, we need to make a habit of mapping out those trips, even the shortest ones, and we should decide the fanfare of the detail that should go into the planning of any life trip, no matter how tenuous.
This, then, also involves one choosing to develop the math-of-the-mouth, so that we are careful what we say to our teacher, our principal, or the Judge, because the words that come out of our mouth will be read, written, and measured by someone and later come back doubled and measured in triplicate—whether as good or bane. In these normal everyday kind of things we can see math lanes as places of choice (another math term) in which we can order our steps as we go about the game of life.
Mathing Our Self Esteem
Let's look at a school level numerical equation: 3X=85. If measuring equals X in the numerical sentence, then self-esteem (85) is >large: greater than large. Large is of course that floating constant of a passing number. So in this numerical sentence, letting X equal the 'act of measuring,' helps determine the volumes of differences after the equal sign. The meaning of the sentence could be expressed in real words such as the following: By doing the measuring process three times, we can attain the number 85, or we can get 85 somethings for our effort. In this example, we get a score or strength of 85 in our self-esteem.
Thus, the more measuring one does on the left side of the equation, the more self-esteem will reside on the other side of the equal sign.
With regard to our front three (reading, writing, and math): If one regularly practices these three essentials from the same starting line-up (number line), so to speak, then self-esteem is guaranteed to become stronger. If one were just to scan the activity alone that goes back and forth between these three bulwarks—no matter the level obtained in one’s personal math discipline—one will easily get the connection I propose about this dynamic trio.
My Mantra
For years I have said to my students:
Reading is Writing
And Writing is Mathing.
During those years, I have invited them to do a most simple test to see this statement in flow. The basic understanding I wanted them to get was: When doing math there are things encountered called numerical sentences; these are made up of numbers and symbols. The movie one might see themselves doing, then, is of reading the sentences first, followed by a PEMDAS procedure, next the evaluation, and finally the writing of the answer into one’s brain, or into the space after the equal sign on paper.
Another way one may test a simplified part of this is by thinking about how one reads a book. Basically when we read, we measure or calculate what letters are in each word (math); at the same time we write details related to these computations into the brain. So every time we read, we write. Some instances later, when we finally put these words together (math, PEMDAS), we write larger, more definitive thoughts about these word groups into ourselves...every time.
Whether we echo the words into our brain systems as we read, by mouthing them silently with our breath, or eidetically scanning them directly into our consciousness (with or without a USB connection cable), we are performing the line-item movements of the ‘front three’. These three: reading, writing and mathing, working ahead of other systems of habit, ultimately can defend the life— and win some games.
Wherever You Go
To go far in all the things we task, and be worthy of breath, we should have a working relationship with these three most essential words.
Summation (math)
The aim of the words in The Tenth Word is to reveal with fanfare some good working definitions of words almost all adults want youth to perform.
This writing is dedicated to the youth who have most charmed and sustained me over the years with their genius-like word-trading. In the short time in which we moderns have each other’s reading attention, I know I couldn’t display the great intensity of our past word play, or the true number of our juvenile thought experiments that have over the years made my life grand. But, with great cavalcades of thanks and unrevealed emotions, I honor all of my young, —not just with respect, but with all the wealth that the working definitions in this book can communicate. In all human joys or successes, we owe great debt to the meanings of words; find here in this writing the many that I have pinched, misered, and invested the most.
Preface A
My mother used to say, “As long as you live in this house, you will respect me!”
She would scold this mostly toward my older brother and to my sister, almost as a mantra. What I never heard her communicate even once in my nineteen years at home was what respect meant and how to perform it. Out of eight children none of us completely complied. We failed—had a reason to succeed—but failed, and I saw her misery.
Word Miser
When I had finally gained a working definition of respect, I was twenty-one, returning from the killing-fields ward. By then I was really in love with the importance of a good working definition of a word. I had finally cruised past misery and now carried the money bag of Miser. I was, literally, daily succeeding in word knowledge and profitably accounting the next words to weave into my writing discipline.
So, I think of myself now as one who knows many, many things but who conducts affairs as one who knows nothing—Or one who must always be seeking (as writers must) how to completely, or partially explain one’s plot along its numerical story line for pleasure and educatorial reasons.
A Word as a Lifetime
My first understanding of one of the words I have chosen for these books began in ninth grade when, in passing, our teacher expressed that he thought we might want to know what it meant. The word was: maturity. His favorite definition for this word was simple and easy for me to check out. It was, I was surprised to discover, one of the first words that I knew would take me a lifetime to complete its math. It also prompted into my mind its own separate book for the writing.
My worlds have never been too dark owing to the details that I found in that working definition of maturity. I remember testing it casually at first, every chance I got, cautiously learning what all the nuances connected to this term truly meant. But by my second daughter’s second birthday I had learned The Tenth Word : what friend meant—and lo, what a measured man I was becoming as I began to feverishly perform these two words among the other words in my growing collection.
The Front Three
We all fail at life—all equals being at ‘play’—when we fail at performing essential words. And like the ‘front four’ in football (Think, Chicago Bears), there are three most essential words in the lineup to guard and rush for knowledge: (you may test them for their essentiality, if you really think you must.)
Reading, Writing, and Mathing.
When we fail at reading,
we fail at measuring.
When we fail at mathing,
we fail also at measuring.
When we fail at writing (conversing),
we again fail at measuring.
In the above representation, I have placed measuring as the key aspect of these front three. Therefore, I think it is most important for a person to develop a math skill level which is equal to the task which they are trying to accomplish during their day, their week, or any and all of their upcoming futures. This book will describe some of the deep places where this math resides, and describe where those of us who are at the heart of the educational society, have failed in adequately coordinating with our young that math is to be highly prized in everything we seek to be as humans.
Math Lanes
Wherever we are going in life, and no matter what we have chosen to do along the way, we need to make a habit of mapping out those trips, even the shortest ones, and we should decide the fanfare of the detail that should go into the planning of any life trip, no matter how tenuous.
This, then, also involves one choosing to develop the math-of-the-mouth, so that we are careful what we say to our teacher, our principal, or the Judge, because the words that come out of our mouth will be read, written, and measured by someone and later come back doubled and measured in triplicate—whether as good or bane. In these normal everyday kind of things we can see math lanes as places of choice (another math term) in which we can order our steps as we go about the game of life.
Mathing Our Self Esteem
Let's look at a school level numerical equation: 3X=85. If measuring equals X in the numerical sentence, then self-esteem (85) is >large: greater than large. Large is of course that floating constant of a passing number. So in this numerical sentence, letting X equal the 'act of measuring,' helps determine the volumes of differences after the equal sign. The meaning of the sentence could be expressed in real words such as the following: By doing the measuring process three times, we can attain the number 85, or we can get 85 somethings for our effort. In this example, we get a score or strength of 85 in our self-esteem.
Thus, the more measuring one does on the left side of the equation, the more self-esteem will reside on the other side of the equal sign.
With regard to our front three (reading, writing, and math): If one regularly practices these three essentials from the same starting line-up (number line), so to speak, then self-esteem is guaranteed to become stronger. If one were just to scan the activity alone that goes back and forth between these three bulwarks—no matter the level obtained in one’s personal math discipline—one will easily get the connection I propose about this dynamic trio.
My Mantra
For years I have said to my students:
Reading is Writing
And Writing is Mathing.
During those years, I have invited them to do a most simple test to see this statement in flow. The basic understanding I wanted them to get was: When doing math there are things encountered called numerical sentences; these are made up of numbers and symbols. The movie one might see themselves doing, then, is of reading the sentences first, followed by a PEMDAS procedure, next the evaluation, and finally the writing of the answer into one’s brain, or into the space after the equal sign on paper.
Another way one may test a simplified part of this is by thinking about how one reads a book. Basically when we read, we measure or calculate what letters are in each word (math); at the same time we write details related to these computations into the brain. So every time we read, we write. Some instances later, when we finally put these words together (math, PEMDAS), we write larger, more definitive thoughts about these word groups into ourselves...every time.
Whether we echo the words into our brain systems as we read, by mouthing them silently with our breath, or eidetically scanning them directly into our consciousness (with or without a USB connection cable), we are performing the line-item movements of the ‘front three’. These three: reading, writing and mathing, working ahead of other systems of habit, ultimately can defend the life— and win some games.
Wherever You Go
To go far in all the things we task, and be worthy of breath, we should have a working relationship with these three most essential words.
Summation (math)
The aim of the words in The Tenth Word is to reveal with fanfare some good working definitions of words almost all adults want youth to perform.
This writing is dedicated to the youth who have most charmed and sustained me over the years with their genius-like word-trading. In the short time in which we moderns have each other’s reading attention, I know I couldn’t display the great intensity of our past word play, or the true number of our juvenile thought experiments that have over the years made my life grand. But, with great cavalcades of thanks and unrevealed emotions, I honor all of my young, —not just with respect, but with all the wealth that the working definitions in this book can communicate. In all human joys or successes, we owe great debt to the meanings of words; find here in this writing the many that I have pinched, misered, and invested the most.