You really need to see this photo on full screen. It's so good, it's almost like being there. This is Wasatch Mountain State Park in Heber Valley. The colors are spectacular. It's time to go for a drive up the canyon! Now!

No, I didn't take this photo, I borrowed it from KSL TV weather news photo gallery. I was looking for a lovely photo to adorn my BLOG. I come here every day to see if anyone has posted anything on their BLOGs, and my last BLOG was rather colorless and drab. As a kindness to myself, I decided that I needed something lovely to greet me when I come here. Sometimes the astronomy photo of the day is sufficient. And it actually was the astronomy photo of the day today that made me think of going to KSL TV weather to look at their sunsets, etc.

Don't you just love the beautiful Fall weather we have been having? Makes you glad to be alive!

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS A WORD THAT MAY OFFEND SOME PEOPLE.

–It’s a much-maligned, perfectly good word. Unless, of course, you are hurling epithets that contain it at someone. Or suggesting that a person has characteristics that are … you know … st*p*d. Speaking of hurling epithets, it seems to me that just about any word said with an expression of repugnance and a certain nasty tone of voice can be equally as disturbing as … st*p*d.

Sister TY, several years ago, used the word “concoction” to describe a New Beginnings program that someone had … uhm … concocted. Her disdain was palpable. Her meaning clearly was that the creatress and her concoction were … st*p*d.

St*p*d is a word that even a child can understand and use adeptly and it’s easy to pronounce. Once as a joke, I succeeded in teaching a 2 year old to say “troglodyte” instead of st*p*d. Adults who heard him say it thought he was just a two year old babbling. They were unfamiliar with the word troglodyte. Obviously, an epithet needs to be understood to have any impact.

Which of the following words are less offensive than st*p*d?? idiotic, dumb-bell, dimwitted, blockhead (Lucy loved to say that to Charlie Brown), dope, numskull, ignoramus, know-nothing, BB-brain, empty-headed, boneheaded, half-baked, simple-minded, bird-brained, airhead, or how about Mork’s “nim-null”?

How do you say something is foolish or ill-advised so effectively that a person will understand and will stop being st*p*d or doing st*p*d things? Isn’t this a case of a 10-cent word being better than a whole thesaurus full of synonyms?

The above are the things I pondered after I saw the following cartoon in today's newspaper: