Daily Oral Language -- Part II

No one likes disappointment.

So I had to feel sorry for Gus Portokalos when he found out that two words being bantered around at Village Board meetings did not, in fact, come from Greek.

"You know, I thought the word community came from the work meaning common, as in what we all had together," he said.  But no.  It's from the Latin.

The meaning, however, doesn't change.  Check it out and you'll find that a key component in the definition is unified or common.


So when Lisa Stone rants on about how the "community wants to know" or how the "I think the community needs to know" she should consider the meaning -- unified.   It's amazing to me how she carries on about the needs of the community, yet she does little to work on behalf of the entire community.  Nor, as a matter of fact, does she check the pulse of the community.  It's as though she is a community of one.  This has been evident in how she works with her colleagues on the Board who, as she was, elected by the community.  Stone portrays herself as knowing the pulse of the community.

Listening to her at the last Board meeting, which was Sept. 13, you'd think the community is unified over the Land and Lakes landfill and the executive session from 2005. How does she know?  Has she surveyed the community?  Of course not.  She is so bent on her personal attacks on village staff and colleagues that she sees little in the benefits of a unified effort.


"So, it's one word, what other word do you want to know," Portokalos  asked.  "Citizen," I said.  "Ach, I believe the word citizen comes from the Greek..."  Sorry, I informed him, it does not.

But it's one of Stoney's favorite words.  You know, how she's heard from citizens about just about everything, well, everything that's on her personal agenda.  Like the Invisible Children group, which contacted her. They wanted to have a fund raiser at the Village Rotary Green.  No one knew about it until the Recall Committee had a rally there -- then, and only then, did Stone bring it to the Board.

Was this working in the best interest of the citizens?  Was it a way to work for the community?

Nope.

Portokalos shook his head.  "You know, I don't think the word stone comes from the Greek, so, there you go."

Gus, I told him, it's not me who has to go.