Scrabble’s Two Letter Words – Re & Sh
Re
Re — The second note in the solfège system. See also: Do. But also…
Re — Often followed by a colon: In regards to. If an abbreviation (like app, fridge, or bike) is used in sentences enough times, it becomes a word. But… re is not an abbreviation. In fact, the word ‘re’ is an older word than the word ‘regarding’. Re is a Latin loan word and one half of the legal expression ‘in re’, which means ‘in the matter of’.
Most cases claimed in the United States have two contestants. For example Brown v. The Board of Education, or Hatfield v. McCoy. But in cases where there are no opposing parties, ‘in re’ is used. This happens often in bankruptcy hearings. For example: in re Hilton Hotels Corp.. The Great Depression was not a good time for Conrad Hilton. The banks repossessed almost all of his hotels, and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. But Hilton was a savvy businessman. He eventually recouped his lost money, bought back his hotels, and continued to grow his empire.
‘In re’ may also be used when applying a legal name change. For example, there was probably an application made in re the name change of Jeffrey Drew Wilschke when he changed his name to ‘Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-bop-bop’. According to Mr. Zopittybop-bop-bop, ‘Beezow’ meant “the explosion of awareness of the interconnectedness of the infinite love in the universe.” ‘Doo-doo’ was “the struggle of our daily lives with that awareness, that with love comes chaos;” and ‘Zopittybop-bop-bop’ was “the outcome of that struggle, which is often ironic, especially because all life ends in death.” All of which is oddly deep for a man with the middle name of Doo-Doo. So it’s a real shame that the other thing Beezow is most known for is for when he was arrested for drinking and taking drugs near a public park. For ten seconds at seven and ten o’clock, every newscaster became a Scatman Crothers. And, at least in that way, Beezow made a lot of people very happy.
‘In re’ is also commonly used when filing for adoption. In in re adoption of Heather Hutchins, millionaire John Goodman (not the actor) filed to adopt his 42 year old girlfriend as his daughter. Goodman was drunk behind the wheel when he smashed his car into another motorist, Scott Wilson. And while Goodman escaped the accident, Wilson died by drowning to death in a canal. When the parents of Wilson sued Goodman in court, they suddenly found that Goodman’s trust fund for his children had simply evaporated. That’s because the money was now hidden in a trust fund under the name of his new daughter-girlfriend.
In the end, the sneaky trick did not work. Goodman was sentenced with 16 years for DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide. As the prosecution pointed out, “This wasn’t an accident. He intended to drive. He intended to drink. He did not intend to kill Scott Wilson. But his intent to do the other things caused Scott Wilson’s death.” The adoption was overturned once it became clear to the courts why Goodman had adopted his girlfriend, and Wilson’s parents agreed to a $46 million dollar settlement outside of court. No amount of money, however, could possibly replace their son.
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Sh
Sh — Be quiet. ‘Sh’ is a rare contagious word in the English language. Often, when a group hears the word, they act like cartoon aliens, repeating ‘sh’ over and over to each other as if it’s the only word their entire species knows.
Sh is a desire for silence. But pure silence is an unreasonable goal. Even in Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Redmond, Washington, where an intense amount of sound is deadened in all directions to a negative twenty decibels (or twenty decibels below the limits of human hearing.) But when all other sound is eliminated, your body continues to make noise. Your ears ring with nothing to focus on. Your heartbeat becomes thunderous. Your bones creak and grind as you move your limbs. You can not escape noise. You can only choose what noises to surround yourself with.
We are not conditioned to enjoy true silence. As with birds, baboons, and all other social animals, humans use a number of ‘contact calls’ around other humans. We chat with people in passing, and hum, whistle, or sing to ourselves when we’re alone. And we’ve incorporated the sounds of our tools into our contact calls. The ring of a bell to say hello. The drone of a radio in the background to not feel alone. Like all our simian relations, we associate sound with a feeling that everything is all clear and safe. When we hear a sudden silence, like when the soundtrack to a movie suddenly stops, that’s an indication that something is wrong. There is a predator nearby. Be quiet and pay attention.
This appears to be why Gordon Hempton, who is an acoustic ecologist and sound tracker for movies and video games, seeks out silence in a different way. To him, silence is not about screening out and isolating the ambient sounds around him so he can pay closer attention to people. Silence is about paying close attention to everything all around us.
It’s a form of torture to spend too much time in the true silence of the anechoic chamber, so it makes sense that what we really desire is noise that agrees with and calms us. Even Hempton, who spends his life tracking down some of the most quiet places on Earth to record almost nothing, still finds the sounds of a train in operation endlessly satisfying. It doesn’t matter how ‘unnatural’ the sound of a train is. There’s something pleasing about the combination of rhythmic clacking rails, the clang of bells at a crossing, and the blast of a train’s horn. And despite the spectacle of sound, the entirety of it all creates an overpowering cone of silence in which all other sounds are drowned to the power of a train endlessly rolling over you.
Silence is not quiet. It is stillness. It is the sublime feeling that nothing is happening, and may never happen again. It is both common and impossible to achieve. It is a single snowflake, falling through the air, never touching the Earth.
