Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

This week presents Sunday Word Puzzle aired on NPR. With a given word and an extra letter, anagram everything into a new word ... in which the added letter is silent. e.g., MOW + B = WOMB      1.   GRIN + W =   2.   TOGS + H =   3.   FINE + K =   4.   TENS + C =   5.   HANS + G =   6.   BRIDE + S =   7.   NOMAD + L =   8.   RETINT + W =   9.    NO SHAME + D = Answer Keys      1.   Wring   2.   Ghost   3.   Knife   4.   Scent   5.   Gnash   6.   Debris   7.   Almond   8.   Writen   9.   handsome

Today, let me share some English words or phrases that you hear frequently these days due to the current mind-boggling pandemic that’s sweeping the entire world. We all feel insecure, unstable, devastated, and lonely. However, this too shall pass. Take a deep breath and hang in there!!! non-essential businesses : the businesses that are generally recreational in nature. (They don't provide groceries, health or financial support, or utilities) e.g., shopping malls, theaters, hair salons, nail salons and spa, museums, casinos/ racetracks, sporting and concert venues *Most restaurants can operate as long as they switch their service to exclusively ‘take-out’ and ‘delivery’. to shelter in place: It means to stay at home or find a safe location indoors and stay there until you are given an “all clear” or told to evacuate. (to be placed on) lockdown: a situation in which people are not allowed to enter or leave a building or area freely because of an...

Small Thoughts in Big Crisis by Jean J. Lee Social distancing to flatten the curve It serves the purpose, but wracks our nerve So tired of news and stories we observe Alas! Is this crisis what we truly deserve? People keep adding piles of food reserve. Hope our humanity is still the thing we can preserve. Oh, Lord, please let the virus swerve     and go away for good with much less verve.

Let us challenge ourselves with the NPR Sunday Puzzle aired this last Sunday. (source: NPR on-air challenge Word Puzzle, March 20, 2020) Every answer today is a word, name or phrase in which the only consonants are C and T — repeated as often as necessary. All the other letters are vowels. Example: Understood without being staged =>    answer: tacit 1.    A room at the top of a house 2.    Like an angle that is less than 90 degrees 3.    group of 8 musicians 4.    desert plants with needles 5.    an adorable person 6.    city on the Erie Canal (in upstate New York between Buffalo and Albany) 7.    strategy 8.    something invisible a grade schooler doesn’t want to get 9.    brand of breath mint (two words) 10.        kind of acid or derived from/ producing vinegar 1...

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or some fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past. Episode # 33. Lonely Hearts Laura and I were both broken souls. Her husband had cheated on her more than twice, which made her determined never to ...

Are you sad? Are you lonely? Do you need some words that would touch and hear your painful soul at the moment? I would like to share these quotes so we all could embrace what we are facing and come to terms with those feelings inside of you. "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew." Saint Francis de Sales "Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C.S. Lewis “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;    And for poise, walk with the knowledge that                     You are never alone.” ...

Here’s the interesting word puzzle from this last week’s Weekend On-air challenge game made by Will Shortz from NPR. You are given clues for two words. The first word ends in -GO. Drop the GO, and what's left will answer the second clue.  For example: What's loaded onto a ship? / Automobile --> CARGO 1. Tropical fruit / Guy or fellow 2. Australian sheep menace / Cacophony 3. Ballroom dance / Light brown 4. Second-longest river in Africa / Opposed to 5. North Dakota city / At a distance 6. Game with a 25-square card / Large container 7. Foreigner in Mexico / Smile 8. Italian cheese / Where China is 9. Third-largest city in America / Latin-American girl 10. Name of a bay in Jamaica / Card game associated with cheats 11. California city / Cookie often made with pecans Answer Keys              1.   mango/ man    2.   dingo/ din ...