10-10-19

10:10:08
Memorial Service
Spring Hill Cemetery
Lynchburg, Virginia

Michael Ross McConnell
b. Thursday 10 July 1952
d. Orthodox Easter Sunday 27 April 2008 

I had to be in Chicago on 10:10:08 or I would have attended the Memorial Service. One last Ross adventure. A chance to meet his parents and members of the Ross community. 

At the Service his Father circulated a document which MJ described as a screed. 

“Screed” has distinctly negative connotations compared to “manifesto,” which is a more neutral term for a public declaration explaining the intentions behind a course of action (derived via Italian from the Latin verb “manifestare,” meaning “to make public”).

“Screed,” now used for a long, vehement denunciation in speech or writing, has had a number of semantic twists and turns in its history. When it first showed up in English sources in the 14th century, its meaning was quite different. It referred to a fragment or scrap, particularly a cut piece of paper, leather or fabric. The word apparently originated as a variant form of “shred” appearing in some local dialects of England.

‘Screed’ also had an independent meaning: A harsh, screeching noise, as from a poorly played fiddle or bagpipe.

“Screed” developed other regional meanings, such as a narrow parcel of land, a bordering strip or the frilled edge of a woman’s cap. Charlotte Brontë, in her 1848 novel “Shirley,” describes a “screed, or frill of the cap” which “stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer.” Builders took “screed” in a more technical direction, to refer to a strip of plaster or wood used as a guide for accurate finishing.

In Scottish usage, “screed” took on yet another meaning: a long, tiresome list or a tedious bit of speech or writing. In a comic play from 1748 titled “The Double Traitor Roasted: A New Scots Opera,” one character lampoons the other’s flowery speech: “A Scots writer, by the Lord, for they cannot speak without a screed of Latin.”

As the use of “screed” for lengthy discourse became entrenched in the English lexicon, it accrued harsher tones, likely influenced by similar-sounding words like “scream” and “screech.” It likely helped that “screed” at the time also had an independent meaning in Scottish and Irish English for a harsh, screeching noise, as from a poorly played fiddle or bagpipe. In current usage, a “screed” isn’t simply tedious but suggests a bile-filled rant.