More answers from suggestions to the Oatmeal bowl

Topic #1 "Why is Polish (as in being from Poland) and polish (as in polishing your shoes) spelled the same?"

You can be forgiven if you find that the Polish spelling looks funny, some would even call it weird. It does certainly look different, even strange with all those funny apostrophes, tails and dots over letters. It is however, not as bad as it might seem, although, the Polish spelling is not for the fainthearted, difficult to master not only for a foreigner, but also for a Pole (another variation of the same word I might add, which again has more than one meaning). No wonder many Poles find it difficult to express themselves properly in writing. Mind you, it takes years for a young Pole to master the intricacies of the Polish written language. For us foreigners we will never become fully learned, we will continue to make painful, often awkward mistakes in our writing. On the bright side, since so many of the youngsters do not know how to spell, there is not much likelihood to be laughed at. To put it simply: the Latin alphabet sucks, that sucking is one of the main reasons the Cyrillic alphabet was invented in the first place. Although Latin is a straightforward language and is easy to spell using the latin alphabet It was never intended for use with somewhat more unique and strong Slavonic languages like Polish.

Anyway, I suspect you were anticipating a long drawn out explanation to this relatively easy question, I will make you wait no more. I bet you did not even realize that you have even given me the answer right up there in the question. Stop reading and look back up there and see if you can find it. While it is, I suppose, a technicality they are not really spelled the same. One must come with a capital letter (P) to mean "An adjective to describe something related to Poland" and, of course, the one without a capital letter (p) "To make smooth and shiny by rubbing or chemical action." If you consider that that the noun also describes the chemical product one polishes with an item with it, well then it obviously becomes crystal clear to all, and yes the “c” in crystal is not capitalized. And then there is the monkey wrench that if the word polish starts a sentence and has to be capitalized, well the context of the sentence will immediately tell you the meaning of the first word. Polish is no longer allowed to be used in conjunction with Slavic footwear for example and could still kind of go either way. Polish for the fine leather shoes was perfected by Kiwi, which was not a Polish company is much more clear and understandable.

I hope this succinct and detailed explanation helps you understand better the proper usage of the first letter of the word in question.

Topic #2 Does a walnut tree make weird sounds, or talk, while it is preparing to drop a walnut to the ground below?

This was given to me under the auspices of one of those “questions from a face book friend”, that is what I was told. I am not a professional psychologist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so I feel more than qualified to pass a bit of judgment on this psychological projection. Basically projection is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and/or emotions, which are ascribed to the outside world, another person or perhaps a walnut tree as is the case here. Projection is the most profound and subtle of our psychological processes, and extremely difficult to work with, because by its nature, it is hidden. It is the fundamental mechanism by which we keep our selves uninformed about ourselves. Humor has great value in any attempt to work with projection, because humor presents a forgiving posture and thereby removes the threatening nature of any enquiry into the truth. More on the humor part at the end. Paleoanthropologically speaking, this faculty probably had survival value as a self defense mechanism when we were still roaming the savanna’s of Africa. According to classical psychology, projection is always seen as a defense mechanism that occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else, or some inanimate object such as a walnut tree. I got to thinking and realized that projection also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them, again more on that later. I for the life of me could not figure out why my friend would have these feelings about the walnut tree question.

After a bit more research I found another term, transference. That term was first used by Sigmund Freud to describe a process in analysis or therapy. Freud noted that many of his patients seemed at some point to begin to place certain feelings, like romantic love or parental love, onto the therapist, or in this case, perhaps it is a love of walnut furniture. And wanting to hear the walnuts drop signified the start of new life because, of course, a small little walnut tree would sprout from that nut thereby ensuring a healthy supply of walnut lumber well into the future. Perhaps with the walnut trees and thereby the walnut lumber, safe from harm, my friends friend could feel safe, perhaps. Perhaps there is some other deep-seated feeling about walnuts, could it be perhaps that my friends friend like to use the nuts themselves in baked goods. As I mentioned earlier I would come back to the humor part as well anxiety, well here ya go. As for “your friend” who asked the question about talking walnut trees, I believe, due to the simple fact trees don’t talk, that he or she has been busted smoking the weeds that grow up under that walnut tree. Which by way, I have heard, work miracles on both humor and anxiety and phenomenally it will also allow them to indulge in baked goods issue to satisfy the, sometimes humorous in it scale, munchies.

Sorry, except for the wizard oz movie (not reality), trees don’t talk and we should not talk to them for fear we may be confused with a Bogo on the Bluebell.
(see http://mroatmealsoratories.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-this-oratory-is-going-to-explain.html for an explanation of what that means)