This quote has been making the rounds with my friends on Facebook lately:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

It is so true, so powerful that I overwhelm with emotion whenever I read it. When we stay silent in the face of hatred, bigotry or injustice, we are doing harm.

Depending on who you ask, the English language has something like half a million to a million words in it. Yet, the average English speakers knows maybe ten or twenty thousand from what I have read. Given the richness of what we have available to use, this is rather pitiful.

Now, I don't pretend to be a wordsmith. I come across words I don't know rather often. But there are times when I am thankful for the variety of words that I do know.

Very late yesterday afternoon, the snow was falling thickly as the children played outside. The dim bit of light that remained in the day was not afternoon, evening or dusk. There was a word that fit the feel of the moment, one I see in books, but no one ever actually uses it.

Yesterday, I saw the gloaming.