…with Gary Moss

compromise |ˈkämprəˌmīz| noun
An agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions : an ability to listen to two sides in a dispute, and devise a compromise acceptable to both | the secret of a happy marriage is compromise.
• a middle state between conflicting opinions or actions reached by mutual concession or modification

Any of you who were around in the year 1850 may well remember the election which was really about the future of slavery and the Union. However, if you listened to the rhetoric of the primary candidates, the Whig Party’s, General Zachary Taylor and the Democratic nominee, Lewis Cass, there was hardly a word spoken on the real issues. The arguments on this volatile issue, was instead taken up in the Congress, with relation to new states being admitted into the Union. There were diehard believers on both sides of the issue. Some would personally rather see the Union crumble, rather than compromise. But compromise they did, for the time being.
• California was admitted as a free state;
• New Mexico and Utah were organized without restrictions on slavery;
• Texas, also unrestricted as to slavery, had its boundaries set and received $10M for the land that would become New Mexico;
• The slave trade (but not slavery itself) was abolished in the District Of Columbia;
• A new Fugitive Slave Act provided federal jurisdiction to assist slave owners in the recovery of escaped slaves.
Any of you who were around in the 1990s may well remember the dictionary disputes and the compromise. Since the Scrabble Trademark was and is owned by HASBRO, the voice of the then NSA membership was heard, but had no power in the ultimate decission. Most players defended words as words and pressed for all words to be included in the Official Scrabble Dictionary. Advocates for ‘political correctness’ made a list of words that they considered to be ‘NAUGHTY’ and lobbied for their ouster from the dictionary. The non- compromise resulted in the printing of 2 separate items. The OWL2 seen on the left is the ‘Official Word List’, produced and sold by WORDGEAR, a subsidery of NSA, includes the ‘naughty words’. Those words are legal to play at clubs and tournaments sanctioned by NASPA. The OWL2 is not sold in book stores. I will sell you one; CLICK HERE.
The OSPD4, Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, is published by Merriam Webster and sold in book stores. The words therein are used in school competitions. Thanks to the politically correct individuals, the ‘F’ word, the ‘N’ word, the “MF’ word, the ‘S’ word and 140 other words no longer exist. And accord to the president of Iran, the Holocost didn’t happen either. Now I feel much better.
And lastly, hats off to all those personal compromises that enable players to slip away from their significant others, in order to fit in their scrabble fix.