Making A Choice, Part One

I first published this series in 2006 and I decided to re-run it in August 2009, as it is central to much of my life's situation..Since there are many new readers here, I decided to run the series again. Initial articles did not contain word histories, but I added them in 2009. Unless otherwise indicated, each article is the same as in 2009. In this first part, only this preface has been added. 

I'm going to keep this simple and lay out facts, with no editorializing (I HATE when I say or type that!).

A person in their 50s works for a company that manages apartments. The person is an on site manager for a building that has a large college student residency, although with a number of non students also. Many of the college students are from overseas, and most are here in America on student visas to attend college. The apartments are rented as furnished units. The building makes money, but is not living up to what the owners had envisioned, and to what they had laid out for investors prior to when the project was started. The building was built circa 1910, and was very rundown, and in fact, had been closed for several years. The project plan was to renovate it and market it primarily to college students, as a community college and an urban university are nearby. The manager has company provided health insurance. The manager has some health issues, one being fairly high bad cholesterol and low good cholesterol, and requiring relatively expensive cholesterol medication. Further, there are spine and possible hernia problems that could require surgery.

A company makes inquiry about housing for a student coming to America from Poland on a work-study type of program for the summer. The student will be employed by this company and attend some classes at one of the nearby schools. The company representative states that the company will pay for the student employee's first month's rent and the security deposit. The total sum is approximately $850. The student arrives at the building, having been in the United States less than 24 hours (he had landed at another city and took an overnight bus from there). The company representative brings $750 to the apartment building prior to the student's arrival. The representative says that she will bring the $100 balance the next day. The young man, only 19 years old, arrives and he is given the keys to his apartment. He has a fair understanding of English, but is not totally fluent. He has never been to America before. He is expected to be at work at about 3 p.m. He arrives at the building at sometime between Noon and 1 p.m.

So, we have the 19 year old Polish student moved into his apartment. Shortly thereafter he heads off to his job, which is about a ten minute walk from the apartment building. The manager has collected all but $100 from the company sponsoring the student, with a promise by the company representative to pay the balance the next day.

The manager's supervisor calls and checks on the student's arrival and move in. He hears that there is a $100 balance due. He tells the manager to get on the phone immediately and call the company representative and demand payment of the $100 the same day, not by the next day. The manager's attempts to reach the representative fail, as she is with the new student (she is also the student's supervisor).

The next morning, the manager's supervisor comes to the building. He wants to know if the company paid the balance the day before. The manager explains that he couldn't reach the lady, and that she wouldn't be at work until in the afternoon, when she had said she would bring in the $100 balance. The supervisor tells the manager, "You'd better NEVER do this again!!! You never let anyone move in without paying all money owed!" The manager asks, "So what, I should put a 19 year old foreign student out on the streets?" The supervisor answered, "Yes, that's exactly what you should have done, and that you WILL do from now on!"

Just think for a second, what would you do in this situation? I'll continue with the second part in the near future.

Word History:
STEM-There are two different words of this spelling in English. (1) The noun: This goes back to the Indo European root "sta," which meant "to stand," and yes, it is also the ancestor of our word "stand." The Old Proto Germanic offshoot was "stamniz," which the gave the various developing Germanic languages forms of the word: Danish "stamme," Swedish "stam," Dutch "stam," German "Stamm," all of which mean "tree trunk," although the German word also has the broader meaning "family line, tribe, a particular breed of something, a strain (as in "this strain of virus"), a root of a word." Of course, all of these meanings still point to the notion of things "stemming" from some main thing, just a a tree "stems" from the trunk, which is how the tree "stands;" going back to the Indo European base. Old English had "stemn," which meant "the trunk of a plant, not just a tree." Further in Old English, because ships tended to have a post at either end, these were also referred to as "stems," and we still say "from stem to stern" to this day. In the 1870s, the little device on a watch came to be called "the stem." Like our close relative German, English also uses this same word as a verb, with the similar meanings I gave above for German.

Stem (2)-This is not the same word as #1. This is a verb meaning "stop, hold something back," as in, "Our troops were able to stem the enemy attack." This word goes back to Indo European "stem/stam," which had the notion of "use some kind of force against something." The Old Germanic offshoot was "stamjan." Whether Old English had some form of this word, I don't know, as many linguists seem to believe that English acquired it during the 1200s from Old Norse "stemma." However, and this is just my thought here, it seems odd to me that the other West Germanic languages (the closest relatives of English, as English, too, is West Germanic) have, or in the past had, a form of the word: Old Saxon (the dialect that remained on the Continent in what is now northern Germany) had "stemmian," Middle Dutch* had "stemon," and German still has "stemmen," which, besides meaning "stop, hold back," also means "to lift weights (in this case "holding up").

* The Dutch used from about 1100 until 1500 A.D.