Hey, it's Maggie. This week, we are revisiting some of our favorite poems and reflections from the season so far.

We'll be back on Monday, December 15th, with new episodes.

I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

One of my favorite things about words is their history.

As a writer, I'm curious about the words I choose for One of my favorite things about words is their history.

As a writer, I'm curious about the words I choose for my poems.

When I look up the origin of a word, it's like unfolding a map, and seeing the journey

that word has taken to reach me.

Suddenly I know it better. It feels special to me,

like a friend. Let's take the word migrant, for example, a word I've used in a poem. Migrant comes from

the Latin, megrins, meaning changing place.

So a migrant is one who moves from place to place.

The adjective migratory is related to migrant, as in migratory birds.

The verb migrate is related to. On any given day, reading or watching or

listening to the news, I'm confronted with divisive arguments about where people belong.

All over the world, there are violent conflicts over land, invasions, and occupations. In the U.S., there is so

much talk about our borders and about immigrants, and particularly alarming lately, talk about

citizenship. Many of those arguments seem so focused on

difference that they ignore our common humanity. The words we use matter. The language we choose

can strip a person's dignity from them or restore that dignity.

When undocumented immigrants are called illegals or illegal aliens, those words carry meaning.

They also carry a heavy negative connotation.

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