Wiped out

Wiped out

Today’s expression is “wiped out.” We use this, informally , to mean destroyed . I was telling you before about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 . About a third of the total building value in the city was wiped out. All those wooden structures , wooden sidewalks at the time, homes, factories , offices, all wiped out, all destroyed by that fire.

Three hundred people died, which is terrible, but it could have been much, much worse, considering how much damage was done.

On one of our very first travel lessons, I told you about the Virgin Islands . And I used to stay in a place called Cinnamon Bay on the island of St. John. Hurricane Irma hit the Virgin Islands in September 2017 and it completely wiped out my beloved Cinnamon Bay campground . It was just totally destroyed. And the whole area was closed for over four years. Lucky for visitors, it re-opened in early 2022.

I also did a travel lesson about Yellowstone National Park . And this summer, there were massive floods that wiped out a lot of the roads in the park. I stayed in a town called Gardiner, Montana. It’s one of the towns outside the park. And the road from Gardiner into the park is completely wiped out. It’s destroyed. It’s buried . There is no road anymore. The road was wiped out.

COVID-19 was bad; it still is. But we can be glad we were not alive in Europe or the Middle East in the year 1347. That was the year of the Black Death, an epidemic of the bubonic plague . Between 30 and 60 percent of the population of Europe was wiped out by the Black Death, the plague. In the Middle East, about a third of the population was wiped out.

So these are the two ways to use “wiped out”: usually a natural disaster of some kind, a fire, a flood, hurricane, tornado , things like that can wipe out an area, buildings, roads, trees. And then a disease can wipe out a population by killing a lot of people, plants, or animals.

JR’s song of the week

The longest-running musical in Broadway history is called “Chicago.” It was written in the 1970s and it’s about a strange time, the 1920s. This is when cities started to get big, when there was city corruption for the first time. And there was a legend that in Chicago, a beautiful woman would never be convicted of a crime . So the musical “Chicago” tells the story of a saucy celebrity, Roxy Hart, who is accused of murder .

So the song of the week is called “All That Jazz,” it’s the first song in the musical. We’ll give the credit to John Kander and Fred Ebb, who wrote the music and the lyrics, respectively. “All That Jazz” from the musical “Chicago” is JR’s song of the week.

See you on Saturday!

I don’t know why I say this, but at the end of the lessons, I often say “see you next time” or “see you on Thursday.” And a lot of you pick up on this, that it’s kind of a joke, that we don’t really see each other. But I still say it, because I imagine talking to each one of you when I record.

Well anyway, this is the one time I can truthfully say that I’ll see you next time. I’ll see you on Saturday, this Saturday, September 3, 2022. We are going to do the 500th lesson live on Instagram and Facebook at 8:00 Saturday morning here in Chicago. That’s 9 a.m. in New York. You can do the math for your time zone from there, but it’s waking hours for almost everyone who listens. That’s why we’re doing it at that time, so everyone can join.

So, yes, we’ll do the 500th lesson, but we’ll also announce the winners of the giveaway and we’ll be doing a champagne toast to all of you, right from my office. So join the Instagram Live, the Facebook Live, you can comment, you can react, all the things you can normally do on those.

If you go to PlainEnglish.com/500, or if you just look in the episode description of this episode, you’ll see our Facebook and Instagram links. Connect with us, follow us on there, and then you’ll be able to join the live stream on Saturday. I’m ready. I’m a little nervous. But you are all so supportive, I know I don’t have anything to worry about!

See you on Saturday! I can’t wait.