One of the news shows on Sunday morning was addressing a new trend for the titles of all sorts of books in your local bookstore to contain curse words. I actually own one of the books they showed, a knitting book entitled “Stitch and ***.” The surprising thing is that some of the books they were showing had much worse words in the titles of what appeared to be children’s books. Also, many of the titles contained the REALLY dirty words. One of the experts, maybe it was a sociologist or anthropologist, said this is an example of the “coarsening of our culture.”I will come clean and admit that I need my mouth washed out with soap several times a day, while my husband may require some bleach or something just as strong to sanitize his mouth. My children, unfortunately, have picked up the habit as well. I have no explanation or excuse as to why I do this, when I find it to be so offensive to hear swearing out and about and, conversely, find it such a relief to find an absence of foul language in a conversation or a movie.Several years ago my mother and I were sitting in a restaurant in New York City when a man at the next table said a comparatively mild swear word. It caught my attention, then I realized the reason it had caught my attention was because I had heard very little swearing since I had arrived in the city a few days before. Since then I have been conducting a very unscientific study of swearing patterns around the country and have discovered that swearing is less commonly heard in the East, but increases as one travels West. I believe Southern California is the cussing-est place I have ever been. Swear words can be handy, but they lose their impact if they are overused. My mother rarely used bad language, so when she did say a bad word, she had my rapt attention. If you swear too often, then you have to find more and more offensive words to get the same “punch.” And that, in my opinion, is one reason why our culture is becoming more coarse—as words formerly considered naughty become acceptable, then we have to keep going dirtier and dirtier to be titillating.One of the commenters on the news said swearing shows your ignorance or lack of education. I know that is untrue because I know plenty of highly intelligent and educated people who could pass for sailors. I do, however, believe it shows intellectual laziness. It is much easier to use a swear word to express an emotion than it is to think of a more eloquent way to express whatever is on your mind. I hate the coarsening of our culture and want to do whatever I can to buck that trend, so I started yesterday to watch what I say and to clean up my language. Besides, I am a Christian and it is not Christ-like to curse. I cannot swear that I will never swear, but I can save it for “special” occasions. Now to convince the rest of my family to do the same… SpringCreekArtsGuild@gmail.com.