Today’s word of the day is forsaken. Forsaken is the past participle of the verb to forsake, and thus it can be part of a verb phrase or used adjectivally. For instance, in the passive voice, one might say, “Joseph was forsaken by his brothers.” As an adjective, it would lack the auxiliary verb and be something like, “The ship arrived at the forsaken planet.” Forsaken means “deserted, abandoned, forlorn” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/forsaken).

Etymonline says that the word first appeared in English as an adjective in the “mid-13c., past-participle adjective from forsake” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=forsaken). So we have to go to forsake to learn more: “Old English forsacan ‘object to, oppose, refuse, deny; give up, renounce’ (past tense forsoc, past participle forsacen), from for- ‘completely’ + sacan ‘to struggle, dispute, wrangle; accuse, blame’ (see sake). Related: Forsaking. Similar formation in Old Saxon farsakan, Dutch verzaken, Old High German farsahhan ‘deny, repudiate,’ Danish forsage ‘give up, refuse” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/forsake). But when did sake mean “struggle, dispute, wrangle,” etc.? Here is what the website says about sake: “Middle English sake ‘strife, discord, enmity, dispute; legal dispute; blame, sin, guilt;’ from Old English sacu ‘a cause at law, crime, dispute, guilt,’ from Proto-Germanic *sako ‘affair, thing, charge, accusation’ (source also of Old Norse sök ‘charge, lawsuit, effect, cause,’ Old Frisian seke ‘strife, dispute, matter, thing,’ Dutch zaak ‘lawsuit, cause, sake, thing,’ German Sache ‘thing, matter, affair, cause’), from PIE root *sag– ‘to investigate, seek out’” (ibid.). The site further says that the OE and ME meaning of sake “has been taken over by case and cause [the noun form], and it survives largely in phrases for the sake of and for _______’s sake ‘out of consideration or regard for’ a person or thing (c. 1200, as for God’s sake, early 14c.), both those formations are said to be probably from Norse, as their like has not been found in Old English” (ibid.).

I’m in Nashville, TN, today, though I’ll be leaving for home shortly. We’re at a Hampton Inn on Crestmore Blvd. with our daughter, who is here meeting with the Tennessee Valley Authority. We just came along for the ride. She had a dinner last night, a networking session as part of the meeting with people from TVA. So my wife and I were on our own.

We found out that there is a Cheesecake Factory nearby, but it wasn’t until we were actually mapping our way to dinner that we discovered that the restaurant, as well as the mall to which it is attached, was just a three-minute walk from the hotel. Other restaurants, such as Emmy Squared and North Italia, are in the same mall complex, as well as other restaurants and food places. The place is called The Mall at Green Hills, and it bills itself as Nashville’s Premier Shopping Destination.

We walked across a parking lot and found the outskirts of the mall, a movie theater and Emmy Squared, along with a jewelry store, separate from the main mall building. Then we passed by a bakery, featuring a cupcake sale for February 29, Leap Day, where you could get $2.29 off a single cupcake. It made us wonder how much a cupcake cost. There was a salad shop called Chopt. Then we came to North Italia and Cheesecake Factory. Between them was an entrance to the mall.

Yes, it is an actual mall. I thought malls were similar to dinosaurs, already extinct, but here is a mall calling itself the premier shopping destination. I think the owners connect “premier” to high prices because all of the stores in this mall were elite. The anchor stores were Nordstroms, Dillards, and Macy’s. In between were stores like Burberry, Chanel, Crate and Barrel, Everything but Water, Dolce and Gabbana, Saint Laurent, Swarovski, North Face, Tesla, State and Liberty, Tempur-Pedic, and many more. We didn’t actually go into any of these stores for fear that just walking into one of them would drain our bank account.

But here’s the thing. As we walked by these fairly large retail spaces, we noticed that each one had only 1 or 2 or 3, or as many as 5, people inside, and all of those people were employees. You could tell by the way they were putting clothing away, or wearing something that said “employee,” or just standing around and chatting or looking at their phones. In a few of the smaller stores, we saw nobody. There were no customers in these stores. I mean, I sort of could understand. When we walked by State and Liberty, a men’s clothing store, I saw on a mannequin pants so tight that I wonder how a guy could walk while wearing them. But how can a store pay rent at Nashville’s Premier Shopping Destination, much less the hourly wage of the employees, if nobody is in the store buying the products?

Now, I realize that it was a weekday evening, not the weekend. And I realize that it was the end of February, not October or November. But why would you have three, four, or even five people working in your store if you’re not selling anything?

We saw a food-selling kiosk with the name Woops! My wife wondered why someone would choose that name, so when we saw the kiosk, we stopped and asked. A very nice, friendly woman was there to answer our questions. She told us that the mall has been around since 1955, and that it had been enlarged several times over the last 69 years. My wife remarked that it looked very new and modern, and the woman agreed, but she also pointed out that the skylight above her kiosk leaks at times. She pointed out that the mall is busier on weekends and around the holidays, but then she also said that the prices of the stores were too high for her to buy anything.

Woops! sells macaroons. It got its name from a catering event, where the caterer ran out of macaroons and said, “Woops.” It was not an inspiring story. The macaroons were colorful, but the kiosk’s placing calorie counts on the little cards identifying each kind of macaroon made the cookies less enticing. Still, knowing that the macaroons would be expensive, I suggested that my wife could get one if she wanted. They had tiramisu, and my wife likes coffee. I said, “Do you want to get one?”

The woman on the other side of the counter said, “The smallest amount we sell is a box of six, and that’s $24 dollars.” My wife didn’t seem to hear her. “Did you say $6 for 24 or $24 for 6?” The woman said that she had said the latter. For any who might be math challenged, that comes out to $4 for each little, tiny cookie, cookies smaller than your average Oreo. We didn’t buy any macaroons.

I’m not sure what to make of what I saw. On the one hand, the fact that there are stores that sell $4 cookies and $10,000 pocketbooks makes me think that people are doing fine. But the fact that the stores in the Mall at Green Hills is devoid of actual customers, at least on a Thursday night, makes me think that things are not going well for the country.

The image today comes from https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/usa/abandoned-malls-usa/. The Randall Park Mall, in Randall, Ohio, “was the largest shopping center in the world. With over 2 million square feet of real estate, the mall was a maze of hallways and corridors.” It “included three 14-story apartments and a performing arts center.” The mall opened in 1976 and closed in 2009. Now it is forsaken.