>I still wish we could call it conservation
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Historic preservation or historic conservation? The issue re: using the
word 'preservation' or the word 'conservation'. I tend to use either/or
depending on how I feel like it.

Words have their dictionary meaning, their denotation, and they have the
meaning, and sometimes the overloaded multiple meanings, of a
connotation that are not quite specific but understood regardless. It is
an interesting aspect of language that it is always in a fog of
misunderstanding and coupled with our tendency, or ability, to discern
patterns out of chaos (the basis of measure of intelligence quotient) it
somehow is often enough that words are functional to communications.
They make do in a pinch. Philosophers have argued over just such issues
and a few have expended their entire careers, productive and otherwise,
trying to find the exactly correct set of words to unlock all of
reality. The compulsion of exactness in selection of words is the sort
of thing that drives poets into mental hospitals or worse.

I run across people who simply don't know what is being talked about
when the words 'historic conservation' are used. The immediate tendency
is to think that something else than what we actually mean is
intended... possibly along the line of saving habitat of really old
Amazonian tree frogs. We all know how important this cause is and I do
not bring it up with HC's lunch lightly.

Considering the National Trust and their promoting of the word in the
title of their publication, Preservation, the common impression of the
larger populace of people in America who think at all of working on old
buildings is going to be preservation, and not conservation. In turn,
the strict denotation of preservation may cause one to think in terms of
canning pickled plums (and not salty Chinese dried plums). The
connotation in the vernacular in common parlance is one of an expanded
meaning beyond keeping perishables in a fixed state of suspension. When
you say 'historic preservation' people tend to have an immediate idea of
what you may be talking about. In this respect, use 'historic
conservation' freely but at your own risk of possibly being
misunderstood. If you are not misunderstood then you will have gained
something, leastways the knowledge that you can imagine that you are
indeed understood by at least one person. Good luck.

I suspect that use of the words 'historic conservation' also goes
against an ingrained anti-Anglo, anti-European independence. An attitude
that we in the United States are free to call it whatever the hell we
want, despite that the remainder of the civilized world may call our
interest in fixing old structures something else. There seems to be
similar feeling towards gun control and condoms. If your insistence is
on not using the word 'preservation' then possibly you should be
prepared to have your patriotism questioned.

Embrace preservation, reject conservation, or move to Canada!

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>