Welcome to Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
Some Manor-keeping notes:
Navigation is on the right, with an explanation of the blog's fictional basis. HINT: Please read the column labelled "ABOUT THIS BLOG." Enjoy the most recent posts or browse posts by posting date in the Archives. Search the blog for scintillating, obscure topics.
Enjoy your stay! There are some fuzzy slippers over there somewhere, too.
this is a repost from the summer of 2008, and i had just had the nuts-and-bolts of the upcoming surgeries explained to me -- you know, spacers and stuff! well, apparently, i took temporary leave of my senses, in a very lingual way...
La Belle Bianca Castafiore, ici --
Zee Retired Educator? She is, comment le dire? She is settled up, I think you say. She will be tossing the Pity Party soon, yes, yes.
Il se peut que... Er, it will be necessary that she will lose the faux shoulder for a period of the time. This? This she can not arrive at wrapping around her little mentation.
But I am knowing her since long time, long distances, and she? She will wrap around her little mentation, bien sûr. Elle va accepter les changements que son état de santé a rendus nécessaires. And she tosses the good Pity Party also as well, too, yes, yes.
It is not impossible that this will not happen, eh? Moi, La Belle Bianca Castafiore,
je reste confiante et optimiste. La prof retraitée va avoir besoin de mon aide considérable (et très bien connu, le monde entier, il faut ajouter.). Je suis prête à aider. Mieux que d'être "prête-à-porter!" Oh, les jeux de mots, que j'en suis la maitresse!
Encore un verre, les mecs! (Oooo, I am not saying that out of loud, am I not?)
Still, where is the Captain? La la la... "Ah my beauty past compare, these jewels bright I wear!...Was I ever Margarita? Is it I? Come reply...Mirror mirror tell me truly!” Oh, scruffy little schoolboy, mon cher Captain Hoddack, où est-il? If there exists anyone who can fix a broken shoulder, it is he! We will simplement build a replacement while the replacement is out, if you arrive at following my route! Ah, oui, on a toujours tellement besoin de moi, de ma sagesse.
Hmmm! Ah, je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir!
I don't think I am the neighborhood Crazy Cat Lady.
Yet.
Until making the acquaintance of The Fredster (on a gorgeous summer Sunday morning, in the entryway to the Militant Lesbian Feminist Existentialist's Place -- where he stood out like a pulsating sore thumb), I was a dog person. The thought of living with cats was a foreign notion, something that people who were disqualified canine caretakers might do, from a lack of options.
And yet, according to extant folklore, my first real pet was a cat. Named Herman.
My sole detailed memory of Herman is of the day I had to give him up. I was just shy of five years old. My brothers and I were fleeing the country...
Okay, we weren't exactly fleeing the country.
We were leaving Turkey, having lived a few years in Ankara, during which, apparently, we acquired Herman the Very Small Cat -- more precisely, Herman of the Small Head in Relation to His Body. His ratios were off.
A pea head. With humongous ears (again, in relation), which indicate, I'm told, a Master Mouser.
My Mother decided to cheat on my Father.
With her gynecologist.
I was born, with the carefully applied assistance of pitocin, on my Mother's birthday. It was this doubly joyful day that she decided to celebrate by spending it with the handsome, soulful ob/gyn -- a possibility because my Father was away for a few days.
She left us kids in the care of a sweet Turkish idiot, a young boy named Ali. We had a grand time, the highlight being a spirited game of Chicken. I was firmly planted on Ali's shoulders, and Brother-Unit Grader Boob was perched atop Brother-Unit Tumbleweed, and we were swinging at each other in total abandon...
When our Father came home early as a birthday surprise.
Surprise! Yay! Dad's home!
We had a very helpful next door neighbor. I don't recall how she helped us prior to that particular day, but on that particular day, she chose to direct my Father to the location of the family sedan, parked, she helpfully told him, in front of the aforementioned gynecologist's flat. Good neighbor. Helpful neighbor!
I have a clear memory of Ali's eyes bugging out.
Those same eyes, then calmer and full of real affection, looked at me some months later, at the airport. I had a firm grip on Herman, so much so that I wonder if I hurt him.
People were doing that awful trick of Exchanging Meaningful Glances Over the Head of The Child.
"You can't take the cat on the plane, Retired Educator."
So it was into Ali's capable arms that I delivered my first pet, Herman. I had no doubt that he would take good care of him, but I did my part to be childish, and burst into tears.
The rest of the day, the rest of the trip, was remarkable for considerable air sickness, and a very close relationship with paper bags. That was the one and only time that flying ever had an ill effect.
No, Mother didn't fly out with us. She stayed behind until her appearance was required for the divorce proceedings and the half-assed play-acting that were our custody hearings.
The Judge determining custody pretty quickly dismissed The 'Rents and turned his attention to the three of us. We must have looked grim. It went something like this:
"If you could live with either your Mother or your Father, who would you choose?"
Brother-Unit Tumbleweed, very, very angry at his Mom, said: "With my Father. Definitely, with my Father."
Brother-Unit Grader Boob, in a panic, said: "I wanna go with Tumbleweed."
At which point, I interjected, under my sad, crooked pixie haircut: "I wanna be with Grader Boob... Please let me stay with Grader Boob!" And again, I did my part to be childish, and burst into tears.
From then on, it was dogs, birds, and turtles for me.
I had a particular talent with birds, and was famous for nursing wounded or abandoned wild birds back to health.
One summer, a neighbor of my grandparents came over with a just hatched blue jay that had been tossed out of its nest by the mother Jay. My grandfather and I nursed him on puréed bugs 'n stuff, kept him warm. Eventually, Squawky lived a part-wild, part-domesticated existence. He slept inside the house, in my room, but would go outside during the day, always returning around sundown, announcing himself in the small dogwood adjacent to the back porch door.
He pulled a few stunts -- the most well known being following us to church, pecking and flying at the closed red doors until someone let him in. The sight of him flying down the center aisle right to me is unforgettable.
At the end of the summer, of course, I could not take Squawky with me, as I needed to return to California to start school. There could be no better caretakers, though, than my grandparents.
Sadly, a hawk got Squawky, though he did make it home to their house before dying, or so they told me.
There were a few more "wild" birds as part of my menagerie, most notably a homing pigeon, creatively named Potty Pigeon, for the astonishing amounts of poo he produced. I located his owner, thanks to the band on his leg, and released him, hoping that he'd find his way home, more than 100 miles away, after 6 weeks with me.
He did!
My new stepmother was the one who discovered that my Father's claim of dog allergies was a baldfaced lie, and the Era of the Dog got underway.
Cats? After Herman and Ali, and before Fred and the onset of twenty years of Feline Frenzy, I never gave them a second thought.
I don't know this particular program's ins-and-outs or its history but back when I dealt with non-profits and aid organizations, The Salvation Army was usually exactly what it claimed to be, and could be trusted.
It has teamed up with J.C. Penney to make its holiday Angel Tree program available online. This is the second year of the partnership, so I assume the first was a success!
The virtual tree allows you to select a child or senior online, get their information and wish lists then shop online and have [your gifts] shipped for free to the Angel tree collection site.
That's if you shop at JCPenney for the items. JCP is offering free shipping on any order for Angel tree network.
Keep in mind you can shop anywhere online or in the store however you'll have to ship the items yourself or drop them off at the location you receive after confirmation.
This is great for someone like me -- I am mall-and-shopping phobic but still would like to do a good turn for a child or an older person who might be having a rough year. Of course, that situation is all but unheard of around here, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs), as we don't suffer from the usual societal and economic stressors.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Cistercian practical jokers from the monastery riffraff down the road submitted themselves as angels to be adopted. They get a little loopy this time of year -- what with that booming office supply mail order business, extra masses (for $49.95, promised in perpetuity, plus an autographed photo of Abbot-Fill-In-The-Blank), and public choir performances (those boys can sing!). It is not just their precious $32 MonkCakes that are soaking in the peach brandy, if you get my drift, wink::wink.
Anyway, here are some FAQs as fielded by The Salvation Army. PLEASE READ THEM BEFORE ADOPTING AN ANGEL -- I don't wanna be responsible for anyone feeling snookered.
What is The Salvation Army Angel Giving Tree program?
•The Salvation Army Angel Giving Tree online presented by JCPenney is a national, online adoption program that allows customers to provide children and seniors in need with Christmas gifts. JCPenney has made it easier than ever for customers to shop, buy and ship their gifts from the convenience of their home, office or anywhere in the world.
How does the Angel Giving Tree program work?
•Visit jcp.com/angel to be guided through a short Angel selection process. After choosing an Angel online, you will receive a confirmation email with all of the necessary details to help shop for your Angel. Instructions will include the Angel’s wish list as well as information regarding where to ship your gifts. This address will have to be manually entered during the checkout process on jcp.com. Deadline for adopting and shopping for an Angel is Dec. 10. Otherwise, you have until Dec. 14 to purchase a JCPenney Gift Card for your Angel. These dates ensure that your Angel receives your gift(s) in time for Christmas.
Who benefits from The Salvation Army Angel Giving Tree program?
•As an extension of the traditional physical version of The Salvation Army Angel Giving Tree, this program provides gifts to children and seniors who, due to financial hardship, may not otherwise receive a Christmas gift. CLICK HERE FOR THE REST!
I am struggling to climb the next rung of what, for lack of a better term, I call my challenge ladder.
Many years ago, during that time when I somehow managed a heavy courseload, worked 40-hours in a weekend, and maintained a fanatic interest in tennis -- oh, yes, and when I was quite busy dealing with an ex-boyfriend turned stalker -- I discovered and put into frequent practice some basic biofeedback techniques to fight the stress of exams, lack of sleep, and being held off the floor, against the wall, by a hand around my neck.
Success is a mighty antedote for stress and worry. During the period when I ruled the Literary and Academic world with an iron hand in a velveteen glove, being overwrought with nervous energy was something of a boon, and certainly to be expected when living on Diet Coke and Gitanes Brunes.
Okay, so my rise up the Ivory Tower might actually more resemble the route taken by Window Washers and professional Masonry Weeders.
But the part about the Diet Coke and the Gitanes is true.
I rediscovered and returned to relaxation techniques when I left hoity-toity academia for the urban trenches of educational warfare: high school teaching. At the time, we also volunteered many hours a week at a homeless shelter for elderly, disabled, and actively ill men. There was a lot of slow, deep breathing going on, let me tell you!
When did these tools morph into a ladder, a challenge ladder? Precisely when I realized that certain situations, if not all, depended on my ability to transcend my circumstances and, almost literally, to rise above them.
"To rise" is an inadequate verb. "To scramble in a generally positive, vertical direction, spewing caramel-colored cola and spitting scraps of nicotine hay" -- that is the more apt verbal expression.
I dreamed the ladder up.
In preparation for a transesophageal echocardiogram, a nurse began spraying my throat with a topical analgesic called Cetacaine. My throat promptly swelled up, and about a minute later, I coded. Somewhere in my head, I could hear the stylings of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, trapped in the wrong episode, yelling "No echo for you!"
The couple of hours I spent circling the drain were marked by brief excursions into consciousness and the subsequent awareness of pain. Extreme pain. It hurt bad enough that I preferred being comatose to the option of fully-sentient existence.
And yet, even then, I grew tired of myself.
"Self," said I, "We're in quite a pickle,* a real jam."
I don't know why so much pain set in following this incident. There was no reason for such a worsening, no reasoning, either, that I should face such a reckoning.'
In my mind, the fog of confusion began to clear. I saw myself -- no, that is not right.
Before I saw anything, I felt. I felt a pleasant warmth on my face and arms, felt a soft breeze.
I heard the breeze, too, and that through which it blew, the leaves, mostly, rustling, rustling.
I was on a tall ladder that was leaning against the second story of a three-story house, a well-kept wooden home, painted a cheerful yellow with white trim. The sun was shining, but gently. I don't recall ever breathing such pure air -- better even than beach air, with its hints of sea bird and salt.
Were I concise and reductive in nature, I would say I experienced an incredible sense of well being.
There was no cogent sense of time in this illusion I was hosting, but after a while, the pain in my legs, hips, and shoulders reasserted itself, the sun slid behind clouds, the breeze turned stale.
Clearly, I needed to climb higher on the ladder. That looks like a patch of sunlight up there, and over there, there is almost a shimmer to the air...
I "remembered" how once I marshalled my resources to survive a lover's grip, an examiner's query, a student's quarrel. I remembered being the real eye of an imaginary hurricane.
My feet found the next rung, tested it, my hands reached for the warmth of yellow, and I climbed the ladder from pain into no-pain, my chest fairly bursting with the effort to breathe right, breathe slow, measured.
[Do you remember when you first understood the how and why of Prufrock, who "measured out [his] life with coffee spoons"?]
I never said a mumblin' word to Fred, to the doctors or the nurses, never divulged even the existence of my clapboard house, held cupped in the bottom of a balsam-scented valley, never shared the function of my rickety, trusted ladder.
Unfortunately, I visited often. The owners have added a few stories -- the ladder, likewise, has magically grown extensions.
Every time that I get a weepy, sad-faced doctor, every time I hear "there is nothing more blahblahblah..."? Sure, I sink deep into the blues, and sometimes for an embarrassing length of time, but then, one day, twisted from no sleep, unable to stand, dropping coffee cups left and right...
I feel the breeze tease my face, smell the pine...and I climb.
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
*The earliest pickles were spicy sauces made to accompany meat dishes. Later, in the 16th century, the name pickle was also given to a mixture of spiced, salted vinegar that was used as a preservative. The word comes from the Dutch or Low German pekel, with the meaning of 'something piquant'. Later still, in the 17th century, the vegetables that were preserved, for example cucumbers and gherkins, also came to be called pickles.
The 'in trouble' meaning of 'in a pickle' was an allusion to being as disoriented and mixed up as the stewed vegetables that made up pickles. This was partway to being a literal allusion, as fanciful stories of the day related to hapless people who found themselves on the menu. The earliest known use of pickle in English contains such an citation. The Morte Arthure, circa 1440, relates the gory imagined ingredients of King Arthur's diet:
He soupes all this sesoun with seuen knaue childre, Choppid in a chargour of chalke-whytt syluer, With pekill & powdyre of precious spycez.
[He dines all season on seven rascal children, chopped, in a bowl of white silver, with pickle and precious spices]
The figurative version of the phrase, meaning simply 'in a fix' or, in the almost identical 19th century phrase 'in a stew', arrives during the next century. Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573, contains this useful advice:
Reape barlie with sickle, that lies in ill pickle.
Presumably, barley that wasn't in ill pickle, i.e. the corn that was standing up straight, would be cut with the larger and more efficient scythe.
There are a few references to ill pickles and this pickle etc. in print in the late 16th century, and Shakespeare was one of the first to use in a pickle, in The Tempest, 1610:
ALONSO: And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em? How camest thou in this pickle?
TRINCULO: I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing.
A return to the more literal interpretation of the phrase came about in the late 1700s. The Duke of Rutland had toured Britain and wrote up his experiences in a travelogue - Journal of a Tour to the Northern Parts of Great Britain, 1796. He was present at the disinterment of the 350 year-old body of Thomas Beaufort, which he claimed to have been pickled and 'as perfect as when living':
The corpse was done up in a pickle, and the face wrapped up in a sear cloth.
Just nine years later the most celebrated personage ever to have been literally in a pickle - Admiral Horatio Nelson, met his end, although some pedants might argue that, being preserved in brandy, he found himself in more of a liquor than a pickle.
My eye flew to the bolded "Dr. SecretWave" on my Google Reader page. I'd not seen a post from him since April, and that one alluded in its title to a "probable farewell."
Today, at least, Dr. SecretWave 101 has a new post: RATIONal. Health care rationing is one of those trigger, scary concepts designed to stir up other triggering scary notions -- like Death Panels.
Part of it goes something like this (when you've read this, run over there and read the rest):
Living in Europe [Baumholder, Germany] insulates the average human from goofy, over-the-top language meant to get people to do and think in ways that OTHER people want them to. So, I haven’t been very caught up in, or all that impressed by, all the politics and steamy language coming out of my home country these past months.
We have fast government. No arguing. You like. Like pizza.
Now the election is finally over, we find that Republicans have “swept” themselves into a level of “power” that assures exactly zero will happen unless they work with all the Democrats and Independents that never lost their jobs. Some people think all the upcoming wrangling is a bad thing; I think it’s great. A super-active government rarely doesn’t do anything well. There IS a type of government that “gets things done” almost immediately, with little debate. It’s called a dictatorship. If you’re smitten with that idea, move to North Korea and try THAT speedy idea on and see how you like it.
Anyway, I received a link to a very persuasive and scary speech given by an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. David Janda, wherein he outlined the horrors and sneaky tricks piled into the Obama health care bill. His speech was in support of Rob Steele, a cardiologist-turned-politician likely because he was mad as hell at the terrible direction of the country (*yawn*, aren’t we all?). Presumably, said cardiologist is now back in the clinic, since he thoroughly lost the election of the 15th Congressional District of Michigan to John Dingell something like 83k votes to 118k votes. Apparently, the Dingells have run that district for generations. If you’re looking for nutty, inflammatory, manipulative language, look no further than at a political battle between a challenger losing in the polls as s/he tries to unseat a longstanding incumbent.
The gist of Dr. Janda’s speech is how Obama intends to RATION health care. This actually sparked my interest. I don’t really care about health care system politics; I’d rather just see patients, frankly. But I have to just say to my fledgling SW101 crowd, I SUPPORT RATIONING....
He has a new blog, called Lover, Daddy, Doctor and fleshes out where one blog ends and the other begins in this way:
Unlike my last blog – which was ostensibly about medicine, but really about anything – this is a chronicle of a guy trying to be a good Dad and good Husband. I’ve been recently trying to be a better man, basically, and since I think best by writing, I figured a companion blog wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The reason I stopped the other blog and started this one is because my goals in life recently became very clear to me. Clear enough to state it here, and to record my pursuit of it for the world to see. Here it is:
I want nothing more than to follow God sensibly, love my wife, love my kids,
be a pretty good doc, stay in shape, surf occasionally, travel often, drink red wine,
make some love, make some friends, get out of debt…
Ever since the day I deleted, on purpose and quite efficiently, two good chapters of my doctoral thesis, along with two bad ones, I've been loathe to dispose of any piece of writing. Let me qualify that just a little: I've been loathe to dispose of any piece of writing that warranted an initial "save" on the computer. Of course, saving a text doesn't always mean the text is worth anything -- it may have been a text interrupted, or a passage awaiting proper citation, or an enticing poster announcing ManorFest schedules and entry fees. It may be something inane to me but valuable to someone else. *[see below]
Let's see what might happen, shall we, if I employ my usual artlessness in a blog post dedicated to the goings-on of The Castafiore, as she has been somewhat neglected of late:
La Bonne et Belle Bianca, The Castafiore, has laryngitis.
That means, for those of you not tuned in to the minutiae of life here at Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock clan -- well represented in the current generation by The Captain -- That means, mes chers, mes petits choux, that no one, c'est-à-dire, personne, is going to be screaming, errrr, singing, à très haute voix:
ah! je ris de me voir... si belle dans ce miroir!
D'habitude, elle crie si fort que je risque de devenir sourde, ou dingue/dingo... folle... cinglée... farfelue... détraquée... maboule... loufe... faible... marteau... insensée... azimutée... loufoque... délirante... toquée... déséquilibrée...
[Not unlike the possum who loves bright, dangly Shiny Things,
I am momentarily caught off guard by this profusion of crazy words,
and in my embarassment, seek to draw my readers' eyes away
from this linguistic glitter by the insertion of cold, hard grammar...]
Remember, please, that dingo is, of course, invariable -- when used as French adjectival slang, that is. Not, I repeat, not when referencing the wild dog of Australia, and certainly not in relation to the tragic event that introduced many of us to the canine dingo: the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain thirty years ago at Uluru, and her mother's famous declaration that "a dingo ate my baby."
It's unfortunate that I tend to burst out laughing at that phrase, as delivered by a shrill Meryl Streep in the movie A Cry in the Dark. I confess to having mimicked Streep with nary a thought in my pointy head for the real actors, and their actual drama. By the time Elaine performs her mimicry on a Seinfeld episode, I was likely inured to the tragic origins of the line.
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, by the way, recently has requested what will be a fourth inquest about the death of her daughter, part of her search for justice being to have the death certificate reflect that Azaria was killed by the primitive canine.
It is so little to ask, and coming from someone who lost...incalculably. Convicted of murder (and her husband of being an accessory to it), she spent a tangible three and a half years in prison for a loss too great for reckoning. She just wants to amend what stands as malicious fantasy with a truth.
And... scene! My mind does work, but it does its work mysteriously. How did any of the above possibly relate to the Dear Castafiore?
Well, the first thought thought is not the first thought recorded, of course.
As I pondered La Bonne et Belle Bianca, and delighted in my good fortune at escaping her rehersal of Gounod's Faust, with her assigned aria, Air des Bijoux, a stray neuron misfired and I flashed on the Benes character, herself reacting to an obnoxious, repetitive voice -- the woman worried about her lost fiancé. Thus was the deadly dingo incident planted in my fertile brow. And somehow, that videoclip made me think of the inane, insane craziness that The Castafiore so often inspires in me on a lazy Sunday afternoon -- but even as I indulged my fantasy with an exercise in Synonyms for "Crazy" in French, I sought to reestablish the facts of the case... a travesty wherein what was called evidence of blood was a mixture of milkshake and copper dust, where a Mother's failure to behave as a proper Mother should was an indicting evil.
One day, I'll have to do a hundred focused words or so on the deadening dichotomy of Mary the Virgin/Whore and other unfortunate idées reçues.
*[What I write] may be something inane to me but valuable to someone else... Such proved to be the rambling introduction I made to a blog entry about CRPS clinical trials. Of course, the clinical trials themselves are of import, but in a fit of gregarious excess, I also jotted down some historical references about the ManorMaze and the family responsable for its very existence, the Mimnermuses:
I'm going to steal a moment away from ManorFest activities to update the blog on CRPS clinical trials that are currently accepting new volunteers.
I could use the rest. We opened ManorMaze to the public this year and, let me tell you, if you have the bad luck to draw Rescue Duty, your dogs are gonna bark.
Written records testify that Marlinspike Hall's Manor Maze dates back as far as 1067. Cretan Manor Jardinier Ajax Mimnermus transplanted the first thousand English Boxwood in a highly original serpentine pattern that twisted and turned over a particularly hilly, 25-acres bit of Haddock ancestral land. Twenty-two generations later, the Mimnermus Family still holds the prestigious position of JardinierOfficiel to the Marlinspike Manor Maze. A proud and loyal clan, they guard our horticultural secrets with ferocity. Both little red-headed, freckled Xenophon and his more swarthy third cousin Clinias are currently in training: One will assume the mantle of Jardinier Officiel; The other will be offered a lifetime position on the Landscape Crew. Everyone wins!
Anyway, you can imagine how huge and complex this labyrinth is today, as one Mimnermus after another has judiciously added plantings, making the maze both more elegant and more challenging to exit. (Though sometimes, I'd swear that it has a life all its own, its paths shifting in the night like sand in a storm -- but I can't prove anything.)
CRPS renders ManorMaze Rescue Duty very tiring, and my wheelchair has lost its charge more than once, over the years, leaving me to call for my own rescue. It's a restful place in which to be trapped, though, as our Illustrious Gardeners have created little enclaves of delight within -- squares dedicated to aromatherapy, curlicued paths lined with delicious mint and sweet clovers!
[Thank the Good Lord, however, that my chair has never lost power in The Marsh installed by Xenophon's paternal grandmother, Nausicaa, who loved the dramatic tension of taming a wild landscape. For The Marsh, she took as her inspiration Tolkien's Dead Marshes of Middle Earth. Being a patriotic soul, Tête-de-Hergéenne through and through, she wanted to memorialize those lands that served as battlefield during the Sixth Uprising, and modeled her marsh on his Mere of Dead Faces that border one of the entrances to Mordor. Years ahead of her time, she achieved the underwater lighting effect by solar cells and advanced the field of horticultural photovoltaics by decades. Captain Haddock's great uncle had the forsight to underwrite her studies in Moscow with Aleksandr Stoletov -- where it is our good fortune that she witnessed the creation of the very first solar cell and was able to make such an apt application of the invention!]
You are probably thinking that a history so momentous would have its own dedicated documentary support of photographic, journalistic, and epistolary evidence. And you would be, of course, correct. Captain Haddock's first Mother-In-Law crested the wave of Nouveau Scrapbooking and stored most everything in Marlinspike Hall's only turret, where she was, errr, housed in the early 1950s. Her digs were eventually turned into The Computer Turret for reasons just technical enough to escape me.
I did my usually doodling and dallying in a blog post about... Well, it was actually about Fresca, and her blog, l'astronave... but as I frequently record where I am when writing, as well as why I am where I am, I was compelled to share a little about the conditions in The Computer Turret that evening:
Excuse me, this computer -- a new, or at least, different one -- is blinking and hooting at me. Sputtering, even.
Part of me keeps thinking "This isn't very wise, Retired Educator! Better you should close the plush velvet curtains of The Computer Turret, though they are impervious to not much, so as to better shield this shy, blinking, hooting instrument from the needling horizontal rain with which the Lord has blessed us, than to continue to risk disc failure by pecking away on damp keys and dipping the world's longest extension cord into the stray puddles gracing the uneven slate flagstone."
Yes, we DO have a turret!
Only the one, though.
It was a medieval design flaw, very common, but normally disguised as a soot-spewing chimney by the gaggle of ensuing sub-contractors unleashed by the inevitable Industrial Revolutions. The original Manor Residents had Castle Pretensions. Anyway, Captain Haddock's first mother-in-law, whose living conditions he seems to have delighted in complicating, was housed up here back in the 50s. After her departure, highly fêted, it kind of became a design nightmare and went through incarnations that might shock even Niecy Nash. [I confess that I sometimes wander around Marlinspike Hall with a blindfold on, stopping suddenly and yelling: "Take your blindfold off and OPEN YOUR EYES!"
Yes, I did recently break a leg. Your point?
You probably shuddered with premonition that night, Dear Reader. Perhaps, in your own blog or journal you wrote of your fear -- perhaps you lit a candle on our behalf, or placed a sporting bet on when, exactly, The Computer Turret would be engulfed in flames.
For just a few short weeks later, the electrical short that had been smoldering behind "the plush, velvet curtains" turned into a sufficiently maintained blaze to destroy everything but its rock base -- panelling, curtains, computers, and, yes, all the archival material about the ManorMaze. Oh, and an inimitable collection of Milanese Osso Bucco recipes.
Yeah, so publishing what may seem extraneous to you, or even to me, in this blog can, indeed, serve a separate and sometimes higher purpose. In this instance, I do harbor a bit of regret, because our Manor insurance company at the time, BCBS -- Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête-de-Hergé -- refused to cover the costs of the inferno, citing my own reportage in this blog as evidence of irresponsible usage and dangerous conditions. Dickwads.
And yet, isn't it grand that some of the invaluable history of The Manor was preserved by my seemingly mindless and circuitous writings?
That, in short, Dear Reader, is how my mind works.
Now... as I said, initially, Bianca has laryngitis. I am thinking slippery elm tea and a pristine broth...
This is probably akin to pissing into the wind... {I will give you a moment...}
I am concerned about a sister blogger who lives in Christchurch, New Zealand -- Kirsten Bentley, also known as MedicalBooBoos, and author of two sites -- New Zealand Healthcare and Neo-Conduit, both currently inactive.
If you are Kirsten, or know her, please pass on my best wishes and concern. When the big quake hit New Zealand, she had literally just returned home following a major surgery. She was posting mostly about the quake and its innumerable aftershocks when her blogs went silent.
I am reasonably sure she is okay, as she has a host of people who care about her and would lend hands, shoulders, and hearts -- whatever was needed.
The school officials in Coweta County, Georgia (of these United States) have lost their minds. I fully expect to read that Ms. Allwine, "a very good teacher," has been nominated for Georgia Teacher of the Year.
Given the apparent political acumen of Georgia citizens, and with the help of pharmaceutical corporate sponsorship, she might have made a successful gubernatorial bid.
It's one of those stories that grow on you, if only because there are some enticing details that are left -- at least in this brief news article -- to the imagination. I won't even allow myself to wonder about her husband and the state of her marriage, as I am fearful of discovering that this has been some sort of a romantic drama, and the lovebirds are planning to renew their vows.
What? Oh... She was arrested after pouring a bottle of Ambien into her Darling's drink in the aftermath of domestic spat. As the article below puts it, so well: He survived.
So, apparently, did she, and with remarkable impunity, even retaining her job as an elementary school teacher.
If trying to murder your husband is not evidence of moral turpitude, what, pray tell, is sufficiently turpid to warrant the loss of a job wherein you deal with frequent frustration in the form of tiny, young people? Just imagine the anger of a turpid-prone educator should the rugrats not make it to the cafeteria in a hushed single line... or upon learning that dogs are eating homework papers again.
You know, coming as it does on the heels of my first vaunted use of the word toothsome, turpid almost seems gratuitously facile. It registers at different levels of the NastyAss Continuum, which includes everything from base to ewwww:ick!
My tendency to migrate toward the burgeoning field of Fancy Forensic Linguistics led me to an astute blog entry over at The Toe Blog -- "Turbid, Turgid, Turpid," an intricate study of Lolita. Well, okay, it is less a study of Nabokov than a list of what the author appreciates in a few examples of language -- but she does juxtapose some meanings in the hope of Etymological Serendipity, and you know, Dear Reader, how much I love Etymological Serendipity! Ms. McKeel begins her moment of verbal jouissance by noting that Humbert describes himself as "dispicable and brutal and turpid," and then she gets down-and-dirty, playing with words, rolling them between the tips of her fingers.
Turbid: (of especially liquids) clouded as with sediment Turgid: ostentatiously lofty in style; abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas Turpid: foul, base, wicked
And of course on a related note:
Tumid: of sexual organs; stiff and rigid; ostentatiously lofty in style; abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas
Honestly, I might have been happier, as a reader and writer, were I incarnated with mild-to-moderate dyslexia. Those of you out there who actually suffer from dyslexia may have a moment to gift me with a wicked BitchSlap, for insolence and callous disregard... but you'll never make a charge of moral turpitude stick, copper! [Of course, you have to give me time to travel from Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs) to Georgia -- a rarely traveled route, with no regularly scheduled flights. Intrepid as I am, I wouldn't dare undertake the journey without a pre-arranged means of immediate escape.]
Okay, so Ms. Allwine has successfully been enabled as a criminal by a backward system. Technically, and it is behind such things as technicalities that the various organs of oversight in Georgia hide from the glare of their own stupidity -- Technically, Ms. Allwine is innocent of all things turbid, turgid, and turpid, too.
Now... taken as meaning turgid-to-the-point-of-being-bombastic-pompous-and-overgrown, I think prosecutors could go after her enablers, her handlers, at least, with one charge of Aggravated Felonious Tumidity. It's been years since I've heard of a fellow educator or educational oversight entity so charged, but if the times and circumstances are sober enough to warrant it, well, so be it.
In the mean time, the thought of Allwine offering infuriating little Johnny a special glass of juice is a tad chilling.
Easy enough in Georgia to escape attempted murder charges and keep your job as an elementary school teacher -- probably with the requisite raise due all "good teachers" -- until they bus in a few Fancy Forensic Linguists. You might wiggle out of a turpitude conviction... but tumidity will get you, every time.
Willis Road Elementary’s Rebecca Allwine’s legal troubles stemmed from a January argument with her husband, Coweta County deputies said. They said Allwine slipped a bottle full of Ambien into her husband's drink after the fight.
He survived, and she was charged with aggravated assault with intent to poison, deputies said.
In September, a grand jury indicted Allwine on a felony charge. Prosecutors dropped that felony after she pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors on Tuesday.
Parents and family members said they were upset that the county allowed her to remain in the classroom.
"She was accused of doing something wrong. Until she was found guilty or not guilty, she should have been pulled out of there," Willis Road parent Frankie Davis told Channel 2’s Richard Elliot.
A spokesman with the state's Professional Standards Commission said that Allwine informed them of the incident within the time frame required by policy. He said because the felony charge did not include the commission or conviction of a felony involving moral turpitude, they left her fate up to the school district.
Coweta County Schools spokesman Dean Jackson told Elliot that they followed all their proper procedures and policies with their decision. He said Allwine was kept in the classroom because she "was a very good teacher." [cont. HERE]
Kate McRae's scan has been moved up from Friday to this afternoon, and her parents are requesting prayer. This is a family of inspirational, fierce faith, so when they ask, we strive to deliver!
You can read about their journey at CaringBridge, here.
UPDATE from Kate's Mom:
Words could not possibly express our joy and gratitude for today's scan. Stable! Never have those words sounded so sweet. We are still trying to let the news soak in.
Kate's oncologist said the scan looked good.... there appeared no new growth from the one 2 months ago. And the enhancement and flair on the scan was actually somewhat less. We could not have been more excited!
We are grateful for the outpouring of prayers. We were in a very precarious situation knowing we could hear one of two drastically different reports today. We are rejoicing that the news was great, and we get more time with our precious daughter. Thank you Jesus.
Grrrr. About the only political "pundit" worth the read today is Helen Philpot, of Margaret and Helen fame. You can start here, and finish over on the Front Porch at her place.
I hear that the Back Porch is pretty racy; They serve a mean hard lemonade. And, for a limited time, apparently, there is pie.
What are you waiting for? Get busy. Read!
Margaret, happy days are here again. The skies above are blue again. It really is just too good to be true. The Republican gains delivered by the Tea Party are almost more than I could hope for. I only wish that lovely Witch in Delaware could have come along for the party as well.
Now let’s see. Where do I begin? Our taxes will soon be about zero percent so let’s start spending today to get this economy back on track. The government will shrink to a size somewhat equal to the size of our military which means Social Security has to go. Those of us who were smart enough to save for a rainy day will be high and dry… for at least a few months. And I got a good check-up from my doctor recently so I don’t need my Medicare… for at least a few months.
Now about that black man in the Oval Office. It will take a few days to get impeachment hearings underway, but until then I hear they are moving him out of the White House and into that little room at the top of the Washington Monument so he can’t cause any more trouble. Oh and Ms. Pelosi is out too. How dare she take on the Health Insurance Industry. Didn’t she realize people own stock in those companies?
Gays are no more. They all left, presumably to join the French Army. And teen pregnancies are a thing of the past. Teens will no longer have sex. Except the Palins. The Palins will abandon teen pregnancies as easily as a camel will pass through the eye of an early pregnancy test stick. No. The Palins will continue to give birth to abstinence only babies. That we know for sure.
Abortion? Well everyone knows that was just a luxury American women really couldn’t afford anyway. And government will now be small enough to actually fit inside a woman’s uterus, so all women with unwanted pregnancies have left, presumably to join the French Army....
[continued at site of origin, HERE.]
Origin -- In the fable The Fox and the Grapes, which is attributed to the ancient Greek writer Aesop, the fox isn't able to reach the grapes and declares them to be sour:
Harrison Weir's 1884 English translation, which claims to be "from original sources ", presents the text like this:
A famished Fox saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, beguiling herself of her disappointment, and saying: "The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought."
Some of the fables associated with Aesop were written as late as 1900 and many of the earlier ones were considerably amended in Victorian translation into English. Also, some scholars also prefer 'unripe' to 'sour' as a literal translation of the earlier Greek texts.
The phrase also occurs in the Bible, Ezekiel - in Miles Coverdale's Bible, 1535:
18:1 The worde of the LORDE came vnto me, on this maner:
18:2 What meane ye by this comon prouerbe, that ye vse in the londe of Israel, sayenge: The fathers haue eaten soure grapes, and the childres teth are set on edge?
18:3 As truly as I lyue, saieth ye LORDE God, ye shal vse this byworde nomore in Israel.
The difficulty in dating Aesop's work makes it uncertain whether it first entered the English language via the Fables or via the Bible.
There's been a pleasant dearth of fresh CRPS/RSD research to report lately, and so it seems the right moment to announce that, as a disease entity, CRPS is now on the map.
Things that mark this arriviste take on things? A ribbon. A plastic bracelet. A few correspondingly sick celebrities. An annual black tie Silent Auction... and at least one Walkathon.
Check, check, check, check, and... check!
But most of all? Most of all, there has to be a quilt.
I have an Attitude about Awareness and the various ways of Raising Awareness. I experience roughly the same sensations that I associate with a plummeting blood sugar -- it's très hypoglycemic. It's kind of a reaction against the prevalent Political Correctness.
Let's just say that my favorite cause button depicts a crisp red AIDS awareness ribbon against a white background, with "Fuck the red ribbon / Find a cure" in bolded italics.
Okay, so in addition to a constitutional dislike of What's Expected, my wariness about all the Awareness flying around might -- might -- have something to do with laziness, and I ought to be ashamed.
The most excellent Doctor Roberta, who Suture[s] For A Living, is the obvious medical blogger to make the announcement, as her handiwork outside surgery is as beautiful as it is within. She is one of few doctor bloggers to address Complex Regional Pain Syndrome/Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy: Here and here.
In her blog recently, she passed on details about the CRPS/RSD Awareness Quilt Project from its organization page over on Facebook:
Contribute a 12" x 12" patch to be added to the RSD/CRPS Awareness quilt. Make sure you keep what you want to show 1" away from the borders... This is for pain awareness. Help spread the word and make a square...if you need help participating please let us know....Mail all quilt panels to: RSD/CRPS Awareness Quilt P.O. Box 500915 Malabar, Fl. 32950-500915. Check out our links for information that can help you put your square together...everything from sewing tips to iron-on tranfers using your printer. If you have any questions please feel free to drop Troy Walker a message and I'll help you out if I can. Thank you very much for helping to spread awareness of Chronic Pain.
At last count, there were 137 panels documented by pictures on the Facebook page.
a panel, the door to the apartment on a red brick.
concentration on the midrange,
the keys clanged: "oh!"
pink stucco on the baptist church
red neon cross on the corner of the avenue
annotate his gasps
(and jagged mesmer!)
annotate his gasps
(and jagged mesmer!) --
"oh!"
It hasn't happened in a while, though it easily could and be but rarely a bothering thing.
Who hasn't rocked and writhed to Keith Jarrett's pestered, stepping, bobbing piano -- that bad, bad piano which forced him to the middle ranges, thank God and praise the Lord?
Who hasn't grunted, and grunted gloriously -- the grunt::gasp pulled straight out from what we now call The Core, what the commercials say needs strengthening, where we reside -- there where we rock from side to side?
I have made a place for dangerous music again, memories be damned, because I need to be somewhere other than here, now, and I am deep down glad for the world's talent, and amazed. In the street in my nightgown, running for the bus on Telegraph Avenue, this last little bit of Oakland, then home again, home again, after the Night Bus, fumes in white cotton, oh! Jagged "oh"s.
Preliminaries to the concert were not auspicious. The concert was organized by Vera Brandes, Germany’s youngest concert promoter. Brandes had selected a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand piano for the performance, but the stagehands did not realize that the piano was stored in the cellar of the building. Instead, they found a Bösendorfer baby grand backstage and assumed that it was to be used. This piano was intended for rehearsals only, and was in poor condition.
Jarrett had not slept in two nights. He arrived at the opera house late and tired after an exhausting hours-long drive in a Renault R4. He rushed to finish a hasty meal just minutes before the concert was to begin. After learning about the substandard piano, Jarrett nearly refused to play. Brandes, who just turned 18 years old, had to convince the 29-year-old Jarrett to perform nonetheless. Almost as an afterthought, the sound technicians decided to place microphones and record the concert, even if only for the house archive.
The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers, so Jarrett concentrated on ostinatos and rhythmic figures.
Despite the obstacles, Jarrett's performance was enthusiastically received, and the subsequent recording was acclaimed by the critics and an enormous commercial success. With sales of more than 3.5 million, it became the best-selling solo album in jazz history. [wikipedia]
Friday night was a write-off;
Saturday, I excelled in Pitiful;
Sunday, today, there came The Demand that I Show Up For Life -- I did -- and we all had a nice time.
We indulged ourselves with an afternoon showing of Rosemary's Baby, cinematic wholesomeness that stands up well to the tests of time. Mia Farrow was divorcing Frank Sinatra, The Dakota became The Bramford, and Sharon Tate was just another girl at the party, though Polanski did not credit her.
Okay, so Fred fell asleep -- his belly full of raisin cream scones that I whipped up at the ungodly hour of 4 am -- very buttery things to which he added additional dabs and smears -- and therefore needed his total blood supply redirected to his gastrointestinal innards -- which action decimated his cerebral forces.
Oh, Reader Dears! This is a *moment*. I am about to use a word for the first time. It's a word I like but that has always seemed a bit much, a bit dated, sort of a hey-look-at-me kind of word.
Ahem: My raisin cream scones -- if they were anything at all (verily!) -- were toothsome examples of crunchy luciousness, and yet, pure restraint, as well.
I think it works. It's the kind of thing I might say. If I drank vermouth, sported cocktail rings, and wore wide belts of crushed velvet -- one belt per jewel tone.
Do you recall where you were when toothsome passed from palate-pleaser to larger-than-life, far beyond tired old va-va-va-voom?
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.
Sentences were presented that suitably displayed the meaning and the gravitas, yet retained the essential flirtiness of... toothsome:
Fleming was impressed not only by its taste but by its astonishing durability: Caudle's apple, after ten months in storage, was still toothsome and fragrant.
-- David Guterson, "The Kingdom of Apples", Harper's Magazine , October 1999
Their topic, naturally: business niches that offer toothsome opportunities and comparatively limited competition.
-- Dick Youngblood, "Business niches can be opportunities", Minneapolis Star Tribune , March 2, 2003
The myth, which Kournikova herself often takes great measures to perpetuate, is that she is an imposter on the WTA Tour, a toothsome starlet who simply uses the tennis court as a catwalk.
-- Jon Wertheim, "Any day now for Anna", Sports Illustrated, April 14, 2000
Speaking of toothsome...
The Manor is Halloween Haven in this neck of the Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs). That means gourds, cupcakes drowned in orange icing offset with licorice dots: that means hot chocolate, and cider, and smile-like-you-mean-it-dammit! Mostly, that means joyfully suspending disbelief so as to celebrate the little ghouls and their trailing, traipsing goblins.
I have a soft spot, though, for little girls, intransigent, in flannel pajamas, slightly tear-stained, not at all sure of this Trick or Treat business.
Propped on parental hips, their somber eyes warn you that this-is-not-what-they-signed-up-for.
Intransigent and toothsome, certain Little Girls use Halloween to put the world on notice.
A beautiful thing, the free download and streaming from the internet archive project at Naropa University: A reading by Allen Ginsberg performing William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Songs of Innocence includes: "The Shepherd," "The Echoing Green," "The Lamb," "The Little Black Boy," "The Blossom," "The Chimney Sweeper," "The Little Boy Lost," "The Little Boy Found," "Laughing Song," and "Holy Thursday." Songs of Experience includes: "Nurse's Song," "The Sick Rose," "Ah Sunflower," "The Garden of Love," "London," "The Human Abstract," "To Tirzah" and "The Grey Monk."
