education, Travel, Uncategorized

Sent Forth

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Yesterday was a day of sitting and people watching in airports.  In Minneapolis, we waited  for our flight to Sioux Falls at a gate where people were boarding a  plane to La Crosse , WI.  For some reason, several  of them were preoccupied with their phones and nearly missed the flight.  Husband is a U of W grad, and I took delight teasing him about the strangely disoriented Badger passengers getting on the flight to Wisconsin. I suggested they were too drowsy from eating all that cheese.  Husband joked that the Badger motto was “Don’t bother me, I’m watching the game”.  I told him that my college motto rather loftily described me as an “informed person sent forth  to influence the affairs of the world at the same time being dedicated to the Christian  life.” Sometimes I think I would rather watch the game and eat cheese.

What motto from college or high school or family are you supposed to live up to? How are you doing with that?

 

38 thoughts on “Sent Forth”

  1. My high school motto was “Ames High Aims High.” I used to think that was marvelously witty, which says something about my sophistication in my teen years.

    The slogan of U of MN athletics teams is “Ski-U-Mah.” It is either gibberish or a garbled version of something Sioux Indians might have said upon winning a canoe race. Dakota language experts speculate the true meaning might be something like, “We beat your butts, losers!”

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    2. The U of M motto (who knew there was a motto?), translated from Latin, where all prosaic mottoes hide, is “A common bond for all the arts”. That expects nothing from me and I’m good with that.

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  2. If my high school had a motto, I wasn’t aware of it, but as I look it up: circling the Bobcat emblem for Marshalltown High School is “Career Ready, Life Ready, College Ready.”

    Upon first search for Iowa State (I forgot to add University) – I get this:
    “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”
    Who knew Iowa had a motto? Does every state have one?

    ISU’s seems to be “Science with Practice.” Yikes, that’s not a motto – I’ll try to think one up!

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  3. Hi-
    Your teasing husband story made me laugh.
    My high school was the ‘Rockets’… don’t remember a motto.
    Here at the college it’s “Expect the unexpected”. Which could go either direction…

    There was a few years in my youth where my motto was to have ‘Experience Adventures!’. Then, you know how life just gets in the way and you’re just trying to survive day to day and I kinda forgot about that.
    But lately I’ve had a few adventures and was reminded that looking for Experience Adventures! is kind of a good idea.

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  4. The high school I attended was a private, co-ed, but open to anyone progressive hippie boarding school named John F. Kennedy Preparatory High School. There seemed to be the motto of “To Go Forth and Lead the Land We Love” from one of JFK’s speeches on the letterhead and outdoor sign. It was a very small but wonderful community with maybe 170 students at the high point. It was based on Abraham Maslow’s theories of self-actualization and afforded students a lot of freedom and choices. I have many fond memories of Prep. Whenever anyone did something out of the ordinary or took the lead, other students would jokingly yell ‘way to be a leader!”

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  5. Joanne’s reminds me of our Y-teen Song that we sang at every G-Y meeting. (Does anyone else remember Y-teens or G-Y?)

    “If we can grow as simply as common blades of grass,
    Both tall and straight as trees grow to the sky,
    Then we can learn to know, to know and understand
    Ourselves and others, what we do and why.

    We the younger generation
    Are striving now to build a better world.
    Peace and unity, freedom and brotherhood,
    These we have set to be our goal.”

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  6. I will have to say, Renee, that in the decades since I have left school I have never once thought about whether there was a motto that I was living up to or not. I had to look them both up. My high school motto (Horton Watkins High School) is “Enter to learn-Go forth to share”. And turns out that Metro State has a motti was well ”Where life and learning meet”. I guess I’d have to say I’ve lived up to those since I do consider my life a long journey of education.

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  7. To my knowledge, none of the schools I attended in Denmark had a motto. Don’t believe it was a thing. SIU, on the other hand does, and as any institution of higher learning worth its salt, it is in Latin: Deo Valente. God Willing! I wonder why they left out “and the creek don’t rise”?

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        1. I’m afraid that much of you consider common knowledge, Bill, isn’t all that common. But I agree, google is a wonderful tool. Happy New Year, everyone. I’m calling it a day, a year, and a decade. See you in the roaring 20s.

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  11. I don’t know if my high school ever had a motto. If it did, I can’t find any evidence of it. It was located in Wisconsin, whose state motto is “Forward!” Which makes me wonder if anyone’s state motto is “Reverse!”. I suppose I have lived up to “Forward!” mostly, but there are times, when you are stuck on a patch of ice, when it is helpful to alternate directions. It can also be useful in just getting out of a parking lot.

    The apocryphal “Don’t bother me, I’m watching the game” motto brought this to mind. I don’t recall how I stumbled across it, but I still find it enormously entertaining in a weird way…

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  12. We have arrived safely in AZ after a delayed trip due to the weather. We stayed over a day in Iowa, (just because we wanted to see political commercials—LOL), trying to wait out the storm over Nebraska. We took off Saturday morning when the weather people predicted clearing over Nebraska. Oops.

    It was a harrowing drive for 150 miles in which 12 inches of blowing snow fell around Kearney, Neb. Clearing? The weather front did not move on as predicted. Semi trucks were jack-knifing in frightening numbers in that stretch. After we arrived at our hotel in North Platte, Neb, they closed the freeway (80) between Grand Island and North Platte when so many semis jack-knifed that they could not clear them. An oblivious Buick driver nearly ran us off the road when she just had to pass us, pushing us into snow banks. Our trusty Honda Pilot held the road somehow, and we pulled out of snow bank, bank onto the one plowed lane. The semi in front of us moved over because she roosted in his blind spot. She moved on at a speed that her car could not handle. So here is a topic someone can post for a day in the near future: harrowing drive stories.

    The rest of the trip was uneventful, with the exception that my son announced his engagement! I am delighted. They texted us while we were driving on I25 towards Santa Fe, yesterday afternoon, as we watched the sun set over the mountains of New Mexico yesterday.

    I am sitting here drinking a beer and eating some cheese and crackers. I will celebrate the New Year by doing nothing at all except unpacking my suitcase.

    Happy New Year.

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