It is interesting living in a comunity small enough that gossip can be rampant and misinformation travels quickly . Our latest “urban legend” is that we will get 24 inches of snow on Friday. Fortunately, it isn’t true.
Tell about some urban legends you have encountered.
I really enjoy reading about the lives of the saints. I am fascinated by their histories, and I am also fascinated by the veneration of the saints by many Christians. Lawrence Durrell writes in his book The Greek Islands that he observed the Greeks to have an intensely personal relationship with their saints, often chastising them for not coming across with answers to prayers. He heard one person angrily refer to their saint as “that stinking old cuckold in the niche” after being particularly disappointed by him. I am Lutheran, a member of a church not typically associated with the saints. I understand, though, how important the saints are to many people, and how comforting and reassuring it is to know that someone who was human and not perfect but really, really special, has our interests at heart.
It is interesting to see references to the saints in modern day life. Unless you know about St. Apollonia, for example, you might not understand why the new dentist office in town is called Apollonia Dental Services.
Many of the saints died horrible and violent deaths for their faith. Many are exlemplars of Christian charity. Some saints are more difficult to fathom. St. Christina the Astonishing is one of the patron saints of mental health workers. Born in 1150, she was a rather alarming Belgian woman who died of a massive seizure at the age of 20, and arose out of her casket at her funeral and floated to the rafters of the church complaining that she couldn’t bear the smell of all the sinful people in the congregation. She went on to behave in very alarming ways until she died again at the age of 74. I don’t know if I would want her to intercede on my behalf. She was pretty odd. I would rather rely on Isidore of Seville, who wrote the first encyclopedia compiled in the post-classical world, and who probably knows a lot about everything there is to know.
Even if you are not a believer, who would you want to be your patron saint?
Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.
Most people cheerfully accept the name their parents gave them. But not all. Some folks have strong emotions their given names . . . strongly positive or strongly negative emotions.
A Jewish friend had a teenaged daughter named Sarah. For some reason that chose not to share, Sarah came to despise her name. My guess was that she decided it was too Jewish and old fashioned. Sarah began identifying as “Daisy.” That put her in conflict with her teachers, for they knew her given name and felt compelled to use it. After months of moods and conflicts, Sarah proved she would only respond teachers called her Daisy. The teachers caved in.
Names can be difficult in several ways. My mother’s name—Charmion—was a problem all her life. The name sounded vaguely French and was a challenge to spell or pronounce. People assumed it should be pronounced with a hard “ch” sound, like the word “charm.” But my mother grew up thinking the only correct pronunciation began with a “sh” sound like the word “shard.” Later in her life my mother began spelling her name Sharm, hoping that would be less confusing. Then, in her seventies, she went back to the original spelling. She was Charmion, dammit, and if other people couldn’t deal with that it was not her problem.
I have had issues with my name, which is Stephen. While I always knew that was my name, nobody called me that. As a kid, I was “Stevie” until the day I demanded that my parents and friends call me Steve. I have been Steve almost all my life, although some people—like bankers, lawyers and doctors—insisted on calling me Stephen, for that is my name on official papers.
After I moved to Michigan about a year ago, I acquired a new team of doctors and nurses who call me Stephen. Sometimes I ask them to call me Steve, but they don’t always comply. It really shouldn’t matter if the phlebotomist about to draw my blood calls me by my formal name. And yet it does matter. When people call me Stephen a little voice in my head notes, “You don’t know me, do you?”
When I became a writer I had to choose the name I would use on published work. A writer friend who lived in Boston was Steve to friends and yet the author name on his books was Stephen. I’ve always been amused and slightly put off by that decision. And actually, he is a somewhat vain fellow who tries hard to impress others. But then, many writers present themselves in print as being more accomplished than they actually are.
I decided to publish under the name of Steve Grooms. It was an easy decision. I am a thoroughly Midwestern guy, and the core of being Midwestern is humility. My mother raised me to be modest, optimistic and unpretentious. The persona I used in print was that of a guy who was often amused by his own incompetence. For me, this Steve/Stephen thing is not trivial. I have feelings about it. In my heart, I am Steve, not Stephen.
I haven’t mentioned my middle name, and that was another easy choice. I hate my middle name. It was “given” to me by my father in a foolish attempt to flatter his father. But his father (my grandfather) was a bigot and misogynist who was disliked by most people in his family. I never mention my middle name.
Do you have any issues or thoughts about your name?
I had some annual medical checkups recently, and I am happy to report I will be around for at least another year. I signed up for my medical provider’s on-line medical records portal so that I could read my medical chart. I enjoy reading the nitty gritty of my lab reports and such, but I was shocked when I read a radiology report from a recent mammogram. There was a mystery woman described in the report .
“Patient is a 60 year old white female” the report starts.
Wait a minute, I thought. Where did this 60 year old woman come from? How did she get into my radiology report? Get her out of here! There’s no one that age around here. I’m not that old! Well, I was born in 1958, and I did have a birthday in February. . .But how can I be a 60 year old woman?
I don’t feel “old”. I feel like me, a little stiffer and quite a bit grayer than I used to be, but not old. I know that most of the Baboons are older than I am, but I don’t think of them as “old” either.
Maybe it is a family trait. One of my great aunts resisted going to the nursing home when she was 95 because she “didn’t want to live with a bunch of deadbeats”. My father was always proud of his volunteer work with RSVP. He drove “the elderly” to their medical appointments when they were unable to drive, and most were younger than he was. Maybe it is all in how you see yourself?
What about aging has surprised you? What makes a person “old”?
The police here arrested two enterprising local men last week and charged them with passing thousands of dollars of counterfeit $20 bills around town. The men, ages 19 and 20, were caught with the fake money and the equipment for making the money. It was the wrong shade of green and had the wrong designs on it, but their scheme seemed to work, for at least a while. I think they might have had longer success had they gone to other cities to pass the bills. I am amazed that they were able to pass so many bills without people noticing the poor quality of the money. I guess people don’t pay as close attention as I thought they would.
Our two local guys reminded me of some shop lifters I heard of in the news who used the same method and the same get away car for multiple thefts from multiple big box stores. They always left through the fire doors of stores, and the police just started to watch the fire doors and surprised the thieves and the get away driver.
How do people come to ignore the poor chances of getting away with criminal activity? It seems to me that, eventually, most people get caught, whether at the local or national level.
What do you think makes for a successful crook? Have you ever known a real crook? How do they fool themselves?
On this day in 1806, after three months overwintering at Fort Clatsop, the Lewis & Clarke expedition headed home from the Pacific coast. When they arrived back in St. Louis in September, they had been gone for 2 years, 4 months and 10 days.
I’m usually good with delayed gratification. I eat the cake out from under the frosting, then eat the frosting on its own. I do my weekend chores right away on Saturday morning. I get my taxes done the first week of February and you all know I do my Solstice cards and gifts way ahead of time. But 2 years, 4 months and 10 days seems like a long time to finish a project to me.
As the temperatures begin to climb a bit I’ve been thinking about the front yard these days. My long term plan has always been to diminish the grass and increase the flowers. Although I still have grass, it’s not much and only takes me about 10 minutes to mow these days; the flowers have definitely taken over. This is year 11 of my plan.
So I guess 2 years, 4 months and 10 days isn’t too long after all.
What gratification can you wait for?
The Bible gives us a metaphor about those folks, those confounded ten-talent people. You know them!
Jesus tells a metaphor about using money expressed in talents, which has turned into a metaphor for the fact that we have varieties and numbers of gifts, that is talents as we use the word today. The parable tells us that some people have ten talents. You know them!
My sympathies are with the timid one-talent guy who comes off so badly in the parable. (Matthew 25:14–30, in case you want to look it up.)
Bill Bailey is a favorite of ours on British television, excepting that fact that he has many talents. Some of you may know him as Manny, the flaky assistant in the wacky Black Books. As well as an actor, he is also a stand-up comic, a writer of comedy, and deeply gifted in music, skilled at improvisation in music and in comedy. We know him for QI and others of the many British TV panel comedy shows. We love him especially for his part in Walks with My Dogs, a show in which various British celebrities walk famous trails around Britain with their dogs. The show is laid back, slow-paced, calming. Bailey’s unassuming manner is perfect. He rescues dogs. Of course, he does. He is also a sort of PDQ Bach comedian, working with orchestras, for one thing with his Odd Guide to the Orchestra. His piece about bassoons is hilarious.
Here he is doing a send-up of Tom Waits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RztSrL4utdg
Forty years ago I had a student who was a true ten-talent person. You could count them. Despite her modest and warm manner (people skills was one of talents), she aggravated her friends to no end for it, especially since she found the talents a burden at 16-18 years of age. I would like to tell you her name, such a delightfully Norwegian name. But I will not.
A few Babooners have more than one talent, a couple at least approaching the metaphoric ten number. I, for one, am a wannabe. I am certain that most Babooners move in circles that include a ten-talent person or two. Oh, yes, you know them!
Tell us about ten-talent people you know and how well they have managed them.
Do your multiple talents distract you?
Image: Mattel
Barbie dolls came up yesterday on the trail, with a couple of gals saying they had never had them when they were growing up. It caught my attention because some new Barbies have been released onto the market this week, modeled after inspirational women, among them an Amelia Earhart, a Frido Kahlo and a Katherine Johnson.
This has made me think of my history with the doll. In my early years I was the oldest of two however my younger sister was born with a heart defect and didn’t have the corrective surgery until she was almost two. She was frail up until that point and I wasn’t allowed to play with her much. We also moved homes quite a bit during my childhood (some due to my dad’s work and some due my parents’ continual wanderlust). I learned pretty early on to entertain myself and let my imagination go with whatever I was doing.
I had a couple of Barbie dolls – at least one of them was inherited from the older sister of a friend – and I enjoyed them quite a bit. Back then there wasn’t a mountain of plastic silliness to go along with the Barbies. No Malibu Barbie houses or Barbie & Ken matching convertibles. But what I did have was CLOTHES. A friend of my mother was a big knitter and sewer and I was the beneficiary of that talent. I had masses of clothing for my dolls and not the cheap little bits of cloth that you could buy for Barbies in the store. I had knitted sweaters, a-line skirts with poodles, shorts, t-shirts, dresses with little stoles, a beautiful white wedding dress with a train. No shoes, but lots of everything else.
Since I needed a place for my Barbies to live with their beautiful clothing, I turned my dresser into a Barbie house. I cleaned out the middle section completely for this house. Because I didn’t have any “real” Barbie furniture, I drew and cut out furniture from paper and pasted it onto the walls of my two-story Barbie house. My dolls were living the life of Riley.
I still have my Barbie house dresser – it’s in the attic. I haven’t used it as a dresser for decades but every time I think about getting rid of it, I look inside, see the remnants of my Barbie furniture and I can’t bring myself to let it go.
Did you have a favorite childhood toy?
Last week my Scientific American came with a big “LAST ISSUE” notification. I’ve been putting off renewing it; it’s a little expensive and, truth be told, I don’t always understand what I’m reading. But it was an interest I shared with my dad and I’m sure I would miss it.
Do you have fond memories of any magazines?
, I don’t usually watch the Oscars, but decided to tune in Sunday night about 8:00. It’s fun to see all the gorgeous gowns (or non-gowns) and the antics of the host, et al. – like Jodie Foster blaming her crutches on Meryl Streep (they were reportedly due to a skiing accident). And this year I was curious to see what would transpire as a result of the “Time’s Up” movement.
But for me Frances McDormand, who won Best Actor for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, stole the show. She played the glamour game to a point, wearing a long dress and little if any make-up or jewelry. And Sunday night she was all business: “So I’m hyperventilating a little bit. So if I fall over, pick me up ‘cause I’ve got some things to say…”
After setting down Oscar on the floor beside her, she continued: “And now I want to get some perspective. If I may be so honored, to have all the female nominees nominated in every category stand with me in this room tonight. Meryl, if you do, everyone else will… Ok, look around… ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell, and projects we need financed. Don’t talk to us about it tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best, and we’ll tell you all about them.”
From Variety.com: “She finished her speech by calling for contractually mandated inclusion across films: ‘I have two words to leave with you tonight: inclusion rider.’ Specifically, an inclusion rider is a clause in the contract of the top line talent on a film that requires a diverse crew to be hired around them.” The article continues with McDormand’s comments about how “trending” differs from what is really happening in Hollywood.
Frances McDormand has become my role model, and I plan to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, plus any of her other films I haven’t yet seen. She is my new favorite maverick. (Try and forget the Sarah Palin image that just entered your mind. I was going to call F.M. my favorite “renegade”, till I checked my definitions.)
Who is your favorite maverick, renegade, or iconoclast?
Trail Baboon 