What's the Word?

co-inky-dink

2008-07-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have fond memories of the TV series Get Smart back in the sixties, so it’s no surprise that I also enjoyed the current movie by the same name. I remember trying to cleverly pepper my stories with phrases like “Sorry about that!” and “Would you believe?” and I remember my dad doing the same thing. It makes me laugh just to hear someone talk that way again.

Get Smart came to us for the first time at about the same time as a new discount store in Crystal called Target. It was owned by the top retailer in our area, Dayton’s, and no one else in the world knew anything about it. Would you believe that the name Dayton’s was once on storefronts all over the Twin Cities and that the name Target was on only one? Would you believe that some forty years later a former stripper named Diablo Cody would choose that same Crystal Target as a place to pen her Academy Award winning screenplay, Juno?

Back in the day, Target was simply our neighborhood bargain basement store. My friends and I jokingly called it “Tar-ZHAY,” as if it were an exclusive French boutique. We all shopped there, but none of us admitted that anything we wore actually came from there because we considered ourselves far too sophisticated for Target couture.

For me, “Sorry about that!” “Would you believe?” and “Tar-ZHAY” are words and phrases that I once used as often as kids today use “Whatever.” or “Ya think?”. Another favorite of mine at the time was “co-inky-dink.” Like most young teenagers, I was fascinated with the supernatural. My friends and I brought out ouija boards at slumber parties. We “oohed” and “aahed” over songs about kids with mysterious and tragic deaths such as” Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri Las and “Strange Things Happen” by Dickey Lee. We scared the daylights out of our freshmen “little sisters” when we drove them to a graveyard and abandoned them there as part of a prank. Sorry about that!

Co-inky-dink was our word for anything that we considered coincidental. It was not limited to situations where two or more events happened to occur at the same time, but was used more broadly to infer that supernatural powers must have been involved for something to take place because we believed that whatever happened must have been more than just a chance occurrence. It was also assumed that there was some mystical reason for this co-inky-dink to occur and that made for a lot of “oohing” and “aahing” and fun speculation on our part. I still think it’s a fun word and I had a chance to use it myself this week.

I don’t know how many Golden Retrievers are in the Helping Paws breeding program, but I just learned the names of two of them: Maisie and Summer. Maisie is the name of our last Golden Retriever and Somer is the name of my daughter who is eagerly awaiting a puppy. That is a bit of a co-inky-dink.

Maisie and Summer are not popular pet names. Would you believe there are only two Maisies and five Summers at our veterinary clinic? (There are also 2 Maiseys, 1 Maise, 8 Maisys, 2 Maizys, 3 Mazys and 1 Somer.) Meanwhile, there are 431 dogs and cats that answer to the name Sam, including those named Sammy, Sampson, Samantha, Sammie, Sammi, Samuel, Samson, Samwise, Samsyn, Samual and Sammy Porkchop. There are 312 dogs and cats called Buddy. There are 334 dogs and cats called Max, including those named Maxi, Maximus, Maxine, Maxwell, Maximillion, Maxx and (Would you believe?) Maxwell Smart.

It is possible that the mother of the Helping Paws litter this fall and the mother of our puppy will be a Golden Retriever named, not Sam or Buddy or Max, but Summer or Maisie. That would be quite a co-inky-dink!

esperanza

2008-07-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Looks like I’ve put the cart before the horse, counted my chickens before they hatched and forgotten that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. There are six new Helping Paws families waiting for five Labrador Retriever puppies. We are the sixth on the list because our application was the last to be processed. We will not be getting a puppy this time around.

I was wrong about the c-section, too. There were nine puppies in the litter, as expected. However, the first two were born out of their sacs and did not survive. After the eighth puppy also had problems, Sheba’s owner took her to the vet to deliver the ninth, but neither the eighth or ninth puppies made it.

Many people are disappointed about this sad turn of events, but Somer is crestfallen. She does not want to hear another word about a puppy until one is placed in her arms.

We are hoping that will happen in November. There is a Golden Retriever in the Helping Paws breeding pool being bred this week. If she gets pregnant, we will be first on the list for one of her puppies this fall. I am not excited about the wait, but I am excited about the possibility of a Golden.

Spanish speakers have a word that means both waiting and hoping, esperanza. Americans don’t really have such a word, probably because our culture puts such a high premium on instant gratification. We do have some sayings that fit, though: “Good things come to those who wait.” “Anything worth having is worth waiting for.”

The pictures above are of the Golden Retriever puppies born last spring. Are they cute or are they cute? As much as we wanted one of them, it was not meant to be and they have all been placed with other Helping Paws foster families. We now know that the same thing will happen with the labs that arrived last week. Our puppy just hasn’t been born yet. We’re waiting and hoping. Esperanza.

compromise

2008-07-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Lots of people are asking if we’ve gotten our puppy. No, we haven’t, and we haven’t been able to contact the Helping Paws directors either, because they are on vacation. This is the only information we have from the Helping Paws website.

“On July 1, Sheba, one of our breeding dogs, gave birth to five Labrador Retriever puppies—two females and three males. These puppies will be placed with their foster families around September 1 to start their service dog training.”

We don’t know why only five puppies were born. The ultrasound or X-ray taken while Sheba was pregnant indicated nine pups. While either test could easily have been off by a puppy, it is highly unlikely that either test would have been off by four. The last we heard, Sheba, who was pregnant with her first litter, seemed agitated and appeared to be engaging in nesting behavior a few days after her June 26 due date.

It is my guess that the first puppy got stuck, a Caesarian section was performed, and only five pups survived the procedure. Of course, I am only speculating. We have been looking several times daily to our email and the website for more information on what happened, all to no avail.

We hope that all five puppies are healthy and that one of them will be placed with us. We have been told that the directors of the program will evaluate the temperament of each puppy at about seven weeks and place each one with the family that seems to be the best fit. I have joked that we will get the sickly runt because we have the experience of already raising four dogs; our primary trainer, my husband, is a veterinarian; and we have offered to cover all the vet bills for our puppy. Somer replies to my attempt at humor with a dagger stare and a sharp reminder that “no ‘sickly runts’ are going to be used for this program.” She is serious about this; there is no room for joking.

We have also noticed that six families have been contacted about fostering a puppy from this litter. If only five families are needed, we could be the one eliminated. Also on the list is a family from our Mother-Daughter book club, who applied to the program before we did. Their family and ours had no idea that the other was interested until after our applications were being processed. Now we are really hoping to do this together.

Waiting for this puppy has actually been a lot like waiting for a baby in that pregnant and adoptive parents rarely get exactly what they want, precisely when they want it either. Somer’s friend, Katherine, claims to be the exception, arguing that she is the child of her parent’s dreams and she is. However, her parents were hoping for a baby in early summer and had to wait until August. And let’s face it, sometime in her life even “perfect” Katherine will probably do a thing or two that disappoints her parents. That’s just the way it is.

How have I had to compromise? I wanted a Golden Retriever. As it turns out, the Golden in the breeding program didn’t get pregnant this spring so I won’t be getting one of her puppies, but I might be getting a Labrador Retriever. I wanted the puppy at the beginning of the summer, when Somer was on vacation. That didn’t happen because the spring puppies were all placed before we our application papers were processed, but I might get a puppy at the end of the summer when Somer goes back to school. I wanted to foster the dog for two years, while Somer was still at home. If we do get a dog, it will probably stay with us for 2 ½ years, being placed with a disabled person after Somer leaves for college. When I found out that my friend was also interested in fostering a puppy, I was excited to share the experience with her. I now know that it is possible that only one of us will be getting a dog. It is possible that we won’t be getting a dog at all.

So, I might have put the cart before the horse here, but I don’t really think so. I’m an optimist at heart and I believe that one of those five puppies will be coming to live with us in a few more weeks. And like most expectant mothers, I’ll have made a few compromises along the way and be absolutely thrilled with what I get.

Azimov

2008-07-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

On a good day, and there have been many lately, I eat my lunch out on my deck before I go to work. A cardinal always joins me in the overhanging ash tree, singing

“what CHEER. what CHEER. Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet.
what CHEER. what CHEER. Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet.”

I call him “Lounge Lizard” because he’s all decked out in his finest orange feathers and he reminds me of the guys in their rust-colored polyester leisure suits who used to hang around the piano bars in my single days. They sang “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” or “For the Good Times” or whatever it took to get a date. This cardinal is just as persistent, but he only knows one song and he doesn’t appear to have any takers.

I sit overlooking my swimming pool, which is cool, calm, and refreshing, even when I’m not swimming in it. I am surrounded by beautiful flowers: fuchsias (attracting the occasional hummingbird), begonias, marigolds, roses, lilies, spirea, daisies, geraniums, impatiens, dianthus, petunias, clematis, coreopsis and hydrangeas. Even my peony bush is hanging on to her last showy blossom for the Fourth of July.

I rock forward and backward in my swivel chair under the umbrella with the matching blue-gray stripes, protected from the sun. I open my Star Tribune to the Variety Section and look to Family Circus, For Better of For Worse, Sally Forth, Baby Blues and Zits for a laugh. (Zits usually hits closest to home these days.) I then turn the page for a little relationship advice from Carolyn Hax, which is often caustic and doesn’t usually apply to me, but I enjoy it anyway. Before settling in with the daily Sudoku, I stir the cherries into my yogurt and take the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz.

I don’t know why I subject myself to the quiz, because I’m not particularly good at it. I usually can answer at least one of the questions and am spared the embarrassment of the scoring category “Who read the questions to you?” Still, learning that I “should hit the books harder” or that I’m “plenty smart, but no grind” is not exactly an ego builder. I guess I do the quiz because every once in a while I get all the questions right and earn the reward of “Congratulations, Doctor.” I suppose it’s the same reason some people play slot machines.

Yesterday was a Congratulations, Doctor/three cherries in a row kind of day. The category was “Starts and Ends in A.” I knew I had a shot at it because it was a word thing and I love words. Here it is:

Each answer is a word that starts and ends with the letter “A.” For example: An aerial. Answer: antenna. (Actually I think that’s one of the hardest ones.)

Freshman Level
1. A pleasant smell.
2. A level area where sports events take place.
3. Measurement of a surface.

Graduate Level
4. A list of matters to be discussed.
5. A loss of memory.
6. A large fleet of ships.

Ph.D. Level
7. A supposed invisible force surrounding a living creature.
8. Something added to a text.
9. A word used by conjurors when performing a magic trick.

Answers: Aroma, Arena, Area, Agenda, Amnesia, Armada, Aura, Addenda, Abracadabra.

I went through the questions lightning fast and my memory, which isn’t as good as it used to be, didn’t fail me. One of my favorite writers, Anna Quindlen, who is about my age, says that her “memory is now so bad that (she) can reread mystery novels and not recall whodunit.” I can relate. However, yesterday, my memory for “A” words was with me. I tried to share my excitement with the Lounge Lizard, but he was unfazed and never missed a tweet in his same sorry song.

“what CHEER. what CHEER. Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet.
what CHEER. what CHEER. Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet, Wheet.”

foster

2008-06-30T21:08:00.001-07:00

We are becoming a foster family. I feel like an expectant mother (without the morning sickness). Ian is talking about cigars and decorating a cake to bring to work. Somer is calling all of her friends on their cell phones (and she is going crazy because none of them are picking up.)

We’ve been on eggshells all weekend waiting for our “baby” to arrive. We just got word that he or she will probably be born sometime tonight. The due date of June 26 (the same due date I had when I was pregnant with Erin) has passed; and this baby is taking its own sweet time, just as Erin did twenty-five years ago.

We are throwing around names like Mischa, Owen, Murdoch, Sawyer and Kenzie. There are new items on our “To Buy” list and new jobs on our “To Do” list.

I have surprised a few people by agreeing to this arrangement because our “baby” is not the kind of baby that usually interests me. Our “baby” is a Labrador puppy. This is what I get for living with people who love animals: Dog #5.

Actually, I’m caught up in the excitement, too. It’s not a long-term commitment because this dog will not really be ours. We will foster it for 2 ½ years and teach it what it needs to know to become a service dog. Our “baby” will be placed with a handicapped person at about the same time as Somer heads off to college.

Wish us well!

control

2008-06-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

At my last MAD (Mother and Daughter) Readers meeting, we discussed Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. It’s the first book in a series about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. It is not my genre AT ALL, but I did enjoy it and I am working my way through the second book. The series is immensely popular with teenage girls and their mothers, reportedly selling better than Harry Potter in some areas.

Some of the vampires in the book have special abilities, such as being able to see the future or to read the thoughts of others. I’m told the idea of super powers is common in fantasy stories, which I don’t know because I wouldn’t read fantasy stories at all if they weren’t so popular with my daughter’s friends and their moms. One of the questions that we explored in our discussion of Twilight was “What special ability do you have right now that could develop into a super power?”

My daughter, Somer, mentioned that she thought it would be cool to have the power to “shape-shift,” although she didn’t feel that she had any special abilities that would qualify her for that super power. She was quite sure, however, that my super power would be “mind control.” That got us all laughing, especially since we had just been discussing my extensive summer job list for Somer. I know I am a controlling person and I laughed as hard as everyone else about my potential for mind control.

How did I get to be this way? I think it is common for oldest children, especially girls, to be bossy. I think it is also common for some children with an alcoholic parent to strive for control because their lives with that parent are unpredictable. In my case, it may also be genetic. I am told that, as a four-year old, when I was asked to pick up my toys in the front yard, I sat on the front steps and told my neighborhood friends and sisters which toys they could pick up for me. My dad responded by saying, “Some people are roofers and some people are foremen. It looks like we’ve got a foreman.”

I found my abilities as a controlling person to be quite beneficial as a teacher and as a parent of young children. The children in my classroom and home had clearly-defined expectations, well-planned activities and predictable routines. When I am feeling defensive about this aspect of my personality; I defend it, arguing that I am not bossy and controlling, but rather assertive.

However, no matter what name I give it, I do not find my controlling personality to be at all helpful in parenting my adult children; who are now trying to find their own way and eager to distance themselves from my way of doing things. I struggle with this because I still want to be involved in their lives and most of the time I am not. I didn’t expect to find this stage of parenting to be the most difficult for me.

In Mistaken Identity, the book that I just read with my adult group (I hesitate to call it my “Adult Book Club” because that suggests a type of literature which we have not yet explored), the issue of control takes on an entirely different light. This is the tragic account of two young women who were mistaken for each other after an accident in their college van. One family mistakenly buries the other’s daughter, thinking she is their own. The other family cares for the first family’s daughter for five weeks, thinking she belongs to them. Some readers find this book overly religious, but I find the depth of faith of the parents and the sisters in both of these families to be truly inspiring.

The most poignant moment in Mistaken Identity occurs for me when Newell Cerak, the father of the daughter who survives, tells Don Van Ryn, the father of the daughter who dies, that he feels guilty because his family has had the happy ending. Don Van Ryn responds that his family has had a happy ending, too, but that they just haven’t gotten there yet. I had to read and re-read his statement, unable to fathom this father’s composure in such hellacious circumstances. Don Van Ryn has no doubt that his family will have their happy ending when they are all together again in heaven. I do not know when I have read anything that touched me more.

No one in Mistaken Identity has any super powers. This is not a fantasy story. No one in the book is destined for mind control. The parents and sisters of Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak are ordinary people sustained by the grace of God. They know that God is in control and they are not, and they are happy with that. I also know that God is in control and I am not, but I have a little more trouble keeping my assertiveness in check.

odyssey

2008-05-08T07:43:00.001-07:00

The Odyssey is an epic poem, probably written by Homer, which describes the adventures of Odysseus on his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War. The Coen Brothers’ movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, is a retelling of The Odyssey, set in the American south in the 1930’s. Another version of the epic is being played out by twenty-somethings in America today.

In an article in the New York Times last fall, David Brooks wrote about a current life phase that follows childhood and adolescence, a period of roughly ten years, which precedes adulthood. This phase, which he calls “odyssey,” is the transition between student life and adult life. It is the time when adult children move in and out of everything: home, relationships, careers and school. It is a time when parents become increasingly anxious because their adult children can’t seem to decide what they want to do with their lives and get on with it. Brooks says,

“There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.”

Using Brooks’ figures, fifty years ago some seventy percent of thirty-year-olds had moved away from home, become financially independent, gotten married and started a family. Ten years ago fewer than forty percent of thirty-year olds had done the same things.

There was an odyssey phase in my own life, but the only name we had for it at the time was “early mid-life crisis.” I left a terrific teaching job in my mid-twenties to take advantage of an opportunity in broadcasting. I gave up regular hours with great vacations at a job I knew how to do well for overnight shifts and a decrease in pay at a job for which I wasn’t trained. I’m sure my parents were very anxious.

It wasn’t easy for me either. I loved teaching, but I didn’t love my life. I didn’t want to be stuck in the same position ten or twenty years down the line. I wanted to try something new. When the rare opportunity for a paying gig as a performer fell right into my lap, I ran with it.

Brooks acknowledges that this is not an easy thing to do, “The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities.”

My journey into the world of radio and television lasted about six years. It was filled with the notable experiences and hardships that characterize an odyssey. I believe I am a better person for having taken the trip. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is always easy for me to watch my children as they struggle in their own odyssey years. I remember well that it is not an easy time.

coyote

2008-04-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

The only time I have seen a real coyote was in the parking lot of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, AZ. My cousin Lynn, who lives in Tucson, acted as though it was almost an every day occurrence. She reacted as I might have, had it been a raccoon going through the garbage at a Minnesota State Park.

The coyote that I saw was smaller than I expected, more like a medium-sized mongrel dog than a wolf. He walked stealthily between the parked cars with his head and tail lowered, eyes slyly shifting from side to side, disappearing into the desert scrub as quickly as he had appeared on the concrete. He looked thin and hungry and I wondered, “Is he tracking a rabbit or some chicken nuggets?” I grabbed my children’s hands, fearing for their safety.

I saw a dancer portray another kind of coyote on stage last weekend in Border Crossing at the Ritz Theatre in Minneapolis. Jennifer Ilse brought to life the trickster coyote, popular in folklore. She did not slink, but held her head high. She drummed a native beat with her feet and spoke with the cunning of a survivor coyote, one who has used her wits to adapt. Mothers should hold their children tightly in the face of this animal, as well.

Ilse’s coyote earns her living transporting human cargo. She is a smuggler of illegal immigrants at the United States-Mexican border. Ever the trickster, she entices groups of migrants to relinquish their life’s savings and follow her, exploiting their need and promising things that she cannot deliver. My daughter is one of her desperate followers.

This is a tragic story of our time, well told. I recommend it. Performances continue this weekend, Thursday through Sunday.

LE:MON

2008-04-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

LE:MON is an acronym for Leadership Evolved: My Oh Nine. The Oh Nine could also be written as '09, the year that my son and his classmates will graduate from college. He is currently running for president of his class as the LE:MON candidate and he has faced some criticism from his opponents because he is new to student government. Colin channels Daniel Day-Lewis and addresses his critics in this You Tube video, which I find very entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfQ-5yF3YE0

madrassa

2008-04-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

All of us have seen disturbing news clips of young children in the Middle East shouting hateful things about Americans. We are shocked and saddened by these images and we are angered at the people who have taught these kids to hate us so much.

In Pakistan, Afghanistan and some other parts of the world, it seems that the virulent Anti-American sentiment is being taught at madrassas, Islamic schools, funded by the Saudis. Madrassa or madrasah is actually an Arabic word for any type of school, but it has come to mean a school where Islam is taught. The madrassas built by the Saudis in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years are said to espouse a radical, violent form of fundamental Islam that is anti-Western and Anti-American.

That is not to say that madrassa schools, by definition, dispense hatred for Americans. Barack Obama attended a predominately Muslim school, which could be considered a madrassa, when he lived in Jakarta as a teenager. Minneapolis StarTribune columnist, Katherine Kersten, reports that there is a Muslim charter school in a suburb of the Twin Cities operating today. She gives compelling evidence that this school, TIZA, which is funded by Minnesota taxpayers; provides class time for the study of the Qu’ran. The problem with TIZA is not that the students study a radical, hateful breed of Islam, because there is no evidence to support that they do. The problem is that they study Islam in a public school. I spend a lot of money to send my kids to a private school where they learn about world religions, examine their own faith and are allowed to sing Christmas Carols. Taxpayers do not support my children’s school and they should not support TiZA.

The Saudi-built madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan raise even greater concerns. Vali Nasr, the Iranian-American Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University has said,

“In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam.
Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia.”

Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, has asked, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, has denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists."

These people know a lot more about all of this than I do, but I recently read a book that supports what they say. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin tells the story of a lost mountain climber, Greg Mortenson, who stumbles into a remote village in Pakistan after his failed attempt to scale a mountain known as K2. Mortenson’s decision to repay the villagers for their kindness leads him to build them a school. Since then he has built 57 other schools, all in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where 24,000 students, more than half of them girls; are currently learning to read, to write and to do arithmetic. The only other schools being built in these remote areas are Islamic fundamentalist madrassas, where students learn fundamental Islam and to hate Americans.

It is Mortenson’s mission to “promote peace, one school at a time.” He has his detractors, but there are many who believe he will one day earn the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Tom Brokaw, one of his first supporters, describes Mortenson’s efforts as “proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.”

rhinotillexis

2008-03-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to my brother-in-law, Pete, who made it to the final round of Jeopardy at the Mall of America last weekend, when the Jeopardy Brain Bus rolled into town looking for contestants. His name now goes on file with those of the other finalists from Minneapolis and everywhere else try-outs are being held. Pete was told that he has a shot at being called up for the TV show anytime in the next eighteen months. He’s down-playing the whole thing, which is characteristic of him; but I am hoping he gets the call, wins big, retires early, travels everywhere and invites me to visit him.

I do not know if the word rhinotillexis was a part of my brother-in-law’s try-out, but I have been told that this is one of Ken Jennings’ questions: “What pastime is technically termed rhinotillexis?” In these days of the internet, the answer to the question is easily found: What is nose-picking?

At first I was not sure why I was provided with Ken Jennings’ question about rhinotillexis and this picture of Pete in the same e-mail from my sister, but I assumed there was a reason. After thoroughly scrutinizing the photo, I think I have figured it out. I now wonder where the future Ken Jennings is hiding his index finger.

Just kidding, of course! Bravo, Pete!

shipoopi

2008-03-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

I remember my dad singing songs from The Music Man long before I first saw The Music Man. I remember him imitating the traveling salesmen, “But he doesn’t know the territory,” loving how the lyrics matched the cadence of the moving train.

I also remember his: “Oh, we got trouble! Right here in River City! …..Capital ‘T,’ …..rhymes with ‘P,’ ….. stands for Pool!” I’d write the whole thing, but there is that law about copy infringement getting in the way.

My dad didn’t have Robert Preston’s voice, but he did have his enthusiasm. His delight with The Music Man rubbed off on me and I thought of him last weekend when the musical opened to a full house at Breck School. I wish he could have been there to see his granddaughter perform with all of his enthusiasm AND a lovely singing voice.

Somer plays the farmer’s wife, which she claims, tongue-in-cheek, is the best part in the play. She is pictured at the top of the cast photo, re-enacting Grant Wood's American Gothic. The lead roles of Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian are played by deserving seniors, who do a great job. Somer, as a sophomore, is waiting her turn. She has the right attitude: There are no small parts, only small actors.

Cast members are now wearing t-shirts advertising the play with the word Shipoopi across the front. It’s the title of a lesser-known song from the play, one I never heard my dad sing. A shipoopi, according to the lyric, is a girl who’s hard to get. The actors in the play sing out the merits of the shipoopi while dancing the Virginia Reel. They have a great time with it and the audience does, too.

Congrats Somer, Sweet Sixteen! Break a leg in your final performance! Your dad and brother and sister and I will all be there, puffed-up with pride as we watch our shipoopi!

mendacity

2008-02-20T06:55:00.000-08:00

“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. They say there's always magic in the air.” Ian and I got to experience George Benson’s Broadway magic in New York City over President’s Day weekend, twice.

The first was a college improv show at 116th and Broadway, which is about eighty blocks north of the theatre district, but on Broadway, and magical for the parents of the performers, just the same. Our son was both the emcee and a performer in this year’s “Fruit Paunch Formal Show,” and he did a great job. In one of his sketches he played a young schoolboy with an exaggerated lisp giving an oral report on walruses (walrutheth). He described how they had three tusks (tuthkth) that were so (tho) long that if they were laid out end to end they could stretch (thtretth) all the way to Buffalo. The college audience loved it, but I loved it more than they did. I actually remember when Colin was that earnest, bespectacled schoolboy giving oral reports with a slight speech impediment.

On our second night, the three of us had dinner at a great little Italian restaurant near campus and then took the subway to Times Square. On the train, I sat next to an artist who frenetically sketched three portraits of other passengers and a quick profile of me in our half-hour ride down Broadway. Our destination was the Broadhurst Theatre, the same stage where Joel Grey gave his Tony Award winning performance in Cabaret some forty years ago.

We had tickets to see the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with a star-studded all-Black cast. I had never read the Tennessee Williams play or seen it performed, so I am not familiar with the Elizabeth Taylor-Paul Newman version, or any other version, for that matter. The play we saw was directed by Debbie Allen (“Fame”) and starred a foul-mouthed James Earl Jones (“The Great White Hope” and the voices of Mufasa and Darth Vader), an overweight, unkempt Phylicia Rashad (“The Cosby Show”), an alcoholic Terrence Howard (“Crash”), and a very hot Anika Noni Rose (the “Dream Girls” star who takes a back seat to Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce Knowles in the movie). Also very recognizable is a henpecked Giancarlo Esposito (“Homicide: Life on the Streets” and “Law and Order”). I can’t imagine any way in which Taylor, Newman, Burl Ives or any of their cast mates could have been superior to any of the actors we saw.

In the play, Terrence Howard’s character, Brick, is disgusted with his family’s mendacity. The word, which is new to me, describes the primary motivation for his behavior. He blames his struggles with honesty and his escape into alcoholism on his family’s mendacity, or untruthfulness and tendency to lie. He doesn’t call his family members prevaricators or outright liars, but mendacious, a term which refers to much more clandestine behavior. He accuses them of lives filled with secrecy, concealment and attempts at deception.

I like Tennessee Williams’ choice of word. Years of subtle mendacity in the lives of his characters have destroyed any good that may have once existed in their relationships, and make it very difficult for each character to recognize the truth. Keeping secrets, brushing small annoyances under the rug, keeping up appearances and refusing to face hard truths are not in the best interest of family harmony or personal satisfaction, although they may seem to be at the time. I am grateful for the new word and all that it illuminates in my own life.

Bravo to Broadway magic and neon lights!

ai

2008-02-12T10:51:00.001-08:00

In my search for useful two-letter Scrabble words, I have found another good one: ai. This is not the AI of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Insemination or American Idol. This is the ai that is the three-toed sloth of Central and South America. The plural of the word is ais. It is pronounced “eye” or “ah-EE,” which is similar to the sound made by the sloth and how the mammal got its name.

There are at least three species of ais, including the Maned Three-toed Sloth of South America. These ais have a coarse outer coat with hairs that apparently angle up so that they will hang down when the sloth is in its normal position, hanging from forest trees. Even a good dose of Frontline wouldn’t eradicate the critters that supposedly live in ai fur: algae, mites, ticks, beetles and moths.

The Maned Three-toed Sloth eats from the trees where it hangs. It is rarely seen on the ground because it cannot stand or walk and is reduced to dragging itself by its front legs and claws when it is on the forest floor.

One of the seven deadly sins that was the subject of many lessons at St. Margaret Mary and St. Margaret’s Academy has the same name as the sloth, which is considered to be a sluggish and lazy creature, although I’m not sure that the description is completely fair.

Human to sloth: “Excuse me. Why are you so sluggish and lazy?”

Sloth to human: “Excuse ME! Why don’t you try hanging in trees all day and night; moving to a new residence every time you run out of food; providing reliable, rent-free housing to numerous undesirable pests that you cannot evict; and dragging yourself around on the ground by your arms every time you to need to use the privy?”

No thanks. I’ll pass. I’ll stick to finding places on the Scrabble board where I can rack up points with my ai, which appears to be a whole lot easier than being a sloth.

ae

2008-02-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

AE: American Eagle Outfitters
A&E: Arts and Entertainment Television Network
AE: The United Arab Emirates
æ (the letters “a” and ”e” stuck together with no space in between them): a letter in some languages and the representation of a vowel sound in other languages. In the International Phonetic Alphabet æ represents the “a” sound in the word cat.
ae.: (ae followed by a period): at the age of; aged

Surprisingly, ae is also a word. It’s new to me, but it’s been in Scrabble Dictionaries for at least thirty years. It is an adjective and it means “one.” I don’t know how to pronounce it because Scrabble dictionaries don’t give pronunciations and I can’t find it anywhere else. I may not be able to use it to improve my vocabulary, but I will definitely be able to use it to improve my Scrabble game.

P.S. ae is not the only two-vowel, no consonant word in the Scrabble Dictionary. More later.

plural

2008-02-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

Somer did a report for biology this weekend on moose. She learned that the moose are able to adapt to the harsh winters of northern climates because they have very thick fur, which keeps them warm in the winter; and because they have very long, thin legs, which help them travel through heavy winter snow. No wonder I have so much trouble adapting to Minnesota winters. I have thin skin and short, thick legs.

Somer also learned something about the word moose, which, of course, interests me. The plural of moose is moose. The plural of goose is geese. The plural of mongoose is mongooses. English, such a fascinating language!

The word plural, of course, means more than one. As we all know, plural nouns are usually nouns ending in the letter “s,” such as the word mongooses, but there are exceptions such as the words moose and geese. There is also another, much more disturbing, use of the word plural.

I recently read Escape, Carolyn Jessop’s memoir of her life in a polygamist cult, where she was given in marriage at the age of eighteen to a fifty-year old man living with his three previous wives and their many children. I am currently reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, which is a scholarly history of the Mormon faith and its fundamentalist offshoots, often polygamist cults or polygamist extremists. I am also a fan of the HBO television series Big Love, which is a fictional account of a polygamous family. In each of these stories the word polygamy is interchangeable with the phrase plural marriage.

Actually, there is some appeal to plural marriage for most women, including me. It would be very nice to have sister-wives as confidantes and partners in cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. The appeal, however, ends there. The attractiveness of the arrangement is also based on the assumption that the wives are companionable and cooperative, which is usually the case in the fictional Big Love, but rarely evident in Jessop’s real-life narrative.

It is not uncommon for polygamist groups to force 14-year old girls into plural marriage with older men and to drive out 14-year old boys before they become competition for the established male hierarchy. Forcing young girls into marriage and forcing young boys to fend for themselves on the street are child abuse. The man who kidnapped 14-year old Elizabeth Smart in Utah 5 1/2 years ago believed the Lord had asked him to take her as his second wife. He abducted her from her bedroom at knifepoint, raped her and claimed her as his own. The fact that she was eventually rescued and is said to be doing well is miraculous. The fact that some version of what happened to Elizabeth is still happening today in polygamist cults in the United States is unspeakably sad.

More than 10,000 polygamists are now living in one such cult in Colorado City on the Arizona-Utah border. They are members of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS), an offshoot of the Mormons (LDS) who believe that the Latter Day Saints erred when they gave up polygamy as espoused by founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young.

The lives of Colorado City residents are funded by American taxes. American laws, which should protect the children living there. are rarely enforced. According to Krakauer members of the FLDS in Colorado City consider the governments of Utah, Arizona and the United States to be “Satanic forces intent on destroying them.”

From these “Satanic forces” Colorado City polygamists received over six million dollars in aid in 2002. The government paid for their school, which employed FLDS teachers and taught FLDS doctrine. The government paved their streets, improved their fire department and upgraded their water system. The government built an airport outside of the city, which is used by few people other than Colorado City residents. In 2002, 78% of the town’s Arizona residents received food stamps. In fact, each resident received an average of eight dollars in government services for every dollar paid in taxes. Members of the FLDS are told by their leaders that this assistance is coming from the Lord, that defrauding the government is “bleeding the beast” and therefore virtuous.

Manipulating words to make plurals is fun for word nuts like me. Manipulating people into plural marriages and a government into supporting them is criminal and pathetic.

AAAGMNR

2008-01-31T18:11:00.000-08:00

Really good Scrabble players can apparently decode AAAGMNR immediately. I guess I am not a really good Scrabble player because I had to work at it. I was stuck on MANAGAR for quite awhile, thinking it could be some version of manager or have something to do with eating from the French word manger. It’s not MANAGAR. (Loyal readers may wish to pause here to decode AAAGMNR. The answer is provided in this blog entry and I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun.)

There are more than two thousand active tournament level Scrabble players in the United States and some of them will meet in Scottsdale, AZ over the President’s Day weekend. While their competition definitely intrigues me, I’m just a recreational player and I’m not foolish enough to think I belong there.

Seven-letter words that use all of a player’s Scrabble tiles are known as bingos because they earn the player fifty bonus points, in addition to the score of the word that is played. Bingos from last year’s tournament include:
seringa - a Brazilian tree
imphees - African grasses
caseose - a water-soluble protein
I can recognize that each of these words contains an “s” and assume that the players were probably able to find a place for them on the board by making a plural of another word. Still, these bingos are not anywhere in my vocabulary and these players are clearly out of my league.

That’s not to say that I don’t share the tournament level players’ passion for the game. It would be nice to recognize in an instant that AAAGMNR can be played as ANAGRAM, but I think I got the same thrill out of figuring it out, even if it did take me a little bit longer. I probably even have a greater sense of accomplishment because I had to work a little harder to get it.

saguaro

2008-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

Somer and I spent the MLK weekend at the Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, Arizona with one of Somer’s friends and her mom. We went hiking and horseback riding on the 640-acre ranch and in the adjacent Saguaro National Park every day. What a fabulous place!

Our picture was taken Sunday morning as we were riding to an outdoor cowboy breakfast at the old homestead on the ranch. I thought Somer was riding right behind me, but I was so busy enjoying the beautiful desert landscape and trying to keep my trusty horse, Zephyr, from getting a mouthful of low-growing brittle brush that I wasn’t really paying much attention to where she and Hondo ended up in the line.

Guide: There is a photographer up ahead who will take your picture individually, or in a group, if you would like.
Me, calling over my shoulder: Come up next to me and we can have our picture taken together.
Lady behind me, who was not Somer: Well, ……all right……but I’ve never even met you.

Fortunately, Somer was only two horses behind the mystery lady, so she managed to catch up to me before the picture was taken. Not so fortunately, Zephyr decided to position himself in such a way that I have saguaro branches growing out of my shoulders. It is probably no surprise that the lady behind me disappeared completely as the picture was being taken, without ever asking to make my acquaintance.

It isn’t obvious in the photo, but we were surrounded by majestic saguaro (suh-WORE-oh) cacti wherever we went on the ranch and in the park. Native only to the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, California and Mexico, they are prolific and incredibly beautiful in Saguaro National Park.

The saguaroes are not only cacti, but trees, because they have woody skeletons (somewhat visible in the photo of the decaying saguaro above), which resemble a bunch of broom handles approximately 1-2” in diameter standing together, with bunches of curved broom handles reaching skyward here and there along the sides to form the branches. We passed a few of the still-standing skeletons on some of our hiking trails, and we also saw them overhead, as the ribs have been fashioned into amazing pole-like ceiling “planks” in the Tanque Verde guest rooms. I wanted to take our entire ceiling home with me. The last time I felt that way, I was in the Sistine Chapel.

The first time I encountered the word “saguaro,” it had the alternate spelling “sahuaro,” and I pronounced it “saw who arrow.” Sahuaro Hall was my freshman dormitory at Arizona State University. I was very interested in the fact that I would be living in a co-ed dorm, meaning that one of the wings housed men and one of the wings housed women. The only thing we actually shared was a dining hall, but this was still considered a rather risqué living arrangement for a St. Margaret’s Academy girl at the time.

As an eighteen-year old, I was very excited to be headed to Sahuaro Hall and anxious to meet my roommate, but not so interested in the word “sahuaro.” I left for college without learning how to pronounce it or finding out what it meant. I was going to Arizona to get away from home and out of the cold, and I didn’t give the unfamiliar name of my new living quarters a second thought.

Family who picked me up at the Phoenix airport: “Where will you be living?”
Me: “Saw who arrow Hall.”
Silence. Exchange of puzzled looks.
Mother in family: “Is that one of the dorms?”
Me, trying to be shocking: “Yeah. It’s the co-ed dorm.”
Mother in family, trying not to be shocked: “Oh. That’s nice. How is the name spelled?”
Me: “S-A-H-U-A-R-O.”
Mother: “Oh, Sahuaro! That’s the name of our biggest cactus and our state flower.”
Me: “Oh.”
Five-year old boy in family: “You’ve never heard of a Sahuaro Cactus?”

I spent the next nine years in Arizona and one by one learned to love, and to pronounce the names of, the desert trees and desert cacti there. I can smile about my comeuppance with the word sahuaro now, but I was mortified then. Though I was raised in Minnesota, the desert became an important part of me in the time that I was there. Today the saguaro cactus feels as much mine as the sugar maple that grows in my front yard.

unibrow

2008-01-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

There is no one who sports a unibrow more prominently than Frida Kahlo. Her paintings are currently on exhibit at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and it’s a good show, although it was very crowded last Sunday afternoon. The $10 admission fee allows non-members to view 46 paintings, primarily self-portraits, and 90 photographs from her personal albums. There is an additional charge for the audio tour, but I didn’t need it. Thursday nights are free between 5-9 and draw huge crowds, last week 2,000 people.

The exhibit closes In Minneapolis on Sunday, January 20, and then moves on to Philadelphia. It is a better collection of Kahlo’s work than what I saw at museums in Mexico ten years ago, but it is missing one thing. The Dolores Olmeda Museum outside Mexico City actually has live Mexican hairless dogs on site. The rare xoloitzcuintlis dogs, pronounced something like “show low eats queen tlees,” are usually called xolos. They are featured in Kahlo’s work along with parrots and monkeys. The xolos I saw in Mexico were yappy and interesting-looking, but it would be a stretch to say they were cute.

Getting back to the unibrow, Frida may be the poster child, but she’s not the only person to have one. I remember when Brooke Shields had eyebrows that were well on their way to meeting above her nose. In a controversial topless photograph by Francesco Scavullo, the pre-pubescent Brooke’s eyebrows were badly in need of a tweezers, but her mother refused to let anyone touch them.

On a recent “Traffic and Trivia” bit on K102 radio, Kirsten Klein reported that the body part that gives women the most trouble is their eyebrows. That’s news to me. I pretty much ignore mine. Once, in high school, I tweezed them to pencil thin lines and got teased by my friends. After that, I let them grow back and left them alone. That’s apparently what Frida did, too, but her result is a bit more extreme than mine.

As for the word unibrow, according to People Magazine, the Oxford English Dictionary now includes it: unibrow (noun) A pair of eyebrows that meet above the nose, giving the appearance of a single eyebrow. The Oxford English added 2,500 new words and phrases last year including:

Omigod (interjection) Expression of astonishment or shock, pain or anger: Oh my God!

*Crapola (noun) Material of poor quality, rubbish; nonsense

*Bogus (noun and adjective) Very displeasing or inferior, bad

*Smoosh (verb transitive) Squash, crush or flatten

Fricking (adjective and adverb) Expressing amazement, anger, exasperation, etc.

Nyah (interjection) Expressing a feeling of superiority or contempt

Buzzkill (noun) A person or thing which dampens enthusiasm or enjoyment

*These words are already in the Scrabble dictionary.

Omigod, Frida must have had one crapola eyebrow wax to get that fricking unibrow look. Nyah, I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but her stylist should have her tweezers smooshed and a great big “BOGUS” stamped across her license.

denigrate

2008-01-12T08:52:00.000-08:00

I am sorry that the Golden Globes have been cancelled because there are some really good movies out there right now that deserve to be recognized. I am all for the television writers getting their due, but I would like to see Ellen Page and Emile Hirsch pick up trophies for Juno and Into the Wild. I hear that Daniel Day Lewis is a shoo-in for best actor, but I haven’t seen his performance in There Will Be Blood yet, so I’m rooting for the young Hirsch, who I think deserves every award out there.

Both Into the Wild and Juno have Minnesota connections. Into the Wild was produced by Minnesotan Bill Pohlad, who previously produced Brokeback Mountain and is the son of Minnesota Twins’ owner Carl Pohlad. It is a faithful retelling of Jon Krakauer’s tragic account of a young man who dropped out of American society to live on his own in Alaska. It is based on a true story and I loved both the book and the movie.

Juno was written at the Target store in Crystal, Minnesota, where I shop when my husband doesn’t do it for me, by a former stripper; who reportedly still owns a house in Robbinsdale, the suburb next to mine. The writer, who goes by the pen name Diablo Cody, says she wrote the screenplay about a boy she hurt in high school. A few years ago she wrote a book, Candy Girl, about her experiences in Minneapolis strip clubs such as Sex World and Déjà Vu. The book is pornographic and less than great literature, but I could not put it down. Juno shows off Cody’s writing abilities better than Candy Girl, and the movie is beautifully acted, comedic and poignant.

One of the Christmas releases that I really enjoyed, The Great Debaters, is not getting the attention that it should be getting. I saw it with my family Christmas week and it was already relegated to a small theatre with a smaller audience. All the movie trailers that preceded it seemed to feature black actors in violent roles, as if these were the only movies a Great Debaters’ audience would enjoy. The film does have a primarily African American cast, led by Denzel Washington, but it is not violent and it is not just for blacks. It is an uplifting, motivational coming-of-age story with universal appeal, based on a true story.

There may be a bit of a pattern to my movie preferences here. My favorite books and movies usually fall into the category of memoirs, based on true stories or historical fiction. That doesn’t really explain my interest in Juno, but it is a quirky version of a real high school relationship by a person who used to live in my neighborhood, so it feels like it fits my genre.

The Great Debaters is also excellent because it educates its audience on the word “denigrate.” The word comes from the Latin words “de+nigrare,” meaning “to make black.” Washington’s character makes the case that the word we use to mean “disparage” or “defame” also means “to blacken” and that it has racist undertones.

I have used the word denigrate without knowing its origin or its ability to offend. I have also used other words unintentionally that were equally insensitive. Mulatto, a word that is sometimes used to describe a person with both black and white ancestry, comes from the Spanish word mulato, meaning “a young mule.” Papago, the name given by the Spanish to an Indian nation in Arizona, means “bean eaters.” Unfortunately, there are probably other words that I still use that are unintentionally insulting to someone.

The words we use have the power to inflame and incite or to heal and uplift. This holds true for debaters, screenwriters, television writers and all the rest of us. The lesson in denigrate is that it is important to choose our words well, and that it is unfortunate that even when we do so we may still accidentally offend. Resolved (as they say in The Great Debaters): Sticks and stones can break your bones and words can be MORE hurtful.

qaid and qadi

2008-01-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

In my search for u-less “q” words (see: qi), I have found two more good ones: “qaid” and “qadi.” Qaid has been listed in Scrabble and other dictionaries for more than thirty years so it should be widely accepted in most friendly Scrabble games. Qadi appears in newer Scrabble editions and might require a bit more negotiation if a current dictionary is not available.

A “qaid” is a Muslim leader. The word can also be spelled caid and has plural forms of qaids and caids. It is usually pronounced “ka-EETH,” rhyming with Sayid , Naveen Andrews’ character on the television show Lost. A second pronunciation, “kithe,” rhyming with the word “tithe,” is also listed. It comes from the Arabic words "al+qadi" meaning “the qadi” or “the judge.”

The Muslim word for judge from which qaid is derived, “qadi,” appears in newer Scrabble dictionaries, immediately before qaid. It is pronounced “kah-dee.” An alternate spelling is cadi and the plural forms are qadis and cadis.

The words qaid and qadi bring to my mind “al Qaida,” the Islamic fundamentalist organization that we all associate with Osama Bin Laden and several terrorist attacks, especially the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. It seems to me that the words qaid, qadi and al Qaida are probably somehow related. However, al Qaida comes from the Arabic words “al+q’ida” meaning “the base” or “the foundation,” which is not exactly the same root as “al+qadi” meaning “the judge.” Still, al+qadi doesn’t seem all that different from al+q’ida, and “the judge” and “the base or foundation” could be considered synonyms of a sort in a legal sense. I guess it is possible that the words are related, but I don’t know for sure.

Few Americans are familiar with the word qaid, even though it has been in our dictionaries, and not just our Scrabble dictionaries, for years. On the other hand, nearly all Americans are familiar with al Qaida, which is not in the dictionary yet. It will get there eventually, and, in time, it may even lose its capital “Q,” become a common noun, and thus become an eligible Scrabble word.

There is precedent for this in the word “nazi,” which has been in Scrabble dictionaries for over thirty years. A member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party is a Nazi, with a capital “N.” A fascist who holds similar views to the Nazis, but is not necessarily a member of the party, can be called a nazi, without a capital “N.” In fact, anyone who is considered overly regimented or dictatorial in today’s world can be called a nazi. Remember the soup nazi on Seinfeld?

In years to come the word qaida or alqaida might be listed in the dictionary alongside qaid and qadi and be in common usage as a synonym for terrorist. If we have been able to desensitize ourselves to the horrors conjured up by the word Nazi to such an extent that we are now able to use it in Scrabble games and comedy sketches, perhaps we will someday be able to do the same thing with the word al Qaida.

neeb

2008-01-05T12:53:00.000-08:00

I have just finished a book called The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It is a true story about a Hmong child with epilepsy who was born in California twenty-five years ago. The child does not receive appropriate medical care because her parents do not understand the doctors and the doctors do not understand the parents. The parents do not speak English, but even if they did, the doctors would not have really understood them because the Hmong culture was so completely foreign to them.

For example, the Hmong believe that the human soul is like a shadow that does not always stay with a person, but takes flight as easily as a butterfly. They also believe that when a soul wanders away from someone, that person will feel sad or sick. When the soul returns, the person will feel well again. The family in the story believes that their daughter has seizures when she is separated from her soul. They want to explain this to her doctors, but they don’t know how to do so.

Most of the Hmong in America spent some time in refugee camps when they were forced from Laos after the Vietnam War. The doctors there often treated the sick with antibiotics, which were sometimes successful. By the time the Hmong arrived in the United States some had learned to trust western doctors enough to seek their medical help, usually hoping to get the short course of antibiotics that had helped them when they were refugees, regardless of their current medical complaint. At the same time, most Hmong held tight to their belief that the sickness was caused by the loss of the shadow-like soul. Hmong families were willing to hedge their bets by seeing a western doctor, but they did not abandon their traditional attempts to reunite the patient with his or her lost soul.

The Hmong use the word “neeb” to mean healing power. It is pronounced “neng.” The final “b” is included in the written form only to indicate in which tone the word should be spoken. The word comes from “ua neeb kho,” which is a ritual performed by a shaman. In the healing ritual, or neeb, an animal is sacrificed and the soul of the sacrificial animal is traded for the wandering soul of the sick person. Different sicknesses require the sacrifice of different animals, including chickens, pigs and cows. Some sicknesses require the sacrifice of a dog, which has created much anxiety among American pet owners in Hmong neighborhoods and has been the source of racist jokes.

“What is the name of the Hmong cookbook?”
“I don’t know.”
“101 Ways to Wok Your Dog.”

The family in the book had several neebs performed on their daughter’s behalf. They wanted to explain the neeb’s importance to their daughter’s doctors, but they were unable to do so. Meanwhile, the American doctors were unable to communicate the importance of correctly administered anti-seizure medications to the Hmong parents.

We learned about pagan practices and ritual sacrifices such as the neeb when I was in grade school. I brought part of my allowance to school each week to rescue the poor, pagan babies in Africa from such a life. Every $5 that we collected purchased a Catholic Baptism for one of these children and allowed us to give him or her a Christian name. My friend, Vicki, contributed so much money to the mission box that she believed there were little girls all over Africa answering to the name of Victoria Rose.

Never did I imagine that these poor, pagan babies would some day become a part of my American world or that my desire to convert them would be replaced with a desire to understand them. One of the largest settlements of Hmong refugees in America is now in the Twin Cities. A Hmong family moved into the house next door to ours two summers ago and lived there for a short time. A Hmong boy attends school with my daughter, Somer. Sister Michaelene, the third-grade teacher who I considered to be omniscient, collected our quarters for the missions without preparing us for these eventualities because she did not see them coming any more than we did.

As more and more Hmongs become Hmong Americans, words like neeb will find their way into our language, our consciousness and our dictionaries. They will challenge our way of looking at the world. They will help us to understand each other. We can hope that they will teach us to avoid repeating the sad chain of events that affected the life and family of a poor, pagan epileptic Hmong child born in California twenty-five years ago.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down sometimes reads a bit like a history book, but it's interesting history and I highly recommend it. Published in 1997, it is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. I do not recognize the other non-fiction books that have won this award, but the fiction winners include All the Pretty Horses, A Thousand Acres (a personal favorite of mine) and Atonement.

P.S. Neeb is not YET a Scrabble word, but it does remind me of some words that are.
1. nee: born with the name of (feminine). Example: My gramma is Loretta Pelletier, nee Reinert.
2. ne: born with the name of (masculine). My cousin, Joan, played this one against me in Tucson last week. Example: My brother-in-law, Peter Somers, ne Stenzel, thinks he invented Platers (See: Platers).
3. neb: the beak of a bird. I remember this one because it is like the French word for nose: nez, and a stereotypical French nose can look somewhat like a beak.
4. n00b: someone who is new to a website or game, especially an on-line game. It can also be spelled noob and is short for newcomer or newbie. Newcomer and newbie are in the dictionary; n00b and noob are not in the dictionary YET.

shuffle

2008-01-05T06:18:00.001-08:00

On the day after Christmas, I climbed Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, AZ with my husband and older daughter, Erin. It’s only 1.2 miles to the top, but it’s a difficult hike because the trail is very steep and at times it requires both hands and feet. I have four broken fingernails to show for it. We reached the Echo Canyon trailhead to begin our hike at the same time as a mother with her young children.

Mother: “Move over so the FAST HIKERS can pass.”
Me: “No one has ever called me a FAST HIKER before. Thank you so much for that!”

When the real ascent began a few minutes later, my husband and daughter, who are fast hikers, left me in the dust (and rocks and cacti). I told them to go. It is not fun for them to have to slow down and wait for me; it is not fun for me to try to keep up with them. I enjoyed my hike at my pace, which was, in my defense, faster than the mother and her kids.

I have always been slow. My mother says that I was born three weeks late and that I haven’t been on time since. I posted my Christmas Wordoku two days after Christmas. I am the last one to finish a meal, the last one to get to the car when we go to church, and definitely the last one to reach the top of the mountain. I don’t always like this about myself, but I have learned to accept it. I look for support wherever I can find it. My favorite fable is The Tortoise and the Hare. My favorite Bible verse is “He who is last shall be first.”

This brings me to the word “shuffle.” I listen to oldies on my iPod Shuffle. With or without tap shoes, I still like to perform the “Shuffle off to Buffalo” that Dorothy Lundstrum taught me in 1959. My sister, Nancy, can shuffle a deck of cards backwards and forwards, but I can’t. Finally, as it relates to being slow, when I say I am going for a jog, I am really going for a “shuffle.”

My jogging shuffle is a little bit faster and more energetic than my walk; but runners, and even some walkers, pass me all the time. I shuffle like an old lady pushing a walker, but there is no metal contraption in front of me and my mittened hands are tucked inside my sleeves to keep them warm. I shuffle down the walking path at my own speed and I try to ignore the critical comments.

Girl from kitchen window: “Pick it up, lady!”
Man in front yard with leashed schnauzer doing its business: “You’ve got to go faster than that!”
Man about to LIMP past me on Theodore Wirth Parkway: “Are you recovering from an injury?”

Even Katie Holmes got criticism for running the New York Marathon because it took her 5½ hours. I don’t get this. America is full of overweight, out-of-shape people. It is time we begin applauding everyone who makes an effort to stay fit, no matter how slowly they run or, in my case, shuffle.

There is a Palo Verde tree at the top of Camelback Mountain that is fully decorated with Christmas ornaments. It’s terribly tacky and wonderfully festive at the same time. Ian and Erin were waiting for me there to have our picture taken after our climb. The photo tells it all: my grin is just as big as theirs. It doesn’t matter that my trip to the top took longer.

Christmas Wordoku

2007-12-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

Here’s my Christmas Wordoku. For directions: see Wordoku, posted last month. I’m still waiting for a solution to that one. Give it a try! It’s fun!

_ _ C _ _ K _ _ F

F _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ E _ _ A C _ I

K A _ _ _ _ _ F T

_ C _ T A I _ E _

R E _ _ _ _ _ A C

I _ R C _ _ E _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ U

C _ _ R _ _ F _ _

The Christmas clue word is: F A T R U C K I E

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Yaktrax

2007-12-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I went outside to play after school every single day. Even when it was bitter cold, I went sliding on Malat’s hill or skating on Bassett Creek. I couldn’t wait to get out of my school uniform and into my snow pants and I didn’t come home until it got dark.

I still love being outside, but somewhere along the way I lost the love for being outside in the cold. It probably started when I suddenly began refusing to wear tights to school because they were not cool and stubbornly insisted on walking to school with bare legs. It probably was reinforced while waiting in line on Hennepin Avenue in my mini skirt for movie tickets to see Sidney Poitier in To Sir with Love and Vanessa Redgrave in Camelot. Baring one’s legs and standing or walking in sub-zero wind chills should be mutually exclusive events, but tell that to a teenager.

This year I have decided to make peace with the cold. After all, I live in Minnesota and it’s cold here for six months out of every year so I might as well learn to like it. Last spring I began walk/jogging along Theodore Wirth Parkway every day, and I’m planning to keep it up all winter long.

Today was a little tough. The temperature was near zero and a bitter wind was determined to wreak havoc with the falling snow before it reached the ground. The flakes that hit me as I crossed the railroad bridge on Golden Valley Road were not the soft, fluffy stuff of fairy tales, but sharp, piercing needles of ice that hurt as they pockmarked my face. Fortunately, I wasn’t running into the wind most of the time. Still, I think it might be time to dig out Colin’s old skiing goggles for days like this.

The amazing thing is that I did not slip. There is a sheet of ice under the new snow that didn’t give me any trouble at all. I credit my Yaktrax and I thank my friend, Denice, for telling me about them. I got a pair for $20 at Dick’s and they’re worth every penny. There was only one other runner out on the parkway with me this morning and he was leaving Yaktrax footprints, too.

Yaktrax are made of an elastic material called polyelastomer and steel coils. They fit right over the sole of the shoe, are lightweight and surprisingly comfortable, and are easy to put on and take off. The strips of elastic that fit across the bottom of the shoe are covered with steel coils that provide traction. I think Yaktraks work something like chains on snow tires. Instead of slipping on the ice, they provide stability as they scrape against it. I recommend them; I haven’t enjoyed winter this much since I was a kid.

w00t

2007-12-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

According to Merriam-Webster, “w00t” is the 2007 word of the year. It isn’t in the dictionaries yet and it can’t be used in Scrabble because the middle two letters are actually numbers (double zeroes: 00), but it is the word to watch.

W00t is an interjection, popular with on-line gamers, that expresses joy, happiness or excitement. Sometimes, but not always, it is used after a big win. Saying “w00t!” is a little like saying, “yay!” It is what my oh-so-hip husband will exclaim when he reaches into his Christmas stocking next week. “W00t! Once again Santa brought me socks and underwear!”

When w00t does not include double zeroes and is written “woot,” it is considered to be an acronym for “we owned the other team,” and to have the same meaning as w00t. Words that use a combination of letters and numbers are popular in on-line gaming, but apparently both w00t and woot are used. W00t (with the double zeroes) may be the 2007 word of the year, but I’m guessing it won’t be long before woot (with the double o’s) is an acceptable Scrabble word. W00t!

Finals

2007-12-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

I remember learning vocabulary words in English class when I was a freshman in high school. I can still recite many of them: hackneyed-commonplace, ostentatious-showy, etymology-word study. Peggy sat across the aisle from me in that class, nervous about our vocabulary quizzes every week. Mari sat in front of me, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to go. We all wore uniforms: navy blue blazers with white blouses, blue plaid skirts and the ever-so-attractive navy blue saddle shoes that we referred to as combat boots. I’ll never forget the morning when I asked Mari if I could borrow a pencil before the quiz. She reached into the blazer pocket on her right hip to get one for me and let out a blood-curdling scream that distracted the entire class. Unknown to Mari I had taken my retainer out of my mouth and slipped it into her pocket, just before asking for the pencil. She got into trouble with Mrs. McPhee for that one, instead of me. Sorry, Mari!

Vocabulary quizzes are still in vogue at my kids’ high school today, and my son, Colin, who is now a college junior, readily admits that they actually helped him on his SAT tests. My daughter, Somer, a high-school sophomore, has taken to posting “Words of the Day” on a small dry-erase board on our refrigerator. I love it! I get out my bifocals to read her small print and spice up our dinner conversation with as many words from her list as I can. I am sure once her friends hear about this they will be clamoring to join us for an evening meal. Not!

This week Somer has taken a different tack. There is only one word on the dry erase board: "Finals". She says that it is a noun meaning, “a particularly harsh form of torture, particularly used on children.” She says the root is the Latin word “final” (fee NAL) meaning “death.” So dramatic! Where does she get it?

Needless to say it is Finals’ Week. It is time for students everywhere to strut their stuff, to show what they know in one, last, comprehensive examination in each class. Frankly, I kind of miss those days. As an adult, there aren’t so many concrete ways to measure our progress. Final exams didn’t kill me and they may have done me some good. After all, I still remember some of the vocabulary words on Mrs. McPhee’s test.

belt

2007-12-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about my comment yesterday that the ability to tell a good joke is an asset in all walks of life (see: steward). Our priest is an example of that. He keeps us entertained with a good joke every now and then, like this one after Mass this morning.

Jew: “You stole all our commandments.”
Catholic: “True. But we didn’t keep them.”

Truth is, the ability to tell a good joke is an asset in most walks of life, but there was a time in my own life when it wasn’t helpful at all.

In the summer before my senior year of college, I was working at the Chamber’s Belt Factory in Phoenix, AZ. I was employed to stand at a table and paint the edges of belts with black ink. If some of the ink accidentally spilled onto the front of the belt, it could be carefully removed with a rag before it dried; but if some of the ink accidentally spilled onto the inside of the belt, it left a permanent stain that decreased the value of the merchandise. It was tiring, tedious and surprisingly stressful work. The quality of my inking could determine whether a belt went to Marshall’s or Macy’s and the supervisors were always on the lookout to judge if someone was ruining too many belts.

There was one other requirement that made the job almost unbearable for me. We could not talk to our co-workers at all. We were required to remain absolutely silent and I am not the silent type. There was a woman stationed at my table directly across from me who did not have a problem with this. She was as proficient as a robot, and she didn’t make a sound. She would grab a stack of belts from the cart on her left, stand them on edge on the table in front of her, tilt them slightly toward her, hold them steady with her left hand while she dipped her sponge into a bowl of ink with her right hand, spread the ink across the edges of the belts with just the right amount of pressure to avoid a spill, return the sponge to the ink, tilt the belts slightly toward me and repeat. She would then flip the belts over onto the just painted end, repeat the entire process and place the finished belts on another cart to her right. Though she was only about six feet away from me, she never looked across the table at me and she never said a word. She just worked her magic on one stack of belts after another.

I spent most of my first day wiping the ink off of the leather and painting belts that would end up on somebody’s discount rack. It was really difficult to get the angle of the belts and the pressure of the sponge exactly right. Once I, more or less, got the hang of it, the silence got to me and I decided to talk to the lady at my table whether it was against the rules or not. I figured a joke would be a good icebreaker.

“You’re really good at this. You must have quite a few years under your BELT!”

No response.

“Want to go out for a few BELTS after work?” Trust me, it’s not hard to come up with belt jokes when you have nothing but the companionship of belts for hours on end.

The robot looked at me as if I were an alien. No smile. No comment. There was definitely, no laugh. I would have been happy with a groan.

On subsequent days, I tried:

“You make this job look like a CINCH!”

“If you don’t answer me today, I’m going to BELT you one.”

“I think this silence rule hits way below the BELT.”

In the end, I was making the jokes for myself. I didn’t even expect a response. I should not have been devastated when I was fired, but I was.

Years later, I heard a belt joke that was actually funny:

“What did the number 0 say to the number 8?”
“Nice BELT!”

For just a moment I wondered if that would have made the robot smile. I doubt it. Being able to tell a good joke is an asset in most lines of work, but it’s not worth diddly squat at Chamber’s Belts.

steward

2007-12-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

My son wasn’t one of those “ha, ha,” funny little kids, but I think he was always interested in humor. I probably first noticed it when he was still in pre-school and his big sister got hooked on knock-knock jokes. One of her favorites was the familiar:

“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Dwayne.”
“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub. I’m dwonding.”

Colin had a lesser-known favorite of his own:

“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Book.”
“Book who?”
“Book. Are you reading enough?”

Now, of course, the book knock-knock wasn’t funny, but I laughed anyway, so my darling, earnest little comic thought it was hilarious. I laughed the first time I heard it and I laughed the one-hundredth time. Moms are like that. I appreciated then, and I appreciate now, how well he was able to imitate the form of the Dwayne knock-knock joke, even if his made-up version made absolutely no sense at all. He had no idea why Erin’s joke was funny because he was too young to understand it, but he was doing his level best to play the game and get a laugh.

Knowing how to tell a joke well can be a nice attribute in any walk of life. Even the presidential candidates are quoted with their favorite jokes in this morning’s StarTribune. My favorite is the one Mitt Romney tells about his wife:

Mitt: “Ann, did you in your wildest dreams see me running for president?”
Ann: “You weren’t in my wildest dreams.”

Today my precocious little jokester is a charming young man of twenty-one, with a good sense of humor and much better material than the book knock-knock. Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching him bring his comedic wit to the character of the steward in Into the Woods on his college stage. I was also pleasantly surprised when I read his biography in the program.

“I’ve played a few roles in Columbia theater now, the Steward was the only one that was too hard. Nevertheless, I had a great time, made some new friends, and am glad my mom is here to see me.”

Feeling all puffed up about my mention in the program, I failed to read his bio carefully and missed his joke.

“I’ve played a few roles in Columbia theater now, the Steward was the only one that waS TOO HARD. Nevertheless, I had a great time, made some new friends, and am glad my mom is here to see me.”

Funny people usually make good company. It warms my heart to know that my son is one of them.

Footnotes:

1. I’m glad the Spigs were able to put “qi” to good use on the Scrabble board. Count me in for your next tournament.
2. Thanks, Emily, for teaching me a new portmanteau word and educating me on SPAM. This is a timely topic, with eleven employees of Quality Pork Processors in Austin, MN suffering from a rare neurological disease after using compressed air to clean brain matter out of hogs’ skulls. Makes me want to rush right out for a can of Spam.
3. I’ll keep my euphoria in check the next time I play “qat,” Colin. It sounds like seriously dangerous stuff and I hope the Somalis who are now living here left it in Africa. Most of the Somali men I see are either driving cabs or collecting money in parking lots. It would not be a good thing if either group became manic or irrational from chewing qat, although it might make a funny comedy sketch.
4. The etymology of the word steward is "sty," meaning pigpen + "ward," which can mean guard. Can we say, then, that flight attendants and palace stewards are employed to guard pigpens?
5. After years of writing stuff and filing it away without any feedback, I really, really appreciate the comments.
6. One more clue for the Thanksgiving Wordoku. The top line is EFWORMAYL. I guess my earlier clue wasn’t very helpful since the “E” was in the original puzzle. Duh! Coming up: Christmas Wordoku.

qat, qats

2007-12-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here is another valuable “u-less” “q” word: “qat,” a noun which also has a plural form: “qats.” It is a tropical evergreen shrub that can also be spelled “kat” or “khat” and is pronounced KOT. The plant, which is primarily found in Africa, contains a natural amphetamine that is considered psychologically addictive. Chewing the leaves can produce feelings of euphoria and stimulation. One source indicates that ninety percent of Yemeni men regularly chew qat and that its production and distribution have been a source of conflict between Yemeni and Somali societies.

One of the words I played during my losing Scrabble match in Florida (see: qi) was an evergreen shrub, but it was “yew,” not “qat.” Interestingly, the yew is a symbol of sorrow or death, while qat apparently provides euphoria and stimulation. Next time I’ll play the word qat, instead of yew, and hopefully feel euphoric when the final score is posted on the refrigerator.

qi

2007-11-29T07:35:00.000-08:00

Last month I spent a long weekend in Florida with my book club. We are a group of ten women who have read and discussed fifty-three books in the past five years, sharing a lot of laughs and a few tears along the way. We usually get together in one another’s Minnesota homes, but this time we all jumped at Janet’s offer to do a destination book club at her retirement home in Naples. In addition to much rousing conversation about Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, we did a lot of wining and dining, did some walking, played a little tennis, and took a sunset cruise showcasing the stately vacation homes of some of the wealthiest people in the world. None of us will be moving up to their neighborhood any time soon.

I have to admit that I was disappointed that no one else in the group wanted to visit the Everglades. After all, we were only an hour away, I didn’t know when we would be in the area again, and, as it turned out, the everglades was to be the setting for our next book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

My sister, Jill, who is also a member of the book club, appeased me by offering to play Scrabble poolside in Janet’s lanai. She must have been a bit nervous that my disappointment about the Everglades would soon escalate into a full-blown snit. Either that or she was afraid I would rent my own car and force her to take the tour against her will, pulling big-sister rank and insisting that the trip was for her own good. Jill wouldn’t ordinarily suggest a game of Scrabble because she likes sports, not word games. She has never beaten me at Scrabble and I have never beaten her at tennis.

As it turned out, I picked the letter “q” in my first group of seven Scrabble tiles. I did not pick a “u” or a blank that I could use as a “u” for the rest of the game. No one else played a “u” that I was able to use either. So, essentially, I played the entire game with six, instead of seven, letters; and lost to my sister. She then made a big show of posting the final score on the refrigerator, just as my dad used to do on the rare occasions when he managed to pull off a win. Need I mention the control necessary on my part to avoid a snit at this point?

I knew at the time that there were some English words in which the “q” was not followed by a “u,” but I had not committed them to memory so I could not use them. That is no longer the case. I opened Janet's Scrabble dictionary and began memorizing the “u-less” “q” words just as soon as the game was finished. I continued studying when I got home and I have discovered that there are quite a few such words. In my research "qi” is the richest find, because it is the only “q” word in the English language that has only two letters, making it a very valuable Scrabble word. My game, and the score sheet, in Naples, Florida would have turned out quite differently had I known the word “qi.”

Qi is not a new word, but it is a new word to the English lexicon. I found it in my 2006 on-line Scrabble dictionary. It is considered a new English word of Chinese origin, pronounced “chee.” Actually, “chee” isn’t exactly right, but it is about as close to right as most Western speakers can get.

The Chinese character for qi is a combination of rice and steam. The literal translation is “steam rising from rice as it cooks.” In Chinese thought, qi is the vital force that is inherent in all things. Qi is the “life force” or “spiritual energy,” sometimes translated as “air” or “breath.” In traditional Chinese thought, the steam rising from the boiling rice is actually considered to be the rice’s respiration.

Frankly, I find the concept of “breathing rice” to be a little bit creepy. I’m guessing that most English speakers who use the word aren’t taking it quite so literally. I am comfortable with the idea of qi as it applies to living things, but less so when it is describing inanimate objects such as sticks, stones and rice.

I’m still disappointed that I didn’t get to the Everglades to see the alligators and the mangroves and the “muck” where Hurston’s Janie and Tea Cake planted their beans. Maybe we’ll get there next year, if we can convince Janet to make the Naples book club an annual event. I’m also disappointed about that score sheet on the refrigerator, but it has certainly proved to be a good motivator to get me working on my game and that’s a good thing. Scrabble anyone?

Footnotes:
1. Bobbie, thanks for remembering St. M.M. and Sister Michaelene with me, and caring about it as much as I do. Et cum spiritu tuo. (See comment on clerestory)
2. Colin, thanks for educating me on Jabberwocky. The word chortle was coined by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky, just as Emily said it was. Colin informed me that Jabberwocky is a poem in Into the Looking Glass, not a separate work. Sorry, sloppy research on my part. (See: chortle)
3. No solutions to the Thanksgiving Wordoku? Hint: Top left corner is the letter "E." Pete, try unscrambling the word and then solving the puzzle. (See: Wordoku)
4. Please keep the comments coming. They are very much welcome and appreciated.

clerestory

2007-11-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

An artist’s rendering of a proposed addition to the exterior of my church arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. The drawing includes a tower, which resembles a bell tower without a bell, that is called a “clerestory.” The base of this pillar is about one-fifth as wide as the front of the church and is faced in a strawberry-blond brick, which matches the church exterior. The top third, which extends above the church roof, is made of glass. Looking at it from the parking lot, the clerestory stands in front of the church, to the right of the front doors. It looks something like a beautifully refurbished box car, standing on one end, with the top third encased in glass and extending above the existing roof, and the lower two-thirds covered in brick to match the rest of the church.

Architects are recommending a vertical structure to complement the horizontal flat-roofed church and school buildings that we now have, and to distinguish this particular building from the others as a church. Oftentimes, people pass our campus on Theodore Wirth Parkway and assume it is only a school; or arrive for a funeral and are unable to discern which building is the church. There is a reason the church of St. Margaret Mary looks so little like a place of worship: it was to be a temporary church and a future gymnasium. When funds failed to materialize in later years, the gym became the permanent church.

St. Margaret Mary has been my parish for most of my life. I made my First Confession, First Communion and Confirmation there. I was married in this church and all of my children celebrated their first sacraments there. My father’s roofing and sheet metal company did some of the roofing in the early years.

I attended grades 1-8 in the adjoining school before and after the church was built. In the winter of 1959, masses were held in a basement church that doubled as the school cafeteria. If my family did not arrive for Sunday services early enough, we had to sit in folding chairs in the hallway between the cafeteria and what is now the church. It didn’t bother me to sit in the chairs, but kneeling on the linoleum floor was a killer, even for a second-grader. My mom was excused from getting on her knees because she was very pregnant with my sister, Jill, and I was very jealous because my knees hurt.

Plans for the current remodeling include such practical improvements as handicapped ramps and bathrooms to meet accessibility requirements and to meet the needs of aging parishioners, including the parents of some of my former classmates. There is also a plan to enlarge Visitation Hall, the social room now used for funeral lunches and church gatherings. When my son rose to the rank of Eagle Scout, we celebrated with a reception there.

In the fall of 1959, there was no social room. There were, instead, two third-grade classrooms and one nurse’s office occupying the space that is now Visitation Hall. The kindly, lenient Miss Kruse, who also taught music, had the room next to the church. The strict, demanding Sister Michaelene, ran a very tight ship, intimidating in her full Franciscan habit, size XL, in the room next door. The nurse’s office was smaller than many of today’s closets and equipped with a tiny table that served as a desk; as well as a cot, a toilet and a sink. It was often, if not always, manned by a parent volunteer rather than a nurse.

In other words, there were two third-grade classrooms, overflowing with students, two teachers and one parent volunteer holding a thermometer in the three rooms that have been combined to form Visitation Hall today; along with their desks, school supplies, boots and coats. It is amazing to me that the teachers kept their sanity and that any of us learned anything.

In those days, I did not know that Minnesota was a home to Swedes and Norwegians named Anderson and Andersen because my classmates were Germans with names like Mueller and Schroeder and Kleinhenz, or of Irish descent with names like Sullivan and Roddy and McPherson. The girls were named after the Blessed Virgin: Mary Ann, Mary Jo and Mary Beth. The boys were named after the apostles: Thomas and James and John. There were no African Americans or native Americans. The Nguyens and the Cabreras had not yet arrived. The Mormons in my neighborhood did not set foot in my church and I did not set foot in theirs, lest I commit a sin.

Sister Michaelene taught me so much and so well that year that I was able to coast for the next three years. Seriously, I don’t remember covering much new material until Mr. Umerski arrived in seventh grade. Because our parish was building a new church in 1959, Sister Michaelene squeezed in a whole unit with church-related words such as sacristy and pew and apse, which we learned we would not have in our new gymnasium church.

Clerestory was not on Sister Michaelene’s vocabulary list, not because she forgot it, but because it is not actually a church word. Clerestory has an architectural origin, not a religious one. It is pronounced CLEAR-story and it describes a construction rising above adjacent rooftops to let in natural light or air. The word fits in our case since the top third of the proposed tower would be made of glass, but not all clerestories involve towers. The windows or slits found at the top of railroad cars are are also called clerestories.

In truth, there will never be a clerestory at St. Margaret Mary unless parishioners donate enough money to build one. A ramp and handicapped restrooms are a necessity and a larger social room would be nice, but a clerestory is a luxury. There have been other plans in other years for other buildings, including a real church, that have never been built.

There has long been a division among the church faithful, in other parishes as well as ours, as to whether it is best to glorify God by lavishly decorating places of worship, or whether it is best to keep the worship space simple and use available funds for social causes. My guess is that that the majority of St. Margaret Mary parishioners prefer simplicity because there is nothing fancy about our gymnasium church and we have made the choice to worship there. Several beautiful Catholic churches can be found within just a few miles of St. Margaret Mary, including the truly awesome Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, where we could spend our Sunday mornings if we so chose.

However, a clerestory would be nice. It is not really fancy, just a little bit fancier than what we now have. I can’t help but wonder that if a bit of sunshine and a breath of fresh air improve the cross country journey of the travelers riding in Amtrak train cars, wouldn’t it be possible that a bit of sunshine and a breath of fresh air might also improve the faith journey of the congregation sitting in St. Margaret Mary pews?

Wordoku

2007-11-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

Pete is brilliant: “packingthread,” “pickthank” and “puckish.” Wow! I bow to Peter, the Platers’ master. Whether he invented the game or not, he’s good! More from me on Pete’s great words later (and the new one that finally came to me on today’s walk, the much more ordinary “pinkish”), but first, I’m anxious to post a Thanksgiving game.

Not only do I like to play word games, but I like to play Sudoku. Last summer, Somer gave me a book called “Wordoku,” which contains Sudoku puzzles for word lovers. It is a paperback written by Frank Longo and printed by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. of NY, NY in 2006. I love it!

Many people, including Pete, think that Sudoku is a numbers’ game, but it isn’t. It’s all logic and can be played with letters instead of numbers. Wordoku is exactly the same as Sudoku except that all the numbers have been replaced by letters. It also has an extra fun component for word lovers in that somewhere in the grid, either in one of the horizontal or vertical rows, or diagonally from the upper left to the lower right, appears a 9-letter word. I have made up a Wordoku of my own, in which a Thanksgiving word will appear. Here are the letters:

O W L Y F R A M E

Each of the nine letters above must appear in each row, across and down, as well as in each of nine 3 letter by 3 letter grids. The grids are formed by dividing the puzzle into three equal parts horizontally and vertically, nine grids in all. It is not necessary that all nine letters appear diagonally. I have used _ to represent an open space in the grid.

E F W O _ M A Y _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

R _ _ _ A _ E _ _

_ E F L _ _ _ _ _

O _ _ E _ W _ _ A

_ _ _ _ _ F R M _

_ _ Y _ L _ _ _ R

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ W R M _ A O F Y

Have fun! Happy Thanksgiving!

Platers

2007-11-17T15:40:00.000-08:00

“Platers” is a word that I have made up to name a game that I like to play. It is a portmanteau word (see portmanteau and dandle) which blends the word “plate” (as in license plate) and the word “letters.”

It turns out that platers is also a real word. It can mean people who do plating, such as metalworkers or printmakers, or machines that do the plating for them. Maybe the sheet metal workers in my dad’s sheet metal shop were sometimes known as platers. Maybe my dad worked as a plater himself when he studied typesetting in high school. He once explained to me how, in his day, nothing was printed without painstakingly laying out every single letter in every single word and each and every character in each and every sentence.

I like antiques and I have a printer’s box, with the letters “b” and “c” from an old print shop on the wall in my kitchen. The raised letters on the end of each matchstick-sized metal piece, are so small that I can’t read them without a magnifying glass. I cannot imagine lining them up to spell words.

There is another meaning for the word platers: inferior race horses. I’m not sure how the sorry, nosed-out nags got this name, but a horse race or other contest for a prize can be called a “plate,” so maybe it has something to do with that.

I have adapted my game, Platers, from a game my kids used to play in the car with one of their friend’s dad. I don’t know if their game had a name and I’m not sure of the exact rules, but this is how I play it.

When I am out for a walk or jog and passed by a car, I look at the license plate. In Minnesota, handicapped plates don’t work because they don’t have any letters, just numbers. I can’t remember how many, if any, letters are on Veteran’s license plates. License plates that support the Department of Natural Resources are too easy because they only have two letters, but they might be fun for kids. Vanity plates can be a challenge; I usually just try to figure out what they mean.

Regular Minnesota license plates have three letters and three numbers. I ignore the numbers and remember the letters. I then try to make the shortest word possible, using all three letters in the same order as they appear on the license plate. Sometimes it is very easy, i.e. MAT; sometimes I can’t come up with a word at all, i.e. VXV.

On my jog yesterday afternoon I had fun with the letters PKH:

1. The first word that came to me was “Poughkeepsie,” which does not work because it is a proper noun and proper nouns are not allowed in Platers, just as they are not allowed in Scrabble. Also, the letter “k” comes after the letter “h,” and I needed a word in which the letters followed the sequence: PKH. Still, Poughkeepsie is a great word and it brought to mind a visit to Vassar College, which is located there. I remember that I couldn’t get any cell phone reception in Poughkeepsie and that two boys were streaking across the campus in the middle of the afternoon while we were on our tour there.

2. The second word that occurred to me was “pricketh.” I imagined this as Shakespeare’s way of pricking his finger. “My lord, haveth thou pricketh thy thumb?” Although, in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock says, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” so I guess pricketh is not really a word, even for Shakespeare.

3. My third word was “packhorse,” a horse that carries supplies, but I was afraid that packhorse might not be one word, but two: pack horse. Turns out packhorse is a word, so I could have quit there, but I didn’t.

4. My fourth and final word was “peckish,” meaning irritable or slightly hungry. I remember Lauren Graham from Gilmore Girls saying, “I’m feeling a bit peckish,” when she wanted something to eat. Peckish creates a word-picture for me: hungry chickens pecking the dirt for food.

Some people like to listen to their ipods when they’re out walking. Some people like sharing the time with their dogs. I like playing Platers. Anyone with another word for PKH? I can think of one.

portmanteau and dandle

2007-11-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

I got a nice surprise from my son, Colin, yesterday: an e-mail with some new words! (He also had a list of things he would like for Christmas in that e-mail, but I didn’t pay much attention to that.) “Portmanteau” was on his word list. Thanks, Colin!

In Britain, a suitcase, trunk or bag used for traveling might be called a “portmanteau,” especially if it is made of leather and opens into two halves the way hard-sided American luggage does. It is pronounced “port-man-TOE” and the plural is portmanteaux or portmanteaus. I’m guessing it’s a combination of the English word, “port,” which we all know as a place where ships load and unload; and the lesser known French word, “manteau,” which means cloak.

Linguists use portmanteau in a different way. They call words that are made by blending parts of other words, “portmanteau words.” It seems that people who spend their days studying words and languages think that combining parts of two or more words into one word is a little like cramming the contents of two sides of a suitcase together when it is jammed shut. I like that analogy.

I have mentioned some portmanteau words in previous blog posts, without knowing that’s what they were: chortle, TomKat and Brangelina. I don’t think the word portmanteau qualifies as a portmanteau word, because, if I am right about its origin, portmanteau combines all, not part, of two words, making it a compound word, not a portmanteau word. Whew!

Sometimes learning a new word leads to another new word. Portmanteau led me to “dandle,” which is a combination of the words dance and handle, meaning to pet or pamper. It is often used to describe the way adults move a baby or child lightly up and down on their knee or in their arms. I have bounced a lot of babies, but I never knew I was dandling them.

Dandle is a great portmanteau word because it combines the joy and music and rhythm of dance with the love and concern and spoiling implicit in careful handling. Like any good word, dandle creates a word-picture. In my mind’s eye, I can see Grampa T., who is no longer with us, dandling my younger daughter on his knee, boisterously chanting, “This is the way the little girls ride.” This tender word-picture, of a time when Somer was so small and Grampa T. was so full of life, brings a tear to my eyes.

freerice

2007-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun website for word lovers that builds vocabulary and (if we can believe what they say) feeds some hungry people: http://www.freerice.com/

Once again, Somer found it. Thanks, Somer!

jo

2007-11-11T17:35:00.000-08:00

Back to Kelly Jo. She is the young woman at work, who gave me the idea for this blog by repeatedly asking me, “What’s the word?” She tells me that she actually does talk about some of my “words” with her friends every once in a while. She admits that most of the time when I’m babbling on and on about this word or that, she just appreciates the break from filing and phone calls and word processing; but sometimes, a word sticks. One of her favorites is “jo.”

As far as I know, “jo” is the only two-letter word in the English language that contains the letter “j.” That makes it a very valuable word for a Scrabble player like me. In my experience with the game, it is much more helpful to know lots of little words than it is to know lots of big ones. Little words that use the “j,” “q,” “x,” or “z” are especially valuable. Recently, I was able to use “jo” in the lower left-hand corner of the board for a triple-word score of 30 points, which is not a terrific Scrabble play, but it is quite respectable.

First, it is important to know what “jo” is not:

1. “Jo” is not a marsupial. The Australian word for any young animal, especially a kangaroo is not “jo,” but “joey.”
2. “Jo” is not an average man. The American slang word for a regular fellow or regular guy is not “jo,” but “joe.” Think average joe.
3. “Jo” is not the Mexican word for “yo,” meaning “I.” The Mexicans do say “jo” for “yo,” but this is a foreign word and therefore not allowed. Also, the word is “yo,” not “jo.”
4. “Jo” is not a morning pick-me-up. I don’t know how to spell “cuppa jo,” but however I’ve tried to spell it, the Scrabble dictionary doesn’t have it. The game’s official reference book says “cuppa” is a cup of tea. It does not contain “cuppa jo.”
5. “Jo” is not a girl’s name. Well, actually, it is a girl’s name. Who could ever forget Jo March from Little Women? However, since Jo is a proper noun, it is not allowed in Scrabble.

That brings us to what “jo” is. “Jo” is a Scottish word which comes from the word “joy.” It means beloved one, darling or sweetheart. Kelly Jo remembered this word because it is also her middle name. Last week when she and her boyfriend were having a fight that resulted in name-calling, Kelly Jo shielded herself from Sean’s insults by insisting that she was a "jo," a sweetheart...and she is.

Chortle

2007-11-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

The best thing about having a blog, so far (two days!), is that people actually respond to what I post. It seems to me that writing is usually a very solitary endeavor and I am not a very solitary person. So, while I like to write, I miss the camaraderie of people while I do it. Thanks for the comments and keep them coming!

I was going out for a glass of wine with some friends after Somer’s play last night, when one of my friends used the word "chortle." I can’t even remember why she used it; something made her "chortle," but I can’t remember what it was. I got a little giddy when I heard Mary say, "chortle," and completely lost track of what she was trying to say. Lesson to self: Do not let an interesting word distract from an interesting story.

Anyway, thanks to my niece Emily’s comment on my first blog entry (in which she offers "chortle" as a good word), I have been thinking about the word "chortle" for the past couple of days. I knew the word, but until I read her comment, I knew nothing of its origin. I did a little research on my own to confirm that the word "chortle" was coined by Lewis Carroll in either Jabberwocky or Through the Looking Glass. I guess I would have to read both the poem and the story to know for sure where it was first used. Either way, it is a combination of the words snort and chuckle, meaning a gleeful chuckle or to utter with glee. This fanciful, TomKat-Brangelina type of word has been around for more than 130 years and is still in common use today. I may be lame, but I find that interesting.

As it turns out there was a "chortle"-worthy moment in my daughter’s second scene last night. I am no serious student of Shakespeare, but I do know that his plays all contain both highbrow and lowbrow entertainment. The wealthy, erudite Englishmen once sat in tiered seats in a semicircle facing the stage at the Globe Theatre in London; while the English commoners stood in the dirt in an open space between the seats and the stage. The two groups were both entertained by the performance, but not necessarily by the same things.

In Act 1, Scene 3 of MacBeth, the three witches have gathered. These are the same witches who later chant, “Double, double, toil and trouble...” and who later predict MacBeth’s ascendancy to the throne. The third witch in last night’s performance was my daughter, Somer. In this particular scene, the first witch complains that a sailor’s wife would not share her chestnuts with her, so the first witch is making plans to sail to the husband in a kitchen strainer, turn herself into a tailless rat, and “do things to him--”

I am sure Shakespeare’s commoners got a chuckle out of the bawdy notion of the old hag “doing things” to the sailor, but the real "chortle" actually comes next, when the other two witches offer “to give some wind” to the first witch to help her sail. This is lowbrow, bathroom humor and the “wind” being offered is actually expelled gas. In other words, I got to "chortle" with the commoners as my daughter pretended to fart on stage.

Sinking

2007-11-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

Sinking is certainly not a new word, but here is a new way of looking at it. I stole it from my daughter, Somer, who got it from her Biology teacher, Dr. Miller, who found it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrYRY6kx550

What's the Word?

2007-11-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

What’s the Word?

There is a young woman at work who regularly asks me,” What’s the word?” Now, of course, I know that “What’s the word?” is Kelly Jo’s way of asking “What’s new?” However, I like words, in a rather obsessive, former English teacher, kind of way; so I usually try to answer her literally and come up with some word that I find interesting.

The first time she asked, “What’s the word?” Kelly Jo seemed a bit surprised that I didn’t answer, “Not much,” like everyone else. She looked at me very strangely, incredulous that I really did not know what she was asking. When I convinced her that “I got it,” but that I thought it might be “fun” to actually discuss a word; she rolled her big eyes, displaying lashes perfectly plumped with mascara, tilted her head to the right and put on a fake smile. I have tried to teach her new words in the office on a regular basis for the past four years and now she realized that she had been duped and unwittingly committed herself to another vocabulary lesson. All three of my children would immediately empathize with Kelly Jo because I do this to them at every available opportunity.

I suppose Kelly Jo continues to play along with me because I am her boss and it’s in her best interest to smile and pretend to be interested. It also gives her a few extra minutes to gab; or, more precisely, listen to me gab; instead of doing her work. Besides, she’s a good-natured girl who, in the vernacular of a former teacher, “plays well with others.” I like to think that my “word of the day” gives Kelly Jo something to laugh about at home and share with her friends, but I’m probably completely deluded about that.

Considering how I enjoy discussing words with anyone who will listen, including salaried employees and children stuck in the car with me; I thought it might be fun to post a word that interests me and discuss it on a blog every now and then, too. My niece, Emily, has had a blog for three years that has taken me through her shoulder surgery; study abroad in Spain; and, most recently, her thoughts on the television writer’s strike. My niece, Gina, has been blogging for over a year about her experiences living in Guatemala, including some not-so-pleasant postings about fleas, mysterious rashes and a chipped front tooth. My younger daughter, Somer, who is a sophomore in high school, has entertained me for the past few weeks with entries about being too sick to go to school, play rehearsals and a youtube video that she watched in biology class. Come to think of it I may have to steal the youtube video from her and post it here because it is very funny and involves a “word.”

Anyway, thank you Kelly Jo for asking, “What’s the Word?” and giving me an idea for a blog that is so right for me. Just don’t think that I’ll get so preoccupied with blogging that it will be the end of the vocabulary lessons at work!