"The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even, by reason of strength, fourscore. . ."
So says the 90th Psalm, and fair enough, I suppose. Although, I admit, being 57 just at the moment, and recalling having been 44 just the day before yesterday, the 13 years left between me and my threescore-and-ten seem pretty much like the-day-after-tomorrow. And those 13 years are by no means guaranteed; my high school class will be holding its 40th anniversary class reunion this summer, and the number of my classmates who haven't lived to see it is distressingly large. 70 just doesn't seem nearly as old as it once did. . .
I was thinking about my dad recently, as I do from time to time, especially on Father's Day (and tomorrow would have been his 91st birthday), and it not yet being two years since he died. I got to thinking about my ancestry more generally, and I had a thought that utterly fascinated me (but then, I get fascinated by weird stuff sometimes). Virtually all of us have known our parents, and these days, most of us have known and had relationships with our grandparents. So far, so good, right? Now, turning it around to the other direction, many of us have children, and the vast majority of those of us with children have known and had relationships with them, although that is not quite as guaranteed as we might wish it to be. And then again, if we are fortunate, we will also know and have relationships with our grandchildren, as well. Some few of us will even be fortunate enough to have known a great-grandparent or two, and some few of us might be fortunate enough to know a few of our great-grandchildren. But, on average, two generations in either direction seems pretty 'nominal'.
So, my dad having died just recently, I got to thinking about his grandfather. Dad had certainly known his grandfather, who died in 1944, when Dad was in his early 20s (and, alas, twelve years before my own auspicious arrival). My great-grandfather, Egbert (for whom I was very nearly named; narrow escape, right there) was born in 1866. His grandfather, Jacob, died in 1875. I don't know if they ever knew, or even met each other, since Egbert was born in Indiana and came to Michigan as a boy, whereas Jacob lived his entire life in upstate New York (not far from Cooperstown, in Otsego County). But their lives overlapped by nine years, and they certainly could have met each other. Jacob was born in 1812.
So Egbert spent 78 years living on the face of this earth. Squarely inside the biblical brackets. But between his grandfather, whom he at least might have known, and my dad, his grandson, whom he did know, the span of his life's connections is stretched to within a year of two full centuries. And I'm sure, if I look at all of my dad's grandparents and their grandparents, somewhere in there, the two-century mark will have been surpassed. Which is a heck of a lot more than threescore-and-ten, and, in a lot of ways, seems a truer representation of the significance of our lives on this earth. . .
And even besides biological/familial connections, I think of the elders - teachers, coaches, family friends, etc, etc - who enriched my formative years, and I am coming into my own set of young friends my kids' age, or even younger. And I wonder how far into the past those relationships reach, and God only knows how far into the future.
Fascinating. . .
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Eight Is Enough (That's What She Said). . .
Now, don't anyone get too terribly excited to see a fresh post here at The Yard. My 'parameters' really haven't changed since my 'farewell' post a couple months ago. But, I had a few posts 'in the hopper' when I said goodbye, and I've more-or-less decided that the World would benefit from my going ahead and actually, you know, posting them. So, I'll dribble them out over the next few months, and we'll see what the World looks like after that. . .
-------------------------
8M is just about to finish 5th grade, and thereby, his tutelage under the estimable Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson holds a unique position in the life of our family. All of our kids have attended the same Catholic parish school, from kindergarten through 8th grade (well, 8M has only gotten to 5th grade so far, but he's a bright lad, and I have every confidence in him).
And Mrs. Jackson has taught them all. In the 25 years of our association with the school, every other teacher has come and gone, some of them more than once. But only Mrs. Jackson has taught all eight of our kids, beginning with 1F's 4th grade year in 1992-93. She was actually a first-grade teacher in 1F's first-grade year, but that year, there were two first-grade classes, and 1F was in the other one. By the time 1F got to 4th grade, Mrs. Jackson had moved to 4th grade, and she taught 4th grade to all of our kids. 7M actually had her for two years, since she moved from 4th grade to 5th the same time he did. And now she's taught 8M, completing the set, the first, and most likely only, member of that club (there is another woman, who has taught middle-school literature to our first seven kids; she wasn't on the staff this past year, but I'm told she would love to return, so that book has not been finally and definitively closed, just yet; we shall see). Not, you know, that it's such a great honor as all that. . .
She hasn't tended to be the most beloved of all the teachers at the school. She has a straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor that can be intimidating or off-putting, until you get to know her. And you can believe me, that, her having taught all eight of our children, we've had no lack of opportunity to get to know her. Even so, it was apparent to Jen and me early on that, whatever the qualities of her personality, she was a teacher of rare ability, who often saw things in our kids that we had only vaguely noticed, and she helped us to deal constructively with some problems we had struggled with. She is a rare gem of a teacher, and we have been fortunate, indeed, to have benefitted from her influence.
Jen asked all our kids to write a single sentence describing their experience of Mrs. Jackson, which we will present to her as a token of our gratitude. I reproduce those brief encomia herewith:
1F - "She was my favorite teacher, because she encouraged creativity and critical thinking."
2F - "When she corrected me, she did it in a way that made me feel better about myself, without softening the correction."
3M - "We disliked each other strongly; yet, after A YEAR together, she still found it in her heart to not only continue teaching, but to go through 5 MORE of my siblings! That is the epitome of dedication to one's craft."
4M - "The first (only?) teacher to connect my Religion grade with my actual behavior - 'Do you behave like a Christian?'"
5M - "She helped immensely with my social development by alerting me to personal hygiene issues."
6F - "She cared about my emotional well-being at a time when our family was going through extreme trauma. But she didn't baby me; I still had to behave."
7M - "She was probably the best teacher I ever had. I just didn't know it at the time. She deserves an award for having to deal with all of us. . ."
8M - "She put up with my ADD, and helped me learn a lot even in spite of it."
So, thank you, Mrs. Jackson. You've been a boon to our family. You're one in a million. . .
-------------------------
8M is just about to finish 5th grade, and thereby, his tutelage under the estimable Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson holds a unique position in the life of our family. All of our kids have attended the same Catholic parish school, from kindergarten through 8th grade (well, 8M has only gotten to 5th grade so far, but he's a bright lad, and I have every confidence in him).
And Mrs. Jackson has taught them all. In the 25 years of our association with the school, every other teacher has come and gone, some of them more than once. But only Mrs. Jackson has taught all eight of our kids, beginning with 1F's 4th grade year in 1992-93. She was actually a first-grade teacher in 1F's first-grade year, but that year, there were two first-grade classes, and 1F was in the other one. By the time 1F got to 4th grade, Mrs. Jackson had moved to 4th grade, and she taught 4th grade to all of our kids. 7M actually had her for two years, since she moved from 4th grade to 5th the same time he did. And now she's taught 8M, completing the set, the first, and most likely only, member of that club (there is another woman, who has taught middle-school literature to our first seven kids; she wasn't on the staff this past year, but I'm told she would love to return, so that book has not been finally and definitively closed, just yet; we shall see). Not, you know, that it's such a great honor as all that. . .
She hasn't tended to be the most beloved of all the teachers at the school. She has a straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor that can be intimidating or off-putting, until you get to know her. And you can believe me, that, her having taught all eight of our children, we've had no lack of opportunity to get to know her. Even so, it was apparent to Jen and me early on that, whatever the qualities of her personality, she was a teacher of rare ability, who often saw things in our kids that we had only vaguely noticed, and she helped us to deal constructively with some problems we had struggled with. She is a rare gem of a teacher, and we have been fortunate, indeed, to have benefitted from her influence.
Jen asked all our kids to write a single sentence describing their experience of Mrs. Jackson, which we will present to her as a token of our gratitude. I reproduce those brief encomia herewith:
1F - "She was my favorite teacher, because she encouraged creativity and critical thinking."
2F - "When she corrected me, she did it in a way that made me feel better about myself, without softening the correction."
3M - "We disliked each other strongly; yet, after A YEAR together, she still found it in her heart to not only continue teaching, but to go through 5 MORE of my siblings! That is the epitome of dedication to one's craft."
4M - "The first (only?) teacher to connect my Religion grade with my actual behavior - 'Do you behave like a Christian?'"
5M - "She helped immensely with my social development by alerting me to personal hygiene issues."
6F - "She cared about my emotional well-being at a time when our family was going through extreme trauma. But she didn't baby me; I still had to behave."
7M - "She was probably the best teacher I ever had. I just didn't know it at the time. She deserves an award for having to deal with all of us. . ."
8M - "She put up with my ADD, and helped me learn a lot even in spite of it."
So, thank you, Mrs. Jackson. You've been a boon to our family. You're one in a million. . .
Sunday, February 3, 2013
The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said. . .
. . . for me to step away from blogging. Again (and those of you who have known me from the beginning, or close to it, back in May 2006, will be forgiven for saying, "Yeah, we've heard that before"). It's been a pretty long, sustained run this time, over 4-1/2 years, from June 2008 until today, with a quick break to change blogs and blog-o-nyms at the end of 2009.
Alas, the Real World is pressing its claims on my life, and I just need to clear my head and readjust my priorities real-ward.
I don't know if or when I'll be back; as of this minute, I don't have any plans, one way or the other. Perhaps I'll still visit your blogs and leave an occasional comment, but I can't promise that I will. If it turns out that I never do return, please allow me to say that I have enjoyed every one of you that I've met (or, I should probably rather say, 'met', in finger-quotes) here in blog-space. You are some wonderful folks, and I have enjoyed such friendship as we've shared, for never having laid actual, physical eyes on each other. If I should ever happen to be in any of your neighborhoods, perhaps we can get together for a suitably convivial beverage.
Until we meet again. It's been a blast.
Blessings to you all. . .
Alas, the Real World is pressing its claims on my life, and I just need to clear my head and readjust my priorities real-ward.
I don't know if or when I'll be back; as of this minute, I don't have any plans, one way or the other. Perhaps I'll still visit your blogs and leave an occasional comment, but I can't promise that I will. If it turns out that I never do return, please allow me to say that I have enjoyed every one of you that I've met (or, I should probably rather say, 'met', in finger-quotes) here in blog-space. You are some wonderful folks, and I have enjoyed such friendship as we've shared, for never having laid actual, physical eyes on each other. If I should ever happen to be in any of your neighborhoods, perhaps we can get together for a suitably convivial beverage.
Until we meet again. It's been a blast.
Blessings to you all. . .
Heartbreak Is Part of the Deal. . .
OK, I promised that if/when I ever stop blogging, I'd leave this post at the top of the page, just in case anyone comes back here from time to time, this is what they'd see. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Place Names in Michigan
I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here. At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state. I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rahn), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rahn), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Epiphany
Today is Epiphany, marking the end of the Season of Christmas (I'm never sure as to whether Christmas is the First Day of Christmas, or Epiphany is the Twelfth; not that it matters all that much. . .) In some Christian traditions, mainly in the East, Epiphany, not Christmas, is the day for exchanging of gifts (after the example of the Magi, I suppose), and, at least in terms of public celebration, Epiphany is a bigger deal than Christmas is.
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
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