Wicked Fairies ... disguised as Truck Salesmen

So … Knobby Knees is an Engineer. Civil engineer, that is. They’re an odd breed. I don’t pretend to understand them. All I know is that this particular engineer likes my cute butt (his words, not mine. I mighta said hawwt or something.), and he likes me. He’s a good kisser. He’s occasionally funny, sometimes boring; his jokes are odd. He has … well … knobby knees. I love him.

But … today we went truck shopping. His company is getting a new truck, and, since it will be assigned to him, he gets to pick it out. I think the local truck dealers have ESP or something. They’re having this truck sale at the convention center. Fine. Good. Let him go truck shoppin’ until he drops from exhaustion.

But, instead, it went like this:

“What are you doing, lass?”

“Shopping on ebay.”

“For what?”

“Books mostly. … Why?”

“Come with me to the truck show. …”

“I don’t like trucks. … Besides you’ll look at every truck, analyze every component, and I’ll be bored. I’ll probably drink too much of their free cola and eat one of those nasty hotdogs stuffed with mystery meat and regret it. … And we’re out of Gas-X.”

“Is that a, ‘no’? … Please come. Okay?”

… Twenty minutes later, I’m in the car wishing I was going to one of the antique malls instead. But here I am, off to the Monster Truck Event and RV show.

I think every truck – new and used – from the surrounding 100 miles is here. (Okay, that’s a wild exaggeration.) We wander up and down lines of trucks, red ones, blue ones, endless white ones. We look at huge 4 wheel dive things, and king cabs. I’m sure no king in his right mind ever rode in one of those, especially in the back seats. I listen to him discuss the fine points with dealer reps. I check my fingernails for dirt. He sits in a few, and coaxes me in too.

“This is fun, huh?” he says.

I think, “Yah, well, buster, if you think so.” But what I say is, “Well, it’s interesting, but we’ve been here over an hour. I’m going to get another Coke.”

He nods. “Bring me back another hotdog,” he says. “Put everything on it.”

I nod. Everything on it includes some really poor quality chili outa a can and some pickled cabbage masquerading as sauerkraut. He many sleep alone tonight.

I juggle the hotdogs. Yes, I weakened and got one for myself. And I juggle the Cokes. And go looking for him. Is he anywhere in sight? Of course not. I finally sit on a bench and munch my hotdog and sip Coke, scanning the crowd between bites and sips. I spot him finally, head to head with a salesman. I dump my trash and grab up his food, making my way over to him.

“What do you think of this one?” he asks eagerly.

“It’s red,” I say.

“Maroon,’ he says.

“Vermillion,” the sales person says.

“Whatever,” I think. But I’m too polite to say so.

“So, is this it?” I ask sweetly. I sure as heck hope it is. My feets are sore and I “wanna go home. … Day-o”.

He thinks it is. This is good. So, the deal stuff gets done. I opt out of that conversation, searching for the other free food and drink tent. They have root beer, and I’m now swimming in Coke, but oddly I’m thirsty. Water would be better, and they do have bottled water. The bottled water is bottled tap water from California. Why in heck would I want to drink bottled tap water?

I find the tent, get my rootbeer and lo! They have really gooie lookin’ pastry that’s probably near fossilized with preservatives. I take one. It’s supposed to be apple filled. It vaguely tastes of apple. I sit and wait.

Finally … days and days and days later … or maybe about 45 minutes later, someone from his office shows up with a check. I finally figure this all out. He drives the truck home. Guess who came along to drive our car home? I honest to the Divine One did not kick his shins. He’s too much fun to kick. But I will tease him about that for days and days and days.

I have a blog harem? Who knew ...

So ... what's the attraction? You actually like short, scrawny, pixies? I shall refrain from suggesting that any one of you might be umm distracted by scrawny .... but then again ...

This photo removed to address the needs of an unhappy Scot who did not want me to share it.

They're PINK! God invented pink ...

humph

So ... I'm sittin' here readin' the news ... and on Reuters I find a photo of that Russian sub that caught fire ... except ... note this ... the sub in the photo is flying the Union Jack. I think they got this one wrong.

Americans do not pronounce the U in in "jaguar" as a long U (yoo), but as a "w." It's Jag-wahr. Now there is a reason for this, and, contrary to my Brit friends, pronouncing it with a long U isn't "pronoucning it as it's spelled." Dear hearts the original word was Portugese, not English. It comes from an Brazilian tribe's word for big animal. Ask a Portugese to pronounce the original word and then get back to me on your English snobbery. Better yet, ask a Tupi speaker to say the original word. Pfuuuttt!

Dear LORD!

As most of my regular blog readers know, my writing partner and I have an extensive research library. Some of the books are rare, some are not. We've never estimated its worth in cold hard cash. Maybe we should. One of the books we own is Day Dawn, or Gospel in Type and  Prophecy by John Henry Paton in the original unrevised edition.

I'm watching an auction on ebay where the same book is listed. With fifteen minutes remaining, the bid is at $4950.00. (Gasp) ... There have been 22 bids so far and nearly 900 views. ... okay, I just checked back and the auction ended at the $4950.00 amount. Stellar! If we didnt' really want and like our copy, I'd sell it!

The book on ebay ...

You know what? I don't think this hat does a thing for me ...

Trip to Switzerland, 1903.

Viktoria - Vienna - About 1880

Honey ... I found what I want for an aniversary present ...

... and it's under two million euros. ...

Reason and Rationality

I should have paid more attention to my psychology class. Having done so might have equipped me to analyze religious mania. I was more interested in social deviance than in the roots of irrational belief.

Religious Mania is probably a too general and too unfair description. Very little of human behavior is rational. Rational thought is not a human birthright. It is an art to be learned. Few of our parents practice it. Of those who possess the skill, few teach it to their children. Children resist learning it. The Biblical proverb’s advice to “acquire wisdom … acquire thinking ability” is ignored.

I was and am a ‘true believer’ though with an increasingly critical eye, and I confess to my own essential irrationality. I’m not overly disturbed by human irrationality because I share in it. I am disturbed by religious insanity. I’ve found it while researching our current project. It runs from self-entitled cussedness to murder at God’s command. I suppose you want details about the murder first. It’s the most lurid and disturbing event. Most of us go for the lurid first, right?

In 1879 a New York “Second Adventist” killed his daughter believing that God had ordered him to sacrifice her as he had ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. God stayed Abraham’s hand. He didn’t intervene in New York, and the girl died. In Christian theology Isaac’s sacrifice is seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death. The ram that substituted for Isaac is sometimes seen as Christ’s substitution for humanity. More immediately, the tale of Abraham and Isaac is a consecration of the firstborn story. In pre-state Israel the first born (or the one counted as firstborn) served as family priest. This tradition persisted under the Law, each firstborn male needing a redemptive sacrifice. How this translated into a divine call to cut a small girl-child’s throat is a mystery to me.

Psychology is hardly a science. It is more religion than science, and any explanation it may give for this bit of madness is suspect. Do we see this as demon possession? Chemical imbalance? The result of a parasite ridden brain? What is this? What are the roots of this madness?

A sense of divine choosing drives the acts of at least three of the main characters found within the history we’re writing. Each saw themselves as the specially chosen purveyor of divine light. Each was influenced, though in varying degrees, by Millerite Adventism wherein competing views were forwarded with the phrase “advanced light” and described as “irrefutable.” Each used the phrase or something like it to disparage opponents.

Nelson Horatio Babour saw each of his prophetic failures as a step forward, a passage into greater light. He saw himself as leading the way into divine enlightenment. Those who did not follow him from one failure to the next were not “in the light.” He never explained how stumbling from on false prediction to another was advancing light, and I have no sense of the origins of his self-view.

John Henry Paton believed his drift into Universalism was based on a personal revelation. He saw himself as a New Testament saint with an advanced understanding. His age and sense of sainthood left him with a bastard doctrine of uncertain parentage. He allowed that others had a share of divine light – just not as great as his. I am at a loss to explain his sense of divine entitlement.

Charles Taze Russell saw himself as one of the few god-chosen teachers. Eventually he would see himself as the “faithful and wise” servant of Jesus’ illustration. He was publicly cautious, seldom, but privately he promoted the idea. Russell cast stories from his childhood in a Biblical fame work. He was like Samuel, dedicated from birth to God, a divinely appointed child who would in time become God’s prophet. One must give Russell credit for emphasizing Christ and not himself. But there is a recognizable sense of divine choosing. How does one measure this?

The most we can do is let each speak through his own words. We quote them. We document what they said, what they did, how they did it. The questions that touch on reason and rationality are beyond our ability to answer.

The NEWS from Zambia .... Just sayin' ... I mean ... I'm speechless

The Invasion of the Shapeshifting Whores!

There has to be a story line in this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the one to write it:

In October last year, another local man was caught having sex with a donkey, which he claimed had transformed from a prostitute, picked earlier at a nightspot. He was then arrested and taken to court.

Sending the court into hysterical laughter, the 28-year-old man told the magistrate: “Your worship, I only came to know I was being intimate with a donkey when I got arrested.”

The Small Fae ...

A film by someone who knows their true nature.

Sha'el's Forest as it is Today

Why Pixies Live Here

Trials and Tribulations ....

I feel as if I were working my way through hip-deep mud. I fell down the stairs yesterday, an experience that left me walking like a ninety year old woman. I had one of my “episodes” and crashed. Fortunately I was not far from the bottom. Unfortunately I had a full cup of coffee in my hand. Two of my daughters cleaned up the mess.

Today I’m in a mental fog. I’ve tried to write some, but it’s coming out as nonsense. I thought my aunt was coming down today, but she’s not here yet, and I can’t reach her on her cell phone. She forgets to turn it on; so I’m not worried. If I don’t hear from her in an hour or so, I’ll call my uncle and find out what’s going on.

I got Knobby Knees to take me to the Goodwill Store. (Yes, I’m still peeved at them! But a Pixie has to shop, doesn’t she?) I didn’t buy any of their now over-priced books, but I found three cups. Nice ones. These were part of a punch bowl set. One is from the 1880s, the other two from about 1900. The oldest is quality pressed-glass. The other two are right on the transition from Victorian style to Edwardian elegance. All have turned purple from exposure to the sun. They were fifty cents each. You can’t sneeze at cheap elegance, or at least it’s not polite to do so.

Sometime last year my aunt and I drove to a town near to where I live and hit the thrift stores. I bought some old spoons and a butter knife. I just liked the pattern. Besides, they oozed quality and age. I polished them up and put them in my silver chest intending to research them. As often happens with pixies, I was distracted and forgot about them. Last week I got them out and went searching for the maker. Turns out these are important items. They’re from the late 1850s to mid 1860s. They’re “coin silver,” very heavy silver at that. My dollar sixty-nine cents each has turned into a buncha money. Now I have to find a buyer. That will take time, but this is a good find. We need the money right now for some repairs to the house.

Back to the writing stuff. … I’m trying to fix something we wrote earlier. We’re trying to explain the vital differences between two religious movements that have been confused in the minds of casual researchers for say a hundred years. I envisioned this as a four or five paragraph explanation. It doesn’t work as a brief explanation; so I’ve been adding detail. The research is good. My writing is (okay this is MY blog and I can be vulgar if I wish to be) crappy. So I’ve given up for the day.

People either hate or love my writing. I do not understand this. There is no indifference, just like or hate. My goal is to be able to handle English so well that readers are lost in the words and thoughts and no longer think about the quality of writing. I want them to be lost in the music of words as I create it. Most day I’m certain I will never achieve that.

I’m eternally disorganized, and for someone who loves order, that’s a tragedy. The eternal struggle to keep my library-workroom in some sort of workable order continues. I can see the top of my desk today. I don’t think I’ve seen it in a month or two. Writing history is clutter-intensive. At least that’s my excuse.

My writing partner has started to research what will be the end chapter. I sent him an essay written by modern opponents of one of the religions we research. Written in 1976, it refutes a single paragraph from a commentary on last-times subjects. Usually things from this source are stupidly written. This one is helpful, taking us to original source material. I come away from much of the polemical material wanting to wash my hands. Can’t these people assume some personal responsibility in life?

On the brighter side of life, I found Knobby Knees’ missing screw driver. He left it in the laundry room. He’ll be happy. You’d think his tools were important or something. (Insert Pixie snicker here.)

One of my younger cousins starts college this summer. She’s enrolling in the same college that my oldest. They get along well. I hope they can support each other. At least my daughter chose one near enough she can live at home. She’s matured greatly in the last two years, but we still have some maturity issues.

I’m faced with a mother’s dilemma that has been passed down to me from six generations past. This is a mother to daughter gift, given on a wedding day. It’s a cut glass plate in a pattern that resembles a wedding ring. It’s green glass, made in Germany sometime before 1850. My mother chose me. Now I have to pick among five daughters. None of them are close to marriage, of course. But this is an important family tradition, one of many we keep. I frown every time I look at that plate. How am I going to make this decision?

When my mother gave it to me, all she said is, “I know you’ll treasure it.” I do.

Reminder to self: We need a jar of silver polish.

Note: Daughter 4 can mimic her grandparents Scots accent perfectly.

Note: I seem to have inherited the local colony of small brown and blue fae. They’re pests. … And dangerous.

Note: I bought some really cheaply priced stamps off of ebay. This was a great find. Poorly described, mostly over-looked, and very nice material.

I lost a student from my critical reading class. I’m not sorry to see them go. I gained a student for my writing class. Along with him I gained a worried parent. Parents are always welcome in my classes. You have to understand that with intellectual brightness one sometimes finds difficulties with judgment, especially at the age of many of my students. You’d probably have to be in the situation to understand fully, but I’m sure you’ve observed this. I drove my parents to distraction.

You ever read Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex? I did. I was twelve years old. I read all umm what? Six volumes I think. Can you imagine the questions I asked my parents? Can you imagine the challenges they faced answering them? God invented children to keep parents busy and to drive them insane.

Where? Why?

Where is Harry? You okay, Harry?

Why is no one playing the What if Game?

Okay ... that's it! I'm pouting!

Santa Clara, Wrecked at Coos Bay, Oregon

Guest Post - Occasional Reader

Silent movies

I have always been fascinated by silent movies. Not just the evolution of cinema storytelling, but the very early efforts – Fred Ott sneezing in 1894, the train coming into the station at La Ciotat in 1896, which reportedly caused panic in the audience – my family thinks it all rather strange, but still make sympathetic noises and ask if I want to lie down when I go into over-enthusiastic mode.

Of course, when the movies found their feet there was a lot more to be fascinated by. I once spent a whole holiday holed up inside the Academy Cinema in London when the British Film Institute first showed the restored Buster Keaton films, rescued from a vault in his old house. One might gather that I was single at the time. I still watch the DVDs. I collected the silent films of Laurel and Hardy on standard 8mm film and was a sure hit at parties showing Liberty and Habeas Corpus. (Fortunately for L&H, their voices suited their characters and their film career survived until 1951, but those early silents remain the cream for me.) I learned to appreciate the grandeur of Griffiths’ films and the stupidity of his vision at times. And I enjoyed the epics – from CTR’s Photodrama of Creation, to the 1920s Ben Hur – with a better chariot race than the 1959 version. Even the duds had their charms – Michael Curtis’ Noah’s Ark had the Almighty talk to Noah through a burning bush and presenting him with instructions for building an Ark on tablets of stone – Curtis had obviously recently seen De Mille’s Ten Commandments, and was not too clear on his Bible stories... But the actual flood on my 8mm print was quite spectacular – and not a touch of computer graphics on the horizon.

Although it is off the point – but hey it’s my post, I’m allowed to ramble – I also love the early days of sound – when for a short while films were so dire, they have a hypnotic appeal. I have fond memories of Joan Crawford – later Grande Dame of cinema, singing – badly – and doing the Charleston even worse! Oh the joys.

But back to the silents - which brings me to the current film, The Artist.

After all the ballyhoo – for a couple of weeks there was only cinema in my country of residence showing it. This one cinema was in a city where I used to live and work, but the costs of parking for the performance were three times the cost of a ticket, and the thought of the traffic trying to get home afterwards would have dominated the experience. But then, as it gained awards and more publicity, a few more locations took a chance – and there was a reasonable audience when I saw it earlier today.

In Britain it has had mixed reviews. Apparently patrons of a cinema in Liverpool walked out because it didn’t have any sound... Duh!

So what is the Occasional Reader’s critical review?

First, to call it a silent film in a sense is a misnomer. Music was the key. It always was. Not a just a tinkly piano with Keystone cops flickering on the screen, but a full orchestra in picture houses that were often called picture palaces, they were so grand. The music in The Artist really held everything together. And the conventions of silent film were observed, and not sent up. (I can still enjoy Mel Brooks mugging in Silent Movie, where the best joke was when the only sound spoken was by Marcel Marceau – a famous mime artiste – but The Artist was not a parody. People who watch opera don’t expect method acting, and people who watch ballet manage quite OK without dialogue – once you accept the conventions of the form). In The Artist sound gradually came in as it did in the movies. For me one of the best sequences has the “hero” who cannot speak suddenly discovering sound. A cup put on the table makes a noise, to his horror something knocked over makes a bigger noise; at the end of the sequence, he opens his mouth to scream – and nothing comes out.

At the very end he does speak a couple of words. You then realise why he couldn’t speak in movies at that time. It’s not as funny as Jean Hagen’s Brooklyn accent in Singing in the Rain (“Well of course I can talk – don’t everybody?”), but it makes the point – silent cinema had a universal language. Once sound came in everything became regionalised by language and even accents within language groups. Until of course dubbing was mastered and America did its best to take over the world of commercial film. (Which is another subject).

There was a brilliant performance by the dog, Uggie. My other half came along to please me, but found herself really enjoying the film, but especially the dog. A canine Oscar should be in order.
It was a film that also paid homage to the history of film – sequences brought back fleeting memories of the music from Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the pathos of Chaplin’s The Kid, and the ending of Welles’ Citizen Kane. There was a nifty rush to the rescue sequence – which brought back memories of the race to save the condemned man in Griffiths’ Intolerance, or the so politically incorrect Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue in his Birth of a Nation. And there’s a lovely payoff sub-title joke at the end of it.

I hope the eventual DVD will have some extras.

Yes – silence is golden.

Now for an evening of noisy TV.

Return of the What If Game

What if Sherlock Holmes became Dr. Moriarty’s apprentice?

What if it were really Holmes and not Moriarty who died at Reichenbach Falls? What if through artful disguise he took Holmes place?

What if Jack the Ripper were really Jane the Ripper?

What if one of those who died in the Nevada desert facility had lived to tell the tale? Where would we be then?

What if there were a genetically neutral species that could reproduce with anything? What would its offspring be?

What if the reason no one visits the play lot is that it’s in another world that only just touches our own?

Would sparrow kill a crow at a pixie’s command?

A Pixie Sorta Day

When I was very young, one of my teachers stressed reading word groupings rather than one word at a time. I took that to heart, and it significantly improved my comprehension. At one point I read well over a thousand words a minute. I haven’t maintained that speed. I’d be surprised if I read at half that rate now. … And now I’m unlearning the skill.

It’s a great skill if your focus is on comprehension. It’s ruined my editing ability. I’m slowly learning to read one … word … at … a time again. It’s awkward, stultifyingly boring, and it has improved my edits wonderfully. I see the whole word. So having put this bad habit into practice, I find many more typos, dropped end letters and such than I used to. This is good. Right? It also gives me a royal headache.

This is a mixed-work day for me. I don’t work tonight. I have a huge amount of house cleaning, desk cleaning, edits to do, and suff piled up. I’m on my second load of wash, all smelly-man clothes. I’ve cleaned the coffee pot, then made some. I’ve washed the pots and pans. I read three nonsense emails from school staff. No, I don’t know where your missing Legos are! I don’t care that students can’t use Conference Room N. Mine never do. Your reminder to file my class syllabi was a group email. I already did that, thanks. Don’t send me silly emails again or I’ll send a middle school student to the office to talk to you. I have several who do not know how to shut up!

So … I’m back … and I’m now on page 37 of the edits. I’d rather be eating ice cream.

I’m going to stop at this point and wash Knobby Knee’s underwear. Oh the things Pixies must suffer to be nice to their mates!

I had this long post planned, all about writing history, and the challenges of living in a world that in its reality is not very like what people imagine it to be. I thought it out sentence by sentence last night. I can’t remember any of it today. Never try to think when you’re half asleep. It doesn’t work!

My writing partner asked me to start planning an Essay on Sources. We won’t include a bibliography. Doing so would add unnecessarily to an already long book, and we’ve exhaustively footnoted our work. I’m not certain an essay on sources will contribute much. Most of the sources used now are wrong. There is no really polite way to say it. They’re wrong. Some are wrong in some details; others are totally off the wall wrong. We already cover that in footnotes. But dutiful writing partner that I am (You’re allowed to snicker here), I’m outlining it, and I’ve written a few paragraphs.

Our local Goodwill Store lost its Federal funding and is trying to make up for the deficit by raising prices. Excuse me! I’m not buying a book for 3.50, or 6.50 when I can go down to the really nice – and organized – used book store and pay the same amount for the same book in much better condition. This is a major fail. My visits have dropped from about once a day to maybe once a week. They managed to peeve a pixie who also donates books to them. I’ve switched to donating to another charity store.

Back … again, after having put the third load of wash in the machine. Next on the list, after taking a break to research an evangelist named John Foore, change the sheets on the pixie beds. Now John Foore is an interesting person. He was a partisan of “Fair Chance” doctrine. (Never mind what that was. The explanation would bore you silly.) My task, should I care to accept it, is to connect him to a guy named Russell … and voilà … there’s this article in The Restitution of May 11, 1881, that does just that! Tada! And umm Yipee!

This kind of research is a tiring process. The old papers have been digitalized, but they’re digitalized off of poor microfilm copies. Reading this stuff is to invite an instant head ache! But the returns are often very satisfactory. For instance, I found a really fun description of John Foore’s personality. We’ll use this bit. It’s too good not to use. History, as usually written, lacks a sense of humor. Anytime we can stuff something into our text that makes me giggle, it’s a good thing. I’m not sure many of our readers will see these things as humorous. But I do.

I got WHAT on that test?!

Daughter 1 is home from school. She grumbling under her breath, so I know something did not go as she wished. She’ll eventually tell me what it is. For now, she’s on her Kindle seeking relief in a movie. Best I can tell she is disappointed in a test score. Getting a B is one of life’s tragedies, as far as she’s concerned.

So ... this semester ...

I have two small classes, both longer than usual. They're an hour and a half each, meeting once a week to discuss and critique a major project. I have one eleventh grader doing college level work. I have a bunch of brilliant middle schoolers, two of whom I know well .... and then ... and then I have a third grader.


She's in with the big boys and girls, and she's not at all intimidated. She, dear hearts, is doing trig for math. Now she's going to tackle the literary world. ... Occasional Reader should have my job. Just sayin ... Or Anthony. Anthony could handle a cute little third grader who plays with dolls, chats up other third graders in language they understand, and can back an adult into a corner in an intellectual argument.

I foresee a very interesting semester.

Be patient ...

I've been writing like a crazy woman. Oh, that means more or less as usual, doesn't it ...

I've been very sick. Nuthin new there, but a bit more intense.

End of semester junk. New classroom, review (best employee review I ever got though), New lessons plans, and stuff.

Besides ... what's the matter with some cute pink sock covered toes?

Be back on the blog in a few days.

Pink!

How to addle a Pixie.

It’s a plot. Damn it! … and what is it with guys and keyboards?!

So here I am up early. I’m frowning at my monitor, trying to puzzle through conflicting and hard to read digitalized microfilms. I’m tapping the “H” key with some irritation, not hard enough to make it “type” something. Just hard enough to make a noise. … I’m working, trying to write. It’s not happening, but I’m focused. A slight head ache is forming. It’s me or abject confusion. I’m determined it will be me. Pixies can be determined … when we’re not distracted.

Got all that? Good …. In walks Knobby Knees. He’s straightening his tie. A sly, slightly silly, grin is on his face. Remember that famous painting? The one where they guy has swept up the cute piano player and they kiss. She has one finger on the keyboard? Knobby Knees does his version of that … live at six am … except the keyboard belongs to my computer and not a piano. We no longer own a piano, and daughter 1’s electronic keyboard is upstairs. It’s a very nice kiss. Lovely.

At the Keyboard

If he said something, I didn’t hear it. My ears were buzzing. He walks out of the room, and I stare at the monitor trying to remember why Ship’s Lists from the 1840s were important. I am not succeeding.

Daughter two walks in. “Hi, Mom,” she says. “You’re red in the face. You okay, Mom?”

“Huh? Oh, yes. I’m fine,” I say

“Did you look at my essay?” she asks.

“Huh?” I say.

“My essay. … You were going to proof read it.”

“Yes … Yes, it’s on the table. It’s good. Read it over.” My ears still buzz and I’m a bit dizzy and out of focus.

Dau 2 says her thanks and zips upstairs. Someone thumps down the stairs. I hear commotion in the kitchen. I smell coffee. Dau 1 brings me a cup.

Now Dau 1 is a very perceptive lass. … “Lose your focus, Mom?” she asks. “Dad looks nice this morning, doesn’t he?”

Sudden Buzzing in my Ears.

I nod. I thank her for the coffee. I take a sip. “Good,” I say. That’s a truncation of “this is good.” But she knows what I mean. “Kiss you, did he?”

I blush and say, “Shoo. You’ll be late if you don’t get dressed.”

She laughs on her way out.

A few minutes pass. Daughters 4 and 5 enter. Does the phrase “hem and haw” mean anything to you? Well … that’s what they do. Finally daughter 4 elects herself as spokes person.

“We want to camp out in the back yard,” she says. “Tonight.”

“It was 14 degrees last night (That’s -10 c for the forgetful). There is no way that you can camp out when it’s that cold.”

“We can use the arctic sleeping bags. They’re good down to -50,” she says. I can tell they’ve though this out … sort of. Maybe.

“No. Not a good idea.”
“Dad could put up the big tent.”

I shake my head. “I’m sure he would love to put up a tent in the back yard when it’s freezing out.”

Irony is lost on Daughter 5. “I’ll go ask him!” she shouts enthusiastically. She’s off like a no-see-em in June. (That’s a very small, nearly invisible, fast flying bug. Just so you know.)

Dau 4 persists. “We could have a fire.”

“You’re not making a fire on our back lawn. …”

“Dad could do it …”

Knobby Knees walks in. “What’s this about a camp out? In this weather??”

“I’ve said ‘no’ in a dozen ways,” I say. The dizziness is returning, and I find my thoughts jumbling up … So it’s a good thing he takes over.

“You can camp out in the front room if you just want to sleep in a sleeping bad. Bed time is the same. It’s too cold for anything else.”

He shoos them off to finish dressing for school.

I stand up, close my eyes and whisper, “I want another.”

Eyes Closed

“Another what?” he asks. “Certainly not another child …”

I bonk him on the chest. He laughs. He gives me “another.”

I’m trying to sort out life. He’s in the front hall shouting at children about the time. I hear the clump of feet. The door slams. In a minute the door opens, and daughter 3 trots in.

“Dad says to remind you he’s only working half a day.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’d forgotten. Thanks.”

She’s off, and it’s quiet, and I’ll probably not get any real writing done today.

He Works just a Half Day

Soldiers, Sailors and whoring ... good song though ...

When cowboys roamed the streets ...

Union Pacific Depot, Seattle, About 1900.

I'd call this a hyperbole, but I think they're serious ....

"A sprawling Native American metropolis which lay hidden beneath a modern city for a millennium has been uncovered.


Archaeologists digging in preparation for the Mississippi River spanning bridge - which will connect Missouri and Illinois - discovered the lost city of Cahokia beneath modern St Louis."

From the Daily Mail web site: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082113/The-lost-city-Cahokia-Archaeologists-uncover-Native-Americans-sprawling-metropolis.html

St. Louis was founded in 1764. It hasn't been there for a millennium. .... Just sayin' ... Yo! Daily Mail People, can't you people count?

Maria and Kira ... the Russian pixies ....

Cranky Old Man, or Guest Post by my Writing Partner.

Pixies are little nags. I’m reminded of Dickensonian style, and must preface this by saying something such as: “Having been persuaded by a guest-post hungry pixie that my duty rests in assuaging her earnest desire for space-filling comments on her blog, I have assented to write what follows.” On second thought, that doesn’t resemble Dickens’ style at all. Maybe it resembles Thorstein Veblen or some such person’s style.

My introduction to pixies really precedes her birth. Her great grandmother, whom she resembles, was a pixie. Now that Rachael has so clearly defined what Pixies are, I’m convinced of it. When I first saw her, Rachael was a bright-eyed bundle wrapped in a baby-blanked and uttering short phrases. She started talking at six months. If I were unkind enough to quote her father, I would add here, “and she hasn’t shut up since.” I’m not that unkind. So I will leave that unsaid.

She is a very opinionated little thing. She settles her opinions quickly and seldom changes them. The exception is with her research. Research is a series of guesses and eureka moments. Good research is plodding work, driven by flashes of insight. I know of no one more adept than the Pixie.

She was a pest when she was little, insisting on sitting on someone’s lap and talking. It didn’t matter what the topic was. She just wanted to talk. She self-edited her speech. When she was two she would begin and then restart a story over and over until she said it to her satisfaction. I learned patience from listening to a two year old. Or, I should say, I learned as much patience as I have from a two year old.

She picks at my theology. We debate. She goes for the jugular. If age expects mercy, it is an expectation without warrant. It’s not the rarified, esoteric point she attacks, but the practical use of belief. She has little patience for the hypocrisy that seems part of the human condition. I confess to sharing her feelings, even if I see human frailties and human willingness to believe the irrational in a different light. If you decide to debate her, wear armor.

Having a Pixie for a writing partner is like eating curried chicken. Curry gives me indigestion, but I like the chicken. She challenges everything. One of the reasons our writing is as detailed as it is – aside from my own love of detail – is her demand for greater proof. She is an excellent check to any tendency to speculate. I sympathize with the approach. I’d like to think I taught it to her. If I did, I taught her well.

She has a very subtle humor system. That may come from her husband. Her childhood jokes sometimes made absolutely no sense. She mangled stories. I think the first joke she told that worked was when she asked her aunt if she believed in “pre-marital inter-digitation.” I think she was eight or nine. Her aunt, who was suitably shocked, said, “NO! … What IS that?” She’s gotten better since.

She’s inherited the family tendency to replace English sentence structure with that of another language. I think it’s an inherited defect. She accuses me of that bad practice daily, sending along some rude comment or another with edits.

I suppose one last observation is in order. She’s very bossy. She would have been the world’s absolute monarch at age seven if she could have pulled off the job. Oddly, she accuses various of her children of the same fault.

Fiesty

Friend Harry

Harry is out of the hospital. You'll be glad to know he wasn't pregnant. (We all hoped he wasn't, right?) He's still feeling rough, but he is home. Feel better quickly, Harry!

So ... too much peace and quiet is a bad thing, no?

Other than chatting online with a few friends and exchanging emails with Occasional Reader, I’ve been updated previously written chapters. Details trickle in. Some of the changes are minor. (We came up with a slightly more exact date for the sale of some property.) Some of the changes are major. An obscure booklet published in 1911 shoved an event ahead from 1872 to 1878. The change in dates produces a major change in the story. So … as I said … I’m doing mostly minor but important edits today.

One really interesting bit is finding out that one of the principal characters was a Wall Street investor. I’d like to follow this trail. I’m not sure we can. We have a few dates when he was in New York City, apparently on business. We have the single statement that he was on Wall Street in the mid-1880s maybe until the late 1890s. That’s it. As with many of these fragmented statements, there is no real trail. However, sometimes a serendipitous find will explain what hard research cannot. One can hope.

One of our challenges is religious mania. Now that’s an old fashioned term, but a good one. Some of those we profile were sane as you and I, except in matters of religion. One of the most prolific writers is a man named Johnson who saw himself as “the earth’s high priest.” Go figure … So we have to balance what he writes against other things. He is ummm ‘mistaken’ often, but right often enough that we cannot ignore him. So here I am on page 434 of one of his books. He says stuff. And “stuff” it is, until one gets about half way down the page. I’m inserting a fragment of this into one chapter. I’ll support it from another source. I’ve learned that it is dangerous to believe anything Johnson says without additional support.

It’s quiet here today. That’s always spooky. Daugthers 3-5 are at a counsin's playing board games, making and eating popcorn balls, and being loud. But they’re not being loud here. Dau 2 is reading a book. Dau 1 is sound asleep. Knobby Knees is off to that God forsaken town of Pasco, Washington, where he is looking at warehouse space for some project. Ever been to Pasco? No? Good … avoid it.

There are dark demonic holes in the universe. They blight our existence. Yakima and Pasco, Washington are just two of them.

Occasional Reader and the Mystery of the Cardboard Boxes

So ... It's not a cluttered attic, but it's as close as I can come.

TIDYING THE ATTIC

One of the delights of a public holiday is the incentive – with a bit of prodding from family – to “sort out” the attic.

Our family are inveterate hoarders, each individually denying it, but collectively having to fess up. The manuals on clutter advise that if something has been in storage for longer than a year, you no longer need it. Dispose. Promptly. Be Firm. Now. Humph.

So this last holiday we ventured into the attic. The first thing we managed to clear were the ancient cardboard boxes for electrical appliances that had long since gone to that great scrap heap in the sky. Even then, there was a lot of stuff.

Books. Not books we regularly use – they fill the actual rooms in the house below the attic, but ones kept “just in case” or for nostalgia reasons. Plus tons of my daughter’s stuff. She got married well over eleven years ago, and lives in a house that is larger than ours, but somehow we still seem to be the repository.

So what books did we unearth, and what nostalgic memories came flooding back? My first taped box unearthed books on conjuring. As a teenager I was well into magic tricks. My very first paid job (part-time) involved demonstrating conjuring tricks and other “toys” in a department store leading up to Christmas. I veered into magic tricks involving “thought transference” which didn’t sit all that well with my religious convictions – although I KNEW that what I did was trickery, because I KNEW how it was done. Outlets for demonstrating my “powers” were sort of limited in my circle, and the hobby took a back seat and soon disappeared off the radar. But yes – a couple of books as a distant memory – there they were, unopened for – well, quite a long time.

Then there were the textbooks on Gregg’s shorthand. Ah yes – Gregg’s shorthand. Because I planned to work for nothing for a religious charity, I needed lucrative part-time work. Secretarial – a well-meaning relative had this idea – shorthand-typing – that was it! Actually, it never was – but I went to classes and got my 100 wpm shorthand and 50-60 wpm typing. It was not exactly a macho teenage boy thing – I ended up as the only male in a class full of girls. Ten years before I had been the only male in a tap dancing troupe in a pantomime in which my father appeared – that was absolute purgatory – but now this was rather nice. As it happened, copy typing was already pushing shorthand into the cold, and anyway – I soon graduated to composing letters for others typists to produce – and at 50-60 wpm it was generally easier to knock them out myself and save on staff. But yes – Gregg’s – all those lovely short forms and perfected arguments to put down all those deluded people in the UK who still struggled with Pitman’s.

My wife’s hoard included the Montessori nursery nurse course. She started work in nursery nursing, before going to Spain to work for the same religious group as I had, when it were still illegal in the dying days of Franco. After detours in life – a major one was marrying me – she became a college lecturer in Spanish, French and Portuguese. Now “retired” she is conquering Welsh. (In-joke – Doctor to Patient – Don’t worry Mr Jones – we’ve found the problem – you’re not dyslexic – you’re Welsh!)

And the fiction books! Now we are both on eReaders, all sort of fiction gets stored in the attic – just in case. The detective fiction – ranging from the strict puzzle based on conjuring principles, with cardboardity of character to match, to modern authors where the turn of phrase is everything, and the plot incidental. Two whole boxes of Simon Brett. A TV producer and sitcom writer, who knocks out numerous tongue-in-cheek pastiches of the “golden age”. Phrases that stick in the mind – a description of the hero’s estranged wife driving a yellow mini – “She roared into the school car park like an avenging slab of butter” – a dodgy receptionist – “a simpering teenager of 45, with hair from a color chart not supplied by God”. Those boxes got opened – a lot of tidying up time lost – before they were ultimately lugged downstairs.

Cartoons books by Styx. No-one today has heard of him – but he was very prolific in his day, and on occasion originals turn up on eBay. The jokes were thin even at the time, but the drawings were brilliant. I modelled my own style on his when illustrating a couple of books – for him it came effortlessly, for me it was hard work.

Notes and visual aids for long ago courses I taught. Actually, one of them did turn up as useful. A few years ago an anxious phone call asked if I could drop everything when illness knocked out someone taking a modern version of the same course – it was all set up and no-one wanted it cancelled. A frantic scrabble in the attic unearthed from nearly twenty years before all my notes and drawings and jokes – (very important to keep people awake) – and being self employed, I was able to make up the lost money in the days ahead. So they all went back into storage with new material thought up for the occasion. Who knows – I might get asked again in another twenty years time...

So where has it left us? All the dead cardboard boxes went into the dumpster. Bootloads of stuff went to our favorite charity shop – and we only bought a little in return – honest. But I don’t know what it is, the attic looks a bit tidier, but overall it still looks very much the same.

Possessions multiply to fill the space available for them – and for hoarders the process just keep on going. I just hope we don’t get totalled crossing the road together and someone else has to try and make sense of it all. They would have a job.

Widder's "Mask"

Get Well Soon, Harry!

And make sure they give you the right meds. This guy is a five year old boy. Two days on the wrong pill did this. Also ... fair warning ... last time I checked into a hospital I came home with a baby. ...

Too much fun!

Sowerby

Bring it on, Fairy!

Gramps (Harry) and the twins

Comments

I am not getting enough blog comments. Some of you are neglecting your duty to pixie kind!

Crosseyed

So ... I worked all day to pin down just two points. The net result was a single sentence and a footnote. Well, that's not exactly true. Tomorrow I'll write up the results of the second search. That'll be a couple of paragraphs, but they'll be an important two paragraphs.

Daughter 5 and the fairies had a huge fight. The baby fairies landed on her banana cream pie and left tracks. They got stuck in the banana goo. She put them in a jar, clamped the lid down tightly, poked holes in it and cut a new peice. Mommy fairy went nuts, and they had this huge and loud discussion over fairy parenting, or I should say the lack of it.

I made her let the babies out of the jar, telling her they were fairies and not bugs.

"They shouldn't act like flies then, should they?" she snorted.

The babies weren't hurt. They spent most of their time in the jar licking pie filling off of each other.

I think they gave me a head ache.

Noah's Ark Found! 1893

Batavia NY Daily News, July 29, 1893

Knobby Knees and Bits

Knobby Knees: Why are you frowning? …. I didn’t do it!

Me: Huh? Oh no. I’m not frowning at you … yet. I’m thinking about a dead guy.

KK: Why? Did someone forget to bury him?

Me: No, silly. I can’t find the information I want.

KK: Maybe I could whisper it in your ear ….

Me: You’d just drool in my ear again. What is this thing you have for ears?

KK: You have cute ears. …

Me: Cute butt too …

KK: I’ve noticed. …

Me: I know ...

KK: What are you looking for?

Me: I want some biographical bits. … Details that seem not to exist.

KK: You have cute bits ….

Me: You’re not paying attention!

KK: Yes, I am.

Me: Not to what I’m saying?

KK: What?

Me: That’s what I mean …

So ...

Explain to me why one of the BBC presenters says "pressurized" for "pressured." There is a huge difference in meaning. ...

Explain to me why some of my Brit friends say "chat to" instead of "chat with." Do people from the UK talk past each other, at each other, or to each other? They certainly don't share the same convesation except incidentally if they only chat to each other in preference to chating with each other. You need to stop abusing your prepositions ....

... and then I found this in a religious text: "she could have found some other Scripture that would have been equally forcible." This is a verbatim quote taken down in shorthand by a Mr. L. Jones. One presumes the original speaker said "forcible." I want to know why. Was is common in 1907 to confuse "forcible" with "forceful"?

Fairies in the Marmalade

Mystery Photo

Between being too sick for words and yelling children, I’ve done some good stuff today. I’m pushing to finish what will be chapter one for the new history book. I’m in what has been the most difficult part. Recovering someone’s childhood from chance remarks is iffy. My writing partner culled quotations from someone’s articles and speeches, wrote it up as a narrative, and I’m adding bits and dropping things that don’t seem to contribute to the story or which are duplicate thoughts. Dang chapter is already too long. The end is in sight though … at least for this chapter.

I’ve added my own ‘finds,’ quotations and stray thoughts the main character wrote that I ran across. Well, that’s not the right phrase at all. I actively looked for them. I also spent a lot of time sizing up what others have written. There is more myth out there than solid history. A man named Zydeck wrote a ‘biography’ of this guy. Zydeck’s book is fantasy fiction. The man should be ashamed. Instead, he seems complacently self-pleased.

The baby fairies are about the size of house flies and just as annoying. Apparently fairies do not believe in monitoring their children. They either live or they die and they might grow up. At least this is the case with the small fae. I try to get across to the mommy fairy that she needs to watch her children. She pouts at the scolding, but she does listen … reluctantly.

This is the last time I’m extracting one of these things out of the jam or honey! I had to throw out a whole pot of marmalade. You don’t need the details. I keep yelling at my own children to put the lid back on the jams and jellies, but it’s like pounding nails into concrete.

My aunt is toddling off to Tacoma next week. She’s going off to see her sister for a few days. She always comes home from that visit stressed. The two aunts are fun separately. Put them together and one of them is her oblivious, wheedling self, and the other does a slow fume.

Old booklets and Fairy babies.

Well … I’m rather proud of myself. … Sick or not, I think I’ve done some stellar research. I’ve found hints of things for months. The hints lead me to believe one of my major – probably the major – characters we profile in our new history book was influenced by Benjamin Willis Newton. Newton was a superb writer, though in a typical 19th Century style. If he had written fiction, we’d still be reading his works and discussing them in literature classes.

I started buying Newton’s smaller works maybe five years ago, mostly on a hunch. Some of them are quite expensive, but I always buy the neglected items from on-line auctions rather than pay book store prices. Along the way we have acquired some key booklets and one book, all of which presented doctrine so similar to those we consider in our new book that I became one suspicious Pixie. Two more showed up on ebay, at inflated prices I might add. I added them to my watch list anyway. Sometimes things do not sell. I have a fair ability to estimate of what will sell and what won’t – at least at the price asked. I was certain these two booklets would not sell. They didn’t.

I waited to see if the seller would relist. I learned the hard way that if I ask a seller to re-list, they often do it at a lower but still inflated price. They have interest, right? So they’re reluctant to decrease the price. There’s a Life and Advent Union booklet on ebay that has been listed at $40.00, since the first day. The practical worth of this booklet, given the date of publication is $15.00. Because another dealer has it listed on abe.com for nearly two-hundred dollars, the seller won’t come down. It doesn’t matter that neither of them can find a market for it at those prices. So, I just wait and watch. Sure enough the seller re-listed. No one bid. We now own the booklets. The oldest is The Prophetic System of Mr. Elliott & Dr. Drumond Considered. This was published in 1850. Ages ago someone added a protective cover to this stitched booklet, and it remains in spectacular shape. The more important booklet is Atonement and its Results. This was published in 1882, but it is a reprint (with revisions) of a series of tracts published much earlier. It is, dear hearts, all about Substitutional Atonement. Now other than maybe five or six of my regular readers (who could comment more often, if you ask me) most of you could care less what substational atonement is. However, it plays a huge role in several chapters of our book.

I can’t prove it yet … notice the yet … but if Pixie’s were the betting sort, I’d say Chuckie read at least one of the original tracts. I’ll spend days verifying this, of course, but I’m convinced. Conviction alone does not meet any sort of solid evidentiary standard, but it’s a good start.

We have fairy babies. Twins. They arrived this morning at 4.42 am. More later. One observation: If you let the fairies move in, put the lid solidly down on the honey pot.

Who said pixies don't exist??

The Ick, Dead People, Fairies

So … here I am. Miss me? I’m still sick. But I’ve been writing furiously. The only really bad thing other than the persistent ick is that I also had “an episode.” I came home from work, got in my warm jammies, walked over to my bed and fell into a seizure. I hit my head on the way down. My old Victorian drop-leaf table reached right out and smacked me on the side of my head. This was not fun.

I’ve been contemplating the dead. Historians do that, you know. I was going to write a longish essay on getting to know dead people, but I feel really icky again. So I’ll skip that. Perhaps tomorrow.

I’ve been turning the pages of my stamp albums without paying much attention to them. It’s a bit of distraction that allows me to focus on other things. In this case it’s a dead guy. (Yes, I know I’d save the essay for tomorrow.) But I’ve not been totally inattentive. I like my stamp collection. In the early 20th century as many as four out of five people in Germany collected stamps. (I read that in an old newspaper article. Don’t know if it’s true, but I suspect it is.) It’s a nerdy hobby now, but I like it.

I’ve been buying a few each week. With the economy as it is, a careful auction shopper can come up with bargains. I’ve only gotten zinged once. I bought some Bolivian stamps that turned out to be reprints. That wasn’t all bad. I collect the reprints too. But I thought I was buying the genuine article. I’ve focused on my French area and German albums, the German album most intensively. Instead at looking at the individual sets, I go for the larger lots. I find that the low end dealers, the penny-listers, will sometimes have a real gem stuck in a lot of common stamps. I’ve managed to acquire some really nice semi-postals that way. I could never have afforded them otherwise.

If I thought you all were at all interested, I’d post some photos of album pages. But I know most of you aren’t. Stamp collecting is a soul-centering occupation for me. Turning the pages, looking at the familiar colors and pictures, the odd things, the bits of history, calms me when I’m sick and distressed. I’ve looked at lots of album pages the last few weeks.

We bought two booklets for our research collection. I’m really impatient for their arrival. They’re both by the same Brethren author. The exclusive Brethren sit at the periphery of our research. I suspect they have more of a place in the 1871-76 period than we have suspected. I’m not really focused on that yet. It’s just an educated guess. But when relevant tracts and booklets show up at auction, I bid on them if they aren’t too expensive. This pair was originally listed at a very high price. No one bid. The seller dropped the price to 9.99 and we were the only bidders. They are exceptionally rare items. I’m pleased.

The blue-house fairy is gone for now. Lots of things have happened, not all of them pleasant. On the funny side, the male got himself stuck in a canning jar. I have some old 1858 Mason’s patent jars on a shelf. He and his mate were sitting up there. (I still have trouble understanding their high-squeaky voices, but I’m fairly certain that she was telling him off for something. She’s getting cranky as her due date approaches.) He was sitting on the edge of a wide mouth jar; she took a swipe at him; he leaned backwards and fell in. Because he landed on his back, he couldn’t right himself. She panicked, squealing loudly, scolded him some more, and finally flew down to get me to help. That little female is one tough cookie.

I rescued him, of course, sliding him out of the jar onto the kitchen counter. He sat on the edge and pouted for a good hour. There’s danger afoot in the fairy world. I’m afraid I’m at the center of it. I have a major decision to make soon.

Noor Inayat Khan - One of my Heroes

New Era-Gleaner (New York) April 16, 1885

The Old Dudes and Words

It started with a word. Things like this usually do. My writing partner sent me a roughed out intro for what is supposed to be chapter two but will probably end up being chapter three. It started with this sentence: “When Russell insinuated himself into the meeting at Quincy Hall, he started on a path that would lead to an examination of the three principal strands of prophetic thought.”

I took his work which was part outline and part rough draft, added to it and sent it back. The first sentence did not concern me. As he used it, “insinuate” means to introduce slowly or gradually. I think the word fits because he seems to have entered a meeting in progress. I’m pretty sure he didn’t fling the door back and stomp down the isle to a chair. After I’ve added my bits I email it back and we fire up the cell phones and discuss it. He says to post part of it to our history blog, which I do.

Enter stage left one of my favorite blog readers. He thumbs his dictionary (Okay … so he being a tech savvy old guy, he may have used one of the online dictionaries. But being old-guyish, he probably used one of those paper things …) and has an “ah ha” moment. He writes to me saying:

“It’s only a question of semantics and style, but I just wonder if "insinuated" could be open to slight misunderstanding? My dictionary defines insinuate as to maneuver oneself into a position of favor or office by subtle manipulation. It has a negative connotation. Did you mean that? And being strictly historical and pedantic, did not CTR's position of favor or office, however obtained, come from his own independent study group - not from the Age to Come congregation at Quincy Hall?”

Ah! The wonders of multiple definitions. … Now I don’t address this. I did not write the offending sentence. Old Dude writing partner did. So I write back: “Why do you always assume that I wrote the bits you don't like? I've forwarded this to Bruce, since the sentence is his.” As I hit send, I snicker, muttering “Let the tease begin.”

Old guy probably wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose. He is now suffering angst. He writes back: “I did think afterwards that, although posted by you, it sounded like Bruce - and I should have cc'd him with the email - sorry - please don't take it personally. I like most of what you both write - honest!”

This, dear hearts, is too good to pass up. I write: “What's this ‘most’ stuff?” To this he replies: “Ermm - nearly all - well, virtually all, well practically all...waves white flag and retires for the night...”

Who says historians have no sense of humor. … So I pass all this on to my writing partner and we debate the sentence. I suggest a neutral word like “entered.” He squints at me from his chair (I’ve driven up to his house) and says in educated, considered tones: “We could use slithered.” I spilled hot coffee on myself.

“Yes, we could,” I say. “Or oozed. Oozed is a good word. I like ooz.”

Now I’m noted for my cranky refutations of nonsense usually in a footnote. Pixies can be academically cranky. So … WP sends me a section for another chapter. Sample? Read on …

“Opposition writers, particularly former adherents, often seek in Russell’s faults justification for their disaffection. This is problematic behavior, leading to wild speculation being accepted as fact. If one asks why such justification is needed, a blank stare and prolonged embarrassment often follow. That in turn is followed by an indignant response. But if one no longer believes Watchtower doctrine, is justification needed? The roots of these uncritical and sensationalized presentations sometimes rest in a rejection of strict behavior standards. Again, one might ask if justification is needed, and if it is needed should it lead to a sensationalized, falsified record? If justification is needed, is not it sufficient to say, “I don’t want to live by these standards”? At best criticisms from former adherents undermine the exaggerated claims made by some of Russell’s admirers.

“Some claims are manufactured out if the fevered imagination of those who lack a passing acquaintance with the principles of logic, who lack any appreciation for research and evidential standards, or for whom attacking their former religion is a hobby to be pursued even at the cost of historical verity. Two of these pseudo-historians write through a drug-induced haze that fosters in them a belief that they are immensely clever. Alas, this is a mistaken belief. Those who parrot them uncritically are either lazy or gullible – perhaps they are both.”

Now that “drug-induced haze” bit will probably go. I’m sure it was fun to write though. And it is true. You can find web postings by these two where they admit the drug use. … But it will probably go. … And yes, it produced a reaction when I posted it on the blog. I’m not going to tease over this one. … I’ve teased old guys enough. Next in line is my pet knobby kneed Scot, as soon as I stop running to the potty to be sick.

Well ... I'm not dead ...

Sure feel close to it though ... Fever, aches, ear aches, bad attitude, groans, ithcy nose. Yup, I'm sufferin'. Where IS all the sympathy?

On the home front, I've been cajoled, begged, blackmailed ("your students have been blessed by your teaching") into changing my mind about quitting the school district. I've relented in part. I'm going to continue to teach but with half the load I carry now. Bribing me with a fancy certificate didn't work. It was the "I'm sorry I'm a jerk I was born that way" apology from the principal that did it.

If I feel better later today, I'll tell you more about my adventures with the fairies. Right now, I'll tell you this, though it's out of place in the story. The little female hid in my shoulder-length hair when I went junk shopping with my aunt. I always check the "wares" section for something nice. Usually it's all junk. When I passed the soap dishes she went into a jumping up and down frenzie. One of them was shaped like an old fashioned bathtub. Just her size. I bought it. She soaks her pregnant self in that miniature tub. I sympathize. I've been there.

Anyway, more about that later.

Right now (when I'm not posting this or running to the bathroom to do what one with the ick must do) I'm finally writing up all our notes on American Literalism. I'm trying to make a fairly complex subject as simple as possible. Our first go at this was just awful. We've debated it, done more research, debated it some more. We've discussed where this fits in our outline. It's enough to make my writing partner lose more hair, which he is rapidly doing. Soon enough I'll be taking a chamois cloth with me when I drive up there ... just to polish his bald pate.

What ever else you think about him ...

he liked pixies. ...



I wouldn't be me if he hadn't.

Old Stuff

I keep my old pamphlets and booklets in archival sleeves. I just finished filling another three-ring binder with the odd bits I've purchased recently.

He's the list:

John Thomas Duffield: Discourse on the Second Advent, a Discourse Delivered at the Synod of New Jersey, in the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth, N.J., October 16, 1866.

G. S. Faber: Napoleon III: The Man of Prophecy, 1865.

The Present Shame and Future Glory of the House of Israel, 1866.

J. N. Darby: The Dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven, no date but c. 1860.

Bishop Hopkins on the Prediction of the Second Advent in 1843, 1843.

William N. Pile: Six Lectures on the Bible and How to Study It, 1897.

N. Wilson: Prophetic Destiny of Russia, England, Persia, Africa, and the Jews, 1878.

Mystery, Suspense ... Oreos!

I’ve read and re-read a single page document dated February 27, 1896. It’s a bill of sale. The terms are vague. A store and all its fixtures are sold together with additions to the structure. It’s an odd document, but not really unusual in contents. It comes from an era when one could own a building but not the land under it.

It is strange for what is omitted. The dollar amount is omitted. I’m not certain why. All it says is that the sale price was paid in cash and notes. My pixie-historian’s sense tells me that there is more here than meets the eye. Lacking further evidence, there is no way to pursue this.

This is a historian’s puzzle. Some of these puzzles cannot be resolved. There may, in fact, be no puzzle at all. I’ve read thousands of words written by the man who crafted this document. He is vague even when appearing to be specific. He dates things to an approximation. He writes of about this year or that. He speaks of things happening near that time or this. He deals in vagueness, and he does it for no apparent reason. So this may be nothing more than additional vagueness.

I don’t think this document covers any great sins. I don’t mean that at all. At least I don’t think I mean that. I feel as if I am missing something here. I wish I knew what it is. I’d post the paper here, but I don’t have permission to publish it on an open blog.

I need an Oreo.

The Smell of Silver Polish

Such a day … such a nasty day. The weather is bad; it’s windy and overcast and on the cold side. But, that’s not why this is a nasty day. No indeed it is not. This house was built in early 1940s, and at one point it was divided in two. When I inherited it, we restored it to single dwelling status, but we left the heating system intact, mostly. We left the two old furnaces in place as back-up for the heat pump system. They provide the fans for circulation. Cost was a factor. Replacing the two old furnaces with a single new unit was enormously expensive. To balance the system, we have to keep the double doors between what used to be two dwellings closed. It’s much easier to remind a gaggle of girls to shut the doors than it is to fund a new furnace. Besides, Knobby Knees assures me that these old (read antique) American made furnaces are better than what comes out of Mexico these days.

The fan motor died. Four hundred and thirty dollars later, it’s working again. This was not fun at all. I had to use property tax money to fund the furnace. Now I have to make up the tax money out of household money. Dang it! Of course the old motor was almost as old as I am, and it owed nothing to no one.

So … bad enough, huh? But pixies are compulsive reorganizers. I decided to move my biggest bookcase … by myself. Result is a four inch long slice in my arm.

Observation 1: P51s are still hot, and Richard Candelaria is one of my heroes.

I need a pie safe, one with a lock and key. I’ll have to bake more than I planned because they keep disappearing. Everyone’s innocent, of course, even if every last one of them including knobby knees has pumpkin breath.

Observation 2: I need a butler who loves the smell of silver polish.

Such tempers - Insulting a soldier and result - 1847

Tortured Grammar, Incest and Cumbrous Lawsuits - From a letter to the editor August 28, 1847

From Widdershins to Harry

My life with fairies - No. 2

You have to understand that there are several kinds of small fae. Some of them look very human, and, aside from their size and wings could pass for human. These have considerable human genetics. They’re usually attractive little things. They know it and strut it, but they’ll also gouge your eyes out and eat them for desert. Carry a sword, and never date one.

The two that have adopted us are not of that sort. They’re human looking after a fashion, but there is so much of “other” in them that you’d never mistake them for anything related to pixie or larger human. They tend to be shades of brown, though emotion will change their coloration. Their heads are very narrow; the eyes large and black; their lips are thin, their teeth sharp and pointy. They have, as do all fairies, considerable attitude.

There are smaller fae than these, but they’re hard to see and can do little damage because of their size. Even other fairies tend to ignore the smallest of the fae. The pair that has moved in on us is from a group treated as low class. Larger fairies alternately abuse them, teat them as pets, slaves or a ready food source. They lead a hard life. One would suppose that they would band together for their own protection, but they have no real unity and often abuse their own. That’s why I ended up being the … what? Damn it! Sometimes I feel as if I’m their mother or something.

I found them backed up against a wall by others of their kind who wanted the female. I’d have left that alone, except the male was protecting her. That’s unheard of. So, I pulled one off by his wings, (They screech when you do that.) pinned one to the wall with my sword, and batted three or four away. The two I rescued took refuge in my hair, and I’m stuck with them.

They treat our house as if it were an amusement park. I’ve had to stop them from swimming in the potty. The male thinks jumping up and down on the flush lever is true fun. If they had their own way, I’d have no privacy. And my dear Lord! The male flirts with anything female, even dolls.

Because their voice is high-pitched they’re hard to understand. My youngest seems to understand them best and translates for them. They wanted to sleep on my pillow. I forbade that in very plain terms, but they snuck under the bedroom door. Every time I moved one or the other of them scolded me. Finally – at my husband’s suggestion (Let’s call that ‘insistence’) - I shooed them out of the bedroom. Oh my soul! Have you ever seen a fairy pout? I thought pixies could pout. …

My youngest solved that problem by shoving one of her dolls out of a doll bed and giving it to them. I remind her that they aren’t our sort and that fairies of all sizes are dangerous. She just smiled and said, “Oh they won’t hurt me.” I’m not sure where she gets her confidence, but they treat her as if she were a goddess. This may have to do with the mirror and brush incident.

They were flying around my head while I was brushing out my hair. The female (I usually call her Mary. I can’t pronounce her slithery, oily name.) ran her fingers through her hair. Her unhappiness was apparent. I ignored it. They have poor hygiene and probably never comb their hair. The large fairies are vain, but the little ones are just umm natural may be a good word for it. It never occurred to me that given their social status among their own kind, they probably never had the opportunity to care for themselves past an elementary level.

Anastasia saw this through educated eyes. They’re doll size. If you have a doll, you comb its hair. Right? So she coaxed them into her bedroom and combed out the little thing's hair with a miniature doll comb. This sent them into raptures of delight. (I read that phrase in an old novel once.) Putting nail polish on the little fairy’s toes and fingernails was a challenge. A magnifying glass and water color brush did the trick.

Now yesterday morning, early, way-way early Katarina, daughter four, shook me awake. She stood beside my bed, blurry eyed and popping those tiny marshmallows in her mouth. The two fae stood on her shoulder rattling off something in their squeaky voices so swiftly that I couldn’t understand it at all.

“What?” I asked. “And why are you eating marshmallows at four am?”

“They threw them at me,” she said. It sounded rational, but in this house one never knows.

“Huh?”

“They say that the blue house has fairies. Bad ones.”

“The blue house is vacant. Go back to bed.”

“Someone moved in this morning. I mean yesterday morning. You were sleeping.”

I held out my hand and the female landed on it. “Talk slowly,” I said. “What’s going on.”

“Fay-eer-ee,” she said. She gestured in a way typical of someone indicating large size. She made a knife cutting gesture up her belly and then a chewing gesture. This was bad.

Pixies can smell fairies. Our house smelled of these two, though my knobby-kneed Scot couldn’t smell them. You have to be pixie to have a nose that sensitive. So … what to do?

I grabbed my coat and slippers, and headed out the door. The two little ones followed. I figured we were safe that time of day, but I took my sword in hand and hoped the police weren’t patrolling our street. I didn’t want to explain an eighteen inch blade engraved with silver-chased phrases.

The blue house is six houses down from us. It’s been vacant for seven months. It wasn’t vacant anymore. And, yes, it smells of fairy. Not little fairy, but the big kind. I’ve killed my share of them, but it’s not easy and it’s not at all pleasant. It is, however, more than a little satisfying to bring down a rogue fairy and watch the blue iridescence creep over their bodies. It’s the mark of death and decay in fairy kind.

Old News

Amazing things turn up when you're looking for something else. Take, for instance, this news article from the Markdale, Ontario, Standard of September 6, 1883:

Pixie Children, Vinegar, and Small Fairies.

Daughter 5, talking about Daughter 1: “Don’t talk to her! She’s cranky. I think she’s allergic to herself.”

Daughter 3 comes into kitchen. She is sipping her peach flavored water. I am cooking. She puts her water on the counter next to my bottle of white vinegar. Result is one startled pixie child.

I’m being followed by fairies. … This could be bad.

I’m overwhelmed with work.

I have written the intro part to one chapter six times and junked it as many times. I need to make the complex seem simple, not more complex than it is.

I rescued a pair of small fae. They’ve attached themselves to me. It reminds me of the time when I tutored a clueless young woman with Siamese cats. I loathe cats. They thought I was their personal chair.

I found one of the small fae bathing in my tea water. They have no manners.

The female is pregnant. I hope it’s not twins. I don’t know what I’ll do with four of these creatures. She likes coffee. If I don’t watch her every minute she hangs on to the side of my coffee cup and sips. She almost fell in once. I don’t share my coffee with small fae – not willingly anyway.

They’re sitting on top of my monitor as I type. I won’t tell you what they’re doing. We don’t discuss that in polite company. Shameless creatures!

They sit on my shoulder when we go out, hiding in my hair. It’s very disconcerting. I tried losing them in a candy store. They love chocolate, but apparently they like me more.

House training the small fae is a challenge. It’s not as though you can paper train them. They don’t like litter boxes. They do like African Violets. It seems to work for the violets too.

Their voices are very high pitched, so they’re hard to understand. I haven’t figured out their names. More or less I just call them what ever comes to mind. They always know I mean them.

They have very sharp teeth.

When the male is angry or upset he turns a delightful shade of purple.

Their base skin color is a dark mahogany brown.

They invite their friends over, but I make them have their parties in the back yard. I will not have a house full of high on chocolate fairies bouncing off walls and doing lord knows what embarrassing thing!

My life was complicated enough … though we haven’t had any mice in the neighborhood since they adopted me. The squirrels are terrified of the female, but I think the huge gray squirrel and the male are drinking buddies. Here is a good place to note that root beer may be non-alcoholic soda fit for children, but it will leave a small fae loopy for two days.

I’m thinkin’ I will have to keep notes and submit them to the royal society for the preservation of fae, crypto-critters and trolls.

Fame - Guest Post from Occasional R.

FAME

The hit film and subsequent TV series FAME spawned a huge disco hit in 1980 – unsurprisingly entitled “Fame”. The lyrics included the words: “I’m going to live forever, Baby remember my name”.

I wonder how many readers of this blog can name the singer who had the original hit. If you are a child of the eighties you might manage it – Irene Cara actually. But if you didn’t give the answer before the buzzer went, the words “Baby remember my name” take on a certain irony.

The words of the song reflect a common human desire to want to be remembered – by someone – be it family or friends. And for others a bit more ambitious, the desire to even leave some kind of mark on “civilization”.

Looking back a century or more, the past masters at perpetuating their own memories had to be the Victorians in Britain. One only has to visit a 19th century municipal cemetery to see some amazing memorials to “the great and the good” of Victorian society. It was put rather nicely by a newspaper columnist – if you can’t take it with you, at least you can show the rabble you once had it!

However, this yearning for terra firma immortality can be quite useful to others if their hobby is family history. Unless your ancestors were all serfs or ag labs (agricultural laborers), they often strived to leave their mark in some way. And even the ag labs left interesting records – if only parish payments for tribes of children born out of wedlock.

A branch of my wife’s family came from a small town we will call G. It is actually quite a famous place today, and it used to have a huge second-hand bookshop where I picked up stacks of material on the lunatic fringe of Adventism. But, I digress. Back in the early Victorian era, it was a small market town, and the key ancestor, JH, was mayor several times over. Looking at it objectively today, it was “big fish in small pond” syndrome, or as H G Wells would describe it, “in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is King”.

Trawling through the Town Hall archives we came into the era of photography, and there we found a picture of JH – a pompous gentleman, extremely stout, posing by a globe, and so very pleased with himself. When he died, the papers gave a suitable eulogy, and a team of black horses pulled the hearse down the main street. Although his grave – discovered while tramping around the cemetery in the rain - was not the grandest by far. Perhaps his descendants had other uses for his money.

But while alive, JH did all he could to perpetuate his own memory. In his own honor, he donated to the town an ornamental drinking fountain. The ornate relief depicted a scene from the Gospel of John, chapter 4 – Jesus and the woman at the well at Sychar. Jesus talked of living water as a metaphor for everlasting life, and the woman – perhaps not the sharpest knife in the drawer – put the two together and came up with everlasting water...

The inscription below the image dwelt on JH’s beneficence and mayoral accomplishments.

Old newspapers showed that JH personally chose where his memorial should be installed –

directly in front of the gas works, as a fitting symbol of Victorian enterprise and progress.

Of course, as always, time moved on. The gas works ceased to be glamorous; they became the back end of town, and ultimately were abandoned and demolished. The frontage of JH’s fountain then languished as scrap metal in the corner of the council yard until an enterprising businesswoman with an eye to local history rescued it. By sheer chance we stayed in one of her properties for a vacation some years ago and an idle conversation rescued the subject. The big question had been what on earth were they going to do with it?

With a bit of lateral thinking, the council decided that it could go in the local bus station, fixed to the wall of the rather run down public toilets (or as US readers might prefer, rest rooms. However, in Britain, public toilets are not a place you would want to rest!)

So to this day, if you visit the town of G, JH’s proud monument to himself is firmly affixed to the wall of the local public conveniences. To our shame, we actually have a nice shiny photograph in our album of irreverent descendants pulling faces in front of it. (In the UK the technical term is “gurning”).

So what was that whirring sound we could hear? Probably JH spinning.

What was it that an ancient writer in Ecclesiastes wrote? – Fame? Ah – sorry Irene – Vanity of Vanities – all is Vanity.