Abenaki

For some reason, I find myself fascinated with the word Abenaki... maybe it is because I find it fun to say out loud. Or -- maybe it is because I think my land may be haunted by members of traveling Abenaki pushed west by European settlers of long ago. They began to intermingle with other Native American tribes of this region by that point in time. Either way -- language has always been a personal interest. I have personal faves. A case in point -- my favorite French word is parapluie. When you say it out loud the "r" sort of catches in the back of your throat.  Again -- so fun to say out loud -- much preferable to the word in English -- umbrella -- although there is something to be said for that word as well. 

American English seems to have borrowed words from all over the place. Around here -- many words have come from the languages of Native Americans -- like the word Succotash, one of my Mom's personal faves -- the food, not the word.  The word actually comes from the Narragansett Indian word msickquatash which means boiled corn. Say that five times real fast. Are you bored yet?

It is fun to know though that other languages have borrowed from us as we have from them.  Popular in France today is the French word "le weekend".  Obviously we share well. Good to know. From time to time, some of you, knowing how I am about words, have shared your favorites with me as well.  Thank you for that. And now -- moving a bit awkwardly from that idea to my most important idea of the day....

Your sharing with me is just one of the many things I am thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.  I am blessed with family and friends, and then there are the many seemingly small, but yet important, things and moments ... and ... so much more.  I am Thankful for all my blessings ... almost overwhelming thankful.  Happy Thanksgiving to all! So much for which to be thankful. You included.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

 

I can't even...

The other day I was scrolling through my news feed on Facebook with the sound muted as is often the case, and I ran across an ad of some sort with a young woman selling an as yet to be determined something. Her appearance made me stop, think carefully, and wonder.  It was her startling makeup. I cannot remember what she was talking about if I even knew.  I may not have even figured it out because … #1 I was trying to read her lips, and #2 I was mesmerized by her face.  She was a lovely young woman, but her make-up was so thick I had to fight the tendency to try to wipe/scrape some it off through the monitor screen. I found myself reaching for a Kleenex and wishing I had longer finger nails. Her skin must have been suffocating under the weight of it all.  But – it went beyond that.

Are you familiar?  Totally blemish free and perfectly highlighted with bronzer, lips lined with a darker shade than that of the actual lipstick color ....  All that is fine, I guess – if you like that sort of unnatural and too perfect look, but… it was the eyebrows that gave me pause.  I simply could not get my eyes off the eyebrows.  They were a wide gray smudge on top of her heavily tweezed actual brows (you could easily see her real ones underneath the shaded area).  It was like she was going for the Brook Shields’ heavy brow look, but tying to create “the look” with a faded, wide tipped magic marker. Each brow was perfectly shaped as if a stencil was employed.  I can’t even…. 

Call me whatever, but it made me think of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes in some distorted way. Whoever convinced this darling young woman that those brows would look natural or even good? Doesn’t she realize that the extreme can detract from the message she wants to deliver? It also made me think of women today, who wear stupid shoes and have no idea that they look ridiculous.  I am talking about those women you see on TV who must have people help them walk in their stylish footwear. It is not just that some shoes are not to my personal taste; it is more. It is in the same category of icky as are some nose rings that, from the side, look like there is a large booger hanging from the "piercee's" nose. Oh - I have to stop now.  It is nuts.   

 #old fart again

 

Shoulder Companions

Years ago, I come across the idea of the hero’s journey. You can find this idea all over the place… in biblical stories like Moses wandering for 40 years in the desert or Daniel in the lions’ den. Journeys such as these also form the plots of a lot of fiction and nonfiction as well as in the story lines of movies and tv shows. My idea is that you can also see this hero's journey in the quiet and maybe not so quiet struggles of the world and of all individual people as well. I used to think of it as I watched students getting themselves to school every single day in spite of serious "complications" at home and/or surrounding them. These journeys are complicated - the lines and barriers are not always clearly defined or easily managed.

Anyway -- the idea of the hero’s journey is that a person enters into a period of trial that involves struggle – physical, mental or emotional. Throughout the journey, the individual learns lessons -hopefully coming out at the end as a better person. These quests do not always have a happy ending though and sometimes it is difficult - or even seemingly impossible - to define goals or to discover which path(s) to take. Choices that once seem defined become blurred. The struggles take on different characteristics – sometimes involving the ways of the world or other people in it. Differences in cultures, beliefs, traditions may blur or overlap in complicated ways.

People finding their way through a pandemic strike me as being on a hero’s journey. Hopefully we have all learned positive lessons from the experience including important lessons about ourselves and the world we live in.

People moving through periods of grief and change are on a journey as well. Hopefully they will find their way and be stronger and perhaps even more compassionate in some way in the end. (Sometimes it is hard/seemingly impossible to find the positive at times like these.)

Focus now on Americans in the week of an important election. The results are still coming in as I write. We as Americans are finding our way through difficult times. We are on a journey. We need to make the best of it and learn. Unlike many in the world, we do have a say in how we will come out at the end of the journey. Hopefully we will begin to work together and in strength continue on our way. Americans are a strong people.  

I do believe that everyone has an important journey - not just heroes … that perhaps just living is in some way heroic at times. Choices become magnified again and again. So do consequences.  Others believe that all human struggles are heroic and that all human beings have hero potential. Either way – we all have challenges ahead. Hopefully we, as Americans, can stand shoulder to shoulder and face them together.  Americans are known to be a strong, generous people who cherish their hard won freedoms. We understand differences of opinion and ways of doing things.  Our country is a melting pot in the best sense of the term. We need to step up and out of the complicated and divisive political muck of the times – and sort it out together as people who cherish freedoms. We can do this. We can be “shoulder companions” and move forward to a better and stronger America, a tolerant America that values all Americans. 

Now is another time to focus on what we all have in common rather than on differences we may have or may have had. We are all in this together.

Persnickety...

 

Every once in a great while I have the outside of my windows professionally cleaned. I am persnickety about windows in general.  I have no problem keeping the inside all sparkly, but dragging a ladder around outside and the ups and downs that entails is not fun… or a good idea at this stage of the game. As for that ladder -- I once spent an entire year looking for it. It turned up missing shortly after I missed the bottom step and found myself on the floor of the garage taking inventory of every bone in my body. I accused both my children and their spouses of hiding it from me. Good thing they have good senses of humor and are kind and patient.  I found the ladder in my barn - eventually.  I sort of remember putting it there, but have no idea what I was thinking when I did that. It might have been related to that episode in the garage when doing windows. That would make sense. I sometimes do.

Anyway …  I had the windows done this past week and this may be a record – it did not rain immediately after as is usually does. The rains that hit the windows enough to spot them came three days later… a new record in the duration of exterior window cleanliness.

If, by the way, you still do the outside of your windows yourself, I discovered by experimenting on a whim one time, that if you put windshield washer “stuff” into a spray bottle, it works exceedingly well to eliminate all grit and spots on the outside of windows. The rain-x variety will actually keep windows from spotting. I do not recommend it for inside as it smells like something that you want to hold your breath while using. 

So … as we in Northwest Pennsylvania begin to batten down the hatches in preparation for the long winter months, I have checked the windows off the list. Some may suggest that it would have been smarter to wait until Spring, but around here, one tends to look outside from inside for a lot of months in a row.  Who really cares about clean windows in the nice weather of the summer which only lasts a couple of months anyway. Not me. Summer here is a very brief time period, a short number of days and …  I am, most often, not inside to look out or to even notice window “sparkliness".