What's In a Name?

Speaking of private languages, as we were in Joe’s blog, those outside a family are often puzzled or intrigued by the nicknames it uses. For example, some family members refer to me as “Bat Poo,” which I admit sounds inexplicably insulting to outsiders, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with small flying mammals or their guano (emphasis is on the second syllable); it’s my sister’s age-two mispronunciation of her nickname for me (I will only make matters worse by revealing it) and my dad has cherished it for half a century to the point that it’s become one of my main family nicknames. I don’t even notice it, because anything you say or hear often enough tends to lose its strangeness as well as any associated reaction, emotion or power (“Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself,” Hermione tells Lucius Malfoy). I think this may explain the perception gap between those who keep their daily conversations rated G and those whose stockpile of adjectives is limited to the "f" word and two or three others; the former are offended by the latter and the latter wonder what the @#$%’s the big deal?

My other family nickname is Tune, same type of origin, infinitely more palatable; but feeling sure of the affection that accompanies its use, I don’t have enough of the old Hun in me to insist that my family members stop using whichever nickname they prefer.

Maybe I could pretend it’s my Star Wars name: “Empress BhatPoo K’asRol” or something. My real Star Wars name, according to one of many formulae out there (http://www.gorskys.com.au/active/star-wars-name.php), is BaiKa ReNew, which I think is too cool for anything, especially me. Unfortunately I was mentally unable to follow the Star Wars movies past number 3 (I’m numbering them chronologically, modern Earth time; I can’t even follow the numbering sequence the fans use). I spent almost the entire viewing time of number 4 asking, “Huh? Who’s that? Didn’t he – isn’t she – wasn’t that--?” until I noticed my hosts had stopped answering me and were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine which one got to finish the movie in peace while the other took me outside and beat me senseless.

I can’t blame my family for the nickname because I’ve done the same with my own kids, thank me for not boring you with the details, and it’s extended to the grandchild generation. On the other hand, this is a blog, and if blogs have any raison d’etre, one could definitely be to give us the ability to bore other people with details we’d be too embarrassed to gas on about in face-to-face conversation:

Nickname list for kids and grandkids– it’s ever-expanding. Principal daily-use nickname is in bold:
Haley: Ha-way, Ah-way, Haydoo, Doo, Ponzie Gwynne, Gweebee, Gwitz, Narley Horkdyke (from a mass-mailing label gone hideously wrong for which we have never stopped thanking the gods of poor typing/scanning)
Sam: Manther, Mandy, Mandela, Mamfer, Andy, Sandy, Andy-Mandy-Candy, Amferler, Taymo, Sammela Grace, Samantha Gump
Sarah: Sally, Sal, Gumby, Saranna, Pie-Face, Sloogie
And my older granddaughter Bailey has been Pintett since her birth, meaning Princess of the Universe, “princess” being too ordinary a pronunciation to be worthy of her All High Pintetterness. I think we got it from one of Louisa May Alcott’s books. Also Pintetter, Monkey, Monkey Poops, Boo-ful, Foo, Foof, Foofy.
Younger granddaughter Sophia is Phia, Ham (she’s Virginia-baked, sugar-cured, fat and pink and sweet), Hammie, UberBaby, (stood up at six months and walked at seven, and is physically stronger than most of the adults in her life), Goblin Baby (ears have to be seen to be believed, where did this creature come from?). Her parents' favored nicknames are Phion the Pion and Kokl-Meml.

I’ve never read anything about the psychology of nicknames but surely it has something to do with possession or intimacy: to name is to claim – which explains why having someone bestow a nickname on you can feel warm and comfortable or unaccountably invasive. After I had been accepted into the program here, and before I left Holt, some of my dear colleagues there took to calling me “Dr. K.” which made me laugh but also made me feel that they were proud and had faith in me to get up here and do this thing.

Welcome to My World 

Little Slice of Heaven 

The Bedtime Canon

I find myself reading so much these days – books and articles directly connected with courses make up a fair percentage, but there’s also the Call of the Stacks: being in and out of the library so much, I can’t help looking up books I’ve either “always” wanted to read or have recently heard about and want to investigate. Sometimes just walking down the stacks, I'll feel a tug and see a title that wants a ride home with me. Then there’s the New Book section that beckons every time I walk in: display shelves running the length of the lobby with about 100 brand-new offerings on every conceivable topic. I haven’t made it all the way across without stopping yet. I’ve decided that if I reach the Promised Land it will have a similar New Book section with comfy sofas and ottomans and perfect lighting, and behind that the Cosmic Secondhand Bookstore where I have unlimited credit.

But I found that reading a new book at bedtime kept me too wired to sleep. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t read myself to sleep, but not with new books; I cycle a particular list of books over and over for bedtime reading. They are like settling down to reminisce with family, or like being read to by your mom. They are known quantities (though I often see new elements or have new insights as I get older) that I have been rereading for decades. I also have to admit they have shaped who I am – my values, my sense of humor, my perception of the world and my fellow humans.

In no particular order:

Tolkien's Hobbit and his Trilogy
Poldark Saga (7 books)
Narnia Chronicles
All of Betty MacDonald’s books (4 for adults, 5 juveniles); 2 of her sister Mary’s books
The Bastables (3) and The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series (3)
Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s diaries and letters (5 volumes)
James Herriot’s Vet series (5 books)
Various Robert Heinlein novels (by no means all of them)
Computer Connection and The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Little House series by Laura Ingalls (8 books)
Anne of Green Gables
. . and assorted single volumes such as Jane Eyre, Karen and With Love from Karen, The Duchess of Duke Street, Young ‘Un, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Stay Me O Comfort Me (M.F.K. Fisher), The Good Earth, Pavilion of Women, and Imperial Woman by Pearl Buck, autobiographies by such diverse individuals as Agatha Christie, Zora Neale Hurston, Jill Ireland (2) Isaac Asimov (4) . . . and most recent newcomers, the Harry Potter series, as well as several others not leaping to mind at the moment.

Apart from Jane Eyre, none would be considered a classic in the pure literature canon (which is just those books being taught at any given time, some of which I'd read only at gun-or-grade point), though most are respected in other contexts. But whatever anyone else thinks of them, I'll stick by these books because for whatever reason(s) they resonated with me at one time, they stood the test of time and rereading - in short, they've become old friends. Some were in my parents’ library and some I happened across as a young woman; some are fairly recent editions, like the M. F. K. Fisher -- one of the many happy discoveries I owe to The New Yorker – I met her by way of her obituary therein. I also meandered into the unaccountably entertaining and unbelievably earthy Three Squirt Dog that way -- Pauline Kael had written a review that captured my attention and proved, not that it needed proving, that the lady knew of what she spoke, be it film or books.

Back to Academentia: Summer '05, Part the First

The first six-week session of summer is over. I just plain enjoyed French in addition to making progress in it. But I found the noise level of the undergrads a bit disconcerting. They were born in a multifeed, sensory-overload environment and handle any amount of what I’d call distraction without turning a hair, whereas the milieu I grew up in required silence for concentration and one focal point at any given time. They don’t modulate their voices at all no matter what’s going on around them, so that oftentimes we had ten normal-or-louder conversations going on at once in the classroom. My fifty-two-year-old auditory equipment wasn’t up to the challenge of sorting out the professor’s voice in what seemed to me a confusing cacophony.

I feel certain I could pass the reading exam at this point but I still plan to take Reading and Conversation in the fall, and take the exam afterwards; then in the spring perhaps take the Latin reading exam course.

Victorian Studies was fantastic; taught by John Fenstermaker, who in his graduate days was research assistant to Richard Altick, one of the previous generation’s preeminent Victorian scholars and author or editor of a dozen books that still serve as unique core resources in Victorian Studies. And together they wrote The Art of Literary Research. I’m beyond impressed! I wrote papers on Scrooge and the spirit of Carlyle’s Past and Present, the question of Purity in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Victorian social issues in Jane Eyre.

But the pressing question: what sank my sidebar?? So far no answers from Blogger.

Haley: Part Poet, Part Muppet. She’s a Moet. Or Poppet.

She wasn’t hiding in the canebrakes when the imagination was passed out. Brill writer, excellent student (now that she’s in college), naturally gifted singer, actress and dancer, she has an uncanny instinct for physical humor. Watching her turn a song from the radio into a comedy act that renders me completely helpless with laughter, I swear I must have had a drunken liaison with Kermit the Frog some forgotten night about 28 years ago.

Haley’s the type of person who walks into my office, declaiming intensely, “Dying is an art; I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell . . .” or “Ohhhh, Baudelaire, you’ve made worm’s meat of me!” or a quote from Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies while all around her people fall silent and I clear my throat and ask how her day has been.

Life is rarely serene around Haley; she was the one who always rushed in and dropped a large-scale fission device on me while I was asleep, falling asleep, or hoping to start falling asleep. She might just as well have kicked the door in and sprayed me with a firehose because from that point on I was permanently awake.

Knock knock knock OPEN
“Something happened to the car. Do you want to hear about it now or in the morning?”

Knock knock knockknockknockknock OPEN
“Sam got married!” (Sam is her sister.)

Knock knock knock knockety knock OPEN
“When people throw up blood, is it bright red?”

I worked hard with her on understanding the principle that if there’s nothing I can do about a situation at 11 o’clock at night, for God’s sake at least let me deal with it in the morning, with a decent night’s sleep behind me. She did improve but I guess she didn’t think this covered breath fresheners, because not long after one of these discussions she came to my bedroom door, knocked briefly, and entered.

I was very well wound-down, in fact could see the Dreamland Express rounding the corner.

“Here, try this!” She held out a small semi-transparent plastic square that looked like an aqua tab of clear adhesive tape.

“I don’t want it. I’m going to sleep,” I mumbled, trying not to become fully conscious.

“Please, trust me!” so to get rid of her I stuck out my tongue and when I was a little girl going to Mass, I used to imagine what might happen if I were in a state of mortal sin but took Communion anyway, and now it was happening to me. A 50 kiloton explosion on every nerve on my tongue and the inside of my mouth. It took me about an hour to find all the pieces of my brain and fall asleep, but boy was my breath fresh just in case Patrick Stewart came in through the window and it wasn’t a dream after all.

Haley 

Sarah 

. . . But Then I Love Her Tiny Hands and Feet

The family quote for Sarah is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Sal (one of her nicknames) is the smallest and fiercest of the Three Weird Sisters. It is not a good idea to cross Sarah, and an even worse idea to wound anyone she cares about. To give you an idea: Sal, her sisters, and I were watching Disney’s Cinderella when it came to the part where the evil stepsisters, in a fit of jealousy, rip up the ball dress that the mice and birds sewed for her. When Cinderella collapsed in tears, Haley, Sam and I joined in with sniffs and throat-clearings and murmurs of sympathy.

From across the room, Sal’s voice, low and measured and full of deadliest intent:

“I’d go to the ball. Oh, yes.”

We could instantly picture the scene: a small exquisite girl in a pale blue satin dress, standing at the head of the ballroom’s stately staircase, with an Uzi in her elbow-length-gloved arms and bandoliers of bullets crossing her gown’s exquisite beaded bodice. And Sarah would do it, too. None of us doubted that.

A friend named Lisa once paid a visit to the girls’ elementary school and happened to walk by Sal’s kindergarten classroom. The teacher, Mrs. Jarvis, was reading to an attentive half-circle of little ones. Lisa looked for a bright red head but there was none. Then she spied Sal, outside the reading group, stretched out on the floor, her arms and legs splayed out wide, chin up, fast asleep. All that energy and sometimes she just burned out like a nova.

Mrs. Jarvis also taught Sarah in second grade and found her to be a never-ending source of delight. She asked the kids to write down their favorite foods and received lots of answers like speggety and peetza and hambrgerz. But Sarah had carefully lettered

S. Cargo

Mrs. J. loved that, but was pretty shaken when Sal turned in an assignment for which she had interviewed me. To the last question, “What is your mother’s most prized possession?” Sal had carefully written, in her new cursive script, “her boobs”. I was able to reassure Mrs. Jarvis that my answer had been “my books” and she looked mightily relieved.

Which reminds me of the time that Sal burst into my room, her face almost as red as her hair, to tell on her sister: “Mom! Sam’s speaking to me in cursive!”

This Can't Be Happening

Last year in Orlando we had our butts kicked over and over as we sat in the crosshairs of one major hurricane after another. Shortly after the first 'cane struck, Haley and I were driving around, staring at downed trees and signs and power lines, creeping through intersections with dead traffic lights, looking for someplace to buy gas and ice and water.

"I can't believe we are out searching for water to drink. How is this possible?" Haley wondered.

"Well, it's nothing people haven't had to do before, or are still having to do in other places, every day," I said. "Think of it this way: we're living like the people in 'Little House on the Prairie'. . . except we curse, and have AmEx."

So here I am in Tallahassee, feeling safe, and the FIRST storm of the season, Arlene, is heading RIGHT THIS WAY.

I would have been perfectly happy to let last year's hurricane season fade to a bad memory, but oh no.

I had taken on a ridiculous teaching load (4.5 courses in addition to my regular job) to help finance my move to Tally, telling myself that I could manage it if nothing went wrong. Then we got hit with three hurricanes. Oy!