Footloose and Fancy Free

At THIS time of the year????

Years and years and years ago, when I was a desk clerk in a psychiatric hospital at age 24, I discovered this is the time of the year when such institutions get their greatest influx of patients.  Just before Thanksgiving till sometime after Christmas.  The average stay on our open, ambulatory ward was 23 days.

Bill and I lived in a university town (from whence we both graduated) that first year of our marriage, and Mrs. Professor’s Wife, I soon discovered, was privy to this “influx” ritual every year.  She’d come in a total whack-job and, within hours, if not minutes, would prance around like she walked on streets of gold.

We all giggled, of course, because her rambunctious spirit lightened up the place.  I ‘spect some of the older staff were a bit envious of her, truth be told.  They watched the weight of the whole wide world slide off her shoulders during the holiday season.  How convenient!

But what I will never forget was how she’d abandon her shoes in the middle of the hallway at early morning’s whim.  I had a direct bee-line visual on them from my front desk.  She’d be nowhere in sight but it didn’t matter.  We all knew she was on an adventure somewhere, cheering up the other patients.

She gave a whole new meaning to footloose and fancy free!

And she taught me До свидания/do svidaniya (Russian for good-bye) as well as a word/phrase whose language I don’t know (Russian?  Hungarian?) and can only spell phonetically:  daw-pa-PAH-chin-yah.  With a twinkle in her eye, she said it meant “till we kiss again.”  She was old enough to be my grandma and it was I who wanted to take off my shoes.  It felt like holy ground.

These 44 years later, the light-hearted spirit of that lady remains as fresh and invigorating as though it were yesterday when she entered my life.  Her Hungarian heritage intrigued me because Bill’s distant line came from bakers there.  In fact, the traditional Christmas meal I still cook to this day is a Hungarian poor-man’s chicken paprikash (with homemade dumplings) my kids and grandson would die for right now, passed on to me by both Bill’s mom and aunt those many years ago.

Why she had to “commit” herself year after year, I’ll never know.  Was she expected to make more than chicken paprikash at home?  Did her professor husband hate seeing her shoes in the middle of the room?  Was he relieved when she was gone?  Did she have children who cared?

It doesn’t matter now, of course.  Nor do most of us have the luxury to get away from it all, for whatever reason, at this time of the year.  Maybe by now most of us don’t need to?  Maybe we’ve learned to cope and be and do and go.  All of it.  We’re the Wonder Women, of course.  Amazon Warrior Women taking charge of Life, no matter what.

Okay, then, maybe not.  But if all we do by now is kick off our shoes, at this certain age, and walk footloose and fancy free, I dare say we’ll make it through to the very end.  Right?

At this time of the year.  Yes!  

Our Shoppe Galery

While celebrating our weekends, and in the spirit of our global collaboration and community of support, we are featuring our personal art as 'Vision to Verb' notecards.

 

Our hope is that they'll inspire you to join with us in our support of KIVA - empowering people around the world with start-up business loans.

Forever Blowing Bubbles

The Bubble Man in Central Park, New York City

Once you discover this post is in fact about the Age of Aquarius, you have my full permission to roll your eyes and say “There she goes again!”

But do give me this.  After almost three weeks in America this past October during the government shutdown, hearing Obamacare this, Obamacare that, and what has this world come to with America spying on her allies, I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

The day we flew back to the Netherlands, we ate lunch with dear friends who are fit to be tied about personal and worldwide privacy and security invasions, and, quite honestly, are wanting to flee the country.  As though it happens only in America!

As I sat there listening to their obvious consternations, feeling helpless, I had one of those brain farts.

“We are living in the Age of Aquarius!” I began….

[hold that thought]

Astrological ages last approximately 2,000+ years each while the vernal equinox precesses clockwise through the twelve zodiac constellations.  Thus far we have tracked 6 astrological ages by major changes in the development of Earth's inhabitants…culturally, socially, politically…all the way back to BC 10,000.

The previous age was the Age of Pisces (the fish), from ca. BC 6 to AD 1994.  Pisces is about universal love, compassion, self-sacrifice, altruism, creativity, intuition and deep spirituality…as well as  deception and illusion.  It was the age of Monotheism, Spirituality, and the Fish...the age of Christianity and the effect of the Jesus-fish (Ichthys) on the entire world, for good and bad.

All astrological ages have a cycle of discovery, trial and error, progression, growth and resolution related to the traits of their individual zodiac signs.  Starting with the crucifixion of Jesus to everything that followed, including untold wars, revolutions and reformations, burnings at the stake, heresies, and sectarian hatreds, all in the name of Christ…you get the picture of why Universal Love had to climax the end of the Piscean Age.

Thus the logical segue to the Age of Aquarius:  universality, friendship, emotional detachment, individualism, invention, philanthropy, humanism, vision, enlightenment, intellect, originality, technology, change, freedom, science, quantum physics, String Theory, space.

And so?????

It means we've begun a new age of figuring out what we can and cannot do in a world small enough to fit in the palm of our hand!

It means we're ascertaining what controls and regulations are necessary every time we invent something new, especially related to the world-wide-web.

It means we have to befriend our enemies in order to coexist in one world!

It means we will probably find life on other planets.

And on the heels of our earth's worst "natural disaster" ever, killing over 3,600 people thus far, it means we're figuring out climate change on this planet, for its survival.

I don't mean to sound simplistic.  But instead of despairing, a bit of pragmatism helps me midst the craziness.  We need those right now (like my Atlanta friends) who hate the misuse of power.  Inequality.  Slavery and sex trafficking.  Invasion of privacy....

THIS is the time to "fix" it.  THIS is the age when it will happen.

Are we ready for this social awakening en masse?  Can we embrace the individual choice to make it happen?  One step, one person at a time.  Each doing our part.  Not pannicking.  Not despairing.  Believing all things.  Allowing Love to win, which surely was the lesson meant for the last age?

Of course, we can also blow bubbles between our spurts of human and technological awareness, right?  Why not!

Spell-Check

Years and years ago while married to Bill (for 21 years), he often told me I would be a good proofreader.  Seriously.  He would catch me circling (with red-ballpoint pen) any typo in whatever book or magazine I was reading at the time.  And he meant it as a compliment.

Today I’m doing well if I can complete my own sentences without spell-check, having become a bit of my mother.  The more languages she learned, the worse speller she became.

A month ago Petra wrote about the Charm of Mnenomics, remember?  When I read her post, I chuckled because I was already forming these thoughts after that quickie trip to Ireland two weeks earlier.

Look at that elegant, artistic font above from a book in the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin.   Don’t you wonder how those scribes of yore corrected typos without spell-check or white-out?!  Or did they?

Take MISSISSIPPI, as a mnemonic example.  I bet you learned to spell it as M-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-humpback, humpback-I.  HA!  It has a sing-song rhythm you could never forget.

To put me in my place, I remember terrible spelling snafus I made while growing up.  My name happens to be Virginia Louise but my family called me Bootsie for short (long story).  Somewhere along the line, when I obviously thought my powers of logic were exemplary, I decided the ‘sie’ at the end of Bootsie was the same sound as the ’ise’ at the end of Louise.  You don’t want to know how long I called myself (on paper) Virginia Lousie (lousy!) before I nearly died in horror on the spot.  Jeez Louise takes on new meaning, right?!

Further demonstrating how those powers of logic did not elude me, I’ll never forget the day I was singing a Daily Vacation Bible School song…”We’re going to the mansion on the Happy Day Express.  The letters on the engine R-J-E-S-U-S”…and suddenly “got” it.   Though I had sung it correctly, of course, it hadn’t computed.  Yup, very embarrassing.

This, of course, is totally aside from the they’re-there-their, your-you’re, lose-loose, then-than, its-it’s, led-lead, etc. quirks.  For some reason, those were always easy-peasy for me.  I understood that kind of logic.

Growing up we had a guy in our church, one of the biggest brainiacs I’ve ever known, who went to MIT.  I remember being aghast by letters he’d write home filled with spelling errors.  Later I learned that Einstein had dyslexia and he, too, was a terrible speller.  In fact, the list he’s on has quite an impressive line-up.  Long before spell-check!

Bottom-line, don’t you wonder if spelling is relevant at all, as long as we’re communicating?  Have we made it more important than it needs to be?  What does it say about us when we turn our nose down at typos and those who make them?  Especially if it has nothing to do with one’s intelligence!

Gotta love Winnie-the-Pooh, my guru, when it comes to these spelling things:

You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right;
but spelling isn’t everything.  There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.
(from The House at Pooh Corner, 1928)

My spelling is Wobbly.  It’s good spelling but it Wobbles,
and the letters get in the wrong places.
(from Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926)

How can you possibly dispute the logic of that!