What Would Jimmy Do?

A few  weeks ago a friend borrowed one of the books with my blog entries that my daughter had printed, and when she returned it, she was curious about one entry that mentioned the Jivaro tribe in South America that was “famous” for shrunken heads. 
For reasons I can’t go into here, one of my more interesting “adventures” a number of years ago involved the Jivaros. 

In case your haven’t been keeping up with this blog, the Jivaros were the famed head-shrinkers that lived in the rain forest in the southernmost part of the Amazon jungle. When this adventure took place, the area was virtually untouched by civilization. My “guide” periodically visited the rain forests for some reason that was never explained to me. I was familiar with the stories about the Jivaro tribe and their unique technique used to shrink heads. Before we left, my guide told me that they only shrunk the heads of monkeys, because missionaries had convinced them that it was wrong to use humans. I guess maybe I was young and naive enough to have bought that story, but the shrunken heads I saw didn’t look like monkeys. But to be fair, they didn’t really look very human either — they were very small and grotesque, and if I remember, they almost all had long hair. I’m not an expert, but I don’t remember seeing many long-haired monkeys. 

Anyhow, my very knowledgeable guide said that the Jivaros didn’t shrink just anybody’s head — it had to be an enemy that they had defeated in battle. The shrunken head was then worn around the waist as a warrior’s trophy. I kept thinking about what could make the Jivaros that mad at monkeys…. so I think I didn’t really buy the missionary story. But just to be on the safe side, I remember smiling a lot — I wanted to appear to be friendly. But I’m pretty sure they just thought I was retarded, or strange — they didn’t smile back.

But obviously I survived because here I am blogging about it. I’ve always heard that when you’re in a difficult or strange situation, you should keep your head about you…. I kept my head.
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I really like rice.When I was growing up in Oklahoma, I don’t ever remember having rice — Maysville, Oklahoma was the land of “meat and potatoes.” I guess my taste for rice developed because in a lot of the countries I’ve lived in, rice was a staple — pretty much at every meal. 

While rice in this country often means “Uncle Ben’s” from the local Food Lion, there are many, many different types of rice. One of my favorites is sticky rice. It’s possible to get “sticky rice” around here, but it in no way compares to the the sticky rice from, say, Thailand.

But what I started out to write about today was an experience we had when living in Asia. A local employee that worked at the American Embassy invited us to dinner at his house one evening and served a rice and fish dish. The rice was kind of like wild rice, but it was reddish brown in color and had a nutty, sweet flavor. Neither of us had ever had rice that tasted like it before. We both commented on how good it was, and our friend gave us the local name to give to our maid so she could buy some for us. We gave the maid the name of the rice and asked her to buy some at the local market. But for some reason she didn’t get the rice. We asked again and she still didn’t get the rice. Finally, we questioned her as to why she hadn’t purchased the rice like we had asked. She finally admitted her reason. The rice, that we called red rice, in their language, translated to prisoner’s food. There seemed to be some unwritten rule that no respectable cook would  buy it — didn’t matter how good or healthful it might be. 
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Today is St. Patrick’s Day. We always celebrated St. Patrick’s day, but this is the second St. Patrick’s Day without Claire — no corned beef and cabbage or green beer today. It appears that celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, or any other day, isn’t the same when you’re grieving — nothing is. 

The day itself commemorates the death of Ireland’s patron saint  — originally it was a religious observation. Of course in recent years its solemnity has mostly been forgotten and the day has turned into a day for people to celebrate their Irish heritage (whether they have one or not.)

Not that all days aren’t, but holidays are especially hard for me — experiencing them without Claire is a real downer. I don’t seem to be able to avoid an unwilling resentment toward couples I see enjoying days like this together. My urge is to walk up to them and say, “Whatever you do, don’t take each other for granted — you’re together. You don’t know how important that is.”

I absolutely understand when someone says Happy St. Patrick’s Day, or happy this, or happy that. Sure, I want to be happy, but the fact is I’m not. I guess I’d rather hear from people that they’re sure Claire is celebrating the day in Heaven…. for some reason it bothers me that others don’t acknowledge her absence. I think I’d rather hear, “I’m sure you’re missing Claire today. I’m thinking of you,” instead of “Happy (whatever) day.”

But life goes on and holidays come and go…. and Claire walks beside me every day, unseen, unheard, but always near — still loved, still missed. I guess, for now, that’s enough.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
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It seems like chickens have been making the news a lot lately. You can hardly read a newspaper or watch the news without at least one story, or more, being about bird flu or the price of eggs. I guess that’s what reminded me of one of our (basically Claire’s) experiences many years ago.

If you’ve ever lived in Southeast Asia, you know the climate is tropical — kind of on the “steamy” side lots of the time. Because of this, and probably some other good reasons, Claire had instructed our cook to be sure to store any fresh meat she bought at the local market in the freezer. She told her to put it in the freezer as soon as she got home. One day when we came home from work, for some reason, Claire opened the freezer and discovered a barely alive chicken. I’m pretty sure it was suffering from hypothermia among other things.

I don’t remember exactly how Claire handled the situation, but she was good in those circumstances.
I’m just glad the cook didn’t buy pork that day……
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I went to a new restaurant yesterday — called Biscuit World. Their entire menu is is made up of biscuit dishes. I guess it’s a small “chain” — there are a number of them, but this is the first in our immediate area. It originated here in West Virginia.

When I grew up in Oklahoma, biscuits were a mainstay at most meals. When I was little, I wasn’t aware of any such thing as “canned” or “frozen” biscuits — they were all homemade. I remember that one of my granddads had biscuits every morning for breakfast. My grandmother made a big pan of them every day and he usually ate them all.
Later, after I left Oklahoma and became more “worldly” I learned that biscuits were originally pretty much a southern thing. 

The word biscuit comes from the Latin “biscotus,” which means twice-baked, and in medieval times probably resembled what we now call biscotti. Today, when Europeans, and especially the British, refer to biscuits, they’re talking about something much different than the little tubes of Pillsbury frozen biscuit dough you see in our food stores.

As part of their rations, soldiers in ancient Rome received biscuits and, in 1588, biscuits were introduced to Great Britain and included as part of rations for sailors in the Royal Navy. The Navy’s “biscuits” were called hardtack and were hard and flavorless, but kept well aboard their ships. For the longer sea-journeys, the biscuits (made only of flour, water, and salt) were baked four times and prepared six months in advance so they’d be sufficiently dry for the journey and wouldn’t spoil. 

Later, in the “colonies,” they became a mainstay because they could be baked quickly and required few ingredients. 
They apparently became popular in the Souther colonies, because successful wheat harvests gave the colonists access to fresh flour and cows and pigs supplied buttermilk and lard — that’s when biscuits gradually started to transform into something more like we know today.

Even though yeast was available to the colonists, it was expensive and was difficult to store. Baking soda and baking powder hadn’t been invented yet, so the biscuits were unleavened. To improve their texture, cooks developed a technique of beating the dough to introduce some air, which made the biscuits rise, at least a little. That was very labor intensive, so housewives usually gave that duty to slaves. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Black bakers, biscuits might not have ever become popular throughout the country.

The restaurant that I went to yesterday is a kind of upscale fast-food type of place. I was thinking that just about every fast-food chain today has a biscuit on their menu. From what I can tell, Hardee’s was the first fast-food chain to add biscuits to their menu in the 1970s. Hardee’s owner happened to eat a biscuit sandwich at a small restaurant. He was a bit skeptical, but he tested a biscuit sandwich in Virginia Beach and it was almost immediately successful. Today, biscuit breakfast sandwiches are available in just about all fast-food establishments. 
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I’ve been reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt. Here’s a quote by him from the book:

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interest skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

Maybe all politicians aren’t the same……
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I went to church yesterday (Ash Wednesday.) It was raining and just a crummy day, but there were more people in church than I’d seen in a long time. The lines were fairly long to get the ashes and for communion and although it’s really not what I should have been thinking about standing in line, I got to wondering about bread and wine…. why did Jesus choose bread and wine? Why not beer and pretzels, or coffee and donuts? 

Well, I guess if you think about it, there probably weren’t any microbreweries or Starbucks around then, and I believe the Last Supper was a Passover meal, and Passover meals featured unleavened bread and wine…. with a sacrificed lamb. 

Bread and wine were probably chosen for both practical and symbolic reasons… bread was, and still is, a staple food in Jewish culture. It represented daily sustenance, and pretty much was “the bread of life.” And wine was a regular part of festive meals — it symbolized joy and covenant blessings. 
Also, no matter where you lived in those times, bread and wine were part of life — they were common and accessible, so transforming these ordinary things into extraordinary symbols made a statement.
We are told that Jesus is the “Bread of Life,” meaning that just like bread nourishes the body, Jesus nourishes the soul. And wine already had a spiritual symbolism, but Jesus give it deeper meaning by linking it to His sacrificial death. 

So I imagine the choice of bread and wine was possibly/probably because they were practical, meaningful and deeply rooted in Jewish religious tradition, and everyday life. Obviously, Jesus gave them more significance by tying them directly to His mission to bring salvation. 

And I guess now might be a good time to mention that I learned a new word — transubstantiation. It means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body off Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of His blood. The change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Hold Spirit.
Have a blessed Lent….
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Yesterday I talked about using the word “aught” to mean “zero.” I probably should have also mentioned that although most people that I knew used the word aught, some said the word “naught.” The dictionary says that naught means “nothing,” so I can see why some people used it when referring to zero. But if you dig a little further, some dictionaries say that its use is archaic or restricted to literary uses. It’s most often used in sentences or phrases like “His studying was for naught, since he flunked.” 
So I guess if you’re into these old words, the rule of thumb is “aught” is preferred when dealing with numbers and “naught” is preferred outside of math.

Now that that’s our of the way, you might be interested to learn that the word “naughty” is derived from “naught” — like, someone might have naught morals or manners. But the original meaning of naughty was “poor.”

And I suppose we should give “nice” equal time with “naughty” — after all, they seem to kind of go together. Nice is from the Latin nescius, that means not-knowing. So nice originally meant foolish or ignorant. It didn’t used to be nice to be nice. But over time, the word’s meaning took on a number of meanings. Today, someone is considered nice if they’re polite and kind. 

I usually think of naughty and nice mostly around Christmas time — we always told our kids and grandkids that Santa Clause kept a naughty and nice list. The fact that Santa kept these lists didn’t become apparent until the song “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” became popular (in 1934, according to my extensive research.) I guess it’s good that the song wasn’t written earlier because naughty and nice meant something very different than what they do today.
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We were having a conversation the other day and a guy said something like, well that’s not the way we did it back in aught four. I hadn’t heard “aught” used as a number in a long time, but when I was growing up, it seemed like that’s what everyone said. Take 703 for instance — today we usually say “seven zero three.” But when I was little, at least in Oklahoma, most people would say “seven aught three.”

That’s just the way people talked — they’d say “back in aught-four Bush was president….” or something like that. According to the dictionary, using the term “aught” could mean both “zero” and “anything.”
So aught is an old-fashioned word that was fairly commonly used in the past to mean zero. There are a number of  reasons that the use of aught to mean zero has declined — or gone away entirely….

Aught could mean both nothing and anything — that led to confusion. If you said he has aught of sense, it could mean he has some sense or no sense — depending on interpretation.   
As mathematics and science advanced, zero became the universally accepted term — especially in education, business and technology.
Over time, English speakers naturally favored other words, like nothing or simply zero, which were clearer and more commonly used in everyday speech.
Aught was more common in older English dialects, especially in Britain, but it gradually faded from everyday American and even British English.

But even today, you still find some old codgers that use aught in certain phrases — like referring to the early 2000s as “the aughts.”
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I’m not sure why I’m on the subject of numbers lately, but the subject came up fairly recently during a discussion about Angel Numbers — it seems like a lot of people weren’t aware of them. But just about everyone has a “lucky” number, or at least a favorite number. And for a lot of people, that number is 1. 
You may have heard the saying, “Make a wish when the clock shows 11:11!” Some people really believe there’s something to that.
It occurs to me that 11/11 is Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in many parts of the world. So I guess that if you made a wish at 11:11 on 11/11 you’d have really good luck.

For some reason, making a wish at 11:11 is thought to be a particularly strong time to make a wish. Numerologists believe that November 11 is the luckiest day of the year (day 11 in month 11) because of its full potential for wish-granting, especially when the wish is made at 11:11!

So — what does 1111 symbolize? According to some numerologists, November 11 expressed simply as 1111 is an angel number. Angel numbers are number sequences (usually made up of three or four digits) that exhibit repetition such as 777, 2222, and/or patterns such as 234 or 1212. Angel numbers supposedly communicate messages from your guardian angels and the spiritual universe that offer insight, wisdom and directionality. 
One thought is that the “ones” in the angel number 1111 signify new beginnings. 1111 signals the start of a new journey or that you are already on the right path. When you see 1111 as a time, or on a license plate, house number, phone number, etc., angels are trying to convey a message to you — like, a good and positive change in your life will occur soon and that you should have faith in the message and hope for a happy outcome. 

Experiencing 11:11 am or 11:11 pm, especially on November 11 (11/11) is particularly powerful for bringing positive energy into your life that will bring joy and happiness.
Besides being special because of Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day, November 11 is a one-of-a-kind date. It’s the only one that can be expressed with four of the same digits — 11/11. There is no other such date. For instance, 22/22 isn’t a valid calendar date, since the month number can’t exceed 12.

I read that a lot of couples arrange their weddings on dates like 11/11 because of its mathematical and spirit uniqueness. I guess being married on 11/11 is easy to remember — and, it probably contributes to additional happiness.
I also read that the number of c-section births increase on 11/11 because many couples would like to have their child born on 11/11 — that brings luck, optimism, positive energy and happiness into their lives.
So keep your eye out for those ones strung together. And if you do see them, don’t forget to make a wish at that moment.
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