The Webster's defintion of "blessed" is: 1) held in reverence, honored 2) of or enjoying happiness 3) bringing pleasure, contentment, or good fortune.
What part of this house is blessed? Do a bunch of little Jesus statues really bring about honor and happiness? It seems to me that all those things were forgotten about, stuffed in drawers and under the sink and covered in bird droppings behind a bush. If the previous owners left each item in the hope that their successors would convert, they made a rather shabby effort. Or perhaps the house is blessed because Twinkle says it is. She gets her way every other time.
Naturally, the first reason given for keeping all of these oddments is that "It could be worth something. Who knows?" When did people start buying blessings? Since there was money to buy them with. And nowadays it comes in porcelain, wood, and color-by-numbers. It's worth about twenty dollars or so on ebay (http://cgi.ebay.com/Porcelain-Figure-of-Jesus-Beautiful-And-Collectible_W0QQitemZ110337782301QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDecorative_Collectibles?hash=item110337782301&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1240%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50). *
Sanjeev and Twinkle are not blessed. Plastic Jesus brings out the differences between them, and there is no negotiation. Sanjeev threatens and Twinkle cries. By the end of a few weeks, Sanjeev is ready to lock everyone in his life in the attic, just so he can have peace for a little while. The most valuable thing in the house is not love or even marriage. Twinkle is willing to leave just because Mary is headed for the dump. A silver Jesus head that neither of the owners can carry is the best they can produce. That is only the shadow of a blessing.
People bless things left and right, at funerals and when they get lucky. You can say anything about anyone in the South as long as you tack on a "bless their heart." Waiters who do a favor for my dad are bound to hear "God bless you" at least once. The word is packaged in cellophane. We have blessed each other so much that we're all back where we started, without honor and unable to purchase happiness with the lint in our pockets.
*I will gladly bless anyone who can show me how to attach a link to a word so that I don't have to post those crazy seven-line web addresses.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
I was told this would be easy...
Right now I'm not so sure. I think computer operation is one of my 21st century challenges.
The first problem you guys might have with this blog is what in the world my title means. Often I've heard the phrase "as the crow flies," meaning an estimated distance. If someone tells you this, they don't know for certain how far you are from where you're going or when you're ever going to get there. That sounds about right for me in this century. In truth, I'm not quite sure I know where I'm going, let alone how close I am to it.
But this thing isn't called "As the Crow Flies." So what's a kakapo? It's a very fat green parrot. Native only to New Zealand, there are about ninety of them left in the world. Originally New Zealand had no predators, and there was plenty for the birds to eat, so the kakapo gave up its ability to fly because it wanted to stuff itself. (The trouble with this is that the kakapo seems to forget sometimes that it can't fly, and so they have been known to leap from trees, flapping their inadequite wings the whole time they're falling.) To prevent over-population, the birds developed an elaborate mating ritual. Males construct a "track and bowl system," a shallow hole with several trails leading off from it, and then they settle into the bowls and boom, or make calls so deep that humans can barely hear it. This noise, helped by pitch and the tracks leading out from the bowl, can travel for miles, attracting every eligible female on the island. The trouble is, it's difficult to know which direction such deep booms are coming from. Douglas Adams, in his book Last Chance to See, described the conversation between a male and female kakapo as something like this:
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where the heck are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Oh, go stuff yourself!
To make things a bit more difficult, females are only prepared to reproduce when a particular tree (which I believe is now also endangered) is bearing fruit. This tree does not blossom every year. But even with all this difficulty, the kakapo did well on the islands of New Zealand.
The trouble started when humans came ashore, bringing rats, cats, and stoats. Kakapos had lived for centuries (at least) without a single preadator, and when faced with a cat, they didn't even have a fight-or-flight instict. They became easy prey to the mainland invaders, as many island species do.
If you're interested (and trust wikipedia), here's an article with a lot more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakapo .
Also, I learned about the kakapo from a fantastic book (previously mentioned) called Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. The BBC followed these two men as they trekked around the world trying to see endangered animals in the wild, and here's a site that has exerpts from that radio broadcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/dna/lastchance.shtml . I believe there are also free audiobook downloads available, but it would probably be against blog rules to encourage file sharing.
That's all I've got for now. Here's hoping this works correctly.
The first problem you guys might have with this blog is what in the world my title means. Often I've heard the phrase "as the crow flies," meaning an estimated distance. If someone tells you this, they don't know for certain how far you are from where you're going or when you're ever going to get there. That sounds about right for me in this century. In truth, I'm not quite sure I know where I'm going, let alone how close I am to it.
But this thing isn't called "As the Crow Flies." So what's a kakapo? It's a very fat green parrot. Native only to New Zealand, there are about ninety of them left in the world. Originally New Zealand had no predators, and there was plenty for the birds to eat, so the kakapo gave up its ability to fly because it wanted to stuff itself. (The trouble with this is that the kakapo seems to forget sometimes that it can't fly, and so they have been known to leap from trees, flapping their inadequite wings the whole time they're falling.) To prevent over-population, the birds developed an elaborate mating ritual. Males construct a "track and bowl system," a shallow hole with several trails leading off from it, and then they settle into the bowls and boom, or make calls so deep that humans can barely hear it. This noise, helped by pitch and the tracks leading out from the bowl, can travel for miles, attracting every eligible female on the island. The trouble is, it's difficult to know which direction such deep booms are coming from. Douglas Adams, in his book Last Chance to See, described the conversation between a male and female kakapo as something like this:
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where the heck are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Oh, go stuff yourself!
To make things a bit more difficult, females are only prepared to reproduce when a particular tree (which I believe is now also endangered) is bearing fruit. This tree does not blossom every year. But even with all this difficulty, the kakapo did well on the islands of New Zealand.
The trouble started when humans came ashore, bringing rats, cats, and stoats. Kakapos had lived for centuries (at least) without a single preadator, and when faced with a cat, they didn't even have a fight-or-flight instict. They became easy prey to the mainland invaders, as many island species do.
If you're interested (and trust wikipedia), here's an article with a lot more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakapo .
Also, I learned about the kakapo from a fantastic book (previously mentioned) called Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. The BBC followed these two men as they trekked around the world trying to see endangered animals in the wild, and here's a site that has exerpts from that radio broadcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/dna/lastchance.shtml . I believe there are also free audiobook downloads available, but it would probably be against blog rules to encourage file sharing.
That's all I've got for now. Here's hoping this works correctly.
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