A dining faux pas and other minutiae

A. While working for a month at IBM Sweden in Lidingö (a suburb of Stockholm) in February 1969, my new friend Gunnar Göhl invited me to his house for a home-cooked meal. At the end of a delicious and very satisfying meal I sat back in my chair and said, in appreciation, "I'm so ful!". Gunnar's wife's eyes grew very wide and she looked confused. She turned to her husband for an explanation. Gunnar was laughing uproariously.

I was confused as much as Gunnar's wife, whose name I do not recall.

After regaining his composure, Gunnar explained to both of us that the Swedish phrase "jag är så mätt" (pronounced yah air so met) is what Swedes say after a meal, but Mrs. Gunnar interpreted what I had said as "jag är så full" (pronounced yah air so full), which means "I'm drunk" and not a single drop of alcohol had been served or consumed!

So much for after-dinner pleasantries.

Precision in word choices is important, and it becomes even more important when an ocean has been crossed. I hope the negotiators who are trying to end the U.S.-Iranian conflict will choose their words ver carefully.

B. In Albanian families (I married into one), when one has eaten a satisfying meal one does not say "I'm so full," one says "barku me cepa" (pronounced bar-koo meh sep-puh), literally "stomach with corners" or "my stomach has four corners", which is the equivalent, I suppose, of saying "I'm stuffed" in America. A word to the wise: Do not say "I'm stuffed" in the United Kingdom as it means something different over there. This is a G-rated (that is, family-friendly, all ages welcome) blog, so we will not delve into the possibilities.

C. I don't know if people in other countries do what I'm about to describe or even people up north in what used to be referred to in the American South as Damn-Yankee Land, but it is definitely a thing in the American South. I'm referring to family nicknames. For example, in Eudora Welty's well-known short story, "Why I Live At The P.O." she refers to her father as Papa-Daddy. Miss Welty grew up in Mississippi. I can attest to the fact that the same sort of thing happened in Texas, where our family lived from the time I was six years old. Before that, our family lived in Rhode Island, up in the northeast corner of Damn-Yankee Land, where anyone east of the Connecticut River is called a Yankee's Yankee. Let me just interject here that so many Northerners have moved to the South that nobody uses that terminology any more. By the way, the difference between a plain old Yankee and a Damn Yankee was simple: A Yankee was a person from Up North who visited the South. A Damn Yankee was a person from Up North who came to the South and stayed. Those days, thankfully, have gone with the wind. But I digress.

When I was growing up in Texas, my stepmother's older sister Cleo over in Carrollton was called "Auntie Mama" by the entire Williams clan, which consisted of five brothers and five sisters and all of their children. In my own town of Mansfield my mother's friend Sally Huffman was called "Aunt Sister" by her nieces and nephews (Helen, Jane, Joe, Charles Ray, Judy, and Jim) but they called their other aunts by their names: Aunt Jesse, Aunt Ruth, and Aunt Pete (Gertrude's nickname, I don't know when or how she acquired it) but I never heard any of them say "Aunt Sally".

One can only conclude that people are, how you say, funny.

Do you have any minutiae, interesting or otherwise, that you care to share? Please be my guest.

Until next time, I remain
rhymeswithplague

And they said it wouldn't last

On May 19, 1963 (that is, 63 years ago today) Eleanor Cudse and I exchanged vows at Orlando Bible Church in Orlando, Florida.



Six months...



47 years (2010)...


59 years, 10 months ( March 2023)...

...and we're still going strong 63 years after we said "I do"!

Half-remembered hills

Over in the sidebar to the right, down past the Blog Archive list, is a poem by a Yorkshire lad named Neil Theasby (you might know him as blogger Yorkshire Pudding) that I included with his permission in 2013. I was 72 then and I loved the poem on first reading. I am 85 now and with every passing year I love it even more. I imagine that not many readers nowadays scroll down sidebars but head straight for the blogposts, so I am posting it here for your enjoyment:

Song for Lost Youth

Perhaps I should have cradled it
Like a dove
Kept it safe with tender love
But I squandered it -
Gushing-blundering-raging
Like a wild mountain stream
Desperate for an ocean
That was but a distant dream.
...I just never thought
That I could have loitered in the shallows
Reflecting the blueness of the sky
- Concealing silver fishes
- Quietly biding my time
- Stretching it out.
And so, and so it's gone now
- My ephemeral youth
- That precious once only gift
- That honeyed sweetness,
Leaving only the trembling resonance
Of distant echoes
From half-remembered hills.

--Neil Theasby, 2013. Used by permission.

I don't really think I squandered my youth but the fact remains that it is long gone and Neil's poem resonated with me. I hope readers of all ages will enjoy it.

Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I celebrate our 63rd wedding anniversary this month. We have three children currently aged 58, 60, and almost 62. We have six adult grandchildren ranging in age from 25 to 30. We are happily anticipating the birth of our fourth great-grandson in early June. The song "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler On The Roof was sung at our daughter's wedding in 1993 as the parents of the bride and groom were escorted to their seats, and its words are even sweeter today:

Sunrise, Sunset

Is this the little girl I carried,
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older,
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty,
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset,
Sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly flow the days.
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,
Blossoming even as we gaze.

What words of wisdom can I give them,
How can I help to ease their way?
Now they must learn from one another,
Day by day.

Sunrise, sunset,
Sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another,
Laden with happiness and tears.

Sunrise, sunset,
Sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another,
Laden with happiness,
And tears.

I may be a sentimental old man now but I have memories, sweet ones and some not so sweet.

And yes, distant echoes from half-remembered hills.

Now it can be told

For the last 15 months I have been writing a book and it is now finished.

For Christmas 2024, our oldest son and his wife gave me a subscription to Storyworth. I would be sent a question every week for a year and my responses would be made into a book at the end of the year. I did receive 52 questions during 2025 but life got in the way at times and I responded to only 29 of them. I was given another three months to edit and get the book ready for publication, which I did [edit and get the book ready for publication] and on March 29 of this year it was, as I said, finished. It has 158 pages, it is called Stories Of My Life, and there are four hardback copies of it in existence besides the pdf file on my computer.

Perhaps my life will now return to more or less what used to pass for normal. Then again, perhaps it will not, which, of course, is an altogether different kettle of fish from it cannot.

I ended my book with words from The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

not because I am pretentious (the jury is still out, I think) but just because I wanted to and I could because it is in the public domain.

Meanwhile, the world has been going on. Assassinations occur with regularity and for many reasons (Charlie Kirk, the Ayatollah Khomeini), leaders are replaced (goodbye Orban, hello Magyar), straits open and close (Hormuz) and some things never change (Vladimir Putin, Britney Spears, Nancy Pelosi).

Perhaps one result of my having finished my book will be that the number of my blogposts per month will return to former levels. I hope so, but I'm not promising anything. After all, as you may have learned recently, I am 85.

Somewhere someone is rolling his or her eyes and thinking, "There's no fool like an old fool".

Our three little babies are now 61, 60, and 58 and our next wedding anniversary will be our 63rd. Time flies when you're having fun, n'est-ce pas? (and sometimes even when you're not).

The correct answer is oui.

Anyhoo, I'm more or less back and I trust that my vast reading audience is more or less happy about it.

Demonyms 'R' Us

Demonyms have nothing to do with demons, in case you were wondering. According to Merriam-Webster (that's a dictionary), a demonym is "a word (such as Nevadan or Sooner) used to denote a person who inhabits a particular place".

I know that people from London are Londoners and people from Liverpool are Liverpudlians. I know that people in the British Isles are Irish or Scottish or English or Welsh, but what about people who identify with the historic English counties like Yorkshire, Essex, Wessex, and so forth? Maybe Janice or Neil or Rachel can help here.

What are people who live in the various Australian states called? You know, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and so forth. Maybe kylie can help here.

What about the provinces of Canada? British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and so forth. Is Saskatchewanian a word? Maybe Red (Keith) can help here.

The 50 states in the United States cause confusion enough when it comes to demonyms. Some are easy but some make me scratch my head. There is no pattern for choosing -an or -ian as an ending. Do you agree or disagree with the following list? Help me out here:

1. Alabaman or Alabamian?
2. Alaskan
3. Arizonian?
4. Arkansawyer?
5. Californian
6. Coloradoan? Coloradan?
7. Connecticuter? Connecticutsan?, Also Nutmegger
8. Delawarian?
9. Floridian
10. Georgian
11. Hawaiian
12. Idahoan
13. Illinoisan? Illini?
14. Indianan?
15. Iowan
16. Kansan (why not Kansasan or Kansasian or Kansaser or Kansasite?). Also Jayhawker.
17. Kentuckian
18. Louisianan?
19. State of Mainer (no matter how much you like Maniac)
20. Marylander
21. Massachusettsan?, Bay Stater?, Massacusite
22. Michigander (fitting for a male, but shouldn't a female be a Michigoose?)
23. Minnesotan? Minnesotian?
24. Mississippian
25/ Missourian
26. Montanan?
27. Nebraskan. Also Cornhusker.
28. Nevadan
29. New Hampshirian? New Hampshirite?
30. New Jerseyite?
31. New Mexican
32. New Yorker
33. North Carolinian
34. North Dakotan
35. Ohioan
36. Oklahoman. Also Sooner.
37. Oregonian
38. Pennsylvanian
39. Rhode Islander
40. South Carolinian
41. South Dakotan
42. Tennesseean
43. Texan (originally it was Texian, actually)
44. Utahan
45. Vermonter
46. Virginian
47. Washingtonian
48. West Virginian
49. Wisonsinite? Wisconsiners? Also Cheese Heads
50. Wyomingite? Wyominger?

Do you even care? Many don't. As the old saying goes, "I don't care what you call me as long as you don't call me late for dinner."

For those who do care, however, give me your opinions in the comments. Maybe we can reach a consensus.

If your nose runs and your feet smell, you’re built upside down

That is the default title I have decided to use when I can't decide what to call a post. I think the statement was made originally by either Steven Wright or Rita Rudner but I really can't say for sure.

My nose is fine and my feet are fine. What I really am is giddy because day after tomorrow I will be

and I am beside myself. Not literally, of course, but there is a photo of me at age three over there to the right, so in an odd sort of way I am. Beside myself, that is.

I thought about calling this post "Earwigs R Us" because I have had a slew of musical pieces running through my head lately like "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" and "Everything's Up-To-Date In Kansas City" and the Bach-Gounod version of "Ave Maria" (I'm not even Catholic) and "My Darling Clementine" and John Rutter's beautiful setting of "For The Beauty Of The Earth" and I could go on but I won't.

What I probably should have called this post is There's No Fool Like An Old Fool. I don't like to think that I might be a fool (there is growing evidence) but there's no getting around the fact that I am definitely old.

We have had some sadness in our extended family recently. Our daughter's mother-in-law and father-in-law died suddenly within two weeks of each other. She was 81 and he was 93. So I'm treating 85 as a major accomplishment, or at least a milestone.

What I'm also doing is thanking God for every breath I take. One never knows when one of those breaths will turn out to be one's last.

On that happy or macabre (pick one) note, I shall now run this post up the proverbial flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

Any Texan worth his or her salt knows what today is

...and since I, an expatriate Texan since 1961, still count myself among that crowd [Texans worth their salt], let me be the first, and probably the last, to remind you of today's significance.

Today is the 190th anniversary of the end of the 12- or 13-day siege and battle in San Antonio that culminated in the fall of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution in 1836. It was on this day that a force of 2,000 (give or take) Mexican soldiers under the leadership of one Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, more commonly known as General Santa Anna, slaughtered almost every single one of the 185 (give or take) Texans inside the edifice known as the Alamo. A survivor or two were spared to bear the news of the defeat to other residents of Texas.

It was in this battle that such hallowed Texan heroes as William B. Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett gave what Abraham Lincoln might call their last full measure of devotion (he used that phrase on another occasion in 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania).

It was this battle that inspired the battle cry "Remember the Alamo!" (as did, it must be admitted the Battle of Goliad inspire the companion battle cry "Remember Goliad!") used at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto near Houston six weeks later on April 21, 1836, where the Texas forces defeated General Santa Anna once and for all and gained their independence from Mexico.

Texas remained an independent republic until 1845, at which time it was annexed into the United States. It never underwent territory status, and as part of the annexation agreement can divided itself into as many as five states any time it decides to. It is unlikely that any part of Texas will be willing to sever ties with the Alamo.

You can look up all the gory details details for yourself elsewhere if you so desire. Otherwise, you may now continue with your day and pursue the mundane and humdrum activities that are calling your name.