Oscar Wilde said, "Life is never fair. ...

               And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

WOMEN HAVE A HISTORY

March: Women’s History Month.  Well of course we have a history - it goes all the way back to Eve, that naughty girl!  We’ve been slightly naughty (well, some of us!) ever since.  It still amazes that me that in the majority of cultures around this world we allowed men to convince us to ditch the matrilineal line of inheritance and descent. Barring a DNA test, unless you are the spitting image of him, you might never be sure of the identity of your father, but you can usually be sure of your mother. 

Today we know about the mitochondrial Eve, who, according to Wikipedia, one of my favorite sources, is “the most recent common matrilineal ancestor from whom we are all descended”.  There are little pieces of her in all of us.  These days, I think there is a little bit of the biblical Eve in many of us too.  We’re not too content to just go along to get along. Inquiring minds want to know, and to test, and to push against what might hold us back.

Boadicea, or, if you prefer: Boudica or Boudigga, was a feisty Celtic woman from the first century.  There is a lot of the ‘it has been said’ about her, and she is a recurring favorite flavor on many of the ‘learning’ channels. It’s probably not her real name, and the spelling is beside the point, but it is what the Romans called her, and it’s a variation on the Celtic name for the Goddess of Victory. Victorious she was for a while, yet in the end she lost it all to the better-equipped Romans.  But lead and fight she did, in a time and place where it was natural for a capable woman to do so.  Can you think of any other historically prominent women from that time until the late Renaissance and Queen Elizabeth I?  Oh, maybe Eleanor of Aquitaine or Isabella D’Este, but just in passing.

In the seventh century, the Council of Nantes argued that women were “soulless beasts”, defectives (defectives! Now, I ask you!) who could be treated as such by men, their natural masters. Whew! It is only in the last century or so that women have started to reassert themselves beyond the realm of farm, hearth and home, and to shed some of the sentimentality assigned to ‘the soft sex’.  Women became teachers, secretaries, authors, even actresses - these and other professions had been open only to men.  New professions such as nursing - thank you Florence Nightingale - came into being, and they, in turn, spawned other professions: the first airline hostesses had to be registered nurses.

Women have had a harder time breaking into the sciences.  Women physicians had a tough, uphill battle just to get their education, much less practice.  Women were thought to lack the mental skills to compete in fields such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry.  Marie Curie, after years of arduous research and many important discoveries, was one of the first to disprove this idea. Just two years after the prize was established, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is one of only four people who have been awarded it twice.   Granted, the percentage of women who’ve won the prize still remains relatively low, but we’re working on it.

Over the ages, women were allowed to vote for various things at various times and under various conditions.  In some places they could vote on local issues if they were the head of the household, paid taxes, or owned property outright.  The move toward the unrestricted right to vote or hold political office, usually tied to the literacy rate of a country’s women and to the enlightenment of a country’s men, was quietly led by the Scandinavians. They were closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States, where the women were a quite bit more vocal about the subject and had a lot more persuading to do. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, among other things, introduced voting rights for women into international law.  Sadly, some countries have yet to get on the bandwagon.

Today we’ve all but finished chipping away at that invisible barrier, the ‘glass ceiling’ that denies many women the positions for which they are eminently qualified in government, banking, and industry. The pay scales may still be a bit askew, but the numbers of successful women are on the rise.  There is an increasing number of women - and men - who are home-makers and hearth-keepers just because they want to be and because they can.  The Feminine Mystique, written almost fifty years ago, uncovered the feminine mistake that made many of us believe that our identities were of value only in relation to our husbands and children.  These days we know better, and young or old, female or male, we can pursue, pretty much without criticism, whatever kind of life makes us happy.

Ladies, let’s give ourselves a round of applause and pat on the back - we really are mah-velous!

TO FELLOW CONNOISSEURS OF FINE WHINES

I hear your whine and raise you one. I do empathize! Whining is what Frank and I seem to do quite a bit of these days.  If it isn’t the weather it’s the coming elections, or the unbelievable things our kids are doing, or the dumb  things other people do. 

       What are they thinking?

              What are they thinking?

                      What are they thinking?

                             What are they thinking?

                                            ???

Not that we know all the answers – far from it! – but in our old age we do enjoy a commiserating whine.

The weather, above all, is Frank’s favorite topic for a whine.  After 75 years in the north he is not too kind when it comes to Carolinas weather. Until we stopped the daily paper he was sure to report to me the high and low and the forecast for the day up in Albany. Not that I cared, and he knew it, but it was information he delighted in sharing out loud. Now I get only the Sunday forecast. I suppose that’s a blessing.

THE INCIDENT IN THE NIGHT

I see by the Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, a site I check every morning, that today is the birthday of John Steinbeck.  That struck a chord in my writing self.  Steinbeck, usually named when I’m asked as my favorite author, was the first author whose full set of novels I read.  I was lucky in that my parents had most of them on their shelves.

 

Strange as it may seem, the scene I remember most from all I read was one from either Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday.  They are one narrative in my mind, and they are my favorite works of his, perhaps because of the following anecdote.

There on Cannery Row, in a Depression era contest to bring some amusement to an otherwise unamusing time, a man is trying to set a record for flag-pole sitting.  Something about the whole thing was bothering this guy, so in the middle of the night he got up and went out and shouted up to the sitter. The answer was shouted down: “I’ve got a tin can up here.”  You know what the question was, of course.  And for some quirky reason this has stuck in my brain for over fifty years.

As I’ve read other novels since then I’ve often come upon an instance where a character was in, shall we say, a marathon situation.  Often I’ve thought about the incident in the night on Cannery Row. Only rarely has the author satisfied my curiosity, and rarely as well as Steinbeck. I just thought you’d like to know that.

ON WRITING AS A PERFORMANCE

February 24^th prompts me to do up an essay on writing. I’ve been at this blog, this compendium of personal essays, for well over a year now, and February 28^th marks the birthday of Michel de Montaigne, considered by many to be the father of the personal essay. Montaigne was born in 1533, during my favorite period of history, the Renaissance, in a wonderful part of France: Perigord.  Oo la la, think truffles, think wine, think foie gras. Montaigne is called the father of Modern Skepticism.  I’ll raise my glass to that – I am somewhat of a skeptic myself, and a curmudgeon to boot. The title of his huge volume of essays, “Essais”, translates literally as “Attempts”, and attempt is what writers do: attempt to teach, to entertain, and perhaps to sway the reader to a certain point of view.

The critic and writer Stephen Greenblatt said, "The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance — and writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig — is to understand the nature of the occasion." I write as I hope I’d speak to you in person, and I always hope you enjoy the performance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, though I always try to relate the essay to the occasion and the season.

We’ve a bunch of diacritical marks to go along with our written language, but they don’t always convey the exact nuance that speech would carry, nor can they convey the subtle facial or body movements that would accompany a live reading (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

In a live reading I’d never have to use dashes or parenthesis or a semicolon; I’d not have to worry about my spelling or grammar, and long sentences like these wouldn’t be so obvious or difficult to follow.  I’ve always tried to be aware of using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but after a while I just like to say “Nuts to that”.  My nephew is the force behind a popular blog on films. (Check the list of blogs I follow, you’ll know which one it is. Zen Hugs db.) Sometimes his spelling, grammar and punctuation set my teeth on edge – but then I realize that I do know what he’s saying, I do understand it perfectly, and enjoy it immensely, so why carp (or crap, anagrammatically speaking) about it.  But I digress…

...back to my topic: writing.  "Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts."   A man I really admired, William Safire, journalist, author, a man of many words, wrote that. 

Well, “get in touch with your thoughts” – it’s evident that I’ve presented three other people’s thoughts here.  But they’ve so eloquently said what I wish I could have as I noodled around with this essay.  And as I noodled around with this essay I came upon these excellent rules for essayists:

·          Remember to never split an infinitive.*

·          The passive voice should never be used.

·          Do not put statements in the negative form.

·          Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

·          Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

·          If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of…**

*and do you know why we’re not supposed to split an infinitive? Because in Latin it was only one unsplitable word. But the rules of grammar are not backed up with any punitive governmental legislation, so whatever works works.

** …a great deal of “what was I thinking?” And, just what was I thinking? I suppose I was just making an attempt to suit an essay to the occasion of Montaigne’s birthday.

This essay excepted, (and you’d think it would be just the opposite) I attempt to “cut out the confusing parts” of what I write, and not ramble too much. Maybe I’m trying too hard. Now to get back to our birthday boy Montaigne, he said “The highest of wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene."  Curmudgeon that I am, I do always try to be cheerful.  I think it will help me live longer.

  



at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH



We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. 
                                                         Anaïs Nin (whose birthday is today)

SMASHING

Recently I read of Eva Gabrielsson’s wonderful evocation of a Viking curse. (You can read the article here.)  What struck me about the Viking curse, and the article describes it as ‘elaborate’, was the symbolic sacrifice of a horse: she broke a statue in two and threw it in a lake.  She was angry and she wanted to vent and get some revenge.  The whole ritual must have been extremely satisfying; cathartic to say the least.  “I felt immense relief, and so did the others who were with me,” she said, explaining, “It’s a ritual - we lack rituals for grief, for confusion, for rage.” It was easy to conjure up a vision of this angry gal smashing things: smashing things is something I’d often like to do.

Except for the Greeks among us who smash plates, we do lack rituals for grief, confusion, or rage.  I suppose, thinking on the lighter side, I can dismiss confusion, especially at my age, with an offhand mention of “Major Senior Moment”, but the grief and rage deserve something specific to be done in response.  I remember a neighbor from years ago who was so mad at him when her husband died.  Not only did he leave her, his death was, in her mind, due to his complete lack of regard for doctors’ orders after he’d had a massive heart attack.  She was mighty peeved, to put it mildly. I know she ranted and raved, but I’m sure she would have liked to haul off and smash him – or at least a plate or two. 

I'm not ready to put a curse on anyone or anything, but very often I find that I’d just love to smash a stack of plates or throw a few glasses against the wall. Oooo – how immensely satisfying that would be! Frankly, I have thought of it, but I never followed through.  Why? Because I’m the one who’d have to sweep up the mess! I guess I’ll have to get a membership in a gym with a punching bag and take my occasional frustrations out on it.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
 I captured this rose for you in 2001 at Descanso Gardens
in Southern California

"One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria." 

                       Christopher Fry in The Lady’s Not for Burning

SING A SONG OF SOUP

       

Soup Of The Evening

  

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

by Lewis Carroll, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

In the winter this old gal’s fancy heavily turns to thoughts of soup. Theoretically, soup can be any combination of vegetables, meats, or fish.  Fruit soups are on their own. Soup can be any consistency from thick and chunky gumbo or stew, to thin and smooth consommé. In between you’ll find all manner of broths and bouillons, purées and cream soups, bisques and chowders. 

Though most soups are served hot, some, like vichyssoise, gazpacho, or fruit soups, are served cold.  These last, to me, are summer soups.  In winter we’re talkin’ hot stuff.  Canned or made-from-scratch, soups can be served as a first course or as a meal.  As a meal they’re great with a sandwich, or a big chunk of crusty bread and a salad.

Soup can be as economical or as extravagant as you care to make it: it’s the end of the week, your cupboard is bare, and you’re down to a few bouillon cubes and an egg or two - voila! - egg drop soup.

Or: you’re entertaining a local politician or pundit, and you must come up with a fantastic, money-is-no-object, starter. Short of soups consisting of shark fins and gold - yes, there are such soups - you couldn’t go wrong with a chunky lobster or shrimp bisque. 

Canned soups are not to be sniffed at.  There are many ways to dress them in glory. Think of cream-of-chicken with some frozen peas or corn added in the cooking. Think of Scotch broth with a splash of vermouth. Think of any vegetable soup with a dash of soy sauce or a sprinkling of grated or shredded cheese. Cream of tomato is excellent made with water, not milk, and zipped up with a bit of dried basil and a swirl of sour cream.  You can make any soup thicker by using about a quarter less liquid than called for. Think outside of the can. Other soup ‘zippers’ include rice wine vinegar, celery seed, crumbled bacon, and, of course, croutons.

Soups made from scratch can be made up fairly quickly. Unless you’d like them to sit longer to ‘flavor-up’, or you have large chunks of raw meat in the soup, about an hour is all you’ll need.   Think of what you’d put on a dinner plate per person: a small serving of meat (soup is a meat stretcher), some vegetables, and a starch. Add a flavorful liquid and you’ve got soup. 

The basic starter for most soups: onions. Figure one medium onion for two servings.  Sauté the onions in butter, or oil if you prefer it, until they are translucent. Then add as much liquid as you’ll need - about a cup per serving. The liquid can be canned broth or bouillon, or water and bouillon cubes. The bouillon cube came to us from the French, those masters at both accelerating and slowing the many processes of cooking. Remember that the broth made from cubes will taste different than fresh or canned because it has more salt in it.

Before you consider vegetables other than onions, think of any meat or seafood you’d like in the soup.  If you’ve pieces of raw meat to go in the soup they should be added, along any spices you prefer, at this point. They should be cooked until they are tender.  Because it takes such a short time to cook, seafood will be added after the vegetables are tender and will be cooked until just done.  Pre-cooked meats are also added as the last step and cooked just until heated through.

Old Carrots? Perfect for soup!

Think of small-diced potatoes, barley, noodles, or rice, or a can of any type of beans - pinto, navy, kidney, or garbanzos, for your starch.  Time things like rice and noodles according to the package directions.

Consider the vegetables.  What have you? Carrots? Celery? An old turnip? Some cabbage? Some almost-past-it spinach? How about a can of diced tomatoes? Be sure to adjust for the liquid in the can.  Other than the tomatoes, any canned vegetables or beans you use should be well rinsed before you add them to the pot. Raw vegetables should be cut no thicker than a half an inch. This is the time to add the spices if you haven’t added any meat. Vegetables can stand on their own in a soup. They’ll cook in up to twenty minutes. A soup made only of vegetables can be puréed with an immersion blender for a thick, satisfying bowl-full. 

If you concoct a soup you love be sure to write down what you did. Think about making more and freezing some next time. So there you have it - soup of the evening (or lunch.)  Beautiful soup. 



Picture from a misty morning at my house

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world

        and a desire to enjoy the world.

       This makes it hard to plan the day.

                                                                              E. B. White



HOUSEWORK

I hate dust. I dusted once – why is it dusty again?  I know, I know – it’s just a rhetorical question.  I hate dusting.  To be truthful, I hate housework.  You’d never know it if you took a quick look at my house – it is almost always neat and picked up.  Few people believe me when I tell them that’s because I’m lazy. I don’t want to have a big pick-up-and-straighten job to do so I neaten as I go. But the dust does accumulate.  Don’t come here wearing your white gloves, otherwise I’ll make you use them to do the dusting.

Spruce pollen cloud

I didn’t have to think much about dust for about a quarter of a century. We lived about twenty miles from the nearest city in upstate New York, out in the clean air of the country where the dust didn’t accumulate very quickly. Well, I must admit that during pollen season in the middle of the woods it could be a bit (a bit?) messy. And it didn’t come all at once: maple, oak, beech, evergreens – they took their turns. Brush past a spruce and it would explode with pollen. The mess stayed mostly outdoors on the porch and patio furniture.  A good hosing took care of it.

Here at SCCL I’m starting to think there are little dust elves sprinkling the stuff around when I sleep.  It isn’t as bad now as when they were building new houses around us, but it almost seems as though I could dust every day. It also seems as though I am less and less inclined to do any housecleaning at all.

On one recent sun-shiny day the angle was just right for the light to reflect off the floor into some of the neglected corners, and on to some of the kitchen cabinets – egad! I hate that kind of sunlight almost as must as I hate dust.  Well, I embarrassed myself into getting out the floor mop and the cleaning spray and sponges and I tackled the job: not just the mess so blatantly lit for me, but the whole floor and all the cabinet fronts. Counter tops too while I was at it. I did draw the line at washing the walls and pulling apart and cleaning the appliances. I mean enough is enough.  I do realize that I felt soooo much better for having done the job – but no one was there for me to brag to. Ah, well. I’ll get my reward somewhere later on in life – I hope!

Just thinking about how my mother and her mother kept house makes me ache all over.  My mother’s mother’s house shone from top to bottom. It will suffice to tell you just that she washed all the walls in her house at least twice a year. Though, like her mother, she did take apart and wash her refrigerator every Thursday, which I think excesive, my mother must have thought her mother's wall washing was the excessive thing. Most of Mom's walls were wallpapered, and the painted walls in the kitchen and bathrooms got washed perhaps once a year, and when I got older sometimes they were washed by me! 

I’ve lowered my standards even further. I take after my other grandmother: I’m lazier. That gal was one of the original liberated women: her house was, as they say, “Clean enough to be healthy, dirty enough to be happy.”  She had places to go, people to see, and go and see she did. 

And so do I! 

Amen to that!

ARE YOU STUFED YET?

        Do you walk into your house and feel like you’re walking into Fibber McGee’s closet?   Do you hear George Carlin (yes, the old Hippy Dippy Weatherman!) talking about “stuff”? He complained: “my stuff has stuff”.  Is your home getting stuffed?   Did you move every last thing you owned to SCCL?

        Peter Walsh, the ‘Organizational Expert’ you may have seen on the Learning Channel or Oprah, calls it “memory clutter” - it can interfere with the enjoyment of our lives and our homes.   We began our monstrous collections when we were very, very young.  We collected things because we liked them, because someone special gave them to us, or because we just could.   Along the way we forgot to how to drop what we no longer needed or what was threatening to overwhelm us.  We just hate to part with furniture or electronics or old birthday cards.  There’s always that sentimental, rarely practical,  reason that stays our hand from getting rid of stuff. These days you can find oodles of organizational hints.  What we seniors need is not organization for our stuff but elimination of a good lot of it.  I’m here to motivate you to make clearance your next project. 

        When we were in the process of moving to Sun City I came upon a saying that went something like “when the furniture heaves off your life you will love the deliverance.”   Well I must say I did delight in the deliverance: less stuff to pack, to move, to find space for in the new house, to clean, to maintain.   First I checked with the kids.  Lots of nice things from Christmas treasures to silverware found new homes away from ours.  I read about a gal who put it to her children like this: “Don’t be concerned, I’m doing just fine, but I’m writing my will.  What do you want of what I’ve got.  Better yet, come on over and take it now!”   Unless it’s your false teeth or eye glasses, what can you loose? Let them ask for what they’d like now - you can always say ‘no‘, but the best thing would be ‘yes’.

But sometimes something's
gotta give!

       Books? My books had books.  I was moving from a house where my husband had built in all the bookcases and storage I could ever need - built in, not moveable! Now the Stephentown Memorial Library has the majority of my books. I was told that many were sold to aid the fund for the new wing, and a quite few were chosen to be added to the shelves.  Made me happy to know I could leave something of value there.

       Living in over a half a mile on a dirt road, and that road off another road infrequently traveled, I saw no point in having a garage sale for much of the stuff that was left.   After all, who would want this stuff if I didn’t want it?  Well, they might, but I didn’t want to bother having a sale. Boxes and boxes of stuff found their way to the Salvation Army.  Boxes of craft supplies and fabrics went to two young teachers of my acquaintance.   What have you got that you no longer use or want and can box up and donate?   Keep good track of some of the better stuff you donate because there’s a nice level of tax deductibility to much of this. 

       What I do still have are pictures of my stuff.  Originally, the photos were taken for household insurance inventory.  They proved to be a treasure.  I’ve got pictorial records of many of the items I’d collected over the years, of the ways in which I changed the décor of the house depending on what curtains or quilts or crafts I’d made, and, to me, the most treasured: pictures of my books.   Most of the books I’d kept had been read two or three times.  I’d always felt that just looking at the title on the spine of a favored book brought the whole book back in an instant.  Now I can look at the pictures and get that same feeling.  If I really need to read it again there’s always the library nearby.

        It might not be easy to peddle your unwanted stuff on the street corners of Sun city, and you might want to get rid of that stuff before the next community tag sale. Let’s face it: after the tag sale you’d  still have leftover stuff to give away.  You might think of selling your stuff on eBay.  I did that once: we sold my husband’s charter collection of Fine Woodworking Magazines.  It was a pain to have to be available on-line to answer possible questions from potential buyers, and when we did get a buyer we had to find boxes, pack up the collection, schlep it all to the post office, etc. 

        So, think of Google and these on-line or local resources while you are de-stuffing your house and your life:

             Legal web sites - for retention schedules for personal records.  Many of us are overwhelmed with paper records we no longer need.  Be sure to shred the discards! 

             Manufacturers web sites - for owners’ manuals for your electronics, tools, and appliances. Who give house room to more unnecessary paper?               

             Goodwill Industries, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, National Furniture Bank - for organizations who will be happy to have your used furniture, clothing, appliances,  what-have-you?  Many Goodwill depots for your more portable discards are right nearby in Waxhaw and Fort Mill, to name two.  Many organizations will arrange pick-ups. 

             The Del Webb library or our own lending library at the Lake House - for books, CD’s, VCR tapes and DVD’s. 

    

       See that?  Don’t you feel better already, now that you’ve begun just by giving a bit of thought to paring down your stuff?  So, where will you start?  Don’t just sit there - go do it!

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

Heads up all you friggatriskaidekaphobics and paraskevidekatriaphobics: this year we’ll enjoy three Friday the 13ths.  Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13.  It is from the Greek: tris means 3, kai means ‘and’, deka means 10, and phobia means ‘fear’. The word was coined 100 years ago in 1911.  Frigga was the Norse goddess for whom Friday was named, so add her name to the front and it becomes fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I won’t begin to decipher the meaning of that second word; it suffices to say it means the same thing. 

In western culture, the number 13 is widely associated with bad luck. No one wants to live on 13^th Avenue, or have an apartment on the 13^th floor.  Hotels also eliminate the 13^th floor, but the floor is really there, isn’t it?  It’s just been renumbered.  Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. For ages the number thirteen was just one of many and had no special significance.

The superstition surrounding 13 seems to have arisen in in medieval times.  It is said that folks became aware that there were thirteen at the Last Supper, and thereafter tried to avoid thirteen - not only at a table but everywhere else.  Norsemen may tell you that when the mischievous Loki crashed the party at Valhalla to which Odin had invited eleven of his closest friends, all Niflheim (that’s Norse for hell) broke loose, resulting in the death of the beloved Baldur. Another case of thirteen at the table.

Fear of Friday the Thirteenth, that paraskevidekatriaphobia, is a newer, just as irrational fear.  Some point to the fact the Jacques de Molay and many of his fellow Knights Templar were arrested for heresy on Friday, October 13, 1307, but many other significant events, good or bad, could have taken place on other Fridays the Thirteenth.  It really seems to be a combination of fear of 13 and the fact that many people wouldn’t care to start anything on Friday.  Actually, neither would I. Not that it really matters, but starting a job on a Friday seems strange: Monday, with the whole work week ahead, seems more logical.  Folks don’t usually want to get married, start a business venture, move, start a trip, or even give birth on a Friday.  “Friday’s child is full of woe.” 

There are probably a baker’s dozen of reasons to admire the number thirteen: a baker’s dozen cookies, or loaves or biscuits, fits nicely on a baking tray.  Thirteen is a prime number, divisible only by 1 and itself.  It is also a Wilson prime and a Fibonacci number, but that’s more mathematics than we need to know right now.  There were thirteen original colonies in our United States, and thirteen stars and stripes on the flag. We’ve added a star as each state was admitted to the union, but we’d be down to pinstripes if we hadn’t kept just the original six white and seven red.

There are thirteen players on a rugby team and thirteen cards in a suit. At thirteen you become a teenager and can watch all those PG-13 movies.  Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, and Dan Marino wore number 13. Alex Rodriguez wears it for the Yankees today. Well, that’s not quite a baker’s dozen reasons, but you get the idea.

And by the way, it might come in handy to know that for some obscure reason the first Friday the Thirteenth of the year is also observed as Blame Someone Else Day.

     Don’t look at me: I didn’t think of it.

P.S. In searching the net for pictures to go with my essay, I came upon this electronic version of and old American Express ad I cut from a magazine and stored in one of my scrap books years ago.  Something about it just struck a chord in me, and I thought I'd add it here for you to see too.

That's the jockey Willie Shoemaker, 4 feet 11.5 inches tall, leaning on our No.13, Wilt the Stilt, at 7 feet, 1 inch.