Waking Up Is Hard To Do

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Okay, I do know that I have a ton of guest blogs, and I could have put one up. I’m also aware that this should have been up long ago. But I woke up dragging, and even the ADD meds aren’t keeping me from getting captured by all sorts of stupid little things, like editing hte image above.

No the image isn’t a cover. I came across it while searching for something completely different and it just got my attention (there’s enough of it (I cropped) to make a wrap around too.

I guess someday if I decide to write a collection of historical tales. Who knows. It kind of deserves to be a cover, I just don’t know for what.

I considered writing another short-short weird fairytale but a friend has threatened me with deathy death if I give anymore of those away. So, I will probably write it (likely not today) and put it in the drawer till I have ten or twenty of them.

I’m just so horribly tired and out of sorts. To be fair, my auto immune is spinning up like something that spins. And also to be fair this is sort of expected, a week into returning to high altitude.

I find myself dreaming of walks by the sea shore which is mostly what I do at the beach, and of a village perched near sea, which I’m sure doesn’t exist in the US, except maybe somewhere in New England and …. well… probably as much at risk as Colorado.

Husband was not at home to a peevish whine of “But I want to go to Brighton!” (some of you will get this.)

So…. I cleaned the kitchen, and set dinner cooking in the slow cooker, and tomorrow’s dinner in the sous vide.

I have a book (Kate Paulk’s) to finish editing, and my book (Other Rhodes) to finish writing. And I just want to crawl back into bed and sleep. Consider this your extended whine for the day 😀

Perhaps part of this is me, again, trying to damp down the berserker by making myself very very tired. Or depressed or something. Not sure which.

2020 btw is my fault because I had a careful plan of everything to publish/finish/edit. I’m…. somewhere at the end of January in the plan. I’m sorry. I jinxed everyone I guess.

Right now everything just makes me want to crawl into a dark comfy room and sleep: the state of publishing. The state of the country. The state of my house. (I need to start on the remaining room to floor. I do. I should be emptying it right now.) I don’t know if son caught the edge of this, but he’s ALMOST cleared the library,without being asked. (It was filled with random debris from older’s son moving/choosing stuff he wasn’t taking.)

Which means I could get to my research books, should I want to write a bunch of historical tales. I probably would, too. if I weren’t so tired.

I’m going to have an energy drink and write. Probably very slowly. And I promise a real post tomorrow. You guys deserve better than a whine.

Meanwhile, I keep meaning to post this on insty and forgetting: The state of publishing. You’re smart boys and girls, you can fill in the rest.

132 thoughts on “Waking Up Is Hard To Do”

  1. On a side note, the way you’re talking means that we’ll have want a “bit longer” for the next Witch’s Daughter segment. 😉

    Take Care Sarah.

    We’ll survive. 😀

      1. It is, it’s just that the link color looks a lot like surrounding text so it’s easy to miss unless you mouse over it. But you didn’t forget the link.

  3. Hope you feel better soon. Everyone is entitled to a whine how and then.
    Perhaps a beach along the southeastern coastline. I was going to mention Maine, but I’ve only been on the coastline in summer, so have no idea just how bad winters can get. (Almost all the beaches are rocky, which is another point). I have relatives living on the Jersey Shore, but I wouldn’t send an enemy to New Jersey.

    1. Brighton Beach, the real one on the South Coast of England is gravel. It’s a tourist trap that has an enormous pier with restaurants, crap traps and the usual. Wonderful place; but I am biased. I think most everywhere in England/Ireland is wonderful.

      1. Now Lydia, you’ll have to wait. It’s in COVID lockdown.

        There’s the pier and the Pavilion — Bombay in Brighton — the beach is shingle and the water is cold, very, very cold. Every fruit and nut in the UK lives in Brighton, which was where London bankers kept their mistresses and is now the gayest town in England other than, maybe, Bournemouth. Good restaurants, great cafes, and the looniest town council (Green Party) in the UK. take the train, parking is very expensive.

        The area around Brighton railway Station has the highest concentration of pubs in the UK.

        We lived about 10 miles west of Brighton for several years in a hamlet called Kingston Near Ferring. Ferring on Sea is tiny but any Simon Brett fans should recognize it since that’s where he’s from and he set a couple of his mysteries there.

        1. I’ve seen pictures from the Sun, which amounted to a futile rant against the throngs and hordes flocking to the beach…

          They *want* it to be in Lung Pao Sicken lockdown, but none of the peasants are listening! The car parks are overflowing! The horrors!

        2. My last trip we went to Port Issac in Cornwall. (Yeah I know, Doc Martin looney etc) We actually went partly to stay in a certain hotel which was right at the foot of the town on the water, and partly because we could run around Cornwall like idiots on the wrong side of the road. Which By the way, In England they rate the roads as A, B and C. We stuck to the A roads, and beside the M-Motorways here in America we would call them cow paths. two cars cannot pass. you have to back up to the nearest side road or gate.

          1. Single lane with passing places and loose chippings. *shudder*

            I had a friend driving in the west of Ireland (by Kilrush in Clare for anyone who knows) When he got back I asked him how was the driving? he said “bad, but I knew if I got into trouble I could drive into the hedge.” I said to him “Ummm there are stone walls in those hedges.”: Glad I didn’t tell him before or he wouldn’t have made it.

    2. Winters in New England (Maine or otherwise) can get ugly. Not as much snow as some places, not as cold as others, but just enough of everything to be a hairy nuisance. As for cliff side towns I can think of a couple. Ogunquit Me has a beautiful cliffside walk, although once it starts snowing in earnest they might close it lest they lose to many tourists. Newport RI has similar and the backdrop there are the mansions of the late 19th century gentry. There are plenty of crazy paths in Acadia National Park both in Mt Desert and Schoodick Head, the latter very unwise to walk in high sea conditions. There’s certainly others those just come to mind as ones I’ve seen.

    3. I find rocky beaches a good deal more interesting than sand. Of course, that IS what I grew up with. But a rock/pebble beach just seems to have more to FIND on it.

      1. I know all about it, my Governor has spent as much time there this year as he’s spent in his actual state…

        1. And they have ponies. Life is better with ponies.

          Also, if you run into anybody from Tangier Island, you will not be the one to have the oddest accent in the conversation.

          1. Weirdly, the most bizarre guesses on my accent are “The outer banks” and some region of Scotland. Around the South east US people guessed the first half the time. And in the UK they go “Oh, you’re from Scotland and lived a long time in the US.

      1. He will?

        Then the Brie over there will have a white wine, the Stilton requests a dark beer, and the Provolone wants chianti.
        –

        1. Not much on Stink-cheese (Stilton) but the beer! About every week or so I have to get some Guiness in those cool cants with the little ball in them and have a guiness with my dinner. Takes me back…

          1. I plead absence of criminal intent! I am a wallaby of simple mind and easily confused.

            “Serve” can be equally a transitive or intransitive verb, something honorable languages, the kind that don’t go about mugging other languages and rifling their pockets for loose nouns, avoid through use of declensions and such hints, but not English, oh ho, English declines to decline!

            “Cheese” is a highly ambiguous word, taking on many meanings. In Baseball it means “heat” or a fastball (I confess I spent excessive amount of time – which is to say: any – browsing clips from Bull Durham and Major League for a supporting example before giving it up last night.) It can also be a gaming term that refers to an unconventional and unexpected strategy used to beat another player. It can also refer to “that which is melodramatic, overly emotional, or cliché, i.e. cheesy.” (Wiki)

            Further meanings include:
            Money
            A dangerous mixture of black tar heroin and crushed Tylenol PM tablets.
            Holed pattern of circuitry to decrease pattern density.
            A low curtsey; so called on account of the cheese shape assumed by a woman’s dress when she stoops after extending the skirts by a rapid gyration.

            There are even some folks who have been know to refer to my various comments as cheesy, so how is a poor wallaby to repose?
            –

            1. Don’t forget:

              Cut the cheese
              Swiss cheese
              Cheesecake
              The Big Cheese
              “Say cheese!”
              Head cheese

              Hmmm, I wonder how Carp and cheese will go together?

            1. [suspicious look]

              Is the aardvark calling me cheesy? RES derailed this conversation so hard for me that I honestly can’t tell.

  6. Well, my cousin’s late aunt’s house is being auctioned off on October 10; I estimate its elevation as eighty (80) feet. It’s about two hours from the beach (and 20 minutes to the emergency room via private vehicle, since I think you mentioned that matters).

    Just wire me $400K, and I’ll have it ready for you when you’re ready to move in. 🙂 {Cue guffaw.}

  7. I think a lot of people are coping with random clouds of exhaustion descending upon them. I certainly have been, as has my husband to a lesser extent. Introvert fatigue, for one – being stuck all day, every day, with family no matter HOW much you love them – plus politics fatigue, Kung Flu fatigue, plain old regular fatigue…sometimes they all crest at once and you just need to collapse for a bit.

    1. It’s autumn.

      I didn’t get to go to a single relative’s house.

      The kids didn’t get to do a single play date.

      Nobody has been here since the wuflu news started to look better– and suddenly the country lost its flippin mind.

      I’ve gained back all the weight I lost over the last two years, even if my pant size has gone down I don’t look any better to me.

      Of course the random tired depression hits.

      There’s good stuff, too, I just can’t think of it over my head ache at the moment. /wry

      1. I saw a series of posts from a doctor used to dealing with long-term issues—not pandemics, per se, but things that take months or years to work out. She said there’s a pretty reliable “six-month slump” when you’re in something for the long haul, and it does happen about every six months of a long duration. So we’re all getting that six month mark about now, where we’ve done a lot of adjustments, but now it’s a lot of “and it’s still going, and we don’t know for how long.”

          1. If I didn’t know you’re more swamped than a prince with a marriage to plan, a wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it, I’d already have shown up on your doorstep and made like Nirvana.
            “Here we are now! Entertain us!”

            Or, maybe, “Wanna go for a road trip? Or out to eat? Or just second FM road to the right and straight on til morning?”

            2. I liked working from “start of business” to “half-way to end of day.” Now I work “hour before start of business” to “thirty minutes to end of day.” With three different during-the-day schedules inside of that, depending on what day of the week it is.

      1. It helps that I have been working this entire time, and still have to deal with lots of people. It also helps that I’ve leveled up at Day Job (ding!) so it’s kept me occupied, and that where I weightlift decided right early on that masks were stupid, panic was stupid, closing down was stupid, and they’re not having any of that.

        All the same, I’m torn between not wanting to deal with the hassle of travelling across fifty little laboratories of panic and authoritarianism, and a sincere desire to get the blast out of here and go road tripping.

    1. I have dedicated a significant portion of my life to avoiding what I deserve and with a little bit of luck I’ll pass on to the next life still undeserving.
      –

  10. Whine? Well, I’d recommend port instead. Any port in a storm, but once the storm is passed, you’ll no doubt turn your nose up at Taylors and insist on Fonseca or M&S, and at least a decade of aging before being bottled…

    1. The 94 vintage was very good but I’m keeping it for grandchildren, We have one bottle left of my father’s Taylor’s 1963. Outstanding.

      The late teens of this century threw off several excellent vintages. huzzah for Global Warming. I wish I still smoked cigars.

      1. Dad bought a bottle for me from my year of birth.
        UNFORTUNATELY it was a victim of vaccuum cleaner wielded by new husband within first year of marriage.
        Both of the boy’s birth years are vintage. I should get them bottles, but I’ll wait till they’re more settled.

        1. I was born in 62 so no vintage. My father had a case each of the the 60 and 63 that were kept for special occasions. No labels back then. The 63 was among the finest ever and it only came out for grandchildren’s births. My parents had 10 grandchildren, leaves two bottles. My father opened one for my wedding in 1988, leaves one. Mine bwah ha ha. When one of my brood breeds we’ll drink it.

          My daughter was born in 94 and we bought a case. Opened a bottle in 2018 for her wedding. young but still glorious. First grandchild gets the 63. Rest get the 94. I’m hoping we use up the case. if not, my kids can sell them and buy a car or something.

          It’d be worth your while to buy the 2011 for your great-grandchildren. They say it’s among the finest, ever and the best since the 94. Also, there were consecutive vintages declared from 2014 to 2017 so there’s no shortage, for a change.

          Sorry, I do love Port. Or as my grandfather, the British Colonel, used to say “Port, sir, is the only wine.”

            1. I wonder if 1954 was vintage but I also wonder “what was vintage in the that year”. 😉

            1. Taylor’s 1994 will set you back $150 or so unless your relations who live, IDK couple miles from Porto, can get it cheaper.

              Port is one of the few Real luxury goods that a normal person can buy. You can buy the Warre’s or Croft’s 63 for $200 a bottle. A bottle of that overpriced French stuff they make in Burgundy will cost you 10 times as much and not be nearly as good.

                1. Huzzah. You never can tell with Europe. I pay significantly less for Guinness than my cousins in Ireland do and one of them lives no more than 1/4 mile from the bloody brewery and with VAT it’s often cheaper for me to buy something from the UK here, pay the shipping, and then have it picked up and taken back than it would be for them to buy it there.

                  Back before the world lost its mind, I used to go to Ireland every year for the rugby, or all Ireland final if the boys were in it. My wife and my cousin’s wives would have reciprocal orders worked out and the contents of my luggage would be completely different going than coming.

        2. >> “UNFORTUNATELY it was a victim of vaccuum cleaner wielded by new husband within first year of marriage.”

          How new are we talking about? Was he still under warranty? “This husband I got here can’t even vacuum properly and I want to exchange him. Here’s his receipt.”

          More seriously, though… How did he manage that? Wine bottles are too big to vacuum up by accident, and they’re not so fragile that lightly bumping into one with the vacuum should break it.

  11. Take care. I understand the need for a vacation on the beach. *sigh I’m so tied to a machine and broke that I can’t even consider a beach vacation.

  12. I’m in that stage of life when I get to choose tomorrow’s pain by how I sleep tonight. I’m a side sleeper — sleeping on my back proves too intermittent — and I’ve been sleeping on the left side the last couple of nights. The good news is the (rebuilt) left knee only dully aches instead of throbbing through the day. The bad news is the left shoulder aches and then some, constantly advising me the arm is too heavy and might we please jettison it? The left elbow provides just enough twinges to keep me aware it could get really nasty if provoked.

    On the right side I get plenty of reasons to try sleeping on the left.

    Pain is just life’s way of reminding: you ain’t dead yet.
    –

    1. Bob and Brad on YouTube have a lot of helpful tips on all sorts of conditions. They also have several years’ worth of short videos, so you might have to search a bit, but they are members of a physical therapist school of thought that wants patients to know tons about what’s going on with the body, and how you can help yourself as well as go to therapy when needed. bobandbrad dot com is their website. Also they are entertaining and funny, so they might make you feel better whatever. 🙂

      2. My wife had full knee replacement about two months ago. I’d sent her the link and she’s already found stuff. Thank you.

          1. I likely need my right knee done and have for years (well, decades at this point)

            Of course, the VA has said that even checking into doing it was ‘not cost effective’

            and people wonder why i hate socialized medicine…

  13. “Consider this your extended whine for the day 😀”

    Meh – if that’s the worst whine of the day, no problem. It’s the whine from under the car’s hood that worries me. Or the whine the vacuum cleaner engine makes just before exploding.
    –

  14. Eh, every once in a while your body tells to you to take a “(beep) it” day. Listen, or it turns to a “(beep) you up” day soon afterwards

      1. Every once in a while I have to take a day off and declare a National Day of Sleep. If I were King, these would happen about once a month. Everyone would stay in bed, except the hardy few tasked with enforcement. Any citizen found out in about by the Dream Police would be detained until a Sonambulance could be called to carry them back home and gently put them in their beds.
        Perfect world isn’t it?
        VOTE Tim for King!

              1. I wore out an 8-track of the Dream Police album, long ago…

                “The Dream Police, they live inside of my head
                The Dream Police, they come to me in my bed
                The Dream Police, they’re coming to arrest me
                Oh no…”

    2. I’m used to 6 hours of sleep before my back starts screaming at me. OTOH, if I wake up after 4+ hours, it’s a lost cause getting back to sleep. I had several days in a row where 5 hours had to do, but last night, after a wee-hour pee break, I went back to bed and crashed. Made it to 7 hours before Angie the border collie started complaining that *she* needed to pee, as did Sara, who frequently lets Angie do the barking..

      The extra sleep felt good after I spent much of yesterday finishing the door to the (somewhat overbuilt) garden shed and getting the damned thing on its hinges. Today, I finished installing the hasp and a couple pieces of flashing, locked it up for the first time, and called it quits for the day.

  15. And, y’all, I found my checkbook!
    It was hiding my car console the whole time.

    (No,really, I was almost to the point of asking everybody.)

  16. Get some rest. Get better.

    I find I’m more tired now than 12 days on the road, there & back, towing a trailer (okay only 5 days trailer towing, and two big days fighting wind with it). Since we were news less while we were gone, I blame it on the news.

  17. They say that waking up is hard to do
    Now I know
    I know that it’s true
    Don’t say that this is the end
    Instead of waking up I wish that we were falling asleep again

    Sorry, but no one else did, so then I had to.

      1. It does. But it’s also weird. Who talks like that? And there’s other people out there ripping off Neil Sedaka lyrics? WTW?

        1. Damn it. Neil Sedaka ripped off his own lyrics and made a book and CD called Waking up is Hard to Do. I didn’t know.

  18. okay okay yes i get it private watson you all tore up the garrison flag so you could identify one another and that’s where it started sheesh let me get my other work done

    (obscure reference for Sarah)

  19. Not a fan sea water. Or seashores. Would much rather be in the mountains. But finances and family keep me in the flat lands.

    No point other than the universe has a contrary sense of humor.

    Get some rest. Be well.

  20. Oh totally off the subject, thought of you the other day Sarah while playing ham radio and worked my first Portuguese station. He’s located in Martinho da Gândara.

    Don’t know if that’s near your old stomping grounds as I’m not very familiar with the geography of Portugal.

    Probably because it did not come up on any of the OPLANS or target lists I worked back in the day. (I still have a good feel for places in North Korea and the Far East Military District for some reason…)

    Anyway thought I’d inject a note of irrelevant trivia

    1. I have no clue where that is.
      I grew up on what is NOW a suburb of Porto. (Twenty minutes away by train. My grandmother could count on both hands the number of times she’d been there, by the time I was in college.)

      1. Understood. But you never know. According to google my contact lives about 29 miles south of Porto.

  22. I really like that image. It definitely deserves to be a cover someday. OT, but is WordPress being weird for any of you? It keeps saying I have forty new posts and since I only follow a few blogs that’s just not true.

    1. I see the same thing, but it won’t show the posts, just groups of pale gray rectangles that sort of resemble posts if you squint at them. Dunno if it’s just WordPress losing its feeble mind again, or something else.

    2. Well, this morning it’s back to what passes for normal for WordPress. Awaiting its next weirdness with bated breath aggrieved resignation.

      1. That’s kind of reassuring– yeah, they’re obnoxious birds, but they’re pretty.

        More importantly:
        http://fav.me/d1rych6

        If you look at a lot of old phoenix art, the only way you can tell it from peacocks is the color.

        Especially if you are looking for a “Chinese Phoenix.”
        China burning out the corruption and rising, renewed, might be nice…

        ************************************

        If someone has art-skills, I freely offer the idea of doing a full spectrum of phoenix-peacock-??? in vague hope of someday seeing one that I can buy for my wall. 😀

        orange/yellow green/blue purple/red?

        Or red-orange-yellow orange-yellow-green yellow-green-blue green-blue-purple blue-purple-red purple-red-orange…..

        Maybe even do a version with the white peacock in the middle, even the photographs for that are gorgeous.

        One of my kids’ art and culture lessons is Asian mythology, they dubbed it the “fee-cock” for ages.

        It was FUN when they noticed, and pointed out, that the mating-dance/cock-fight looks a lot like the standard phoenix swoopy-dance. They also pointed out that to make a phoenix, you just turn the peacock red. VERY proud mommy, they were SEEING.

        2. Might very well do it, Fox, after I have a studio again, so in a month or so (all this traveling delayed it.)
          Phoenix. Yes, that might be why i’m obsessed. I kind of need to be the Phoenix right now.

  23. I used to think Health Nuts…were. Until I tried a few of their suggestions, and
    they worked; Not just the supplements, but avoiding sitting, splitting sleep
    into two sessions a night, with a couple of woke hours in between, and tuning
    diet to one’s own internal marching song. There is also something going on
    with dreams, but I’m still working on that: Ancestral memory, Guardian Angels,
    something. Everything seems to work on everything else, synergistically.
    Cultivating a certain bemused amusement about life and the universe helps me.

    1. I’m still working on “what works for me.” One of the things I’ve figured out is that high altitude is spinning my issues up. I should have known, because my first year here was hell, and then it became “the normal.”
      Sigh. Well. Two more years.

  25. Some China news for those following. Evergrande corporation is the second largest property developer in China they do apartments in Guandong Province. Trading in their bonds was halted this morning because of “abnormal fluctuations.” They are a systematically important firm, as a matter of fact you’d be hard put to find a more systematically important firm in China. Too Big to Fail is an understatement. They’ve been in trouble for a long time and were seeking bailouts from the local government. They have $19 Billion coming due the end of January and simply don’t have the money. The problem isn’t the $19 B, though that’s a lot of money, it’s what they call “cross defaults.L. There is a very real risk of cascading failure.

    Property is where middling Chinese people put their savings. You’ve all read about the empty cities and the recent floods are driving up food prices substantially. So there’s underlying stress across the economy.. Evergrande would take a fair number large firms and a very large number of middling ones in what is China’s richest province. Wiping out your upper and middle class is not the way to promote economic growth. The issue for the government would quickly become civil unrest.

    China is a basket case.

    2. Right on cue. Evergrande has been allowed to spin off its property management business to raise capital.

      Crisis postponed but it changes nothing. What they’re trying to do is shift the burden from the billionaires on to the punters. Typical. The phenomenon exists everywhere but China is filled with degenerate gamblers

      In any case, China is a basket case

  26. New England has lots of small ponds, lakes, streams and rivers that while not seacoast, are probably safer and more affordable to live next to.

    Downeast Maine has a lot of cute little towns perched on the oceanside. How affordable they are varies widely; with the price going up the farther south you go.

    Seacoast NH is only 15 miles long. Seabrook, Hampton, Rye, Newcastle, and Portsmouth pretty expensive properties, and subject to flooding.

    Not sure you want to live in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, or RI, or Ct. NYS doesn’t know if it wants to be a kleptocracy, a totalitarian dictatorship, or a socialist state, so they try to be all three. NJ, do I need say anything. Everything south of there that’s beach front floods seriously regularly; maybe a house built on a barge with large anchors at each corner to keep it in place?

    It’s a shame we didn’t hold on to Mexico after we beat them. Of course they get either tropical storms or earthquakes depending on which coast. Some places get both!

    1. I AM NOT moving from ever-left-moving Colorado to New England. Talk about getting stuck behind the lines.
      I love the landscape and the coats (my husband was born in a house facing the sea.) BUT no.

      1. What kind of “coats”? Mink? [Very Big Crazy Grin While Flying Away Very Very Fast]

              1. Imagine what we’d say if you talked about “wearing a coast”. [Crazy Grin]

                1. I’m trying to imagine the “yo momma so fat” jokes her kids would have to endure.

                  “Yo mamma so fat, Gaia asks her for fashion advice.”

  27. Oh, hey, found something out today. The Hebrew word for shepherd is basically a participle made from one of the verbs “to feed”, and the Hebrew word for “wool” is basically “sheep stuff” (or maybe the sheep are “woolies”.) So all that bit in Ezekiel with “Dudes shouldn’t the shepherds be feeding the sheep?” is really, “Hey, feeders, you’re supposed to be feeding sheep, not feeding yourselves! And stop sheeping yourselves!”

    And that’s why Jerome did all the stuff with pastor/pasture, because he was trying to preserve that connection.

    Anyway, also heard a couple of interesting talks from Michael Heiser about the connection between various chapters of Ezekiel and the things Jesus says in various chapters of John, which was fun, and made sense given all the Septuagint Ezekiel connections in the Book of Revelation.

    Also the word for “gather” used in the Septuagint for gathering what was scattered is “synagoge” or something like that.

    Re: words, Biblehub has interlinear, etc. Hebrew/Greek side by side with English, and ellopos.net has the Septuagint side by side with English. Biblehub just started having Septuagint but doesn’t really have Latin. I tend to use drbo.org for the Vulgate, for convenience, but it has proofreading problems and you might want a different Vulgate. Clementine Vulgate is online various places. The Old Latin versions of the Bible are probably found most easily in old books on Google Books and archive.org (Vetera Latina is a good search term). Biblehub sorta has some of the Catholic/Orthodox books for research purposes; but they don’t really commit to support them, because they are a proudly Protestant site.

    1. Found another thing. The Greek word for shepherd is “poimen,” which literally means something like “protector” (of the herds/flocks, in this case).

      The Greek word for poet is “poietes,” literally “maker,” but you notice that the first syllables are the same. And yes, flockguards sometimes made poetry, so you can see where Greeks would have a strong association.

      A lot of this stuff is hidden from us, by not having a culture that’s big on traditional education in the big historical/cultural languages. Maybe we shouldn’t all take it, because not everybody wants it or would get much from it; but tech making it more accessible is a good thing.

      1. “Poimnion” is one of the words for flock, btw. A flock is what is protected by the protector.

        “Episkeptomai” gets used for “to visit” and “to inspect, to look over.” (Ezek. 34:11 — “I shall seek out my sheep and I shall visit them.”) The word for “I shall seek out” is “ekzetesou,” which also means things like “search after intensely” and “investigate.”

        I like Greek so much. It’s just a fun language.

  28. Write while the striking iron is hot, or whatever that’s supposed to say… LOL We look forward to more words from you in various forms! 🙂

  30. For some reason your mention of Brighton triggered a memory of a part of the old Beyond the Fringe bit They English Way of Death’

    She says, “I want to be scattered.”

    I says, “All right, then.”

    She says, “I want to be scattered on the East Shore of Blackpool.”

    I says, “They won’t allow that, it’s a smokeless zone!”

    She says, “I want to be scattered on the East Shore of Blackpool, and I want to be scattered on Easter Bank Holiday Monday.”

    I says, “You’re ruddy mad.”

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