To commemorate being completely skunked by overcast skies during Sunday’s lunar eclipse, I give you this Sunday from last year. I don’t think there’s been a regularly scheduled celestial event in years that hasn’t been obscured by clouds where I live. It’s been a frustrating run. I plan to be in the path of the total eclipse of the sun as it traverses the central United States in 2017. At least I know that if it’s cloudy that day, it will still get creepy dark!
And, of course, pisces…
By Jimmy Johnson
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270 responses to “And, of course, pisces…”
Dear emb, Jackie Monies’ little dog is named Dickens (she didn’t say why.) Remember, “the ten pound dog” also “the adventure dog”. He often travels with her.
Tut tut, I’ve read lots more of Charles Dickens’ books. My grandmother adored him, and often said so! The rest of the family read him also. But then, you had to concentrate on science, so you did well to read what you did.
Dearest Ghost, thank you — I’m glad you liked what I wrote. And it’s all true!
Jerry in FL, thank you for thinking of me, and your hurricane analysis is most welcome (even when it’s scary). Thank goodness, none of us live near that river, but everybody saw pictures from the floods.
In case of fire, never use the elevator.
Always use water.
Charlotte in NH, Dickens is one of my favorites also. At one point I had picked up several volumes of his collected works. They must have been printed before 1900, because these were the large size, green cloth with gold-leaf lettering on the covers and multiple engravings inside. Really cool. What struck me strange, though, is that although I bought volumes in many different places, they all showed signs of having been in a bookcase with windowpanes. You could tell, because they all were faded in the pattern of the panes and the gilt was bright where it had been behind the wooden crosspieces. i often wondered if they all came from the same original owner.
Here’s what they looked like: http://s156.photobucket.com/user/bluebird49/media/bluebird51/73715.jpg.html
emb: The rest of the answer to your question, now that you know Dickens in Jackie’s dog – someone suggested that she visit Mammoth Cave. Her trip to Maryland was cancelled after she had reached Tennessee and she was looking for a different route home.
My guess is that Dickens has less to do with the author and more with the dog’s behavior, as in “You little dickens!” According to one source on answers dot com that’s “a minced oath. It stands for Devil. A little Dickens is an imp. Used familiarly, it is usually affectionate.”
Dickens is indeed named for Charles Dickens whose works I loved. I was given this tiny ball of fluff on Christmas eve, as big as a single ear muff. Taken out from under the jacket of a tiny five year old girl who had stood in the 20 degree cold all afternoon to find homes for a litter of abandoned puppies left by people in an RE on our lake.
What else could I name him? And I knew I would catch the dickens for bringing another dog home to rescue.
He is curled up on bed , a dog in his natural habitat, a La Quinta motel.
By the way, I parted with my complete editions of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain which I inherited courtesy of the Sunflower, Mississippi lending library which I assume went out of business?
Aunt was a Mississippi librarian and these were old, libraries do shut down. Love.
That was an RV that left the puppies and two little girls and a mom watching them both.
Mark I had passed caves before I read your suggestion.
Jackie, from what I know of your rather catholic tastes in music, I thought perhaps a certain singer was the inspiration for your small dog’s name.
http://www.cmacloseup.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/01/little-jimmy-dickens-4.jpg
Charlotte: “But then, you had to concentrate on science, so you did well to read what you did.” Thanks, but lots of scientists who have concentrated on science more than I have are also much more literate than I.
I had spurts of fiction reading in my teens and later [all of Sherlock Holmes, Twain’s Tom, Huck, and CT Yankee, Agatha Christie, Leslie Charteris [sp.?], whoever wrote Lord Peter Whimsy [sp.?], Asimov, Heinlein, Simak [met him, came to BSU as a guest speaker], other sci.fi., short stories and plays mostly at Stuyvesant [Chekov, W.S. Gilbert’s Iolanthe, Scott’s Ivanhoe, Ibsen’s Dolls House, The Sun is my Undoing [because Mom wouldn’t let me], Boccacio, Balzac [as in The Music Man?], J. Swift, etc.
Gradually grew out of reading much fiction / so much other interesting stuff in magazines and journals, only some of it scientific. Wife [RN] was the serious reader of lit. When wife died, one of our 24 house guest students reminded me that she read Pride and Prejudice annually[?]. [Box just left of me has scores of such tributes in it. They are a comfort.] I now read some theology partly in prep for an annual summer theology workshop [e.g., Bart Ehrman’s (sp.?) How Jesus Became God].
Now my reading, esp. of periodical articles, often leads to columns in the local daily. And I still keep up w/ some science and much science/faith lit.
Peace, emb
Peace,
I grew up with the terms imp and dickens, sometimes re others, sometimes not. Most often in Mom’s conversation, sometimes Dad’s. emb
Ghost, you should have known my reading was even more catholic tHan my music as I know who Little Jimmy Dickens was but have no idea what songs. Post one.
EMB I was often told I was going to have the Dickens switched or whipped out of me. Granny believed in corporal punishment. Where did that term originate?
Trying to sign in to Pandora or I heart or Spotify. I am falling backwards into the 19th century instead of 21st.
Corporal from Latin corpus = body, e.g. spanking or 40 lashes. Capital from capus [?], head, thus capital punishment = beheading. Nasty, both of them. I’m not sure spanking did me or my boys any good. Had given it up before daughter was old enough to spank.
Peace, emb
More likely caput. emb
But why whip the Dickens out? Was Dickens considered bad?
Common sense is a flower that doesn’t grow in everyone’s garden.
good night all.
Yes, he was and not Charles, but the devil himself and was a euphemism for the devil, used by Shakespeare 200 years earlier.
Jackie, see Ruth Anne’s post Oct. 1 10:26pm.
Debbe 😉 Just a song before I go to bed…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGTPvDoJyM
Anon 😉 I think this is a song about karma…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzk4l2NYx_Y
James Cecil (Little Jimmy) Dickens died on January 2nd of this year, at age 94. He had been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1948 and was the oldest living member of the Opry when he passed away. He was four feet eleven inches tall.
Anon 😉 A bonus track for you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7FNyckr7w
Good morning Villagers…
Just enough time to answer Emb’s question….I leave before 7, and the sun is just starting to peak over the horizon….I have see some beautiful sunrises on my way to work…..
Ya’ll have a blessed day
So far this morning I see nothing about the current hurricane which would cause ne to change anything that I said last night. It appears to me to have a better chance now of a westerly track. I will say that obviously TWC and NHC have access to pressure gradients, etc. which I don’t, but the strange thing is that TWC has switched to a totally new cast, none of which I’ve ever seen before. They seem to know only what someone else has told them and if they know much about weather they aren’t showing it.
That may mean TWC veterans have their LL Bean gear in a duffle bag and a cameraman in tow and on a plane or van going to their reporting station to report, leaving the commentary in hands of the cleaning crew and the lowly crowd in the back of the studio. The ones the camera pans over without stopping normally.
Are any of them comely weather wrenches for Ghost?
I invite you to look at this link and you can see what you think.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/eaus/flash-wv.html
Virginia Beach is experiencing 35-40 mph winds and high surf. The airplanes flying into the hurricane found higher altitude winds of 170 mph. This is a very different kind of storm.