Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 7, 2010 · 7:53 am

Feed your pig

Many years ago, my Uncle Buddy gave me a ceramic piggy bank.  It’s pretty small, as piggy banks go, so it doesn’t take long to fill it up.  Still, it takes me about a year, as often as I remember to feed it.

I usually empty it this time of year, take the coins to one of those coin machines and get a nice little piece of cash.  It’s found money after all, so I try and spend it as frivolously as possible.

About four years ago, the accounting industry launched a public awareness campaign called “Feed the Pig.”  In partnership with the Ad Council, the accounting profession’s national association developed the campaign in an effort to encourage personal saving.  At the time of the launch, while working on a financial literacy project, I became acquainted with spokespig Benjamin Banks (get it?) and decided to start feeding my own little oinker.

Check out Feed the Pig – It’s still chock full of good information, including a Habit-Breaking Help section that addresses, among other dangers, Shoe Addiction.  Be sure to click on Benjamin’s face when you arrive, but also take some time to take the Beat Your Brain quiz.  You’ll get to know your financial self a little better.

After all this evangelizing, I am going to take a taste of my own slop and try to save more.   Charging for purchases, even shoes, doesn’t warm the heart the way saving does. 

And thanks, Uncle Buddy, wherever you are.  I just came home with $33.34  in free money.

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July 6, 2010 · 7:43 am

Dirty minds

There are some really sick people out there.  I know because they are stumbling onto my blog.

As I’ve noted before, my blog platform’s back end allows me to see how visitors come in.  Never fear, I don’t know who they are, but I know if they have entered words into a search engine that led them to my site.  I am always pleased when someone finds me by Googling a word usage question.

The obvious referrals come from searches on various forms of “nymph.”  Some are innocent and some are quite obviously not.

Don’t look for me to cite examples of sordid searches, because they are really dirty.  Suffice it to say there are plenty of innocuous strings of words that have filthy connotations.  And these phrases, when searched, lead a seamy trail to my innocent blog–even before my post about Mrs. Warren’s Profession. 

I hope the pervs aren’t too disappointed when they find me.  And I do hope they come back for legitimate reasons, such as a word usage question.

I wonder if my colleague over at The Sticky Egg has noticed anything untoward on her back end.

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July 5, 2010 · 8:11 am

The Boss

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. 

(Belmar, actually, but I wanted to open with the name of the album.)

It’s been many years since I’ve been to this stretch of the Jersey Shore.  Some good friends were kind enough to invite us to join them for the holiday weekend.  We are thrilled to see them and to be back “down the shore,” in that order.

This is hallowed ground for fans of Bruce Springsteen.  And I am definitely one.

In the summer of 1975, having never heard of him, I saw Springsteen perform at a concert hall in Norfolk, Va., and my life was forever changed.  The Born to Run album had just come out and, to a girl of fifteen, Bruce’s energy and stage presence were electrifying.  Once I knew what he was actually singing, I was inspired. 

It can be hard to understand Bruce when he sings but, within no time after the concert, I had the album and was reading and memorizing the lyrics.  That, boys and girls, was back when an album cover was large enough to print all the lyrics in readable type.

At fifteen, I was already disillusioned with the sappy pop music of Top 40 radio.  The Captain and Tennille just didn’t capture the pain and angst that kids my age were feeling.

But Bruce?  No candy coating there, his songs were real.  They were life in the streets and broken hearts and hard knocks.  They ripped your heart out and offered hope at the same time.

I’ve always considered Bruce Springsteen a modern poet.  On this occasion of my visit here, I’d like to share some of my favorite of his lyrics.

From the song, “For You”

We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore

From “Growin’ Up”

I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched

From “Thunder Road” 

There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street, your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they’re gone, on the wind, so Mary climb in
It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win

From “Jungleland”

In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners desperate as the night moves on
Just one look and a whisper, and they’re gone. 

I’m going to sign off now.  I have a lump in my throat.

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July 3, 2010 · 7:46 am

Two if by sea

As we approach our country’s 234th birthday, it’s appropriate to reflect on the significance of Independence Day. 

My educational frame of reference for American independence centers chiefly around a film we were shown in grade school.  I have been trying to remember the name so I can dig up a copy.  The film was black and white and grainy, but it painted a pretty vivid picture of the events leading up to the formation of the United States as an independent nation.  So when this holiday rolls around, that film rolls in my head.

The Fourth of July is also my younger brother’s birthday.  When he was little he used to sing, “A real live Matthew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July,” while watching fireworks at the neighborhood celebration he thought was being thrown in his honor.

Living in the nation’s capital, the Fourth used to mean hearing the Beach Boys playing on the National Mall, and a long, crowded Metro ride home.  Sometimes it’s a crab feast or a pool party or a visit to the National Archives.  Fireworks?  Don’t hate me, but I could take ’em or leave ’em. 

Even though our nation might at times seem like it’s going somewhere in one big hand-basket, with oil spills and wars and political infighting over the freedoms we hold dear, my holiday wish is that for one day we Americans can cool off with a Good Humor Bomb Pop, sing Kumbaya and appreciate how good we have it.

As I trust the Founding Fathers would have intended, I’ll be at the Jersey shore.

Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays, but she wishes you a Happy Independence Day.

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July 2, 2010 · 7:26 am

The oldest profession

Here’s a trivia question for you.

What do Lynn Redgrave and Amanda Quaid have in common?

Lynn Redgrave, the award-winning actress who passed away in May, and Amanda Quaid, daughter of actor Randy Quaid and also a talented actress, both played Vivie Warren in the stage production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession.

Why am I telling you this?  For several reasons that I hope you find as interesting as I do.  If not, come back tomorrow when we’ll be talking about the Fourth of July.

In 1976, my godparents flew me up to New York to see Mrs. Warren’s Profession.  It was an enormous thrill to take the shuttle up by myself, go to Lincoln Center, see this an outstanding play with my aunt, uncle and cousin, and then have dinner in the city.

The play starred Ruth Gordon as Mrs. Warren and Lynn Redgrave as her daughter, Vivie.

The night before last, a friend was kind enough to take me to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company perform Mrs. Warren’s Profession in Washington, D.C.   It starred Elizabeth Ashley as Mrs. Warren and Amanda Quaid as Vivie.  And, of course, some notably accomplished male actors, including Ted van Griethuysen, Andrew Boyer, Tony Roach and David Sabin (and may I just say that Sabin was brilliant?).

For those not familiar with the play, which was written in the late 19th century, it is a comedy about a young woman who learns that her privileged upbringing was made possible by her mother’s profitable career as an owner and manager of brothels around Europe.   I’d love to get my hands on the script.  It’s hilarious.

It has been written that the character of Vivie, who at a young age had already begun a career in the business world, was known as the “New Woman” when the play was written in 1893.  In fact, the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s literary associate Akiva Fox notes that “Shaw called Mrs. Warren’s Profession his ‘play for women.’”

Shortly after the play was first performed in London in 1894 (two years before Ruth Gordon was born, by the way), it was censored for dealing with the subject of prostitution.  These days that’s hard to imagine.

Lynn Redgrave, who played Vivie in 1976, had just starred in the movie The Happy Hooker the year before.

As for Ruth Gordon, prior to Mrs. Warren, perhaps her best known role had been Maude in Harold and Maude, which dealt with the oddest of male-female relationships, between an 80-year-old woman and a 19-year-old boy.

I am not connecting any dots here and there are many degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.  Just some things I found interesting, that’s all.

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July 1, 2010 · 7:45 am

Rabbit rabbit!

If you haven’t spoken yet today and you say “rabbit rabbit” right now, you’ll have good luck for the rest of the month.  And you don’t even have to forward this on to anyone.  The catch is, you have to say it before you say anything else on the first day of the month, in order for it to work.  Otherwise, try again August first.

We embraced this superstition in our house about 10 years ago after hearing it from a local television meteorologist.  Channel 9’s Topper Shutt is right most of the time about the weather, so we trusted him on this one. 

I have no idea if it works, but why chance it?

When you are walking with a friend and an object comes between you, do you say “bread and butter?”   Do you have a required response?  My mother answers with “salt and pepper.”  I have a friend who responds with “come to supper.”

“Rabbit rabbit” and “bread and butter” fall right behind “knock on wood” and “break a leg” in a litany of superstitious phrases uttered in the spirit of attracting good luck.

Reach back through your ancestral traditions.  Are there any you feel comfortable sharing?

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