I feel, thanks to you that I am meeting an entirely new set of brethren on a regular basis. Reminds me of what we older coffee klatch guys call our weekly tune-ins. Inevitably it becomes our regular organ exchange...
About using the word “john” to indicate the commode. I’m older, so I have to use it a lot more often than I did in years past. So I call it “my favorite room.” As in, “I’ve gotta go to my favorite room.” So far, it’s worked pretty well.
I also laughed out loud at the "crushed nuts" letter! Thanks for being you and for adding to the humor and quality of my life. I was born at St. Mary's 77 years ago and am glad the health care there is still so good.
In junior high my friend was tasked with writing a limerick. She was stumped. I wrote her a few, all of which ended up in the school literary mag under her name. Here’s the only one I remember:
"When I was in college, I applied to a monastery..." From the outside, the monastic life can have a lot of appeal - especially for those seeking "some peace and quiet" in their lives. I'd like to help you reconsider that image! In my early retirement, I went to work as a librarian for the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Monastery/ Seminary. I prayed with the monks, ate my meals with the monks - even had the driveway of the house I was staying in plowed out in the winter bu monks - so I could get to work at the monastery.
Certainly, that doesn't qualify as a full-time observer. Obviously, I didn't get any further into the residence hall than the dining room. Even there, the few females among us who were there for meals were isolated behind a wall, except for entry and exit doors. We sat on our side and listened as the Seminarians, following the Monastic Rule, read from the Bible (in Russian, of course) during our meal. On the other hand, the monk at the head of the seminarian's table had a monstrous appetite! The poor young students ended up with a spoonful each, while the monk at the head of the table would turn around, notice that the three of us women had hardly made a dent in our serving bowls, and proceed to beg the remains from us and polish it all off. That was the "gluttonous monk" - sort of a Shakespearean Friar Tuck. Another of the monks had an amazingly long beard! It reached to his crotch, I swear! What made it all the more improbable was that he was the monastery's beekeeper! I could just imagine him, working there by the hives, with bees buzzing about his hirsute extension!
Some youths who have visions of monastic life imagine hours and hours, isolated in their rooms, immersed in intensive prayer. "No more teachers, no more books..." Father Luke, who had an office in the library building, went full-time to a university an hour away in order to get a Master's degree in Administration. A team of monks took shifts at the monastery store - about 20 hours a week each. There was a dairy that had to be tended. The monastery buildings were heated by firewood - which had to be split before it was tossed into the stove. And then there were the visitors! Most of the founding congregation lived on Long Island, in a Russian community close to Coney Island. On weekends, we had a regular stream of congregants who came up to the "Pilgrim's House." So much for "gender isolation," especially then! There was a not-too-bright Russian handyman who loved to chase skirts! He had a "Keeper"- as if he were a dog on a chain - to keep his hands off the ladies.
Maybe you get the picture. Yes. There were glowing, ethereal religious moments for me. Sometimes when the monks chanted in services, I felt as if I were standing beside a roadside in Galilee and watching The Son of God riding by on a donkey. At other times, when the air was full of incense and the rituals at the altar were intense, I felt as if I might have been Tolstoy, standing in a Moscow cathedral. There were high points. But, on the other hand, a lot of the time, those "sacred monks" were pretty close to everyday human beings.
And, maybe more importantly for the world - these men had chosen to take largely "Internal Journeys." Your Journey, on the other hand, has led you directly Into the Real World. And what you have seen here, and learned here, you have assimilated and reflected upon! You wouldn't have the following you do have, if you had gone on the monastic route of self-isolation.
I, for one, am extremely relieved that you had second thoughts about that aspiration! Where would all of us "Church of the Prairie Homers" be without you, our precious leader? It seems that the Good Lord, in his wisdom, understood that there can be different ways of fulfilling His Will. It seems as if HE didn't want you, in particular, to "Hide Your Light Under an Bushel." Thank Heavens for that!
Mr. K, your issue with double images when driving may be due to prisms being out of whack in your eyeglasses. It took several visits and a change in optometrists to track that down that fix for me. And now, bliss!
Can you expand on how to find an optometrist who understands such things? “Are you a really good optometrist?” seems rude.
I’m resorting to my old glasses with a broken frame (but if you’re careful the lens almost never falls out) because the TWO remakes have been unwearable. The Scot in me won’t let another lens be ground; the Swede in me won’t accept imperfection.
In 2004 my husband I went on a wonderful music-themed "Learning Tour" to N. Italy, sponsored by WGBH, the PBS station in Boston. Our leader was Cathy Fuller, a classical music host (then and still) for their radio station, now WCRB. (She told us that she once interviewed Garrison - she may have mentioned it on a later trip - we went on tours to Spain and France with her in later years) It was a wonderful trip, with only 8 of us in the group, so we got to know one another quite well. Near the end of the tour, she challenged us to each write a limerick about the trip to read to the group at the Farewell Dinner. I was energized by the challenge and wrote two of them, it Italian! I may still have them somewhere, but but I don't think they wouldn't be of much interest to this group.
The JFL/FNA post reminds me of something similar that happened to me. In 2004 a guy pulled in front of me, and we collided, causing me (though belted) to break my sternum on the steering wheel. Thirty minutes later in the ER, while waiting to see a doc, a female cop was interviewing me about the accident. At one point I asked her if she had talked to the other driver, who wasn't hurt, about why he pulled in front of me. "HUA," she said matter-of-factly. "HUA?" I replied, aware of DWI and DUI but not HUA. "Head up ass," she said. That made me laugh, causing my sternum to hurt even worse. -DWS of Goshen, Indiana
I feel, thanks to you that I am meeting an entirely new set of brethren on a regular basis. Reminds me of what we older coffee klatch guys call our weekly tune-ins. Inevitably it becomes our regular organ exchange...
Dear Mr. Keillor,
You may add this to the pile of valiant efforts:
With rumblings peptic and enteric
Gary struggled heroically to nail the trick.
With all said and done
He had had tons of fun—
And he finally farted a limerick.
Love,
Dawn
FNA and crushed nuts. Goodness, thank you for the morning laughter! :)
About using the word “john” to indicate the commode. I’m older, so I have to use it a lot more often than I did in years past. So I call it “my favorite room.” As in, “I’ve gotta go to my favorite room.” So far, it’s worked pretty well.
My husband refers to it as my "Reading Room." What can I say, sitting on the throne can get boring without a good book! :D
Someone will eventually master this...
There once was a young man from Emmerich,
Heinrich's his name in this limerick.
His job in the town
was to turn the lights down,
So his nickname became Dimmer Rick.
Sharon Olson
of Annapolis
I also laughed out loud at the "crushed nuts" letter! Thanks for being you and for adding to the humor and quality of my life. I was born at St. Mary's 77 years ago and am glad the health care there is still so good.
I'll be sharing that "crushed nuts" joke later today!
A limerick, once it is read,
Can lodge itself deep in the head.
Like the lass from Nantucket
There’s no way to duck it,
So continue to giggle instead.
My favorite so far!
GK wants some limerick limericks.
We're trying, but no one's quite getting it.
Doesn't matter how done,
Just as long as it's fun,
That's the point of this exercise, isn't it?
In junior high my friend was tasked with writing a limerick. She was stumped. I wrote her a few, all of which ended up in the school literary mag under her name. Here’s the only one I remember:
There once was a young girl in bed
Who fell off and damaged her head.
She fell on her ear
And now she can’t hear
For when she woke up she was dead.
I apologize for prying, but I'm burning with curiosity: Did Her Healthness write the post from Ms. G.K.?
"When I was in college, I applied to a monastery..." From the outside, the monastic life can have a lot of appeal - especially for those seeking "some peace and quiet" in their lives. I'd like to help you reconsider that image! In my early retirement, I went to work as a librarian for the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Monastery/ Seminary. I prayed with the monks, ate my meals with the monks - even had the driveway of the house I was staying in plowed out in the winter bu monks - so I could get to work at the monastery.
Certainly, that doesn't qualify as a full-time observer. Obviously, I didn't get any further into the residence hall than the dining room. Even there, the few females among us who were there for meals were isolated behind a wall, except for entry and exit doors. We sat on our side and listened as the Seminarians, following the Monastic Rule, read from the Bible (in Russian, of course) during our meal. On the other hand, the monk at the head of the seminarian's table had a monstrous appetite! The poor young students ended up with a spoonful each, while the monk at the head of the table would turn around, notice that the three of us women had hardly made a dent in our serving bowls, and proceed to beg the remains from us and polish it all off. That was the "gluttonous monk" - sort of a Shakespearean Friar Tuck. Another of the monks had an amazingly long beard! It reached to his crotch, I swear! What made it all the more improbable was that he was the monastery's beekeeper! I could just imagine him, working there by the hives, with bees buzzing about his hirsute extension!
Some youths who have visions of monastic life imagine hours and hours, isolated in their rooms, immersed in intensive prayer. "No more teachers, no more books..." Father Luke, who had an office in the library building, went full-time to a university an hour away in order to get a Master's degree in Administration. A team of monks took shifts at the monastery store - about 20 hours a week each. There was a dairy that had to be tended. The monastery buildings were heated by firewood - which had to be split before it was tossed into the stove. And then there were the visitors! Most of the founding congregation lived on Long Island, in a Russian community close to Coney Island. On weekends, we had a regular stream of congregants who came up to the "Pilgrim's House." So much for "gender isolation," especially then! There was a not-too-bright Russian handyman who loved to chase skirts! He had a "Keeper"- as if he were a dog on a chain - to keep his hands off the ladies.
Maybe you get the picture. Yes. There were glowing, ethereal religious moments for me. Sometimes when the monks chanted in services, I felt as if I were standing beside a roadside in Galilee and watching The Son of God riding by on a donkey. At other times, when the air was full of incense and the rituals at the altar were intense, I felt as if I might have been Tolstoy, standing in a Moscow cathedral. There were high points. But, on the other hand, a lot of the time, those "sacred monks" were pretty close to everyday human beings.
And, maybe more importantly for the world - these men had chosen to take largely "Internal Journeys." Your Journey, on the other hand, has led you directly Into the Real World. And what you have seen here, and learned here, you have assimilated and reflected upon! You wouldn't have the following you do have, if you had gone on the monastic route of self-isolation.
I, for one, am extremely relieved that you had second thoughts about that aspiration! Where would all of us "Church of the Prairie Homers" be without you, our precious leader? It seems that the Good Lord, in his wisdom, understood that there can be different ways of fulfilling His Will. It seems as if HE didn't want you, in particular, to "Hide Your Light Under an Bushel." Thank Heavens for that!
Mr. K, your issue with double images when driving may be due to prisms being out of whack in your eyeglasses. It took several visits and a change in optometrists to track that down that fix for me. And now, bliss!
Can you expand on how to find an optometrist who understands such things? “Are you a really good optometrist?” seems rude.
I’m resorting to my old glasses with a broken frame (but if you’re careful the lens almost never falls out) because the TWO remakes have been unwearable. The Scot in me won’t let another lens be ground; the Swede in me won’t accept imperfection.
GK
Here is my attempt at expressing my perennial gripe about baseball while attempting to write a limerick-limerick:
Have you heard all the baseball silly limericks
About umps that are always such dim wicks
That a strike is a ball
And a ball is a strike
Because umpires are always big dip-shits?
Bill Juntunen
Middlebury, IN
A limerick writer at bat,
Should keep his thoughts under his hat.
On his way down to First,*
If he fondles his würst,
He’s liable to trip and fall flat.
* should this be capitalized?
In 2004 my husband I went on a wonderful music-themed "Learning Tour" to N. Italy, sponsored by WGBH, the PBS station in Boston. Our leader was Cathy Fuller, a classical music host (then and still) for their radio station, now WCRB. (She told us that she once interviewed Garrison - she may have mentioned it on a later trip - we went on tours to Spain and France with her in later years) It was a wonderful trip, with only 8 of us in the group, so we got to know one another quite well. Near the end of the tour, she challenged us to each write a limerick about the trip to read to the group at the Farewell Dinner. I was energized by the challenge and wrote two of them, it Italian! I may still have them somewhere, but but I don't think they wouldn't be of much interest to this group.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.623851434326167&type=3
A limerick, it has been said,
Has no place in the marital bed.
But for fooling around
Possibilities abound
For rampant appetites to be fed.
The JFL/FNA post reminds me of something similar that happened to me. In 2004 a guy pulled in front of me, and we collided, causing me (though belted) to break my sternum on the steering wheel. Thirty minutes later in the ER, while waiting to see a doc, a female cop was interviewing me about the accident. At one point I asked her if she had talked to the other driver, who wasn't hurt, about why he pulled in front of me. "HUA," she said matter-of-factly. "HUA?" I replied, aware of DWI and DUI but not HUA. "Head up ass," she said. That made me laugh, causing my sternum to hurt even worse. -DWS of Goshen, Indiana