Not having come across a meme that struck me, I went with this art de computer, via some FOL (Friend of Lefty). Frankly, don’t think any of them REALLY look like me. Do you? (The fifth is Paul Tibbetts.)
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UAlbany plays Virginia in Columbus this week in men’s basketball’s March Madness. I’ll probably do some pool. Any insights on upsets, such as what #12 is going to beat the #5 seed they’re playing?
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Today would have been my parents’ 57th wedding anniversary. On their 50th, in 2000, my sisters and I were trying to plan a surprise party for them. However, my father was ALSO trying to plan a surprise party for his wife, and the people my sisters and I called were confused by the fact that TWO parties were planned for the same day at the same place – their church – so, we ended up joining forces in surprising mom. Dad died five months later, so that last party holds a special place in our hearts.
ROG
Category: anniversary
Lunaversary TM
lunaversary (loon’ a ver’ sah ree) – the monthly recurrence of a notable event. At the half-year point in their relationship, Roger chimed, “This is our sixth lunaversary!”
“Six month anniversary.” Something is just linguistically WRONG about that. Anni- refers to year. Now semi-anniversary, or some variation, maybe.
You may have read about the recent study about the “swooning magic of head-over-heels love.” Researchers “found high amounts of activity in a ‘reward’ part of the brain when the smitten subjects were shown photos of their honeys. That part of the brain has previously been linked to the desire for cocaine, chocolate and money. ‘It shows us exactly why love looks so crazy. It’s activating these circuits that are associated with very intense desire,’ said SUNY Stony Brook psychologist Arthur Aron, who [helped lead] the study.”
Well, luna- is the prefix, not just for moon-based objects, from which the word “month” comes, but for “lunatics” and “lunacy,” all the things “early-stage intense romantic love” is.
I sent this word to William Safire’s “On Language” column in the New York Times about a dozen years ago. Safire thought it was interesting construction, and wrote that he considered using it in his column, but never did. (But a question I had about “Joe Sixpack” did appear in a Safire column.)
Use at will. Tell them when they say “fifth month anniversary” that the PREFERRED term is “fifth lunaversary.”
You never heard of lunaversary before? That’s because I created it. Impress your friends, and confound those who aren’t.
This would be Carol’s and my 73rd lunaversary, except that it isn’t really the way I envisioned using the term. We have a more stable, MATURE love. But we do try to go out to a dinner date once a month around the 15th (sometimes two days early or three days late.) Maybe we CAN still use lunaversary…
Community
I live in the Pine Hills section of Albany, NY. But I’m also part of a work community, the librarian community, and now, a bloggers’ community, among many others. One I’ve valued a great deal is the church community.
Carol and I got married in the largest Methodist church in Albany on May 15, 1999. Little did we know that we would be leaving that community less than two years later.
I’ll try not to get too arcane here. In January 2000, the Pastor Parish Relations Committee suspended the choir, the fact that the PPRC had no authority to do that in Methodist polity notwithstanding. At about the same time, the pastor of Spanish-speaking part of the congregation was squeezed out.
For the next couple weeks, Carol and I attended worship in the cold, inaccessible basement of the other Methodist church where the Spanish-speakers found themselves. (By “cold”, I mean that my feet got numb, even with my boots on. By “inaccessible”, I mean that I helped carry a man downstairs in his wheelchair.)
There was a meeting of the PPRC chair and the choir in March. The choir members had hoped that this would have been an opportunity to clarify the issues, and to create an atmosphere of reconciliation. Instead, it was, unfortunately, a lecture by the PPRC chair, with no real chance to respond to the mostly baseless accusations. There was a suggestion that the choir could come back if the members signed a loyalty oath to the pastor. A loyalty oath! After the meeting, the chair seemed pleased with the outcome; I told her it was b*******.
Even before this meeting, I had started singing in the choir of the church around the corner. But, ultimately, Carol & I left our old church, not just because of these events, but because the governance of church had been changed so that there was little redress. (The opposition to this change in governance, labeled as obstructionist, was the primary “crime” of many in the choir.)
We still have friends at our old church where I was member for a decade and a half, where Carol was member for nearly a decade, where we met, where we wed, but we changed our membership three years ago.
The story about the folks getting kicked out of their church for their voting patterns resonated with me, and even more if you see it on
video. (You may need to download software.) They were forced out and we left voluntarily, but the sense of sadness, loss, abandonment, and perhaps a touch of anger still lingers. In any case, we feel grateful that we have found another community in which we can participate in the church around the corner.
Not a very romantic piece for our 6th anniversary, is it? Still, I believe the experience strengthened my bond with Carol. And with Lydia, we have a (small) community of our own.
Happy anniversary, Carol. I love you.