I didn’t know musing had anything to do with Greek gods and stuff so, I sacrificed a cat today. I just seemed like the right thing to do. They don’t teach you THAT in Sociology School!

Welcome Cindy!

Our offer on the house was accepted, and the contract signed. We close on or before 30 March which is great with one exception. Now I don’t feel right spending a hundred bucks to go to Charleston and run the Cooper River Bridge on April 1st as I’d planned on for the last few months. I was really looking forward to spending that time with 50,000 of my closest buds from all over the world smelling like sweaty socks! Well maybe next year.

Anyway,,,,I was gonna send you all pictures of our cool 3BR, 2BA, 1 Office home with a pool in the subdivision. But not being so computer wise as some like Tom, I couldn’t figure it out. If you’re really curious, go to cdanjoyner.com, and check out MLS # 1100944.

Greg, we need no truck, (I married a bread man. He comes with a big truck) but the muscle will be appreciated if you’re up for it. We’ll supply the pizza or subs or chicken or whatever. To answer your earlier question, it’s about 4-5 miles from Rock Springs Baptist Church. I’ll let you know when and where all the fun will be, okay?

Sigh….I expected more technical savvy from a member of our country’s first line of defense….

I don’t know what I said. Did I mention musing? Or did I thnk something was amusing, as in funny, not as in a musing? However, I feel much more educated in the museness of this blog, and will try to use the word muse in my normal daily conversation starting this afternoon.

Guess that’s what a degree in library tech or something from an obscure Canadian college will get you: a complete disregard for honest research. Rather than musing on the word “muse,” you could have simply looked it up – as I’m sure your sainted mother would have advised you to do had you been living at home and being annoying on the eve of a great Tupperware party (“You can either look it up or make yourself useful by stamping these flyers, young lady”).

So I’ve taken it upon myself to get the information that you need. Me. With my lowly sociology degree. The major that you refer to as “what one does when one cannot choose a major.” Please read carefully and digest it all. There will be a test.

The Muses are the Greek goddesses who preside over the arts and sciences and inspire those who excel at these pursuits, such as sociology majors and tubists. Daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne (“memory”), they were born at Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus. Their nurse, Eupheme, raised them along with her son, Crotus the hunter, who was transported into the sky as Sagittarius upon his death. Their name (akin to the Latin mens and English mind) denotes ‘memory’ or ‘a reminder’, since in the earliet times poets, having no books to read from, and no library sciences majors to ask questions of, relied on their memories. The Romans identified the Muses with certain obscure Italian water-goddesses, the Camenae (from the Greek “Cam,” meaning “part of an engine” and “enae,” a Scottish brogueism for “enough” – as in “Thot’ll bae enae o thot, ye youngue camenae!”)

The original number of muses and their names varies in earlier times as their evolution blossomed in Greek mythology. At first, three muses were worshipped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia: Melete (“meditation”), Mneme (“memory”), and Aoede (“Melete and Mneme’s Sister”). Another three were worshipped at Delphi and their names represented the names of the strings of a lyre: Nete, Mese, and Hypate. Several other versions were worshipped until the Greeks finally established the seventeen muses in mythology as: Calliope, Doc, Clio, Erato, Bashful, Euterpe, Dopey, Sneezy, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Happy, Sleepy, Terpsichore, Grumpy, Thalia, Urania, and Stumpy. The Muses had several epithets which usually referred to places where they had settled.

Ephialtes and Otus, who also founded Ascra, were the first to sacrifice on Helicon to the Muses and to call the mountain sacred to the Muses. Sacrifices to the Muses consisted of libations of water, milk, or honey poured out of a plastic jug shaped like a dancing honey bear.

Their companions are the Charities, the Horae, Eros, Dionysus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Harmonia, and Himerus (Desire). Apollo is the leader of the choir of the Muses and consequently he has the surname Musagetes. Later Greeks consistenly referred to him as Mr. Musagete. Over the centuries, this was bastardized by English tourists and finally made famous by Andrew Lloyd Weber’s smash hit, “Mr. Mestopholis.” Athena caught and tamed the winged horse Pegasus and gave him to the Muses. Some of their disciples included the Sphinx who learned her riddle from the Muses; Aristaeus, who learned the arts of healing and prophecy from them, and Echo, who was taught by them to play music – over and over and over and over.

Source: Some website that came up first on Google.

So –

I’ve pondered the meaning of muse for about 24 hours, now. Greg says that we can “muse” and have the (and I quote) best blog ever. I believe that muse and music come from the same Latin root (which probably means to make noise), and this leads me to wonder if blogging and making noise could be similar in nature. Yes, Larry, the verb “to blog” is, as we now can clearly see, just like the verb “to blow” (as in blowing a horn…).

All these questions of language then lead me to wonder if one can take the NOUN, blog, (ooh, I read your new blog today) and make it into a different kind of verb – the sort I really hate – where all you do is add “ize” to the end. This is how we arrived at silly words like “strategize” so why can’t we have “blogize?” In which case, we then have a sentence that’s something like: “I’m blogizing about my life – don’t bother me right now.”

The fact of the matter is that I have nothing of import to share with any of you. No kids who were the youngest horn players (way to go, Tad!). No momentary home ownership on the horizon (congratulations, Trude!) – just an ongoing and seemingly never decreasing mortgage to pay. No great day at work (glad YESTERDAY was good, Tom), since work tends to be whatever I tell myself I have to do. I just live a quiet life that is interspersed with traveling to foreign countries (I’ll send you photos from Cancun when I figure out how to do that), getting awards (okay, just one award in 50 years, but it was a good one), reading to my little buddy at the elementary school (have you all read Peter and the Starcatchers?) and stoking the fire (winter arrived on Saturday at about noon).

But I’m still the oldest of this motley crew – and I’m sure that’s good for something.

How come Mom and Dad haven’t shown up yet? Is it time for us to get them up and and running with DSL or what?

Anyhow – I’m entirely psyched about being part of a blog, having a chance to blog and simply blogizing to my heart’s content. Now, however, I’m off to do some research about a dead guy so that sometime within the next 10 years (that’s my goal) I can write a history/biography of him and his times in Addison County. After that, the musical – or blogical.

cdt