Lady Liberty

I spent a large part of the day working on my Combat Challenge Cake.

I haven't received pictures of Cheryl's cake yet, but I will post them once she sends them. I must say, though, that whether hers is better or not, I am pleased with my efforts. I learned a lot! I enjoyed it! Lady liberty is imperfect--I can see lots of little flaws--but I'm still proud of my creation.

Best Mommy Moments: July 2008

I have no idea why this got posted twice. I've deleted this one. silly Gail.

Reepicheep's Honor: Challenge and Combat

[I quote, with permission, certain emails which passed between my sister Cheryl and myself this week past. They have been minimally edited. Cheryl said that adjudication would be a problem. I look to you, loyal readership, to arbitrate between us. In a completely impartial manner, of course.]

Cheryl:
Gail,

I have lost my library card and wonder it if could have fallen out of my bag at your house. If you see it, please let me know. Rachel has finished Dealing with Dragons and Doug has finished Artemis Fowl. We are almost done with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and are already finished with The Magician's Nephew. I had forgotten that Reepicheep is completely insane. [Emphasis added] Soon I will have a little packet of your stuff to send back to you.

Cheryl



Gail:
To Our Most Noble Sister, Duchess Cheryl Homer Moody, greeting.

Reepicheep isn't crazy!....

[An impromptu essay defending this valiant mouse. In a few days, I will re-work it slightly and publish my persuasive arguments.]

...Thus, in accordance with the ancient rites of honor, I challenge you to a duel, to test upon my body whether I speak true or no. I send this epistle by the hand of my dragon, Eustace, and Njord, my henchdolphin, who shall also serve as my seconds. If you have such henchanimals who are willing -- though it would not startle me to discover your "friends" desert your cruel tyranny in your hour of direst need -- they may make arrangements for the time, place, weapons, and arbiter in consultation with my own representatives.

Trusting that you shall not prove craven, I shall have the pleasure of meeting you next upon the field of honor, whereupon I shall prove your libelous assertions false in the eyes of all the world.

My seconds are also authorized to negotiate press coverage and media rights in my behalf.

Defiantly yours,


Gail Homer Berry
Queen of Papizan, Defender of the Realm, Preserver of the Dignity of Our Subject Gentlebeings, &c.

Postscriptum: If, as I hope, our encounter shall prove fatal to your person, I shall, as a warrior of honor, forward any personal effects, such as library cards, to your heirs and estate.

--GHB



Cheryl:

I stand by my assertion. Reepicheep acknowledges no reason to avoid danger in any instance. In fact, he gloriously seeks danger under the guise of adventure and labels any who refuse to join him cowards, even if they are merely cautious and perhaps want to examine the situation prior to rushing to their likely deaths. He reminds me of those who step in front of semis saying "My god will save me." The fact that he keeps being saved only encourages him and he doesn't see that not every one is so blessed.

As for the duel, honor demands that I choose the weapons. I select buttercream frosting, which is unlikely to result in death or maiming. Merely an increase in glucose levels from the taste testing. Yes, a cake decorating contest. Splendid idea. The impartial jury will be comprised of missionaries who are about to ship home.

Does that mean you found my card, or not?

Cheryl



Gail:
I accept your challenge! I can post pictures of my masterpieces of cake decorating from the last several years. (Poor Jon was hoping for a new cake out of this.) Our distance makes the taste-test impractical. I point out that buttercream frosting could result in death or maiming for
Dad.

May I post our emails on this topic on my blog? Along with my fair, unbiased commentary? [I later obtained verbal permission.]

I have not seen your library card. I merely meant that I would ship any and all personal effects to your heirs.



Cheryl:
My husband also believes this should be done with new cakes. He likens using pictures of past cakes to showing up at a duel with previously shot at paper targets. It occurs to me that next week is the 4th of July, may I suggest that we each prepare a patriotic cake? I think Reepicheep would approve of celebrating the Revolutionary ideal. Judging is a challenge, though.

My Twenty-ninthety-twooth birthday!

Yesterday was my twenty-ninethey-twooth birthday!

Wait. If we follow Bilbo Baggin's method (eleventy-first), that makes it sound like I'm 292 years old.

Twenty-ninth-dash-two. Twenty-nine-dash-twooth? Twenty-ninth version 2.0? Twenty-nineth the Second. (29 II). Twenty-nine-d2. That makes it sound like I need to toss a coin 29 times. (Gaming reference. D2 would mean a two-sided die, which doesn't exist, see, so...never mind.)

Twenty-ninth-take-two. And, assuming I don't get it right, I'll try twenty-nine-take-three next year. But if it takes me 9 or 10 tries to get it right, that implies I'm pathetic.

I can say twenty-nine two-point-oh. I can write 29: 2.0

That sounds like a ratio.

My twenty-ninth birthday v. 2.0. That sounds like a Supreme Court case.

Twenty-ninth and two-tenths. Two tenths. Twenths?

My twenty-nine-twenth birthday!

I begin to see why women just fib and say, "twenty-nine."

Anyway, the question is not how to write the cardinal number, but rather how to write, and say, the ordinal number.

Suggestions?

(I could just say "thirtieth," but that's way too simple। And, speaking of court cases, it sets a very bad precedent!)

Map the Linguistic Genomes!

My sister, Carrie, who is studying abroad in Grenada this summer, asked a philosophical question about linguistic globalism. This set me off, I'm afraid. After I finished a very long-winded comment on her blog, I looked at it and realized that, really, I had written my own entry.

For Carrie's original post, click here. For my slightly-edited, preachy, pedantic pontification, which exhausts everything I remember from college linguistics, keep reading.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

It is vitally important to make and preserve records of dying languages. It is not, necessarily, important for large groups of people to speak them.

Language has an amazing amount of nuance. It influences thought, culture, causality, and a host of other seemingly-insignificant-yet-fascinating issues.

My amazing French teacher, Madame Selke, pointed out a few differences. First, the French hate using the passive voice. They don't say "My car was stolen;" they say "Someone stole my car!"

And, as a culture, the French are much more likely to blame something. Or someone. This isn't me being a bigot; this was Madame Selke's observation, and she was a native. (My friend Katie claims that a few months ago, Parisians held a huge march protesting Winter. That's right. They were sick of cold weather, so they staged a protest. See? They like to blame something.)

Some languages are more vague. In America, you can refer to "my cousin" without it being gender specific. In a romance language, you can't get away with that. It's either "cousin" (male) or "cousine" (female). This makes it harder to lie. Or obfuscate. Or be deliberately vague. Or pull off literary twists of surprise.

Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Earthsea books, portrays a world in which wizard's literally cannot lie in the Old Tongue, but dragons--who are ancient, and thus still native speakers--can. Think about that for a moment.

If there were a special language designed by Aspies, it would be very precise. And if your only options were to say, "I'm sorry, I will be busy entertaining my male second-cousin once-removed on my father's side," or to say, "I will be busy. I refuse to elaborate," (assuming you are unwilling to lie outrageously), it would hardly mollify a prospective boyfriend. As opposed to "Oh, I'd love to, but my cousin's in town and I promised my Mom I'd be a good hostess."

I did a linguistic exercise once where I had to interpolate translations based upon an incomplete gloss. (A "gloss" is where you get a transliteration instead of a translation. Example: "But not friend (male) my did" vs. "But my friend didn't do it!") Anyway, I spent over an hour scratching my head over a seeming inconsistency. Again, over the word(s) "cousin" There were two different terms for male cousin, and two different terms for female cousin, and I could not figure out what differentiated them.

The teacher explained, at the next lecture, that this African language I had failed to decode differentiated kinship very specifically, primarily because of rules about what kinds of cousins people could, or could not, marry. I have dug through my notes from that class, and I can't find the worksheet. :( But I have done research online and I believe the exercise was in Sudanese, which has eight different words for "cousin." (Father's brother's son, father brother's daughter, father's sister son...etc.)

Many cultures allow marriages between cousins on the father's side but not the mothers. Or marriages between parallel cousins (children of same-gender siblings) but not cross-cousins (children of opposite-gender siblings). This may reflect their observation of birth defects (if the tribe suffers from a common y-chromosome disorder, for instance, it might affect taboos about inbreeding). Often these rules reflect tribal laws of inheritance. In a patriarchal society, two brothers have an interest in their children marrying and keeping all the property in the family. Anyway, the language reflects the anthropology.

LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY

There are a variety of Eskimo languages, but they all tend to be very polysynthetic. That means, essentially, that they instead of adding a whole bunch of words together to make a sentence, they string a whole series of morphemes together to make a word. And that "word" frequently can function as an independent sentence.

I'm trying to think if I can invent an example. Something like "un-heav-y-snow-fall-now" ("It's snowing lightly")

It is also said that the Eskimos also have eight or twenty or fifty different words for snow. Again, there are different languages, and "word" is difficult to define here since in a highly polysynthetic langauge, the difference between a "word" and a "sentence" is difficult to delineate. They have lots of morphemes which can modify the idea of snow to convey specific meanings. "Light snow," "Heavy snow," "Hard snow," "Snow falling right now," "Snow on the ground," "Crusted snow that's safe to walk on," "Powdery snow that will take a long time to wade through," and so forth. All those ideas can be conveyed in English, although not as compactly. There are probably northern languages who subdivide snow further in categories we don't think about, though. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on whether certain Eskimos have different words for "sleet" and "snow" or if they just modify "snow" with "stinging".

The idea, of course, is that these subtleties of nuance are fascinating, and endless. Language means you can express new and novel ideas. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, and yet everyone immediately knew what he meant.

When the earth loses a language, it forever loses the unique ideas and perspectives and thought patterns of that language. It would be sad, indeed, if it never occurred to anyone to question authority because there was a single word for "authority" which carried, always, a positive connotation.

Madame Selke also said, "Language control is thought control. Period." She was referring to L'Academie Francaise's efforts to censor English words from the French language, but she also mentioned, eerily, "1984".

The French intelligentsia go to huge efforts to ensure that Official Documents, or TV programs, or Authorized Dictionaries say "l'ordinateur" (numberer) instead of "le computeur" (an obvious import). So far they are managing to keep their fingers in the dikes' holes. But the sea is, nonetheless, spilling over the top. If the majority of the population start using words like "le t-shirt," what can they do? (Or, for that matter, if the majority of English speakers stop using the word "whom," what can middle-school English teachers do about it?) Popular linguistic sovereignty!

The general rule of thumb is that if a language encounters a new noun (thing or idea), and it already has a word which can easily be adapted, it will adapt. But if not, it will import. If a primitive tribe in the South American rain forest encounter a truck for the first time, they are more likely to borrow the Spanish word for "truck" than to invent their own, since said truck is so alien.

But not always. The French Linguistic Police are trying, in their own way, to invent French-sounding substitutes rather than let their pure language be diluted with obnoxious Anglicisms. But, according to Jon, the Laotians just started naming car parts after animal anatomy.

Wouldn't it be sad if we lived in a world where no one, ever, thought of calling a car's rear-view mirrors "ears"?

LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

A basic lesson from history is that people will find ways to communicate. If a bigger civilization conquers a smaller, the smaller tends to learn a new language. Remember my favorite quote: "Language is the dialect with the biggest army"?

If two different cultures try to establish trade, they are more likely to create a pidgin, or blended language. Swahili is an example of this.

Modern English began as a pidgin of Anglo-Saxon Old English and Norman French. Another example of culture: a more passive people might simply have shrugged and started speaking French. The Anglo-Saxons were dragged, kicking and screaming, into incorporating French vocabulary. (This is particularly ironic because, now, English loves to "borrow" words. We import like crazy and create even more. Another favorite quote: "English doesn't "borrow" words. English stalks other languages in dark alleys, beats them up, and then rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.")

In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman said that globalization is like the sun: more good than bad, and inevitable. "It will happen whether you like it or not," he argued, "So you might as well begin adapting." The same might be said of a universal language.

In general, a "lingua franca" is beneficial. (Yes, that term, which means a commonly spoken language, derives from the time when French was the dominant language of diplomacy.) It facilitates communication and trade. But should we stop teaching college Latin classes just because nobody speaks it anymore?

LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR

Each language is amazing, rich, unique, and vibrant. I remember studying ASL and thinking, "It never occurred to me that you could organize a sentence this way! What a fascinating grammatical structure!" (In ASL, you make a picture and present the biggest ideas first. So, spatially you would show "room-table-chairs-sofa (in the corner)"

ASL doesn't have the verb "to be." It's implied. ASL also doesn't have a passive voice, because it is all action. Now, if you had never heard of ASL, would it even have occurred to you that it was possible to have a language without the verb "to be"?

(I really wonder how an ASL interpreter would handle Hamlet's soliloquy. "Live or die?")

It was a huge revelation when, in my first semester of German, I realized that in German (and, Mom explained, Latin and other languages), it doesn't matter what order you put words in, because you change the word endings instead of the word order to create cases.

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

Spoken Mandarin would have little value to a deaf person, since it relies upon tone. (Does this mean that the Deaf in China rarely bother trying to speak or lip read, the way many in the U.S. do? I can't imagine anything more frustrating than a Deaf individual trying to voice Mandarin.)

Still, written Chinese could have enormous benefit for the Deaf. Mrs. Robarge says she knows someone who wants to create a written version of ASL. If he succeeds, he would probably have to study all the glyphic and pictographic written systems in the world. Even if every extant language on the planet used an alphabetic system for writing, don't you think this linguistics professor would be happy to find grammars on Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Babylonian cuneiform, or Chinese pictograms at the library?

This leads me back to the original premise: it may be impractical for smaller languages to survive. It may be relatively unimportant for smaller languages to survive. (Survival of the fittest.) But it is vitally important to preserve records.

A few decades ago, scientists embarked on a huge project to freeze samples of every plant variety they could find, to preserve genetic diversity. Nowadays they are trying to map the genomes of different plant species. We may never need a particular variety of barley again. But it's nice to have a sample around--just in case.

It's the same principle with languages. I'm not talking about charts showing which languages descended from Latin. I'm talking about recording oral tribal traditions, especially where there is no written language. Create dictionaries. Analyze syntax. Make sound recordings of native pronunciation. And then store everything in a huge granite vault somewhere.

Map the linguistic genomes!

P.S. I also agree with Mom; it would be marvelous for everyone to be bilingual, speaking both Adamic and another language. Or two. Or three.

P.P.S. Also, having a written record of languages can help with historical research. If you can map where languages influenced each other, you can map where different groups of people overlapped.

P.P.P.S. Um, sorry about my super-long rant. It's not my fault! I studied linguistics in college! Something about your blog entry set me off! I couldn't help it!...

P.P.P.P.S. Someday I'll get around to writing my "Anti-imperialistic linguistic terrorism" novel. Wahahaha.

P.P.P.P.P..S. Esperanto is great for Romance-based languages. If you already speak French, Spanish, or, especially, Portuguese, it would be marvelous. It would not be particularly helpful for native Africans, Arabs, Asians, Slavs, etc. A really good international language would rely on the International Phonetic Alphabet. And would only incorporate sounds common to 85% of all languages. Like /m/, for instance.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Alas, even the best artifical language is unlikely to take off. But I'd settle for reforming English spelling.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. I have now flushed my buffer. 90% of everything I know about linguistics is written above. (And no longer in memory.) Therefore, comment. Please! Ask questions! Just don't expect me to know the answers!

Best Mommy (and Auntie) Moments: June, 2008

Mommy: [at the dinner table] So I thought, if the prince were an Aspie, he would have performed a statistical analysis of shoe sizes and narrowed the field. I mean, it sounds like Cinderella's foot was smaller than 99% of the population.

Eric: I think that means she was in the first percentile!
Grandpa: [rolls his eyes in amazement]


"And then, if you adjust it here along the K scale, you see that the cube root of 27 equals...? Right, 3."
--Grandpa Homer, providing a basic tutorial on his generous gift of a slide rule to Eric.


Mommy: [Laughing] "Wow. Those are the cutest puppy-dog, fluttering eyes I have ever seen. [pause, melting] Okay, yes, you can have some more chocolate milk, but you realize that this won't always work, right?
Danny: [nods seriously]
--(That really was an amazingly cute, and funny, expression. I wish you could have seen it.)


"The books beguiled me...and I did read."
--Gail, explaining to her very tolerant husband why she had just spent $40 at the half-price book store.


"I have housing-price and closet-space envy. And milk is less than $3 a gallon!"
--Gail, admiring the economic situation in Indiana. (Alas, there are no computer-chip design jobs here.)


"Dear Heavenly Father...us we thank thee we [garbled here/place] now please [awful garble] [wince] sorry bad...name Jesus Christ amen."
--Gail, doing a Very Pitiful attempt to interpret (without warning!) the opening prayer of a Sunday School class.


Gail: [signing] I'm sorry I'm such a bad interpreter.
Deaf Sister: [tactfully] Just...practice. Practice a lot.


"But that's so...simple."
--Gail, obsessively leaping into project mode, volunteering to take over, and making the six-cousin birthday cake project much more complicated. Naturally. (Grandma Homer wanted to do a basic sheet cake.)






Doug: [boasting] I am the only person in this car who has read any of the Chronicles of Narnia
Aunt Gail: [quellingly] Doug, I have read them all. More than twenty times each.
Doug: Oh. Well, I am the only KID in this car who has read any of the Chronicles of Narnia. So I already know what happens. You see--
Aunt Gail: Doug, don't spoil the ending for everyone else.
Doug: [sighing] Fine...
--(We were listening to the books on CD during the long drive back to Raleigh)


“Aunt Gail, what IS the right way to avoid offending someone in Latin America with your thumb?”
--My niece, Rachel, playing a travel version of “The Worst Case Scenario” card game.


"I want Aunt Gail to tell me my bedtime story!"
--A common theme. I'm delighted they enjoyed my stories. All except Patrick. I never could get the trains to his taste. (I kept introducing other characters, like sea serpents, into an otherwise fine train tale.)


[Telling Danny a story while pushing him on the swing]
Mommy: ...So Daddy took Eric and Danny and Bear camping for a whole week! But when they got there, they discovered there weren't any toilets. Eric and Bear started panicking at the thought of just going in the woods. But Danny was brave. He--
Danny: Actually, Mommy, I did not need to use the bathroom. I just held it.
Mommy: [skeptically] You held it? For an entire week?
Danny: [seriously] Yes, in this story I only waited until I got home and THEN used the bathroom.
Mommy: [muttering to herself] And then I paid for dialysis and a kidney transplant...


“Mommy, you could spell 'goat'. See? You have a G, O, and T.
--Danny, giving me tips while watching me play a scrabble-like game on the computer. I was very impressed that he sounded out that spelling all by himself!


“We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all people may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances thereof!”
--Danny, trying to pass off the third Article of Faith. He got a bit tangled with the fifth. (Perfectly understandable.) You also have to imagine the missing /r/ and /th/ sounds.


“We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy...”
--Danny and Eric both had trouble with the thirteenth article of faith. Again, understandably!


Danny: 'We believe in...' Daddy, I need help.
Jon: The eighth article of faith is about the scriptures.
Danny: Aaaah. Dat's wight.
--(He sounded so grown up...except for his phonemes! You had to be there.)


“Mommy, you look so pretty!”
--Danny, spontaneously complimenting me one Sunday morning. I had actually put my contacts in!


[At Primary music time, playing “Name that Tune.” I was subbing with the Sunbeams on the front row.]
Chorister: Eric, how many notes do you think you need?
Eric: Three.
Chorister: Only three! Wow!
[Pianist plays three notes]
Chorister: So, Eric, what do you think?
Eric: [stares blankly, thinking]
Mommy: [whispering] Psst! Eric! [Signs “We” “Thank” “God”...]
Eric: We Thank Thee, Oh God, for a Prophet!
Mommy: [grins apologetically at the adults who caught her cheating]
--(I am trying to feel guilty, but it's not working। Instead, I am delighted at Yet Another Testament to ASL!)

Best Mommy and Auntie Moments: May, 2008

"Are the robots okay? Will someone rescue the robots?"
--Eric, watching Star Wars for the first time. (He was callously unconcerned about Princess Leia.)


[The Death Star destroys Alderan]
Eric: [panics]
Mommy: Eric, you understand this is science fiction, right?
Eric: Oh! I thought it was real. [Immediately becomes blasé]


[Danny was interacting with a three-ish-year-old boy in the waiting room of the doctor's office.]
Boy: [Starts to disassemble the lego throne Danny had created for Bear]
Danny: [Using his words!] No, that's Bear's throne.
Boy: [Pauses, shrugs, and then resumes trying to change the structure]
Mommy: [Intervening on Danny's behalf] I'm sorry, but that is Bear's throne. He's the king, and he says that he wants to keep it.
Boy: [Confused] The bear can talk?
Danny: [Nods seriously] Yes, he's a Very Talented Bear.


"What should I do, little Dad of mine?
I want to get ready to dine.
What should I do, Daddy dear?
I shall do it with no fear.
What do I need to do for you?
I do not quite know what to do.
How is it coming, Mr. Dad?
I don't want you to get mad.
I don't know where to put this, man
Please let me do it as like a fan.
Daddy, should I put this in the sink or the dishwasher?
I figured it out, figured what to do.
I now know just what to do.
What should I do to be with you?
I figured it out, I thought a lot
I shouldn't be just like a tot.
What should I do if I want to chow?
I don't want to have to bow.
What do I want to do on a tree?
I don't know what I want to be.
Should I be invisible a tree?
An explosion would occur that would make me see.
I think I know just what to do;
Do not make me throw up, you!
Is a very compsus me
A little tree that I should be?
Now I know just how to chow
Do not be in a little bow."
--Eric, inventing poetry extempore. This started while trying to figure out where to put his dirty dishes in preparation for dinner.


"Bear is rueful that he will be in time out when we get to Grandma's."
--Danny, right before embarking on a twelve-hour ride, on Bear's consequence for hiding and delaying our journey. I pointed out that Bear could be in time out during the ride.


"Yes, but you see, that would be logical and might even make sense."
--Mommy, on Eric's very insightful critique of a plot point in The Hobbit. (I can't remember what it was, sorry! We were driving!)


Danny: Mommy, I need the keys to your van.
Mommy: [shuddering] That's eerie. And twelve years premature.
--(He wanted to hide Abby's birthday present in it.)


“I uh dragon! ROAR!”
--Abby, my three-year-old niece, after falling in love with my great “Sophie and the Dragon” book in German. (See a previous blog entry: http://burgunbesiegt.blogspot.com/2007/06/der-ritter-und-der-drache-knight-and.html.)


"The wicked Witch and Wizard of Doom are creating robots to destroy I-derry-keeka. This is the magical laser gun I created to stop the witch."
--Eric, imaginatively mixing science fiction and fantasy.


Original: "An Gail? You uh An Gail? I uh Abigail! You uh an Gail house? I uh An Abigail house!"
Translation: "Aunt Gail? You're an Aunt Gail? I'm an Abigail! You have an Aunt Gail house? I have an Aunt Abigail's house!"
--Abby


"Mommy, if you do a Really Good Job, you will earn a penny. Actually, if you build a big creation, you will earn a big penny, and if you build a medium-sized creation, you will earn a regular penny and if you build a little creation you will earn a small penny."
--Danny, explaining economic realities to his confused mother. I made a big creation.


"Don't break it!...[Pause] [Sigh]...That's okay, Grandpa, because Mommy already took a picture of it so I can rebuild it."
--Danny, magnanimously forgiving his Grandpa Homer for accidentally destroying his lego creation.


Mommy: ...and The Magician's Nephew is about how Narnia was created and how the White Witch got there in the first place.
Eric: Is that a metaphor about Satan, or someone else?


Grandma Homer: Eric, you are six-and-a-half years old. Where were you living ten years ago?
Eric: [looks at her in confusion]
Mommy: Eric, what is six-and-a-half minus ten?
Eric: [does some rapid calculations using his fingers] Negative 3.5!
Mommy: And where were you living when you were negative 3.5 years old?
Eric: [stumbling over his words] At my--grand--at Heavenly Father's house!


"So, whether Bear deliberately ruins your birthday cake, or whether he accidentally sets it on fire, he still has a responsibility to fix the problem, right? That's part of being accountable."
--Gail, speaking at her niece Rachel's baptism.


"When I was seven-and-a-half, I used to torment your Mom. I would follow her around, interrupt her, annoy her friends, and just be obnoxious. And if she complained I would claim, 'But I'm not eight yet, so I'm perfect.' Or 'I'm not accountable yet, so I don't know any better.' I was something of a rules lawyer."
--Gail, still speaking at the baptism.


Rachel: "Aunt Gail, did you really do that?"
My sister Cheryl: Oh, yeesss. She did. All the TIME!
Me: [chagrined] Um. Yes.
--(Of course, now that I'm accountable, I know better.)