Northern Exposure

The little woman and I just returned from a short vacation to Quebec to see if we could find any of my long-lost cousins. Man, what I did find! I discovered that those French Canadians actually catch, cook, and eat possum, raccoons, frogs, and what they call "craw fish." They make and eat some kind of spicy rice sausage which they term "boo-din," which they often have with a Coke as breakfast too. Their music is dominated by---can you imagine in this day and age: the accordion?---and by the violin, music which features many depressive waltzes. They play this stuff late into the night mostly at houses at which couples bring their young children or grandchildren---at performances they call "fais do-do"---and allow---get this---the children to sleep in the corners while the couples dance. And their English? Whew. I know it's French Canada, but come on, the whole industrialized world speaks English, not this choppy non-European French. And, I think, they frequently perform in private and in public what looks like mini-voodoo rituals.

Quebec! I just hope those French Canadians never move south. As for me, I think I'll remain in Seine.

A Strange Little Dude

Remember when my neighbor, Emory, recently called the local funeral home to ask "What's playing?" Well, when the mortuary director finally understood Emory and told him whose bodies were on view, Emory became excited. "Come on," said Emory, "Warren is on display. We gotta see him!"

When we arrived at the funeral home, we found Warren's room. His body strangely was half in his coffin and half out, arms dangling down. "What's with this?" I nervously asked Emory.

"Ah, that's Warren," he replied. "He always saw himself as thinking outside the box."

Suffer the Fools

"Fences make good neighbors"? Well, there's no fence between my farm and that of loony neighbor Emory, so you can imagine what happens. For example, he bought two tickets for the fights in Dover, walked across to my front yard and invited me to accompany him. "Seats are in the nosebleed section," he said, but I didn't care because I love boxing. Turned out the seats were two chairs placed right inside the boxing ring.

Then today I said to him, "I wonder if anyone we know has died lately."

"Let's just call the funeral home and ask," Emory says. So he phones and says, "What's playing today?"

'Tis the Season

It's said that Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice. So be worried---be very worried.

Wonderful, Wacky World of Sightings

So the Catholic Church officially has approved the three apparitions of the heavenly Mary to a young immigrant woman in Champion, Wisconsin near Green Bay in the 1800s, the only appearance of Mary in the U.S. That's a surprise---I never had heard of those events at that place. I guess that Mary, after bearing the "majestic" titles of Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, etc., won't mind being called Our Lady of Champion. I can just imagine some commercial sponsors having a field day with that with the tourists there.

Rumors a few years ago were that Mary was appearing in a field at Tickfaw, Louisiana near Baton Rouge. But as I said then, I was certain that her apparitions weren't real, because I couldn't imagine her tolerating being called Our Lady of Tickfaw.

As far as I know, the only place in the U.S. where the Church has approved of an apparition by a saint (not Mary) is in the bucolic backwoods of Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana and also in the 1800s. There St. John Berchmann, who was an Englishman (of all things, not a Frenchman to match the Cajun French culture of that region), is said to have appeared to a dying nun. I said "dying," not "flying."

Wasn't That Church Exciting Enough for Ingmar Bergman?

From "The Onion" another headline: "Lutheran minister arrested for boring young children."

Fruitcake and Moonshine

Did you know Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday? Go figure. God bless dem rednecks.