Church

At church in El Salvador people are always hugging each other. Every time I leave church on Sunday morning I have to smile and hug that mentally retarded lady who is there standing near the front door with her mother who is always with her. She is a Mongoloid. On New Year's Eve church service at midnight especially everybody has to hug everybody else around them. It's just something that they do there, hugging each other to show Christian love. Of course, the people at school are not Christians and I guess sometimes I forget that. A lot of those people are pagans and Jehovah Witnesses or whatever so they would not have any real understanding of Christian love. They would rather kill people than hug them. Sad but true.

Mejía

Reviewing the high school yearbook recently I suddenly noticed something that I had never thought of in high school, that Antonia Mejía from church, the boyfriend of my sister's friend Conchi, and China Mejía, a from high school, someone I never thought of or met or spoke to or would ever have been interested in mingling with, just vaguely remember seeing his face there, have the same last name. I never noticed that during high school and it doesn't necessarily mean anything. After all, lots of people in Spanish have the same name and are not that closely related. There really aren't that many Spanish last names in comparison to English for some reason so the list of Gonzalez, Rodriguez, Sanchez is endless. It is impossible to say from just seeing a last name whether there is much connection if any. So it is interesting and yet means nothing to me because the two worlds, church and school, don't mix very well for some reason. Mainly it is because the wealthy people who attend the expensive private school would probably prefer not to mingle and rub elbows with the hoi polloi common middle class down to very poor people one finds at our churches. It is the case that in Latin America society is much more stratified in terms of social class which explains a stricter separation there between rich and poor, not that I would know anything about that. I was only visiting that country, not planning to stay forever in that social limbo land. It's not like I would ever have any reason to exchange information or go back there because nobody ever asked me nor would they ever.

Book Burning

Yes, it was my parents who had a book burning and thus destroyed several old books that were considered extraneous and surplus or in horrible condition beyond repair, including the volumes that had holes bored through them by bookworms because there actually is such a creature or else unsuitable for the eyes of children attending the little school, San Salvador Christian Academy. Yes, it is rather horrible and sad to contemplate the fact that some books were obliterated from the face of the earth. Just think of the horrible loss of library books that ensued when the library at Alexandria, Egypt, was destroyed by fire in 48 B.C. Julius Caesar didn't mean to burn the library, only his own ships for military reasons, and yet countless manuscripts are lost to posterity because of a careless warrior playing with matches. And so it is that various books were burned at the MK School although I don't remember which ones. It wasn't my idea. If it were up to me, no book would ever be discarded. If there were only some place to put them all I would have a huge personal library because I love books and it is hard for me to let the books go. Better to pass the books along to someone who wants them rather than toss them in a landfill. Still, I am sure that books get thrown away all the time. Thus, it makes no sense to slit my throat over some books that my parents burned. Just because they had a huge bonfire out on the basketball court, that does not mean that it was a witch burning kind of thing. There were some strange books there of which I remember almost nothing, just that they were stashed in the back of the storage room so that nobody could find them until my parents got busy cleaning things out, and my mothers always did love to throw things away.

..A "Lead Pipe" Cinch

Yes, like I was saying to someone, probably that mental retard Stacy Cox, "lead pipe" simply refers to the game of Clue, like, you know, Colonel Mustard in the study with the lead pipe. Everyone in America understands the reference to "lead pipe" so there is no need to explain. But my words are wasted on this blithering idiot Cox family. They don't own a newspaper. They are just a stupid hick from the sticks math teacher who never got a clue that he is way over his head outside of his hillbilly hometown.

Heinz 57 Varieties

Whenever my family is asked about our ethnic background, my Dad often tells a joke. He says that we are Heinz 57 Varieties. I must caution that this is a joke not to be taken so seriously. It is just a joke. It just means that we are a little bit of everything, you know, English, Scottish, maybe Irish, German, maybe French, maybe Dutch, etc. Not that it matters very much in white America. Anyway, it's not like my family ever put much stock in genealogical research or ever thought of going back there. What would we find there? Probably just ordinary people, nothing to get excited about. Only in these modern days of online resources have we rediscovered some interesting information about the Calkins who arrived in America in 1640. We used to have no idea, really. My uncle said we were Welsh but I don't know. The name could have Irish origins or maybe it is an English word, an attachment to a horseshoe. With a "u" in the name we might have been caulkers, maybe window sealers or boat builders, but we don't have a "u" in our name, and anyway, we really don't understand why it should be this important. After all, no castle real estate is involved.

Jack Ketchup?

I am endeavoring at all costs to avoid this crude and vulgar British man. His name is Jack Ketch and perhaps he imagines that his endless mental looping will fascinate an American girl like me, but he is wrong about that. I am horrified to see his beady eyes staring out from the page at me. At me? I must be out of my mind to think that he is looking at me because obviously I am not a known person over there, my ancestors long gone from that unbearable place, and besides I would not fit there. My place is America. Just because I once thought of writing my autobiography, that does not mean that my life's story merits being thrown into the same category as infamous autobiographical author Jack Ketch.  As Jack himself has said, "...a tribe of literary locusts, called autobiographers, is at this moment enveloping the atmosphere of letters in Egyptian darkness; a Cimmerian gloom which neither the rod of Moses, nor any other rod with which I am acquainted, is able to disperse." Fortunately, I have not yet ventured pen to paper on my autobiography, despite what I said at age 10, because obviously I would have to have something in my head to say and as yet, nothing of significance comes to mind. Perhaps I will die first and spare myself the trouble of writing. After all, as Jack has said, "Death is the great overtaker of all our schemes; these thwarted, he makes room for the undertaker."

Primary Documents

Mr. DePaul was such a good teacher as far as high school social studies were concerned. I always found his class very interesting. I still remember the time when he talked about looking at the diaries and letters handwritten by pioneer women and men, now donated and stored away in the university library and brought out only to be perused by qualified persons doing valuable historical research. He talked about how fascinating it was to have the actual primary documents in one's hand, with the actual words of the persons in question being almost the only thing left of them, almost the only record that exists of historical events such as, for example, the Donner Pass excursion which came to such dire straits. Yes, I suppose it could be interesting. Back in those 1970s nobody could find the primary documents so I really wouldn't know what he was talking about. Nowadays it is interesting to see that many of these documents are now online and accessible to the general public, to persons not qualified to digest the historical research but who find it interesting and helpful for their personal project of some sort. Take for example the witchcraft collection at Cornell University. No longer do researchers have to travel to New York to find the evidence of centuries past. There it is, a gold mine of useful information handed down by the unnamed physician of Hertfordshire in a letter to his friend, "A Full Confutation of Witchcraft."

The doctor says: "A learned man at Paris was accused of magic, for printing a commentary on the Tenth Book of Euclid; and a Norman gentleman observing from the barometer, that it would not be long before it rained, got his hay mowed whilst the fine weather lasted, which made the country people report, he held a correspondence with the Devil. The water experiment to try witches, is the most fallacious of any, so is that of Marks about the body: a mole or wart, or any excrescency, passing current for the stamp of the Devil. It would be endless to recount the several idle tokens the country people have of witchcraft, and not one of them with the least shadow of reason."

Yes, and who was saying that my birthmark, a giant freckle on my arm, makes me of necessity some sort of witch? As if those "people" ever had anything intelligent to say! Ha!

The doctor describes the battle against witches as a struggle of genders, the male priest eclipsing the mean old woman witch, sort of ignoring the fact of male warlocks fattening their own wallets for no particular reason, especially in the days before Christ when pagan religions were mostly a channel of demonic activity. 

The doctor is elaborating the story of Anne Thorn, a silly woman prone to having fits. Anne Thorn is the maid who concocts a bizarre and illogical story unsupported by the available witnesses when she is found sitting in front of the hearth in disarray, apparently with no clothes on, and confronted by Mrs. Gardiner, the woman of the house. It is thought by locals that Anne Thorn has been bewitched by Jane Wenham, a local person who calls herself a witch.

The doctor believes that Anne Thorn is merely a helpless lunatic.

The doctor says: "But one thing must not be omitted here, viz., that Anne Thorn never complained to these Divines, of the Devil's uneasiness at the frequent removes they gave him by prayer; or that Jane Wenham finding her power wasting by the frequent application of that lip salve, did not amongst other threatenings, warn Anne Thorn against this frequent prayer: No, we find her, by their own account, equally successful, and triumphing over their sham miracles, and themselves exposed as a company of raw artists."