Migraine Interlude

Good nighty night, ladies and jets -- I mean, gents. I am so good happy to speak to you this day on the change purse of the Headache People. In Washington. From the tingly part to the shame labyrinth -- I can make it a migraine for you. That is to say, I can help you get migraine too.

Remember that book about the guy who was really really smart, so smart he could see the cells in the flowers? And then he got really dumb again, so dumb he forgot his name was Algernon? No wait -- Charles. Algie was the mouse, right? Anyway, it's like that.

Or like have you ever tried to sleep over at your cousin's or aunt's or roommate's place on one of those blow-up thingies down low on the ground close to a big spiderweb, and then in the morning you are on the hardness in a sinking sinkhole with covers choking you? That's it too.

Maybe you are going up in a log ride and your tummy is already boiling from the cotton candy you shouldn't have eaten for breakfast, but up you go, chunkity chunk chunk -- and you know you aren't going to die, but it seems like you might, only the chunkers under you chunk out and you slide down the back side of the flume, not going the right way, so maybe you do die. That's what happens to your thinking parts. Not just your thinking parts, but the whole bowling ball up there, and your jugular vessel is the chunking machine.

Does that make sense? I had some powderpoint slides but I can't get this thing to work, so you'll have to follow me through the frabjous part.

Good! Now is the question asking time. Hello there! Hmm. Mmm hmmm. I'm nodding. Yow, that smarts. Excuse me -- see that long green thingy over there, off stage, the one with the pillows and the hard bits on the end? Is that clean enough to lie down on or what?

By Request

Comments have been streaming in (Can't see them? Make sure you have your preferences set to "View Invisible Comments.") about how William Blake's picture of Cronos eating his children is not a very nice "summer vacation" picture for the blog. Cronos seemed like a good idea at the time, and it isn't always the crazed daddy I identify with. But onto other seasons! This season I've been digging up new material. Cemeteries in the North Country, it turns out, are treasure troves of Victorian names, and some of them are real howlers.


Apparently some families had a real poetic gift for choosing evocative names, and I'm sure they knew very well the provenance of the names they chose, internet or no internet. Even in temperance-friendly northern New York, you just have to let your kids be their own people.

Modern-day children with funky names are a great help in spotting the real treasures.


But some of the stones in these tiny rural cemeteries are so old, the names have long been obscured by lichens and mosses, as if the dead are so fashionably ensconced in the afterlife they no longer need the living to care for them.


Whoops! On closer inspection, this gravestone belongs to my Grandma Guthrie, who is alive and well and always did believe in planning ahead. You wouldn't want your children messing around with your final resting place. In their grief, they might get uppity ideas.