Word For The Day -- Epenthesis / Epentheses -- Apriil 1, 2023

Language:

Metaplasm. 

Epenthesis. Also link here.

All legal for scrabble:

• moo
• moot
• smoot
• smooth
• smoothie
• smoothies

I vividly remember using "epenthesis" in first grade when I was trying to learn to spell a very difficult word (for me). At the time I did not know about "epenthesis."

***********

411.com

In the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I took a six-week college-level course in “Romanticism” at St Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Although I never returned to St Olaf after that, the college has always held a very special place in my heart. That six weeks at St Olaf was a life-altering event for me and probably explains a lot about the next 50+ years of my life.

Break, break. Hold that thought.

Flash forward thirty-three years. In 2002, while serving overseas at a remote site in northern England, I had the opportunity to complete some medical paperwork for a one-year-old child of whose father worked for some US intelligence agency.

I was on "temporary duty" to Menwith Hill Station, Yorkshire, which turned out to be another life-altering event. The friendships one makes on remote assignments are some of the best friendships one will ever make. It was so with this family of three. I only saw the mom when the couple, together, brought their child in for medical visits. I don't remember now but there was something in the infant's / child's history that concerned the parents with regard to their child's future. It could have been a vaccination question but I don't remember now. Whatever.

The father wore a suit, he was not in the uniformed military. He impressed me, mostly because of his involvement with his one-year old child. The mom was beautiful. The child was uniquely charming.

Of the tens of thousands of children that must have passed through my offices, exam rooms, and emergency rooms over the years, I have strong memories of hardly a handful. One had a congenital heart disease and died at two years of age, I knew her and took care of her for eighteen months.

The second was a three-year-old diagnosed with cancer. He survived. I was his personal physician for three years at Travis AFB. After I was transferred, I lost track of him, but then I "ran into" him and his family in Germany, maybe ten years later. He was healthy as a horse, did not remember me, and barely had time to come into the house, at his mother's request, to say "hi" to me. I was there for about an hour; I saw him for less than five minutes. No one knows how hard I worked for three years with Jimmy, 1977 to 1980. The mental toll was unimaginable. 

And then there was that one-year-old Anna (not her real name) in Menwith Hill Station. As noted, she was uniquely charming and healthy. But something about Anna captured my heart. It wasn't just her; it was the whole movie: the remote location; a spy for a dad; a beautiful mom, and a charming infant/toddler. 

She had her one-year-old birthday while at MHS and for some unknowable, sublime, reason, I recorded her birthday in/on my Yahoo!Calendar with annual reminders.

Break. Break.

Yesterday, I wanted to find a close friend with whom I had lost contact some years ago. Last time she wrote she told me she had "serious" breast cancer, age 69 or thereabouts and we likely wouldn't be exchanging notes any more.

Yesteerday, "on the internet," I "found here." She is alive. Whether she is "alive and well" I do not know.

If you want to assess your "internet" skills see if you can locate an acquaintance from thirty years ago nnot using social media like Facebook.

While searching the internet to find that lost colleague I rant across a headline in local newspaper had made the Dean's List at St Olaf. Wow, that piqued my interest. I honestly could not figure our from wheere the local newspaper originated. I thought maybe Minnesota -- the newspaper made reference to the "north country" but it turned out to be Oldensburg, upstate New York.

It turns out that the young woman who made the St Olaf Dean's List was Anna from MHS.

The story, of course, was an old, but the dates added up, but more importantly, the article included the parents' names, both the other and the father. 

Then using 411.com one could surmise the family had lived in multiple locations in and around Baltimore / Washington, DC, where many intel agencies are located. Over the years they had moved frequently, probably to other foreign assignments. By then they had retired to upstate NYC. 

But to see Anna's name on the St Olaf Dean's List after all these years truly blew me away.

There's only one person in my life that would appreciate that story, but for various reasons will never be able to share that story. But, wow, how I wish I could.

*****************************
Video Essay

Wes Anderson. Grand Budapest Hotel. 

By Matt Zoller Seitz.

***********************
Soccer