The Tribulations of Ti

Not to be excessively bloggy, but for those of you who don't believe in a God, here's your proof He exists: the crazy, *******tent-as-he-is-*********iacal executive director of Fort Ticonderoga (yes, Virginia, there is a Fort Ticonderoga!) is finally announcing he is finally stepping down, having estranged himself and thereby the Fort from the friendship, largesse, and presence of benefactors and former board president and member Deborah Clarke Mars and Forrest Mars. Fort attendance is down overall (except for this year, which had 250th-anniversary events for the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga [July 8, 1758] in the 'French and Indian War' [1754-63]), charitable contributions are way down due to the departure of the Marses, the Fort's largest donors, and, with recent media coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, Mr. Westbrook's plans to sell off the Fort's artwork (banned by New York law, by the way, under the Fort's charter) reached a wide audience.



And if you have any question as to why such a nice fort would have kept switching hands, it is apparently because a candle and a groggy wife do not a sound defensive strategy make.

Sarah Palin's Hairstyle: Leave It Alone!

Sarah Palin as VP candidate may or may not prove to be a brilliantly maniacal move. We will see what happens; in the meantime, riveting though her story is, and as complex a figure as she may be, I am sad that my own most-favored hairstyle (see above; way, way above, up in the header) is being pilloried ceaselessly by cosmetological hatemongers.

It is not a beehive,

as journalists, bloggers, editorialists, and other such ill-informed numbskulls continue to call it. It is, however, a hairstyle that adds a little height, which some of us can benefit from. Additionally, being an updo, it conveys slightly more sophistication, and the weest soupςon of gravitas when necessary, than long, loose hair does,

while not suggesting the prudery that people seem to read into tightly-pulled-back chignons.

Mind you, I can pull off the archest of chignons and ballerinabuns, but I have eyes the size of pancakes, so it is only with extreme effort that I can manage to look 'hard' or severe under any circumstances.

Nonetheless, I resent the fact that every time henceforth I hastily put together a French-Twist-with-a-Pouf with nothing but hope, two bent bobby pins, and a rearview mirror to guide me, I run the risk of being accused of sporting 'A Sarah Palin.' It is a sad year for grooming indeed.

Clavardage and Cohen

Completely trivial post, but:

My new absolute favorite word is the Québecisme clavarder. I don't know what the Académie Franςaise has to say about it, but it's a portmanteau word (or mot-valise if you're speaking French while throwing French words around) comprised of bavarder, to chat + clavier, and it hopes, on the heels of courriel's success (courrier + électronique = email) to replace chatter, tchatter, and even tchatcher, for electronic chat.

Not that it matters, but it gets my vote.

To celebrate clavarder's victory over my heart, here is my favorite stanza from my favorite song ('Joan of Arc') by the irrefutably (and even Québecoisically) Canadian Leonard Cohen:


'Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.'

Doe-eyed, Po-faced, and Half Dotty Already

Earlier, while duskily languishing and hanging upon the cheek of night like a French Hook in an ecdysiast's ear, it occurred to me how pleased I am that I am no more in need of recourse to clip-on hair. In fact, I have so much of my own now that it frequently gets in my way, and I have alternately to Put It Up, Pull It Back, Smoosh It Down, and continue to work on my own tragic version of the French-Twist-with-a-Pouf, wherein all the extra bits that would otherwise make me look like a daughter of Akhenaten were they stuffed in with the rest are instead pitched topside, in a studied simulation of the sort of Devil-may-care posture I'll never quite pull off. At least not until I'm convinced that the Devil doesn't care very, very much and is not standing to my left at all times and pulling little pieces of it out and around and straight up, to illustrate that the only way in which I'll ever resemble Brigitte Bardot will be in my looming dotage when I'm so potty over animals I have no idea what I'm saying about anything else.

Certainly it won't be for supporting Le Pen. Nor, I suspect, for having an affair with Serge Gainsbourg or encouraging massacres in Algeria. Still, it would be nice to be able smolder abandonedly every so often, presuming there were no German playboy astrologers around to render it all cosmically de trop.