Amanda Witt's Blog, page 4

Throwback Thursday

Thanksgiving, 2007. From the how did my kids survive their childhoods? archive:

We had a little unnecessary excitement last week. On Wednesday, as I was cooking up a storm getting ready for Thanksgiving, our day was interrupted by a visit to the emergency room, and by an hour cleaning blood off the walls and floor (yes, some of it was carpet).

This time it was the eleven-year-old, who does not multi-task as well as he thinks he does. He was chattering away entertaining his sister while simultaneously opening a can of pumpkin, and just about sliced half an inch off the end of his thumb.

"I don't think you'll have to remind me again that lids are sharp," he said later. [Warning: There's a yucky photo down below.]

When it happened, I was upstairs. I made it halfway down before he could even shout, thanks to the particular tenor of his quiet "Oh!" (Ear-splitting screams and agonized yells just mean he and his brother are playing.)

There was blood all over the walls, the refrigerator, and his sister. (Fortunately the pie crusts were well across the kitchen from him.) I don't think one can sever an artery in one's thumb, but he sure drenched the dishtowel I wrapped around his hand.

Fortunately, once I assured him he wouldn't bleed to death before we could get him to the hospital, he kept his sense of humor. The emergency room doctor told him the numbing injection would feel like a bee sting, and then the nurse proceeded to try to distract him from what the doctor was doing.

"What's your favorite subject in school?" she asked.

"Zoology."

"Oh, so you like animals?"

"I like animals a whole lot," he said, "All animals. Except for bees when they're stinging."




















Now, time for a public service advertisement.

Éamonn G. e-mailed to give me the low-down on the artery issue:

I'm a part-time EMS volunteer, and the only thing we hate more than arteries being nicked is serious wounds to thumbs and palms. The brachial artery (armpit, good for pulse-taking in babies) goes down the upper arm, through the elbow joint and tracks the radius (lower arm bone on the thumb side) and then turns in and branches across the palm of the hand. So a severed thumb will involve one or more arterioles but probably not an artery proper.

The really scary fact is that an 11 year old compensates for this level of bleeding really well. If you hadn't treated it so rapidly and effectively, he could have crashed quite suddenly later on. Direct pressure (i.e. your messed-up dishtowel) and early advanced care (the ER) did the trick.

All the words I utter...

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken'd or starry bright.

--William Butler Yeats, "Where My Books Go"

What the English language reveals about our history

After William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, he ordered a survey taken--the Domesday Book--which recorded who owned what.

Now nobody owned land without obligations to the King: they held it as William's tenant, and had to pay for the privilege with a "service," which could take the form of a basket of eggs, some chickens, bacon, honey, a barrel of herrings, money, or supplying armed soldiers when the King called for war.

Many centuries later this system became known as "feudalism," from the medieval Latin feudum, meaning "fee" or "payment." The economist Adam Smith first coined the phrase "feudal system" in 1776--long after feudalism itself was dead--and it has been talked about in high-flown, almost philosophical terms. In practice, it was the crude means whereby William and the Normans shared out England among themselves. It was a land-grab. Domesday makes clear that by 1087 all the major landholders were Normans or French ... the Anglo-Saxons had been cut out of the picture.

That's Robert Lacey. And now we're to the most interesting part:

There was one law for the Normans and one for the natives....This legal discrimination is reflected in the language that we speak today, a mixture of Anglo-Saxon or englisc, and Norman French. Our modern English words of control and authority--"order," "police," "court," "judge," "trial," "sentence," "prison," "punishment," "execution"--all come from Norman French.

And there is a similar linguistic apartheid in the way we describe food. When it came to the hard work of rearing and tending the animals, the words used were English--cow (cu), pig (pigge), sheep (sceap). When it came to eating them, they were French--beef (boeuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton). 

It is not hard to see who produced the fruits of the earth, and who enjoyed them.

Do you lie?

Below are a couple of remarks I ran across (and made a note of) quite some time ago. They're still relevant--a good reminder that the myriad small decisions you and I make every day do, in fact, matter to other people. And to our future selves, for that matter:

We tend to think of a market as an inanimate force and economics as akin to alchemy, where only a few brilliant insiders know what is going on. But markets are not inanimate; they are relationships between people.

(Michael Matheson Miller)

A healthy economy cannot be built on a sick culture. More specifically, transactions that depend on trust -- meaning most of them -- cannot exist where the basis for trusting is as thoroughly eroded as it is now.

(Bill Otis) 

Orwell and English

Another oldie but goodie, from George Orwell's Politics and the English Language:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

--or--

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

When words are uttered (McCall Smith)

Something to consider, from Alexander McCall Smith's character Isabel Dalhousie:

"She did not want to say anything about them, even to Jamie, who would not repeat it, because she felt bad about labelling them as bores. The knowledge that somebody else has labelled you in some way can be wounding, no matter how true, and did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause."

Redhead Trivia

Source: Amanda Kesting, KUSA

- The highest concentration of Redheads is in Scotland (13%) followed by Ireland (10%). Worldwide, only 2% of the population has red hair.- People with red hair are likely more sensitive to pain. This is because the gene mutation (MC1R) that causes red hair is on the same gene linked to pain receptors. It also means redheads usually need more anesthesia for dental and medical procedures.- Having red hair isn't the only thing that makes some redheads unique. They are also more likely to be left handed. Both characteristics come from recessive genes, which like to come in pairs.- Redheads probably won't go grey. That's because the pigment just fades over time. So they will probably go blonde and even white, but not grey.- Rumor says Hitler banned marriage between redheads. Apparently he thought it would lead to "deviant offspring."- Redheads most commonly have brown eyes. The least common eye color: blue.- Bees have been proven to be more attracted to redheads.- Being a redheaded man may have health benefits. A study published by the British Journal of Cancer suggested that men with red hair are 54% less likely to develop prostate cancer than their brown and blonde-haired counterparts.- Redheads actually have less hair than most other people. On average they only have 90,000 strands of hair while blonds, for example, have 140,000. However, red hair is typically thicker so they it still looks just as full.(© 2015 KUSA)

National Redhead Day

Apparently Thursday was National Redhead Day, so of course we must (belatedly) celebrate:


Source: Amanda Kesting, KUSA

- The highest concentration of Redheads is in Scotland (13%) followed by Ireland (10%). Worldwide, only 2% of the population has red hair.- People with red hair are likely more sensitive to pain. This is because the gene mutation (MC1R) that causes red hair is on the same gene linked to pain receptors. It also means redheads usually need more anesthesia for dental and medical procedures.- Having red hair isn't the only thing that makes some redheads unique. They are also more likely to be left handed. Both characteristics come from recessive genes, which like to come in pairs.- Redheads probably won't go grey. That's because the pigment just fades over time. So they will probably go blonde and even white, but not grey.- Rumor says Hitler banned marriage between redheads. Apparently he thought it would lead to "deviant offspring."- Redheads most commonly have brown eyes. The least common eye color: blue.- Bees have been proven to be more attracted to redheads.- Being a redheaded man may have health benefits. A study published by the British Journal of Cancer suggested that men with red hair are 54% less likely to develop prostate cancer than their brown and blonde-haired counterparts.- Redheads actually have less hair than most other people. On average they only have 90,000 strands of hair while blonds, for example, have 140,000. However, red hair is typically thicker so they it still looks just as full.(© 2015 KUSA)

About the Author

Amanda Witt began writing novels when her teenagers and their friends cornered her and gave her a wish list for their ideal fiction series.

Her short story "Night Rose" was chosen by bestselling author Jeffery Deaver for inclusion in the MWA anthology A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime and singled out as "hottest of all" by Kirkus Reviews.

She has a Ph.D. in English and has taught at various universities across the U.S., and has also worked as an editor, copy editor, proofreader, and graphic designer.

Contact

All inquiries and comments can be sent via

River Jude Press
P.O. Box 712
Argyle, TX 76226
riverjudepress-at-yahoo-dot-com

Or to Amanda Witt directly at words.count-at-yahoo-dot-com