Wednesday 

1 February 2017

— Finally we are into the famous-people birthday month!

Good Morning All, 

In the Ridiculous-Things-to-Feel-Proud-about-Department, I have always felt ridiculously proud to have been born in the same month as Abraham Lincoln. Whether you believe history makes great men, or great men make history, he has to be right up there with Jesus, Muhammad, Caesar, Buddha, Gandhi, Churchill, and Carl Yastrzemski in the Pantheon of the Greats.

Also neat is that both my brothers are also born in February. Whenever I wanted to watch my mother do her impersonation of a time-lapse ripening tomato, I’d ask casually, “So, ma, what do you figure, is May your favorite month?”

Today is Muriel Spark's birthday. When Johs was here for Esther’s birthday in mid-January, while we were driving around doing errands, we played a game of Botticelli, what Holly used to call A Pot of Jelly. Earlier that morning, I’d done today’s Day Book page,  and so chose her (Ms. Spark) as my person. I am happy to report that for only the second time in three decades I managed to stump Johs. (The only other time was when I chose Clarence Birdseye.)

Mind you, we used to play Botticelli a lot from the time he was seven and Holly five. They both loved it because I'd repeat questions from earlier games, so that the more we played the more they got the answers correct. I still have a lovely memory of going into school on the train with Johs, engaged in a game, when his feet did not come close to reaching the floor, when he’d chosen as his person someone whose name began with M. 

I asked, “Is your person a monk who did early experiments in genetics?” 

Johs, who’d had this question five times before, answered, “No, my person is not Gregor Mendel.”

“Okay, is your person the oldest person in the Bible?”

“Nope, my person is not Methuselah.”

“Did your person compose what is now referred to as The Wedding March?”

Johs, who could see as well as I that our fellow occupants were now looking at him over the tops of their newspapers, would hold his chin in a thinking posture, and say, “I don’t think it was Gustav Mahler. I guess I’ll go with Felix Mendelssohn. Nope, wasn’t him.”

Bu now, as you can imagine, there was not a sound in our compartment as I asked, “Okay, might your person have been the King of Pontus who so successfully fought against the late Roman Republic?”

Johs, pretending this one was hard, scratched his head. People leaned forward. Johs suddenly smiled and said, “Sorry, my person is not Mithridates VI.”

And so it went, our compartment mates reluctant to get up and get off at their stops, never to find out—alas—that Johs’s person was Minnie Mouse. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron