The Basics

With a new semester starting, we may have some new names and faces joining our little blog family. Welcome, welcome! I just wanted to give you "The Basics" to help you get started.

#1- Become a follower. To the left is a list of current followers. Click on the "follow" box with the Google "g". If you have a gmail (Google email), Yahoo or Twitter account, becoming a follower is easy- you just sign in with your username and password and your info is transferred over.

It's a little harder if you don't have one of these accounts. Click on the "create a new Google account" link. What you are actually doing is creating a gmail account so don't forget your username and password. You'll need to know them to sign back in later. You'll also get the chance to add a pic. I'm sorry for all the trouble but this is a Google site and my blog is free so I bow to the wisdom of Google.

Regardless of which path you have to take to become a follower, be sure to "follow publicly" so you show up on the list.

#2- Read, comment, start a discussion with other followers/commenters, suggest ideas for future posts. I'm always looking for new ideas to discuss. Also, if you have books/movies/etc that you want to recommend to fellow followers, let me know. You can do a guest post telling us all why you like it. The only thing that I ask is that you keep all comments PG-13. We have a few youngsters in our blog family.

#3- Pass the site to others. Please share the site with friends, family, co-workers, Facebook/Myspace friends, anybody and everybody. Let them know that we discuss all kinds of stuff (and yes, I do slip in a little history here and there. My dream is to see the number of followers skyrocket. More people= more ideas. Let's make our little blog family get big!

Thanks for being here! Enjoy!

Wedding Traditions #4- The Cake

The bride is supposed to be the showstopper at a wedding right? I've begun to wonder if the popularity of the bride isn't being overtaken by the cake. There are cake shows out there by the dozen. You just gotta love Duff on Ace of Cakes and Buddy Valastro and crew on Cake Boss (and as much as I hate to say it, Martha Stewart). Wedding cakes are crazy nowadays. The decorations are out of this world, absolutely breathtaking, but then again so are the price tags attached to them. It always reminds me of the sticker shock Steve Martin got in Father of the Bride when he saw the $3000 pricetag for Annie's cake ("A cake is flour and sugar and water, isn't it?").

But despite the insanity that today's wedding cakes exude, they actually have a very humble beginning. In Ancient Rome, loaves of wheat bread would be baked as part of the wedding planning. The largest loaf would be crumbled over the tops of the bride's and groom's heads and the more crumbs that fell to the floor, the luckier and happier the couple would be in their married life. The smaller loaves would be broken into pieces by the couple and given to their guests, the idea of "breaking bread."

By the Middle Ages, the wheat bread loaves have morphed into sweeter confections. Makes sense, people ate wheat bread all the time. Sugar was hard to come by and if you have a sweet cake at your wedding, it makes the whole thing more festive and special for everyone in attendance. All the guests would get a slice of wedding cake but young, unmarried women wouldn't eat theirs. According to legend, if you took that piece of wedding cake home with you and slept with it under your pillow, you would dream of the man you were going to marry. I may be taking this a little too literally, but that's sort of gross. I would have cake and frosting and everything else in my hair and rather than having sweet dreams of my future groom, I would be spending a very pissed off night washing my hair and changing the sheets on my bed.

A more modern tradition concerning wedding cakes has the bride and groom feeding each other pieces of cake. This actually has two points of significance. First, it is the opportunity to show their committment to each other; they are actually completing their first joint task as a married couple. And it also shows that they trust each other. Historically, it meant that they trusted that the food wasn't poisoned but now it's that each trusts the other not to smash the ooey gooey frosting all over their face. I have often wondered if this actually turned into the couple's first marital squabble. It would if I were the one getting frosting smeared all over my face. It might be the quickest divorce in history!

More World Cup Fever

OK just so I haven't talked about the World Cup in the last few days doesn't mean I haven't been watching it. As a matter of fact, just the opposite. I've pretty much been glued to the TV for all of the games. And I just have to say, thank goodness for ESPN Classic because they re-run that day's games in the evenings. I can watch my favorite bits again!

Seriously though, this World Cup has been pretty interesting so far. No headbutt (yet) but then again, France's Zinedine Zidane isn't there. I do love his Adidas commercial though. With his black hood, he looks like a Sith from Star Wars...Darth Zidane, I love it!

However, there has been a lot of blood. My poor little Pique' has lost so much that he might need me to give him a transfusion. There have been some crazy games- USA's Landon Donovan's stoppage time goal to push his team into the Knockout Round and then the big loss in the very next game (I know I said earlier that I didn't think they would make it that far, but I was really hoping they would go further than that), referees who know how to do their jobs- like the guy who told Portugals Christiano Ronaldo he better not end up on the ground unless he's hurt (Ronaldo has a tendency to roll around on the ground if a strong puff of wind wafts in his general direction), and unfortunately, referees who have no clue how to do their jobs- there are too many example of this for me to even get into.

It's like a soap opera without women. Would you have ever thought such a thing could exist?

Caitlin is giving a speech in her public speaking class today informing people about the wonderfulness that is soccer and trying to convince them to watch the World Cup. Let me leave you with a few of her points...#1, it's the biggest sport in the world, #2, it is actually very exciting, a contact sport without pads and #3, the guys are HOTTTT. Go ahead, find you a pretty one to root for. Just remember, Pique' is MINE!

Wedding Traditions #3- White Gowns

There is nothing more beautiful than a bride walking down the aisle, resplendent in her white wedding gown. And it's not necessarily the clothes, you can see the love and happiness sort of emanating from within. But tradition says that a bride is supposed to have the white dress. Why?

Actually, the white part of the dress is a fairly modern concept. In centuries past, it wasn't the color of the dress that mattered. What did matter was the fact that the dress should be the best dress that the bride owned or could afford. It was a status symbol because the dress wasn't necessarily supposed to make the bride look beautiful, it was supposed to show how influential her family was and to prove that the groom's family was lucky to be absorbing such a woman into their bloodline.

For poor brides, the dress might be one they already owned and definitely would be worn again. Just because it was your wedding dress didn't mean that it got packed away after the ceremony was over. Lower class women would wear their wedding dresses to special church services or even to other big social events.

Upper class women, especially royalty, took pride in having a new dress made for their wedding days. The best possible fabric they could afford would be purchased from a cloth merchant. The dress might be worn again but only for the most formal of occasions. And the fabric for the dress was whatever color said "important." The wedding dresses of ancient and medieval royalty were in a rainbow of colors.

There is one notable white wedding dress in ancient history though. In 1406, Princess Phillipa of England wore a white wedding dress embroidered with real silver and gold thread to her marriage to King Eric of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It's nearly five centuries before white wedding dresses actually become a trend though.

In 1840, Queen Victoria of England chose white satin for her wedding dress so she could incorporate some beautiful antique white lace she had inherited from an ancestor. A photograph of Victoria and her groom, Prince Albert, became widely popular as a postcard (see the pic above). Women in Europe and the US would take this postcard to their dressmakers to design something similar to Victoria's gown for their own wedding.

The tradition of the white wedding gown took hold. Since that time, brides in the Western World have sought their own white creation. Whether it's technically pure white, ecru, candlelight or ivory, "wedding white" is still the most common choice in wedding dresses.

Wedding Traditions #2- The Ring

What symbolizes weddings and marriage more than the ring? Indeed, although wedding rings have gotten more ornate over the centuries, that simple band of gold is still synonymous with the joining of the bride and groom into a married couple.

Wedding rings are a very old European custom that has spread throughout the world. We know for a fact that wedding rings were exchanged in Ancient Rome and were most likely used in Greece and Italy long before that. But ancient wedding rings had a much different meaning than what we think of them today.

Back in the day, weddings were more of a contract between two families than the culmination of love between two people. Marriages were contracted to protect fortunes and bloodlines and could often be used as a means of social advancement. This holds true for the elite and the common people. You did not want to "marry down." That was social suicide. Wedding rings were simple bands (not unlike modern ones) cast out of metal. The more affluent the family, the more expensive the metal. And affluent families would have the last names of the bride and the groom as well as the wedding date engraved inside the ring to show when the two families were contracted together.

In addition to symbolizing the junction of two families, the wedding ring also symbolized the sharing of goods. The bride brought a dowry to the relationship. It could be money, land, animals etc. The amount of the dowry was directly proportional to how rich her family was. The bride also brought her own personal clothing and household goods. The ring was provided by the groom's family to show their wealth (again, the more affluent the family, the more expensive the metal used in the ring with gold as the pinnacle of success).

Have people always worn wedding bands on their left hands? Nope. Traditionally (and in many cultures even today) the wedding band was worn on the ring finger of the RIGHT hand. The Latin word for right roughly translates into our modern word for dexterity. So you wore your ring on your right, or more dexterous, hand. By the same token, the Latin word for left translates to the modern word sinister. So it was evil to wear it on your left. Anything "left" was considered evil. As a leftie, I have a huge problem with that.

However, there were people who believed that the so-called "love vein" ran directly from the left ring finger to the heart. Once love began to play more of a role in marriage, people began wearing wedding bands on that finger and for Western Europe and its descendents, the tradition stuck.

In modern times, the wedding ring is not always a traditional gold band. Regular gold sort of fell out of fashion in the latter part of the 20th century so now bands of white gold and platinum are much more popular. Also, it is nothing unusual to see wedding bands dripping with gemstones nowadays.

And it's not even just wedding bands anymore. Engagement rings have been around for quite sometime. Originally they were considered betrothal rings. A betrothal was just as binding as a marriage in most cases so a betrothal ring cemented the deal until an official wedding ceremony could be held. Now we have the promise ring- typically given when the relationship becomes serious (sort of a pre-engagement engagement ring I guess), the eternity ring- a more elaborate version of the wedding band given after X number of years of wedded bliss (wonder how many of those are actually given today?), and the mother's ring- where a husband gives his wife a ring with his, hers and their children's birthstones to celebrate how a couple has become a family.

In case you are wondering, for me, the perfect ring set would be an emerald cut diamond (the bigger the better) for an engagement ring and a plain band for the wedding ring. And yes, despite the more modern inclinations, HE would be wearing one too. I'm not marrying anybody who won't wear a wedding band too. Now if I could just find him...

Happy Midsummer's Eve

Today is the Summer Solstice, or to put it in technical terms, the day of the year that the Earth's axial tilt is most inclined toward the Sun. Yeah, if you are like me, sitting there with a confused look on your face that just screams "Huh?" think about it like this...today is the day of the year with the longest amount of sunlight. Ahhh...that makes more sense.

And of course if there is more daylight, then there's more time to party. So guess what?...?...? Yup, Midsummer's Eve has historically been one of the big festival days in the world. In ancient times, people believed that the most medicinal plants bloomed profusely on Midsummer's Eve, so if you were having trouble getting pregnant, Midsummer's Eve was when you gathered herbs known for increasing fertility. If you had a problem with fever-causing illnesses, you gathered Feverfew on Midsummer's Eve to try to make yourself healthier for the rest of the year. Huge festivals with dancing and bonfires were held all over the world.

As Christianity spread, most priests saw Midsummer's Eve festivals as heretic pagan rituals so tradition got a religious bend. The Summer Solstice became the day to celebrate the works of St. John the Baptist. You still had the feasts, plant gathering and bonfires but now they were in honor of St. John. The pic above is of the 2009 fuegos de San Juan (fires of St. John) in the Spanish countryside.

The custom hasn't changed much in the past millennia and a half. All across the world today, people will be having their big picnic-type festivals and burning their bonfires after the sun goes down. For the devout, Midsummer's Eve is still a day to celebrate St. John; for the not quite as devout, Midsummer's Eve has actually become a celebration of the beginning of Summer.

I love me some crazy holidays, especially when I can throw the words "pagan" and "fertility" in there, but I'm not to sure about this one. It has been hot as Hades in my neck of the woods for the past few days so I'm not going to be celebrating the fact that it's going to get HOTTER! So I think I'll forego the bonfire and just remember the works of St. John the Baptist and try to forget the temperature.

Congratulations CSCC Honors Scholars

I just noticed that they have released the President's List and Dean's List of honor students for the Spring semester. I think I saw about 15 of my students on the lists. I am really proud of you guys. Major congrats to all of you who made it- especially my past and present students. You really should give yourselves a big pat on the back because you definitely deserve it.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Book Review: The Millennium Trilogy

Usually when I recommend books to my blog family, they are young adult books. That's what I write so I spend a lot of time reading books from that particular genre. However, I am actually a voracious reader. I'll read anything that will hold still long enough. I can honestly say that up until this point, I had never read a foreign book/translated book- for pleasure I mean. I've read loads of international stuff for academic purposes and usually I felt like a blithering idiot.

Maybe that's why it took me a while to read Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. I had heard about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and knew that it was a translation of a Swedish work, so in my mind it went into the not-gonna-read-it pile. And then...Caitin read it and its sequel, The Girl who Played with Fire. She was so impressed by them that she talked me into reading them. I figured I'd have to muddle through them, maybe read about 1/2 of Dragon to placate her and then move on.

Twenty pages into it and I was hooked. Larsson's characters are so cool because they are flawed people. The hero, Mikael Blomkvist, and heroine, Lisbeth Salander, are not actually what you would think of in terms of hero and heroine. Both of them are broken people because of things that have happened to them in their respective pasts and both are literally trying to overcome their pasts- in Lisbeth's case that means kicking ass and taking names. And that's just the backstory! All three books are mysteries with Blomkvist and Salander trying to figure out whodunnit while battling their own demons.

I literally flew through Dragon and Fire and waited with baited breath for The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third book in the trilogy, to come out just so I could find out what Lisbeth was going to do next. You would think that by now I would have learned to listen to Caitlin. *shrugs*

I do have to give you this one little caveat in my otherwise glowing recommendation of the trilogy though. If you are looking for happy little tales or some light reading, skip the Millennium Trilogy at this point. None of these books are exactly what I would call easy reading. They are set in Sweden and you just have to smile and nod at the fact that the characters eat some of the nastiest stuff and the fact that a 20 degree day is short-sleeve weather for them. Go into it with the knowledge that unless you have been to Sweden, you aren't going to recognize the places Larsson describes.

But, believe me, if you take the time to read the Millennium Trilogy, you will be so glad you did.

World Cup Fever

Four years ago, Caitlin was bouncing off the walls, literally refusing to leave the house for the entire month of June because the 2006 World Cup was on and she wanted to be able to watch every single game. To be perfectly honest with you, I didn't have the foggiest clue what sport actually competed for the World Cup. When I found out it was soccer, I sort of gave her the side-eye and wondered how in the world my gently raised little Southern girl ever learned what soccer was. I mean, we're a college football kind of family. ROCKY TOP BABY!!! I had never seen a soccer game. I remember waving my hand dismissively because there was simply no way soccer could be as interesting as football, could there?

Flash forward to 2010. Caitlin wants to be a diplomat in Spain when she gets out of school. Her interest in soccer has increased since the 2006 World Cup and like a good mommy, I figured if my baby was into the game and was going to end up living in Spain one of these days, I ought to at least support her.

OMG, folks, I am here to tell you that I am a convert. I was wrong. Soccer IS as good as college football. You have to support a club team and our team of choice is Barcelona. Caitlin has decided that she is going to marry their coach one of these days (Check out his pic associated with her name in the followers list). We have spent our Saturdays and Sundays watching countless numbers of games. We must watch Barcelona play and we have to watch the other games that might effect Barca's standings. I know, I know...we've gotten all die hard now!

The 2010 World Cup started this week and yup, you guessed it, we're both glued to the television supporting Spain (I'm pulling for the USA team too but I just don't think they'll go very far). Going into the tournament, Spain was the favorite to win the whole thing. I say "was" because they sort of muffed their opening match game with Switzerland yesterday. It was a nailbiter though; I sat on the floor screaming and trying to kick the ball for them. Despite the loss, I'm still pulling for Spain FTW.

The more games I watch, the more I'm learning the ropes. I have actually begun to understand the rules and regulations a little bit. Caitlin says that by the end of this year's World Cup, I might actually have moved up from youngling to Padawan. I will freely admit to you that one thing that keeps me watching is the fact that there are a lot of cutie patooties on the soccer pitch. I figure that if Caitlin gets to claim Barcelona's coach then I get to pick one for myself- only fair, don't you think?- so if you look at the pic at the top of the post, Spain's #3 Gerard Pique' is spoken for. To borrow a phrase from Bill from True Blood, "Pique' is MINE!"

Regardless, if you aren't a soccer fan, give it a chance. Don't be surprised if you end up addicted to it like me!

Wedding Traditions #1- June Weddings

Whip out the lifestyle section of your Sunday paper and 5 bucks says it's filled with wedding announcements. We just sort of accept the idea that every year when June rolls around, it's going to be filled with weddings. (Unless you are in my family that is- see the earlier "Wedding Bells" post about my brother's May wedding)Historians, wedding planners and brides-to-be in general will tell you that traditionally June is THE month for weddings. OK, so my question is...why?

The month of June is named in honor of Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. Juno protected wives so it makes sense that women would want to get marries in Juno's month. Suck up to the goddess a little to ensure you have her keeping a close eye on your marriage.

There are also more practical reasons that ancient brides chose June for their wedding celebrations. #1, you were coming out of Lent, the penitential season. You could actually have big festivities. #2, the month of May was when people tended to have their annual baths and clothes washing. As bad as it sounds to say it, if you got married in June, your guests (and you and your groom for that matter) probably smelled better and were wearing clean clothes. #3, if you conceived your first child within a few weeks of a June wedding date, that baby would be born in spring the next year. That meant you wouldn't be suffering through the late summer heat with a big belly and swollen ankles, you wouldn't be going through labor in the winter snowstorms and most likely you would be recovered enough from childbirth to participate in the spring planting season. Practicality was big to ancient folks.

Now, in the modern world, such practicalities don't necessarily hold water anymore but June is still a big time for weddings. Again why? To be truthful, we have our modern practicalities. Brides love outdoor weddings. June is warm but not as rainy as May or as stiflingly hot as July and August so a better chance for good wedding weather. Also, children are out of school and most people have their vacation time scheduled for the summer. That way more people are able to travel for weddings. And big honeymoon destinations tend to offer wedding/honeymoon specials in June.

Interestingly enough, although June is the traditional month for weddings, when I was digging up the info to tell you "why," I stumbled on something that surprised me. 21st century brides aren't into the idea of being June brides like those who came before them. For the past 10 years, July and August have been the months that the most weddings have been held in the United States. June comes in at a close 3rd. Makes you wonder if in a few centuries down the road, somebody will be blogging about why August is the traditional wedding month.

Happy Flag Day

I know, I know...Flag Day isn't really a holiday but hey, the American Flag is a symbol of the past, present and future of this wonderful nation- the past being the 13 stripes representing the original 13 states, the present being the 50 stars representing the 50 states and the future being the fact that there is hope that this great nation will endure. Here I go, getting on my soap box again but for over 2 centuries, people have fought and died to give us the opportunity to fly this flag so what can I say, I get a little patriotic now and then.

Flag Day is always celebrated on June 14 because on that day in 1777, in the midst of the American Revolution, the Second Continental Congress adopted the first American Flag. Until the early 1900's Flag Day celebrations tended to be local things. Civic groups would hang a new city flag, picnics would be held on the town square, all that good stuff. Pennsylvania was (and still is) the only state to recognize Flag Day as an official state holiday.

In 1907, the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks decided that the US government wasn't doing enough to honor the American flag so Elks Lodge leaders decreed that Elks Lodges across the country had to hold bigger celebrations on Flag Day.

On Flag Day the very next year, in 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt was eating in a restaurant in Philadelpha when he thought he saw a fellow diner blow his nose on what appeared to be a small version of the flag. Completely enraged at this abuse of the flag, TR jumped up, grabbed a small wooden rod laying nearby and smacked the guy 5 or 6 times on the head. That's when he noticed that the man's "flag" was actually just a navy blue handkerchief embroidered with white stars. Teddy apologized for the beat-down and then popped the man in the head one more time for good measure since he got him all riled up with an excess of patriotism. Imagine sitting there enjoying your lunch and the President of the United States whopping you upside the head with a big stick!

By 1916, the Elks' Flag Day celebrations caught the attention of President Woodrow Wilson who decreed that although Flag Day wasn't an official Federal holiday, all government buildings would henceforth fly the flag and celebrations would be held.

Today, throughout the country, there will be parades, celebrations and new flags flying. The Boy Scouts are setting up stations for people to drop off their old flags so that they can be properly destroyed.

So, even though it's not a real holiday, please take a moment today to remember what our flag stands for and to honor those who have fought and died so we can fly it.