if a concept as relatively new as blogging can already be considered to fit into parameters of convention.
Having said that -
Some of my friends, who blog their thoughts - their humour - their lives - have been participating in something in which I normally wouldn't, due to it falling outside the parameters of my blogging's convention. It turns out, though, in this particular instance, that our blogging worlds have - not so much collided - but are actually spending a moment in sync.
The practice of tagging throughout the blogging world is not new, but would serve no purpose here, where I only serve to provide my children with their earliest history, and the part I play(or played) in it. I'm 51 as of June 2nd. They're two and a half as of May 3oth. Do the math. Regardless of how much time I have with them, there's no doubt in my mind that there will be things preserved in here that I either would have forgotten, or wouldn't have had the chance to impart to them.
That, Morgan and Liam, is why this blog is here.
(Just in case I've never actually told you that before you read this.)
However, the nature of the tag aligns with recent events worth highlighting.
A couple of weekends ago, we took the twins into Toronto to see their Mormor, who was just home from having some broken bones in her feet repaired for a second time. This is something she's been going through for a year now. (I may explain this a little more someday - and if I ever do, it will be some time after the story has completed its rounds through the legal process.)
As we were about to leave Mormor's that day, she returned to me a book I had lent her sometime before, which was written by - and about - a man named Richard Biggs. Richard was my Dad's Dad's Grandfather's Dad. (Recite the great-greats as you see fit.) Richard was born in 1847 in Devizes, Wiltshire. At the age of 17, he entered Trinity College in Dublin. He was also a graduate of London University, and became Head Master at Galway Grammar School. He had a tradition of a weekly talk with his students, and a series of his talks was published in Dublin in 1905, aptly titled, "A Schoolmaster's Talks With His Boys (Being Addresses By The Late Richard Biggs, M.A. LL.D.)". Many years later, my Grandfather (J.P. Biggs) was born in Galway. He and my Grandmother are the generation of my family which moved to Canada (British Columbia), where my Dad was born.
So, coincidentally, the nature of the tag, as described to me?
- Pick up the nearest book.
- Open to page 123.
- Find the 5th sentence.
- Post the next 3 sentences on your blog.
- Tag 5 more people (and don't forget to name the person who included you.)
Newsguy Bob's the person who included me, and I've already mentioned the nearest book.
However, I won't be tagging 5 more people.
Sorry.
However, if you're reading this, and you feel like taking up the cause, you can always continue the tag, and give me credit for urging you on. Just let me know if you plan on doing so in the comments. I just thought this worked out to be a great opportunity to provide just a little writing from a book the twins will eventually inherit. (...and might I just make a quick mention, you two, that sharing is important? Hmm? Morgan, Liam - are you paying attention?)
Page 123 is a chapter/address entitled, "A Rose By Any Other Name".
Fifth sentence down the page begins as follows:
"When a number of books, for instance, appear either all bearing the same pseudonym or evidently from their style proceeding from the same hand, we begin to be interested to know who it can be that wrote them, and so we find out that the Waverley Novels are Sir Walter Scott's, and so on. Again, when striking statements are made, the degree of credence we give to them must depend on whether the writer is in a position to know the truth of what he says; and this we cannot know unless we know who and what he is: the statements, e.g., of the individual who imposed himself on Sir G. Newnes as M. Louis de Rougemont, and which at first, on his authority, some of you were inclined to believe, marvellous though they were at once completely discounted when the imposition was discovered.
In a novel there is no question as to the truth of the story, all we look for is that the descriptions be correct, the characters consistently drawn and like such characters as we are familiar with in life, and that there shall be nothing impossible in the events."
It's funny to me that the first thing I noticed was rather poor sentence structure. Where sentences should have ended, they ran on, being joined together by commas and semi-colons - but this was 1905, and it was, after all, culled from a schoolmaster's lectures, so I guess I'll forgive the transcriptionist.
Anyway, there are my three sentences.
Oddly enough, due to the timing of the tag, they're the words of a relative, six generations previous to Liam and Morgan.
Their Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather.
