Thursday Thirteen #210

I always knew the Thursday would come when I was completely and absolutely bereft of ideas, and not feeling up to an eclectic Thursday Thirteen. That day is here. So today, I guess I'm going to start out doing things that start with the letter "A" and we'll see where that takes me. I suspect it will be an eclectic TT about things that start with a certain letter!

1. Me! Well, "me" doesn't start with the letter A, but my name does. Anita. That's my name. According to the website Behind the Name (one of my favorites), Anita is a diminutive of Ana, which is a form of Anna, which originally came from Channah, or Hannah. "The name appears briefly in the New Testament belonging to a prophetess who recognized Jesus as the Messiah," the site says.

2. Apple. I love apples. Did you know Johnny Appleseed's birthday is in September? That's right, he was a real person. His real name was John Chapman and he was born on September 26, 1774. He brought apples to the American mid west.

3. Angels. Angels are spiritual beings who serve God, mostly as messengers. They are depicted in the Bible as being important to the Apocalypse. The theological study of angels is called angelology. Many people think we have guardian angels who watch over us and keep us safe.

4. Accordion. An accordion is a musical instrument that has a bellows and a keyboard. Believe it or not, I used to play one. My father had one when I was a teenager, and at that time I could play pretty much any instrument I picked up. I did not particularly care for the accordion because it was very heavy and hard to hang on to and manage.

5. Ankle. When I was 32, I carried some food outside to toss over the fence. I stepped in a big hole and fractured my ankle. I also made a mess of the tendons. I was on crutches for a while and I had a limp for almost a year. For several years after that, my ankle would pop and make crunchy sounds. Thankfully it doesn't do that anymore.

6. Art. I love to look at art, but aside from writing, which is a type of art, I don't really create art. I took a couple of art courses in college, and received decent grades, but I am no artist. My friend Dreama Kattenbraker is a wonderful local artist who has a whimsical style. My Hollins professor was Nancy Dahlstrom. These two wonderful ladies, and many other local artists, will be part of Botetourt County's first-ever Open Studios event on October 29 and 30.

7. Anagram is a form of word play. You take a word or a phrase and then you use all of the letters of that word or phrase to create a completely new word. Example: Antigone = negation. You can find an anagram solver here.

8. Academics. I love academics, that is to say, learning. I enjoy being a student and gaining understanding of new things. I feel better when my brain is getting a workout.

9. Asthma. This is not something I have blogged about much, but back in July I was told my asthma needed to be controlled. In fact, I was only breathing with something like 67 percent of my lung capacity. My doctor put me on two different controller inhalers, and I am breathing much better now. When you have asthma, your lungs swell and the little air tubes narrow, making it hard to breathe. It causes wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and coughing. Apparently there is no cure.

10. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in words. It is used a lot in poetry. For example, "juiced and jazzed" or "immemorial elms march madly for miles." These are also examples of consonance, that is, alliteration with the consonants.

10. Assonance is alliteration with the vowel sounds, not consonants. For example, "The purple curtain made me uncertain as to why I was hurting."
11. Ancestor. I have long been a student of genealogy, and I can trace my ancestors back to the late 1700s in Botetourt County, Virginia, where I live. My ancestry here goes back at least seven generations. At one time, my ancestors owned part of the Catawba Valley, particularly the area around Catawba Hospital. They came over to America from Scotland and Germany.

12. Aspartame. This is a good time to offer up my occasional rant against this rat poisoning that the government allows as a sweetener. I am not a fan of sucrolose, either, as that is chlorinated sugar. Here is a pro-aspartame website. It will tell you how safe it is. Here is a website that tells you how terrible this drug is. It lists 92 different problems that aspartame can cause, including MS, lupus, cancer, vision problems, and death. I think this is a loathsome chemical. The 'net is full of reports about aspartame and the illnesses it reportedly causes. Just type it in. The government says aspartame does no harm. Since I tend to believe little the government tells me, I guess you can figure what I think about this. I think the stuff is poison. So is sucrolose.
13. Afraid. Something I am a lot more afraid than I care to admit. The older I get, the more a-feared I become, I think. These days I worry about my health and fear becoming even less healthy than I already am. I think I am afraid of my own shadow on some days, but fortunately that does not happen very often. Other things I am afraid of - failure, success, mean people, rabid animals, losing my house, writing, and not writing. I am not afraid of ghosts.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 210th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.