Why do you write...why do you say...? These are questions that come to El Gringo Viejo at various times. Usually we are too much in a stew and feeling too grumpy to remember that there are a lot of folks who have just "tuned in" so to speak. So, here are a few answers:
What does (Sir Edmund)Hillary mean?
That comes from she, herself. She swings wide, when answering questions about her past, present, and future. She was asked one time about the source of her given name. She answered that her parents had always been impressed with the exploits of Sir Edmund Hillary and, in order to give their daughter the inspiration to always aspire, simply "because it was there", they named their daughter in honour of the famous, if somewhat eccentric, Brit hohenbergsteiger.
So, there you have it. How noble. What brilliant, loving parents to recognise the brilliance they had whelped forth. The only problem is that (Sir Edmund)Hillary was born three years after the conquest of Mount Everest by anybody other than the father of Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano *. Perhaps, one might suggest, they were waiting for someone named "Hillary" to do something really noteworthy so that they could go down to the district clerk and finally register the birth. Any explanation will do when a person has to corkscrew down to the Courthouse. *(yeti and sasquatch have long been suspected as being involved in the paternity of the two women in question)
What is an OROG or what does it mean?
An OROG is the Order of the Readers of the Old Gringo. No membership fees, no benefits, but an occasional chuckle and place where you can find somebody who is grinding his teeth just like you are.
Why do you infect your writing with English spelling and other Anglophilia?
This is part of an ancient war El Gringo Viejo has with the useless and pointless changes that have come the way of the Episcopal Church, the English Church, and the Anglican Communion in general.
More pointedly, it is a protest against the flushing of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer as the basis of conduct and worship for members of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church Church of England and the Anglican Community. The basic prayer book, common because it is used, commonly, by prince and pauper, remained essentially unchanged when brought out of the Latin in the 1550s. Some changes had to be made after the American Revolution so that Americans would not be required to pray for the health and protection of King George and all those in authority. That is where the term "Protestant Episcopal Church of America" comes from. It is an Orthodox Church, but had to protest the little matter of praying for the health of the monarch who had just been overthrown. So it was changed in the 1790s to this...(see if you can figure out what part was changed):
O LORD our Governor, whose glory is in all the world, We commend this nation to thy merciful care, that being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in thy peace. Grant to The President of the United States, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness; and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
The entire set of services and Celebration of the Mass of the Holy Eucharist, order of officiation over Rites of the Sacraments all comes came to this poor child when he was very young. His Grandmother Mamie Chisum Neal...a nice girl from the low hills of Eastern Tennessee ...could quote page after page after page from the the Book of Common Prayer, used by Episcopalians...and their half-brothers the Methodists, Presbyterians, and the ME Church, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was not an Episcopalian, but the King James unabridged was, literally, her Bible, and she could recite with theatrical emphasis page after page of that cornerstone of the Faith. She would say that she was a Methodist, but her mother-in-law was a Christian (surname) and very high-church Anglican, out of New York, and back into the inner workings of that strange Island that ruled the world before it decided to rot. Her mother-in-law, of course, is El Gringo Viejo's grandmother.
So, that is the long form. There is reason behind the madness. Perhaps not a reason that makes sense to a reasonable person, but it does make sense to the this writer. It is a reasoning that asks the question, "If it is good to change, why then is it not just as good to remain the same?" Supposedly the Episcopal Church changed and ordained lesbian tuna fish and uses "relevant" language to re-fill the pews 'with young people'.
Holy Spirit (?)... (wine, whisky, everclear, ethanol?)...why not "Holy Ghost" ? Were the ghosts in Supernatural Workers Local 2256, AFofL-CIO offended? Did they want a royalty payment? Did changing the Book of Common Prayer make the message more "relevant" ? No. Did it re-fill the pews? No. They are emptier by the week.
So there are a couple of answers to questions that have been asked over the last few days. If you will all be so kind as to notice, no one can accuse El Gringo Viejo with anything like blowing up a mosque or synagogue or church of any kind....or beating up a nun....or tumbling a wall onto a homosexual....or shooting a adulteress in the head for half-time entertainment at the soccer game in Kabul. It is not the way we argue or discuss differences.
We would never dynamite the Cliff Buddhas of Afghanistan.
Thanks for the time and interest. Other questions follow during the next few days. The hour is drawing nigh for our return to the Quinta, so we shall have to type quickly.
El Gringo Viejo w
That comes from she, herself. She swings wide, when answering questions about her past, present, and future. She was asked one time about the source of her given name. She answered that her parents had always been impressed with the exploits of Sir Edmund Hillary and, in order to give their daughter the inspiration to always aspire, simply "because it was there", they named their daughter in honour of the famous, if somewhat eccentric, Brit hohenbergsteiger.
So, there you have it. How noble. What brilliant, loving parents to recognise the brilliance they had whelped forth. The only problem is that (Sir Edmund)Hillary was born three years after the conquest of Mount Everest by anybody other than the father of Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano *. Perhaps, one might suggest, they were waiting for someone named "Hillary" to do something really noteworthy so that they could go down to the district clerk and finally register the birth. Any explanation will do when a person has to corkscrew down to the Courthouse. *(yeti and sasquatch have long been suspected as being involved in the paternity of the two women in question)
What is an OROG or what does it mean?
An OROG is the Order of the Readers of the Old Gringo. No membership fees, no benefits, but an occasional chuckle and place where you can find somebody who is grinding his teeth just like you are.
Why do you infect your writing with English spelling and other Anglophilia?
This is part of an ancient war El Gringo Viejo has with the useless and pointless changes that have come the way of the Episcopal Church, the English Church, and the Anglican Communion in general.
More pointedly, it is a protest against the flushing of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer as the basis of conduct and worship for members of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church Church of England and the Anglican Community. The basic prayer book, common because it is used, commonly, by prince and pauper, remained essentially unchanged when brought out of the Latin in the 1550s. Some changes had to be made after the American Revolution so that Americans would not be required to pray for the health and protection of King George and all those in authority. That is where the term "Protestant Episcopal Church of America" comes from. It is an Orthodox Church, but had to protest the little matter of praying for the health of the monarch who had just been overthrown. So it was changed in the 1790s to this...(see if you can figure out what part was changed):
O LORD our Governor, whose glory is in all the world, We commend this nation to thy merciful care, that being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in thy peace. Grant to The President of the United States, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness; and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
The entire set of services and Celebration of the Mass of the Holy Eucharist, order of officiation over Rites of the Sacraments all comes came to this poor child when he was very young. His Grandmother Mamie Chisum Neal...a nice girl from the low hills of Eastern Tennessee ...could quote page after page after page from the the Book of Common Prayer, used by Episcopalians...and their half-brothers the Methodists, Presbyterians, and the ME Church, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was not an Episcopalian, but the King James unabridged was, literally, her Bible, and she could recite with theatrical emphasis page after page of that cornerstone of the Faith. She would say that she was a Methodist, but her mother-in-law was a Christian (surname) and very high-church Anglican, out of New York, and back into the inner workings of that strange Island that ruled the world before it decided to rot. Her mother-in-law, of course, is El Gringo Viejo's grandmother.
So, that is the long form. There is reason behind the madness. Perhaps not a reason that makes sense to a reasonable person, but it does make sense to the this writer. It is a reasoning that asks the question, "If it is good to change, why then is it not just as good to remain the same?" Supposedly the Episcopal Church changed and ordained lesbian tuna fish and uses "relevant" language to re-fill the pews 'with young people'.
Holy Spirit (?)... (wine, whisky, everclear, ethanol?)...why not "Holy Ghost" ? Were the ghosts in Supernatural Workers Local 2256, AFofL-CIO offended? Did they want a royalty payment? Did changing the Book of Common Prayer make the message more "relevant" ? No. Did it re-fill the pews? No. They are emptier by the week.
So there are a couple of answers to questions that have been asked over the last few days. If you will all be so kind as to notice, no one can accuse El Gringo Viejo with anything like blowing up a mosque or synagogue or church of any kind....or beating up a nun....or tumbling a wall onto a homosexual....or shooting a adulteress in the head for half-time entertainment at the soccer game in Kabul. It is not the way we argue or discuss differences.
We would never dynamite the Cliff Buddhas of Afghanistan.
Thanks for the time and interest. Other questions follow during the next few days. The hour is drawing nigh for our return to the Quinta, so we shall have to type quickly.
El Gringo Viejo w
