Word Nerd Light Walking

Un chiste andaluz, a joke from Andalucia which came to RantWoman while RantWoman was on the last walking leg of her weekly trip to Meeting.

Word nerd digression: Andalucia is a region in Spain. The adjectival form above translates Light walks. RantWoman simply wishes to note that and will TRY to resist the temptation to further Word Nerd delving. RantWoman will try.

RantWoman has told this joke in 3 languages in several different countries. A LARGE percentage of the time, the verdict is "Don't quit your day job." Hold that problem in the Light. RantWoman posts here in faith that if the joke also needs to appear in person, people who have read it will be able to bear with repetition. Also hold in the Light that both parties in the joke below agree that the fly is there.


Two guys are walking along a road.
One of them says to the other "Look. See that very tall tower way off in the distance. There is a fly walking on the windowsill."
The second guy responds: "I cannot see the fly in spite of these thick glasses I am wearing, but I am sure it's there because I can hear its footsteps."

This joke makes both RantWoman and Ferrener Husband laugh and laugh. If why and further digressions are needed, the topic of "passing" will come up. As will learner's permits and learnign to drive.

It's possible that RantWoman should just leave the joke as is, like a spiritual smoke ring hovering here.

RantWoman famously does not know when to quit and will tread cautiously forward.


Recent dialogue
"RantWoman, you talked to much"
(elaboration on concern; RantWoman chose to hear as "We need your cooperation")

"So I have been told"
("Okay, let's cooperate.")
How about you, group leader, articulate some norms like people waiting to be called on and leaving space between offerings? 

See RantWoman is sometimes a jumper-inner.

RantWoman usually is not the only such sinner in the room. In this case, the norms were articulated. The discussion moved forward. That is, the first time a query was posed to the room, about three people jumped in without waiting to be called on. Can anyone guess the gender of the three people?

RantWoman managed enough demure to put her hand up and wait to be called on before suggesting that "You and you and you" need to wait to be called on.

Many things went MUCH better, including elements of presentation that invited people to speak to experiences and generated different experiences to start from. Now RantWoman would like to hear the verdict of others in the room.


Another word nerd visitation to Planet RantWoman: besides all the entanglements of the word "Oversight" around Quakerdom, among those who shepard meaning back and forth between English and Russian, "Oversight" exists in a meaning cloud with administration, supervision, and several words. The words and meanings clump differently in the two languages and the meaning shepards can dither for hours about which word is right for a given context.

Okay, RantWoman tries not to overdo this. In fact, the midlife vision meltdown rather severely impedes RantWoman's capacity to obsess in this way. Unfortunately the midlife vision meltdown does not always impede RantWoman's desire to investigate and fuss.

Recently RantWoman was in a conversation explaining her one unresolved monumentally fixated issue remaining from Meeting's effort to rename the Oops Well Committee:  Research was done. The names this committee is called in several places were listed. WHY OH WHY was Rantwoman not happy?

RantWoman asked Not Nearly As Much of a Word Nerd Friend in Business Meeting for what she hoped might be a tiny bit more commentary about whether Oversight comes with the same baggages as Overseers. Somehow the question got lost, lost from notes, lost from minutes, disappeared entirely from subsequent presentations.

RantWoman heard all three other people in the recent conversation go "Ohhhhh."
Not Nearly as Much of a Word Nerd Friend was also busy, busy, busy keeping many hats on her head, tending to important family medical matters. Clearly this Word nerd momement, this moment fantastically important to RantWoman, this point RantWoman had VERY little capacity to research on her own, this very point just went winging right by Not Nearly As Much of a Word Nerd Friend

Now, months later, what might help RantWoman just "Get over it"  or at least move on to the next opportunity to be true to Light / er , get monumentally stuck over something?

Spoken ministry.

Spoken ministry from someone who kept wondering why it was important enough that the topic came back and came back and kept coming back to Business Meeting. Spoken ministry about how the coming back and coming back and coming back made someone think a LOT about privilege.

Can you still hear the giant long "ohhhhhhhh...." from RantWoman? There would also be some mumblings of gratitude to whichever Friend(s) helped tend the conversations about privilege.

Hold this all in the Light.