The Rogue Tapestry of Upham

Today's title -- let's face it, you have to have a good title to draw your readers in! that, and an audience to tell people about your work, so who's telling people about this? -- comes from a combination of three words I've first heard mispronounced so I've pronounced them wrong, often for years. Let's start with the most recent one, Upham. And to be fair to me, I probably mispronounced that "up-UM" this morning rather than "up-HAM" because I was tired as Martha and I put the papers together for our delivery routes this morning. Upham's a town about a hour northeast of where we live in Minot, North Dakota, population 130.

Tapestry ... now that's an interesting story for me. What you probably now know as the sixth-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Q allows Captain Picard to experience what life might have been like he had not had a personal tragedy happen to him I knew in fourth grade (1981-1982) as a reading book. I expect all of you know that word is pronounced with a short a, like the a in "tap", but once I pronounced it with a long a like the a in "tape", I stuck with it. That. Entire. Year. I think it was my pride, even after I was proven wrong, even after Mrs. Preston my teacher and then peers would make fun of how I said it, that kept me from backing down.

And my introduction to the word rogue came about via a Marvel comic book, specifically Avengers Annual #10 which had appeared that summer of eighty-one. It introduced the character Rogue who could absorb anyone's powers and memories by physical contact, effectively lobotomizing somebody if she holds onto them bare skin to bare skin too long. She'd later go from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to the X-Men to the big screen to be played by Anna Paquin ... anyway, I had never heard her name (which I later -- much later -- learned doubled as a common noun, synonymous with adversary) pronounced, so I went with two syllables (row-GEW) rather than, well, "rogue".

Let me see ... I got home last night and the kids had done their reading for the day and Martha had just finished cooking up macaroni and cheese for the three of us. She only fixed one box so Sarah, Jeffrey, and I finished it -- Martha would serve herself something when she got home from church choir practice. I don't remember what Sarah read, but I do remember Jeffrey read to Martha from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which we'd been working on because they couldn't find The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins that he had been reading. I found it this morning and I suspect he will read that tonight. But whether it's a step up or a step down?

I can't say, David