It Takes a Village to Lose a Child

Outside a typical suburban high school in Ohio sits a concrete bench with my name carved in it, alongside the names of my brother Matthias and sister Regan.  The school engraved our names in memorial of the countless hours we spent sitting on that cold seat, waiting for our parents to remember to pick us up from school.  You haven't experienced calculus until you've tried to integrate trigonometric functions by the dim glow of parking lot security lights.

As it turns out, forgetting one's children is a family tradition.

A Talk at Camp Hinckley

The following is a talk I gave at my Stake's Young Women's camp the week of July 4th.  A few important points of context: First, the location of the talk was the amphitheater which they refer to as the Sacred Grove.  Second, each day's lessons share a theme, and that day's theme was love.  Third, some parts may seem disjointed because the questions were not rhetorical; each question involved receiving answers and comments from the audience. So, without further ado:

Eat, Pray, Marry

Once again, many thanks to Yvon Sicotte.

As movies have taught us, marriage serves the exclusive purpose of validating romantic love.  If you're not out-of-control, head-over-heels stupid in love then you have no obligation to marry, stay married, or remain faithful, regardless of circumstances.  In contrast, our ancestors married and respected marriage for a bunch of dull reasons like Religion, Morality, and Survival. BOR-ING! So to those of you of modern sensibilities, the story of how the Cicotte family established itself may cause you anything from distaste to horror, but I think there's a human, even tender story to be told here, so bear with me.

Côte des Argoulets Part II

    I owe this post to Yvon Sicotte, a distant relative who has had a twenty-five year head-start studying the same documents I have been piecing together for about five years.  His work's comprehensiveness puts mine to shame and renders it useless.  I may only meagerly contribute by providing translations since his work is only in French.  Still, I encourage anyone reading this to visit his site here, if only to boost the number of visits and encourage him to continue.  I also owe this post to my father, who found the website.

A long time ago I promised a transcription of Jean Chicot's land grant.  I got about a third of the way before the less-than-legible handwriting and archaic language forced the project onto the back burner.  Later attempts only got me about half-way.  Then my father provided me M. Sicotte's website which contained a complete transcription, as well as some useful contextual commentary.  Here is my English translation, along with my own commentary:

Clementine Cicotte's Blog Debut

Not a lot of commentary on these...just at home to grab some food for Arminda and me, load some pictures, and then back to the hospital.

Genetic Engineers Announce New "Brown" Cicotte

     Engineers have announced the creation of a new brown version of the Cicotte, saying it will be available in summer of 2012, most likely right after the release of the previously announced M&M model.  Asked about the project, Cicotte representative Logan Cicotte explained, "We saw the work being done by researchers at G.W. and M&M and thought, 'What else can we bring to the table?'  Of course, I immediately thought of the old line 'You can have any color Cicotte you want, so long as it's white,' and thought, 'Let's shake things up a bit.'"
     Truth be told, plans for a new brown Cicotte have been in the works some time.  Mr. Cicotte admitted that they had been working on a brown chassis model borrowed from the Gomez line (much like the Honda Passport) for some three and a half years.  Still, engineers are hopeful that the first original brown Cicotte will create plenty of excitement.  Mr. Cicotte went on, "We're definitely putting the unexpected into 'What to Expect when You're Expecting.'"
    And the changes don't stop at color.  "We're still hashing out the details, but our goal is an on-board communications system in English, Spanish and French," Cicotte continued, "Of course, we want it to be a Cicotte, so we expect to stick to the classic huge head and stubby limbs.  We want people to know that we're trying to add to, not replace, the original Cicotte line." The new Cicotte is expected to come out around August 6th.

Punkeydoodle

Did your parents call you Punkeydoodle? Probably not, because it's weird. But mine did, and while I can't say, "I've always wondered where that came from," I was nonetheless very surprised to come across the name in reading.  As I was researching my family history I read the following passage in a book about rural   Ontario called Country Roads: The Story of South Easthope:

     One of the oddest (and funniest) names in the province is Punkeydoodle's Corner at the point where three townships (South Easthope, Wilmot and East Zorra) and three counties (Perth, Waterloo, and Oxford) meet.  The origin of the name seems to be tied to a Mr. Zurbrucken who, probably coming late from his pumpkin patch whistling Yankee Doodle, seems to have become victim of his irate wife's mixing of the two as Punkeydoodle.  Many versions of this story have developed over the years. (Hagarty, 6)