Dear Reader:

Stories really do name everything in our universe, don’t they?Without stories there would be no memories of names. Think about stories of ancestors and relatives who came before you….perhaps as a child you over-heard stories about crazy Aunt Minerva and all her comical antics like snorting so loudly she once drove off a herd of pigs… or Uncle Buck who sang off key so badly and so loudly that the desperate preacher finally bought him a homemade muffler to wear during church service…some saying resembling “Hannibal the Cannibal’s” face guard.

I have always loved Native-American stories for that exact reason… that naming humans, objects in nature and sky, merit rewards, animals…were all based on character traits which told about a person or thing just by their name. Naming was the most important sacred ceremony in their everyday culture and customs.

Stories and names are one and the same. There will be some colorful characters’ names that will stick with us in our memories long after childhood, youth, and adulthood. (How many times can you still say  Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo? It meant  (“The Most Wonderful Thing in the Whole Wide World”) and his poor little brother Chang whose name meant  (“Little or Nothing.”) 

Think about the number of times our names change in life…I started out Rebecca Lynn Barbour...which was shortened to Becky unless mother was really mad at me and then it was “Becky Lynn…you better get in this house right now!”  Later I married and I became Rebecca Barbour Dingle or just Becky Dingle...which I still am today…except when I am “Boo Boo” to my grandchildren…which actually got its origin in college when the Ya’s called me ‘Boo Boo’ because they said I reminded them of the ‘Boo Boo’  in the cartoon series Yogi the Bear and Boo Boo. (I was always running behind the rest of the group and always asking questions.)

These days I enjoy “Being” time more than ever…sitting on my deck lounge chair staring out in my garden sanctuary or in my “Happy Place” recliner…just thinking…about everything and nothing….about a comment, phone call, conversation, line or quote in a book, music, a piece of art…just “being” in the moment.

So until tomorrow…Find your creative zone and go there to just “be”….for everyone it is their happiest place ‘to be.’

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh