Enablers

Ok, usually when someone who does 12-step says enabler, they mean something bad. In this case, though, I'll make an exception.

My Christopher... he drove the 5 hours up to Oxford, MA so I could teach my mustard class. Even though there really wasn't any interesting classes for him. He put up with me whining Saturday morning about how we couldn't stay another night and visit the Met on the way back because he had a cook's guild meeting. He paid for the dinner that night, the very nice hotel room, and the dinner the next day, because I'm broke. He drove the 5 hours back with me napping part of the time (including the suddenly waking up and flailing from time to time). He sat through discussions at dinner that bored him silly, but admitted that the people he met were really nice and he was really glad I had made arrangments to go out to dinner with them. The next day he bought me a number of things at the China Outlet, just because I wanted them.

No, he's not a saint (I could have done without the continuous poking-my-buttons on the drive up, for instance). But he has made my work a lot easier and I'm sure he doesn't know how much I appreciate it.

Russian historic mythology

Reported by Olearius between 1630-1654, as a urban story from Novgorod:

"The Novgorodians, when they were still pagans, had an idol called Perun, the god of fire (the Russians call a flame perun). At the place where the idol once stood, they built a monastery, which preserves the god's name, for it is called Perun Monastery. The idol was in the form of a man holding in his hands a flint that looked like a thunderbolt or an arrow. In honor of this god they burned oak wood day and night; if the attendant negligently allowed the flame to go out, he paid with his life. When the Novgorodians were baptized as Christians, they flung the idol into the Volkhov. It is said that the idol floated against the current; when it came to the bridge a voice said, "Novgorodians, here is something to remember me by," and immediately a cudgel was thrown up onto the bridge. The voice of Perun was heard afterward on certain days of the year, and then the inhabitants fled in panic and beat each other with sticks so cruelly that the voevoda was hard put to pacify them. According to a reliable witness, Baron von Heberstein, similar things occurred in his time, too. Nothing of the sort is heard of any more." (p. 93)