McGee, that's a French name. I don't know anyone named McGee who doesn't speak French.
--Cajun musician Dennis McGee (1893-1989), quoted in The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (pub. ) by Shane Bernard.
I have relatives named McGee (the children in this photo) and it's true-- they are all Cajuns and speak French.
I have known a few spider curators in my time, and they can on occasion be troublesome. For more than fifteen years I was the curator of mammals at the Australian Museum in Sydney, and my office was located between that of the nation's foremost snake expert and the museum's curator of spiders. Accidents do happen in museums, and I have on occasion found myself sitting at my desk not suspecting that a live snake lurked in my filing cabinet. Yet it was the rather eccentric habits of the curator of spiders that most unnerved me. I don't count myself as a great arachnophobe, but on occasion*, when dashing out of my office door on some urgent errand and bumping into the curator, whose hands were full of deadly Sydney funnel-web spiders, I admit to being discomforted**.
He was a delightful fellow to be sure-- bearded, gentle, and erudite-- but I dreaded visiting his office, for aquariums containing live spiders had been crammed into every corner, and the walkways between them were so narrow that the room seemed transformed into a den of oversized, hairy-legged monstrosities. Worst of all, he was so fond of his charges that whenever I crossed his threshold he would invariably reach into an aquarium and enthusiastically wave his latest acquisition in my face.
.....
Until recently the goliath tarantula of Amazonia was believed to be the largest spider on earth. Then someone collected an enormous spider in the remote rain forests of southeastern Peru. Its body was almost four inches long, and its legs spanned almost ten inches. It is said by those familiar with these near-mythical beasts that up to fifty share a single burrow, and that they cooperate in the hunt. Hillyard's clinical description of this new and as yet unnamed discovery (though it has been called araños pollo, chicken spider) has embedded in it the stuff of nightmares. I can imagine the scientist intent on studying them struggling through precipitous country and an endless tangle of roots, vines, and thickets as he forces his way toward their habitat. And then, in a sudden silence, he hears the drumming of countless hairy legs on dry leaves as the colony erupts from their abode. Though just how the spiders "cooperate in prey capture to overcome large animals" is perhaps best left unimagined.
--Tim Flannery (1956- ), in a review of Paul Hillyard's book The Private Life of Spiders, published in the New York Review of Books, 1 May 2008.
*Third use of "on occasion" in one paragraph (I'm just saying).
She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a card game where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child's purse, full of useless things.
--Michael Hartnett (1941-1999), "Death of an Irishwoman," in Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, ed. Neil Astley
All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.
--Gloria Swanson (1899-1983)
As for the Duke[of Windsor, the former King Edward VII of Britain]-- well, Hughdie [Auchincloss] had made me permanently susceptible to the charms of the born bore, to which time had added to this peculiar lust of mine an equal passion for the deeply stupid. David, as Wallis called him, always had something of such riveting stupidity to say on any subject that I clung to his words like the most avid courtier of the ancien régime.
--The Duke of Windsor, quoted by GoreVidal (1925-) in his memoir Palimpsest (1995)
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
--Fred Allen (pseudonym of John Florence Sullivan, 1894-1956)
Leaving New Orleans is like finishing a very long, very good book. But suddenly, something's missing. A part of you is left in the last chapter.
--New Orleans writer Nick Marinello, quoted in New Orleans: Life in an Epic City, ed. by Mary Fitzpatrick.
My father had promised me to Goes Ahead, when I was thirteen....I had not often spoken to Goes Ahead until he took me [at age 16]. I fell in love with him, because he loved me and was always kind.
The happiest days of my life were spent following the buffalo herds over our beautiful country. My mother and father and Goes Ahead, my man, were all kind, and we were so happy. Then, when my children came I believed I had everything that was good in this world.
--Pretty Shield, of the Absaroka [Crow], quoted in The Spirit of Indian Women(2005), ed. Judith and Michael Fitzgerald
Two Negro nuns were bargaining for the rental of a red devil costume. I heard a phrase: "Ah, madame, but you should allow us a little off the price....It's for the church, you know!"
---From Fabulous New Orleans,(1928) (Mardi Gras) chapter III, "Two Red Devils and a Zulu King", by Lyle Saxon (1891-1946)
