I’ve been thinking about Names this week.
The textbook my students use has tips for Vivid Descriptions that begins with naming, which it says helps readers “visualize…and understand.” We recently compared “a vase of flowers” to “a vase of dandelions,” the latter not only more vivid, but an image that can generate meaning on its own. My students suggested: insulting, broke-but-still-in-love, spontaneous, and others.
A colleague at the historic site showed me a photo of blazing, tomato-paste-red leaves, and asked me sheepishly if they were in fact maple. I thought they were; there are some that ignite like this in early fall. She wanted to post Creatively with them and to be sure of their Name. Reading Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s lively book poemcrazy: freeing your life with words has put back into simple focus how beautiful and rich words are: Leaf. Flame. Fall. Float. Color. Earth. And names: Oak. Paperbark Maple. Linden. Pagoda Tree. Hawthorne. Elm. (And big thanks to the Boston Public Garden for all the little signs on the trunks!)
More magic name-glitter got sprinkled onto my workday at the site when I met a descendant of someone in the Burial Ground, Dr. Comfort Starr, whose name has always been a Favorite of mine. Having met this woman, I looked him up, and it turns out he was, in fact, a medical man, a “chirgeon.” Not, as I had wondered, a clergyman. He had the perfect name for either profession, no?
Of course, once one foot is in the Research Rabbit Hole, down you go. I spent part of the afternoon reveling in the names of his many siblings. Puritan names are often wonderfully strange and creative. No offense to William or Judith or even Jehosophat, but some of their names read like a poem-fruit growing on the family tree: Moregifte Starr, Mercy Starr, Suretrust Starr, TruthShallPrevayl Starr, Standwell Starr, Beloved Starr, Joyfull Starr.
They seem to have felt the power of words as names, to witness or even to make real their Values and Aspirations.
On that note, this newly-returned-once-more-and-who-knows-maybe-again-later blog has been renamed. It is now The Creative (Almost) Full-Timer: Finding and Being Creativity in a Brimming-Over World. My favorite name in the Boston burial grounds has always been Hopestill. Yes. Yes, indeed.
Thanks to Jenni, because this began when I said the words, “Yes. Maple.”
The Creative (Almost) Full-Timer 