PORVEL
I was doing the NYT Spelling Bee today.
My wife and I share it; she begins, getting bingo if available, and finding all the pangrams she can. Today there was only one.
Meanwhile, I like to keep adding words until we reach a ‘genius’ rating. Like, yeah, recalling or recognizing all those words from the seven letters available doesn’t make us a genius. Just a fun activity.
Today’s seven letters were R V O N E L P. V was in the center, which means it must be used. As I was going through the words, I put in PORVEL.
That wasn’t in the word list.
That surprised me; I’m sure PORVEL is a word. It means ‘poor novel’. Seriously.
I checked the net to verify the word, but the searches only came up with Porvel cheese.
We really need better search engines, don’t we?
Almost Bookends
My sister, Gina, sent some photos out to the family this morning. They’re almost bookends of Mom’s adult life.
This is Mom with her first born, my older sister, Debby.
This is actually a photo of a photo that hung on the wall. Mom is 19.
Here is Mom with me and my wife at Mom’s house about twenty years ago, in much happier times for Mom.
What’s wild in thinking about this photo is that I was fifty and Mom was my current age, 70.
That’s why taking these photos, which may not mean much at the time, can become timeless and special.
Michael Seidel, writer 