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Friday Funnies (a bit long)



Good morning to all! Three items that are too good to be kept to myself:

First of all, the following was forwarded to me. Take it for what it's
worth, but once again I see evidence that real life is weirder than fiction!
It reportedly came from a notorious teller of tall tales -- okay, a liar. So
I was inclined to disbelieve, considering the source. But it turns out this
is for real -- I checked out the references at the end of the article, and
they're quite legit. So my friend is in the unfortunate position of the Boy
Who Cried Wolf, because the biggest tall tale of his life turns out to be
true. Except that, as it turns out, he didn't originate it, he only passed
it on. It may have originated in a newspaper column someplace.

"What we need, I said to myself, is to find out who the patron saint for
contested elections is, and ask his or her intercession.

"Well, it turns out there is one.  And you're not going to believe what
follows, but it's true: his name is St.  Chad.

"No, I am NOT making this up. Chad was born in ancient Britain, probably
about 620, to Saxon parents. His people had been pagan, but his parents were
baptized by St.  Aidan. Thus he represents the Celtic, rather than the Roman
stream of Christianity.

"As a youngster he was sent to the bishop of Northumbria to be educated.
Later, he seems to have gone to the Irish monastery-schools established by
St.  Patrick, and then to Iona, where he was ordained priest, and, after
the death of two of his brothers in a plague, eventually became head of a
small abbey near Whitby.

"Chad is perhaps best known for NOT being Archbishop of York. In mid-life he
returned to Northumbria, being called by its king to be chief bishop there
(and thus, Archbishop of York). He was elected and duly installed, but
various persons raised objections on the grounds that his consecrators were
bishops who followed the Celtic church calendar and customs rather than the
customs then being imported from the continent and from Rome. Not wishing to
cause division in the Church, Chad withdrew  (nota bene!) in favor of
another candidate!  The Archbishop of Canterbury, who was greatly impressed
by Chad's humility, subsequently consecrated him bishop of Lichfield, in
Mercia, where he worked for the remainder of his life."

"St.  Chad, pray for us!"

Looking for references? Sure enough, there are plenty.  Here are a few:
   >
   >http://www.saintchads.org.uk/stchad.htm
   >http://users.erols.com/saintpat/ss/0302.htm
   >http://www.britannia.com/bios/saints/chad1.html
   >http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03470c.htm

 =======================================================================

The other two are stranger-than-fiction happenings here. In once incident, I
got a box from one of our regular donors yesterday. The fellow sends us
quite a good amount of equipment sales literature from his own collections,
but there's one problem. He uses only boxes for 8.5x11" paper for storage.
If he obtains something that is longer than 11", such as paper sizes that
are apparently common in Europe and Asia, or wider than 8.5", out come the
scissors and off go the offending margins, regardless of information loss or
damage to the record, until it fits his boxes. Probably 20% of what he sent
us yesterday was mutilated in this fashion. The punch line was that, with
his donation, the dear man included a very well-intentioned and eloquent
letter urging me to take special pains to see that the records he was
donating are carefully preserved from harm for the benefit of future
generations. Unfortunately, I can't confiscate his scissors as a means of
aiding that preservation!

The other is a bizarre followup to the incident I related in October in
which our managing director deciding to rearrange files for me while I was
on vacation. One thing he did was move our flat files to another room,
directly in front of three sets of shelves, so as to block all access to the
shelves. Because of delays in obtaining funding for construction of a new
building, our Board voted last Saturday to place inactive collections in
temporary off-site storage. One guess where the collections that the
managing director wants stored are located.

Best wishes to all for the weekend!

Thomas Berry, Archivist
Historical Construction Equipment Association
16623 Liberty Hi Road
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
Phone 419-352-5616
Fax 419-352-6086
tberry@wcnet.org
http://www.hcea.net

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