SEANACHIE

11 February 2003

A sheanachie is an Irish (or Celtic) teller of tales, the historian for the clan in ancient times. I found this description on the Internet:

Bards, pipers, storytellers, and seanachie were members of honored Gaelic professions who passed on a clan's history and culture. Their poems, stories, songs, and music recounted the Chief's and Clan's victories, and on rare occasions, their losses, but never defeats! They also traced the genealogy of the family of the Chief.

The need for the telling of tales is deeply inbred in the Irish and though I am Irish through and through, I've never quite found in my own family the compulsion to tell and retell the old tales as strongly as I find it in Walt's, the familiar old stories told with all the enthusiasm as if they were being told for the first time. And then the old stories blended with the new--some of which will be melded into the cache of old stories and continue to be passed down to future generations, some of which will be told a few times and then fade into unrecorded time.

Cousin Ernie came to town today. He's a director for Comcast Sports Network and is presently traveling around with the Washington Wizards, who will be playing the Sacramento Kings tomorrow. (Michael Jordan's last appearance on a basketball court in Sacramento--a sold out house.)

As happens when any member of the clan comes to town, as many as can gather to visit gather to visit. A small group of us this time. Walt and I picked Ernie up at his hotel and drove out to Walt's mother's place, and from there to a restaurant where, in time, Walt's brother Norm, driving up from the Bay Area met us. They sat around and told tales.

The tale that frequently gets told at gatherings of the clan is the tale of the Hope Diamond and how Walt's uncle, Ernie's father, was the son of Walt's grandmother, the companion of Evalyn Walsh McLean, whose husband founded the Washington Post and who at one time owned the Hope Diamond. The story goes that the family was traveling from Washington, DC to Florida and taking the diamond with them and to avoid attracting thieves, they hid it in the 5 year old's suitcase--because who would suspect the son of one of the hired employees of carrying one of the world's most famous jewels?

We've always considered the Hope Diamond to be part of the family jewels. But it's less stressful to let the Smithsonian take care of it for us (it doesn't go with my jeans, for one thing).

But a new chapter in family lore was added this time around, and it's hard to know whether it will ever reach the rank of the Hope Diamond story, but Ernie tells it well. His wife, the lovely Lucille, has an extensive background in media and presently works as--I think--the media director for the Montgomery County, Maryland police department. I'm sure I don't have her job title right, but in whatever capacity her job demands, she coordinated the media blitz that went on during the time of the infamous Washington snipers--nearly missed the recent wedding in LA, in fact, because she was hobnobbing with the big guys from the networks in their frenzy to cover every second of the hunt for Muhammed and Malvo.

When we picked Ernie up at his hotel, he had a twinkle in his eye and said he had a Lucille story--but he'd wait until he could tell us all at once. When we were all together, he announced proudly that his wife had finally made it: she was in Playboy. "But tastefully done," he hastened to add.

As it turns out, it really is the articles. There is apparently an article in the latest issue of Playboy which mentions Lucille's role in working with the media. It's nothing that the mechanics are going to hang on the wall of the toolshop to ogle in slow times--but how many guys get a chance to say "My wife is in this month's Playboy"?

After being disgusted with the lack of customer service at Staples, following Dr. G's similar disgust with the lack of customer service at Office Max, I called my brother-in-law, a Canon copier sales rep to see if I could either buy a machine through him or if he could direct me to someone more local.  Well, it turns out that the Staples and Office Maxes of the world have cornered the market on home/small office copiers and so you can't get one through a Canon dealer, unless you are ready to upgrade to one of the bigger, heavy duty models.  So that put me back at square one--the local office supply stores with the rotten customer service departments.