Fauxbohs

 

In a magazine article about the home of interior designer Dallas Shaw, I encountered the unfamiliar term gypset.

"With this gypset-style approach, Shaw started with her favorite room," the article said.

A Google search shuttled me to the website of travel writer Julia Chaplin, where I found the definition.

"I coined the term gypset (gypsy + jet set) to describe an international group of artists, entrepreneurs, surfers, seekers, and bon vivants who lead semi-nomadic, unconventional lives." Chaplin writes. 

"They are people I’ve met in my travels who have perfected a creative approach to life that fuses the freelance and nomadic ways of the mythologic gypsy with the adventurous freedom of the jet set."

Martha Stewart-like, Chaplin has built an empire around the so-called gypset lifestyle, replete with branded clothing, books, excursions, and events.

While gypset describes the lifestyle, its practitioners are bohos, Chaplin says, free-spirited folks who are "nomadic entrepreneurs," and who plan the path to bohemianism with precision NASA would envy.

It ain't easy being laid back.

Chaplin's term inspires me to coin my own: fauxboh.

A fauxboh is a fake bohemian, someone who spends a fortune to look non-materialistic; uses a travel agent to book a spiritual journey; and works all day long to appear a carefree slouch. 

A fauxboh is the 2020s' version of the 1960s' plastic hippy, only better traveled. 

A fauxboh should not be confused with a fauxbo, a well-off poseur who dresses like he's homeless and penniless; in short, a fake hobo.

Nor should the term be confused with FOBO, the "fear of better options" that cripples most college applicants, job seekers, home buyers, and diners at Denny's.

Finally, a fauxboh should not be confused with a bobo, the term coined by journalist David Brooks to describe a bourgeois bohemian. 

A bobo is a well-heeled yuppie with a guilt complex. When he shops, he "shops organically," to offset the carbon footprint his five cars, two homes, and jet ski, snowmobile and motorboat leave; and when he buys, he "buys American," to compensate for the fact he outsources all his business to Mumbai. A bobo is a big-spending bohemian.

All these terms raise the question: who were the original bohemians?

The answer: gypsies.

Parisians were the first to call artists and dilettantes “bohemians,” in the early 1800s. But they borrowed the term from the one they'd been using for 400 years to label gypsies, the stateless Roma.

Banished from India to wander Europe and the Middle East for centuries, in 1423 the Roma were granted citizenship in the Kingdom of Bohemia. 

When they were cast out of the kingdom 274 years later, the gypsies migrated to France. 

The French called the Kingdom of Bohemia La Boheme, and the strange and nomadic newcomers from that land les Bohemiens.

Chips on Their Shoulders

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

— P. G. Wodehouse

"Modern" families can stand down.

Mr. Potato Head is no longer a mister, according to the AP.

Toymaker Hasbro announced yesterday that its spud-shaped figure will now be referred to by the gender-neutral name "Potato Head." 

The company's Potato Head kits, moreover, will now include enough parts to allow kids to create same-sex potato couples.

Whether Hasbro's move anticipated passage of the Equality Act the same day is unknown, but its choice to stand on the right side of history did not escape company spokespeople.

"Hasbro is making sure all feel welcome in the Potato Head world," the company announced on its website.

Those spokespeople did not announce whether the toymaker will remove "bro" from its name, however.

A spokesperson for the National Potato Council (NPC) applauded Hasbro's decision, pointing out that potatoes, in fact, are genderless.

"Let me explain what happens when one potato loves another," NPC's spokesman told Goodly. 

"The parts of their flowers, which do have genders, become, if you will, 'intimate.' Pollen from the male part migrates to the female part. The female part then grows into a potato, but that potato is neither male nor female. So, scientifically speaking, Hasbro's decision to remove 'Mr.' was absolutely the correct one."

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, newly elected Republican from Georgia, criticized Hasbro and challenged the National Potato Council. 

"This is fake botany," Greene told Goodly. 

"Everybody knows God made two sexes when He created potatoes. Hasbro and the Council are just kowtowing to you-know-who: libtards from the land of fruits and nuts."

Unlike Greene, the majority of gendered trade characters, including Mr. Clean, Mr. Bubble, Mrs. Butterworth and Lille Miss Sunbeam, support Hasbro.

Although unavailable for interview, Mr. Peanut told Goodly through a publicist, "I'm a 'nut' for LGBTQ rights and salute Hasbro for its bold decision."

Names

A man's name, which is supposed to be just the sound for who he is, can be an augur of what he will do.

— William Faulkner

The Kardashians, "America's First Family," are notorious, among other things, for picking saccharine baby names. Kim, Kourtney, Khloé and Kylie have burdened their kids with names like True, Dream, Saint, Psalm, Reign, Mason, Stormi, North, Chicago and Scotland.

"The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers," Marshall McLuhan once observed.

The Kardashians would do well to remember McLuhan when naming their unborn.

In 1976, The Paris Review published a 14-page book entitled How to Name Your Baby, said to be among the most highly stolen books in history.

The book comprised a "gallimaufry of actual names" purportedly assembled by a "worldwide network of correspondents" in order to help parents avoid the "lifeless" when choosing a baby's name. 

"A dull name often means a dull child, and in an age of mass-men America scarcely needs more nonentities called 'Chick' or 'Buddy.' No; the times call, instead, for new generations of pioneers and founders, men of strong characters... and strong names."

Among my favorite names in the book are:

• Brooklyn Bridge
• Cigar Stubbs
• Halloween Buggage
• July August September
• Katz Meow
• Moon Unit Zappa
• Positive Jackson
• Rosetta Stone
• Welcome Darling

Absent from How to Name Your Baby is my all-time favorite name, Capability Brown. 

The "Shakespeare of landscape design," Capability Brown was King George III’s royal gardener and the chief landscaper for scores of well-heeled English aristocrats.

Christened Lancelot by his parents, Capability earned his name by praising clients' yards not as yards, but "capabilities," by which he meant opportunities for dining, meditation, sports, and recreation.

Who Will Mourn the Confederate Dead?

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!

                             

— Henry Timrod

Last year, 160 Confederate memorials—19% of the Confederate memorials across the South—were removed from public view, according to the AP. Meanwhile, cities and states removed the names of Confederates from hundreds of streets, schools, public buildings, parks, and forts. 

“These racist symbols only serve to uphold revisionist history and the belief that white supremacy remains morally acceptable,” Lecia Brooks, chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the AP. “Exposing children to anything that falsely promotes the idea of white superiority and Black inferiority is dehumanizing.”

But cancelling the Confederacy rankles the unreconstructed, who, despite the words and actions of contemporaries, insist the American Civil War was not about preserving slavery, but the "rights" of White Southerners.

Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney, the maverick Republican from Wyoming, begged her party to assert “we aren’t the party of white supremacy” in the wake of the January siege of Capitol Hill. "You saw the symbols of Holocaust denial, for example, at the Capitol that day; you saw the Confederate flag being carried through the rotunda, and I think we as Republicans in particular, have a duty and an obligation to stand against that, to stand against insurrection.”

But she's alone in her opinion.

Who will mourn the Confederate dead?

The GOP. Racist to the bone.

Figs in Winter

Figs thrive in areas with long, hot summers.

— The Old Farmer's Almanac 

Five hundred thousand Americans have died from Covid-19, a number unimaginable a year ago.

Covid-19 has killed indiscriminately, but has favored the old. 

Eighty-one percent of the deaths so far have been among adults 65 and over.

And it continues to favor the old. 

Compared to a child, the risk of death for a 65-year-old is 1100X; for a 75-year-old, 2800X; for an 85-year-old, 7900X, according to the CDC.

So what are you going to do, old bean?

My advice is to take all the routine precautions, but take them resignedly.

Mask up and let go.

"We ought not to be affected by things not in our own power," the Ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said.

Epictetus warned against attachments—including those to family, friends, and one's own life, as well.

Only attach to a thing as if it were "brittle as glass or earthenware; that when it happens to be broken, you may not lose your self-command," he said.

"Remind yourself that you love what is mortal; that you love what is not your own. It is allowed you for the present, not irrevocably, nor forever; but as a fig in the appointed season. If you long for these in winter, you are foolish. 

"So, if you long for your son, or your friend, when you cannot have him, remember that you are wishing for figs in winter. For as winter is to a fig, so is every accident in the universe to those things with which it interferes."

Epictetus urged stoicism even in the face of death.

"A wise and good man, mindful who he is and whence he came, and by whom he was produced, is attentive only how he may fill his post regularly and dutifully before God. 

"'Do you wish me still to live? Let me live free and noble, as you desire; for you have made me incapable of restraint in what is my own. 

"'But have you no further use for me? Farewell! I have stayed thus long through you alone, and no other; and now I depart in obedience to you.'"