JOKE-AGORY Pt 2: The Trinity Friends Hear The WRITER

Continued from A Chaplain, Converso, and Fat Girl Walk into a Writer's Brain

[Wikipedia: The Converso's Pet Scapegoat]

The PR Angel is dressed in Black. She hears their tale. "My metaphorical children," she says, "there's one clear way for all to fulfill dreams. You must Kinda Keep Kosher."

"You want we should do WHAT?" asks the Chaplain, who's been studying Jewishness by watching lots of Woody Allen films.

"Keep Kinda Kosher, my daughters," says the Writer. "You must sail to the Upper West Side to consult with the Great Conservative Rabbis."

"But Kosher Chinese tastes awful!" whines the Fat Girl.

[NEW!] "OH NO," says the PR Angel. "You awakened the consciousness of the Writer! And she's on post-extension deadline." The Angel bent her head, and whispered to herself. "This time she's going to do it: transfer me to the Activist's Brain." The PR Angel gasped. "I'll have to serve as prophet to Congress. It's going to be a long year."

The Writer paid no attention to the distraught Angel. "Ah, my Dorky Daughter," says The Writer. "You must learn patience. If you wish to slim fast, you must first hold your tongue and duck-tape your mouth. I mean that metaphorically. Almost nobody means anything literally. Those horrid words: 'I mean that literally' make me want to shoot flying monkeys out of the offenders' nethers. Sheesh. Doesn't ANYBODY think before they speak?"

"Relax," whispers the Converso to her Trinity sisters. "My people have been getting around the rules for centuries. It's how we kept Holier-than-Thou Pogromy Peasants from roasting us on a spit. When you're trying to save your skin from the crisper, you get really good at busting open loop-holes."

"Ah," say the Born-Again and the Fat Girl. "Kinda! Kinda Kinda!"

[Enhanced!] "Exactly my children," says the Writer. "Kind, with an a." You didn't work your nethers off @ Brown & Sarah Lawrence so you could follow the rules as directed! Seriously, make you emptied-pockets parents proud. Apply your mega-liberal, way-too-expensive, liberal arts education. Let the Engineers & Lawyers do all the ritualized literal-minded grunt work. Now Go. Seriously. I've got other characters to flesh out. AND GET OUT OF MY BRAIN. I have way too many random thoughts and book proposals already."

[NEW!] The Writer turned to the PR Angel. "I'll deal with you later. I have something special in mind. Something worse than Congressional Prophet. SHAZAM!"

All three Trinity Friends breathed a sigh of relief. Because Kosher Chinese really is awful. And the pizza's not so good either (except Falafel pizza, which the Fat Girl loved).

[TO BE CONTINUED -- someday]

JOKE-AGORY Pt 1: a Chaplain, Converso & Fat Girl walk into a Writer's Brain...

UPDATED 9/16: The Converso needs to dig up her Jewish roots. It's tough. Her mother cut & stuffed the family's Sephardic roots in a LOCK BOX, jammed it with relics, & purified the Lock Box in Holy Water from the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

Then she buried the Lock Box under the mythical land of Atlantis (Portuguese Azores). She's one thorough Mother.

The Converso asks the Chaplain for help. No problem. "If I can be Born Again in Jesus the Jew, why can't the Jew in You be resurrected?"

As with all good intentions, therein lay a silver thread of self-interest. The Chaplain needs to bone up on Judaism to serve Jewish sailor-sheep in her flock.

The Fat Girl, who'd been hiding in a corner, timidly speaks up. "Um, I could help too, if you think I'm good enough to help. But, umm. I'm not sure how. Sorry. I can't really do much. But, I have this dream. I guess it's silly. But I want to get buff, so I can Sail the Seven Seas."

So the three form a team. They get hats & t-shirts that read: The Trinity Friends. The Chaplain insists on Sailor Blue with Gold Lettering.

The trinity build an ark. The Fat Girl brings her Vietnamese pot-belly pig; the Converso drags along her scapegoat; and the Chaplain calls her Warrior Pigeon.

They sail the ark to the Memory of the New Rochelle Pier where the Sarah Lawrence College rowing team rows. Once Upon a Time, The Fat Girl rowed (badly) with the Gryphon team. But that was long ago.

But, back to the Quest. The Trinity Friends must first get past the Writer's PR Angel.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

See: The Trinity Friends Hear from the Writer

Clinging to Eden: Converso Names Take Root

To find out who & where I come from, I absolutely must travel to Portugal. Ironically, the best records of Conversos are kept by Roman Catholic parishes. Records likely go back hundreds of years -- back to the start of the Inquisition (1497), or to the year the parish was founded, perhaps as far back as the beginning of the Millenium.

If you want a sense of how meticulous Lusos (people of Portuguese heritage) can be when it comes to documenting death and torture, watch the movie Brazil. Speaking of Death, I'll also need to examine cemetery stones in all towns where kin are known to be buried. Fortunately, I think cemeteries are kind of cool. Taratara, taratara, taratara... Btw, I reported for Court TV, and gallows humor is an occupational hazard.

[Paradise by Lucas Cranach der Ältere, oil on wood, Wikicommons]

Complications Ensue...

Most of my family, myself included, don't have birth certificates. My only record of "coming into existence" is my baptismal record, or cedula (which doesn't have a picture). The cedula records birth, confirmation, marriage, and other sacramental rites. The parish also kept records of "good behavior" & financial conributions. And course, records of heretics, and their "outcome."

But, until I can get grant money for travel, I must rely on Library & Web research; exploration of every clue, however far-fetched; lots of Imagination; and Conspiracy-Theory-type thinking.

Likely, I'll dedicate a wall in my apartment to creating the kind of Five Families chart & photo/evidence display you see in FBI movies, or in my favorite serial-killer series, DEXTER. Imagine: a massive map with green-circle push pins & flags. I'll post dork-wall-pics as I progress.

Confirmation BIAS alert: Even though I want to believe my immediate ancestors' surnames are definitive clues, they are about as reliable as hearsay, however juicy my "facts" may be. Pre-modern people made up & discarded surnames at will, and often village folk re-named their neighbors. Descriptive names might stick to a man, and remained glued, like it or not, to the next generation. Imagine a world where nicknames given by siblings, fraternity brothers, the town joker, and/or gossips outlive you and afflict the next few generations.

[RIGHT: Pinto Horse & my grandfather's namesake. Francisco Pinto was quite a horseman & served in the Portuguese Cavalry. Perhaps a name does bring on a Destiny: Wikicommons]


My maternal grandfather, Francisco Pinto, for example, loathed one of his paternal surnames: Alpiarca. It was the name of the village in central Portugal from where his grandfather migrated. When he was nine or so years of age, Francisco Pinto managed to officially eliminate the Alpiarca name from his line of descent. My people are precocious. He wasn't the only anti-Alpiarca campaigner; many kinsmen tried to wipe the name from history. Of course, that/those stories are for another post. And of course, the name survives (in Massachusetts, btw).

A man and/or woman could try to assert control over their destiny and/or re-create their heritage by adopting the name(s) of persons they aspired to be. Or take the socially-respected, Inquisition-Evading names of the local gentry. A powerful patron could be named as a child's godparent, and the godparent's name (and some privileges) would be given to the child.

A great source is Jeffrey S. Malka, author of Sephardic Genealogy: Second Edition, Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World. [More commentary from Malka in future posts]

Why are Portuguese named after so many TREES??

To briefly sum up: When forced to convert, Sephardic Portuguese chose new surnames that were "close to the earth."

My mother's natal village contained many wild plants/trees, as well as cultivated orchards & crops. "We had so many trees on the fazenda (estate)," said my grandmother, Maria do Rosario Bispo Carvalho (abridged name). "It was as if I lived in the Garden of Eden."

Commonly, when Jews were baptized, they re-created themselves by selecting names of trees, eg, Carvalho (Oak), Oliveira (Olive tree), Pereira (Pear tree), Pinheiro (Pine). Less common: fruit, eg, Sousa (type of Sherry grape near the Douro River); or animals, eg, Coelho (rabbit), as in Tony Coelho, former congressman, and Pinto (type of horse), which happens to be my grandfather's name.