Crispin not Crispian or even Crispinian

I once said (or I vaguely remember typing) some crap about the Patron Saint of Shoes.  Well, I have finally found him.  Kinda.  I found a slew of saints (a slew of saints, like a murder of crows, I like it!) who oversee cobblers.  Also I like thinking of chichi shoemakers like Manolo Blahnik as "cobblers".  Feel free to delve the list yourself, but I am settling for Crispin not to be confused with Crispian, also a patron of shoemakers & his twin brother.

Sooooo, let's dig in:

Crispin (not Crispian AKA Crispinian, not that we care overmuch) or Crispinus but not Crispianus (because those spellings have fallen out of favor) was born to a noble Roman family sometime in the 3rd century.  Just to give you some perspective, Hadrian's Wall would have been well underway (as in a century & a half underway) by the time this kid (these kids) was (were) born.   That doesn't help? Let's just say the world was Roman as far as the eye could see & depending on which direction you were facing, probably much much farther.  In short, it was not the best time to start walking around talking about the one son of the one god.  There was many many words for that & one of them was treason.

Anyhow.  Our saint (& his brother) went out into Gaul & started preaching this heresy & eventually lost their lives over it (details to follow).  But that is not where the shoes come in.  Apparently, for his (their) pay-the-bills job, not to be confused with their vocation, he (they) made & repaired shoes.  He (they) got into trouble with the local constabulary over their contempt for all things material & were martyred in a variety of ways.  No really, a variety:  the rack, a few other tortures to get them to recant, thrown in a river with a millstone secured at the neck, & then burned.  All of this had no sway & the torturer was reputed to seek refuge in the flames himself.  I don't know about you, but I have had jobs like that; I kinda feel for this guy.

Anyhow, after the torturer left the building, the emperor's man, the one who had assigned the torturer, took over the job & made short work of it:  beheadings all around.  & let me say I have had jobs where I wished my boss would step in & kill people so I would be able to stop trying to punish them into seeing the error of their ways.

So that's the story of our saint.  & his twin brother, the other guy.  Also a saint.  Now for the shoes.

Shoes get A LOT of press.  They used to be just one of many fashion accessories, but now that no one wears hats or gloves & I cannot remember the last time I saw an evening bag on the red carpet, accessories more or less boil down to shoes.  That they might be the day job of a guy going on about the evils of excess & & his twin brother, that's just funny to me.  In fact, it seems appropriate that the Patron Saint of Shoes be one of a matched pair.

So how to celebrate the Patron saints of  shoes.  Well, may I suggest cocktails at the Designer Shoe Warehouse (they really should apply for a liquor license, don't you think?), where we could maybe listen to the late & truly lamented Kirsty MacColl.  Then we could all settle down to watch one of my very favorite movies based ever so loosely on a true story (almost certainly more than you can say about the life of our saint.  & his brother.) of a struggling family business in a world of changing values: Kinky Boots.

All G*d's chillun got shoes

I admit I have had a morbid fascination with the fate of the Iraqi journalist/shoe thrower. I lurk on the BBC readers to get the latest info (US news seems to have dropped the story entirely).

I also spend way too much time thinking about the US Postal Service. I am a big, big fan of mail that arrives by human being, at my door (well the end of my driveway, anyhow). One of the perks, & there are MANY, of living on a rural route is that our mail-people know us. That's right, we have different carriers, different days & they have learned the routines of our home (it is OKay if you pull into the front yard & turn around, the doorbell does not work, the dog wearing the t-shirt that says "AMY" was actually named Amy so if you looked at her & say "Why is that dog wearing a shirt that says Amy?" she would think you are calling her & try to get into your vehicle). These are the kinds of things only locals can know. & people who read this blog.

& I know that the Post Office needs help. Mail-to-the-door has gone out of fashion & it is not coming back. Even when we need something tangible, overnight delivery has spoiled us all. But still, for less than $.50 you can send an envelope anywhere in the US (continental or otherwise). I remember once my brother mailed me a piece of pizza & it got delivered. Let me be clear, he did not put it in a box, he did not put it in an envelope, he wrote my address on the bottom crust & dropped it in the mail. & I got it, petrified pepperoni & all.

They will not do this anymore. I am not criticizing; I am not sure they ever should have. What they do do though is employ lots & lots of people in every community around this country. The Post Office has not outsourced. They provide pretty good health coverage & if the work is boring as hell, well have you ever tried useless ranching? For 50+ days I have been watching an emu not move. I was excited when he blinked & I don't get paid at all. My health coverage is pretty good, though, but I digress.

Thirdly (there is a point, I swear) I have a lot of shoes that do not fit anymore. Actually, I have a lot of left shoes that do not fit anymore. They all got stretched out from that brace I had to wear winter '07 thru spring '08 & now the right shoes fit, but the left ones keep flopping off. Unless I wear an extra pair of socks on my left foot. Which looks very very odd. Especially with shorts.

So, I am thinking of mailing my shoes to Crawford, Texas. Or maybe the Bush Legacy Project, if only I could find an address (OKay I admit I did not look too hard). I would pay $9 for a t-shirt that said I wish I could throw my shoes at GWBush, so why not pay the postage & help the post office? Also, what else can I do with those shoes? Except I cannot find a mailing address for the western white house either, only Crawford, Texas.