In the last few days, I've come across, a number of times, the Lender home of Bad Axe, Michigan.
For who knows what reason, that name kept on catching my attention.
http://www.kiva.org/lender/mathewterriethan5806 Sort of made me wonder if it might be next to a town named Good Axe.
Then, because some people's minds (I'm not mentioning any names) get lost in
"Out There Land,", it occurred to me that if Bad Axe had been in Massachusetts instead of in Michigan,
there might have been a really really
good story behind its name because Massachusetts was where Lizzie Borden was from.
Lizzie Borden was the New England spinster who was the defendant in a notorious trial in the late nineteenth century,
who, "relevantly," was accused of the AXE MURDER
(ergo, "Bad Axe! Bad Axe!")
of her father and step-mother.
Now, the fact that Bad Axe is in Michigan and is not in Massachusetts did not stop this self-same individual from wanting to expand her mind,
and she found she couldn't quite stop herself from going to Wikipedia and punching in the name of Lizzie Borden to see what she could find out.
You never would have been able to imagine the pearls that were there, just waiting to be discovered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden Por ejemplo (I told you I was trying to learn Spanish):
"....Another theory is that the maid did it, possibly out of outrage for being asked to clean the windows...." (Makes sense to me....).
" .... Certainly, another ax murder in the area which took place shortly before the trial was a great stroke of luck for Lizzie....."
(Maybe a slightly smaller stroke for the victim?)
" ...... The case was memorialized in a popular jump-rope rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one."
Lizzie was the topic of a wonderful song by a wonderful folk music group, The Chad Mitchell Trio's. The song was called
"Lizzie Borden: You Can't Chop Your Poppa Up in Massachusetts" And, according to Wikipedia, Lizzie's story so captured the imaginations of this (apparently
always celebrity-starved) nation that the story of Lizzie Borden has been immortalized in
ballet,
opera, comic books, rock music, and
theatre here.
(And who says Americans have no culture?!).
And to think, but for Kiva, ..... But For Kiva,
none of us may have ever had the opportunity of learning this absolutely vital and life-altering information.
Well, it's now two minutes to 7, my time. S'pose it's time to go out and greet the morning.
...............................However, before I go,
I have just
Two more asides:
When I was looking for the Bad Axe Lender (yes, I
did think of what Bad Axe sounds really similar to) so I could give you their link,
I found him listed as one of the Lenders for that butcher in Azerbaijan whose picture has provoked so much discussion
in the
Celebrating Diversity thread.
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=12046
Whether that was purely coincidental, the juxtaposition of that picture with a Lender from the name of a town named "Bad Axe,"
I'll leave it up to you to ponder.
Also, a number of times, recently, when looking at different Entrepreneur Profile pages,
I've run across a Lender from Japan whose name is "
Yo."
I keep thinking how fun it would be to be able to greet that Lender,
should we ever happen to meet on a New Jersey street....
"Yo, Yo. How ya doin'?!"
Yes, I realize I'm probably showing my age. (Not to mention my inanity and my apparent dangerous excess of "free" time).
Kiva, Forever!
