Riehlife Responds to 8 Random Facts Meme: Tag, I’m It–Background and Okay, NINE Facts

Susan Tweit and Jane Kirkpatrick tagged me for the EIGHT RANDOM FACTS meme which, upon doing a google search, I discovered is going around the blogging world like measles. Who knew?

What’s a Meme, Mom?

Here’s how Susan Tweit defines a meme:” The word originated with British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used it first in his book The Selfish Gene to stand for units of cultural transmission, just as genes are the units of biological inheritance. A meme could be a song, advertisement, style of dress, myth, story, slang, a cuisine–any unit that transmits culture. Dawkins summed up memes this way: ‘In much the same way that the molecular codes of genes pass on physical traits, the bits of information called memes pass on human culture, propagating themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.’ Or in this case, from blog to blog.”

Here are the rules for Eight Random Facts:

1) Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2) People tagged post on their blog about their eight things and post these rules.
3) At the end of your blog, you choose eight people to tag and list their names.
4) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Susan Tweit’s 8 random facts
(http://communityoftheland.blogspot.com/)

1) I live in a house that has a view of four biomes: western Great Plains, southern Rocky Mountains, Chihuahuan Desert and Great Basin.
2) In my garden are six kinds of heritage tomatoes (none are ripe yet).
3) My first car was a horse and a pack train.
4) My first dog was a Labrador retriever who loved to fish and hated hunting.
5) My last dog was a Great Dane who was bigger than I am. When she galloped, I could almost fly by holding onto her leash.
6) One of my degrees is in fine arts photography but I don’t own a camera; my other degree is in field ecology and I don’t own a field either.
7) I do own a formerly decaying industrial property on which my husband and I are carefully restoring the native bunchgrass habitat (the wildflowers in our front yard are gorgeous right now).
8.) If there is a plant I love more than big sagebrush, I haven’t met it yet.

Jane Kirkpatrick’s 8 Random Facts
(http://www.janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com/)

1. I don’t have a belly button.
2. I’m a licensed pilot who hasn’t piloted since surviving an accident in 1987
3. I’m gluten-intolerant
4. My sister and I used to sing duets
5. Our wire-haired pointing Griffon is the third dog we’ve had in a year; the youngest of the two we still have.
6. I always wanted to be a stand-up comic.
7. If I went back to school it would be in spiritual counseling.
8. I like to eat salt from the palm of my hand.

Janet Riehl’s 8 (okay, 9) Random Facts

1) I first heard the word “meme” in the early 1990s working for as the backroom girl developing training curriculum and materials for an internationally known organizational development and diversity consultant. I thought it sounded exotic…and remembered how to pronounce it by thinking, “It rhymes with ‘theme’.”

2) I grew up on land in Southwestern Illinois on the bluffs above the Mississippi River which has been in our family for six generations.

3) “It’s part of your education,” is one of my touchstone phrases from my father, Erwin A. Thompson, who graduated from high school when they still taught Latin. He usually says this when something goes wrong…as a philosophical way of balancing the nasty thing out in my mind…meaning…”Now you know and won’t do it that way a second time.”

4) “I’m ready for a new set of problems,” is a touchstone phrase from a Ghanaian friend E. F. Ofosu-Appeah who I knew in West Africa in the 1970s…meaning…”Nothing is trouble free…there are no completely new slates…and it’s all about figuring things out.”

5) “It was sad really…when…” is a touchstone phrase from my friend Stephanie Farrow in Albuquerque, New Mexico…who says this to me when I’m becoming overly morose…in order to restore my perspective. In anyone else’s mouth, it could be cruel, but she is so kind, this phrase serves as tonic and produces a laugh, almost guaranteed.

6) I lived in Africa for five years in the 1970s. My parents came to visit me three times in both Ghana and Botswana. If they had not entreated me to come home on their last visit, I likely would have remained an expatriate forever.

7) I’ve set foot on five of the seven continents (Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe, but not Antartica nor Australia). I’ve worked with most major ethnic groups in community education and development. I travelled to Bhutan before it was an open tourist site when I attended a cremation of a great Buddhist master in 1992.

8.) I’m a hyphenated kinda gal, and have trouble at parties saying what I do at any given time, as I fish from my lily pond of: writer, artist, storyteller, actress, speaker, creativity coach, teacher, old-fashioned variety comedy show impresarrio, violinist, violin teacher…or, as my father dubbs me, “Woman of the World.”

9) I’m always sliding over the line, so my eight facts become nine: I have a frog collection in my bathroom where they hop around at night.

And, I’ll get back to you on the eight people I’m tagging. Susan Tweit also tagged Velda Brotherton, that marvelous gal we heard from yesterday, so check out http://www.veldabrotherton.blogspot.com/