Muns, Raleigh. "Want to plagiarize? Prepare to get your ass kicked "
The Current (University of Missouri-St. Louis) May 1, 2006 (vol. 38, no. 1185), p. 5
The Cincinnati Post (March 8, 2006) is reporting that a group of nuns from Kentucky are coming out of retirement in order to kick some librarian butt at a charity spelling bee. Bring ‘em on. This librarian’s gonna be talkin’ smack to a bunch of nuns. After dominating the annual competition for years, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Walburg Monastery “retired” from the contest in 2001 claiming that they wanted to give others a chance to win. I think they just wimped out. They never had to face the obviously superior spellers, and defending champions, from the Boone County (Kentucky) Public Library. I may be biased, but I’m betting the nuns are going to get their habits handed to them on a platter and be sent packing. Yeah, you BETTER pray sisters! You’re falling for one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Librarian when spelling is on the line! (Nods to The Princess Bride.) Allow me to illuminate and ruminate on why we will dominate. A local tradition at the Thomas Jefferson Library is to celebrate a librarian’s birthday with cake, ice cream, a keg of beer, and a few rounds of Trivial Pursuit. We sometimes entice student employees to play, and they usually win - at first. THEN we make things interesting. “Hey, want to play another game for $5 per correct question?” Sweet. This supplementary income of librarians fleecing hapless undergrads comes in handy. I use it to finance my gambling habit of betting against nuns every chance I get. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee? Never take on a librarian in Jee-oh-pardee! One of my friends at Library School at UCLA actually paid for his education from his winnings on the television game show Jeopardy. Twenty-five grand went a lot further in the early 1990’s than it does now. Though, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the Walburgians don’t have a ringer. Several years ago one of our reference librarians decided to change careers and joined the Carmelite Order. For those of you who don’t know, Carmelites can best be described as “a nun’s nun” (which I mean sincerely and affectionately). I can vouch for the commitment and piety our ex-librarian brought to the nunnial profession. So, if these Benedictine Sisters from Kentucky also have one of these hybrid nun-librarians, the game is over and I’m going to have to recall my Vegas bets already placed against the nuns. Not fair. Half nun, half librarian is like half Spiderman, half Batman – invincible. So. I’m not taking any chances. I just went to the good sisters’ web site at http://www.stwalburg.org/ and found the following: “Each day during Evening Prayer we include our relatives, friends, associates and benefactors in our intercessions. We would be pleased to include you and your prayer requests in our prayers. Your prayer request text will be posted on our prayer board at the Monastery.” I asked them to “Pray for the success of the Boone County Librarians in the upcoming Spelling Bee.” I think God’s going to punish me for this. |
Email Address: muns@umsl.edu
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