AKA, the parson’s, or sultan’s.

NYT headline today:

Doctors insert feeding tube through Pope’s nose

In my family, “Pope’s nose” has a very specific meaning, and it doesn’t mean the scent-detecting organ in the middle of the pontiff’s face. Apparently its anatomical name is the pygostyle. Never knew that.

Nall family lore: My mother missed Thanksgiving 1957 because she was still hospitalized after my birth. So my dad and her cousin came to see her after dinner, half-drunk, bearing a lovely velvet jeweler’s box. My mom opened it, expecting to find a necklace honoring her for having given my father a wee daughter. It contained…the pygostyle.

Posted at 12:07 pm in Uncategorized |
 

5 responses to “AKA, the parson’s, or sultan’s.”

  1. mary said on March 30, 2005 at 12:21 pm

    Sorry to go off topic, but here is a Peggy Noonan quote, regarding Terry Schiavo.

    “So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he’s drawn to his side.”

    You say Jameson’s is her drug of choice? I don’t doubt it.

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  2. joodyb said on March 30, 2005 at 4:05 pm

    Note increasing hysteria (Hannity, Limbaugh, Scarsborough) and the “experts” they find to corroborate their crusade. (John Edward’s TV show was canceled LAST YEAR. He’s begun a MINISTRY. Do the same angry bigots who watch Fox News buy anything he’d have to say about Terri Schiavo? Where does conversing with the dead/braindead intersect with sancity of life or, for that matter, going to be with Jesus?)

    And the Sun Hudson story is leaking out to the mainstream. Has anyone asked O’Reilly about that one? He’s apparently got better things to do, interviewing Al Sharpton about Jesse Jackson.

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  3. Mike said on March 30, 2005 at 6:13 pm

    Pope’s nose has the same meaning in my family – so the initial feeding tube headline startled me at first.

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  4. harry near indy said on March 30, 2005 at 6:14 pm

    peggy noonan said “a strange-o”?

    WHAT THE F—?

    that sounds so damn juvenile — like some ignorant, snobby east coast version of a valley girl.

    and the wsj prints that?

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  5. Nance said on March 30, 2005 at 8:44 pm

    Ha! The headline now reads: Pope receiving food through nasal tube.

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