Does Your Derg Bite?
 

Hooray! I finally made it to one of our regular club meetings and, despite my four meeting absence, nearly everybody remembered my name, but some members didn't understand why I looked even more handsome than usual.

PP C.K. "Clouseau" Tsang, (pictured left), cleverly deduced that I'd grown a moustache. Of course I've had the moustache for 25 years; my different appearance and boyish good looks arise because I finally shaved off my "more salt than pepper" beard. Close, but no cigar. Hence, this week's Golden Smile below is dedicated to my buddy PP C.K.

 

Sergeant Susie "Madam Lash" Misini was in her usual form, although her narrative was somewhat shorter than usual (Mexican Wave!). She fined a number of hapless souls but she even fined The Phantom $100 for declining to give the vote of thanks for the guest speaker. Apparently Madam Lash feels that The Phantom is not pulling his (considerable) weight in the club just by being Treasurer, Bulletin Editor, Webmaster and Chief Bottle Washer. I'm truly ashamed of myself and I will do my best to repent.

Our guest speaker Mr. Gavin Coates, a cartoonist, author of children's books and environmentalist, gave a somewhat unusual presentation about the environment. It was interesting to note he suggested that merely being aware of the problems facing Planet Earth is not enough; we must take action. Perhaps we should have explained that our annual theme last year was "Create Awareness, Take Action"!

 

2. Birthday greetings for 14 September to Rtn. Rajiv "Anyone For Cricket?" Makhija, who shares his birthday with Kiwi actor Sam Neill, who played the scientist in the movie "Jurassic Park" (a.k.a. "Louis Thomas - My Childhood").

3. Former Beijing college student Janet Liu Rong-rong (pictured left), who KGM endorsed in her successful application for a scholarship from the Georgia Rotary Student Program ("GRSP") last year, has now arrived in the USA and is about to commence her studies. More information about the GRSP can be obtained from their web site.

The GRSP program was established in 1946 by the Rotary Clubs in the American State of Georgia, and is distinctly separate from the programs operated by Rotary International, which will not award scholarships to students from non-Rotary countries, which China was at that time.

Of course, since then, provisional Rotary Clubs have been established in Shanghai and Beijing, but these two clubs are "non-districted" and are not part of our District 3450.

Sincere thanks are due to PP C.K. Tsang and President Ebe Tung, who collaborated with The Phantom to assist Ms. Liu with her application last year.

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There are several theories about how these came about. The two most common suggest that our modern phrase is, via one or other of these forms, a corruption of "spit and image". This contains the even older "spit" which existed by itself in phrases such as the two above.

Larry Horn, Professor of Linguistics at Yale, argues convincingly that the original form was actually "spitten image", using the old dialectal past participle form of "spit". He suggests that the phrase was reinterpreted when that form went out of use, first as "spit 'n' image" and later as "spit and image" or "spitting image".

But why "spit"? One view is that it's the same as our usual meaning of liquid ejected from the mouth, perhaps suggesting that one person looks as though he'd been spat out by another. But some writers make a connection here with seminal ejaculation, which may account for the phrase being  originally used to describe a son who bore a remarkable resemblance to his father.