My so-called life in hip-disturbia

At first I had no idea what was going on. All those emails from old boyfriends and ex-colleagues, giving the strange impression that - after years of radio silence - they would like to be in contact with me again.
There was even a message from Amber, congratulating me for finally going gluten-free and vegan; years ago we had this ridiculous-in-retrospect falling out over butter. I had no idea I felt so passionately about butter, in a positive way; she felt just as passionately in the other direction, and suggested that my pro-butter stance verged on the lurid/kinky. Our friendship was sundered. Until now.
Joe D., who cast aspersions on my lineage, my intelligence, my sexual proclivities and even my taste in pets, when we broke up after the unfortunate incident with the capybara, emailed me to say that in the intervening decades he has embraced the varieties of human experience, that all is forgiven, and do I know any real estate agents? (Everyone in hipsturbia knows real estate agents. There are more real estate agencies than yoga studios. Though there are more hair salons than either.)
Strangest of all, by a factor of a gazillion and three, was hearing from Sister Flight into Egypt. Back when I was reading Nancy Drew mysteries on my lap during religion class in parochial school, I thought Sister Flight was about a hundred years old. I was very wrong. She is still very much alive, she has left the order, come out of the closet, and works on a biodynamic herb farm in upstate New York. She and her partner had apparently wanted to move back to the city and had set their sights on Brooklyn, until they read about our own hipsturbia up the river. I have no idea how she found me, but she did, and she said she had always know I was reading Nancy Drew mysteries while she expounded on the difference between mortal and venial sins; though now she understood my creative noncompliance as an early harbinger of the hip adult I must surely be, living as I do in hipsturbia. Oh, and she is no longer known as Sister Flight into Egypt. She is once again the Susie Shaughnessy of her youth.
I was beginning to see a pattern. And then CSB clued me in: it wasn’t me, it was Hastings. Apparently the paper of record singled out our village, though only in a “Wittgensteinian sort of way”, for the dubious distinction of “hipsturbia”.
I have no idea what it means to be a village in a Wittgensteinian sort of way, or even a Augustinian sort of way, or even less a Nietzschean sort of way. No more will I abide by Wittgenstein’s famous dictum from the end of Tractatus, in which he says: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Re Issues constitutional

The bad news is that CSB’s truck (performing valiantly as ever, delivering a chicken coop to Brooklyn) received not one but two tickets while parked overnight on the street.
The good news is that it is now possible to protest parking tickets on-line, thus obviating the lengthy trip into the city, the probable acquisition of yet another ticket, and the even lengthier wait in Traffic Court. I write as one not unacquainted with Traffic Court.
In case this happens to you, I thought you might like to see what I wrote, on CSB’s behalf, to the NYC Department of Finance, Parking and Vehicles Section, regarding our two (2) parking violations, which are not really parking violations but citations for an expired inspection sticker. But still, they carry a hefty fine.
I would like to have this violation dismissed because:
1. While my son-in-law was borrowing my truck, he parked it on the street and it was ticketed for an expired inspection sticker TWICE IN THE SPACE OF 32 MINUTES. This seems excessive. Also excessively punitive. Since there is no possible way the truck could have gotten inspected in 32 minutes, this perpetration of double jeopardy seems to be the linchpin of a transparent and craven policy by the Brooklyn police to target exurban vehicles to raise revenue for their city. I feel confident that there are several articles in the United States Constitution prohibiting this sort of targeted taxation without representation.
2. The truck was satisfactorily inspected immediately upon return to Hastings on Hudson, our bucolic home. I can supply a copy of this inspection, if you would like.

Yclept?

Are you aware of the difficulty of coming up with a suitably hip but still meaningful name for a soon-to-be-born baby when you live in Brooklyn, where the most ordinary pre-K class includes Max, Liam, Wilfred who prefers to be called Frog, Grayce with a Y, Ella, Sadie, Luther, two Naomis, Quinn, Toby, Ruby, Ahikara, George, Henry and Elias?
Let me assure you of the difficulty, especially when it is compounded by the fact that both parents are inclined to choose family names, but obscure and relatively distant family names.
On one side the obscure and relatively distant family names, such as Schlomo, Moises, Gavril and Adi, hark back to the Polish rabbinate. On the other side we find French names such as Raoul, Constant, Clement, Armand, Arnould, Hippolyte, Jehan, Bardin and Louis. On that same side we also have WASPy names. Basically the same 4 names (Charles, Jeffrey, Richardson and Winthrop) have been used for about ten generations, which results in lots of juniors, thirds and confusion.
And have I mentioned that both parents are opinionated, stubborn and determined?
The first order of business is rejecting names, for all the usual reasons. She knew someone in high school named Constantine. Nix Constant. He played tennis against a Bartholomew who was notorious for foot-faults. Any kid named Hippolyte would be called Hippo, and never survive kindergarten.
She liked the names of German artists, such as Dieter or Gerhard or Kiefer (for Anselm, not Sutherland). His grandmother would be profoundly unhappy with a German name.
What’s wrong with Anselm, I wonder? He was a great 11th century theologian who fought corruption in the church and opposed slavery. He is also a saint, but I won’t mention that to the parents in question.
Aldous (as in Huxley) was mooted for a while, then rejected, but I don’t know if the rejection was based on literary criticism or dissonance.
I have suggested the following for consideration: Aloysius, Sebastian, Benedict, Horace, Buckminster, Linus, Maurice, and Phineas. Around the holidays I put forth: Melchior, Balthazar or Casper. Casper got some traction. But then was tossed on the basis of the Friendly Ghost association. My argument is that every name has some association for somebody, and for that reason all such associations should be discounted. Except when they are not.
CSB fixated on Atom for almost a week.
Last night I had what I considered to be a brainstorm: Rainer. Or Rilke.
She liked it. He does not. And so it goes.