{"id":12400,"date":"2012-04-29T00:05:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T07:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=12400"},"modified":"2012-04-29T00:05:59","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T07:05:59","slug":"micawber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/12400","title":{"rendered":"Micawber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tWhat do Charles Dickens and Keith Richards have in common?<\/p>\n<p>A Victorian-era author and a modern-day rock star? <em>What?!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-14655 aligncenter\" title=\"gleaming_word-keith_richards-2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/gleaming_word-keith_richards-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"273\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Probably not much, right? But there\u2019s at least one thing I know of.<\/p>\n<p>Bet you can\u2019t guess what it is.<\/p>\n<p>Before we talk about that, let\u2019s talk about &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;\u00a0the word micawber.<\/p>\n<p>Micawber (mik-kaw&#8217;-bur) <em>n<\/em>.<br \/>\nOne who is poor but lives in optimistic expectation of better fortune.<\/p>\n<p>We all have our share of micawberish moments, don\u2019t we? Days when things don\u2019t go our way, but we still wake up the next morning convinced our luck will change.<\/p>\n<p>And it usually does. I believe in optimism.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there is optimism to a fault. Sometimes you have to have more than hope. Hope gets you through the night, but in the morning, you need that pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps farmgirl gumption to kick in.<\/p>\n<p>And it will. I believe in you.<br \/>\nOk, so let\u2019s talk about where this word came from.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Micawber is a character in the classic Charles Dickens novel, <em>David Copperfield<\/em>. Poor Mr. Micawber is so terribly bad with money that he ends up in debtor\u2019s prison for a bit (don\u2019t worry\u2014he eventually turns it around and becomes both popular and successful in Australia).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image wp-image-14654 aligncenter\" title=\"gleaming_word-Wilkins_Micawber-Frank_Reynolds\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/gleaming_word-Wilkins_Micawber-Frank_Reynolds.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"239\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The thing about Mr. Micawber is that he never stops believing that \u201csomething will turn up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s an eternal optimist. And it works for him.<\/p>\n<p>But he also takes matters into his own hands. He turns in his no-good boss, the infamous Uriah Heep, and takes his family away to start a new life.<\/p>\n<p>So, by now you\u2019re thinking there\u2019s no way I can bring this back to Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones, right?!<\/p>\n<p>Have faith, girlfriends! Where\u2019s your micawberish optimism?!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image wp-image-14656\" title=\"gleaming_word-Keith_Richards-onstage\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/gleaming_word-Keith_Richards-onstage.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Keith Richards was reportedly a fan of Dickens and had a guitar that he named &#8230; yep &#8230; Micawber.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do Charles Dickens and Keith Richards have in common? A Victorian-era author and a modern-day rock star? What?! Probably not much, right? But there\u2019s at least one thing I know of. Bet you can\u2019t guess what it is. Before &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/12400\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/12400\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gleaming_word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}