Comments on: Maturity still not achieved

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:31:37 +0000

Nate: As I mentioned in the post, Rexford Tugwell was a most impressive man. How lovely to hear that his son and grandson have followed in his footsteps.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:22:53 +0000

I know exactly what you mean! I work for the federal parliament and I get many giggles (too many, probably!) out of the names of some witnesses at parliamentary inquiries. My fave so far is Professor Zumbo. Just great. A close second though came in a recent speech in which an MP was rattling off the names of a bunch of primary school students in his electorate. The winner of the best name was (drum roll, please): Tiger Boontang! I kid you not.

By: PixelFish

PixelFish — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:27:00 +0000

Okay,this is a bit before Tugwell’s time, but our favourite person (aside from the uber famous Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau) in the Concord, Mass, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is (pause for dramatic emphasis) Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. He has such a great tombstone too. It reads “Fearless of Death” at the tail end of a list of glowing attributes.

I’ve got a picture here: http://flickr.com/photos/pixelfish/496187074/

By: Tez Miller

Tez Miller — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:05:38 +0000

Remember the Olympics? DICK POUND!

By: cherie priest

cherie priest — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:50:52 +0000

Heh. You sound like me — I rummage through cemeteries and the like in search of such names, pretty much whenever I can. That’s where some of my best characters have come from!

Though I got “Jedediah G. Swakhammer” off the local news, and that one was pretty sweet, too.

By: Camille

Camille — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:06:31 +0000

Mr. Tugwell also has a fairly hot picture going on there. [/ gross objectification]

(I leave the puns to the more skillful, it always ends up badly when I try.)

By: Gina Black

Gina Black — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:28:02 +0000

Sounds like a WC Fields character.

By: Amber

Amber — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:06:47 +0000

Some people need to get a grip.

And start pulling themselves together.

What?

Snork.

By: marrije

marrije — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:56:38 +0000

No way. I do not believe you. This is just one of Maureen’s cats or her swanky ski intructor or something, real people do not have names like that.

By: john cash

john cash — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:31:39 +0000

How about Guy Tugwell? (“Guy” was his middle name)

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:51:10 +0000

Oh, Rexford. Tugwell, sir. Tugwell.

By: sylvia_rachel

sylvia_rachel — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:20:17 +0000

That’s an awesome one. The spousal unit and I have a sort of running competition to see who runs across the most humorous, embarrassing, or peculiar names in the course of our ordinary existence (going looking on purpose is not allowed). It’s great fun, but I’m not sure I’ll ever better two of my very early finds: Dick Hehr (a member of the Alberta Cabinet in the early 1990s) and Anita Dyck (a real-estate agent who used to advertise on bus-stop benches in Calgary in the late 1980s).

Sounds to me like Mr Tugwell — like his better-known fellow sufferers Fitzwilliam Darcy and Robertson Davies — was a victim of the widespread and unfortunate trend of giving defenceless little boys their mothers’ maiden names …

By: Nate

Nate — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:07:28 +0000

True, true, but amusing name or not Rexford Tugwell was a pretty impressive guy who made serious contributions to Roosevelt’s New Deal, and his family continues to be involved in public service. His son Frank Tugwell is the president of Winrock, an international agricultural development nonprofit that works all over the world, and his grandson, Bryce, works with me at the Jane Goodall Institute. Go Tugwells!

By: angharad

angharad — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:55:26 +0000

for the first time, i’m glad you enabled the capital, ’cause sometimes a girl needs her big letters.

By: angharad

angharad — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:54:02 +0000

Rexford Tugwell of THE BRAIN TRUST. It just gets better.