GoetheIf it were up to me to replace Gabriola Gertie, I’d create Gabriola Goethe.

Now Goethe is famous for lots of things. Wikipedia explains that Goethe:

…was a German writer and according to George Eliot, "Germany’s greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth."[2] Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism and science. Goethe’s magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust.[3] Goethe’s other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and [continue]

One of the quotations most often attributed to Goethe is this:

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic."

I think of this often. Since moving to Gabriola, the quotation has mutated in my head, so that it’s now:

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, do it now, before the power goes out again."

So if it were up to me to create a replacement for Gabriola Gertie, I’d make a Gabriola Goethe, and that’s what he’d be saying.

(Quibblers: Yes, I know, I know, but Gabriola Murray lacks alliteration. We can indulge in a little fantasy, yes?)

Of course, now you all think I’m mad, and you’ll probably banish me to the HalfBakery. But that’s a wonderful place, so I don’t mind.

(The image I’ve used of Goethe is part of a portrait painted of him in 1828 by Joseph Karl Stieler. This image comes from Wikimedia Commons; it’s in the public domain. The full portrait is here.)