Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Maverick Moments

I don't ever remember giving the word maverick much thought until Brenda introduced it as our next theme.  When I think about it the only thing that comes to my mind is a person, although Carol Soderlund pointed out to me the original meaning was in rancher terms, where a maverick is a renegade bull.
When Terry and her husband Ray were here a few weeks ago, we got into a discussion of what comes to mind when you say a person is "a maverick", and it was easy to come up with who is not a maverick, for instance, being a genius, or a great athlete, or creative in some way does not qualify you.  One of the definitions I found for the word is dissenter, someone who goes their own way and isn't influenced by others opinions.  It doesn't have to be someone who's done good, it could be just as easily a troublemaker, in fact I'm pretty sure a lot of mavericks are also labeled troublemakers.
As more wine was being consumed, we moved into more abstract ideas.  Is there such a thing as a "maverick moment"?  I was pretty sure I'd heard this phrase before but when I googled it I couldn't find anything.  I mentioned this to a few people at the quilt show and at Carol's class the next week, and before you know it we were having maverick moments several times a day!  The only thing google had listed in it's first four pages for maverick moment was this


Up at Half Moon Bay in northern CA, there are some very large waves, which of course gets some daredevils out for a Maverick Wave contest each year.
I'm pretty sure I've settled on a person I think of as maverick, now I have to decide how to capture that maverickness.



6 comments:

Terry Grant said...

I have been trying to remember all of our "Maverick" discussion (could it have been the wine?), especially when we started identifying Mavericks. John Lennon--yes, Paul McCartney--no. Bob Dylan--yes, Allen Ginsburg--no. It all got quite hilarious, but I still don't know what I'm going to do with maverick.

Brenda said...

Wine, Twelves and mavericks. Sounds like a fun conversation!

And, yes, mavericks can be troublemakers. Karen, did you know that circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are often referred to as maverick cancer cells?

Unknown said...

And then there is the 1960s television show.... ;)

Del said...

Yes, Lisa, my first thought was James Garner in his black Stetson. Guess it is a "guy" sort of thing! Del

Karen Rips said...

Sigh, that man is so handsome.

Renate said...

I think you Twelves are all mavericks. Oh to have your maverickness!