Answers To Go with Susan Smith
Q. I belong to a group that provides a range of outdoor experi ences for teens. We’d like to find some legal forms. Specifically, we want releases of liability for parents to sign. We’d prefer releases specific to a variety of events.
A. Our TexShare database subscription includes Gale Texas Legal Forms. I did a search with these terms: release liability child. The resulting list included 153 forms.
The outings covered things like bicycling, bowling and visits to an arboretum or zoo. They also included some pretty adventurous pursuits — bungee jumping and parachuting. For the latter, the facility itself would no doubt require their own releases.
This comprehensive set of legal forms covers many fields. Personally, I most often help people find forms for real estate leases, bills of sale, wills and divorces.
The library pays the subscription fee so accessing the Gale Texas Legal Forms database is free to our residents. Give us a call at 512-393-8200 or email us at smpl@sanmarcostx.gov for the login and password information. Or — when the library reopens — stop by the library, and we will help you get started.
One caution: this database provides forms, not legal advice. For that, you need to consult an attorney.
Q. How do you make "humble pie?" I always thought it was just a figure of speech, but Alexander McCall Smith mentioned cooking it in his “Corduroy Mansions” series.
A. This reader was listening to the audiobook version of McCall Smith’s London series “Corduroy Mansions.” William and his dog Freddie de la Hay are visiting friends in the country when kitchen talk leads to the mention of "humble pie."
Here’s the quote: “I’m making you a Melton Mowbray pie, or an imitation of one now that we can’t call our humble pies by that name anymore. Or so Brussels says.
“It’s the people of Melton Mowbray who say it,” said William. “Not Brussels.”
“I suppose so. They don’t have much else, do they, poor dears? Just their pies.”
Since this is an English series, we turned to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first definition of humble pie refers to a pie made of the ‘umbles’ or inwards of a deer (or other animal.) The oldest quote cited is from 1648. The second definition is
The second definition is to eat humble pie: to be very submissive; to apologize humbly; to submit to humiliation. The earliest example of this meaning is dated 1830.
Author McCall Smith is probably best known for the warm-hearted character Precious Ramotswe, founder of Botswana’s “#1 Ladies Detective Agency.”
