October Open House wreath

This was my dream. In the beginning there was a giant corrugated cardboard circle with the middle cut out. Then children began making orange and ochre paper rings like they do at Christmas for tree chain decorations. But they were gluing the paper rings onto the cardboard circle. When the whole cardboard circle was covered in rings, the children began thinking about initial sounds and prefixes, to make a wreath of October work for the school Open House.

Now in the musical, "Fiddler On the Roof," Tevye tells a dream like this:

All right, This was my dream. In the beginning, I dreamt we were having a celebration of some kind. All of our beloved departed were there. And the musicians...Even your great uncle Mordichai was there. And..and your cousin Rachel was there. In the middle of the dream in walks your Grandmother Tzietal, may she rest in peace.

Golde: Grandmother Tzietal? How did she look?

Tevye: Well for a woman who's dead 30 years she looked very good. Naturally, I went up to greet her.

Now in no way am I comparing meeting the families of my students at Open House Night with greeting Grandmother Tzietal, but the song did pop into my head. These things can't be helped. I'm not even thinking about Orack Borama.

But back to the October wreath, I dreamt that all the students made prints of an owl or an octopus, and each hung one print on the wreath. Then we could add some of our overwhelming okra harvest. We could take funny photos of the smallest students turning the lights or faucets ON or OFF, and let them trace those letters to add to the wreath.

Slightly older students could cut out red octagons and make STOP signs to hang on the wreath. Some of these students have been doing work about opposites. They could draw OPEN & SHUT, OVER & UNDER, INSIDE & OUTSIDE, and OLD & YOUNG, or do math work about ODD & EVEN numbers. Young observers might consider OPAQUE & TRANSPARENT. We could hang their drawings on the wreath, or weave them in and out of the paper rings.

We have been studying occupations since the semester's onset. Some students would be happy to draw opera singers, oceanographers, organists, Olympic athletes, opticians, astronauts in orbit in outer space, baseball outfielders, ornithologists, orthodontists, mommies and daddies working at "the office", and surgeons performing operations.

Montessori students love studying animals, so they would be glad to draw an okapi or ostrich, an otter or ocelot, an orangutan, oryx, or ox. A teacher might share her photos of Phil, the patio opossum.

The music teacher must surely have some ideas about ocarinas, octaves, opera singers, and orchestra conductors. The art teacher could contribute outline drawings and Georgia O'Keeffe orchids to the olio. The elementary teacher might offer students some opportunities for studying Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Oahu, Omaha, and Odessa, TX. Her assistant would contribute original recipes with oregano, olive oil, or onion.

I hope an octegenarian great-grandparent will attend Open House to observe our community of learners. "Our" is a very important word for the school. Students come from diverse backgrounds, but at school we are one community.

Parents at Open House could hang other "O" words on the wreath--oxygen, opals and obsidian, ovens or ogres, omelets at one o'clock a.m., Oman, ounces or orchards. Sure, someone might need to oversee and organize the project, but there are some outstanding options.

I've obviously gone overboard. I'll start my little outboard motor and putt-putt offshore.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Blooming mommies

Growing blooming mommies can be done easily in most home gardens with the proper cultivation techniques. The preschool students love the idea of a blooming mommy with flowers growing out of her head. Today they each made a portrait of their own blooming mommy on the seed packets for our special Mommy Seeds.

The Mother's Day projects are nearing completion. Like the Little Red Hen, the preschoolers grew the plants last summer, collected the seeds last fall, saved the plastic applesauce containers from their lunches this winter, drilled holes in the containers this spring, then filled them with potting soil, planted the seeds for the flowers, and marked the flowers with plant stakes. The Mommy Seed packets are the Mother's Day cards to accompany the gift of flowers.

The children are learning about cultivation, which they define as "taking care of the things we plant". At the same time, the children are being cultivated.

I've spread out my old American Heritage Dictionary, turned to cultivate and cultivation. Preschool is all about forming, refining, educating, fostering, and nurturing. To educate, we improve and prepare, plow and fertilize, tend and till.

Cultivation can also mean "socialization through training and education to develop one's mind or manners". Preschool is a never-ending battle for acculturation, which is "the adoption of the behavior patterns and norms of the surrounding culture". We aren't talking about diversity and multicultural awareness here. That is the territory of my eldest son working with university students. We are talking about not picking noses in public, and remembering to flush the toilet, the behavioral norms of the surrounding population of human beings! It's often a harrowing experience.

Till means to prepare for the raising of crops by plowing, harrowing, and fertilizing. It means to work at, to labor. It is definitely hard work to get preschoolers to stop picking their noses and start flushing the toilet. The word "till" seems to carry the frustrations of hundreds of generations of farmers on its back.

My young sons each went through a John Deere phase of fascination with farm implements. As a MOBO, I excelled in the choo-choo railroad fascination phase, and performed bravely in the truck stop big rig phase. I could identify every Matchbox car pulled from the three-gallon tub by year, model, and color. I really knew my hook-and-ladder trucks in the firefighter stage. I was damn tolerant in the military vehicle phase, if I do say so myself, waiting out G.I. Joe. I was never very good at farm implements, aircraft ID, or motorcycles, though. If I crammed for the test I could pass, but I never retained the information!

Harrowing experiences sometimes require using a plunger instead of a farm implement. A harrow is used to break and level plowed ground. It's a farm implement with heavy disks and teeth. To harrow is to inflict great distress or torment on the mind. Or perhaps on the foot. My mom used to receive an annual Christmas letter from an old high school chum. The best year the letter recounted the farmer dropping a sharp harrow upon his foot, but having to pull the harrow teeth out of the punctured foot so he could drive himself to the regional hospital because his wife couldn't shift gears on the manual transmission pick-up truck.

Sometimes on the commute home from work I chant, "It was a tough day, but at least I didn't drop the harrow on my foot." Being a mommy is a tough job, too. There were a lot of days when I felt I'd dropped the harrow on my foot as a parent. The most difficult years were those when I felt unable to shift gears.

Fortunately, there were many more days when I felt like flowers were blooming out of my head!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Kibitz and Kaboodlniks

The elementary students are learning a new card game by the makers of UNO, called Kaboodl. The game has k'bosh and k'baam cards, and apparently quite a bit of strategy. I got confused just listening from the other end of the play room, but occasionally was able to offer up unhelpful comments!

Mostly, I started wondering how k'bosh is usually spelled, and where the word originated. From there on, a thick cover of alien vines began to grow all over my mind. Would I be able to get home to my trusty dictionary before I went kaput?

"Here I come to save the day," as Andy Kaufman might sing. Dictionary Woman is on the way!

• kibosh is a restraint or check, used primarily in the phrase put the kibosh on, similar to quietus [origin unknown]
• kaboodle is actually caboodle, and means the lot, group, or bunch. Used chiefly in the phrase the whole kit and caboodle. [perhaps ca-, probably short for kith or kit + boodle.]
• boodle is slang for money, especially counterfeit money, or money accepted as a bribe. Boodle can also be stolen goods; swag. [From Dutch boedel, estate, effects, from Middle Dutch bodel, riches, property...]
• kith Friends and neighbors, as opposed to kin.
• kit... among many definitions a container such as a box, bag, valise, or knapsack.... [Middle English kytt, kitt, wooden tub, from Middle Dutch kitte, jug, tankard.] So on that note, let us lift one! This can't get much more muddled.
• kibitzer 1. An onlooker at a card game who gives unwanted advice to the players. 2. Any meddler who offers gratuitous advice.
• kibitz To act as a kibitzer. [Yiddish kibitsen, from German kiebitzen, to look on, from Kiebitz, lapwing, plover, hence a meddlesome person, looker on (at a card game), from Middle High German gibiz, plover (imitative of its cry).]
• killdeer a widespread and familiar American plover.

• kibbutz a collective farm or settlement in modern Israel [Hebrew from qibbetz, he gathered]
• kibbutznik a member of a kibbutz
• Kibbles 'n Bits a dry dog food made by Del Monte.
• kibble coarsely ground grain in the form of pellets (as for pet food); coarsely ground foodstuff; especially seeds of various cereal grasses.
• quibble To make exaggerated distinctions or raise objections to the unimportant details of a thing in order to avoid acknowledging its worth or importance.

"Shish," you are probably saying as you raise your hand to object to all these unimportant, yet intertwined details.

• kebab see Shish kebab A dish consisting of pieces of seasoned meat roasted and served with condiments on skewers. [Turkish sis , skewer + kebap roast meat]
• kaput destroyed; wrecked [German kaputt, from French capot, as in the expression etre capot, to have lost all tricks at cards, "be hoodwinked," from capot, cloak with a hood, from cape]*
• kaboom an exclamation representing an explosive sound or event [I'm embarrassed to admit I couldn't find an origin]

• kudzu a vine, Pueraria lobata, native to Japan having compound leaves and clusters of reddish-purple flowers and grown for fodder and forage, and known as an ECOLOGICAL THREAT. Kudzu kills or degrades other plants by smothering them under a solid blanket of leaves, by girdling woody stems and tree trunks, and by breaking branches or uprooting entire trees and shrubs through the sheer force of its weight. Once established, Kudzu plants grow rapidly, extending as much as 60 feet per season at a rate of about one foot per day.

Kaboodl is suitable for 2 to 6 players age 7 and up.



*And now here is a Hoodwink
Who winks in his wink-hood.
Without a good wink-hood
A Hoodwink can't wink good.
And, folks, let me tell you
There's only one circus
With wink-hooded Hoodwinks!
The Circus McGurkus!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Tchaiko Psycho

After an inspiring performance by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in about 2005, I bought a cd of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E Minor (George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra). Driving along between Norman and Purcell, the music had the same powerful emotional effect and trivial tidbit distraction as usual.

The second movement, II--Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza, is the culprit. The first few notes always derail my teeny-tiny narrow gauge mental railroad, and send it plummeting down a pine-scented mountain slope. Trouble is, that rich evergreen melody sounds a wee tad like John Denver's "Annie's Song". You might remember it as the "fill up my senses" song. Sing along:



You fill up my Buick like regular Chevron,

like Milk Duds in August,

like money down the drain,

like llamas in springtime,

and Old Spice at midnight,

you fill up my senses,

come fill me again.



What were the real lyrics? Between Norman and Purcell I lacked the internet, but I'm glad to provide these words:


You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,

like the mountains in springtime,

like a walk in the rain,

like a storm in the desert,

like a sleepy blue ocean.

You fill up my senses, come fill me again.



And so, I'm always relieved to get back on track for the third movement Valse. Not to be confused with valise--a small piece of hand luggage from the Medieval Latin!



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cense and Sensorbility

My Buick, a '96 Skylark, has a new crank sensor in this week's effort to make it start reliably. My unfortunate repair shop has been sucked into the vortex for "Stump The Mechanic"--yet another excellent reality show to get us through the writers' strike.

What is a crank sensor?
Let's ask Wikipedia:
A crank sensor is a component used in an internal combustion engine to monitor the position or rotational speed of the crankshaft. This information is used by engine management systems to control ignition system timing and other engine parameters. Before electronic crank sensors were available, the distributor would have to be manually adjusted to a timing mark on the engine....
That sure clears it up for me!

What is Crankshaft?
Crankshaft is a spin-off from the popular Funky Winkerbean comic by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers.

Does my Skylark have a crank sensor?
Does a 1994 Buick Skylark have a throttle position sensor or a crank sensor?
It has both.

Does my Buick have a Crank censor?

Only if it gets really crabby!

Why does my car need one?
A good question. Maybe to eat up finances. Possibly to deal with objectionable, harmful or sensitive situations when it fails to start. [See censorship]

Does my car have Spell Check???
From the web: Has anybody had any experience with the crank position censor? I have herd from somewhere that when it goes out, the Jeep will not move. The motor will just keep cranking over and will not start. Where can I get one online that is cheeper than a dealer?

Or as one parakeet cheeped to another, "Y'know what I herd? .... "Sheep!"

What is a censor?

As any of June Williams' former Greco-Roman History students will tell you, a censor is a Roman magistrate in charge of the census, finances, and public morality.

Or from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

censor (n.) 1531, Roman magistrate who took censuses and oversaw public morals, from L. censere "to appraise, value, judge," from PIE base *kens- "speak solemnly, announce." Transferred sense of "officious judge of morals and conduct" is from 1592; of books, plays, later films, etc., 1644. The verb is from 1882.

[Is "officious censuses" the same as that time the Oklahoma allergist asked my kids to sneeze on a piece of Reynolds Wrap for lab analysis? Or was that offensive sinuses?]

What is a crank? For that we must search the Online Etymology Dictionary:

O.E. cranc- preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument," from P.Gmc. base *krank-, and related to crincan "to bend, yield." Eng. retains the literal sense of the ancient root, while Ger. and Du. krank "sick," formerly "weak, small," is a figurative use. The sense of "an eccentric person," especially one who is irrationally fixated, is first recorded 1833, said to be from the crank of a barrel organ, which makes it play the same tune over and over, but more likely a back-formation from cranky "cross-tempered, irritable" (1821), and evolving from earlier senses of "a twist or fanciful turn of speech" (1594) or "inaccessible hole or crevice" (1562). Popularized 1881 when it was applied to Horace Greeley during Guiteau's trial. The verb meaning "turning a crank" is first attested 1908, with reference to automobile engines.

Guiteau, as we all know, assassinated President James A. Garfield.

What is a sensor?

This noun dates from circa 1928:

a device that responds to a physical stimulus (as heat, light, sound, pressure, magnetism, or a particular motion) and transmits a resulting impulse (as for measurement or operating a control)

How is a censer used in the Greek Orthodox Church?

I was really amazed the first time I visited the Greek Orthodox Church in Lincoln with my junior high Sunday School class. The use of burning incense in the swinging metal censers was so different from my Congregational-UCC church experience. Incense is the symbol of prayers rising to heaven, and we all know the Buick could use some divine intervention!

Bonus question

Who was James Ensor?

He was that Belgian symbolist painter of grotesque masks, skulls, and corpses. The mechanics look more like Edvard Munch's "Scream" when they see me drive up in the Buick.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Baffled, bobbled, and birds

Solutions present themselves free of charge when we forget to worry about the problem in the middle of the night. Last night I forgot to wake up and fret about the broken birdfeeder at school. The birdfeeder is a tube. At the feeder holes with their little perches, the sunflower seeds are deterred from spilling out by little curved plastic pieces inside the tube. Imagine the front door bubble awning outside a chic miniature French boutique or hotel. Now imagine the awning inside the door of the boutique instead of outside. The missing parts of the birdfeeder are the awnings inside the tube. That's why the sunflower seeds are pouring out unimpeded from the broken feeder.


I'm baffled. How can I fix the feeder? It would be a shame to spend money on a new feeder, as this one is autographed by the students from a few years back.


Maybe I need to think like a guy. My ex believed anything worth fixing could be fixed with duct tape, WD-40 or SuperGlue, including, but not limited to, cars, briefcases, relationships and winter Army surplus coats. My sons believed in the restorative power of hot glue and clear packing tape even on eyeglasses. My dad tends toward a lengthy mental approach to problems:

1. Deny the existence of a problem until evidence is overwhelming.
   


2. Cogitate the nature of the problem once acknowledged over a geologic period of time.
   


3. Devise the lowest cost, lowest tech solution.
   


4. Make something out of nothing.
   


5. Remain oblivious to criticism of aesthetic aspects in #3 and #4.

Dad would manage to eventually repair a nuclear submarine with rubber bands, one-by-twos, cardboard toilet paper tubes, and empty three pound coffee cans saved from the late-Sixties. The sub would work, no question. It would probably keep lying off the coast of Newfoundland for another forty years while making the occasional Crazy Ivan turn. Still, it would never quite be the submarine of your dreams.

Baffled on the birdfeeder front, and wishing for a gelid North Atlantic mental escape to beat the reality of mid-nineties on the playground. Hunt for Red October. Submarines. Fred Thompson with the theory of dumping Ruskies. Running silent? But what about baffles:

Baffles are the place in the water directly behind a submarine's propeller where conventional sonar cannot see. The blade's motion through the water creates acoustic distortions and noise which an enemy ship can follow and not be detected. Baffles can be cleared by executing a Crazy Ivan. Shadowing Soviet submarines, in their baffles, was a popular technique used by U.S. Navy submarines during the Cold War.

A little late afternoon daydreaming about Sean Connery and the frigid waters off the coast of Newfoundland. Solutions percolate from the cold North Atlantic. Could new baffle awnings be devised from plastic Easter eggs or the lid from a cottage cheese container? It won't look great, but it will regulate the flow of sunflower seeds. The price is right.

baf·fle(bfl)
tr.v. baf·fled, baf·fling, baf·fles
1. To frustrate or check (a person) as by confusing or perplexing; stymie.
2. To impede the force or movement of.
n.
1. A usually static device that regulates the flow of a fluid or light.
2. A partition that prevents interference between sound waves in a loudspeaker.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Baffles

Baffled isn't Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, a Pal Joey song by Rodgers and Hart. It's not Baubles, Bangles, and Beads from Kismet.

My baffle device didn't fix the birdfeeder. It will be time for a new one this winter--when it is very cold off the coast of Newfoundland. See you then, Sean.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Failure to communicate

So many Monday afternoons the elementary kids slog through their homework. You remember those workbook pages photocopied on pastel paper, full of graphite and eraser smudges. The kids struggle to copy the list of vocabulary words, and that's just the appetizer for a meal of searching the dictionary and using the words in sentences.

This is the circle of Dante's hell where compulsive alphabetizers like myself are doomed to learn patience for all of eternity. Forget Chinese water drips. Forget nails on the chalkboard. Forget sitting through the Kevin Costner "Waterworld" and "Wyatt Earp" movies. True torture is waiting for elementary students to find words in a children's dictionary.

Should a student locate a vocabulary word in the dictionary, she must copy the entry onto the cantaloupe- or mint-tinted paper in her wobbly handwriting. He must decide if the word is a noun or verb, or, gag, both. Then it's time to use the word in a sentence.

Homework sentences always remind me of "Cool Hand Luke" in the rural prison. I'm sentenced to homework life without parole. It's good to know I'm not alone!



What we've got here is usually a failure to communicate complicated by some misguided expectations. Kids who have trouble singing the alphabet song are not going to be able to locate "coil" or "crest" in the dictionary.

When I am in charge of the world, all kids will sit on tall stools filing cards in those grand old wooden card catalog drawers. They will put an orange "check" card behind each one they file so a qualified grown-up could check their work. They will begin filing cards by first letter, then by two letters, then by three:

c
ch
chr




In the background the kids will hear the metallic swirrrrr-clink-swirrrrh of the institutional ceiling fans, and the batting of moth wings against the library screen windows. Tennis shoes will squeak on the concrete floor. Chronological stacks of decaying newspapers will scent the air. Librarians will stamp the date due on index cards.

Monday's homework is due on Thursday. It just seems generations longer!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Newspapers, breakfast, & indigestion

My Dallas Morning News hasn't been arriving early enough for me to scan it at breakfast before I go to work. I need my newspaper to arrive between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. on weekends. As a hard-core lifetime newspaper subscriber, it really eats my Cheerios when the paper shows up after 6:45 on a weekday.

The day the paper wasn't delivered until 7:20, I called the DMN customer service number and told the woman I was cutting back to the weekend subscription (Friday-Sunday only). Explained to her while she smacked her chewing gum that it really sticks in my craw when the paper is late. She did not know what a craw is, and didn't care.

Waiting for a late newspaper ruins my breakfast. I might as well read the paper online, which cuts down on the recycling. The bad thing is I can't do the crossword puzzle while drinking coffee in bed with an online newspaper.

Some newspapers do more than ruin my breakfast. They cause indigestion. It's been many years since I subscribed to the Plano Unproofread. That newspaper should go straight to papier mache, just as some movies go direct to video without a theater release.

Papier mache translates as chewed paper, but a bird would find the paper stuck in its craw.

My dear old red American Heritage Dictionary has

craw n. 1. The crop of a bird. 2. The stomach of an animal. --stick in the (or one's) craw. To be unacceptable or offensive. [Middle English crawe. Old English craga (unattested). See gwere...


According to Language Log:

IDIOM: stick in (one's) craw To cause one to feel abiding discontent and resentment.

Etymology: like something you cannot swallow, based on the literal meaning of craw (= the throat of a bird) craw

O.E. *cræg "throat," a Gmc. word of obscure origin.

There must be an Aesop's fable to cover this situation... The Editor and the Early Riser, or The Crab and the Craw. I'll check my childhood copy tomorrow morning between 5:30 and 6:30 with a mug of hot coffee in bed.

Perhaps the late papers are a hint that I could check in with my tiny patch of nature out the back door instead of fretting about the news across the nation:

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

Praise for the springing fresh from the world

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dewfall, on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

Born of the one light, Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Snakes On a Plain

Sometime in the mid-1980's, about the time "Entertainment Tonight", Regis Philbin, Mary Hart, and John Tesh took over the airwaves, I got disgusted with network television. Cable became one long commercial, and PBS became a perpetual pledge drive occasionally interrupted by quality broadcasts. Beta lost the battle with VHS, and the trip to rent videos rarely recouped the aggravation. Finally, the remote husband/channel-surfer became a bad Twin Peaks episode. We won't discuss Howard Stern today, as I'm already feeling as sluggish as a rattler after a prairie dog all-you-can-eat buffet. I tuned out and dropped in, or vice versa.*

Instead of coming home from work and flipping on the tv, I usually take off my shoes, start a load of laundry, check my phone messages and emails. Then I click on a few blog bookmarks. Today I checked in on Prairie Bluestem, and read all about sand adders and other snakes of the Nebraska Sandhills. "Sand adders" calls up an image of an ancient toga-clad mathematician walking down the beach writing geometric proofs with a long stick.

Much as I would like to dilly-dally wondering if Peabody, Sherman, and Captain Peachfuzz ever met this particular sand adder back when tv was worth watching, I must find out about the Chaldean astrologers. A Chaldean was a member of an ancient Semitic people who ruled in Babylonia ... a person versed in occult learning; an astrologer, soothsayer, or sorcerer, according to my precious American Heritage Dictionary. The root word may have a relation to the word caldron, mentally brewing, bubbling and burping during our Wizard camp. Nebuchadnezzar lurks just off stage, too, because of the upcoming Dallas Opera production of Verdi's Nabucco. Dallas artists Tom Orr and Frances Bagley are designing the set and costumes for this new production in honor of Dallas Opera's fiftieth anniversary.



A Washington Post story informs me that most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics whose church is autonomous from Rome, with its own liturgy and leadership, but recognizes the authority of the pope. Chaldeans trace their lineage to the Babylonian-Mesopotamian nation of Chaldees, where the patriarch Abraham was born. Did you know that? I didn't!

But then, there is the problem of chalcedony. Chalcedony is much more ancient than any mathematician, even my high school pre-Cal teacher. According to the U.S. Geologic Survey:

Chalcedony is a catch all term that includes many well known varieties of cryptocrystalline quartz gemstones. They are found in all 50 States, in many colors and color combinations, and in sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. Chalcedony includes carnelian, sard, plasma, prase, bloodstone, onyx, sardonyx, chrysoprase, thundereggs, agate, flint, chert, jasper, petrified wood, and petrified dinosaur bone just to name a few of the better known varieties.

Because of its abundance, durability, and beauty, chalcedony was, except for sticks, animal skins, bones, plain rocks, and possibly obsidian, the earliest raw material used by humankind. The earliest recorded use of chalcedony was for projectile points, knives, tools, and containers such as cups and bowls. Early man made weapons and tools from many varieties of chalcedony including agate, agatized coral, flint, jasper, and petrified wood.

*Turn on, tune in and drop out.
Timothy Leary
(1920 - 1996)

Intersection of Three Songs = Trivial Fun

It all started a couple weeks ago when coworkers spontaneously burst into song:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born the same year Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of the 1946 Merle Travis song was recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood and sold over a million copies. Tennessee Ernie had a black and white tv show when I was little, and he had a mustache, and he looked a bit like my Uncle Swanee. I didn't understand why Ernie got to be "Tennessee Ernie". I thought I ought to be "Nebraska Nancy Lou" even if I didn't have a mustache. Tennessee Ernie Ford's signature sign-off was, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart!" In my youthful misconnected mind I thought "owing my soul" had something to do with shoe soles, and particularly with the Wells & Frost Shoe Store on "O" Street. I didn't shop at Wells and Frost. Brady's Juvenile Shoes was much closer to my dad's office, and to the Miller & Paine tea room with its famous macaroni and cheese and cinnamon rolls. Plus, Brady's store had giant rocking horses and funhouse mirrors .



I don't need an iPod, that's for sure! I've got entirely too many songs on constant tornadic rotation in my mental storm cellar. In Nebraska we head to the basement when tornado weather threatens. As kids in the era of Tennessee Ernie, my brother believed that a species of scary beings known as "The Gooeys" haunted our basement. Gooeys or no Gooeys, a basement is a good thing to have in tornado country when the sky turns that creepy green color.

A Cockeyed Optimist is the second song rattling around in my corn-popper brain:

When the skies are bright canary yellow
I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen,
So they called me a cockeyed optimist
Immature and incurably green.

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!

I've got a full tank of things I can't get out of my head!

On my DART train trip to work a third song began to compete for attention with Tennessee Ernie and Kansas Nellie.

"Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms" seems to have been written by Charlie Monroe, and recorded by darn near everyone including Lester Flatt, Buck Owens, Dolly Parton, and possibly Alvin and the Chipmunks performing with the Grateful Dead. I didn't realize it could be a square dance!

OPENER

Sides face, grand square

I ain't gonna work on the railroad
I ain't gonna work on the farm
I'll lay around this shack
Till the mail train comes back

Allemande left & weave the ring

Rolling in my sweet baby's arms

Dosado and promenade

I'll lay around the shack,
till the mail train comes back
Rolling in my sweet baby's arms

Three songs in my DART-riding brain crisscross paths:

trivial
1432, "of the trivium," from M.L. trivialis, from trivium "first three of the seven liberal arts," from L., lit. "place where three roads meet," from tri- "three" + via "road." The basic notion is of "that which may be found anywhere, commonplace, vulgar." The meaning "ordinary" (1589) and "insignificant" (1593) were in L. trivialis "commonplace, vulgar," originally "of or belonging to the crossroads." The verb trivialize is attested from 1846.

Trivial fun is found on a particularly splendid page of the Online Etymology Dictionary that includes "pipsqueak", "pun", "bullshit", "penny-ante", "snookums", and "quibble".

Adopt a Word

The trouble with pets is the whole pooper-scooper issue. We have a small and skunky tank of ridiculously hardy tropical fish. No matter how much we neglect them, they refuse to die. That is my pet history in a nutshell. Harriet the Hamster was also known as The Hamster That Would Not Die. For all I know, she is now six feet long, and living along the Salt Creek Watershed in a west Omaha suburban community, feeding on small children and poodles. Our fish refuse to die unless they can leap out of the tank and get smelly on the carpet behind a son's bedroom headboard. Hermit crabs scuttle under the piano and starve to death rather than come back out into the savannas of the open free-range wall-to-wall carpet.

Don't get me started on cats and dogs. I am unable to comprehend that many people find these creatures cuddly and amusing and worth the trouble and the itchy eyes. People actually walk around with their pet dogs collecting warm feces deposits in plastic bags. These same people get squeamish about slimy papier mache glue!

I've seriously considered adopting a zoo animal in the past. Pride of ownership without hairballs and scooped poopering for my kids. Unless I wanted to sponsor Madagascar hissing cockroaches, this sort of pet was out of my price range.

Give this etymologist a butterfly net! Online Etymological Dictionary now offers users the option of sponsoring a word for six months for only ten buckaroos. You never have to take a word to the vet for shots, or clean its habitat. One still has the problem of selecting the cutest, fuzziest, most loyal word to sponsor. I want one that is playful, but never gets fleas, and cleans up after itself. You can the word pet's pedigree. Afterall, that's what etymology is all about!

Gnarly troll houses

gnarly adj 1. very good, excellent; COOL. ("That trick on your skateboard was gnarly!") 2. used to describe something that looks painful or dangerous. ("That was a gnarly car wreck.") 3. gross, disgusting. ("Check out that gnarly old homeless dude.")
Online Slang Dictionary

gnarly Original from 70's surfspeak - to describe waves that are violently breaking without the form that would render them more rideable. Can also describe less than ideal females.

"I'm bailing on this session-waves are too gnarly"
"I had to ditch her friend, she was lookin' gnarly"

UrbanDictionary.com

gnarl - "contort, twist," 1814, a back-formation from gnarled, which appears only in Shakespeare ("Measure for Measure," 1603) but was picked up 19c. by romantic poets and brought into currency. It is probably a variant of M.E. knar "knot in wood" (1382), originally "a rock, a stone," of uncertain origin. Gnarly first attested 1829; picked up 1970s as surfer slang to describe a dangerous wave; it had spread in teen slang by 1980s, where it meant both "excellent" and "disgusting."
Online Etymology Dictionary

My favorite dictionary is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language that my Uncle Milt and Aunt Margie gave me for high school graduation in 1973. Its red binding is really showing the wear, and sometimes it is a bit out-dated, but the thumbnail illustrations are still intriguing, and the page lay-out has enough white space to keep it visually restful. The entries invite browsing, and send me off on see also references to other words for perusing. To a word-lover, it is a ten-minute vacation, the equivalent of a power nap or hot shower.

I have a friend who reads phonebooks, and finds the same intrigue, edification, and relaxation. Other friends browse cookbooks. To each her own reference book.

American Heritage indicates that gnarl can mean to snarl or growl, as well as a protruding knot on a tree. Gnarled can mean misshapen, "crabbed in temperment", or "rugged in appearance".

How are you doing, darling? You seem somewhat crabbed in temperment....

It's so nice of you to ask, honey. I'm having difficulty refraining from browsing gnash, gneiss, and gnu, and thence to wildebeest or schist. I am worried that I might be gnathic, and maybe related to a jaw.

We are making quite delightful troll houses. They resemble tree stumps. I will get some photogs on the Itty Bitty Art Projects blog soon. We did papier mache with Ross Art Paste and covered our houses in crumpled and torn brown paper bags for a tree bark texture. [This is going better than the year we made the rock'n'roll trolls on stage at the Fairyland Bandstand complete with teeny tiny disco balls.]



Papier mache always brings out both the "excellent; cool" and "disgusting" comments. This time the soggy, sagging forms will also fit the contorted, twisted, misshapen connotations of "gnarly".



One of these summers we will finally create chia trolls. The time frame limitations have yet to be surmounted. I want to make clay trolls, dry them, fire them, and still have time to sprout the grass seed hair...It just doesn't work in two weeks.

Going to climb the rope ladder into my treehouse now for some reading time. I will lower a bucket for provisions and bug repellent.

Attention to detail

It's the little things that make all the difference. Having posted about North Texas cricket infestations, fire ants, and Dubya's cabinet, it is time to come clear. Entomology is the scientific study of insects. Etymology is the study of the origin and historical development of a word. Etymologists rarely need nets, and entomologists don't carry loaded dictionaries. Eighth graders are a fascinating species to one and pure torture to the other. My junior high English teacher got so disgusted with those of us sentenced to her honors class that she literally threw the book at us. It is mighty scary when a sixty-five year-old woman in black Wicked Witch of the West shoes starts spittle-ranting a roomful of kids who don't get "Beowulf". When she becomes imbued with the strength of an Olympic shotputter and throws Webster's Dictionaries around the room you are going to be scarred for life.

Despite Miss Madsen, still twitching her mustache and communicating her eternal disdain from the Big Junior High in the Sky, I am thankful for an outstanding education in English. I am grateful, too, for the climate of recognition of authority if not necessarily respect that still existed in the schools of the 1970's. Zeus and his lightning bolts could never have been as motivating as a well-heaved dictionary and the threat of Your Permanent Record.

Holiday reading

During our Thanksgiving feast I got the giggles about the recipes I'd discovered by accident in Joy of Cooking while looking for the turkey instructions. "You know," I told the guys,"I found this great recipe for armadillo." This led to what would be called a "challenge" in Scrabble. I got out the reference volume, and indeed there was a recipe for armadillo. Also muskrat, raccoon, beaver tail, porcupine, possum, squirrel, rabbit with chili beans, and woodchuck. Clearly, this was new material for a holiday dramatic reading. Yes, I know, not every family needs a reference library for a holiday meal!

A few years back the guys and I went to Fredericksburg so that we could spend Thanksgiving climbing Enchanted Rock. Our motel was next door to an emu farm. We stared at the emus, and they stared right back at the same eye level. It was a bizarre Thanksgiving moment, and makes the holiday memory hit parade every year when we baste the large bird.

I always travel with a reference section in the back seat. Who knows when I might want to identify a bird, lizard, or butterfly? Where would I be without my Roadside Geology of Texas? A dictionary is good, too. Sure, this might have something to do with my husband calling me , "obstinate and recalcitrant" on a trip while we were still married. And there I was library-less and wondering if "recalcitrant" had something to do with deposits on teeth! Never again will a vacation go [further] down the tube for want of Webster's.

You will have to look up the armadillo recipe for yourself. This is my grandma's recipe for Ginger Creams:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease two 11x16 cookie sheets.

Heat and stir in a large saucepan
1 c. sugar
1 t. salt
1 c. Crisco or oleo
1 c. molasses

Remove from heat and stir in
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 t. cinnamon

In another bowl stir together
3 c. flour
2 t. baking soda

To saucepan add 1 c. boiling water, then stir in flour/soda mix to make a stiff batter. Pour into cookie sheets. Spread and bake till done. Check with toothpick after 10-12 minutes. Let cool.

Frosting

Sift very well and measure
2 1/2 c. powdered sugar

Scald
5 T cream or milk

Blend
2 T Crisco
1 T butter
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t salt

Add 1/2 c. of the powdered sugar to the Crisco mixture. Alternately blend in the scalded cream and the rest of the powdered sugar until it reaches a nice spreading consistency. Let sit a bit, then cut into squares.

For 1/2 recipe of Ginger Creams use 2/3 recipe of frosting.

Take a walk in the fall leaves or winter snow, then eat!