A little less stressed with Wenceslas and Wences

S'awright!  I'm gonna be all right.  Sure, I'm talking with my puppet hand, but it's all good.

Feeling relief tonight that all my little students have painted their clay trivets, wrapped them in bubble wrap, and have them nestled all snug in little gift bags ready to take home on the last day of the semester.

Haven't had enough time or daylight to hike at Oak Point Nature Preserve in December.  The photo was taken in November. This type of seedhead always reminds me of a puppet saying "s'awright" way back in my black and white television childhood. It took a bit of Googling to track down the name of that ventriloquist, Senor Wences.  He appeared often on the Ed Sullivan Show with his puppets, Johnny, Pedro, and Cecilia.  Pedro was a head in a box, and said "s'awright."  Johnny was a face drawn on a puppet hand.  Cecilia was a chicken.







Perhaps this  perambulation began when I spilled the paprika in my hash browns.  My puppet hand had a chat with Billy Crystal!





Waiter, there is too much pepper on my paprikash. 
But I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie. 

I've always liked the carol, "Good King Wenceslas", but it's hard to say just why.  As a child I enjoyed being able to pronounce Wenceslas, but there's also the Bohemian connection, and the legend of a kind, good king.  Maybe I just liked it because I managed to memorize it for my piano teacher, a rare miracle!


Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel

...

In his master's steps he trod

Where the snow lay dinted

Heat was in the very sod

Which the Saint had printed

Therefore, Christian men, be sure

Wealth or rank possessing

Ye who now will bless the poor

Shall yourselves find blessing 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Velour Caterpillar

After the big storm of Wednesday night, the students found an impressive caterpillar on the playground retaining wall Thursday. Over three inches long, it looked like it had been sewn of dusty gray velour exactly the color of the nozzle attachments for my mother's 1950s cylinder vacuum cleaner. Down each side was a soft gray fringe that could have been the mustache of the Muppets' Swedish chef. Never imagining the caterpillar would be easy to find again on Friday, I didn't take my camera. It had only crawled two feet.

The search for identification led me to two very useful sites. The first is Discover Life, which can be used to ID all sorts of living things. The search function of the IDnature section let me choose up to four characteristics. It took me awhile because I didn't know that the "fringe" is very aptly called "lashes". The only close photo was the larva of the American lappet moth. Our playground visitor had two bands of dull, rusty gold, instead of the bright red bands.



Phyllodesma americana, larva Dave Wagner / Discover Life

Once I had a name, I was able to find this photo by Jo McGavin on BugGuide.net, another useful site. You have to look at it awhile to realize what you're seeing!



I can't publish John Davis' photo of the adult stage lappet moth, but Phyllodesma americana has some nifty camouflage tricks. Davis is a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. He has a Flickr gallery of excellent moth photos, and contributes to the Digital Guide to Moth Identification's North American Moth Photographers Group.



I hope we can all identify the Swedish chef making chocolate mousse!

Mom's vacuum was silver gray and just right for little kids to ride. It is not as easy to identify as the caterpillar, although I spent too much time trying. Her well-used copy of Guide to Easier Living taught her that vacuuming was a once-a-week task to be done on Thursday. I'm sure she selected it with this explanation in mind:

The choice of model--whether it's upright, canister, or cylinder--depends on the amount of carpeted area versus hard-surface floor area in the home. The two latter types have swivel arrangements that permit one to reach all parts of a room from one central position. For large carpeted areas, the upright is preferred because motor-driven brushes get deeply embedded dirt out of the rug fibers.

From the Great Achievements page of the National Academy of Engineering:

In 1907 an American inventor named James Murray Spangler created a vacuum cleaner that basically consisted of an old-fashioned carpet sweeper to raise dust and a vertical shaft electric motor to power a fan and blow the dust into an external bag. Manufactured by the Hoover Company, which bought the patent in 1908, it was hugely successful, especially after Hoover in 1926 extended the fan motor's power to a rotating brush that "beats as it sweeps as it cleans." Meanwhile, the Electrolux company in Sweden grabbed a sizable share of the market with a very different design for a vacuum cleaner—a small rolling cylinder that had a long hose and a variety of nozzles to clean furniture and curtains as well as carpets.




Our vacuum was similar to the Electrolux at left, but not quite the same in my memory. For one thing, no kids are riding on it.

Links cited in this post:
http://www.discoverlife.org/nh/ DiscoverLife.org

http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q? DiscoverLife's ID Nature Guides

http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?guide=Caterpillars DiscoverLife's caterpillar search page

http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?guide=Caterpillars © Dave Wagner, 2002 photo

http://bugguide.net/node/view/63153 BugGuide.net caterpillar photo by Jo McGavin

http://bugguide.net/node/view/106402 BugGuide.net moth photo by John Davis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johns_pics John Davis' gallery of impressive nature photos

http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/MainMenu.shtml Digital Guide to Moth Identification

http://www.electrolux.com/node15.aspx Electrolux history

http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3775 Great Achievements history of modern appliances

http://anchormama.blogspot.com/2006/03/good-design-and-easier-living.html Thoughts on the Guide to Easier Living

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Live Strong Lance Lips

Take off that plastic bracelet, and let it speak to you! Or let it emote for you.

We received a bunch of frog green Live Strong-style bracelets. Since I'm a great Muppets fan, and not particularly mature, the bracelets looked just like frog lips. Papier mache frog princes were already on the lesson plan. I hope they turn out more expressive than Prince Charles!

Good medicine

There are times in our lives when we all need fast-acting, long-lasting, deep-healing Laugh Therapy. If I were in charge of FEMA or the Red Cross, I would be showing the Muppets First Season dvd on the JumboTron in every basketball arena or domed stadium turned refugee center. And I would have people reading James Herriot stories aloud 24/7 in some quiet hallway. If you've ever been "crackerdog", or gone "flopbot", you know that a story may be just what you need. We are never too old to benefit from listening to a well-read story.

I have never been as ill as I was ten years ago with pleurisy. The memory of my son reading James Herriot stories to me during that horrible time is one I will always treasure. It hurt to laugh, just as it hurt to cough, but every laugh he and I shared gave me strength to heal.

To stay healthy, we all need the RDA dose of laughing every single day, along with that apple to keep the doctor away, the dried apricot for cowboy regularity, and the carrot so we can see in the dark. We all need the Muppet Swedish chef as much as we need real comfort food.

U C D V?

The five and six year olds were so excited about building their own palaces of Wali Dad that I couldn't get their attention. I wanted them to fold their pieces of tag board in half, open them again with the spine/crease up, and fold the two ends to meet at the center. If you fold up the tag board and look at it edge on, you will see a V-shape, and then a W.

Regaining the students' attention often requires a weirdness factor. If I just speak louder, all that happens is the noise level and my blood pressure rise. I've never had good luck with the Clap-Clap-clap-clap-clap class signal, and turning off the overhead lights communicates a level of teacher desperation, not control.

That's why weirdness works best for me, although some would say it's just doin' a what comes naturally. Start wearing a paper hat, and kids get curious. Start directing an incoming 747 on the tarmac with two tp tubes, or tap kids gently with my magic wand, and they get curious. Start pantomiming the next step in the project, and they realize the teacher is from another planet*. Start singing, and I scare the children, so that's out for me. Start dancing, and I can usually get the class back with me, although it's not a pretty sight. Then start speaking in fangy Transylvanian, faux French, or Muppets Swedish Chef, and they are eating out of my hand. Putting a Buddy Holly cassette in the tape player and playing air guitar is good, too.

Monday was the first time I ever started writing in secret code. William Steig's classic book, CDB flashed into my mind, and I wrote "U C D V?" on the dry-erase board. A couple kids started to sound out the word. (Go ahead and try it. Sounds like a kid trying very hard not to be carsick.) I shook my head no, and pointed to one letter at a time. More kids were noticing. I started silently demonstrating with the folded tag board. V. V. V... Moved on to demonstrating the next fold like a flight attendant for the hearing-impaired.

U C D W?

O S, I C D W!

To William Steig, I have to say, "N Q!"

And now, at the end of the day, "I F-N N-E N-R-G".


*Some say men are from Mars and women are Venutians, but I think teachers have to be from Saturn with the spinning rings. I'm not the only person who compares teaching to the man with the spinning plates on the Ed Sullivan Show.

C N-E?