The pink Dora lunchbox zipper broke. As it traveled around the three sides, the zipper teeth meshed, then gaped, then meshed. Wrote a note to the mom. Tomorrow my student will have a new pink lunchbox for her bologna sandwich.
Dad's thinking travels around three sides alternately meshing and gaping. Wrote a note to the doctor, but Dad will not have a new brain tomorrow. We are going to have to deal with the unmeshed teeth, confounding gaps, and frequent leaks. We will have to deal with it in a kind, gentle, nonconfrontational way. Telling Dad he's full of baloney doesn't do either of us any good. I might hum that Oscar Mayer song as a coping device, though.
Dad was eating tuna salad and cornbread for supper, and shoveling it in pretty well, so I didn't interrupt. Instead I wondered why my wheelchair-confined father was wearing windstop nylon jogging pants with reflective stripes down the sides. These are NOT Dad's pants. Maybe they belong to the seven foot girl. Maybe Watson could shed some light here.
I was curious about the "Jeopardy" show with Ken Jennings and Watson, the IBM computer. Dad was sufficiently glad to have my company to let me watch part of the show. My three-sided zipper brain malfunctioned trying to explain the computer search process for natural language puns as if I understood them!
Dad was in bed staring at the billowing hospital drape in front of his open window when I arrived Monday. His aide had opened the window to the seventy degree afternoon breeze, but left his heater set at seventy-two. Dad seemed to think very tall girls were hiding behind the drape and wiggling it. This is the same Dad that thinks boys are playing leapfrog behind his bed and that I am Tall Alice. The hospital drape on its curved ceiling track is beyond his comprehension. When I scooted the drape down the track so the wind wouldn't catch it, Dad asked where all the girls went. "Did they just shoot straight up?" Yes, Scotty, the seven foot tall girls beamed up!
Like Alex Trebek, quoted in Sunday's Washington Post, I'm not worried about being replaced by a computer:
"Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek isn't afraid he'll be replaced by a machine. "It's a possibility," Trebek told me recently, "but it won't happen for a few years." After all, the machine would require "infinite patience, great wisdom, a sense of humor, which is hard to build into a computer. And tenderness when dealing with contestants."
Oh, Lordy, save me from the seven foot tall girls wiggling the drape and send a double dose of tenderness for dealing with the contestant!
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder
Showing posts with label zipping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zipping. Show all posts
2/2/08
Intermission at the Met
During the second intermission of the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's "Die Walküre" today (heard on WRR 101.1 fm), there was a brief interview with David Sylvester, the Assistant Wardrobe Supervisor. His job is making sure each singer arrives on stage wearing his costume just as the designer intended.
Sometimes singers are not thrilled with their costume and pretend to have lost part of it. Sometimes they want to wear their costume in a manner they consider more personally interesting, comfortable, or flattering.
Oh, geez, can I relate?! My students are always trying to lose their hats or wear their jackets upside down. Sometimes they get confused about which coat hook is theirs. More often they have pink furry princess parka envy, and just "borrow" someone else's coat.
Does this David Sylvester person ever have to teach the singers to spread their costume out on the floor, stand by the collar or hood, put their arms in the sleeves, and flip the whole garment up over their head? Does he have to stand behind them and reach around to zip their zippers, lining up the engine and coal car before pulling the train along the track?
I have a lot of experience reminding my little singers to fetch their lunchboxes and the notes from their cubbies. I could easily expand my repertoire to remind singers to fetch their swords, veils, and mustaches. True, my little singers are singing Looby Loo* in raspy false baritones with contorted lyrics, but the skills required for the job are the same.
Most tellingly, Mr. Sylvester reports his essential role reminding soloists to use the facilities. "Did you go before you put on your costume?," he asks them. "Are you sure?"
I've been asking this question professionally since I went back to work in 1994. Before that I asked it at home for a decade. True, I was the Assistant Wardrobe Supervisor for snowsuits, swim lessons, karate class, scout meetings, and peewee sports teams, not the Metropolitan Opera. But David Sylvester didn't say anything about asking the singers if they remembered to fuh-fuh-fluh-flush and wah-wah-wash their hands!
*My students prefer these Looby Loo lyrics:
Here we go looby loo
Here we go looby light
Here we go looby loo
Hickory dickory dock!
[repeat ad nauseum]
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder
Sometimes singers are not thrilled with their costume and pretend to have lost part of it. Sometimes they want to wear their costume in a manner they consider more personally interesting, comfortable, or flattering.
Oh, geez, can I relate?! My students are always trying to lose their hats or wear their jackets upside down. Sometimes they get confused about which coat hook is theirs. More often they have pink furry princess parka envy, and just "borrow" someone else's coat.
Does this David Sylvester person ever have to teach the singers to spread their costume out on the floor, stand by the collar or hood, put their arms in the sleeves, and flip the whole garment up over their head? Does he have to stand behind them and reach around to zip their zippers, lining up the engine and coal car before pulling the train along the track?
I have a lot of experience reminding my little singers to fetch their lunchboxes and the notes from their cubbies. I could easily expand my repertoire to remind singers to fetch their swords, veils, and mustaches. True, my little singers are singing Looby Loo* in raspy false baritones with contorted lyrics, but the skills required for the job are the same.
Most tellingly, Mr. Sylvester reports his essential role reminding soloists to use the facilities. "Did you go before you put on your costume?," he asks them. "Are you sure?"
I've been asking this question professionally since I went back to work in 1994. Before that I asked it at home for a decade. True, I was the Assistant Wardrobe Supervisor for snowsuits, swim lessons, karate class, scout meetings, and peewee sports teams, not the Metropolitan Opera. But David Sylvester didn't say anything about asking the singers if they remembered to fuh-fuh-fluh-flush and wah-wah-wash their hands!
*My students prefer these Looby Loo lyrics:
Here we go looby loo
Here we go looby light
Here we go looby loo
Hickory dickory dock!
[repeat ad nauseum]
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder
12/31/03
I'd like to thank the Academy...
...for having jeans in my size on sale for $6.88 and $9.99. Okay, it's not an Oscar, but Academy Sporting Goods has been one of my top ten discoveries of 2003.
The new year is a time for lists, either looking back or forward. I am going to offer ten visions I'd like to see. To have them in my imagination is a sugarplum gift.
1. A friend has just moved back to Nebraska from Idaho. Her mention of seeing grain elevators again set off a terrible ache of geographic homesickness. I would love to see the flat, straight highway in the reduced speed zone, with the grain elevators, railroad tracks, and telephone wires off to the left. A light coating of snow on dark brown stubble neatly combed into rows under a slate gray sky would bring me to tears.
2. Sunrise over the South Dakota Badlands. I can smell the chalk, dust, and sage, see the snake and the magpie. Tall sunflowers grow along every fence. The late night short cut to the Badlands is a profound memory. We so rarely visit a place without artificial lights. The Milky Way seemed to swirl and wrap about us in ribbons.
3. Mexican freetail bats exiting Carlsbad Caverns. This sight is still one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life.
4. Hot-air balloons lifting off at the Plano Balloon Festival and skimming over the pink lake in the early dawn light.
5. The Monahans Sand Dunes of West Texas with their cleansing winds and shifting forms. Sandpaper for mental anxiety. Alternate candidate: The white lizards of White Sands, N. M.
6. A lapful of rapt little boys listening to stories about wolves and dogs.
7. The frozen purple midnight solitude at the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon following a March blizzard, and better yet, the last of the snow on the red rock formations the next morning.
8. Buzzards soaring over Dinosaur Valley State Park viewed while sitting on the river bottom and flying a kite. Lift! Soar! Tug!
9. The inside of an old-timey hardware store with three aisles, squeaky-dark wooden floor, tiny drawers built into the wall, a loft over the main floor, dust motes and light from the tall windows facing Main, and the smell of galvanized buckets.
10. A sandbar on the Platte River, preferably with the smells of oatmeal cookies, driftwood, and bonfire, and the sound of Bob Devaney's Cornhuskers beating the Oklahoma Sooners on an early transistor radio.
Few milestones in my life have been as satisfying as learning to zip a red plaid autumn jacket. The zipper pull is still a train engine, and the zipper is the train track. Matching the two sides of the jacket and coupling the parts of the zipper pull, to zip my jacket without derailment is still scented with dry pin oak, maple, sycamore leaves, and accomplishment.
The very best in 2004,
Nancy-Louise
The new year is a time for lists, either looking back or forward. I am going to offer ten visions I'd like to see. To have them in my imagination is a sugarplum gift.
1. A friend has just moved back to Nebraska from Idaho. Her mention of seeing grain elevators again set off a terrible ache of geographic homesickness. I would love to see the flat, straight highway in the reduced speed zone, with the grain elevators, railroad tracks, and telephone wires off to the left. A light coating of snow on dark brown stubble neatly combed into rows under a slate gray sky would bring me to tears.
2. Sunrise over the South Dakota Badlands. I can smell the chalk, dust, and sage, see the snake and the magpie. Tall sunflowers grow along every fence. The late night short cut to the Badlands is a profound memory. We so rarely visit a place without artificial lights. The Milky Way seemed to swirl and wrap about us in ribbons.
3. Mexican freetail bats exiting Carlsbad Caverns. This sight is still one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life.
4. Hot-air balloons lifting off at the Plano Balloon Festival and skimming over the pink lake in the early dawn light.
5. The Monahans Sand Dunes of West Texas with their cleansing winds and shifting forms. Sandpaper for mental anxiety. Alternate candidate: The white lizards of White Sands, N. M.
6. A lapful of rapt little boys listening to stories about wolves and dogs.
7. The frozen purple midnight solitude at the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon following a March blizzard, and better yet, the last of the snow on the red rock formations the next morning.
8. Buzzards soaring over Dinosaur Valley State Park viewed while sitting on the river bottom and flying a kite. Lift! Soar! Tug!
9. The inside of an old-timey hardware store with three aisles, squeaky-dark wooden floor, tiny drawers built into the wall, a loft over the main floor, dust motes and light from the tall windows facing Main, and the smell of galvanized buckets.
10. A sandbar on the Platte River, preferably with the smells of oatmeal cookies, driftwood, and bonfire, and the sound of Bob Devaney's Cornhuskers beating the Oklahoma Sooners on an early transistor radio.
Few milestones in my life have been as satisfying as learning to zip a red plaid autumn jacket. The zipper pull is still a train engine, and the zipper is the train track. Matching the two sides of the jacket and coupling the parts of the zipper pull, to zip my jacket without derailment is still scented with dry pin oak, maple, sycamore leaves, and accomplishment.
The very best in 2004,
Nancy-Louise
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