High heels and pearls

Wore my hiking boots and princess hat to teach today. You will be relieved to know I wore clothes, too. When my sister was very little she reported that her Sunday School teacher had worn high heels and pearls to class. That visual has stuck with all of us for over forty years.

This is a cute book, with fresh watercolor illustrations. Kids like to watch for the goofy things the dog does, like selling lemonade, or hiding in a tree when the princess has a grumpy bad hair day. Our projects have involved drawing, lacing yarn through poster board boot cut-outs, texture rubbings of the bottoms of our shoes/hiking boots, and more practice using watercolor paint sets.

The girls who are addicted to Disney princesses want to argue with all the Q&A rhyming pages in the book. Still, the message wins most of them over. Yes, princesses are just like you, and you are a princess on the inside. I am waiting for the Charles & Camilla-inspired sequel, Do Princes Wear Kilts? I will use it to teach about plaid.


This is the review at www.barnesandnoble.com:
FROM THE CRITICS
Children's Literature - Heidi Hauser Green
What does it mean to be a princess? A young girl and her mother talk about what princesses are like in this delightful, rhyming book. Inspired by her own daughter's question, "Do princesses wear hiking boots?," Carmela LaVigna Coyle has written a fun, witty book that touches on themes of childhood and identity. The little girl asks if princesses engage in a variety of activities, from climbing trees and walking in the rain to drinking sparkling punch and even doing chores. Her mother has a good answer for everything. Ultimately, the pair come to realize that being a princess isn't a matter of what one does, but what one is—inside. This is a book readers are sure to enjoy again and again. 2003, Rising Moon, Ages 4 to 8.

A Gift for Coach

At the end of each season there's a tiny panic about giving an appreciation gift to the coach. I've been a soccer mom for a ridiculously long time now, pretty much since the Neanderthals first played the Sapiens. I know that people don't volunteer to coach youth recreational soccer or other sports in expectation of receiving an appreciation gift. True, some of them get roped into it the same way I got roped into being a Tiger Cub leader back in Edmond, Oklahoma. Usually they find they get at least as much out of the coaching experience as they put in. Hanging out with young children will supply a coach with whimsical comments and blooper moments to last a lifetime.

Encourage children to write a letter to their coach at the end of the season. You can prompt your child with questions. What was your favorite drill? What was your greatest moment of the season? What new skill did you learn? What new rule did you learn? What was the funniest thing your coach did?

Parents can write a letter to the coach, too. Thank the coach for keeping the emphasis on learning skills, being good sports, working as a team, and having fun. Enclose reprints of all the photos you took, even the ones of children picking dandelions, picking noses, getting entangled in the goal net, staring up at hot air balloons, or wearing their socks all the way up under their shorts.

While you are at it, be sure to thank the refs at your child's games. Model respect for rules and good sportsmanship for your young player.

For all you do, this goal's for you!

This can be an appreciation gift for your coach, or for your dad:

1. Get your family to eat all the cherry tomatoes from a red plastic net package. Cherry tomatoes are delicious, so this shouldn't be too tough.

2. Weave some pipe-cleaners through the net to form a soccer goal. Cut off the extra netting.

3. Staple the goal onto a piece of poster board so it stands up.

4. Draw a picture of yourself blocking a goal OR scoring a goal on another piece of poster board. Use crayons or markers.

5. Carefully cut out your picture being sure to not chop off any arms or legs. Leave some extra poster board around your feet. Fold that extra so that you can staple or glue your figure in front of the net goal.

6. If your whole team is working together, you can make a whole field of players with two nets as a way to thank your coach. You can make another one for yourself to play with and act out kicks and games. You might be able to sweet talk your soccer mom into baking a sheet cake and frosting it green. Then you could decorate it with goals and players for a team party.

Soccer Mom Appreciation Game Day

Plan ahead for May seventh, Soccer Mom Appreciation Game Day, aka the day before Mother's Day:

1. Save one small water bottle for each member of your young team. Cut the bottles off 3" from the bottom to make a tiny flower pot.

2. Put a jiffy pot in the water bottle "pot", and moisten according to instructions.

3. Have your little team members plant seeds in the "pots" for marigolds or sunflowers--something that sprouts fast.

4. Get some plastic straws, coffee stirrers, or skewers.

5. Use the coffee stirrer as a florist-style plant spike. Staple a little sign on the spike that says something like,
"Thank you for tying my soccer shoes, cheering for me, bringing the orange slices, and kissing my boo-boos. Thank you for being my very own wonderful Soccer Mom. Love, _______ XOXOX".

6. Tie a sports shoelace around the flower pot.

7. Have the kids make an arch for the moms to run through! (Do not dump cold Gatorade on moms.)

8. Present the flowers to the moms, and give them sweaty, muddy hugs.

Night vision

I've been doing an art project this week using the book, Night Driving, by John Coy. The picture book is too long for most kids under age five, but younger ones like to find circles and half circles in the illustrations. The story is about a boy and his dad driving to the mountains at night in the Fifties. Elementary school kids are intrigued, and go on to imagine other things you might see driving at night.

Materials:
Black construction paper 9x12", or 9x6" for little kids.
Stickers--white circles, silver stars, hole reinforcers, eye stickers, alphabet stickers.
White crayons.
Glue sticks.
Scissors.
Kinko copies of black and white patterned circles.*

Teach kids how to cut circles out of copies. Show them it's like driving a car. The scissor hand cuts right on the line/"highway" of the circle edge. The other hand turns the paper like a steering wheel.
The littlest kids (3) also walked/"drove" around the room using Chinet plates for steering wheels. We pretended it was getting dark, so we turned on our headlights and saw lots of bugs flying around the lights.
I love this owl that looks like Groucho Marx!
Older kids relate to playing alphabet games in the car. "A is Abraham Lincoln, B is Babe Ruth...", or "B is bridge...Y is yawn...Z is zero on the speedometer".

The kids cut out lots of circles and snip some of them into half circles. The half circles can be VW Beetles/"slug bugs", which look similar to the old-timey car in the illustrations. Half circles can also become the moon, the tummy of a mule deer, the arches under the bridge, a baseball cap, the wings on a beetle or moth, or a dome-style tent. The eye stickers can be the eyes of the deer, or you can go off on a UFO tangent.

Use the crayons to draw more details. One girl used circles to create a boombox for the campers in the tent. Another kindergartner correctly made all the constellations she knew (I was very impressed!). Kids made Cinderella's carriage out driving at night, igloos, skunks, raccoons, deer on roller blades, hibernating bears in caves, and some very Seussian aqueducts with hiding trolls.

*You have to go to Kinkos because this project will use up all your toner! Make photocopies of patterned papers--zebra prints, crossword puzzles, buttons, bubble wrap, want ads, snakeskin, etc. Cut out circles of various sizes from the black & white patterns tracing CDs, jar lids, etc. Glue cut out circles onto contrasting patterns, and assemble an 8.5x11" page of black/white circles of various patterns.

No, No, Cyrano!

The last few minutes of a preschool art class get a bit hectic. The first kids who finish the project and wash their hands need something constructive to occupy them so they won't tackle each other. A few kids are still finishing their art, and need my encouragement toward that end. The line of kids waiting to wash hands needs my attention so they don't wipe their painty hands on each other.

Usually I place a couple activities on the big floor rug for people with clean hands; a building toy, a book, finger puppets, a puzzle, or the ever popular bucket of dinosaur postcards. We also have some lovely smooth square samples of marble counter tops to stack or sort.

Today, though, the kids asked me to get the Drama Nose. Since our program is half art and half drama, my brain veered off on the theatrical instead of the practical. What the kids wanted was:

Family Tree with Flair

This is the first revised edition of my family tree originally drawn up in 1965 at the dining table of my Grandma to earn a Camp Fire Girl bead and become a Faggot Finder or Torch Bearer, I'm not sure which. That first family tree was created during an oral history moment and sketched out on blueprint paper in pencil.



For eighth grade American Studies class we had to compile a neater and more detailed family tree. I had just received my very first set of colored felt pens. The twelve pens were in a black box that opened and folded back to stand ready to comply with my artistic wishes. This family tree is written with my op-art Papermate pen, and underlined with green, yellow, and red violet felt pens. I am proud to have grown up with the Beatles and the first felt pens. Where would we be without them?!

My walking bud wants to know why I am into this genealogy stuff. Maybe I just want to feel like I'm sitting to the left of Grandma at the big dark table in the light green dining room. I can smell the dark wooden buffet. I see the day's mail in the big glass bowl on the buffet, and the little pots of African violets and baby's breath on the shelves by the window. I can feel the anodized drinking glass at my place and see the tiny salt shaker with the bluebird design. Forty years ago, and we would have been anticipating cold pressed chicken, cukes & onions, mandarin orange jello salad, sugar cookies, and sweet iced tea from a cut glass pitcher.

Grandma would tell a bit about teaching in a one-room school near town. I would get more of the story from Dad as we walked off our big lunch. I especially liked the story of my great-great grandmother, Susa Smith, who was disowned by her parents for eloping with John Lee, the [handsome] gardener of their estate in England. The next generation had a different Cinderella spin, and Grandma had to go live with her aunts when her new stepmother came into the picture.



Behind the door to the kitchen were the shelves of games. Marbles for Chinese checkers were in a heavily waxed cottage cheese container. The Tinker Toys were in their original cylinder. Mom told us not to trip on the electrical cord running under the area rug. The figurine on the corner whatnot stressed, "Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil."

Age lines

Went to see a performance of "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue. It ran long for me. My companions said certain sections dragged. That wasn't my problem with it. "The Foreigner" just hooked more cars onto the long blurred train of country-house dramas that I've seen performed in high schools, middle-schools, community colleges, dinner theaters, and suburban repertory theatres over forty years. I'm trapped in "The Hollow" and I can't get out.

You know the country-house drama routine. An assortment of guests assemble for a weekend at a hunting lodge, rural inn, country house, or even beach house. They are not all who they pretend to be. There are deceits and manipulations. Sometimes there's a murder. Often the guests have to help the owner raise money to avoid foreclosure. In a frightening number of these plays, the guests decide to put on a musical talent show to raise money and/or solve the murder. Romantic pairings reshuffle. Inheritances are decided. The bad guys are run off, true lovers survive misunderstandings, the crime is solved by the town fool or an outside detective, and the country house is saved until next season.

You've been to these performances, so don't pretend you are from some different culture. The set always has three entrances; the left to the guest bedrooms; the center to the outdoors; the right to the kitchen and servants quarters. The elderly roles are played by the youngest actors wearing bad gray wigs, mustaches, and beards that look like they came from the Halloween aisle at Hinky Dinky. The kids have drawn on fat black age lines that could be seen from across a football field, and just look like weird facial grafiti in a small theatre. The young female characters are dressed in bright outfits from the junior department at Target, even though costumes for the other players hint at a time period or region. Too often there's a guy stuck wearing lederhosen. Actors of all ages attempt accents that obscure understanding of their lines.

Howard Cosell was criticized because he had never played football. I have never been an actress, except a few times in my marriage that I won't get into in this blog. Still, I've been known to speak in Transylvanian vampire mode while dancing to Buddy Holly and imitating the hairstylist of Fluffy the Paintbrush for my Tuesday first-grade art students. Without hammering my point, the combination of sets, make-up, costumes, and accents in these plays make about as much sense.

Country-house dramas are safe. They take us out of the business and politics of real life, send us on vacation with people we don't know, and serve us the dramatic equivalent of banquet rubber chicken and green beans. They make sure we don't trouble our pretty little heads with contemplating the human condition, moral or philosophical issues.

Bad accents...country setting...biscuits or grits...not who they seem...manipulations of finances...distraction from all philosophical and ethical issues...safely unquestioning audiences...

Good golly, Buddy Holly! The President is entertaining foreign dignitaries down in Crawford again this weekend!

Auntie Myrtle

Discussing groundcovers with coworkers has led me off on a new genealogical hunt. I'll keep posting about the search, but for now this is its origin.

The myrtle planted around my patio is blooming with pretty, precise blue flowers. Sparrows are tearing off shoots of the vine for nesting material. With myrtle, the sparrows often get more than they counted on. One poor bird sat at the top of my fence with three long strands of myrtle hanging from its beak, but couldn't figure out how to fly with all this carry-on luggage.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
In Texas the term "myrtle" refers to crape myrtle trees (Exh. A) which provide color in our hot summers. In Nebraska "myrtle" is the name for a ground cover (Exh. B) also known as Vinca minor or periwinkle.

Myrtle grew all around my grandma's house in Pierce, Nebraska. Being a kid, I was oblivious to it until my mom decided to dig up a bit to plant around our house in Lincoln. We wrapped these horticolonists in newspapers--probably The Pierce County Leader and the Omaha Wierd Herald--and fretted about whether they would survive the three hour, 120 mile drive in the trunk of the '63 Pontiac Catalina.

My parents weren't prone to gardening. We kids were brought up with the idea that if you didn't water or fertilize, you wouldn't have to mow very often. The original owners of our house had planted a few chronically depressed rosebushes on the south side of the house, outside my bedroom window. It's all a bit jumbled with my kid understanding of the 1964 Alaska earthquake, but our parched lawn sometimes had big cracks during the hot summers. I was reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books about the hardships of life on the prairie and the horrible infestations of grasshoppers in those days. Big, ugly grasshoppers jumped over the cracks, surprising my bare legs, and spitting tobacco at me. To this day grasshoppers creep me out. Making a sculpture of an adult winged grasshopper did not help me overcome this aversion. (This photo and the next two are by Steven.)

The transplanting of the myrtle from Grandma's house to our house seemed like a big step toward making our yard more lush and friendly. I was all for it, and happy to be Mom's "big helper" on the project. That myrtle still grows happily in the shadier parts of my folks' yard.



In turn, I transplanted new colonists of that myrtle around the apartment building I managed as a newlywed at 1822 H St. in Lincoln, and later around our two homes in Omaha. I wonder if it is still growing around these spots. To plant myrtle around three houses in Oklahoma and Texas, I had to buy small pots from the nursery. When I moved to the condo complex, I brought myrtle, ivy, canna, and "purple stuff" colonists from my old yard. This is "purple stuff":


Grandma's sister was named Myrtle. The baby name website call Myrtle a "neglected horticultural name deserving of consideration". Grandma's middle name was Fern, probably also deserving of consideration. I'll let everybody know when I get a batch of three year old students with horticultural names. This wave of deserved consideration has yet to reach shore! For now, I'm awash in Carolines, Graces, and Claires.

The myrtle
c.1400, from O.Fr. mirtile, from M.L. myrtillus, dim. of myrtus "myrtle tree," from Gk. myrtos, from same Sem. source as Gk. myrrha (see myrrh).

verbena
genus of plants, the vervain, 1562, from L. verbena "leaves or twigs of olive, myrtle, laurel, or other sacred plants employed in religious ceremonies," from PIE *werbh- (cf. Lith. virbas "twig, branch, scion, rod"), from base *werb- "to turn, bend" (see warp).


The word "verbena" time zaps me back to Mrs. Barry's eleventh grade English class. We are reading Faulkner for the very first time, and trying to make some sense out of Light In August. We are all making fun of the writing, and saying, "Verbena, verbena, verbena," in high falsetto voices. I remember absolutely nothing else about Light In August, and I didn't know verbena was myrtle. I have read other Faulkner novels of my own volition. The Reivers is my favorite.

Anacreontic
of or in the manner of Anacreon, "convivial bard of Greece," the celebrated Gk. lyrical poet, born at Teos in Ionia (560-478 B.C.E.). In ref. to his lyric form (1706) of a four-line stanza, rhymed alternately, each line with four beats (three trochees and a long syllable), also "convivial and amatory" (1801); and "an erotic poem celebrating love and wine" (c.1656). Francis Scott Key in 1814 set or wrote his poem "The Star-Spangled Banner" to the melody of "To Anacreon in Heav'n," the drinking song of the popular London gentleman's club called The Anacreontic Society, whose membership was dedicated to "wit, harmony, and the god of wine."

To Anacreon in Heav'n, where he sat in full glee,
A few Sons of Harmony sent a petition;
That he their Inspirer and Patron wou'd be;
When this answer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian;
"Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,
No longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot,
And besides I'll instruct you like me, to intwine,
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

The tune is late 18c. and may be the work of society member and court musician John Stafford Smith (1750-1836).

Myrtle is a symbol of the goddess Aphrodite in Greek mythology. Yertle needs a few shoots of periwinkle in his mouth.

You Nork, You Nork

Two of my preschoolers just returned from a trip to see the "Yifull Tower". I didn't know they had been in France, because they told me before spring break that they were going to Africa. Maybe they went to Africa AND France. On the way home, they saw the Statue of Liverdy in You Nork.


"New York, New York" is a song from the 1946 musical On the Town, which has music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The first line of this song is, "New York, New York, it's a hell of a town: the Bronx is up and the Battery's down." My teen-in-residence, being a self-assured third child, is into Frank Sinatra. Frank was confused, and didn't know about You Nork.

On my drive to work I pass a shop with a banner proclaiming, "Cigarettes Discount/Open Sunadays". I would like to work Sunadays, and stay home Uddadays. This shop is in the same neighborhood as the classic "Wok Bueno" restaurant.

Another student told me his friend was on a trip to "Princess". Turned out she was in Paris, France. If you pick up Paris, France with Silly Putty, then twist it a bit, you do get "Princess". I hope that young student will visit the Yifull Tower while she's in Princess. Being an art teacher, I wonder how one might make Georges Pompidou out of pipe cleaners and pom-pons.

(Composition of Silly Putty 65% - Dimethyl Siloxane 17% - Silica 9% - Thixotrol ST 4% - Polydimethylsiloxane 1% - Decamethyl cyclopentasiloxane 1% - Glycerine 1% - Titanium Dioxide )

Two boys were not to be outdone by the girl transatlantic travelers. They had ridden on the "D.A.R.K. Train" over spring break. So much of Dallas city government and rapid transit is frightening, but I'd never actually considered the eerie Halloween possibilities. [I do wonder why the DART Rail can't have easy tickets and fares like the D.C. Metro.] And besides, what about the D.A.R.T.H. Rail options at warp speed? I see the Wookiee singing with Sinatra...


"The Battery's down" always reminds me of my brother's Dodge Dart the year he was doing his student teaching at a rural school. Many sub-zero mornings the Dart's battery was down.

FYI: Finding Nemo underpants are no longer as newsworthy as Bob the Builder briefs for the 3-5 yr. old male demographic. Spiderman waterproof band-aids are the ultimate!
Nanu nanu, You Nork.

Muddy Waters

Maybe you can remember how frustrating it was to use a watercolor set as a child until you mastered keeping the paints from getting muddy. You rinsed your brush, but didn't know how to get the extra water out, so your paint tray flooded; the blue got in the yellow, the black got in the red, and nothing was going right, right?

Learning to use watercolors is as difficult as learning to cut with scissors. It takes lots of practice. That's what we are working on in Art Class.

If you are going to buy a set of paints for your child, please avoid the inexpensive sets in the grocery store school supply aisle. Those paints are very chalky and your child will have a really tough time getting vibrant clear colors. If possible, get a set of Crayola® So Big® Washable Watercolors. The pans of color are larger than usual, can be replaced, and encourage practice mixing colors. The sets have splendid bright red, yellow, green, and blue. For more advanced students, please get a nice eight-color set of Prang watercolors (it should not have white). Good results build on good experiences with good materials.

A bunny dances into a bar...

A bunny dances into a bar...no, wait. This isn't an old joke. The bunnies are at the barre in ballet class.

The Three Baffled Goats Gruff

What in the hey-ho is a Billy Goat Gruff?? As a kid, the troll made a lot of sense, compared to the goats. Who was Billy? Was he as cute as Bill Z. in Mrs. Erickson's first grade class? Bill Z. had a buzz cut, and big, dark brown eyes.

And what's up with "Gruff"?
Gruff is much more worrisome than troll!
The definitions say "course, thick, large, rough, surly, brusque, and forbidding."

When my sons were little they demanded that I say, "Who's that TRIPPY TROMPING on my bridge?" "It's just a little billy goat was the answer." You tell it that way once, and you are stuck for the next seven years! Children crave repetition. They need grown-ups to always read or tell the story the exact same way. We gain the confidence to change the elements only when our safe grown-up has given us the firm foundation of repetition-on-demand.

Last week my little students gave me a new insight on this tale first recorded in 1845 by Peter Christen Asbjornsen. "What's a belly goat?" "Do the goats dance on the bridge?" The image lurks just off-stage in the absurd theater of my over-active mind. That poor troll! I'm sure the belly-dancing goats have rubies in their belly buttons as they play finger cymbals on the bridge!

It's an image to keep in mind during long rainy days with small children. I am closing my eyes really tight, but the belly goats seem to be singing, "You've Got To Have a Gimmick"!

Off the eye chart & Off The Map

"Please read the smallest line you can see clearly," said the eye doctor's assistant.

"What lines?," I asked.

"Can you see this light flashing?"

"What light?"

I have some prescription eye drops to relieve the inflammation of my lower eyelids, and I've ordered new bifocals with a "tweaked" prescription. The drops are very creepy as the instructions read:

Tilt your head back and with your index finger, pull the lower eyelid away from the eye to form a pouch. Drop the medicine into the pouch and gently close your eyes. Immediately use your finger to apply pressure to the inside corner of the eye and continue to apply pressure for 1-2 minutes.

Just reading the instructions made me queasy. I was still seeing magenta, yellow, and purple spots from when the doctor looked into my eyes. Inside there, I bet he saw the auditorium at Eastridge Elementary School.

In the upper primary grades of the mid-Sixties we studied Our Senses. We watched black and white filmstrips in our classroom about Our Nose and Our Ears, with the teacher's pet advancing the frames, and the highest reading group taking turns reading the script aloud. For Our Eyes we had to go to the school auditorium walking in two single-file lines, the Girls Line and the Boys Line, following the Supreme Line Leader For a Day, who was following the teacher in her shirtwaist dress. We walked with our hands clasped behind our backs so we wouldn't pinch each other. The teacher set up the film projector, and we were zoomed into what amounted to High-Tech Multimedia Learning! Our Eyes was a color film, with a couple of frenetic splices! The more informed about the workings of the human vision system I became, the more queasy I felt. After the film, we all stood up (too quickly), and filed out of the auditorium into the hallway. The single-file lines walked off down the hall behind our teacher, but I leaned against the wall and fainted, sliding down the chilly pale green cement block wall onto the swirled linoleum tiles. No one noticed. I recovered to find myself alone, and made my wavy way to the School Nurse's Office. Please don't mess with this mama's eyes, or make her study optical diagrams!

First time I met my future in-laws, I was wearing those doctor-issued black plastic shades with cardboard earpieces after my first eye exam. I've always sort of blamed my marriage on those cheap sunglasses.

Saw a wonderful movie this afternoon, "Off the Map", with Joan Allen and Sam Elliott. So many of my own themes cropped up in the movie: solitude, New Mexico, depression, letter-writing, sailboats, credit card debt.



Much of the movie is about a child, but it is not a kid movie. I love the artist using a rusted out bus for a studio. For years my New Mexico artist fantasies have involved using an abandoned Sinclair gas station at an isolated road junction for a studio. I've always wanted to be Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain. I've often wanted to returned to La Junta, the meeting of the Rio Grande and Red rivers near Questa, New Mexico.

If you enjoy the movie, you might like to read Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. You might also read And Now Miguel aloud to your children.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

I've got a headache. The theatre next to my classroom was the site of a high school student rock band's performance this afternoon while I was teaching preschoolers about making tints and shades of blue.

I needed a break from the tints and shades of red after three days with Lettice the bunny. The children were quite taken with Polar Bear Night. They had different opinions about whether the polar bear cub really went exploring alone, or if the cub was dreaming. The illustrations were definitely ice cool and dreamy.


With the bass, drums, and vocals of the teen band thrumphing the classroom, we took time out to do do some Chuck Berry and John Travolta imitations, to play air guitar and applaud. Just another weird day at work!

Our health class teachers in the late Sixties-early Seventies told us psychedelics could cause us to suffer flashbacks without warning any moment making us strip off our clothes and jump out of high-rise hotel windows. I don't know about that. I did suffer a flashback of sorts this afternoon to the ninth grade dance at Millard Lefler Junior High in 1969. In those days the school colors were pink and black, due to the school being built in the poodle skirt era. We bore the burden of that "sissy"image at the time we were dealing with our early adolescent gender awareness, and it made us stronger. Remember, this is the same year Johnny Cash recorded "A Boy Named Sue" at San Quentin Prison!

As for the ninth grade dance, I was terrified about the upcoming event, and managed to get a horrible headcold in my anxiety. My nose could have guided Santa. I had a legit excuse to stay home, but wiser forces were conspiring otherwise. I wore an itchy brown wool pantskirt, a white sweater, and "suntan" nylons, Yardley white lip gloss, bronze blush, and "kitty cat eyes" green eyeshadow. Pocketless, I had to fold Kleenex tissues and tuck them into the cuffs of my sweater. Staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I was paralyzed. Mom suggested that if I wore her favorite hot pink mod daisy pin no one would notice my raw red nose. It was a hard sell, but I ended up at the dance in the gym. The lights were low. The folding divider between the Boys Gym and the Girls Gym had been opened. Boys loitered next to the wall of the Boys Gym. Girls stood in huddles near the wall of the Girls Gym. Across the north end of the combined gyms were the food tables, laden with plates of cake donuts. Under the basketball hoops at the south end was the band. The band was playing its version of Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida", which was way longer than seventeen minutes.

If you were to ask me if I would rather experience several hours of back labor or relive the ninth grade dance, I would choose labor. If you asked me if I would rather have impacted wisdom teeth removed or relive the dance, I would choose oral surgery. Would I rather deviate my septum crashing on the saucer sled or go to that dance, I would endure a two-day nosebleed. Would I rather eat cold cooked brussel sprouts or go to the dance? It would be a draw.

As the drum solo dragged on, the ninth grade boys and girls got relaxed enough to meet in the middle of the gyms for a donut food fight under the disco ball. I wanted to go hide in the girls' bathroom, but, horror of horrors, a boy asked me to dance to a Jackson Five song!

Did I mention that I was on the staff of the Millard Lefler Mascot newspaper under the editorial leadership of Beverly Renee Austin, a teacher stuck with the monogram "BRA"? I can still smell the blue stencils and stencil-correction fluid. My sister found an advertising poster I made for the Mascot today in the closet of the room we shared back then. It took a bit of description, but then I remembered the large poster I drew with very Monkees-style lettering, flowers, and a beautiful girl. My sister asked if we would have to have a big fight over who got the hot pink mod daisy pin. She found it in the jewelry box in the drawer in our closet. My memories are way too vivid to need the actual pin, even though it would be back in style this spring. Maybe the health class teachers were right about flashbacks.

"...'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' by Iron Butterfly was the first rock album ever to go platinum. For 140 weeks it stayed at the top of the Billboard charts and was spun millions of times in living rooms and at make-out sessions across the country..."

"Iron Butterfly's 1968 album veritably defined the burgeoning genre of hard-rock, primarily by way of its utterly over-the-top title cut. Reportedly composed by keyboardist/lead singer Doug Ingle in such a stoned-out, numb-tongued condition that he couldn't properly pronounce its intended title--'In the Garden of Eden'--the track seemed almost a parody of every excessive inclination of psychedelia. Melodramatic vocals, repetitive riffing, aimless solos--you name it, this 17-minute behemoth had it. Aided by FM DJs who loved to program it in its entirety so they could take "legitimate" breaks, it became an unavoidable hit--and an anthem of its era. "--Billy Altman

"...With its endless, droning minor-key riff and mumbled vocals, 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' is arguably the most notorious song of the acid rock era..."

If this memory is a monochromatic exercise in the tints and shades of red, I can tell a parallel tale in blue of a high school Fifties dance in the cafeteria with a student band playing a mind-numbing version of "Duke of Earl":

Duke, duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl