Scout Moves

When I was in elementary school in the late 60s, my class took walking field trips to the library down town, and we would sometimes sit down in tiny chairs to watch films, the old clickety kind with the projector. One of those films was The Red Balloon. As many times as I watched that movie, I don't remember a thing about it except for the kid and the big balloon. The balloon was invented by a Portuguese priest in 1709 in an attempt to demonstrate his idea of an airship to the King. He had great plans for his invention, but he died before it was ever fully developed. The early balloons were made of animal bladders but were made from rubber later in the 1800s when Michael Faraday invented them to use in experiments with hydrogen. It seems neither man intended to make toys when they went to work, but I'm glad something amusing was at least a byproduct of their bigger projects. One of my favorite things to do with balloons is make animals. When my kids were young enough to appreci

Today in history (1983), MASH aired its final episode after eleven years of nearly brilliant television programming. I say "nearly" because some of its later episodes lacked the shine that made the show so popular. An estimated 105 million people watched that final episode, and I was one of them, although it was a long shot. I grew up watching MASH at home, although I distinctly remember my mother getting up to change the channel when Hawkeye said "son of a bitch," the first time that phrase was ever said on television. It was a very intense episode involving a Korean prisoner who was being patched up at the unit so she could be questioned and possibly executed, and I thought Hawkeye's expletive was appropriate. Not so for my mother. Despite that one incident, the show was a favorite in our house. When I left home for college, the show was on the list. By that I mean there was a list on the one TV allowed in the dorm building of my very conservative school. If y

Normally on Wednesdays, I play a little something for you on my piano or tenor recorder, but today, I am not well. With the help of webmd.com, I diagnosed myself as having acute bronchitis. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm going to think it is for a week or so and hope this passes. Have you ever been so sick that your skin hurts? I don't know how else to describe the sensation—it's not really pain, but it's not pleasant either. One minute I'm chilled and need a blanket, and the next I'm burning up and want a cold compress for the back of my neck, but my temperature never rises above 99.6˚. So, there will be no musical rendition today. Instead, I will join in Dive's bad-hair display. We'll start with the 9th grade. My sister had cut my hair a few days before picture day. "Trust me," she said. "I know what I'm doing." Clearly, she did not. And I'm not sure, but I think the scarf was a scrap from the curtains

Everyone has a mother, so I'm digging into a new series about the mothers of the famous and the infamous. Let's start with the mother of Genghis Kahn, born Temujin. In the early 1100s, Hoelun was a girl from a tribe in Mongolia. During a raid led by Yesugei of a neighboring hostile tribe, the girl was captured and taken away from the tribe of her new husband. Back at camp, Hoelun was given to Yesugei as a wife. Their first child was Temujin, later to be called Genghis Kahn. Hoelun was a trooper whose sole motivation in life seemed to be self preservation. She went along with the opposing tribe, and she went along with the forced marriage, as if any marriage she would find herself in would have been anything but forced. She gave birth to five children, and she assimilated. If she had failed at any one of those tasks, she most likely would not have survived. When her oldest child was nine or twelve, depending on your source, her husband was poisoned by enemies, and his tribe, pre

Fracas has given our Monday Melee a facelift with new questions. Funny, I was just sitting here wondering what has become of the Melee. I hadn't done it in a while because I had run out of answers for the previous questions, and here we have new ones. The timing couldn't be more perfect. 1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why. I just adore the old trumpet player in town known as Skeets. He's pushing 90, if he hasn't already reached it, and he plays an old crusty trumpet with his left hand. The year he is unable to play Taps at the town Memorial Day service will be a sad one. 2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”. I don't get why people become venomous about their politics. They don't just support their candidate of choice or vote according to their conscience. They get downright nasty about it. 3. The Magnetic: Name something or someone good (or bad) you’re drawn to and you just can’t help it. Tell us if

Further to yesterday's story about George Washington's mother, let's talk about his teeth for a minute. Like the rest of you, I grew up being told his false teeth were made of wood, which explains his stern expression in paintings and on our money. The truth is that while he did have false teeth, they were not made of wood. "The dentures are made from gold, ivory, lead, human and animal teeth (horse and donkey teeth were common components)"—they have been X-rayed and examined, and an article about them, along with a picture of a reproduction of them, can be found here . I'm not sure how important you have to be to have your teeth saved and examined more than 200 years after you have died, but I suppose being the first president of the United States meets the requirements. It's an odd thing for us to do, though. Imagine being the guy who does the X-raying at the National Museum of Dentistry (yes, we have one of those), and at the end of the day your kid ask

to George Washington. I see no point in going on about him, though. We already know he was the first president of the United States. He rejected the notion that he make himself king. He owned slaves. He had bad teeth, but they weren't made of wood. What I find more interesting is the story of his mother, Mary Ball Washington. When my kids were little, I found a book entitled George Washington's Mother by Jean Fritz. It was full of so many unexpected facts, I giggled all the way through it. We read books aloud quite a bit back then, and this one was in the stack of those most requested, along with Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hungry Caterpillar . Mary became a widow in 1743, and she was left alone on a farm with five small children. In those days, women weren't expected to be assertive or free spirited, and Mary was both of those things. If she didn't want to dress for guests, she wouldn't. If she didn't want her young son George to join the navy, he

I was sitting quietly, nibbling a cappuccino-flavored cookie shaped kind of like a flower, when I was overtaken by a sudden image of Salerno Butter Cookies, the delightful cookies of my childhood, the ones with a hole in the middle so you could stick them on your fingers like crispy, baked rings. These cookies keep coming to mind for some reason, so I think I'm meant to buy them. The trouble is, they're so hard to find. They don't have the whiz-bang appeal cookies need to keep them on the grocery store shelves—no chocolate or hidden goo or animal shapes. Kids aren't amused by the simple charm of wearing their cookies like jewelry any more. You really can find anything online, though, and I have found my long-lost Salerno Butter Cookies at Hometown Favorites . They have an entire hard-to-find grocer where I discovered all kinds of forgotten treats. I wonder how old this box of cereal is? It can be yours for $4. No day was complete without a stop at Ben Franklin for a 10¢

When I was fifteen or so, I was taking piano lessons from Mr. Stevesand, and he sold me a book of piano solos published by Carl Fischer, Inc. It was chock full of pieces at varying levels of difficulty, and we spent three years working through it. I loved that book. I still love it. I love it so much I have kept it with me all these years, dragging it around in moving boxes and letting it sit in storage all those years when we didn't have a piano. The cover is gone, the glue in the binding has disintegrated, and the pages are crinkling like it's old or something. The other day Daughter No. 2 said, "Well, it is at least thirty years old, you know." "Shut up!" I said back. "It is not." She's right, though. My old Carl Fischer, Inc. solo book, what's left of it, is more than thirty years old, and it's time to replace it, although I will never dispose of it. I can't find the same edition, but I can find the individual sheet music, so I

Mrs. G has a whole stable of "secret boyfriends," and her collection keeps growing. If she can have so many, I figure I can have just one—one who is living anyway. I think Gregory Peck doesn't count. So, I choose Anthony Bourdain, the scrawny, cynical, foul-mouthed, smoking curmudgeon who cooks. He also writes, travels, and eats. And he's hungry for more. I have a very, very bad cold and have been laid up since Sunday. You know it's bad when you start putting Chapstick on your nose for the tissue burns. Have you ever tried blowing your nose while taking your temperature? I'm not sure it can be done. I have been sniffing and coughing painfully and moaning about the sinus pressure. I have been drinking tea with Kalua and eating clam chowder. My hair is flat on one side because I keep falling asleep on the couch. Through all of this, the Travel Channel has entertained me with a No Reservations marathon. In No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain travels the world, me

Daughter No. 2 at the pan. Part 1: This is where I talk about another "last time" experience. This was the last steel band concert I will attend with one of my own children as part of the band. That didn't occur to me until half way through the performance, and I just had to choke it back. I'm glad I hadn't thought of that sooner because I would have approached it kind of sad. I prefer going to these festive things with a smile. The program was shorter than usual but still wonderful with a good mix of the band's classic tunes and some newer ones taught to them over the weekend by their visiting clinician guy. They played it all very well—old and new. The senior players were each given a four-bar solo during one of the final pieces, so I got to listen to No.2 do her thing. It was her last big concert, too, but I don't think kids look at it quite that way. They are immortal, after all, and have an endless number of years ahead of them to experience all kinds

Soooooo....last night, I am preparing to make some appetizers ahead of time when I discover a voice mail on my cell phone—the visiting drumming clinician is allergic to shell fish, and I have four pounds of mussels and four dozen clams waiting for me at the grocery store. They ordered them especially for me. The drummer is gracious, though, and does not want me to change plans at this stage. He'll be satisfied with the other things on the menu. Well, that's a shame, but we'll all be flexible and move on. I go to the store to pick up my order, a day early because I want to get that errand out of the way. At the meat counter, I give the guy my name and tell him about my shell fish order, and he goes in the back to fetch it. When he comes back, he hoists this net sack of man-eating clams up on the counter, so heavy he practically groans with the weight—cherrystone clams. These are the largest clams I have ever seen in a domestic setting because I am accustomed to littleneck cl

I'm about to launch into a cooking frenzy, a food festival of sorts. Pantasia, my daughter's steel band concert, is this coming Sunday, which means that tomorrow evening is the date of my Pantasia dinner. I host this thing every year, inviting the visiting steel drum clinician, staff from the school music department, which ever daughter is playing in the band, and her friends of choice. I never like to repeat myself with these dinners, which is ironic as I tend to repeat myself quite often when I speak. So, this year, we'll serve some new things: Smoked Salmon mousse with crackers Cheese, Herb, and Sun-dried Tomato Phyllo Rolls Savory Parmesan Shortbread Rounds (recipe below) Tomato and Feta Salad The main course will be Ina Garten's kitchen clam bake with clams, mussels, shrimp, and lobster tails simmered with chorizo sausage and new potatoes. So you can join in on my food fest, here are two recipes to play with. I won't be serving the wasabi dip at the big dinner,

This is serious winter here, for the Ohio Valley anyway. Six inches of snow is nothing to the lake effect snow areas, like near Cleveland and like the town where I grew up just right of Lake Michigan. We had to get a foot of snow for schools to close, and I'm not just saying that like those old people who say they walked two miles in the snow up hill both ways to get to school, and they never complained. My father-in-law used to say that, and he grew up in Brazil. No, I mean it when I say we've got winter. The schools have been closed state-wide, and today is the first day of class this week. First it was too cold, then it was six inches of snow, and then it was another few inches on top of that. Road crews in over a dozen plows and salt trucks keep things pretty clear on the main roads, but they can't always get to the country roads in time for school buses in the morning, so kids have been laying around watching TV and eating crap. This is my back yard and the summer furn

A few of you—OK, maybe only one or two—asked for more harpsichord, so here is a J. S. Bach prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier book, well tempered as in well tuned. There are just a few things worse than a piano or harpsichord out of tune. A French horn out of tune, perhaps, or a saxophone. What's the difference between a lawn mower and a saxophone? You can tune a lawn mower. How do you get two piccolos to play in perfect unison? Shoot one. How can you tell if a violin is out of tune? The bow is moving. How do you get a trombone to sound like a French horn? Stick your hand in the bell and miss every other note. What's the definition of a gentleman? A man who knows how to play an accordion but doesn't. What is the range of a tuba? Twenty yards, if you've got a good arm. Why can't a gorilla play the trumpet? He's too sensitive. Yes, I know these aren't funny. Nobody ever laughs at them except out of pity, but people keep writing them anyway. Let&

Because Daughter No. 2 had a snow day yesterday—well, actually it was a cold day since we didn't get any snow but had plenty of cold—she sat in front of the big-screen TV and watched movies. Afterwards, she discovered a long lost show we had loved in her childhood—Angela Anaconda. There is and has always been a lot of crap in children's television programming. Low-budget shows with bad actors and bad scripts can rot a brain faster than anything, but Angela Anaconda is not one of those mentality-sucking shows. Angela Anaconda is a work of art, a combination of black-and-white photography and animation, a mixture of clever plots and funny lessons learned. Angela Anaconda is an 8-year-old girl in the third grade who goes to school with friends like Gina Lash, Johnny Abatti, Gordy Reinhardt, and Josephine Praline. And she goes to school with her arch enemy, Nanette Manoir. Nanette Manoir is a pretentious snit who pretends to be French, and Angela Anaconda often calls her Nanette Ma

Today is National Inventor's Day, I suppose because it's also Thomas Edison's birthday, and the man had over 1,000 patents in the U.S. alone. I don't know how many things he invented based on necessity or just based on dreaming. I remember that scene in Young Tom Edison with Mickey Rooney—someone needed to have emergency surgery on the dining table of the Edison house, but there wasn't enough light in the room. Young Edison broke into the local general store in order to steal the big mirror that would reflect enough lantern light to brighten up the room. So, I can see why Edison might think a light bulb would be necessary. Imagine if Edison hadn't invented the phonograph. There is no substitute for a live, musical performance, but we have become so conditioned to having our favorite recordings at our finger tips, and there is a massive industry revolving around our ability to record sound. It may not be necessary for sustaining life, but it would certainly be di

I said I wanted to volunteer, didn't I? Well, today I am getting my wish. I'll start at 9:00ish at the food bank filling bags with canned goods and then passing them out to people until around 12:15. I am supposed to stay until 1:00, but I have an appointment to get my hair cut, one I forgot about when I agreed to help out today. I don't think I'll tell them why I'm leaving early. It would look bad. A couple of days ago I got a call from the woman who arranged for meals for sick people, and she signed me up to make dinner for a family this evening. The couple in need at the moment is somewhat elderly, and the wife has broken something. I should know what exactly, but I have forgotten. She fell on the ice recently, and after a visit to the hospital, she is at home but still a bit hobbled. So tonight, I will deliver a salad, pasta with mascarpone , and flourless chocolate cake . All week I have been designing book covers for a non-profit group that provides books to s

Because I don't usually bother to post on weekends outside of November, I missed saying my piece about Groundhog Day. It was last Saturday. I don't know anyone who cares about Groundhog Day—we all know the varmint doesn't really predict the coming of spring. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, then we will have another six weeks of winter, but February 2 is conveniently about six weeks before the first day of spring regardless. I guess we just like to hang on to traditions. We drag around this poor groundhog named Phil on February 2 because the day is halfway between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, a day known as Imbolc. And in Celtic history, it was customary to follow a snake or badger to see if it came out of hiding and saw its shadow. Candlemas, a Christian feast day, falls on the same day, so some people think the present Groundhog Day is a remnant of that—"If Candlemas be bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year."—although I don

Today is Husband's birthday. He will be in school all day and won't get home until evening, so we'll wait for the weekend when Daughter No. 1 comes back for a visit, and then we'll celebrate. It's also the birthday of Aaron Burr, vice president to Thomas Jefferson and offended citizen who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. And today is the birthday of Babe Ruth, Ronald Reagan, Thurl Ravenscroft who sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rip Torn, Tom Brokaw, Fabian, Bob Marley, Natalie Cole, and Axl Rose. Today is the anniversary of the death of Vince Guaraldi, 1976. But let's keep things light and have a song.

It's time once again for "What I Found in the Music Cabinet." When I was in the fifth grade, I was the teacher's pet. Mr. Shumway always chose me for special jobs like being featured in an Encyclopedia Brittanica filmstrip and passing out papers to the poor slobs sitting at their desks. Even though I broke my right arm that year and had to do my school work with my left hand for six weeks, I was a pretty good student. Those are the things I remember from that year, that and the arm slings my mother sewed to match all of my dresses. I loved this dress here, and I'm pretty sure I loved the sling that went with it. Here is a writing assignment from that year, one Mr. Shumway thought was "very clever!" I'm not so sure. My Friend the A Once upon a time I was learning the alphabet. I had to take it home so I would learn them by the next day. It was 8:00 p.m. I was in my room studying, when there it was. The letter A, I think, popped out of my page. "

I worked my first shift at the food bank last Friday—sort of a half-day affair, and I am so glad I signed up for this. It's easy and difficult, dull and interesting—it's what you make of it. I arrived an hour early at the old Salvation Army building and went down to the basement where the food bank is operating even though it isn't a Salvation Army program. There were thirteen volunteers, and we were handed paper grocery sacks and a list of food to put in them—two cans of soup, one can of tuna, two cans of fruit, one box of macaroni and cheese, two cans of vegetables, and a can of baked beans. I take pride in knowing I didn't select a single can of beets for the bags I filled. Separate "family" bags were filled with peanut butter and jelly, pasta, pasta sauce, Jello, and a couple of items from the section of rice and instant potatoes. Then we were each assigned a station and offered coffee while we waited for the place to open. Some people were to pass out the

...to Clark Gable Pretty, isn't he? He was born in 1901 in Cadiz, which is a little town not too far from Small Town. It's the kind of place that if you're driving down the interstate and see the exit for Cadiz, you only stop if you really, really have to go to the bathroom, and the next exit isn't for miles. The Clark Gable Foundation in Cadiz is hosting what they are calling a "surprise" birthday party for Clark. I'll say it's a surprise. Everybody knows about Clark Gable and his movies and his ways with women (and allegedly men) and "Frankly, my dear" and all that. So, I won't bother talking about those things. Instead, I'll talk about how young Clark learned to play the mellophone, a kind of marching French horn, and was so good at it he was invited to play in the Hopedale Brass Band in Hopedale, Ohio. He was the youngest member of this little community band, and if his father hadn't moved him to Akron, he would have played fo