Sunrise House Bali

On the CBS Sunday morning show, Sunrise House looked fabulous. But the program didn't do it justice. To say this structure is breathtaking is indeed an understatement. Made entirely of bamboo. by hand, it overlooks the Ayung river which can be heard rushing by all day and all night. The house has no windows and all four levels open out to the jungle. Birds and butterflies fly in and out as we sit drinking our coffee. The buzz of insects and croaking of frogs provide a constant chorus. 

Ladies come and go: they clean, they bring fruit, they brought breakfast. We move from level to level

agape.

Off to Flores

uVi

Back onto Garuda Air today to fly from Bali to Flores.

Sights out the window were amazing.

The Indonesian archipelago just goes on and on. 13500 islands is the number you read, but they've never all been officially counted. 

Fun ride - hated to get off because the window viewing is so great. It's incredibly hot here in LBJ. instant sweat from head to toe. There isn't a bit of breeze; they're in the doldrums. Personally never experienced this kind of heat/still air combination before. No wonder everyone's out in boats or diving which are the two principal things you do here. 

A new airport has just opened and there's construction all over the town - restaurants, hotels, shops. No recession woes here. 

We noted that once again, we're the oldest people walking around or rather stumbling around. The sidewalks are autrocious - just as bad as in Bali. They start for a few feet and then abruptly end and drop off. You have to watch every step. In the dark, after dinner, we walked back to the villa, lighting our way with little flash lights. Quite a change from the Intercontinental in Bali. 

View deck of the villa where we have a room for the night. 

A great place to sit and enjoy the view.

A gorgeous sunset. 

Elevator Encounter Dubai

The elevator doors opened and a young girl started to come out. She bit her lip, looking past us to the concierge desk. After a second she sighed and with a shrug, stepped back in; we got on and punched M for main floor. 

The curvy young girl was dressed in a satin strapless dress and extremely high heels. She had long thick black hair, beautifully shiny. Her artificial eye lashes, about 1/4 inch thick, enhanced her huge brown eyes. On her arms, constellations of stars started at her wrists and exploded up her arms. Little individual stars, small and mostly blue appeared on one shoulder, sprinkled across her chest and continued down her back. They were quite beautiful.  Her little bag was beaded and as she opened and closed it I could see her Marlborough cigarettes. The whole package - girl, make-up, last night's dress, circumstances - spelled Hooker, loud and clear.

On floor 4 an older couple stepped in, about our age. They glanced at her and looked at the floor. So did she.

Third floor. The doors opened and three Japanese piled in, chattering away about cell phone cost, laughing and wholly engaged in each other. They barely noticed the rest of us. The girl had to step back to make room for them.  About an inch away from me now, I could further examine and appreciate the artful spray of stars scattered across her shoulder bones and the back of her shoulders. Her tattoos were unlike the schlocky stuff you see around Fallbrook. These were artistry and so striking I'll remember them long after my impression of the girl herself willl have vanished. 

Second floor. An Asian man dressed in a suit and pulling his suitcase, stepped in, glancing around at us before he assumed elevator position - facing the doors and looking up at the floor numbers flashing by.

Main floor. The hooker girl looked up and chewing her lip, walked out, oozing confusion. We exited behind her and watched her walk away teetering on the spike heels, hair swaying, stars twinkling - out the front door and into the bright sunlight. 

And as we watched her, why wouldn't this song brain-worm me leaving a slimy trail of

irony in it's wake. 

I enjoy being a Girl

I'm a girl, and by me that's only great!
I am proud that my silhouette is curvy,
That I walk with a sweet and girlish gait
With my hips kind of swivelly and swervy.

I adore being dressed in something frilly
When my date comes to get me at my place.
Out I go with my Joe or John or Billy,
Like a filly who is ready for the race!

When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do,
I enjoy being a girl!

When men say I'm cute and funny
And my teeth aren't teeth, but pearl,
I just lap it up like honey
I enjoy being a girl!

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

I'm strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who'll enjoy being a guy having a girl... like... me.

When men say I'm sweet as candy
As around in a dance we whirl,
It goes to my head like brandy,
I enjoy being a girl!

When someone with eyes that smoulder
Says he loves ev'ry silken curl
That falls on my iv'ry shoulder,
I enjoy being a girl!

When I hear the compliment'ry whistle
That greets my bikini by the sea,
I turn and I glower and I bristle,
But I happy to know the whistle's meant for me!

I'm strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who'll enjoy being a guy having a girl... like... me.

DubaiDino

In Dubai, everything's new! Except for a few things. Yesterday at the mall, we were surprised to stumble onto DubaiDino, a long-necked whip-tailed sauropod, 155 million years old. In a dramatic display under the souk dome, Ampicolelias brontodiplodocus holds it's tiny head 80 feet in the air balanced by the huge 25 foot long tail at it's back, slightly curled and looking as dangerous and ominous as it was in real life. Discovered at the Dana Quarry in Wyoming in 2008, it's 90% real; no comparable exhibit exists with as many complete bones. 

I couldn't get a decent photo of the huge creature; this one I lifted from the web site. 

Two dinosaur "experts" are on hand at the exhibit to answer questions. They explained that the dinosaur exhibit was air-freighted from the US to the Souk in The Dubai Mall. I read on-line that the mall developers paid several million dollars for the skeleton. We learned the creature was as heavy as five elephants and was a vegetarian using it's long neck to reach tree tops for food. It gulped down whole branches and leaves without chewing. The head is really small and I find some of the info a bit hard to swallow. Whole branches? Even with an unhinged jaw - how did it work? And what kind of muscular spasms could it muster up to get all that vegetation down to the gut? I'm betting there were days when the Ampicolelias could've used tums and an alka seltzer or two. The exhibit states that the tiny brain didn't require much blood; the heart pumped blood up there once every ten minutes. No wonder they're extinct. 

Just behind the dinosaur is the Level Shoe district of the mall. Thousands, no kidding, thousands of shoes are displayed. Every notable shoe designer you can think of has a store or kiosk. You can read about it here.

http://www.levelshoedistrict.com

Glittery boots rotate on display pads. It boggles the mind to pass from a 155 million year old skeleton display into all the amazingly expensive footwear. The Level district includes a personal consultant who will help you select just the right shoes for an occasion; a concierge who'll help you "seamlessly combine shopping and life style"; a foot care specialist, world reknowned for fancy pedicures using emu oil products; a cobbler who'll repair anything and make custom slippers; and something described as culinary "relief" in the Vogue cafe. Conde Nast has a line of restaurants. Who knew? This one offers breakfast through dinner surrounded by iconic photography from the magazine. If you're into "shoe frenzies" or "shoe fantasies", both terms used in the marketing material, then the Level Shoe district is for you. Did some genius marketing person figure out that the ladies in abaya shuffling by in Adidas are more inclined to buy shoes or have a pedicure after viewing dinosaurs???

The whole shoe thing was beyond us. And apparently beyond others as well. While the dinosaur exhibit was full of people, the dinosaur viewers appeared to be able to restrain themselves from the shoes. We saw one or two women rushing past the stores and a couple of rubber-neckers just like us. No sound of cash registers ringing. It was downright funereal in there. 

Turning back to the Dino, we wondered who the heck owns dinosaur bones dug up in the U.S.  Turns out they belong to the owner of the land where they're found and can be disposed of as the owner wishes. Sort of. It's complicated and most finds are donated to museums or to universities for further study. On line I found a couple of fairly complete dinosaur skeletons for .5 - 1 million dollars. If you've got money and are so inclined, you can find them for sale. The idea of the dinosaur in the mall bothered me at first, but in the final analysis, it's properly preserved and I guess available for scholarly research. At the very least, it's thought provoking and might pique the curiosity of the countless thousands of people who visit the mall but might never visit a natural history museum where you'd expect to find this display. 

A day at the mall

Dopey from a combination of sleep deprivation and jet lag, we staggered around the Dubai Mall admiriing the window decorations and struggling to keep from dropping in our tracks.

Souvenir shop...oh the keychains and postcards and stuffed animals and Tshirts. I think R did fall asleep leaning up against this mountain of stuffed camels. 

Divers plunging down fountain wall. 

Nifty coffee press.

Cheese in Eataly.

Gear head in Bloomingdale's window. Flat tattoos are out. Three dimensional stick on stuff is in. 

Versace tableware.

Shoe tree.Reflects in the ceiling mirror.

Bloomingdales looking festive...too bad about the "m". Bloon Ingdales - could be a new store altogether. 

Don't know what happened here...triple exposure jangle. Like our heads.

Emirates First Class to Dubai

16 hours is a long time in a tube, even in first class, even Emirates first class which was a splendid experience. The lounge at the new Terminal in LA looks out over all the snazzy expensive branded merchandise. A column almost in the middle is covered with ever changing video images. Very interesting to watch. The same images show up on columns, panels and towers all over the terminal as you walk to your gate. 

We could never afford these plane tickets...we got them with frequent flyer mileage on Alaska Airlines. It was our once in a lifetime splurge.

They showed us to our suites after boarding and ran through operation of all the bells and whistles. Each suite has a wide screen TV and a Ipad thingie to control everything with. There is a vast, vast choice of entertainment. They load you up with goodies. First, the soft pyjamas. All 8 first class passengers went into the bathrooms and changed into these things. You have a little closet adjacent to your suite for your clothing. For the rest of our flight, we looked like inmates from some luxury recovery hospital. We were given the usual amenities bags filled with Bulgari products; the men's bag is leather and considerably more substantial than the ladies fabric bag. Just saying. Each suite has a mini bar and a little desk/make-up area. There's no particular meal service. You can have anything you want anytime.

Video tower from the first class lounge.

Settling into the suite.

Minibar

Selecting from the date box.

Video tower, changes constantly.

My wide screen TV

In my pyjamas in the shower/bathroom. There are two of these in first class. 

Bathrooms loaded with amenites.

You can have a five minute shower. 

Richard across from me. There's a divider you can pull up if the person across is a stranger and not a tall, dark, handsome stranger. You pull the doors shut for privacy while you sleep. 

I watched two movies and slept 6 hours. Richard slept 8 hours. There's a bar at the back of the business section where you can hang out and drink and visit. The first class section has a tiny bar area squeezed between the showers. Nobody used it even though it was beautifully fitted out with champagne, little snack plates etc. Maybe once you're half drunk it would be more attractive although there's a flight of stairs dangerously close you could fall down.

All in all, an excellent experience. 

Sepia Saturday 257: "We aim to stay number 1 in a number 2 business!" - Ed Lowe

The prompt this week...includes sitting on stairs, pets, kids, lassoes. 

1916, Alberta, Canada

I have a few photos of family members sitting on the stairs. 

1946. Letellier, Manitoba, Canada. My dad, grandfather, me, cousin Maurice

1947. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Me and my cat.

As I looked at this picture of Sandy and me, I realized that 1947 was a huge year for cat owners everywhere. Little did we know what was to come........

Bloomberg released a list this past week of disruptive inventions which have changed our lives. Included on the list side by side with cell phone technology and the internet, was Kitty Litter. Sandy, my cat, looks pretty content in this photo but as I recall she had to go outside in the snow and cold to pee. We had a stinky sand box in the basement Sandy would use in a pinch and which everyone hated scooping out and changing. 1947, the year of this photo, everything changed - for cats and for cat owners. With an odor-free litter box in the house, cats (sadly Sandy didn't live long enough to enjoy the new technology) could stay indoors and live compatibly with their owners. The biggest barrier to cat ownership was broken down for good. 

 Here's the story from Bloomberg Business Week, Dec. 4th, 2014. 

1954 Tidy Cat, the first mass-produced brand of kitty litter, arrives in supermarkets.

Ed Lowe was working at his father’s delivery business in southern Michigan when he had a brilliant idea: take some fuller’s earth (a type of clay) and sell it to local farmers for chickens to nest. He called it Chicken Litter.

It was 1947. The farmers weren’t interested—which is why Lowe had a big pile of it when a local woman came by. She’d brought her cat in from the January cold and needed some sand for her cat box. On an impulse, Lowe offered her some fuller’s earth instead.

The stuff turned out to absorb the ammonia smell of cat pee. The woman soon came back for more. So did her friends. After enough requests, Lowe put some fuller’s earth in bags, wrote KITTY LITTER on them, and dropped them off at a hardware store. The product sold, and it sold in supermarkets and pet stores. The market grew ever outward, from southern Michigan to the world.

The introduction of Kitty Litter meant that after millennia of scratching at the door cats could come indoors and stay there. They had long been visitors in American homes; now they were residents. In some ways it has been a hostile takeover: There are millions more cats than dogs in the U.S. This also means that Lowe is the indirect father of countless Internet cat memes. Anyone who sells recreational laser pointers, fuzzy mice, scratching posts, cat furniture, or electric-fountain cat water dishes should thank him, too.

Competitors appeared—after all, it was dirt in a bag—but Lowe kept expanding the business, struggling at first to break out of his Michigan market, ultimately building a vertically integrated mining, distribution, and marketing concern. The 1954 launch of Tidy Cat, specifically for supermarkets, meant the cat waste category belonged to him. “We aim to stay No. 1,” he said, “in a No. 2 business.”

A research facility was built in Michigan. Dozens of cats were housed there. They scampered, played, and—given their ultimate responsibilities—probably ate rather well. Lab-coated materials scientists watched them. Absorbency and granularity had to be understood. Alternate materials such as paper were considered. A cadre of sniff-testers periodically came to the facility to test the product’s quality and report on its effectiveness. Probably not the greatest job.

The beating heart of it all was Lowe. He looked like Kenny Rogers (they were friends) and had a manic entrepreneurial energy. He remembered your name if you worked for him and walked the floors of his factories and mines. “He called me one time,” says Michael McCuistion, who worked with Lowe and now works at Lowe’s foundation. “It was in the middle of the night. He found a ranch in Florida that he wanted to buy.” Lowe sent a Learjet for McCuistion so he could look at the property and weigh in.

Real estate was a special interest, and Lowe amassed about 3,000 acres in Michigan. But he never really made it past the cat business. An old-timey town with amusements failed, as did a line of pet stores and an experiment selling packaged firewood. He knew his own tendencies toward short attention and incredible enthusiasm and told his employees to keep him in line. They did, striking a deal: He could plow a steady percentage of revenue into new business as long as the bulk went back into the litter box. He agreed.

He left behind 93 short stories and 10 times as many poems, along with a play. In 1990, after more than 40 years in litter, Lowe sold the company to a group of investors for $200 million plus stock. According to McCuistion, it was an anguished decision. Lowe had been estranged from his family, distanced from the product he invented and the company he created, now called Golden Cat. In his last years he put his energy into a foundation dedicated to supporting “second-stage” entrepreneurs—chief executive officers who have found initial success with a handful of employees but face the challenges of large-scale growth. He felt that his greatest struggle was taking Kitty Litter and Tidy Cat national.

Lowe died in 1995. His family put aside differences and gathered around him as he passed. Golden Cat was absorbed by Ralston Purina in 1995. Today the Edward Lowe Foundation sprawls across thousands of acres of southern Michigan. On the grounds are many endangered species of plants and animals: The cerulean warbler sings there, the eastern box turtle swims, and the cut-leaved water parsnip grows. But there are no cats.

Do more than scratch the surface - climb the stairs over to Sepia Saturday and read other stories
about pets, sitting on the stoop and lassoes to name a few. 

Dinner with a Dragon

I'm sure Phil Bronstein has dined out for years on his story about being attacked by a Komodo Dragon at the Los Angeles Zoo. Failing that, he can always resort to describing his married life to Sharon Stone which sounds remarkably similar.

I can hear the zoo keeper suggesting, "It's a good idea to remove those white shoes and socks before we enter the Komodo enclosure. Komodo's snack on white rats...better safe than sorry."

And I was worried about fleas on the beach!!!

Probably nobody guessed that feet could be as white as Phil's were. Then he was the editor of the San Francisco Examiner and one would surmise he spent most of his days behind a desk with very little time to tan his tootsies. Phil walked into the enclosure and the Komodo promptly attacked him. He was hurt so badly he required surgery to reconnect tendons. I can imagine the dragon was probably a little embarassed once he realized a fancy schmancy editor was attached to his would-be snack.

Phil comported himself bravely and actually pried open the Komodo's jaws and released himself.

We're visiting Komodo Island next week and learning from Phil's experience we know to stay out of striking distance from one of these creatures, the largest lizards on earth. They look lethargic and slow moving but they can be lightening fast and deadly. 

Snacking is not a natural part of the komodo diet. The creature's eating routine is so gross I can assure you if you're ever invited to dine with a dragon, say NO, NO, No.

How bad is it? Really bad.

They eat about twelve times a year, so it's pretty unlikely you'll get an invitation anyway. A whole goat or a deer is the preferred bill of fare in the natural habitat on Komodo Island but the dragon doesn't have sufficient tooth or tearing power to tear a goat into manageable pieces. Instead, it attempts to swallow the whole goat and weak peristalsis in the throat means the goat frequently gets stuck part way down. So, when a dragon is sitting there with 2/3rd's of a goat sticking out of it's mouth, what does it do? Why it runs up against a tree of course and tries to slam the goat down the gullet. If one run doesn't do it, it continues to try two or three times or until the tree is knocked down. The polite dinner guest will avoid drawing attention to this bizarre behavior and keep on eating, eyes down.

You'd think suffocation would be a danger from this kind of eating, but the dragon has a small tube under the tongue that connects to the lungs and allows it to continue to breathe despite the ruckus.

After eating up to 80% of it's body weight it drags itself to a sunny location to speed digestion. Sounds like my family after Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm not even going to mention the bloody red saliva dripping from the Komodo mouth - or the gastric pellet it regurgitates "covered in malodorous mucous (Wiki)", a mass of bones, hair and horns. After it coughs up one of these monstrous hair balls it rubs it's face in the dirt attempting to get away from it's own horrible smell. 

Nor will I mention the Dragon breath - a mild description of the horrible emanations from a Komodo mouth.

Nor will I mention that in a pinch, the Dragon digs up human corpses from shallow graves. Hey, any port in a storm!! It's not like they can go to In-N-Out once a month if there's a lean month with no deer or goat on the menu. Villagers on Komodo have learned to bury their dead in deep graves with stones piled on top.

We're hoping our timing for the Komodo visit ends up being between meals.

Besides the dragons which are dwindling in numbers, there's a population of over two thousand people living on the island: the people are descendants of former convicts who were exiled to the island. They recognize five genders: men, women, Calalai or "false men" (who sound like gay women), Calabai or "false women" (who sound from the description like gay men) and Bissu who are "gender transcendent", whatever that means. Complicated.

Digging up family history

Although I'm pretty well finished with planting things, I'm still digging - but now I'm digging for facts about my family.

While I was at work on the landscaping, I crouched over each patch of ground, picking out the stones and construction rubble and thought of my relatives in Canada who cleared the land for their farm in the province of Ontario during the early 1800's. They've been on my mind lately as I continue to dig but not in the DG anymore. Now I'm hunting for information about their history.

They felled the trees, burned the stumps and used a horse to pull a crude plow through the virgin land. The men worked the horses and used axes while the women and kids followed behind picking up rocks and stones, piling them into berms. They worked like dogs but they were building a future and grateful for the opportunity. When the land was cleared, the farms they created sound like beautiful places. My Aunt Alvina, long deceased but fortunately a memoirist, writes of the family farm where she was born in 1901.

"The area they chose was comprised of 350 acres of sandy loam, situated in a rather scenic area amid gently rolling hills - a large meadow through which ran a fairly large creek which brought endless hours of enjoyment for the boys, who loved to go fish and wade in the clear sparkling water, besides catching a good supply of trout. The clear water also was a source of pleasure as one could readily see the fish darting to and fro among the rocks and weeds. It was so inviting on a warm day, we would go wading and splashing with our bare feet with rolled up skirts and pants. It was fun! Beyond the creek was the greater part of the meadow and beyond that was quite a high hill which was called "the Mountain".  It was covered by a variety of trees-balsam, cedar, poplar and the good old Canada maple usually so colorful in the autumn which produced a sap for the lovely maple syrup for which Ontario is noted."

Here's a section I love:


"Many times during the winter, Clem, Hilda and perhaps George would pile into the sleigh or cutter on a cold, frosty moonlit night, fortified by hot bricks at their feet and covered with buffalo robes, off to a dance they'd go. This was usually the only diversion they had and was the topic of conversations for weeks before and after the event. When Sunday came around and also news of the party - the priest usually gave the people a 'You're going to Hell sermon', however that didn't stop them, for off they went when the next party popped up."

Memories of farm life were tender ones for my aunts and uncles, city slickers by the time I came along. They left the farm around 1907 or 1908 but I believe they still and always thought of themselves as farmers.

As a kid, on September Sundays, we'd pile into a couple of cars and repair to the countryside to Bob's farm where we played farmer, digging up potatoes and shtooking wheat. Bob, a family friend, was eternally an old man in my memory - a bachelor farmer dressed in dirty overalls. He had a goiter problem, a huge Adam's Apple and bulging eyes. He was skinny and the few teeth he had were yellowed from his continual smoking. There was always a cigarette dangling from his fingers. He spoke very slowly and deliberately. Despite his gruff appearance he seemed to like kids and he usually had a surprise of some kind ready for us on visiting days. Riding on a cow's back was one such surprise.  He'd pick us up and settle us on the cows back and then pile up some fresh cut grass in front of the animal so that it would stay in one spot. The elevation seemed very lofty to me and quite exciting. As I grew older I can remember reading on the animals back - one of the more curious ways I've read a book.

Digging potatoes on Bob's farm

During one of my university years, I had a garden on Bob's property. He'd turned the earth for me and I came out in the spring, set the rows with my hoe and sowed the seeds. My father probably forced me to do this as part of the payback for tuition...I was too self-absorbed to think about charity and he was always harnessing me (to the plow, so to speak) and encouraging work for the joy of it. Bob did all the really hard labor in advance and I got the good part - planting yellow wax beans, beets, rhubarb, potatoes, peas and onions as soon as the frost danger was over. Harvest time yielded bushels and bushels of vegetables which we donated to an orphanage. My boyfriend's little black Austin convertible was loaded up to the gun wales. I rode in the back using my body to keep the veggies from blowing out as we crept our way for the few miles to the orphanage. We made several trips a day on Saturdays until the plants were picked bare and the nights were getting frosty.

Old Bob came to my wedding. It was the last time I saw him. The reception was held at a restaurant in the airport presaging how my life was going to unfold. Bob and my three maiden aunts (all in their sixties at the time) got blotto drinking Manhattans in the Fly-Away bar (not the actual name) before the wedding. None of them really drank much and they ordered Manhattans because they'd heard of the drink. What happened afterwards I shudder to think. My father reported that they all suffered mightily from hangovers. Fortunately, the aunts lived right next door to the Catholic Church; if "mourning after" confession was necessary, they didn't have far to go.

Cooties and the uncontrollable urge to yell "Yack-A-Boo!!"

At our Thanksgiving table, the conversation turned to "poux".  How - I have no idea. Our subjects range far and wide, the participants hailing from various parts of the world and spanning 75 years from youngest to oldest. "Poux", a french word, translates to lice in English. Google translations are a great help during these rapid fire multi-lingual exchanges. Zuzu informed us that in her youth one could "get" poux in the movie theatres in Syria. If you had enough money you could sit in the balcony where it was less likely you'd be infected. Mac, from the Philippines, chimed in telling us that during his boyhood the movies cost one peso for the main floor, the lice free zone, or two pesos for the balcony where you were less likely to pick up the dreaded little parasites.

I recalled my own childhood school days.

"Mavis has cooties!", we would shout at poor Mavis who had the misfortune to live in a slightly dilapidated home. Mavis also wore thick glasses and in my memory had a slightly off-kilter affect which made her even more of a target. She may have been dsylexic or just shy. I remember her very soft voice and her timid demeanor. We pounced on her; she was the weakest in the herd.

If your family was poor or your Dad was a drunk or there was no Dad in the house, or you were different in any perceptible way, you would probably be picked on at school. There was no anonymity in those days. Every house in the neighborhood and its occupants was well known to all the other kids at school.  Furthermore there was no escape during the whole span of your school days. As we were all more or less stuck with each other through elementary, junior high and high school, the labels you got at the very beginning stuck with you until you left school or went to university or your family moved to someplace where you could finally blend in. I was a skinny minnie and sometimes a teacher's pet, sometimes not. One of my junior high school teachers thought I would end up in jail. Funny I remember that remark very vividly and not the other more positive speculation about my future. Every single one of us had a cross to bear. 

Sometimes when I hear people lament the fact that classrooms are too big and schools are impersonal I remember those days of no escape. I'm sure Mavis would have loved a bigger classroom and a little bit of distance from her tormenters.

As one always does these days, I looked up cooties on Wiki to see what they had to say. The first definition is rather mild and playful and of all things, imaginary. Not where I lived....cooties were real.

The Brits have the "dreaded Lurgi" as a kind of fun ailment and they lump it together with cooties. We had one of those mysterious illnesses in our family. On Sundays, before mass, my father used to come down with HIPOTICUTUS-IN-THE-HUDINACAPAP. Usually the miasma lifted about noon, when all church services were over and the cocktail hour was in shooting distance.



From Wiki:

Cooties is a fictional childhood disease used in the United States of America, Canada, and Australia as a rejection term and an infection tag game (such as Humans vs. Zombies). It is similar to the British dreaded lurgi, and to terms used in the Nordic countries, in Italy, and in New Zealand.^[1] A child is said to "catch" cooties through close contact of an "infected" person or from a person of the opposite sex of the same age. Often the "infected" person is someone who is perceived as "different", such as being of the opposite sex, disabled or shy, or who has peculiar mannerisms.^[2] Usually the phrase is used on girls by boys, as in "now you've got girl cooties". The phrase is most commonly used by children aged 4–10; however, it may be used by children older than 10 in a cruel, sarcastic or playful way.^[3]

The word is thought to originate from the Austronesian term "kutu", meaning a parasitic biting insect. The earliest recorded uses of the term in English are by British soldiers during the First World War to refer to lice; the term was brought to America in the 1950s by military personnel coming back from service alongside the British in the South Pacific.^[4] As with the British "dreaded lurgi", the cooties game developed during the early 1950s polio epidemic, and became associated with dirt and contagion.^[1][5]

Yackaboo...I love this stamp!

The Dreaded Lurgy

Several of the words and phrases invented for the Goon Show entered common usage, the most famous being the word lurgi. In the episode "Lurgi Strikes Britain", Spike Milligan introduced the fictional malady of Lurgi, (sometimes spelled Lurgy) which has survived into modern usage to mean any miscellaneous or non-specific illness. The symptoms of Lurgi included the uncontrolable urge to cry 'Yack-a-boo,' though even during the episode the ailment proved to be an extortionate attempt to sell brass band musical instruments. Milligan was later to make up his own definition in Treasure Island According to Spike Milligan, where Jim Hawkins' mother describes it as "like brown spots of shit on the liver".

PyschoBilly

Another birthday, another year come and gone. Everything goes too fast for me now. Should I be smoking pot?

Having procrastinated for long enough, I got a hair color and cut today. As I sat waiting for the brown color to seep into my salt and pepper roots, a young guy about twenty hopped into the chair next to me and asked George, the hair dresser for a psychobilly cut. "What??? said George. "You knows, like blahblah blah (I couldn't hear the name) - you know, like the music!" said the kid. George shrugging his shoulders asked the kid to describe the cut: shaved at the sides, feathery at the rear, slicked back from the face with a kind of pompadour (but not too much pompadour) at the front. The kid had a beautiful head of hair with black soft curls hanging a little below his ears. In my opinion, it was perfect as it was. 

George, on the exterior, does not look like a hip kind of guy. While the kid was describing the cut, George, rolling his eyes, was reciting all the AKA's this hair cut has sported over the years, starting with the "Elvis Presley". As he prepared to cut, he prowled around the kid like a lion assessing his prey. He looked from this angle, then another angle. Finally he picked up his scissors, did a few preliminary snips, to warm up I guess, and began cutting. The black locks piled up on the floor and the kid's classic profile began to show. Then the shaving started. George was judicious - a bit here, a bit there. Finally he did the slick-back of the pompadour and the kid started smiling. George had nailed it. I can't say I liked the style but the kid looked more eye-catching when he left. It's the kind of hair cut you notice.

While I'd been watching, the salon had filled. George's fellow stylist was working fast, tattoos flashing on the lower part of her arms and on her back; something floral, navy blue and green was curling around her neck. Bright and bubbly, she too was shaving and snipping at another twenty year old. The people waiting were all young.

I tried to focus on the greasy, tattered People magazine in my lap but I felt like a dinosaur at a grey hound race.  

Eventually a timer dinged somewhere and the spell was broken. My greyish hair had turned brown and George gave me the standard little old lady bob/cut. Fast on his feet he managed to switch back three generations of hair styling from psychobilly to little-old-lady in one smooth swivel.

Next time I'm signing up for a couple of red streaks at the front to fight back the dowdiness.

Sepia Saturday 253: Three Men in a Boat

The prompt this week reminded me of the famous book, "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome. Talk about standing the test of time, it has never been out of print since it was first published in 1889! I first read it 50 years ago and have read it at least 10 times since then and it never ceases to delight me. It was originally intended as a travelogue describing the trip from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford actually traveled by Jerome, his two friends and a dog. 

Fans of Jerome have used "Three Men in a Boat" to recreate the trip, since the route remains virtually unchanged and many of the pubs and inns named in the book are still open. 

Following is the famous "Plaster of Paris Trout" story from chapter 17. The entire book can be read for free at the Gutenburg project which is at Three Men in a Boat - Gutenberg. You can read it online, download it as a PDF or put in on your Kindle. 

George and I—I don’t know what had become of Harris; he had gone out and had a shave, early in the afternoon, and had then come back and spent full forty minutes in pipeclaying his shoes, we had not seen him since—George and I, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went for a walk to Wallingford on the second evening, and, coming home, we called in at a little river-side inn, for a rest, and other things.

We went into the parlour and sat down.  There was an old fellow there, smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began chatting.

He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely.

After that it came out, somehow or other, that we were strangers in the neighbourhood, and that we were going away the next morning.

Then a pause ensued in the conversation, during which our eyes wandered round the room.  They finally rested upon a dusty old glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece, and containing a trout.  It rather fascinated me, that trout; it was such a monstrous fish.  In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a cod.

“Ah!” said the old gentleman, following the direction of my gaze, “fine fellow that, ain’t he?”

“Quite uncommon,” I murmured; and George asked the old man how much he thought it weighed.

“Eighteen pounds six ounces,” said our friend, rising and taking down his coat.  “Yes,” he continued, “it wur sixteen year ago, come the third o’ next month, that I landed him.  I caught him just below the bridge with a minnow.  They told me he wur in the river, and I said I’d have him, and so I did.  You don’t see many fish that size about here now, I’m thinking.  Good-night, gentlemen, good-night.”

And out he went, and left us alone.

We could not take our eyes off the fish after that.  It really was a remarkably fine fish.  We were still looking at it, when the local carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, came to the door of the room with a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish.

“Good-sized trout, that,” said George, turning round to him.

“Ah! you may well say that, sir,” replied the man; and then, after a pull at his beer, he added, “Maybe you wasn’t here, sir, when that fish was caught?”

“No,” we told him.  We were strangers in the neighbourhood.

“Ah!” said the carrier, “then, of course, how should you?  It was nearly five years ago that I caught that trout.”

“Oh! was it you who caught it, then?” said I.

“Yes, sir,” replied the genial old fellow.  “I caught him just below the lock—leastways, what was the lock then—one Friday afternoon; and the remarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a fly.  I’d gone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn’t quite take me aback.  Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound.  Good-night, gentlemen, good-night.”

Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and described how he had caught it early one morning, with bleak; and then he left, and a stolid, solemn-looking, middle-aged individual came in, and sat down over by the window.

None of us spoke for a while; but, at length, George turned to the new comer, and said:

“I beg your pardon, I hope you will forgive the liberty that we—perfect strangers in the neighbourhood—are taking, but my friend here and myself would be so much obliged if you would tell us how you caught that trout up there.”

“Why, who told you I caught that trout!” was the surprised query.

We said that nobody had told us so, but somehow or other we felt instinctively that it was he who had done it.

“Well, it’s a most remarkable thing—most remarkable,” answered the stolid stranger, laughing; “because, as a matter of fact, you are quite right.  I did catch it.  But fancy your guessing it like that.  Dear me, it’s really a most remarkable thing.”

And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half an hour to land it, and how it had broken his rod.  He said he had weighed it carefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale at thirty-four pounds.

He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord came in to us.  We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout, and he was immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.

“Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Maunders all telling you that they had caught it.  Ha! ha! ha!  Well, that is good,” said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily.  “Yes, they are the sort to give it me, to put up in my parlour, if they had caught it, they are!  Ha! ha! ha!”

And then he told us the real history of the fish.  It seemed that he had caught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a lad; not by any art or skill, but by that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait upon a boy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a sunny afternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.

He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a whacking, and that even his school-master had said it was worth the rule-of-three and practice put together.

He was called out of the room at this point, and George and I again turned our gaze upon the fish.

It really was a most astonishing trout.  The more we looked at it, the more we marvelled at it.

It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to get a better view of it.

And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at the trout-case to save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on top of it.

“You haven’t injured the fish, have you?” I cried in alarm, rushing up.

“I hope not,” said George, rising cautiously and looking about.

But he had.  That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments—I say a thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred.  I did not count them.

We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break up into little pieces like that.

And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it had been a stuffed trout, but it was not.

That trout was plaster-of-Paris.

My grandmother Pulcherie Fortier fishing for real fish.

Show poster from Original Theatre

I learned from cruising the web that Original Theatre Productions has launched a show based on the book which will run through March 2015 at various theatres. For more information see Original Theatre