Spatter

Friday Fact - Shakespeare Speak

Did you know that Shakespeare contributed more phrases to the English language than the Bible or any other work...and many more than any other individual? 

Here is a list of most of them as compiled by The Phrase Finder.  If you click on the link of a phrase it'll take you to a page explaining its origin.

A dish fit for the gods
A fool's paradise
A foregone conclusion
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse
A plague on both your houses
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
A sea change
A sorry sight
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio
All corners of the world
All one to me
All that glitters is not gold / All that glisters is not gold
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players
All's well that ends well
And thereby hangs a tale
As cold as any stone
As dead as a doornail
As good luck would have it
As merry as the day is long
As pure as the driven snow
At one fell swoop
Bag and baggage
Beware the ides of March
Brevity is the soul of wit
But, for my own part, it was Greek to me
Come the three corners of the world in arms
Come what come may
Comparisons are odorous
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war
Discretion is the better part of valour
Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble
Eaten out of house and home
Et tu, Brute
Even at the turning of the tide
Exceedingly well read
Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog
Fair play
Fancy free
Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man
For ever and a day
Frailty, thy name is woman
Foul play
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears
Good men and true
Good riddance
Green eyed monster
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings
He will give the Devil his due
Heart's content
High time
His beard was as white as snow
Hoist by your own petard
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child
I bear a charmed life
I have not slept one wink
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
If music be the food of love, play on
In a pickle
In my mind's eye, Horatio
In stitches
In the twinkling of an eye
Is this a dagger which I see before me?
It beggar'd all description
It is meat and drink to me
Lay it on with a trowel
Lie low
Like the Dickens
Love is blind
Make your hair stand on end
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water
Milk of human kindness
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows
More fool you
More honoured in the breach than in the observance
Much Ado about Nothing
Mum's the word
My salad days
Neither a borrower nor a lender be  (I actually thought Ben Franklin coined this one)
No more cakes and ale?
Now is the winter of our discontent
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo
Off with his head
Oh, that way madness lies
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
Out of the jaws of death
Pound of flesh
Primrose path
Rhyme nor reason
Salad days
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
Screw your courage to the sticking place
Send him packing
Set your teeth on edge
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Short shrift
Shuffle off this mortal coil
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
Star crossed lovers
Stiffen the sinews
Stony hearted
Such stuff as dreams are made on
The course of true love never did run smooth
The crack of doom
The Devil incarnate
The game is afoot
The game is up
The quality of mercy is not strained
The Queen's English
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on
There's method in my madness
Thereby hangs a tale
This is the short and the long of it
This is very midsummer madness
This precious stone set in the silver sea, this sceptered isle
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it
Thus far into the bowels of the land
To be or not to be, that is the question
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub
Too much of a good thing
Truth will out
Under the greenwood tree
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown
Vanish into thin air
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
We have seen better days
Wear your heart on your sleeve
What a piece of work is man
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions
Where the bee sucks, there suck I
While you live, tell truth and shame the Devil!
Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure
Wild goose chase
Woe is me

And that's a Friday Fact!

First Exposures

Nikki Giovanni, ee cummings, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Rod McKuen, Simon & Garfunkel, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

How lucky I was to come of age amid these voices. 

Becoming History

I put my merchandise on the counter to check out.  I routinely swiped my credit card and signed my name on the electronic pad. 

Done. Fast and easy, though I don't understand why the card swipes aren't standardized to all have the card go the same way. 

This thought aside, I then started thinking about the "old days" when the cashier pulled out a booklet of wafer-thin paper filled with columns and columns and columns of numbers...minuscule numbers...of stolen/lost cards and closed accounts.  Remember?  You had to stand there as the cashier went through page after page straining her eyes to see if the card you were using was among them.  These books were such a pain in the arse that many times the cashier didn't bother and hoped for the best. 

Wanting to share this memory, I queried the cashier before me: "do you remember...?"  The look I got back told me she didn't even before she said so.  She was truly baffled when I tried to describe them...she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. She was far too young to remember.  I left the store feeling...well...old.

It reminded me of another time when I felt like my life was becoming history. I was at work and one of my staff came up to me and asked what a  hippie was.

After I got over the shock that she didn't know this and too, that she thought me old enough to assist her, I began to explain.  I said "a hippie was sort of a 60s version of a beatnik". 

Oops...I was using the unknown to describe the unknown.  I ended up giving her a brief history of American culture in the 50s and 60s.  What?  She didn't know who the Beatles were either?!

 

The times of my life have become the stuff of history. It's so very strange to think of it. 

Charlie Wilson's War

The other day I was in the mood for a movie and some popcorn.  Several  movies have been released lately that I want to see, but on this day, we opted to go see "Charlie Wilson's War"  starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  I really enjoyed it. It tells its story ( a true one) very cleverly and the story it's telling is one worth thinking about: how the world really is a big cobweb of interactions....complicated and complex and counterintuitive.   

It brings to mind some spatter of mine: "spiders have webs, but not just they...and more than flies get caught."

Mrs. McRay

I happened to pass by what used to be my elementary school. It stopped being an elementary school many years ago...becoming some sort of special education center.  I'm not sure where the little ones who live in that area go to school now. 

The building actually looks very much the same as it did in 1958-1963...pretty incredible for this neck of the woods...and seeing it brought up a myriad of memories...

• Being a safety patrol officer.  How proud I was!

• Walking home via the neighborhood drug store and candy counter.

• My first book report. I was inspired to use a pull down map as a visual aid in giving my book report on the exploration of the Mississippi River.

• Growing little plants in milk cartons and making macaroni laden pencil holders out of empty frozen juice cans. These and similarly made ashtrays were proudly presented to my parents as gifts.

• Walking single file wherever we went.  Do they still do that?

• Being selected to be interviewed by a Sun-Sentinel columnist.

• Watching the reaction of my favorite teacher when the news of President Kennedy's assassination came to her via a whisper in the ear.

• Coming to realize how much I loved to learn.

But there's one memory that really stands out of my time at Pine Ridge Elementary:  my first grade class with Mrs. McRay. 

That's me in the first row on the right side...sitting next to my first boyfriend...at least that's what I thought.  It's worth clicking on the picture to see it larger. 

In many ways, this was a typical class.  We had cigar boxes on our desks to hold our supplies, and we sang songs and wrote our letters with that paper that was lined to help us know how.  But something else took place in Mrs. McRay's class. Children who misbehaved got tied up.  You read that correctly. 

Good ole Mrs. McRay actually sat unruly children in a chair and tied them up. Of course, I never, ever had to be tied up.  I was  your typical  white middle class white girl with a German streak who had a love affair with rules and  an innate need for approval to boot.  No, my experience was different.  I was the one that was often called upon to go to get the milk for our lunches - no cafeterias back then - and then feed the milk to the tied up child.  Can you imagine that happening today?!

I often joke that between my being a safety patrol officer and doing this, it's no wonder I ended up in the career I did.

Post Note
Here's my interview with the columnist.  Click on it to get to a text you can read.  I think he played up some of my responses to make for good reading...I was never this flippant.  Still, I do remember thinking that this guy was an idiot.  Excuse the dark background on page 2...the article was laminated on a green background by my dad.

Drive-In Movies

Who (if you're over 40) can forget the drive-in movie! It was consummate Americana in the 50s and 60s, though the first one actually opened in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey.  Here it is:

 

Ah...
                            Listening to the tinny sound coming from speakers hanging on the door...

                                            Burning a mosquito repellent coil on the floor...

                                   Walking to the concession stand through rows of cars...

                                   Finding just the right angle for your car on the hump...

                      Looking through the steering wheel or the windshield wipers...

                                            Watching Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies...

One of my memories of going to the drive-in was falling asleep on the shelf at the rear window.  I fit perfectly and it became my special place.  It was a sad day when I grew too big for it!

Eventually, and like all things, the drive-in movie ran its course. Land became too valuable for a summer only type of business and the adoption of daylight saving time made starting times too late for families.

Some drive-in sites can still be found as testaments to another time...most though, have been completely bull-dozed away.  But believe it or not, a few remain active.  One in particular  is alive and well: the Florida Swap Shop.

First opened in 1963 as the Thunderbird Drive-In Theater, it had one screen and a reputation for showing adult movies. Since the screen could be seen from the road, people - teens mostly - drove by to get a free peek. And here's a somber note: its parking lot was divided by a fence to separate white customers from the black customers. 

Over the years it added more screens, a flea market, a circus, and a stage where the likes of Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and 3 Dog Night appeared.  It finally stopped growing at 14 screens (only 13 in use thanks to Hurricane Wilma), and now has the honor of bein the largest drive-in theater in the world with movies (general fare now) playing every night.

If you're ever in Fort Lauderdale, check it out!

Stormy Weather

Storm clouds moved in.  There was thunder.  There was BIG wind.  I mean "Wizard of Oz" storm blowing wind.  As we scurried to close up and secure the deck chairs, I saw birds trying and failing to fly into the wind. And...I saw a single deer standing in the field looking at the house. She soon left, but it was great seeing her. Maybe the deer are back. Shaynee, meanwhile, followed us like a shadow and has now moved in under my feet.  It's her instinctive protocol for in-climate weather. I always think of our "duck and cover" exercises back in elementary school when she does this.  Speaking of which, I read the following today in the book The Brother: 

In 1950, the government released a study by Arnold Kramish and other scientists to catalyze a constructive civil defense. 

"It is hoped," the authors wrote, "that as a result, although it may not be feasible completely to allay fear, it will at least be possible to avoid panic."  Among other things, they recommended that anyone seeing a sudden flash of light should drop to the ground in a fetal position for ten seconds, after which "the immediate danger is then over and it is permissible to stand up and look around to see what action appears advisable." 

...What to do while you're lying flat on your stomach in the basement waiting for the all clear? "Lots of people have little tricks to help steady their nerves at a time like that - like reciting jingles or rhymes or the multiplication table."

Does this remind you of anything?  Can you say color coded terrorism threat advisory scale?

 

 

The Civil Defense program had one thing going for it that Homeland Security doesn't:  we believed and now we don't.

"The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case"

I'm in the middle of reading a book about the Ethel & Julius Rosenberg espionage incident...drawing on interviews with Ethel's brother, David.  He and his wife were also involved in the whole business, but from what I've gathered, they escaped the worst of it by cooperating with the prosecutors. I wouldn't say it's a great book, so I'm not really recommending it...but has provoked thought.

What struck me was how innocently it all began.  Here were children of first generation Jewish immigrants... ordinary people...trying to survive in the "land of plenty".  Communism for them was not evil, but an ideal to embrace and as a way to overcome economic inequities and discrimination.  Additionally, the Soviet Union was, for a time, our ally... right there fighting against fascism. 

How quickly our allies turn to enemies! Over and over again we chum up to despots, etc. only to then move them into the other column when it suits us.  I suppose I can view this behavior in the context of the respective time and place, but given time, this pragmatism seems to have a price.

There is a documentary out there that is worth seeing. It's made by the Rosenberg's granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol: "Heir To An Execution".  Very well done.