Category Archives: daughter

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Print or cursive?

My father’s father was a pressman and the head pressman when he was in Knoxville, Tennessee. This is back in the lead type times, when the type had to be set before printing the newspapers. Before they moved to Knoxville, they lived in Connecticut. My father said that my grandfather helped develop the four color process for the comics. My father would get the new comic books, Superman, straight off of my grandfather’s press. Too bad those were thrown out!

I started cursive in school in about fourth grade and I did not like it. I learned, but I thought it was ugly. My father knew how to write in italics. I liked italics much more and asked him to teach me. I adapted the capital letters to make them easier and then I wrote my papers in italics when we were not allowed to print. The teachers objected but I pointed out that we weren’t allowed to print in the papers, but it did not say, “No italics.” I imagine that some teachers found me difficult.

My cursive is still stuck in about fifth grade and I almost never use it.

Meanwhile fast forward. A law is passed in Washington State that prescriptions cannot be written in cursive. However, it does not say that we have to print. The same loophole. I usually printed prescriptions anyhow, so that the pharmacist could read it. I got compliments occasionally for printing in a legible way. I didn’t spell certain medicines correctly, but the pharmacists never seemed to care about that. Now it is all by fax and since Covid started, even the controlled substances go by fax.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: print.

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Betty Ford’s

I met my daughter at Betty Ford’s on Saturday. No, not the rehab, Betty Ford’s Alpine Gardens in Vail. Vail is about half way between us. We found lunch at the Farmer’s Market, walked the gardens, and shared a banana split. My daughter was laughing by the end of it. “None of my friends are still eating at the end of a banana split, mom. You and my brother are the only ones who can keep up!” We walked over six miles and yum, how often do I have a banana split?

The gardens are not huge, but the alpine flowers are beautiful and from all over the world.

We heard music too, since the gardens are right next to the amphitheater. Robert Plant and Alison Kraus were warming up and doing their sound checks. My daughter was underwhelmed.

This looks beautiful and peaceful, but the Farmer’s Market is big and was packed with people. We were pretty much out of the range of Robert Plant at this point, but he accompanied us much of the way.

I heard it on the radio! Well, no, I found it on Youtube.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: radio.

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Take off

Our family of four is visiting the Hoh Rain Forest. I think my husband is a relatively normal person and that he and my daughter are just being silly.

Suddenly they morph into dinosaurs! Pterodactyls! Ferocious long toothed beaks and weird speckled feathers! My son looks at me and gives me a hug. “Thanks, mom.” He morphs too and they are in flight, off in to the rain forest!

They weren’t being silly. They were practicing and apparently my daughter has now learned to fly.

I still miss them terribly and hope that they are well. Be careful, and do not marry a pterodactyl.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fiction.

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Tongue twisters and counting rhymes

My mother taught us the tongue twisters that she learned growing up. My favorite is “the mistle thrush whistles in the thistle bush”. There are mistle thrushes in Europe but not in the United States. It is also found in temperate Asia and North Africa, here.

A counting rhyme that we learned is this:
“Intry mintry cutetry corn
Apple seed and apple thorn
Wire briar limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew east, one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Sit and sing, by the spring
One, two, three
Out goes he.”

Here is another version, from 1920: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/74/nursery-rhymes-and-traditional-poems/5204/intery-mintery-cutery-corn/.

We also learned some of my grandfather’s songs. A piece of this one:

Only we learned it as “chop, chop” not clap, clap. It’s like a 1960s line dance, isn’t it? Shirley Ellis, 1965.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: whistle.

And here is a version with the clapping:

I would bet that there are way more elaborate versions of the clapping.

Before that, a song called Little Rubber Dolly was recorded in 1930.

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hiking soundtrack

Saturday my daughter was still here and we hiked the smaller loop at Palisade. It is about 3.5 miles. Coming down, the soundtrack in my brain was “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain”. I did not sing it to my daughter. One person with an earworm is enough!

My brain definitely plays music. I’ve had 24 years in Rainshadow Chorale and hope for quite a few more. Sometimes in clinic, quite inappropriate music plays. Everything from children’s songs to Bach to Blues, Rock and Punk and various oddities.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: soundtrack.

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Red and yellow

My mother would say, “Red and yellow, catch a fellow!” if we wore red and yellow together. So my sister and I didn’t, to avoid being teased.

I look it up to see if it is from a poem or song, and get lots of rhymes about differentiating poisonous coral snakes from non-venemous King snakes. Also the following:

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.