Going on 80

This is the beginning of my collection of prom photos. They’re hopefully being compiled as I can wiggle them free from your grasp. If you haven’t sent me one yet, please do it!  Along with the year, name of school, city, first names of the person(s) you attended with, details about the dress, the event, or what-have-you.  Now, c’mon, when did you ever look more sensational? 

(Later on, I’m gonna re-group them sequentially by year. For now, they’ll just be hit-or-miss as I can get my hands on the photos. If you didn’t go to a prom, can’t you at least unearth a photo of yourself at age 18 when you were REALLY dressed up to the nines?)

The first for today is of my granddaughter Teresa (TT) Covey.  The prom was just last week, so hers will be in the 2011 group. Here she is with her date, Jesse Gouveia (it’s hard to say which of the two is the most gorgeous!  Of course, being her grandma, my vote is leaning toward TT.) 

TT did her classes in Running Start at a community college this year, but she will still graduate with her class at Roosevelt High School.  Their prom was at the Columbia Tower; they had dinner first at the Thomas Street Bistro on Capital Hill. Sounds swanky.

Also this spring, 2011, was the prom of my great-nephew, the handsome Tom Fortune. 

His date is the winsome Shelby Ayala.  Their school is Elkhorn Area High School in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

I think Tom and Shelby’s prom was in March. I’ve never been in Wisconsin, but it has a reputation for being chilly. This photo ought to prove once and for all that they wear garments there other than fur parkas, mukluks and long johns.

Next is my granddaughter Erica Opsvig in the dress she wore to her prom, May 20, 2008 at Mt. Si High School in North Bend, Washington.  Her escort was her good friend, Matt Kinsman.  

I made the dress she’s wearing for her sister Sonja a year or two earlier, but Sonja only wore it for the prom photos because it was too hard to dance in.  For Erica’s prom, though, we made a minor engineering change so the dress would stay up better and it actually made it through the whole event.  

This is the only prom in the family I know of where the pre-prom “dinner” was at Dick’s Hamburgers! 

How’s that for romance?

I hope the burgers were “Deluxe” with extra tartar sauce.

This is Erica at her Junior Prom in 2007.  Her date was again Matt Kinsman.

And these two gems are of my niece and nephew-in-law Chris (Fitzpatrick) and Mark Milner.  They were high school sweethearts, and this is how they looked at their proms.

The LaSalle High School proms were held in the school gym. It was customary for the juniors to be in charge of the planning and decorating.

On the left are Chris and Mark at their Junior Prom in 1968.  Chris’s dress was a yellow gown she had worn the summer before in Jim and Ann Fitzpatrick’s wedding.

And on the right is a photo of how they looked at the Senior Prom in 1969. My sister Joan made the dress (but not the tux). 

Chris remembers it (the dress, not the tux) as white with a blue flower print and a blue ribbon sash.  “And talk about modest”, she said. “Full sleeves and stand-up collar!”  Even in a black and white photo, she looked dazzling! (Oh, all right then, Mark, so did you.)

I love these photos.  Today, they still exude the same magic they did then. 

Stay tuned for more of the Prom Parade in the days ahead (I hope).  Please humor me.  Email to ford@fordvideo.com. 

A quick, hassle-free way to get rid of stuff after de-cluttering is to put it out on your front parking strip with a FREE sign on it. My daughter Susy taught me that. Anything I haul out there is gone within a few hours.  It’s my way of having a “garage sale”.  

Gone are the aged bookcases, vases, frames, suitcases, old cans of paint, rugs and more. That way, (1) the stuff gets a good home, (2) you avoid the expense of getting it to the dump, and (3) you get some free space back.

Try it.  And if all else fails, consider the following story.

STOVE FOR SALE?

Raymond, from Seattle, purchased a new stove. The local dump wanted $20 to receive and accept his old one in an environmentally friendly fashion, so in order to save money he put it in his yard with a sign that read, “Free to a good home. You want it, please take it.”

The stove stood untouched for 4 days.

Then Raymond changed his tactics. He made a sign saying, ‘Stove for sale – Fifty dollars..’

One day later the stove disappeared: stolen.

The people at American Idol just won’t listen to me.  They always get it wrong.  Last night, over my strenuous objections, they crowned Scotty McCreery as the new American Idol.

It’s not that I don’t like him, or that I favored Lauren Alaina, but I was counting on my write-in vote to tip the results in favor of the best talent ever to appear on the show. The three teenage tenors – Il Volo – who appeared as guest stars last Thursday.

Awright, awright, I know.  They weren’t contestants – just guest stars.  They aren’t American,  and maybe they can’t even speak English.  But what they lack in citizenship, they make up for in preternaturally mature talent.  As far as I’m concerned, I will always remember them as this year’s “American Idol”.

Nobody but the Italians could have produced a trio like this one.  The boys are 16 and 17 years old.  Their names are Piero Barone, Ignazio Boschetto and Gianluca Ginoble.  

They got their start two years ago when they were 14 and 15 years old on an Italian show similar to “American Idol.” They were competing against each other, but some inspired producer on the show said “Why don’t we have the boys do a number together?  How about “O Sole Mio?” And Il Volo was born!

“O Sole Mio” is a very old song, but Il Volo brought it to resplendent life.  Thursday’s performance on American Idol earned a standing ovation – even from the judges.  The performance simply brought the house down.

“O Sole Mio” is a globally known Neapolitan song written in 1898. The lyrics were written by Gionanni Capurro, and the melody was composed by Eduardo di Capua.

This is what the words mean in English:

What a beautiful thing is a sunny day,
The air is serene after a storm
The air’s so fresh that it already feels like a celebration
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s upon your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s upon your face!
It’s upon your face!

When night comes and the sun has gone down,
I almost start feeling melancholy;
I’d stay below your window
When night comes and the sun has gone down.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s upon your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s upon your face!
It’s upon your face!

Il Volo is hugely popular overseas, where they’re known for their incredible voices, and they’re just now breaking out in the United States. 

Their self-titled debut album has gone platinum overseas, and was just released in the U.S. – in time to appear on American Idol last week.

The name, Il Volo, means flight; it was chosen to signify the feeling that these three young tenors were about to spread their wings and fly. And they will.

Buona fortuna, boys! 

Folks who go to Mass in a Catholic church (or services in the Episcopal church), participate in an ancient cry for mercy.  We call it the Kyrie.

Whether the words are spoken or sung, they contain an earthy, simple plea for help. The words keep sneaking into my mind when I see and hear the heartbreaking accounts of the weather turned savage in our southern and midwestern states.

Who wouldn’t feel the acute pain of the victims on viewing the destruction of their homes and the loss of life from this week’s storms?

What can one say? Maybe this:

“Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.”

Translated from Greek (not Latin), the words mean “Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.”

Here they are as sung in Gregorian chant by some Benedictine monks.

All the students I know seem to be undergoing various forms of interrogation known as “final exams”.  

We should share their pain.  It’s the least we can do.  If you want to climb aboard, put your thinking cap on and plunge into the following questions.

This is called the “Test For People Who Know Everything.”

The test-makers suggest that we should be able to correctly get answers to at least three of the questions, but you have to be a genius to get all 10.  Question (2) is especially tricky.

(1) There’s one “sport” in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends. What is it?

(2) What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

(3) Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables? (Biennials don’t count.)

(4) Name the only sport in which the ball is always in possession of the team on defense, and the offensive team can score without touching the ball?

(5) What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

(6) Only three words in standard English begin with the letters “dw.” They are all common.  Name two of them 

(7) There are fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name half of them?

(8) Where are the lakes that are referred to in the “Los Angeles Lakers?”

(9) It’s the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh.  What is it?

(10) Name six (or more) things that you can wear on your feet that begin with the letter “S.” 

=============================================
Answers
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1. Boxing. (Possibly Ice Skating)

2. Niagara Falls. The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.

3. Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. Baseball.

5. Strawberry.

6. Dwarf, dwell, and dwindle.

7. Period (full stop), comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses. 

8. In Minnesota. The team was originally known as the Minneapolis Lakers and kept the name when they moved west.

9. Lettuce.

10. Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, snowshoes, stockings.

Well, now you know! Feel any smarter? If not, at least now we know how the kids feel. I don’t know how they put up with it!

Help Wanted: for my Prom Dress Project.

Please think about whether you may have a photo – scanned or otherwise – floating around of any prom you may have attended. As long as you’re a reader of this blob, it would be fun to find out what you looked like in your prom dress or tux.

If I get any photos, I’ll post them in groups during June, and then I’ll put all of them in one big blob in sequential order by year.  Everybody will look beautiful.  You’ll see.

Besides your name, how about including the year of the event(s), name & city of the school, first name of your escort, a description of the dress or suit, whether you bought it, made it, borrowed it, or inherited it, what happened to the dress (or tux) later – (like, do you still have it, or did anyone else borrow it to wear at their prom?) -, and any particular memories you may have of the occasion.

For some of us, that means oiling up some of those rusty old memory wheels. Even if you don’t have a photo to email me (to ford@fordvideo.com), maybe you can draw a picture for us with words.

I’m asking you this because I know you don’t have anything else to do, right? . . .  I thought so.

Okay, the only reason I’m making you do this is for your own good. Yep, there may be a little stress trying to fumble through old photos looking for the prom(s). But maybe the search will bring back some happy memories. And, afterwards you – and everybody else – will be able to see or remember you as you were then.  In all your eighteen-year-old glory! 

Before searching for the photo(s), this might be a good time to offer you some support in times of stress. Of course, if you’ve never experienced any, you can skip the following recommended procedure.

Otherwise, read on:

** Stress Management Techniques – by Alicia Moss **
Subject: an eight-step stress management technique

Just in case you’ve had a rough day, here’s an eight-step stress management technique recommended in the latest psychological texts.

1. Picture yourself near a stream.
2. Birds are softly chirping in the cool mountain air.
3. No one but you knows your secret place.
4. You are in total seclusion from the hectic world.
5. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
6. The water is crystal clear.
7. You can easily make out the face of the person you’re holding underwater. (Editor’s note: That’ll be Octo-woman’s.)
8. See? You’re smiling already.

Granddaughter T.T. just left for her Senior Prom.  She looks seriously gorgeous. I can’t show you till tomorrow though when the photo takers will let loose of their harvest.

 It occurred to me to try to compile prom dress photos (girls AND boys) from any friends and family members of all ages that’ll email ’em to me.  (ford@fordvideo.com).  It would be a fun collection to say the least, and could span several decades. The oldest ones – from my generation and sooner –  will only be in black and white but they’ll still be a treasure.  Any notes you could add to describe the clothes, the occasion, your school or date’s name, and the year, would be food for the gods.

In the meantime, this is a collection of  prom dresses worn in my day – the 1940s as found on the internet.  I never owned a prom dress myself – since my fashion guru sister Joan only bought whatever was de rigueur and she always let me wear them (sometimes willingly).  (I hope she can come up with some photos).

This is me wearing one of her dresses at my Senior Prom in 1949.  Note also the modest wearing apparel of my classmates.

I’m the one on the left – (crown on the head and bouquet was due to my inexplicable selection as “queen” of the prom.)  I wish the dress showed up better.  It was lavender with a ruffle all around the neckline.  My sister always had impeccable taste in the involuntary wardrobing of her younger sister.  

The big deal on prom dresses in those days was “fluffy and feminine”.  And, yes, modest.  Back in those days, modesty was considered something to be desired in feminine wearing apparel.

At Mount Mercy Academy, the girl’s school I attended in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when the girls and their escorts arrived for the Senior Prom or other formal occasions, we were temporarily separated from the boys.  The girls were then ushered into the big parlor on the first floor. 

What would be waiting in the parlor was what might appear to be a receiving line of four or five nuns.  It was actually an inspection line.  Its objective was so the nuns could evaluate our dresses.  Any which did not measure up to their expectations of modesty would be altered on the spot.  Right next to the Sisters were tables containing tulle, netting, pins, needles and scissors.

Any girl who had the miserably bad judgment as to show up wearing a dress which showed too much skin, had to undergo a minor transformation.  The next Sister in the “receiving” line would gently but firmly stitch a ruffle of tulle or net onto the offending section(s) of the dress. 

Thanks to my sister’s discreet fashion sense (and my underdeveloped figure), I was never a victim of one of the nuns‘ “makeovers”.  And never – I say never – did it occur to any of those unfortunate girls to cause the experience to be repeated. Lesson learned.  

As you may be aware, times have changed and so has feminine apparel.  As an example, it wasn’t too long ago, that we did the video editing of a documentary for a motorcycle club who had just returned from a journey to California.  At one of their formal evening get-togethers at the camp, some of their wives and girlfriends were dressed only in Saran Wrap.

I don’t think the Sisters would have been pleased. 

Stay tuned for more about prom dresses.  Please remember to send me your prom photo(s) to ford@fordvideo.com.  Now, let’s party!

Unbelievable but true. The Seattle weather thermometer hit 70 degrees yesterday. It’s the first time that’s happened since November 3rd, 2010.

All my new Knockout Roses have temporarily stopped shivering and my hopes for their survival have been renewed. Or they were, till I saw the five-day forecast. Alas, the Big Cool and more “showers” will be coming back tomorrow.

What if summer never comes? We’re just going to have to make do.

Actually, according to the End of Days folks, we have a lot more to worry about today than the weather and five-day forecasts. They say Judgment Day will be today – May 21st (they don’t say what time), with the End of the World to follow five months later on October 21, 2011.

What a great excuse to avoid working in the yard. On the other hand, what if Jesus DOES come back to earth today? To judge us. Please, Lord, is there any way we can re-schedule? If I promise I’ll turn over a new leaf? And not only in the garden?

How ‘bout a reprieve, God? I promise I’ll do better! Amen.

Today is National Bike to Work (or School)  Day. Our Seattle mayor, Mike McGinn, has proclaimed that in observance of the occasion, we have to ride our bikes to work today.

Octo-woman has a problem with this. She is frantic because she doesn’t exactly own a bike. That means she has to borrow one from somebody.

Don’t scoff, kiddo.  I may be going on 80, but at one time,- as far back as 1935 –  I was considered to be an accomplished cyclist.  True, I had to share my rusty Radio Flyer trike with my sister Joan, but I put the pedal to the metal with the greatest of ease and enthusiasm. Everybody said so.

As with all dedicated athletes, I eventually advanced to the next level – a two-wheeler.  My next bike looked a lot like this.  Like the photo, it wasn’t really mine though. I had to share it with Joan and our three brothers, but while my time at the wheel was limited, I logged as many miles, spills, skinned knees, bruises, cuts and abrasions as is worthy of any Olympian.  Of course, helmets were unheard of in those days, but I was undeterred. 

Eventually, I got a little more time on the bike because my siblings got fed up when the chain on the pedals persisted in coming apart. My dad kept soldering it together but It would only hold for a block or two and then I’d have to turn around and wheel it back home.  This was disconcerting, and it may explain why my athletic ability was temporarily diverted to the only other sport in which I ever engaged – the game of jacks. 

It wasn’t till high school that I re-discovered biking.  My best friend Louise Mackey and I used to rent a tandem bike and ride on it all over town.  I remember we had a lot of trouble learning to ride the thing, but we eventually mastered it.  We didn’t really care for bicycling that much, but it was a great way to attract boys.  

The wheels didn’t help improve our athletic prowess that much, but they certainly helped us make our mark on the local teen scene in Cedar Rapids.  Especially impressed were the paperboys who recognize quality biking when they see it.

Once grown-up and married, I continued my ongoing involvement with bikes, but only in a supervisory capacity.  Our seven children acquired two and three wheelers of all sizes and shapes, but I managed to avoid piloting any of them.

Before the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair was to be launched, my husband Gene and a buddy dreamed up a money-making scheme involving rental bikes in a kiosk on the fairgrounds. A great way to see the fair and to explore Seattle downtown, they figured.   

Gene and the buddy, “assisted” by our sons, Mark and Matthew, assiduously assembled all the bicycles and got their little shop set up at the Seattle Center.  Then came the coldest “summer” in history.  The World’s Fair opened in April, and I still shiver to remember the months that followed.  By the time it was nearly over, Emmett Watson, one of our newspaper columnists, wistfully wrote, “When the long hot summer comes, I hope it falls on a Sunday”. 

Nobody, to speak of, rented the bikes.  Indoors was the best place to survive that dreadful summer, not out pedaling the hills of our frigid city.  At the end of it, Gene and company had a bunch of bikes to get rid of.  I wish I had one of them right now so I could cycle to work this morning, as our Mayor McGinn insists.

Since the failure of the bike rental enterprise, my only other cycling experience was helping produce “One Wheel Jammin”, a video tutorial on how to unicycle. It can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about how to master the use of this vehicle, but I have way too much good sense to try it myself.  

So here we are today – on National Bike to Work Day.  What shall I do?  I don’t have a bike.  And, worse yet, I work at home.  Even if somebody will lend me a bike, I don’t know how to ride it from the laundry room to the kitchen.  It’s way too crowded for a very big bike.

But Octo-woman to the rescue.  Difficult problems require creative solutions.  I will be able to bike to work after all.  I shall engage the services of son Matthew’s stationary bike.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

And, see, it worked!  Here I am, at work, writing this blob.

I know Mayor McGinn appreciates the effort it took for me to meet his mandate about riding my bike to work.  It’s okay, though, Your Honor, please don’t give me any awards or anything.  I was just doing my duty.

 “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein

It’s not easy to lose faith in your father, especially when you’re only seven years old.  I finally got over it, but it still smarts to tell of it.

In my youth, it was unheard of to go to a doctor or dentist for no reason other than facing an extremity of life or near-death. 

It was 1938.  I remember riding in the car with my dad that day.  He was taking me to see a dentist.  I was filled with fear and foreboding.  In the first place, our mother was always the one who arranged and took us on such missions on the bus.  It was her job.  Daddies did other stuff.  Like fixing cars and taking the garbage out. 

Secondly, no one in my family had ever been to the dentist that I knew of.  Why had I been chosen?

I remember asking him, “Daddy, why do I have to go to the dentist?”  “Don’t worry, Tee-Tee”, he said. “It’s just a checkup.”

I didn’t like anything about the sound of it.  “What’s a ‘checkup’?”, I asked fearfully.  “The dentist is just going to check up on your teeth”, Dad said.  “He won’t be doing anything.  He’s just going to look at your teeth.”

I tried to feel relieved, but kept asking questions. Something wasn’t adding up right.  By the time we arrived at our destination and went into the office, I was a seven-year-old nervous wreck, but desperately clinging to my father’s assurance that what was about to happen – wouldn’t. 

The next thing I remember is that my father was left in the waiting room as I was ushered into the room of no return.  

I don’t know what the dentist’s name was but I shall always remember him as “Dr. Sadistic: the Worst Dentist in The World Who Deserves To Go Straight To Hell When He Dies.”  (It may have been he who later appeared as Dustin Hoffman’s dentist in the movie called “Marathon Man”. Whatta guy!)

With an assistant pinning me down in the seat of torture, the dentist proceeded to pull out my teeth one by one.  Then he, or his accessory in crime, put seven of my baby teeth in a brown paper sack and presented it to me like a cat proudly delivering a dead rat.

No novocaine was used.  I know there are those nut-cases who try to perpetrate the myth that it doesn’t hurt the child when she has her baby teeth extracted.  These are the same sadists who used to tell you your baby boys didn’t need an anesthetic when they were circumcised because “infants don’t feel the pain”.  Please allow me to meet them in person.  I shall bring an axe.

Hysterical and nearly toothless, I was delivered back to the waiting room to the scoundrel who had failed me – my father.  The man who tells big lies.  Who submits his child to the care of monsters.  The man who causes her to take home most of her teeth in a sack. The man whom I would never forgive.

I did, though.  Forgive him, I mean.  It took a very long time – at least till I could eat apples again –  but it finally occurred to me that maybe my father really did think the dentist would just be “looking” at my teeth.  Perhaps he couldn’t imagine that such alternative evil exists. 

The moral of this story is that you must never lie to your children.  (Except for extenuating circumstances, of course. Such as when you can’t think of a way to explain to a seven-year-old about impending tooth extractions.) 

This blob has been brought to you as a public service.  Help stamp out child abuse and baby teeth extractions.

(Editor’s note: I would like to tell you that the Tooth Fairy showed up and made it all better with a cash reward for my seven valuable teeth, but of course, she didn’t.  During the Depression, we had never even heard of a Tooth Fairy, and if we had, everybody would have been getting their teeth pulled out as a way to finance groceries.)