Mr. Spence passed away

Our junior-high-school principal, Edward Spence, passed away. He was strict and brooked no nonsense. Here is the obituary from the Monitor.

Ed died on March 22, 2010 at age 97 in Chandler, AZ, where he lived with his wife of 73 years, Leona. Born in Liverpool, Eng, Ed came to the U.S. as a child, grew up in South Dakota, and became an educator. He moved to Los Alamos, NM, where he taught and was a school administrator for 30 years. He was an accomplished musician, singing and playing brass instruments, serving as the director of the Youth choir of the United Church of Los Alamos, where they were charter members. He was active in the community and in professional organizations. Following retirement, he lived in Albuquerque, and more recently in Chandler. Leona, their 4 children, and many grand and great-grands survive him. A memorial service will be at Chandler Presbyterian, 1500 W. Germann Rd, Chandler, AZ 85286 on April 10. Memorial gifts may be given to the church for a youth scholarship in Ed’s name. Bueler Mortuary of Chandler is handling arrangements.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth . . .

Yesterday at Lunch Buddies, my kindergarten buddy said, "My friends would like us to play with them." So instead of eating lunch first and drawing afterwards, we played "Scary Monster." In this game, which we have played before, I am the scary monster (or the grizzly bear) and try to catch the various bats and werewolves who attack from all angles on the playground equipment. My little pink-and-white, ruffledy-puffledy buddy informed me, "I'm the mom werewolf." In that capacity she gets to make up the rules.

The little folks got all wound up, and I had kids leaping onto my back, grabbing my arms, and tugging at my jacket. I had to remonstrate with a couple kids for head-butts. There was also a little fellow on his tummy with his hands around my ankle; I dragged him around for a bit.

In the midst of the scrum, however, I felt a sharp pain in my calf. "Hey!" I yelled. "Who's biting?" I looked down, and two werewolves had their mouths full of my pant legs. "No biting!" I said. The lunch cop came over and said that my buddy had to go to the nurse's office to get her blood sugar checked, and the game was over.

After lunch I detoured to the house to inspect my calf. My jeans weren't torn, but when I examined my leg, I found that although the werewolf didn't break the skin, but he did pinch a dandy blood blister into my calf. I cleaned it up with alcohol, put antibiotic ointment on it, and covered it with a Band-Aid. I'm watching it closely. And I'm going to keep my eye on those werewolves and bats.

What day is like a command?

From third to seventh grade I was always in the same class with David J., who was the biggest teacher's pet who ever drew breath. 

In fourth grade he got up in front of the class with his book of questions and answers. When he asked, "Do monkeys cry?" he screwed up his face and asked the question as if he were crying. The rest of the class rolled their eyes, but Mrs. Singer was enchanted.

He won the speech contest in fifth grade with his recitation of "Casey at the Bat." Instead of a baseball cap, he wore his little round Cub Scout hat on the back of his head, which everyone thought was so cu-uuuu-uute. When he got to the line, "And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow," he swung his little baseball bat with a downward chop. The teachers lapped it up because it was so cu-uuuu-uuu-uute. The boys in the class were ecstatic that he won, and they stood outside the classroom and chanted, "We want David! We want David!" at recess.

In seventh grade he got the award for best librarian's helper from Miss Ketola, and he beamed as he pranced up to the stage to receive his award.

The worst was in fourth grade, though. One day at show-n-tell, he asked, "What day is like a command? March fourth!" Then he marched forth with his chest thrown out and swinging his arms and lifting his knees up high. It was so cu-uuuu-uuute!

It's been 50 years. I should let it go. See also Chuckbert's Simple Grudge Index.

Happy March 4th

Mardi Gras: laissez les jaunes d'œufs rouler!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. During catechism on Ash Wednesday we'd troop down to the church to have our foreheads smudged with ashes. If the smudges wore off, we could always freshen them with ashes from dad's cigarette butts. 

Back in those days, when we were orthodox, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays. Here is my recipe for a Pueblo Junior High Tuna Sandwich.

First,  if you're not in a hurry, take a can of tuna, drain off the oil, and empty it into a bowl. Then add some diced celery, a little minced onion, and chopped hard-boiled egg whites. Save the yolk to roll down the aisle in Mr. Baldwin's social studies class. Maybe this time he'll send you out. Add salt, pepper, and mayonnaise, and spread the mixture on crisp toast.

If you are running late, just mix the undrained tuna with mayo and spread it on bread. Stick the sandwich in a recycled Baggie, whose clinging power has been reduced by repeated washings.

Put some potato chips in another gappy Baggie. Put the sandwich, chips, and an overripe banana in a brown paper bag. Or a sugar sack, better. A sugar sack is sturdier and has stuff written on it so you can read it at lunch if you have to sit alone. It's lunchtime's answer to the cereal box.

Put the lunch in your locker. Between classes, pitch your social studies book on top of the bag.

At lunch, open your locker. It smells like you're standing next to Moby-Dick. Fruit flies have formed a deep and abiding relationship with the banana. Take your oily, squashed bag to the cafeteria. Sit down at a table. Marlene, who always laughs with her mouth wide open after swallowing most of her milk or cottage cheese, sits down opposite. Gross. But it's better than eating alone. 

Take out the oil-dampened sandwich. Try to chew it, but the best you can probably do at this stage in the game is just sort of mush it around in your mouth. Dab up the minuscule bits of potato chips, the major casualty in the encounter with the social studies book, with your fingertips and lick them off. Marlene thinks your performance is hilarious and laughs. Wipe her milk off your face.

Lick the banana off the inside of the sugar sack. Throw the banana peel and the bag into the garbage can. Save the Baggies for Mom.

After lunch, everything you touch will smell like tuna. By the end of the day the whole school will smell like a whaling vessel ninety days out of New Bedford. Everyone knows it's you. 

Think of death by embarrassment as your Lenten sacrifice.

Jellied tuna: tasty Lenten fare

Schools, dazed.

Lately I've been doing a lot of work with the public schools up here, and I've come to the conclusion that many of the teachers are out of touch with the real world as most of us encounter it. 

Back in August I set up a table outside the Duane Smith Auditorium so I could feature many of our cool books and other items that teachers can use in the classroom. I was handing out coupons when one of the teachers, as frightening a broad as ever stepped off a Gothic church, stomped up to me and said, "Every time I tell my students to get a book from you, you guys always tell them that you don't have it in stock and will have to order it! Why can't you have the books we need in stock?!" 

I said, "Every year we ask the teachers for their supplemental reading lists. We've tried and tried for years, but nobody has ever responded."

She huffed, "Well, maybe you should try harder!"

**********

This fall we had a signing with Ellen Klages, who wrote The Green Glass Sea (our number two best-seller at the store) and its sequel, White Sands, Red Menace. I sent a note to all the middle-grade teachers and the language arts team at the middle school to let them know that Ellen would be available for school visits. Two schools, an elementary school and the middle school, responded. 

Over the summer one of the middle school teachers had worked with the superintendent to make sure that she, and she alone, would be the only one allowed to teach The Green Glass Sea. (The upper-grade elementary teachers were understandably steamed, but, as far as I can tell, have ignored the edict.) At any rate, Ellen was going to speak to the creative writing class in the library, and as luck would have it, the classroom of the monopolizer of The Green Glass Sea was right next door. So Ellen and I went into the classroom, and I introduced Ellen to Ms. Monopoly and invited the teacher to come to the talk in the library. I figured that she'd leap upon the object of her monopoly with gladsome cries and boot-licking felicitations. "I'd love to come," Ms. Monopoly said, "but I have lunch this period."

**********

Now I'm working up estimates for one of the elementary school librarians. Her most recent list included about 20 titles that she wanted in both hardcover and softcover formats. I sent her the estimate, and she fired back a stern email saying that we needed to talk. Nothing cramps my bowels so quickly as hearing the sentence "We need to talk" from a customer. 

So I stopped by the school library on my way to the store, and the librarian told me that she wanted only the hardcover books and asked where in the world I came up with all those softcover editions. Then she asked me to make a copy of the estimate and walk it down to the principal's office. Fine. We're your full-service bookstore. And I was on my way out anyway. 

When I got back to the store, I had another request for an estimate from her. She wanted prices on books about latitude, famous Americans, geography, complex machines--no titles or grade levels included--and that book that has something in the title about "what every girl should know. You know the one I'm thinking of?" 

I wasn't feeling puckish enough to give her an estimate on Margaret Sanger's seminal (heh) work. 

Who are you really?

Wednesday was the all-district meeting for the faculty and staff in the Los Alamos Public Schools. I set up a table outside the Duane Smith Auditorium to pass out informational flyers with valuable cents-off coupons, get addresses for our teachers-only newsletter, and feature the cool books, games, and toys we have at Otowi Station. And to make sure that I was noticed, I wore my Cat in the Hat hat, which has a 14-inch crown. When I wear it, I'm really hard to miss, as the folks behind me at the Santa Fe Opera can attest.


(Not really P-Doobie.)

But some people were confused about which literary character I was portraying.

"Good morning, Dr. Doolittle!"

"Hey! It's the Mad Hatter!"

"I wish I'd said that." "You will, P-Doobie. You will."

Ever since 1968, when I graduated from high school, I've kept a commonplace book of quotations, funny and interesting words, and felicitous turns of phrase. It's a little notebook that holds paper 3 1/2 inches by 6 inches that I bought at TG&Y, which I think was still where the Central Avenue Grill is now. It has 2918 entries right now, with quotations ranging from my senior English teacher, Mrs. Campbell, to the novelist Jerome Jerome and the letters to and from Groucho Marx. One of my favorite quotations in it is from the play No Trifling with Love by Alfred de Musset: "Shall I not find a sensible man here? Upon my word, when you look for one, the solitude becomes appalling." It's appropriate for so many situations.

Here's the front of my commonplace book.

Here's the back.

And here's a page spread.

If one in four Americans owns a firearm, one of the Lennon Sisters is packing a rod.

The discussion of shop class last month put me in mind of other "specials" in elementary school. I loved going to the library, art class, and shop. PE was okay if we were outside, but indoor activities, including rope climbing, tumbling, and trampoline, gave me the All Overs. Music was a trial. Before Mountain School had a designated music room, the music teacher, Mrs. Cherry (I'm using a pseudonym here, but you know who I'm talking about), visited each classroom. Have autoharp, will travel.

We all thought she was a little nuts. Our next-door neighbor John H. called her a hick. I asked what a hick was, and he hunched over and began stalking around the lawn, singing and snapping his fingers. He looked like a musical stork. He looked exactly like Mrs. Cherry.

She was dramatic and offensively jolly ("Polly Wolly Doodle" was always a laff riot for her), loved having us sing the descant to any song (and if the song didn't have a descant, she'd make one up), and conducted with all the fervor of Leonard Bernstein on meth.

One day in fourth grade at the end of the music lesson, she favored us with three chords on the autoharp and sang

Good-bye, everybody! Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed!
Good-bye, everybody! Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed, my darlings!

We were to respond with

Good-bye, Mrs. Cherry! Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed!
Good-bye, Mrs. Cherry! Yes, indeed!
Yes, indeed, my darling!

"My darling"?! The rolling of our eyes was almost audible. She had left the room and closed the door by the time we reached the second "Good-bye, Mrs. Cherry, yes indeed!" Thirty fourth graders abruptly and simultaneously stopped singing. No way were we going to sing, "Yes, indeed, my darling!" a line that would have stuck in our little throats and made us the laughingstock of the whole school.

The door reopened with a bang like a rifle shot. It was Mrs. Cherry. Her nostrils were flaring. Her hair was waving softly from the draft. The strings on her autoharp hummed at the same frequency her body was quivering. She fixed us with her gimlet eye. "You will sing the entire song. You will sing it loudly enough that I can hear it from my office!" Her office was halfway down the hall; singing to be heard at that distance would require us to use our leather-lunged outside voices. Everybody in the school, not to mention the surrounding neighborhood, would know that we called Mrs. Cherry "darling." Three chords on the autoharp got us started, and she stalked from the room.

GOOD-BYE, MRS. CHERRY! YES, INDEED!
YES, INDEED!
YES, INDEED!
GOOD-BYE, MRS. CHERRY! YES, INDEED!
YES, INDEED, MY DARLING!

In sixth grade, we had music in the new music room. Gone was the autoharp. Mrs. Cherry had a piano now. She introduced the principles of harmony. We didn't get it. She urged us with her face. We sounded terrible. She demonstrated on the piano. We sounded worse. She appealed to something we all did: watched TV. "When you watch The Lawrence Welk Show, you see the Lennon Sisters. They harmonize so beautifully. Sing, boys and girls! Sing like the Lennon Sisters!" Thirty little heads thumped in disgust and dismay to the tabletops.