Mistletoe on Christmas Eve

I was going to write an essay (some would call it a blog) about the mistletoe that is in all of the barren sycamore trees around my neighborhood today. You know, a scientific analysis, a history, the lore … but, it is Christmas Eve and that would be a bit like analyzing Saint Nick or Rudolph on Christmas Eve.

Instead, let me show you a few pictures of the massive amounts of mistletoe surrounding our house. This does seem like a very good day to walk under the trees with my wife.

  

True, Santa Barbara has no snow,

But we have lots of mistletoe.

Walking the woods is a lot of fun,

With your love, its halcyon.

Merry Christmas to All!

The Stench That Went Bump in the Night

Yesterday after teatime, or at least shortly after the time we would have had tea if we had had tea, my wife, Pam, and I walked into our backyard to check our garden. As we opened the garden door, we were struck by a fetor. It was a stench not unlike that of the Mexican scarecrow. I am not sure if that is the proper name for a dead crow hanging from a pole by its feet in a field but that is what I have been told. Anyway, it smelled like some critter had died in our yard and did not have the common decency to bury itself. 

After picking a few tomatoes, Pam noted that the smell was gone. It wasn't that we had gotten used to it – this was a smell that no person would get used to – it was just plain gone.

Later that evening, while we were watching reruns of Masterpiece Mystery, Pam and I heard a big thump (or would that be a bump) at our front door. After making sure our cat was still at our feet and not doing his hormone driven rampage which includes bouncing off the walls, we both went to the door and slowly opened it. I carefully let Pam take the lead but nothing was there and no one was nearby.

Then, about eleven-thirty, I decided that I needed a proper soaking in our hot tub. It was a moonless evening with the sky looking a bit van Gogh-ish due to its bright blueness and the stars blurred by my astigmatism. I was into a deep relaxation, which some would call meditation but I don’t meditate so I guess I was in a state of rumination when I heard a rustling under our Mediterranean fan palm. Stirrings in our flora at night are a somewhat common occurrence with the rats, the raccoons, the opossums, the skunks, and the occasional stray cat. But shortly after hearing the first crepitation the same stench from the afternoon ruined my rumination.

This noisome mephitis startled me. I remembered hearing various wackos talk about smelling apparitions. Some say they smell roses; some say they smell wet dogs; others say they smell rotting flesh. Well, I smelled rotting flesh and I decided that, unlike the nice clean smell of our occasional startled skunk, this was not a smell I was going to enjoy while sitting buck naked in hot water in the dark.

Normally, when exiting from our hot tub, I slowly extract myself and close the lid while rubbing my wet body against the nearby rosemary and lavender plants for a bit of aroma therapy. I then put on my robe and stare at the stars or the moon while drip drying on the patio. Last night I slammed the lid closed, jumped over the lavender, ran toward the house while struggling into my robe, and quickly entered the house locking the door behind me.

Maybe because it is October and everywhere I go – bookstore, grocery store, tea shop – I see ghouls and witches; maybe because I am reading the biography of Edgar Allen Poe which includes much of his dark verse; or maybe my imagination is on overdrive, but I have to wonder what  the true source of that smell was - ghosts, zombies, vampires?

Tonight when I go for my starlit ablution I will take a flashlight, a machete, and maybe a mirror and some garlic.

A Toad Moment – skivvies

A couple of weeks back, I was standing in a friend’s kitchen watching her cook chicken when the subject of strange words came up. I commented that I had recently used the word ‘skivvies’ with a thirty-something friend and that friend had no idea what I was talking about. My chicken-cooking friend then commented that a word with double v’s was interesting and wondered what the origin was. Well, that sounded like a challenge for the Toad so I have launched into the fray to see what I could find out.

skivvies, noun

Pronounced - skiv (as in give ) vees (as in bees)

Skivvies (at least the ones we are talking about here) are men’s underwear. I generally think of them as just the undershorts but the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seems to define skivvy as an undershirt. I always thought it to be a Navy term but I cannot prove that via any of my books or the all-knowing internet. My Thorndike Barnhart World Book Dictionary says that it is U.S. nautical slang and the OED says it is North American slang of nautical origin but neither give references or examples so there is no Q.E.D. via the OED.

Now the question is whether it is plural or not; at least one dictionary says it is. I sometimes run out to the kitchen in my skivvies and I can tell you that I only have one pair of underwear on. However, I can understand the confusion because sometimes, when I am less vernacular, I run out to the kitchen in my undershorts. And I only have one pair of those on also. So, at some future time, maybe the Toad will take a moment and tell us why men’s underwear sounds plural but is singular. But I digress.

If the OED is right, then a ‘skivvy’ (or ‘skivvie’ as my Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang says is an alternate spelling) is an undershirt and ‘skivvies’ are underwear, which I assume consist of underpants and undershirt.  So what then, are the lower half of skivvies or underpants called according to Oxford? I looked it up – short knickers. Well, since this is American slang, and I don’t know any men who wear knickers, I am going out on a limb and officially also define ‘skivvies’ as underpants.

Note, also, that I am carefully spelling skivvies with a lower case ‘s.’ That is because some dictionaries, such as The Third Edition American Heritage Dictionary, says Skivvies is a trademark used for underwear. Certainly there is a Skivvies site which sells men’s underwear but the first U.S. trademark for Skivvies was in 1954 which is decades after the term was commonly used.

If you Google search ‘skivvies’ you immediately get a response that reads:

“Skivvies, 3rd person, singular present, plural of skiv·vy (Noun)”

While this is true, I believe that it is referring to a different slang term altogether (confused yet?). It turns out that in British colloquial slang ‘skivvy’ is a derogatory term for a female domestic servant such as a scullery maid. Hence, if you have more than one skivvy in your kitchen then you have skivvies.

I think all of this needs a summary. When men are in their undershorts they are in their skivvies. Also, when men are in their undershorts and undershirts (not sure if wife beaters qualify) and they have a nautical background they, too, are in their skivvies. If one wants to be proper, then when in just an undershirt, one is in his skivvy. I suppose that means that if there are two men, each in a skivvy, then the two are in their skivvies. If the man is in England and is in his skivvy, well, that is a different story.

I guess, in classic Toad tradition, we now need to show usage via a sentence:

“Sylvester slipped down to the scullery in his skivvies late at night to skive some ham for a snack when, to his surprise, the skivvy was there scrubbing the floor.”

The Green Flash

Ah, the Green Flash - the mystery, the wonder, the quest. After watching decades of sunsets, I finally saw a Green Flash. And, yes, I deem it worthy of capitalization because it is a marvel, like a god, that many pursue and only a few witness. I know the Green Flash is a simple optical refraction phenomenon, not an illusion, but I was still pretty stoked and doubly excited because I was looking through a camera lens and snapped a picture of this rara avis. Now I can prove to friends that this wonder was truly physical and not physiological, psychological, or a figment of a Mai Tai.

We have all heard sailors and old timers wax on about the beauty of the Green Flash; they say it is a brilliant emerald color not seen in any artist’s palette. I always assumed that the people who claimed to see it fell into one of several categories: those who habitually see pink elephants; those who have stared at the sun so long they have destroyed the retinal rods that transmit any color other than green; and those who lie about what they have seen in order to score deference, dates, or drinks.

From a scientist’s perspective, the Green Flash is a phenomenon due to the dispersion of atmospheric refraction. As the sun drops below the horizon, the shorter wavelength green light has a longer refractive delay and hence is the last to disappear - which is really a good thing if you like Green Flashes. Now the astute reader will be saying, “But blue is an even shorter wavelength than green so why don’t we get a blue flash?” The very short wavelength blue light of the setting sun is scattered away by air molecules and aerosol particles before it gets to your eye. That’s why the sky is blue.

From a nonscientific perspective, observing Green Flashes is a result of people relaxing and watching the sunset regularly enough that they get treated to a nonpareil vision - sort of the visual equivalent of stopping to smell the roses.

Jules Verne was so enamored by the Green Ray, as he called it, that he wrote the novel Le Rayon Verte, a story of people traveling to Scotland in quest of the Green Flash. At the end of his novel, they prevail. Verne’s description¹ of the event is:

Motionless, and with intense excitement, they watched the fiery globe  as it sank  nearer and nearer the horizon, and,  for  an   instant,  hung   suspended  over  the  abyss. Then, through the refraction of the rays, its disk seemed to change till it looked like an Etruscan vase, with bulging sides, standing on the   water. There was no longer any doubt as to the appearance of the phenomenon. Nothing could now interfere with this glorious sunset! Nothing could prevent its last ray from being seen! ... At last only a faint rim of gold skimmed the surface of the sea.

"The Green   Ray! the  Green Ray!" cried  in  one breath  the  brothers,  Dame  Bess and  Partridge,  whose eyes for one second had reveled in the incomparable tint of liquid jade.

Since Jules Verne wrote this so well in 1882, all I can add to it is the picture I took. Alas, I did not get a photo of the Etruscan vase - maybe next time.  

The Green Flash - Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California

Right before the flash - almost an Etruscan vase.

1 – Jules Verne, The Green Ray, 1882. Translated from the French Le Rayon Vert by Mary De Hautesville. Published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington; London, 1883. Copy obtained via The Internet Archive. http://www.archive.org/details/greenraytrbymde00verngoog

A Toad Moment - Ennui

A couple of years ago I started writing a Toad’s Words Excursion with words from Cole Porter lyrics. My motivation was partially that I had just seen Midnight in Paris multiple times. But the full truth is that I have been fascinated by the word ennui and had been researching it (I have 44 pages of research notes). 

I started looking into ennui shortly after I had to spend eight hours flat of my back in the hospital recovering from a test. During that time I responded to an email from a friend who asked how I was doing and my response was “fighting vainly that old ennui” which, of course, is a line from Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick Out of You. Also, several years ago when our local high school performed Porter’s musical Anything Goes, I acted as a volunteer dramaturge and did a fair amount of research on Mr. Porter and his glorious words. I am in awe of anybody who can write lyrics that have the natural rhythm to them, like “At words poetic, I’m so pathetic…” Those words speak directly to me.

But my attempt at a complete Toad’s Words of Cole Porter got stalled by other events in my life, or perhaps, just ennui.

Never-the-less, I did finish writing Ennui so I present it as a Toad Moment.

Ennui, noun

Pronounced  - on we (ahn wee)

Boredom is the simple definition. However, ‘ennui’ is more than simple boredom. ‘Ennui’ is apathy, mental dissatisfaction or weariness because of lack of interest in one’s life due to existing employment or surroundings or brought about by societal or personal stagnation.

Cole Porter used ennui in the opening stanza of his song, ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’:

My story is much too sad to be told.

But practically ev'rything leaves me totally cold.

The only exception I know is the case

When I'm out on a quiet spree

Fighting vainly the old ennui

And I suddenly turn and see

Your fabulous face.

But Porter was not the only lyricist / poet to use ennui. Alan Jay Lerner had Mordred sing it in ‘The Seven Deadly Virtues’  from Camelot:

"Those seven deadly virtues were made for other chaps,

Who love a life of failure and ennui…"

Those always upbeat poets Sylvia Plath and Lou Reed wrote poems titled Ennui. Langston Hughes wrote this:

Ennui

It's such a

Bore

Being always

Poor.

And, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde has the character Lord Wotton say to Dorian Gray:

"The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness."

And it is said that Buddha said:

 “Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair.”

Ennui comes from the French word ennui which means boredom.

Baulelaire in his preface of Les Fleurs du mal, says:

“C'est l'Ennui! —l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.”

Or as we would say in English:

 “It's Ennui! — his eye brimming with spontaneous tear, He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah”.

Now that we have made the connection between the French word ennui and the English word boredom, I guess I should mention that, according to the OED, the first recorded use of the word boredom was by Charles Dickens in 1852 in Bleak House. To me, that seems pretty recently but maybe before Charles Dickens started writing nobody was ever bored.

Ok, that is probably much more than you wanted to know about a single word but it fascinates me. Ian Fleming (yes, the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) liked the subject of boredom and lassitude of mind and used it a lot. He never used ennui but he did talk about its resulting accidie in at least five of his Bond novels – but that word and discussion will be covered in another Excursus – if acedia doesn't get me first.

A Noisy Thanks

So far this spring, in my ‘hood, I’ve seen:

Intrepid black crows cawing and mean,

Lazy red-tailed hawks soaring to maul,

Energetic woodpeckers dominating all,

Nascent black phoebes in their nest of three,

Tiny Anna’s hummingbirds swooping with glee;

Scrub jays behaving as if they’re king,

Pairs of mourning doves each pitying,

Robins, red-breasted, digging my grubs,

Ignoble house sparrows filling the shrubs,

Northern mockingbirds acting like barons,

Gopher-stalking great blue herons;

Rufus hummingbird being a missile,

A charm of gold finches eating our thistle,

California towhees gleaning the heather,

House finches in their varied red feathers,

Elusive bluebirds delivering peace,

Large band-tailed pigeons looking obese;

Citrine hooded orioles, exotic!

A pair of quail, almost quixotic,

Radiant and showy black-headed grosbeak,

Set of mallards away from their creek,

Oak titmice with their Mohawks frenetic,

Nuthatch, white breasted, looking ascetic.

I Like My Pork Rinds Plain

I needed a change of venue. My home office is piled high with Ian Fleming books, James Bond reference books, and other flotsam and jetsam of my collecting habits so I went to my real office which is piled high with the detritus of thirty-seven years of engineering research.

I tend to get groggy mid afternoon and, unless I am on one of my intermittent health kicks, I wander down to the break room to get caffeine and salt in order to raise my blood pressure so that I can cruise Facebook and check my blogs with a lot more gusto.

Much to my surprise, the snack food fairies took away our old vending machine, which required buffalo nickels and Indian head pennies, and put in a modern, 1970 vintage, vending machine with a lot of newfangled features:

1) It is digital – you have to use your digits to push the proper letter and number code to get your junk food;

2) It has a really cool (by pre-Apollo Mission standards) quasi-robotic mechanism that drops your junk food as far as it can, insuring that your choice is delivered in tiny pieces – this works particularly well for Life Savers and Hershey Bars;

3) It charges 33% more than the old machine did – digital costs more;

4) And, it has a very large glass front so you can observe all the junk food choices at once and watch your snacks either fall to their demise or get stuck on the way down.

I was excited by all the new possibilities for my salt and fat addiction. I intently studied my opportunities.

Whatever happened to plain, ordinary snacks? There were three full rows of chips (crisps for my British friends). We have:

• Sour Cream and Onion Cracker Chips,
• Cheddar and Bacon Potato Skins,
• Chili Cheese Fritos,
• Nacho Cheese Doritos,
• Flaming Hot Crunchy Cheetos,
• Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles,
• Garden Salsa Sunchips, and
• Chili Flavored Pork Rinds, to name a few.

 Ok, ok, I admit, I am from the flatlands and cornfields of Illinois in the middle of hog country not far from Peoria. I learned to eat my food unflavored – some say bland. But good, well made, plain corn chips, potato chips, and pork rinds all have real honest flavor. I have not ruined my taste buds by eating artificially flavored chipotle nacho bacon sour cream onion cheddar flaming chili salsa chips. Nor do I intend to start at my advanced age. Adjectives describing chips should only be words like “plain,” “salted,” “natural,” or “fattening.”

Flavored pork rinds really upset me. Fried fat has no carbohydrates but it does have a lot of natural flavor. There is nothing any better than salty pork rinds and a cherry Coke to lift your mood on a dreary day or a long car drive.

The only simple salted snack in our new highfalutin machine was Dirty Sea Salt All Natural Potato Chips. I finally figured out that “Dirty” is a brand name.

So … out of frustration, I bought the Healthy Chocolate Covered Mini Donuts. 

An Omen?

Or two, or three? 

You bet!

I had an off day yesterday. No … I don’t mean because this is Spring Break and I was off work. I mean that I was mentally and physically off kilter. (What does 'kilter' really mean? I feel a Toad Moment coming on.) So this morning and on my morning constitutional I vowed that I would take my own advice, keep my senses open, and look for a moment. Because it was early and the sun was just burning through the morning fog, I decided to concentrate on watching for and listening to birds.

As I turned the corner by my brother’s house I stopped dead in my tracks – there were a pair of ducks, mallards to be precise, standing on the sidewalk in front of me. Now we don’t live in one of the neighborhoods where there are lakes, or ponds, or even a river. Oh, I think a few neighbors have swimming pools and there are a few hippie hot tubs around, but no open bodies of water. We have lived in this same neighborhood for almost 37 years and I have never seen a duck taking a walk down our sidewalk. So . . . seeing a pair of ducks did surprise me a bit. It also brought a big smile to my face.

You see, there are three animals that always cause me to stop, smile, and just plain mellow out  — ducks, toads, and beagles. Why? Well, that is another story. I will say that my nickname (thanks to a high school friend) is Duckman but that, too, is another story.

So…I stood and watched the ducks until they finally realized that they were in a cheap neighborhood that didn’t have a pond or a lake and they flew away. I walked another half block and when I turned the next corner, a dove walked out in front of me from under the neighbor’s rosemary plant. A great plant — I always swipe my hands through it when I am out for my walks. Now, I am not over the top about doves like I am about ducks but they are fun to watch and to listen to when they mourn.

So I am now feeling pretty good about seeing a few of nature’s creatures when I turn the corner again, and out of a neighbor’s lavender plant (yep, I run my hands through it, also) hop two little bunnies. Again, keep in mind that this is southern California and not central Illinois. In Illinois there always seem to be a dozen or more rabbits (notice I didn’t call them bunnies) eating my tulips. We don’t have bunnies in this simple tract neighborhood. The bunnies just sat there. Since this is Easter week, I started to really wonder.

So ... in my mind these were definitely omens and have already brought me pleasure. I cut my exercise short by thirty minutes in order to get home and write this all down. And … No! None of these were pookas. But they all provided a Moment!

My Drug Abuse

This morning at the communal water cauldron, a holier-than-thou co-worker went off about how South American third-world countries are corrupting American society. According to him, these countries have purposely introduced a plethora of drugs into the good old U. S. of A. These drugs have pushed our society into a death spiral to the point that we, too, will soon be a third-world country. He didn’t say it but he strongly implied that when we hit bottom it will be with the aid and direction of the pinko leftists.

I don’t like arguments so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, I have been using a South American exported drug for many years. Yes, this habit has cost me money and occasionally has clouded my judgment and affected my health. I guess I have always had a craving but the wise council of my parents kept me pretty clean. Once I graduated from college, moved to California, and had a steady income, I increased my intake.

I found a local source that was within walking distance of my office near the beach. My wife, who is also addicted, and I ultimately became close friends with our source. A good thing too - I remember late one Saturday night, after going out to an Italian dinner, we both desperately needed a fix but our cache was empty. In fact, our backup cache was empty so we panicked. We called our source who said she had some at her house and if we dropped by she would fix us up. We beat a path to her door, took possession of a bag of the goods, and sat in the car and used it before even driving the few blocks back home. Yes, we were in a bad way.

We have tried on a number of occasions to stop cold turkey but to no avail. When we were raising our children, we worked at keeping the stuff out of the house. All kinds of youthful problems have been associated with this drug. We ultimately found that one of our daughters was a friend of our source’s son. He would sneak bags of the stuff to school in his back pack and share it with our daughter at lunch. Needless to say, we did not report this to the authorities; no telling where it would lead.

As we have gotten older our tastes have become more refined and, unfortunately, we are now addicted to the expensive, more highly concentrated stuff. Fortunately, our friend is still in business and supplies a high-end product in half-kilo bags. We keep it at home in the buffet next to the cooking sherry. My wife uses it in brownies, but, you know, after the first brownie you get the munchies and can’t stop eating.

In recent years there have been lots of articles written on its medicinal value. I am not sure of the veracity of that research. One wonders if it is just an excuse to justify the bad habits and addictions of the authors. If all of the articles are true, then I will live a long time and prosper. My blood pressure will be lower, my cholesterol will be lower, my hormones will be better balanced, and my body will be protected from aging. I certainly know that my wife is a lot happier when the stuff is available.

If America does fall as a result of this drug we cannot blame the source but should look to one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, an early addict, who said:

"The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain."

And don’t get me started on coffee.

Moments - A Cogitation

The other night my wife and I saw Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The main punch line of the play is when the newly dead Emily says to the Stage Manager, "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" The Stage Manager replies, “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

I don’t agree with the Stage Manager’s response. I think we all “do some.” The “some” that we do are called “moments.”

Life is all about moments and the stories that come from them. Sometimes they are humorous. Sometimes they are sad. Sometimes they are romantic. Sometimes a moment is so private that you can’t tell the story publicly but you still have the the memory and the story.

I collect moments like some people collect coins or books.  I am always on the lookout for a good one. Moments are clearly important for everyone.  Did you ever think about all of the songs that speak of moments:

This Magic Moment – The Drifters

Moments to Remember – The Four Lads

Magic, Moments - Perry Como

It Only Takes a Moment – Hello Dolly

One of the things that make us human is that we tell stories. Moments lead to stories.  Without a moment you have no stories. 

We all have some moments. Some are obvious like our first date, our first kiss, losing our virginity, our wedding, the birth of a child, seeing the Grand Canyon or Chartes Cathedral for the first time, or seeing your first pileated woodpecker. To make life exciting you need to make yourself available to experiences. Open your senses… your eyes, your ears, your nose. But most of all get out there and look for moments.

Photography helped me learn to see, allowing me up to gather more moments. Even when I don’t have a camera with me I am constantly looking for a picture. Be careful – you don’t want to look like a scanning radar – but do keep yourself alert to opportunities. Sunsets, sunrises, rainbows are common but with the right person or at the right time they become a moment.  To me, full moons are always a moment. However, I remember only a few of these – a lunar eclipse, the moon over the Eiffel Tower with my arm around my wife, a swooping owl.

Moments are not just opportunities of the senses. Sometimes being in the right place at the right (or wrong) time is what causes the memory. My being in the air at 6:00 am on September 11, 2001, was not a lot of fun, but I do have a story to tell.

We all know that music and scent can bring us back to a moment. The first line of the first story I ever wrote was, “I remember it as a summer of The Graduate, “Cherish”, and Windsong” … three sensations that brought back a moment.

So, fellow Boomers, what do you remember when you hear the line, “Hello darkness my old friend,” or “I can’t get no satisfaction,” or “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away?” Or… do you remember who you were with the first time you heard Vic Flick’s guitar riff Dum-Di-Di-Dum-Dum…  (Yes, the James Bond Theme)?

Rarely does TV provide a memorable moment but one that jumps out at me was watching Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in real time. And a few years later we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

So, we all need to be alert and looking for moments. When we find a good moment, we want to make sure that it has a lot of momentum. I am absolutely sure that my children are tired of hearing about some of my momentous moments. But, that’s OK; I have a granddaughter to tell my stories to now.

And since I argued with Thornton Wilder at the beginning, I think it only fair that I let him close. 

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

A Dogged Moment

Over the past month several of my friends and colleagues have commented that The Toad and Dogged Dialogues have both been quiet recently. I checked and it has been well over a year since I posted anything. There are a lot of reasons for that but I suspect that at the top of the list are my sloth and ennui. In defense, however, I have started writing several poems, essays, and Toad’s Words but, well, acedia always took control and my muse would run away.

To solve the problem of never finishing anything I start, I decided to create Dogged Moments. These will be very short dialogues based on some of the weird thoughts and musings that occasionally blow the windmills of my mind and then dog me for the rest of the day.

Dogged Moment #1 - Dashboards

While I was peeling my grapefruit this morning and waiting for my morning thunder tea to brew, I found myself singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.  Don’t we all sing tunes from Oklahoma while fixing breakfast?

You can pretty well find anything in their lyrics to inspire you: “Oh what a beautiful morning,” “They’ve gone about as fur as they can go,” “I cain’t say no,” “It’s a scandal. It’s an outrage,” “Don’t start collecting things.” Although it is my wife who usually sings this last one to me. And my favorite, “It's summer and we're runnin' out a' ice.”

Anyway, if The Surrey with the Fringe on Top is good enough for Marlene Dietrich to sing and Miles Davis to play, then I can sing it in my kitchen.

Well, I got to the line which I have heard and sung a million times, “The dashboard’s genuine leather”, and it suddenly hit me that we were talking about a surrey here. That begs the questions: Why do both cars and surreys have dashboards? And, why is it called a dashboard?

The answer is simple. Surreys, wagons, sleighs, and carriages were pulled by horses and when horses run fast, or “dash”, they tend to throw clumps of mud, crud, and other, even less delightful stuff, off their hooves.  Hence these modes of transportation put boards in front of the driver and passengers to keep the mud from hitting them.

So why do they call them “dashboards” in cars? Keep in mind that early cars were called carriages or horseless carriages so it made sense to name the board holding the knobs, gauges, and controls after what everyone was already calling it, the “dashboard.”

The truly interesting thing is that now we also call computer displays that show us real-time data like weather, time, stock prices, and news, “dashboards” … clearly a misnomer. These modern day dashboards don’t protect us from the crud the news and stock market throw at us.