Tag: Mother Goose

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Mother Goose (and Writing My Story) by Betsy

“Let’s see…. Mother goose. What can I possibly write about an old woman who flies through the air atop a goose,” I mused. “Or about the Mother Goose rhymes, for that matter.” Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. I know there is a hidden political statement there, but, do I really want to research that?”

“Well, Mother Goose and I have one thing in common. We’re both mothers. Further research is required here. Besides, I want to write about writing my story. Maybe I can combine the two subjects,” I speculate.

Facts about the Canada Goose: The species mates for life. Well, we don’t have that in common. Although I am monogamous, and faithful to my mate.

Many Canada Geese use the same nest each year and also build their nests in the same spot as their parent’s nest. My nests have moved around about every 15 years of my life and I have never nested anywhere near my parents nest.

Enough with the comparisons already. The Canada Goose is a very interesting creature. I read on.

Most people are familiar with the Canada goose. However there is great variation among them. There are 7 subspecies of the Greater Canada Goose in North America ranging in weight from 3 to 24 pounds. These waterfowl live for 10-25 years.

Mother-to-be goose (and father-designate) find each other at 2-3 years of age usually. It seems they find each other strictly for the purpose of breeding that very same season. No honeymoon. They go right at it. If one dies, a new mate will likely replace the deceased before long. Otherwise Canada Geese mate for life.

The nest is constructed of grass materials and feathers from mother goose’s breast. The eggs once laid are incubated for 28 days and hatched all at the same time. After being hatched the goslings are led away from the nest and cared for by both mother and father goose. The goslings have the protection of both their parents for 10-12 weeks after which time they are able to fly.

Mother Goose spends most of the day foraging for food which consists of grasses, roots, and leaves. That makes us both grazers–another point in common. She sticks pretty well to a vegetarian diet including lawn grass. A walk through the park attests to the amount of time spent consuming their food. One must carefully place one’s foot when walking through heavily goose-populated areas.

We have all witnessed the familiar V formation of the flying flock of geese. Why the formation? The V formation makes it easier to fly and facilitates communication among the flock. They migrate from the northern hemisphere in the late fall when the ground begins to freeze. These birds can travel more than 1000 miles per day on their journey to the Southern U.S. or Mexico. This puts my mileage to shame if you will permit me another comparison. The furthest I can go using my own muscle power is 100 miles in 1 day. That’s on a bicycle which allows me the aid of wheels and a drive chain. Even going that far in a car on interstate highways would be unthinkable for me even with two or three alternating drivers for that matter.

Canada Goose populations are expanding in urban areas attesting to the adaptability of the species. Well, I have been known to adapt to new environments–but not without complaint. But I do suspect that mother and father goose complain quite often. At least they sure look like it when they are hissing and honking.

So these are a few basic facts about goose behavior and habits. As for combining this subject with writing my story…I think that project must wait for another day and another topic. It turns out Mother Goose and I have very little in common.

© 12 May 2012

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Mother Goose by Phillip Hoyle

“Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her,
Put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he …”
          uh, uh, something
“… very well.”
          Two syllables, what was the word? words? Sure.
“Kept her very well.”

These days I still recall several Mother Goose rhymes because some of the names like Peter are answers for clues in one of the crossword puzzles I work each day. They’re stored deep in an obscure folder in my mind and reside in the culture although we rarely think of them as important except for children’s language development.

“There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile,
And found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse
And they all lived together in a crooked little house.”

I recall one of my grade school teachers explaining sixpence and stile just like my college literature professor years later explained odd words and expressions in Shakespeare and John Milton. So these rhymes were an introduction not only to poetry and vocabulary but also to literary criticism.

Most important for me, though, was that Mother played the role of Mother Goose in our house. She introduced us kids to the large volume that had a picture of a bespectacled and bonnet-clad Mother Goose on its cover. From it she read aloud to us endlessly. She quoted even more poetry from memory, she told stories of the family, she researched and relayed her findings about Gypsies, about cooking, about Girl Scouts, about history, and sometimes about movie stars. Mother introduced us to literature: children’s literature, classic comic books, tongue twisters, and so much more. She danced with her cats as well as with us. She entertained. She played. She challenged us to look. She wanted us to engage in life. And, like those of the literary Mother Goose, some of her tales were tricky. We had to figure out just what they were about. Of course, in the meantime, there was always the rhythm, the characters, the word play, and her charm. She never let the characters wander too far away from our conversation. She’d suggest the spider walking across the kitchen floor was just like one that so frightened Miss Muffett, point out Peter Rabbit in her mother’s large garden, or identify me with the little boy Georgy Porgy who so liked eating his puddin’ and pie. She made literature live for her children.

Father Goose lived at our house too. He read to us, usually from the Eggermeier’s Bible story book. He pronounced each character and place name correctly having listened to countless sermons from educated preachers and consistently following the code of his self-pronouncing King James Version Bible. He played the piano to our delight. He sang and taught us to sing. He also entertained, occasionally doing an old high school cheer—he had been a cheerleader—or dancing to an old jazz tune he put on the record player—he’d played for years in a dance band. He employed and discussed difficult words and taught us generosity with vocabulary as well as with other resources.

And we, too, all lived together in a little Cape Cod house where the children’s world of old Britain was brought close to us in our Kansas town. So was the world of the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, and Sumerians. It’s no wonder I started devouring book after book of historical fiction on my own beginning in the eighth grade. And thanks to the creativity of my mother and father and of the effectiveness of the education I received, Mother Goose stills reigns supreme in my world of literary fantasy.
   
Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Mother Goose and Granny – Revisited by Ricky

            It has been over twenty years since I have given any
thought to Granny or Mother Goose products or nursery rhymes, as that was when
my youngest child stopped wanting me to read to her.  Now I just have to wait until my granddaughter
is around so I can read that stuff again.
          I first encountered Granny Goose in the 1960’s when actor
Philip Carey played a macho James Bond type of character, named Granny Goose,
in potato chip commercials.  My favorite
commercial was the one where Mexican banditos ride up to Granny and one says,
“What’s in the bag, Goose?” 
Phillip Carey (1951-2008)
See Phillip Carey as Granny Goose

          Those commercials usually ended with Granny asking, “Now the only question is, are you grown up enough for Granny Goose.” I can assure you that the old cliché, “Idle minds are the Devil’s playground” is quite true. I was in high school in the ‘60’s and it did not take me long to convert Granny’s closing question into “Now the only question is, are you grown up enough to goose Granny?”

          Naturally, I first learned of Mother Goose when I was very young. My parents did read it to me sometimes, when I would sit still so they could. After I began to read, I would read them myself if it was raining and I was bored. I is rather interesting how many of the rhymes people can remember when they become senior citizens of advanced seniority.

          While on-line researching the term “Mother Goose,” I discovered that there are many books published on the topic containing many of the nursery rhymes. As it turns out, I have a copy of one of them in my library.

My Book’s Cover

          It is not the rarest one but apparently the most popular (if not famous). In perusing the contents, I managed to read many of the rhymes I remembered and discovered that several were longer or worded different.

          One of the oddest I found was one that completely solves the mystery of the cause of sexual orientation.

A Week of Birthdays

Monday’s
child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s
child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s
child is full of woe,
Thursday’s
child has far to go,
Friday’s
child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s
child works hard for its living,
But the
child that’s born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny
and blithe, and good and gay.

           Since there is one Sabbath Day per week and 52-weeks in a year, according to the above rhyme it follows that 14.285% of the population is gay, not the 3 through 10-percent figures often thrown about.  Mystery — SOLVED.  (Note:  These figures do not include the “Sabbath” days of other religions so the actual percentage would be even higher.)

           Many of the nursery rhymes are supposed to be short lessons on proper or unacceptable behaviors or even warnings. For example, consider:
 

Little Miss Muffet

Little
Miss Muffet
Sat on a
tuffet,
Eating
of curds and whey;
There
came a big spider,
And sat
down beside her,
And
frightened Miss Muffet away.
Moral #1: Eating curds and whey attracts big spiders. 
Moral #2: Girls are afraid of spiders. (So am I for that matter but, I don’t run; I attack using deadly force.)

          Also, consider the case of: 


Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son

Tom,
Tom, the Piper’s son,
Stole a
pig, and away he run,
The pig
was eat,
And Tom
was beat,
And Tom
ran crying down the street.
Moral:  Getting beat is worth a good meal.
         If you recall I titled this essay “Mother Goose and Granny – Revisited.” What comes next is the revisited part. These rhymes come from my K-8 elementary school days.
Little Miss Muffet

Little
Miss Muffet,
Sat on
a tuffet,
Eating
curds and whey,
Along
came a spider,
And sat
down beside her,
And she
beat the hell out of it with her spoon.
Little Miss Muffet

Little
Miss Muffet,
Sat on
a tuffet,
Eating
curds and whey,
Along
came a spider,
And sat
down beside her,
And she
ate that too.
The above nursery rhymes in
the blue font are from the book The Real Mother Goose, the 67th printing in 1977 – Rand
McNally & Company.  © 1944
© 20 May 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky
was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los
Angeles, California.
He lived first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. 
Just prior to turning 8 years old, he went to live with his grandparents
on their farm in Isanti County,
Minnesota for two years while
(unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.



When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay
and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South
Tahoe High
School in 1966. 
After three tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado
where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children.  His wife passed away from complications of
breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.  “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”

Ricky’s story blog is TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com.

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Mother Goose by Colin Dale

Train whistle blowing, makes a sleepy
noise,
Underneath their blankets go all the girls and boys.
Heading from the station, out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown, many miles away.
You may recognize those
lyrics, from the ‘50’s folksong Morningtown
Ride.  What does Morningtown Ride have to do with Mother Goose?  Well, I had a rough time with this week’s
prompt.  I had to really reach.   Mother Goose had nothing to do with my
childhood.  She was just not a presence
in my earliest years.  When I talk about
“earliest years,” I’m talking about really
earliest years: one, two, and three.  As
best I can remember—and who can really remember those years?—there was no
Mother Goose, no nursery rhymes, no bedtime stories.  I’m not saying my parents were remote or
ungiving, like “Let the kid lie in his crib and stare at the
ceiling.”  Not at all.  It’s just that storytelling wasn’t my
parents’ “thing.”
Early childhood memories are
notoriously uncertain.  I’ve tried many
times to reach back and remember my earliest true, verifiable, trustworthy
memory, not looking for Mother Goose but for the first flicker of
self-awareness, like a movie screen coming to life.  We’ve all done this.  It’s tough.
The best I’ve been able to
do is light up a day when I was four.  My
fourth birthday, as best I can tell.  I remember
a gift, and it seems it was a birthday gift: a toy truck, yellow and blue plastic,
and I remember playing with this truck on the living room carpet of our
second-floor apartment in the East Bronx.  I remember the room being filled with
sunlight.  Mine happens to be a February
birthday, so I’m guessing if this is a true memory, and it was my fourth
birthday, and if I had I looked out the window I’d have seen The Bronx in deep snow–the
way winters were back then.
I’m reasonably sure there
were no bedtime stories around the time of this fourth birthday.  There was certainly no Mother Goose.  But what about the years before: Years One,
Two, and Three?  Might my parents have
slipped in a little Baa, Baa, Black Sheep or I’m a Little Teapot during those
earliest veiled years?  Who’s to say?  Those years are forever irretrievable, unknowable.  Annus
incognita, the old maps would have said. 
  
The best I can do is
introduce circumstantial evidence.  My
parents were not big readers.   It’s
highly unlikely they would have been storytellers.  Anecdotes and jokes among adults, yes, but
bedtime storytelling?  Highly
unlikely.  My father went straight to the
back pages of the New York Daily News to see how he might best place a few
bucks on horses at Aqueduct and Belmont. 
My mother read the supermarket magazine, Woman’s Day.  Throw in a once-over of the Sunday church
bulletin.  That was it around my house.  More circumstantial evidence?  When I was old enough to be prowling about
and looking for stuff to read, I found no Golden Books of children’s literature,
no Beatrix Potter, no Brothers Grimm.
Slipping the time machine
into Forward gear, let’s hop ahead ten years, to when I’m fourteen, to when Morningtown Ride is just about to enter
the picture . . .
In spite of not having been
read to, I filled those ten years with books. 
I was a self-made reader.  Where
the inclination came from, I have no idea. 
Ours was a family of four.  My
father and mother, as I’ve already said, were limited readers.  My brother, fourteen years older than me, was
an athlete, and his athleticism was all consuming.  He was even less of a reader than my parents.
Me, the reader, was also me,
the shut-away loner.  My kingdom was my
bedroom.  How it came to be that I
dreaded being made to play outdoors with the boys in the street, I don’t know.  But that’s how it was.  That’s how I was.  I’d come home from P.S. 71 and shut my
door.  Weekends, too, except for meals,
I’d stay in my room.  I had a beat-up
Smith Corona typewriter I was using to pound out my first great novel–although
I never made much headway: I kept typing Page 1 over and over.  I did have a treasure in travel books
(wrangled from a favorite uncle, but that’s another story): Richard
Haliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels,
Beryl Markham’s West with the Night, Heinrich
Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet, Charles
Doughty’s Travels In Arabia Desert and
so on.  I was happy in my room.  My second-floor cave.  Through double-pane windows I would hear the
shouts of the boys in the street, but I didn’t care.  I was safe. 
Apart.  Unthreatened.
But–and this is the odd
part–I was also unhappy.  Although I
kept my unhappiness a secret, I had arrived at the point where I didn’t want this
loner existence to be the sum total of my life–the be all and end all.
Cue: Morningtown Ride . . . 
Slipping in to join the
books and the Smith Corona–thanks to a favorite aunt, wife of the favorite
uncle–came a Phonola High Fidelity Record Player, breadbox-size, portable, tan
& cream, a second speaker in the detachable lid; on the face of it the only
three knobs you would ever really need: base, treble, and loudness.
Along with the Phonola came
an assortment of records, mostly singles, 45 rpm.  One of the singles happened to be by a
singer/songwriter Malvina Reynolds: Morningtown
Ride.  I listened to it.  It was definitely juvenile stuff.  I listened to it again.  And again. 
And again, until it took up (I later realized) permanent residence in my
brain.
Train whistle blowing, makes a sleepy
noise,
Underneath their blankets go all the girls and boys.
Heading from the station, out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown, many miles away.
Sarah’s at the engine, Tony rings the
bell,
John swings the lantern to show that all is well.
Rocking, rolling, riding, out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown, many miles away.
Maybe it is raining where our train will
ride,
But all the little travelers are snug and warm inside.
Somewhere there is sunshine, somewhere there is day,
Somewhere there is Morningtown, many miles away.
Years later I heard Malvina
Reynolds on the radio, when Morningtown
Ride recorded by the Australian group The Seekers had become a surprise
hit.  Reynolds said, “I know youngsters
hate to go to bed at night because it seems like, as far as they’re concerned,
it is the end of the world. Going to sleep means you are going to be cut off
from everything, and I wanted to help them understand that they were heading
somewhere, when they got into bed, that they were heading for morning.”
At fourteen, naturally, I didn’t
think going to bed meant the end of the world. 
I wanted to travel, to get out of my room, and not to be “cut off
from everything.”  I didn’t want the
alternative to be having to join the boys in the street.  I wanted an alternative that was right for me,
something that was me, something that told me I was “heading
somewhere.”  Until it appeared, I’d hang
on to my apartness, to remain “snug and warm inside.”
   
So, this silly little song,
perhaps in the shock of my being exposed for the first time to the innocence–and
wisdom–of a nursery rhyme, assured me . . .
. . . somewhere there is sunshine,
somewhere there is day . . .
A silly little song that
was–and remains–my foster Mother Goose.

About the Author

Colin
Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center.  Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a
volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center.  Then and since he has been an actor and
director in Colorado regional theatre. 
Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin
lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The
Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at
RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The
Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most
recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at
the Arvada Center.  For the past 17
years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado
Shakespeare Festival.  Largely retired
from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel,
and memoir.
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Learning to Dance (According to Mother Goose) by Nicholas

Girls and boys, come out to play,
The moon is shining as bright as day.

Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows into the street.

Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about
princes and princesses and queens. There’s magic and elegant balls and fancy
costumes. Carriages take us to places of great imagination. And we dance all
night till dawn’s dim light.

Dancing, I mean disco dancing, was a part of
my liberation. Getting myself out onto the dance floor to shake and writhe was liberating.
I had spent plenty of time watching the sensuous moves of dancers wishing I
could just step out and let go and give in to the music. I think that disco
dancing in the 1980s was to gay men what going to church on Sunday was to black
women. Release me, oh, sweet Jesus, release me.

          Swaying, twisting, turning, stomping,
and waving arms to those simple rhythms and an overwhelming drumbeat at
deafening volume produced a sense of reverie. You could do anything and call it
dancing. You didn’t even need a partner. It just took some nerve to go out onto
a dance floor and shake your booty and other body parts.

          What got me dancing was hanging out
with Jack, Steven and Bill (whom we called Chester). We worked together at
Macy’s in San Francisco and we would go out after work. Friday saw us head to
Trinity Place, a downtown bar that featured cabaret shows. Then it was on to
get something to eat and then out dancing. These guys were light years ahead of
me. They didn’t just dance, they had moves, fancy ones, sometimes with fans or with
their stripped-off shirts. It was a performance to behold.

          On Halloween one year there was an
all-night extravaganza at the Galleria, a designers warehouse with a five-story
atrium. Entertainment was some disco diva headliner, the place was ablaze with
a continuous laser light show, and the best dance music in the world pulsed through
the night. We paid the high price for tickets, acquired the right wardrobe, and
did the right drugs so we could dance frenetically all night long.

          For Halloween everybody was in
costume. Jack loved the theatre and was adept at sewing so he
volunteered—insisted, actually—on making all our costumes. We decided on a
Renaissance courtier theme, with tights, puffy-sleeved velvet doublets, magnificent
capes and flouncy hats with feathers. Mine was midnight blue and grey with
ermine trim, of course. Our regal carriage—a grubby San Francisco taxi—took us
to the ball. There were no pumpkins and no mean sisters. It was all glamour,
like something out of a fairy tale.

          They’re all gone now and my dancing
days are over for sure. Chester was the first to go. I took him to see my
doctor because he didn’t have a doctor. But there wasn’t much to be done and he
died before they even named his illness. Steven went dancing into eternity next.
Jack hung on the longest, righteously angry that his life was being cut short.

          I don’t know what this has to do with
Mother Goose. There may be no rhymes here but I and my “playfellows” left our
supper and left our sleep and danced all night, seeking that release. This tale
of princes and magic and carriage rides into the night and back again with the
rising sun was one of those rare moments of wonder that stand out from
day-to-day life. Not all Mother Goose rhymes have happy endings—like “down will
come baby, cradle and all.” But though baby came to a hard landing, he enjoyed
his time swaying high in the tree top.

Rock-a-bye, baby,
   In the tree top:
When the wind blows,
   The cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks,
   The cradle will fall;
Down will come baby,
   Cradle and all.

About the Author

Nicholas
grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in
Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles,
gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.