Message text written by "The listserv without rearview mirrors.  --Minnie
Cooper"

Another Muppet fan here. My earliest Muppet memory goes back to when they
were doing TV commercials; Kermit the Frog, advertising bacon, popped up
from a skillet to inquire, "Madam, are you troubled by shrinkage in the
pan?" Long before he became a superstar of color--green. 

My personal favorite dialogue from the Muppet Shows was when Fozzie Bear
reported that he had given Animal the standard agent's contract to
sign--and he ate it. "Oh dear," said Kermit. "I do hope the contract isn't
binding."

I too, Johnette, had to change to digest mode (in which a day of BP is
easier to digest, if, like an anaconda, you prefer one large meal less
often to snacking throughout the day in the manner of small furry or
feathered things.  It's less dynamic than receiving messages as they go,
but I couldn't deal with the volume when I am not online all day. But it
also leads to messages like these, trying to cover several topics at once. 

Beethoven as road music reminds me of when I was an aspiring printmaker in
college. I found that Bach was good to work by, but Beethoven was so
emotionally involving that it started to influence the work. The
Brandenburg Concertos (my contribution to our listening library) were the
most popular. One of my colleagues became so tired of one of our pop-music
albums (we had a portable record player and vinyl discs in the print room,
this was in 1973) that he inked it, wiped it and made a print from it. I
still have this print somewhere. I thought it was very funny until he
repeated it with an album I happened to like. 

Consider the possible the relationship between road-music preferences and
driving styles. 

I doubt that FLW (which is also a photographic filter) took the mirrors off
his car (how else to admire himself) but the story sounds like someone's
metaphor for his personality. My direct experience with his buildings is
limited to one trip to the Guggy and one to the Usonian house whose name
escapes me that he did in Arlington (now at Woodlawn Plantation in
Alexandria). It was interesting to look at this house from the point of
view of histo presto, in comparison with the plantation house, and as a
realtor--that is, imagine what people would think of such a house in the
modern world, as well as in its time or some other time. It is a rather
charming house, full of ideas that don't always work. It also didn't
succeed in being cheaper to build than a conventional house, mostly because
it required a lot of custom millwork and hand-built construction. A triumph
of ideals over practicality. I was most pleased, though, to learn that the
original owner, now in his 90s, still a gourmet cook, volunteers for
special events at the house, and, proving the practicality of the tiny
kitchen, cooked a dinner there for a group of donors sometime in the last
few years. 

Rear view mirrors do tend to look ungainly on most cars, especially when
they are the only projections on the jellybean-like shape.  Any clutter on
this sort of shape tends to be more obtrusive than it is on the older, more
complex designs, which are so cluttered anyway that door handles, door
outlines, mirrors and so on don't detract. Same goes for building shapes.
Also, on cars with running boards and separate fenders, the side mirrors
don't stick out beyond the car. They are attached to the doors, which are
well within the perimeter. If I can get the front of my Morgan through a
space, the whole car will fit--kind of like a cat's whiskers. This plus the
fact I can see both front corners easily allows some very precise
positioning. With an envelope bodied car, you may get the front through a
space, and scrape the mirrors off. There's a lot to be said for 'old tech'
but I don't have to tell this group that. 

And finally, when my pretzel-loving colleague, David Cooper, brought a bag
of bite-size pretzels to share with the office instead of his usual
standard-size ones, I immediately dubbed them "mini-Coopers." 

Don

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>