A whole passel of puzzles

Lettuce pause for a moment of self-doubt followed by the Serenity Prayer and a daily dose of gratitude for my sister who mailed me a whole passel of jigsaw puzzles. She mailed them in a Crate & Barrel box.

Q. How many 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles did she send?
A. A whole passel.

Q. How do you spell "passel?"
A. "Passel" is spelled like "tassel," and unlike "hassle." "Passel" is a real word. Thank heaven! I didn't just dream it up. It's right there in the big red dictionary.

Just seeing the box of puzzles unleashed an inner endless-loop of the Andrews Sisters singing "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck."

Q. How much do I love you?
A. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

Q. Is a bushel bigger than a passel?
A. That is comparing apples to oranges with a festive sauce of linguistic idiosyncrasy.

Q. At Christmas dinner the cook opined that peeling 6 lbs. didn't make as many mashed potatoes as it used to.
A. Should that be "as much" or "as many?"

It is still a passel of mashed potatoes. A "passel" is a large quantity although etymologically-derived from "parcel." And "to parcel" means to divvy up and dole out fractions of a whole.

Q. When was Bob Dole on the Republican ticket?
A. Let's skip over this part.

Q. Why do we say "part and parcel?"
A. To mean the whole kit and kaboodle. Also, since part and parcel mean the same thing, the expression is for decorative emphasis with all the bells and whistles.

Q. Does everyone know that The Idiot by Elif Batuman is a really dry funny novel about college, language, linguistics, narrative, meaning, constructed worlds, attending foreign films, Dracula, and conflicted romantic relationships?
A. No, but they need to read it.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Rothenburg on the Tauber

December 1945 finds Tech Sgt. Mastalir transferred to the 15th Tank Battalion in Rothenburg, Germany. As he writes home, he is in the redeployment pipeline, "but the pipes are frozen." He is staying with eleven guys in two rooms, and having trouble getting any peace and quiet to think straight. To add to the chaos, he has developed some sort of nasal blockage that will require surgery before he can finally travel back to the States. Plus, and this is a big plus, he has just gotten word that his older brother Milt has married Marge, a woman friend when Dad was studying at Georgetown. (Although he insisted she was not his "girlfriend.") Dad's aunts are sure Milt has "stolen" Dad's girlfriend. Never mind that Milt is six years older than Howard, and Marge is older than Milt. It must have been a major soap opera in tiny Pierce, Nebraska, considering how invested the townsfolk were in writing to their young soldiers and hearing readings of letters from overseas.



Growing up I was fascinated by three wood inlay pictures of a fairy tale village*. Both my memory and my photos are incomplete, but it looks like Dad sent the framed pictures home from this time in Rothenburg on the Tauber. They must have resonated with his interests in architecture and woodworking, and his need for clarity and order. The inlay pieces fit so neatly, while his life must have felt very disordered.

No date on the tourist guidebook

The town seems to have been both a symbol of Nazi ideology, and protected from shelling by the Allies due to its history and beauty.

One of the Rothenburg postcards in the trunk.

   

*Even Rick Steves calls it a "fairy tale dream town."

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Galette, gavotte

After a long food discussion at Thanksgiving, Danger Baby and his wife sent me a Trader Joe's gift card and the I Love Trader Joe's Cookbook by Cherie Mercer Twohy for Christmas. I went on a fantasy fill-your-cart shopping trip to fuel a winter Big Cook, but not after reading the cookbook. So, when I did start marking recipes with colorful sticky arrows I had the inspirations, but not all the ingredients. And the first inspiration was the asparagus tart on page 24. Had the fresh asparagus from Trader Joe's and 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Two out of seven ingredients! We have a winner.

You sigh. You roll your eyes. Have I ever had all the ingredients? Have I ever followed the directions?

I love cooking with Google. Type in the items I have, and, voilà, recipes appear. They may not be tested recipes, but I won't follow them anyway. 

Asparagus + crust + cheese....   

Wait! Asparagus + refrigerator piecrust dough + Parmesan cheese + mushrooms + Meyer lemon + garlic + spinach ...BINGO!

Google results were for asparagus galettes. Galettes seem to be unfettered savory or sweet pastries made without a confining pie pan. How did I not know about this ridiculously easy way to make a supper or brunch? I wanted to dance a gavotte!

galette--a flat round cake of pastry or bread

gavotte--a medium-paced French dance, popular in the 18th century;  a piece of music accompanying or in the rhythm of a gavotte, composed in common time beginning on the third beat of the bar.

https://www.britannica.com/art/gavotte

With a full tummy I drifted off into a happy dream of an earlier trickle-down era, the early '80s in Omaha. Upon awakening I couldn't remember the name of a favorite ladies' lunch destination beloved by my mom after discovery by  my Welcome Wagon club. The restaurant was done in lovely pinks and corals with white trim and not-annoying paintings hanging on the walls. Best of all was the dessert counter visited after soup-salad-sandwich with its amazing rich cakes. The restaurant was probably on the south side of Center Street, maybe Pacific, a little east of District 66. Fritzi's favorite cake was a ga- ga- ga- something with apricots. It took about an hour of searching to find the word "gateau," and I never did find the name of the restaurant (I am embarrassed to admit this failure):

gateau--a rich cake, typically one containing layers of cream or fruit.

Stumbling around in rich French desserts I got side-tracked by garrote. (This is not a French carrot cake.) The first time I read of murder by garrote was in Margaret Truman's Murder in the White House. Donald Bain, who died in October, ghostwrote some of Truman's mysteries, but not that one.

garrote--kill someone by strangulation, typically with a length of wire or cord.

But what of Marat? Did he die by garrote? He did not.

Mystery readers mourn the loss of Sue Grafton today. While I only made it to "N is for..." I always wanted Kinsey's shipshape apartment and elderly neighbors.

Thanks to Donna Leon and Louise Penny for another year of thoughtful, well-written mysteries.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Balcony garden gambling

Life is full of gambles that may or may not pay rewards:

1. Taking on student debt for an advanced degree
2. Marriage 
3. Cross-country moves for jobs
4. Letting spouse take the Sam's Card
5. Signing a lease
6. Buying a used car
7. Home ownership, for heaven's sake!

So buying a $9.99 tomato plant and matching eggplant at Calloway's Nursery on Memorial Day weekend seemed like a perfectly responsible purchase. So far, so good!

Never would have put money on the cut-off top of a pineapple, but it's determined to finish first in its second year.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Apricot-filled Alghero

After breakfast of warm cornetti all'albicocca, espresso, meat and cheese on the cloister terrace at Hotel San Francesco, a walk in Old City Alghero provides wonderful images:

 

Upcycling

More research needed into the best shoes for cobblestone walks!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Mystified frosted flakes in a concealed-carry world

Life feels SO serious lately, what with candidates as pleasant a gagging on a tongue-depressor, endless pledge drives, and the death of the department store. We need mystery fiction, cozy, historic, romantic, with or without cocker spaniels. Throw in some biplanes, dessert recipes, and secrets in an Antiques Roadshow clock. 

Library work is rarely glamorous, but it does have publisher blurbs inside dust jackets that inspire curiousity, wonder, and wacky visuals!

It's another day of agony at the dentist's office for ninety-two-year-old poet-sleuth Victoria Trumbull when a fellow patient, wealthy Mrs. Wilmington, dies in the next cubicle. It's an unfortunate, though seemingly not murderous incident, but the receptionist is hysterical. With the police shorthanded due to an upcoming presidential visit, Victoria takes on the case. As she wrestles with her ex-son-in-law, a three-million-dollar will, four greedy heirs, and a deadly dental clinic, Mrs. Trumbull discovers that nothing in the case is quite what it seems-- Adapted from dust jacket flap of Bloodroot by Cynthia Riggs.

1. 92-year-old
2. wrestling 
3. ex-son-in-law
4. dental agony
5. poet-sleuth

I want to be there when the 92-year-old poet-sleuth wrestles her ex-son-in-law over three-million-dollars just to see the hyphens fly.

Texas gun culture and workplaces don't mix on multiple levels. Governing bodies are trying to set policies for carrying concealed weapons on the job. It's been a bad couple weeks in the Man vs. Machine category with recalcitrant printers, obstinate computers, and demon-possessed coffee-makers. I shot the copier, but I didn't shoot no vending machine. 

In other workplace mysteries, I accidentally looked inside the break room fridge.  Birthday Cake @ 3:00 Today introduces plucky human resources professional Jemima Benefits who must find the killer in this forensic culinary thriller before moldy leftovers claim another victim. Sequel May 2017  working title:  Case of the Queso Crockpot.

Remember this -- any workday when you don't show up on the nightly news is a good day. Don't wrestle, write haiku.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Storage, screams, and boredom

Monday:  My life is a mess, or my apartment is a mess. Well, maybe it's the bathroom that's a mess ... especially the counter with all those pill bottles and hair goo and mouthwash that won't fit in the drawers or in the cabinet below the lavatory.  Maybe Target holds the answer to my life.  Target is a mess with a leaking roof . Target has giant jellyfish catheter bags hanging from the ceiling in many departments and only two cashiers and the customers are getting properly pissed disgruntled. My life is looking better and the bathroom storage solution only cost $42.

Heavy Duty Drain Tarps Help Redirect Leaks From Ceiling Through A Drain Port.

Tuesday: Am I bored with my Breakfast Blog, or just bored with making breakfast? Why am I up to two mornings per week bribing myself with Einstein bagels to creep into the shower and get the day going? The employees at Einsteins know my name. Sometimes you want to go....

Wednesday a.m.: Yes, he is still there, the young/old person camping out under one of the thirty-seven High Five bridges, but now over on the east side of the 75 Expressway instead of the west.  The concrete supports create a sleeping berth and shelves for his/her belongings. I spy a cooler, a burgundy nylon sleeping bag, and maybe a boombox with my little eye.

Wednesday p.m.: I'm still not sure which bridge exactly, but I worry about the new resident rolling over in the night down the slope into traffic. What could be more of a deserted island than this spot you can't get to from here, you can't check out or ever leave. A half million of us weaving under and around and over the interchange everyday feel we can't get anywhere without moving through this place of his/her complete isolation.

Thursday: The periodicals room is screaming at 9:15 a.m. Librarian noir? 650 _0 $aHomicide investigation$xFiction. No, a computer back-up battery has died under a desk, oozing a chemical goo that ruins wood finish,  If the person under the High Five falls out of bed who will hear the scream? I buy cream-of-wheat and taco shells at Tom Thumb, then store myself on my ledge.

Cheers!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Kolache clarification

 My youngest food-conscious son sent Matthew Sedacca's Eater post about the Texas kolache tradition from 2/15/2016. Fortunately Sedacca explain's the "massive cultural confusion" associated with Texas kolaches, particularly the totally untraditional Little Smokie sausage in a "blanket" that most Texans think of as the true kolache. This has always bothered me, although they are tasty with the cheese and jalapeno. "Massive cultural confusion" is like putting mini-marshmallows and Nutella on pizzas.

As in East and Central Texas, Nebraska had a large immigrant population of Bohemians and Moravian Czechs. They cooked and baked as they were accustomed in their old land, but adjusted and innovated when traditional ingredients were unavailable in the new. 

According to Sedacca the Czech name for a sausage wrapped in dough is klobasnek. I didn't find a klobasnek recipe on my search this afternoon, but I found my great-grandmother's koblihi recipe, transcribed by her daughter Emma in 1943. Two layers of sweet yeast dough with plum butter between, then fried sounds really yummy!  "Czech donuts" close, but no kolache.

My great-grandmother, Mrs, Mary Mastalir's kolace recipe in the Pierce Congregational Cook Book assumes one knows a thing or two about yeast and dough, but I don't. Okay, give myself credit for not being afraid to open Pillsbury biscuit containers by whamming them against the edge of the kitchen counter ... I am afraid of typing diacritics, though.

 

Mrs. Turek's Bohemian rolls sound good, but they are not kolaches.

Mrs. Mary Mastalir's daughter-in-law Halma Mastalir baked the kolaches of my personal memory in this kitchen. I often wish my sons could have sat around her dining table or helped in that kitchen. Do my sons have memories from their Grandma Fritzi's kitchen that compare? Do they have food/flavor memories that give them a sense of exotic roots and time-travel?

  

Halma lived in a world where people still needed to know how to make their own soap, pickles, and sauerkraut by the quarts.

My own mother, Fritzi, made frustrated attempts at baking kolaches using Halma's recipe. I tried to help once.  It wasn't pretty. Think hockey pucks with jelly.

On the way to work there's a Chinese donut shop selling Tex-Mex jalapeno kolaches. We are all descendants of immigrants in various stages of massive cultural confusion, with or without the mini-marshmallows and Poppin' Fresh dough.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Trending

My generalized tendency is to become a tad more introverted and irritable each day of the week ending in the letter y. Today my annoyance is following the flow toward all things "trending".

The big red dictionary gives two interesting examples:

"A noticeable trend away from narrow "laws of learning'": (Gertrude Hildreth)

"The prevailing wind trends east-northeast."

"I made a big crockpot full and the leftovers are inescapable."

So, yes, society keeps sending us with the same unacceptable presidential candidates, poorly behaved professional athletes, exotic illnesses, uncomfortable shoes, sinus headaches, ineffective educational testing, and historic weather histrionics in our sack lunches everyday along with the BBQ chicken sandwiches. The leftover chicken sandwiches are the best in the lot, and a couple dill pickle slices help.

We don't need to figure out which way the wind is blowing to know what's going on. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with what's "trending" until we have no will left to fight against the gale. The commentators prattle on with all the insight of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern:

ROS: I merely suggest that the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively, the clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. I forget which you're trying to establish.
GUIL: I'm trying to establish the direction of the wind.
ROS: There isn't any wind. Draught, yes.
GUIL: In that case, the origin. Trace it to its source and it might give us a rough idea of the way we came in – which might give us a rough idea of south, for further reference. (2.52-55 Stoppard)

The figurative sense of 'the way the wind blows', that is, meaning the tide of opinion, was in use by the early 19th century. In November 1819, The Times published an advert for a forthcoming book - The Political House that Jack Built, which was said to be "A straw - thrown up to show which way the wind blows".

Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965, encouraged the young to make their own decisions with the lines:

You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Once I finish digging out the information about the "Tri-Trend" house where I grew up, I plan to go back to watching Audrey Hepburn movies. There are many, and I've only just started!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Go Share Make Be

All Gaul is divided into four parts, or maybe five. So Julius Caesar emails Brutus, Cassius, and Casca a link to Survey Monkey to take a personality quiz.

2015 will go down as The Year of the Personality Type Surveys. 

Learning styles

• visual
• tactile 
• auditory 

Don't tell me you have provided a printout of the Power Point so nobody has to take notes! If I can't take notes, I'm outta here no matter how good the snacks look. If there are no snacks, forget it!

Calm/Storm workplace communications  This survey yielded colors and numbers I never did understand. The quiz was based on the Friendly Press style profile for coworkers. Results and categorizations of staff based on this survey were disputed adding to workplace discomfort.*

Team player type

• collaborator
• contributor 
• communicator 
• challenger

True Colors 

• green--inventive, conceptual, complex
• gold--responsible, loyal, conventional
• blue--compassionate, poetic, dramatic
• orange--active, daring, exciting

Our trainer tried to correlate our True Colors results with the four team player types, but it did not hold up, and we got to go home early. 

Chef Team-Building

For this staff event we expected to be randomly assigned to groups to cook a meal within time constraints. Instead we were allowed to divide ourselves based on attraction. I had worried a lot about which staff members I could envision working with in the kitchen. I was growing fond of the everybody, but that didn't mean I could cook with them! I bet you could try the same thing at a big family holiday dinner. By attraction we ended up in comfortable groups of similar approaches and time use styles. The food was good, too.

Some facilitators split us into groups by type. Other threw us into a big flour tortilla with one person from each category for a Chipotle burrito exercise. If money was no object, what would you do? From this I developed my four Gaul parts. I think we each have an overriding motivation:

• Go
• Share
• Make
• Be

You have a responsibility to tell me I'm full of it until I upload my online quiz and start raking in the big bucks. 

The United States Institute for Peace has a conflict styles quiz. It is short. 

• avoider
• compromiser
• competer
• accomodator
• problem-solver

John Janovy wrote in Chapter 11 of  Keith County Journal that we work for one of four reasons

• love 
• joy 
• pride 
• money

As Sixties kids we wondered which of the Beatles we would date

• John?
• Paul?
• George?
• Ringo?

And then there's the matter of backbones. Which vertebrate are you?

• fish 
• amphibian 
• reptile 
• bird 
• mammal

*Grandma Halma had this framed poem on the pink bedroom wall for the calm and the storm:

It is easy enough to be pleasant

When life goes by like a song,

But the man worthwhile 

is the man with a smile

when everything goes dead wrong.

May 2016 be your year of staying in the cave grunting and snarling at passing coworkers and saber-tooth tigers.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

If at first you don't succeed

Opening night and world premiere of the Dallas Opera's "Becoming Santa Claus" was a strange and wonderful event. To begin with, I dribbled toothpaste on my black opera attire, and had to start over dressing in my dark chocolate opera outfit. We will not even get into my failed frozen pumpkin experiment except to say the thawing sections are too gooey for the intended bird feeder craft project. Now I'm attempting a slow drying in a low oven. The theme of the day is Plan B.

The Dallas Opera commissioned Mark Adamo to create a Christmas opera in hopes it would become a reliable Nutcracker/Christmas Carol/Polar Express-style annual money-maker. I admire the motivation, but I'm not sure they succeeded.


Good news first--the production has successful sets and costumes designed by Gary McCann.  It's quite Through the Looking Glass, complete with portraits that express more emotion than the living characters.


Bad news is the intentionally shrill, shrieking music, especially the vocal parts of the elves. I don't expect new operas to be hum-friendly toe-tappers, but they should not cause physical pain! Oh, and the wigs looked like they came from Party City.

I remain fascinated by the huge collaborative undertaking required to create a new opera or a new production. For the 50th season of the Dallas Opera local sculptors Tom Orr and Frances Bagley were invited to design the sets and costumes for Verdi's "Nabucco", and the results were stunning. Attending the premiere of the Dallas Opera's commissioned "Moby Dick" with mind-blowing projections was an amazing five star experience. Already in 2015 the Dallas Opera presented two brand-spanking-new very successful operas, "Everest" and "Great Scott". The mountain-climber opera made the audience part of the oxygen-deprived challenge. "Great Scott" was a delightful Rossini-does-NFL soap, enjoyable and even thought provoking, but nothing I can hum. Of course I am basically tone deaf.

In all of those bold ventures the Dallas Opera  created works where I felt totally engaged. At "Becoming Santa Claus" there was no personal engagement, no emotional connection, no likeable characters, and no transporting music. I kept trying to imagine any child of my acquaintance sitting through it (with no potty breaks or snacks).

I sincerely hope the Dallas Opera can do a major reworking of this opera to fulfill the possibilities of an annual family tradition/money-maker. And this time Dallas Morning News opera critic Scott Cantrell and I agree!


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Ice-breaker at Tone Deaf Anonymous

Yesterday I hosted another educator workshop. Hosting is easy compared to presenting the program. I bring the mini muffins and seedless grapes, and make the first pot of coffee.

[Hint #1--If you make the coffee too strong or too weak, workshop participants will ask if they can make the next pot.]

We opened the workshop with a fiendishly difficult ice-breaker. Each participant had drawn the name of a very familiar song from a bag. We were to walk around the room humming our song until we found all the other folks humming the same song.

Each new hummer I met completely knocked my tune out of my head. I was struggling to hang onto Jingle Bells, and to sort it out from Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle, Row Row Row Your Boat, London Bridge, and Mary Had a Little Lamb. When I finally found a young park ranger struggling with jingling all the way, we almost hugged in relief!

Early childhood curriculum guides are full of ideas like, "Sing this rhyme about tying shoes to the tune of I've Been Working On the Railroad," or "Use the tune of Frere Jacques for this little ditty about washing your hands after you flush." Remember, deer need food, water, shelter, and space. And there's a reason why we all aren't improv jazz musicians.

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous, Rudolph? 

  



© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Frozen pumpkin crescents

At the first sign of our belated fall, I went on a cooking binge. I made ground turkey and black bean taco filling in the crockpot to freeze. Then potato soup with a couple little turnips for tang, mushrooms for earthiness, and celery because Grandma said so. Most of that went into the freezer, too. A gardener's gift prompted a big batch of eggplants stuffed with lentils and almonds, but I was running out of Rubbermaid storage containers. The two dozen eggrolls had to be frozen in Ziplock bags, and the parmesan chicken casserole got shoved to the way-way back.

All good. Ready for the blizzard of '88.

But now I'm gutting the pumpkins left from autumnal decor for a work event. I need the seeds for an upcoming family nature craft session, and also crescents of pumpkin shell, Peter Peter. So far four 13-gallon bags of pumpkin shell crescents are wedged into the freezer. Three more pumpkins are out in the waiting room filling out paperwork before surgery.

So, if you are looking for Poppin' Fresh pumpkin crescents, you have reached the wrong site. If you want to wish the Pillsbury Doughboy a welcome-to-AARP happy birthday, check here.

 

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Shelf shifting, continental drifting

Work-out #1

Two days, two work-outs.What does peckish mean?  This English word meaning hungry dates from 1785 "literally disposed to peck". Other slang meanings dating from 1902 are outside the scope of this post.

My mission was to shift the periodical shelves down to get more magazines into the reach of more users, and to cull back issues so they would fit in the reduced spaces. For eight of the nine sections of the shelves this was a simple task. Count the holes. Position the brackets. Slide the wooden shelves onto the brackets. The wooden shelves were not light, though, especially not the front display shelves. Lifting stacks of back issues was a pretty good work-out by itself.

But for one section of shelves this was a woodpecker-drilled nightmare. Perhaps the section was installed upside-down. The bracket holes did not line up with the other sections vertically. So someone, probably a woodpecker, drilled many more holes. These holes were spaced too far apart front-to-back. The brackets were not long enough. The installer must have been the poster child for Measure Twice, Cut Once.

Woodpecker work

I had to look up peckish again. It never seems to fit its meaning when I see it in a book.

Work-out #2

Craving autumnal food despite the temps in the low nineties, I had an attack of recipe posting on Pinterest, then wrote a very long grocery list based on the recipes. Never mind my failure to ever actually follow recipes.Then I went digging for quarters to use at the car wash.

After the wash, the grocery list was nowhere to be found. I would just have to shop by memory! The answer sheet for this test was probably on the kitchen table.

garlic fail sweet potato pass chicken broth pass ginger thought better butternut squash pass can of chickpeas reassessed Greek yogurt pass fruit for smoothies pass zucchini pass couscous pass tomato paste pass canned tomatoes pass fresh mint fail fresh sage partial credit for a jar of dry sage potatoes pass lemon pass parmesan pass rice vinegar pass bread pass eggs fail fail milk fail butter fail sparkling grapefruit soda partial credit birthday card partial credit gift card short ribs fail partial credit for getting close pork roast partial credit pie crusts partial credit for a bargain chicken thighs fail bratwurst fail turnip fail breast cancer donation fail yellow squash

The real work-out will be convincing myself I want those breakfast fruit smoothies.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Brooching the subject?

[This post-brunch report did not harm any pooches or poached eggs.]

Sad to report I failed my brooch certification test. I am old enough to wear big jewelry pins, but I cannot reliably pronounce the word. So let us broach this subject.

Why, over brioche, I asked, are broach and brooch pronounced the same way if poach and pooch are not? Brioche, that light slightly sweet bread made with a rich yeast dough, is sensibly said, "bree ausch".

A participant at the nature art workshop designed this elegant brooch:

Nature art brooch design

Just last week I wanted to wear my mother's acorn brooch. It must be here somewhere, but I didn't find it on a first pass through all the boxes and storage tubs in the apartment.

Fritzi's brooch missing in action.

Fritzi's brooch, of course, is a piece of jewelry held on a woman's clothing by a pin near her neck. As always when I go off course on these searches, I thank the Online Etymology Dictionary!

Broaching the subject of brooches led me off-track, as usual: 

brooch (pronunciation American English)

brooch (n.) 

early 13c., from Old French broche "long needle" (see broach (n.)). Specialized meaning led 14c. to distinct spelling.

While broach can be a noun, the verb is on my mind:

broach (v.) 

"pierce," early 14c., from the same source as broach (n.). Meaning "begin to talk about" is 1570s, a figurative use with suggestions of "broaching" a cask or of spurring into action (compare Old French brochier, 12c., "to spur," also "to penetrate sexually"). Related: Broached broaching.

And as for the pronunciation, click here.

Who wears brooches? Madeleine Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Kate Middleton, Coco Chanel, and early childhood educators. Albright used her pins to communicate diplomatic statements. 

At the Montessori school we used pins and brooches to communicate study subjects--dragonflies, bees, flowers, fall leaves, spiders, ducks, mammals--even if we wore jeans. We did not make a big fashion statement, but children noticed and commented on our jewelry. 

An intriguing part of Princes at War involved the Duke of Windsor's commission of a Cartier flamingo brooch. I had trouble putting Deborah Cadbury's book down on my recent flights. And now we must broach the subject of males with brooches:

Hugh Fraser does not actually speak this line. That thingee on his chest IS NOT a brooch. It's time for me to do the ironing and watch another video about Wellington and Sharpe based on Bernard Cornwell's Napoleonic War novels. 

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder