2024, education, gardening, Gatherings, holidays, Uncategorized

Puff

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Well, our bell choir played for the PEO sisterhood on Saturday. It all went fine, although dragging the tables, bell cases, and all the equipment we need from church was a lot of work. We played in a huge facility the public school district purchased from the Haliburton Oil company for middle school and high school technical education. Culinary arts students prepared the meal. They also teach building trades, health sciences, all sorts of practical technology training, large equipment operating, business methods and marketing, and agriculture training. The complex is almost brand new and is enormous, with multiple buildings. The facility and the training are amazing. It is located on the outskirts of town on the major road north to the oil fields.

We played in the lunchroom. Everyone was very appreciative, and we played well. I couldn’t help thinking, though, how silly Puff The Magic Dragon is. I thought it was silly when I was a child, too. To make the situation even sillier, Saturday was 4/20, National Marijuana day. Here we were, middle aged and older people playing a song long associated with marijuana use for a bunch of very prim and proper middle aged and older women. No one else in the bell choir realized the symbolism or association of the song with the day, and we all got a good laugh out of it when I reminded them after the performance. There is a push to legalize recreational cannabis use in our state. Who knows, maybe they will add training at the technical institute on how to grow and market recreational pot!

What was technical training like when you were in high school? What is the most ludicrous performance or presentation you ever were involved in?

26 thoughts on “Puff”

  1. Puff, the Magic Dragon is, for me, right up there with Little Drummer Boy as songs I can’t abide.

    In junior high school the boys had various shop classes in which they were obliged to participate. There were both wood and metal shops. I remember making some sort of rotating screw and nut holder and a three-legged triangular side table and some metal shelf brackets. We also had a class in mechanical drawing. But the class I remember best and most enthusiastically was print shop. The school was equipped with platen presses and ample drawers of type. Even back in the early ‘60s, this was all vintage and for the most part obsolete technology. We learned the arrangement of the California job cases (I still remember some of the mnemonics to help with that) and how to handle the set type and transfer it to the press. Years later, when I had a little business/hobby making rubber stamps I was able to put some of those skills into practice.

    As much as I enjoyed it, these were skills unlikely to ever be applicable in the world of work. I expect the school had this equipment because it could be had cheaply due to its obsolescence but I wonder how they justified it as training.

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      1. So do I, but I’ve always loved Puff the Magic Dragon. Perhaps naively, I prefer to interpret it literally rather than see it as a metaphor for smoking weed, although I can readily see how easily it lends itself to that too.

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        1. i’ve never been able to work myself into a froth about Puff the Magic Dragon. Really? There are so many songs and poems and movies and books that you can twist if you want. It’s just a cute song about a kid and a magic dragon. And growing up.

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  3. I remember being in a 5th Grade class play about Teeth… I believe I was a toothbrush. Just imagine…

    At Iowa State (up until 2018) there was Varieties, a fall event/ competition, with skits from many of the residence hall floors and fraternities/sororities. Ours in 1967 was Alice in Wonderland, with psychedelic lighting and music; I was one of the cards from the deck being yelled at by the Queen. That is all I remember..

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  4. I wish I had thought I could take shop class. The first 11 years of his career, my dad taught shop, mechanical drawing, and “industrial arts”. I wish I had known that eventually I would like to know how to do many things taught in at least the first two of these. At that time, girls just weren’t thought to be interested in this stuff. I’ve learned a lot from Husband, and have done a lot of my own repairs…

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons? It is Late.

    The first Arbor Day in 1970 our HIgh School Band played outside while a tree was planted–in the snow. I got frostbite on my hands while playing–not the first time, but that was particularly bad case–and because it was so darn cold exactly no one attended the ceremony. It was a dumb performance in the snow and all for naught. And my hands hurt like crazy afterward. 

    Technical Training? That was a separate building that trained mechanics to work on cars and trucks. I was unaware of any other training there was in high school.

    Then there were the nerdy guys who ran projectors and overhead projectors, slide shows and movies. I can’t remember what they were called but it was the only “tech” there was. My HS boyfriend always had a slide rule in his pocket.

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  7. The only “technical” training in Danish high schools back in the fifties was “home ec” skills for girls (which included cooking, knitting, and sewing), and basic wood working for boys. These classes were mandatory, no wiggle room based on assumptions about what you might or might not be interested in because of, or despite, your gender.

    Looking back, I learned some basic home ec skills that I think boys could have benefited from learning too. Likewise I suspect the boys learned some basic woodworking skills that girls might have found handy too. But, back then the “system” was hell bent on keeping us in our separate lanes.

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    1. We had the same nonnegotiable home ec/woodworking classes when I was in junior high. In the spring, there was a two week period during which the girls all went to do woodworking and the boys did home ec. I assume the boys learned how to sew on a button and make a scrambled egg. Woo woo. We girls didn’t do much in woodworking. In fact most of the girls ended up making rings out of wood. I managed to hurt myself on the bandsaw on day three so pretty much sat out the rest of the two weeks.

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  9. Shop. Not technical.

    As a union Carpenter member, I have been part of programs to recruit people to the trades. It’s a challenge. Working with your

    hands doesn’t get any credit and money.

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    1. Being married to a man who ran his own business making custom furniture the first twenty years of our marriage, I can attest to the fact that, though he was reasonably good at making furniture, he didn’t make any money. Partly, I think, because his method of giving estimates for the finished piece involved figuring out the cost of materials and time it would cost to make the piece. Then he’d ask: “Would I pay that?” Inevitably the answer to that would be: “NO.” And, so he would adjust the price to the neighborhood of what he would consider reasonable. (Remember, he’s rather tight with his money.) His own customers told him he wasn’t charging enough for his work! After twenty years in business, he gave up on Danish Woodworks.

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  10. For many years, my old company had new hires go to multiple presentations made by different divisions and groups in the company. Usually twice a year, my friend Peter and I did the recycling presentation. Peter would dress up as Oscar the garbage man and rant at the new hires for recycling because it was going to put him out of a job. He was very funny. Then we just explained to people what to recycle and where all the various bins were. And then we usually let people know that a couple of times a year there were all-employee treats that were provided by the monies that we made from recycling. When I look back on it now, I can’t believe that all these presentations that were given and The amount of time that new hires had to spend in these meetings. They slowly died out and new hires these days don’t have to go through any of that torture. Even if it was funny.

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  12. When I was in junior high, the girls were in home ec and the boys in shop, except there was one quarter or semester, can’t remember how long a time, they switched us around. The girls took shop, where we made a couple of things like a resin napkin holder and some sort of basic bird feeder or something, and the boys went to home ec. Don’t know what the boys learned. Maybe they made pancakes or something. Schools were just beginning to be slightly more enlightened then.

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