JOY ALONG THE WAY: SEPTEMBER'S INVITATION TO LEARNING

My back-to-school arrangement has been in place for several weeks. No flowers. No vase. Just a little stack of early school books, a penny pencil, a Big Chief tablet and a box of Crayolas.

To me these things have come to be symbolic of an open gate leading down Nostalgia Lane, as well as symbols to the Invitation to Learning, which should be a lifelong pursuit.

I suppose, as the years went by, these old things should have been replaced by a calculus textbook, Advanced Psychology, English Literature, slide rule, calculator, and ball point pen, but the old familiar arrangement is so pleasant. The penny pencil smells of cedar and the odor of Crayolas makes me feel young and eager to color the world as I see it.

This year I have added a boxed bar of Lifebuoy soap to give an added old schoolroom odor. I wish it were the little sample bar of Lifebuoy we used to be awarded for arriving at school for a whole week with clean hands and fingernails. However, it is an old big bar, still redolent of the familiar carbolic acid odor. I can't remember when Lifebuoy took the "clean" odor out of its product. I only know my bar pre-dates that time.

There isn't any list of ingredients so popular today on boxes and cans, just someone shouting, "Dinner's ready," from some unseen kitchen and a picture of a father and son scrubbing their hands in a bowl of suds, complying with the printed admonition, "Make it a family habit for everyone to wash up with Lifebuoy Health Soap before each meal."

In keeping with my hoped for ongoing learning, I searched for the usage of that little word, up, in the Lifebuoy instructions -- "wash up" with Lifebuoy Soap. Why up? Why not just wash? I found that this usage is acceptable but the dictionary gave no reason for such an expression as it did for "wash down." So I make up my own explanation. It gives a "lift upward" to anyone who knows his hands are clean. There now!

Back to my arrangement. There is a Grade III Elston Reader that has so many lovely poems in it, one being, "The Use of Flowers." The poet, Mary Howitt, ends this poem by stating, "Our outward life requires them (flowers) not/ Then wherefore had they birth?/ To minister delight to man?/ to beautify the earth?/ To comfort man, to whisper hope/ When'er his faith is dim?/ For Whoso careth for the flowers/ Will much more care for him."

Shall I ask for an opinion from ACLU about banning this book and poem because "Whoso " is capitalized?

The old Hamilton-Brown arithmetic text asks, "If farmer Brown had a half acre of corn, two quarters of which yielded ten and three-fourths bushels, one quarter of which yielded five and eight-tenths bushels, one quarter of which yielded four and-five eights bushels of corn, and Farmer Brown wished to give one-fifth of his crop to his niece, Ellen, one-half to nephew, Ben, how many bushels of corn would he have left to divide equally between his three children and how much would each get?"

Isn't that a delightful problem? Takes more than a fraction of time to work it out with pencil and tablet paper. Try it.

The old spelling book, in addition to much information about accent, syllabication, and diacritical markings, gives a long list of troublesome words often misspelled such as calculable, incandescent, agglomerate, esctasy -- whoops -- ecstasy.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.