"Space Child's Mother Goose" (1956) - do you know it?

[leno...@yahoo.com]

The author, Frederick Winsor (1900-1958) was an architect from MIT. The illustrator, Marian Parry, is 92 and lives in Cambridge, Mass. It was reprinted in 2001.

The book includes a glossary at the end, even though it should have been a bit longer. One rhyme is based, not on a Mother Goose rhyme, but on the Eugene Field rhyme "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" ("The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat"). Then there are others that seem not to be based on anything!

First rhyme:

Probable-Possible, my black hen
She lays eggs in the relative when
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now
Because she's unable to postulate how.

(Later, there are French and German translations of that same rhyme. Plus Greek-style, Swahili-style, and Chinese-style twists and English translations, with different words.)



Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the Moebius strip
The strip revolved
The mouse dissolved
In a chrono-dimensional skip.


Little Jack Horner
Sits in a corner
Extracting cube roots to infinity,
An assignment for boys
That will minimize noise
And produce a more peaceful vicinity.


Little Miss Muffet
Sits on her tuffet
In a nonchalant sort of a way.
With her force field around her
The spider, the bounder,
Is not in the picture today.


Little Bo Peep
Has lost her sheep,
The radar has failed to find them.
They'll all, face to face,
Meet in parallel space,
Preceding their leaders behind them.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
At three o'clock he had his great fall.
The King set the Time Machine back to two.
Now Humpty's unscrambled and good as new.


This is the way the Physicist rides:
A quantum, a quantum, a quantum.

This is the way the Agronomist rides:
I plant 'em, I plant 'em, I plant 'em.

This is the way the Philosopher rides:
O Plato! O Plato! O Plato!

This is the way the Rocketman rides:
JATO! JATO!! JATO!!!


Quantum: The quantum is only a tittle or jot:
On a little theory hangs a lot.


And here's Winsor's version of "The House that Jack Built"! Bet you'll love it.

http://blog.regehr.org/archives/881

http://charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com/2011/07/space-childs-mother-goose-for-poetry.html
(blog on it)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/818211.The_Space_Child_s_Mother_Goose
(reader reviews)

https://www.google.com/search?q=space+child%27s+mother+goose&rlz=1C1VFKB_enUS694US694&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=923&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivppKYvfrMAhUCGz4KHZt8BVUQ_AUIBygC&dpr=1#imgrc=_
(pictures)


https://www.facebook.com/SpaceChildBook/



Lenona.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Friday, 27 May 2016 15:55:58 UTC+1, leno...@yahoo.com wrote:
> The author, Frederick Winsor (1900-1958) was an architect from MIT. The illustrator, Marian Parry, is 92 and lives in Cambridge, Mass. It was reprinted in 2001.
>
> The book includes a glossary at the end, even though it should have been a bit longer. One rhyme is based, not on a Mother Goose rhyme, but on the Eugene Field rhyme "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" ("The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat"). Then there are others that seem not to be based on anything!
>
> First rhyme:
>
> Probable-Possible, my black hen
> She lays eggs in the relative when
> She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now
> Because she's unable to postulate how.
>
> (Later, there are French and German translations of that
> same rhyme. Plus Greek-style, Swahili-style, and Chinese-style
> twists and English translations, with different words.)

I assume that <http://nurseryrhymescollections.com/lyrics/hickety-pickety-my-black-hen.html>
and variations are known.

As far as I think I know of agriculture,

One egg a day is what you should bespeak,
If you ask her for more, then beware of her beak.

I have read that "Some individual hens never lay
eggs, due to narrow pelvises" so what else do they
do with them? It's probably painful and maybe
also tragic. And unpicturesque.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <7cef87fb-06b9-4830...@googlegroups.com>,

Yup, I've had a copy for lo these many years.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

[leno...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, May 27, 2016 at 11:50:38 AM UTC-4, Robert Carnegie wrote:

>
> As far as I think I know of agriculture,
>
> One egg a day is what you should bespeak,
> If you ask her for more, then beware of her beak.

Reminds me of this Aesop fable:

A poor widow living alone in the country kept a faithful hen. Each morning the hen laid a big, brown egg for the woman's breakfast.

One day the widow thought to herself: "Now if I was to double my hen's allowance of barley, she would lay me two eggs a day instead of one." So she started feeding her biddy a double measure of grain, and soon the hen began to grow fat and sleek and lazy. It wasn't long before she stopped laying altogether.

Application: Figures don't lie, but they won't make a hen lay.


(I told that fable recently to a disgruntled conservative in his late 40s, in an effort to show him that logic isn't everything.)

Here's where I found that particular retelling:

http://www.terrypwren.com/home/archives/10-2013

It has three other fables from the Fritz Kredel (as illustrator) edition of Aesop, including one of my favorites: "The Monkey and the Camel." I like to rephrase the moral (for young listeners) as follows: Don't even TALK about things you don't know about or you'll just look foolish. Of course, Mark Twain famously put it better, but his phrasing is a little above the heads of some children.

Lenona.

[Don Kuenz]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
> In article <7cef87fb-06b9-4830...@googlegroups.com>,
> <leno...@yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>

>>https://www.facebook.com/SpaceChildBook/
>>
>
> Yup, I've had a copy for lo these many years.

My copy just arrived. There's enough sig material for at least a few
months. :0)

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <2016...@crcomp.net>, Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote:
>
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> In article <7cef87fb-06b9-4830...@googlegroups.com>,
>> <leno...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>>>https://www.facebook.com/SpaceChildBook/
>>>
>>
>> Yup, I've had a copy for lo these many years.
>
>My copy just arrived. There's enough sig material for at least a few
>months. :0)

Have fun.

>--
>Don Kuenz KB7RPU
>
>Probable-Possible, my black hen,
>She lays eggs in the Relative When.
>She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
>Because she's unable to Postulate How.

Then there's [illustrated with a picture of Descartes]

There was an old man in a Time Machine
Who borrowed a Tuesday all painted green.
His pockets with rockets he used to jam
And he said, "I have thunk, so I cannot am!"