St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 78

tW T'TSTB''TWaT mass i I -Love- Ding Dong, D-i-n-g-D-6-n-g 4t Possum Trof Farm Wheels. Stop When Emergencies Arise 6 Leonard Hall It. Should Always Be Tender By Dr. Paul Popenoe OUR dairy heifer, Peggy, 1 a creature of moods. As Hartwlg used to say, before he went off to the Array, "The girls art that way." Thus when Peggy disappeared one day about a week ago, she gave us quite an upset.

Our first assump- tion was that she'd Jumped through a fence and run off with some handsome young bachelor In the neighborhood, but the problem to solve was, "Which one?" The pasture she shared with 14 other young heifers of about her own age borders the Norman White farm to our i north, though with her in genuity we Knew me might have gone In three directions. But first there was our own farm to search, to make certain she hadn't Jumped into the corn field or over Into the new clover and. foun dered herself. We started our search TENDERNESS is an integral part of love, especially in marriage. A husband can hardly expect his wife to be responsive if he mistreats her.

He sets up a psychological block. I agree with Mrs. at least to that extent. Many husbands blame their wives while they themselves are mostly responsible because of their gross-ness, lack of knowledge of a woman's emotional makeup or even physical mistreatment. Here's Mrs.

who is inclined to be a little hard on me: "You have written a number of columns about wives who are wrecking their marriages by being unresponsive," she reminds me "You don't say why they are unresponsive in this way. Go on, Dr. Popenoe. Tell the truth. You know it's because of the way their husbands treat them.

Why don't you denounce the husband and pity the wife for a while, instead of pitying the husband and denouncing the wife?" I'm not much given to denouncing anybody, Mrs. because my purpose is to help them and I haven't found that denunciation is what they need, in most instances. They need information and reeducation, and calling them names won't do the Job. It'a true, however, that some women could do a great deal better, if their husbands made it possible. LET'S CONSIDER a few cases: If a husband is brutal, drunken, cruel, or hostile, it wouldn't be surprising If his wife found it difficult to show deep affection for him.

If a wife knows that her husband is unfaithful, it's not easy for her to be as loving and trustful as she would like to be. (On the other hand, if she merely throws him out, she is merely throwing him into the arms of the other woman. If she wants to improve her marriage, not destroy it, she'll have to go to I ifflr ivmiiir i i niimintf-iT I I I OR. PRANCES NORWICH HER TOYS ARE FAMILIAR TO TELEVISION VIEWERS. MISS FRANCES OF DING-DONG SCHOOL DEMONSTRATES FINGER PAINTING.

IOAT SAILING IS ONE OF THE REGULAR ATTRACTIONS. 6 Clarissa Sfart A Staff Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch Pre-School Children and Many Older Persons as Well Drop Other Activities When Bell Rings on Television for Ding-Dong School-Background of Its Erudite Star i vv. yrJi ir I I AU. work along other lines.) If a husband ia completely irnorant of the emotional needs of women, he can't expect much response from her unless she has sense enough to study the subject, and educate him. When both are to blame, either one who ia smart enough to do ao can take the lead In improving the situation.

BUT In the largest number of cases, Mrs. the wife is primarily at fault, because of the way she was brought up. Sex was made to appear to her, all through childhood and even ado- on Monday morning and first thing out of the box made a disturbing discovery. Away at the back of the farm we found a big limb blown from a wild cherry tree, with the leaves half-wilted. It is characteristic of the wild cherry that, while the leaves are quite harmless when green or entirely dry, In the wilted stage they contain enough prusslc acid to kill a mature cow in three or four hours.

We know this from sad experience because we lost a fine cow to wild cherry poisoning after a storm last summer. So on Monday we spent six or seven hours combing the woods and thickets at Possum Trot to make certain we didn't have a dead Peggy on our hands. And while we didn't find hair nor hide of her, we felt relieved that she was probably still alive. TUESDAY MORNING we saddled Daisy and Ribbon and renewed our search. We rode out the ridge and down through the woods and found a bunch of steers -in one field, but no Peggy.

So we pushed on across Reed and Saline creeks to the far fields where there were a few cows, but still no Peggy. Then we crossed the mountain, came down and forded Saline creek at our water-gap and worked out the back field's where we found plenty of dewberries and a fine new blackberry patch, but discovered no sign whatever of cattle. We'd been five hours in the saddle, by this time, and there were a doten tasks waiting, so we gave up and came home. Late that evening I decided to try an easier method and started calling the neighbors in torn, to find out if they'd seen a Guernsey heifer heading their way. "Is she yellow with horns and a tag in her right ear?" asked Jack Sutton.

"Because if she is, she's been down in our ereek pasture since Saturday evening." So Peggy was found, having gone in exactly the opposite direction to what I'd anticipated, and I'll agree with Hartwir. NEXT MORNING we heard another heifer bawling, down in the bottom, as I was starting on the dsy's round of work. So I told Ginnle I'd run down, just to make certain all was well in the pasture. And I'd look In on the cows and steers over at the East Farm, while I was at it A couple of big, mature cows over there were about due to calve and, while we never anticipate trouble with these old girls, I like to see them every day. The heifers were all right but, sure enough, out In the middle of the east field all by herself stood one of the big cows.

I hurried over and soon discovered a spot of white in the tall grass which marked the resting place of the new little white-face. The cow was gentle enough not to be alarmed when I went to the calf, but I certainly got a shock. For this youngster, instead of weighing a husky 40 pounds, was Just about as big as a minute. The ealf lay quiet, with its head tucked back against its aide, so thst at first I wondered if it was alive. Bnt it breathed evenly and, when I set it op on its feet, let out a healthy if miniature bawl which brought its mother running.

Plainly this was not a "dwarf," for it was perfectly formed in every respect Nor did it seem premature, since ita tiny hoofs were hard and well-developed and its teeth Just ready to come through. But it would need help nursing for awhile and would have to be brought to the barn lot with Its mother. SO I RUSHED HOME FOR GINME to drive the car and we went back and loaded the calf into the car-trunk, BLESSED QUIETNESS SETTLES OVER HOUSEHOLDS WITH TV SETS WHEN DING-DONG SCHOOL COMES ON. appropriately enough, by one of its three-year-old public, Wer-renrath's son, Peter. "We'd been talking about the program at home," Werrenrath says, "and of course, the name was the vital thing.

I'd planned to use a school bell to Introduce the program so I asked Peter what he'd think of having a bell. His reaction was, Peter's mother, Elizabeth Im-brie Werrenrath, wrote the sim-p 1 up-and-down-the-scales theme song, and on Oct 3 Ding-Dong was officially launched. Letters began pouring in a few days laterwlth one record day's count at 2590. Two months later, Ding-Dong wss on the network. Now Dr.

Horwich, who took a leave of absence from her job, Is a full-time TV employe with a five-year contract, and quite a changed way of life from her educator days. "Privacy has gone right smack out the door," she laughs. "Children come up to me on the street and poke me to see If I'm real. Last Saturday I was stopped 17 times in one block." Along with leading a public life. Dr.

Horwich finds she musf follow a completely dedicated life. She must go to bed at nine week nights because she has to get up at five, be at the theater at seven to rehearse at eight. i AN apartment dweller, she "enjoys a lot of things tn life," but has to confine social activities to Saturday nights. As viewers have guessed from watching her expressive hands, her hobbles are artistic ones. She enjoys cooking, knitting, paintings, ceramics.

In June she celebrated her twenty-second wedding anniversary. Her husband, Harvey L. Horwich, civilian historian and analyst with the Air Force, recently returned from Korea. She and her husband met when both were Sunday School teachers at KAM Temple in Chicago. Dr.

Horwich estimates that she herself has read 75,000 pieces of mail from parents, grandparents, baby sitters, editors, educators, and children. She has been touched to learn that she entertains not only pre-schoolers but handicapped children of all ages, and even older people, who say the program "relaxes them and sets the pace for their day." One regular reaction is that parents have been encouraged to enjoy their children through Miss Frances's example. She thinks many parents, overawed by psychologists, tend to take the business of parenthood too seriously, forget to have fun. "I'll never be able to tell you what you've done for my little boy. You've helped him feel a sense of pride and confidence in himself," wrote one mother.

Another, telling how her four-year-old mfliped around after the older children- went to school, ended with, "Maybe It's coincidence, but since Ding-Dong her appetite has improved, she sleeps better, goes out and visits neighbors and tells them what she did that morning wheras before she had to be with me constantly. Maybe it's coincidence, but I think it's you." "If you had a sponsor and that sponsor sold long underwear, I'd buy a set each week to make certain your program stayed on the air," wrote another viewer. Snapshots of children, recordings of their thanks, works of art such as an Indian painted on a paper sack with a chicken feather headdress, pour in daily. One small boy sent what his mother explained was his most prized possession, a twig, with instructions to" give this to the lady I love." 1 If there are critics of Ding-Dong, aside from the Godfrey fans in St. Louis, they are in the minority.

An occasional father, of course, has a legitimate complaint, such as the one who said: "Does my wife use the time that Ding-Dong is on the air and the kid out of her hair to do some housework? Nah. She's glued to the set every day just like our three-year-old." CHICAGO, 111., July 18. THERE'S never a dull moment In a house where there's a pre-school age child. Ours Is no exception. But two days a week, early In the morning, there's a blessed, blissful half hour of quiet, an interlude in which the only sound is a soothing voice from the television set.

The voice belongs to Dr. Frances Horwich of Chicago, and the TV program she conducts is known as Ding-Dong School. Broadcast over the NBC network five days a week, it is seen on KSD-TV on Fridays at 9 a.m. and kinescoped on Saturday at 9 a.m. The TV Letter Box of the Post-Dispatch's Sunday Magazine was recently subjected to debate between those who want the Arthur Godfrey program every morning at 9 and those who want Ding-Dong.

Harried mothers have indicated they'd like the latter, not only daily, but all day long from bedlam to bedtime. Reaction among St. Louis audiences is no exception. The video nursery school has been the sensation of the year In TV circles and a surprise sensation at that. Aimed at three-to-five years olds, it could not be evaluated by experts in advance.

Even Its backers were dubious as to the potential power of a school teacher demonstrating finger painting and boat sailing on television. On its debut day last October, one official described it as "either the worst or the best show we've ever had." NEITHER he nor anyone else anticipated what actually happened. Within two months, Ding-Dong School was a network show, the hottest thing on television, with a rating higher than Godfrey's, drawing an average of 500 letters a day, with an audience not limited to three-to-five but numbering viewers from seven months to 84 years. And plump, friendly Dr. Horwich, as "Miss Frances," had become as well known among viewers as Hopalong Cassldy.

Ding-Dong's viewers, young and old, perhaps imagine that their favorite program comes from a real school and might be disillusioned, as was Dr. Hor-wich's secretary, to observe the lack of permanence in its setting. Broadcast from the Stude-baker Theater on Michigan boulevard, hemmed into one corner of the stage by lights and cameras, Ding-Dong School has walls that are only dark curtains, portable shelves and a couple of unpainted cabinets to house its equipment. But when Miss Frances's warm voice takes over, illusion becomes reality. "Hello, there, did you have a nice day yesterday?" she asks the children, and she's talking right at them because she's seated on a hassock at their eye level.

"I hope it's a nice day today wherever you are, so you're able to get outdoors and play, and have a good lunch and a good nap and feel just fine all day long." One of the first orders of business is an examination of the drawing and paste-ups pinned around the curtain wall, offerings crude and clever, artistic and goshawful, eent in by the children by the boxfuls, and treated as reverently as if they were exhibition masterpieces on a world tour. "Look at this," Miss Frances says enthusiastically of a kangaroo-like bunny. "It's a rabbit and he's wearing overalls. Of course, rabbits don't really wear overalls. Do they? No, of course not.

That's what? That's right. It's make believe." The major activity of the day might be creative work in clay or crayon or papier mache, hand puppets, or something instructive such as a musician demonstrating a certain Instrument. finger painting is cleaning It up and helping the children clean themselves. Small children tend to' hold their arms up to see if they're clean and the finger-paint may run down on their sleeves, so it's a good idea to help them and see that they keep their hands down while they're washing them. "Some of you have asked for my recipe for fingerpaint.

The easiest way is to make starch the way you always do, add food coloring and make the color good and strong, and if it's not thick enough, add soap flakes, soap, not detergent. Of course, the important thing about fin-gerpalntlng Ls what it does for the child; it's relaxing and creative." THERE were other bystanders watching the program. One man turned to another. "You think the kids don't go crazy over this stuff?" he asked. "My wife tries to get 'em out In the yard on sunny days.

Nothln' doin' till Ding-Dong's over." The effect Miss Frances achieves is not just a happy accident. Preschool education has been her field for 20 years. Holding a Ph.B. degree from the University of Chicago, an A. from Columbia, and a Ph.D.

from Northwestern, she taught in grade schools, WPA nursery projects, junior kindergartens, had trained other nursery school teachers, and was in charge of the department of education at Roosevelt High School in Chi It may be Interrupted, If Miss Frances suspects her audience Is getting fidgety, by time out for stretching, hopping, foot tapping. The morning we visited her, she was wrist deep in finger painting. "Do you like to paint on oilcloth?" she asked, as she swished the paints around her oilcloth covered table. "Perhaps your mother doesn't have a place for you to finger paint in the living room so if she doesn't, you watch now and paint later. The nice thing about finger painting is you can make it all one way and then it's all gone.

The wiggles disappear. Where do they go, do you suppose?" And, after she has executed a landscape with trees and birds and boys and girls, "Look at my hands," she exclaims. "You know what I'm going to do now? I'm going to take this sponge and clean the table. One thing you must remember, when you have fingerpaint on your hands, you mustn't touch anything else." After 25 minutes, a familiar rollicking tune on the organ tells the children that, "It's time to get your mothers; you can go play now." Then, to the mothers, she explains: "This morning we had finger painting. We did it on oilcloth.

My table has the oilcloth fastened on which I find works very well. If you have a porcelain kitchen table that will work, too. One problem with cago when television discovered her. The original Idea of a TV nursery school came from George Heinemann, WNBQ director, who approached Judith Waller, NBC's Chicago director of public affairs and education. With Reinald Werrenrath producer-director, they began looking for someone to handle the program.

An exaggerated story has been told that Werrenrath and Miss Waller hired Dr. Horwich under the mistaken assumption that they were getting Carolyn Horowitz, author of children's activity books. This is not the case, but it fs a fact that both women were recommended, and when they first called on Dr. Horwich, Werrenrath had to sneak a look at the letter inside his briefcase to remind himself which woman he was interviewing. As fuzzy as they were on the subject of educators.

Dr. Horwich was even hazier on the subject of TV. She'd been on a few group panels and discussions, but the idea of being a solo performer scared her to death. Looking back, she thinks it's fortunate the program was put together in a few weeks' time so she didn't have time tD reflect. Even so, she was nervous.

"Being a teacher, I was used to looking to the children for response," she recalls. "Looking at that totally cold camera terrified me. Now the camera seems almost human." Ding-Dong School was named, lescence, as something evil and nasty, or else as something cheap and tawdry. She does not understand or respect herself as a woman. She needs re-education.

If her husband can't help her. she can help herself. Answers to Questions. Q. Should grandparents be allowed to indulge their grandchildren on an occasional visit to their home? A.

Depends on what you mean by it. Strictly speaking, "indulgence" isn't good for anybody. Of course, grandparents will show affection and try to make the children have a good time; but they must use common sense. Q. Some of the boys in our high school say they prefer to go with girls who are older than themselves these girls know more.

What are we younger girls supposed to do? A. Grow a little older. The boys you mention are still Immature and looking for substl-tute mothers Just now. You don't want that role. Give them another year or two and they'll all be on your telephone line.

Q. How can I get my son in-terested in the girls: Different ones ask him to go to dances; he refuses; then I have to make excuses for him. A. You don't say how old he Is. Maybe he is still at the Boy Scout age, and time will cure him.

Girls at the same age are more mature, socially and emotionally. Start gradually by get. ting friends and relatives to in-vlte him in groups of both sexes. Q. Wouldn't you say that absolute trust in each other Is a necessity for married persons? A.

In the first place, scientisti don't think there are many "absolutes" in the world. Trust Is certainly desirable, but should be realistically tempered by a recognition of the strengths and weaknesses which all of us have. 1 hoping I could persuade the cow to follow. Four hours of trying proved this wasn't going to work, so we brought the tractor with its open cart. By this time we'd aroused the curiosity of the whole herd and driving the excited mother cow home alone was out of the question.

So I made another trip for a bottle of warm milk and by that time it was dark. Next morning, with forester Buck Hornkohl and Ginnle mounted on Daisy and Ribbon and me driving the tractor, we went at the task again. It took two hours to find the calf, hidden away in the tall grass, and another two hours to convince the cow she must follow along behind the tractor when I'd loaded the calf aboard. And here has been recounted the story of a week which illustrates how farming differs from other callings. The emergencies which arise are total emergencies; and until they are solved, the wheels stop turning.

No overtime or briefcase carried home at night or sudden trip to Buffalo will make up the production that is lost or keep the other farm work moving ahead. The emergency becomes, in fact, the only business of the farm until it Is over. REGULAR RITUAL IS THE EXAMINATION OF CHILDREN'S WORKS OF ART SENT TO MISS FRANCES. 2H SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 19,.