THE YAHOO BALLOON

Watching news about Yahoo growing, I'm back at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, watching a performance of "Babar the Elephant," that I staged with a orchestra and cast in cardboard elephant outfits, using my husband, John Cullum, as the "Ringmaster."

Using a vacuum we brought from home, John blew up a weather balloon on stage -- it went from being pancake flat to a four foot, to an eight foot, then a ten foot, twelve foot, fifteen foot monster white ball -- oh my, what a sight! And with a gentle push -- John launched the giant balloon out into the sold out house where the children and their parents ooh-ed and ahh-ed!

What a moment -- it floated -- would it fall -- would it land in the balcony or hit the chandelier -- it was riveting, thrilling, spectacular, till if finally nested on the ceiling.

That's what I feel when I read about Yahoo buying TUMBLR, an ever-expanding social media Website with 111 million bloggers, lots of users under 25, with tag-able porn, often 75.8 million posts on its pages each day.

Oh Lordy me oh my, why oh why do we need another social network -- plus the other guys that Yahoo's courting for a merger -- PINTEREST where you pin info and photos on a scrollable wall; SNAPCHAT where you can share pix, vids, text that self-destructs after 10 seconds, SOUNDCLOUD where musicians play their creations, find backers, and listeners; WAZE -- driver's navigation land for routes and traffic reports; DROP BOX where you can put anything from any device that can be viewed.

Will Yahoo shove over -- yikes -- Facebookery likes, or Google's kit and caboodle, while Yahoo's  intertwining, combining, controlling, patrolling, directing, protecting, infecting the ooh-and-ahhing me and thee, as it as sails out over the whole world?

Dear God, please -- JEEZ -- I'm on my hands and knees like the guy in this video.

(VIDEO) MYSTERY OF NEW THINGS

 New things for one's home or office are always time-consuming to shop for and install, When the display on Emily's computer monitor, a 24-inch, old-
fashioned, huge Sony Trinitron, suddenly turned dark pink, John and Em were forced to learn in one day, all they could about monitors.

Describing how they ended up ordering and returning wrong size-wide screen monitors, and the help they needed in installing it, Em suggests that Amazon is not only underpricing everything, "They're taking over the world."

LOST AND FOUND

My purple scarf -- it's purple chiffon, I tie it around my ponytail.

My  favorite color, right length, it cascades down my back to my shoulder  blades -- just the right amount. frames me -- my head -- me in my not  very attractive work outfit, and gives me a femininely decorated look.

I misplaced it.

"This is dumb," I have said every single day since last Tuesday, when it disappeared. I blamed it on Marta the maid, who cleaned last Tuesday. I scolded myself for being attached to a scarf that is not only an inanimate object, but also a replaceable item. I mulled over and over where I could find another scarf that color, made out of chiffon -- I bought at the Woolworth's 5 & 10 cent store, that used to be on 14th street in Manhattan -- it closed about 10 years ago.

I searched everywhere in my office -- under the desks, behind the cabinets, bookcases, and  shelves -- I always put my favorite purple scarf on the shelf next to a small carton that contains chiffon green, blue, orange, and yellow scarves that I don't like to wear. Saying out loud to the room, "it must be here," I searched again. After I mentioned it to John, my husband, we looked in the studio-theater, his office, the hallways. Upstairs, together, we searched for my scarf in the bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms, dining room, and the brown and green living rooms.

No purple scarf.

Cursing, furious, I have frantically searched all those places a second and third time, yelling "You're a nut. Ridiculous idiot, Stop looking. You know it's gone. It's been thrown out accidentally. By Marta, damn her. Or by you -- you when you emptied the waste basket. Or  maybe John did it. -- dammit.

That it was gone, lost forever, made me depressed, frustrated, sad. It seemed symbolical. It reminded me of other things I have lost, looked for and never found. Gone things -- things that are irrevocably gone like youth.

I FOUND IT

ELEVEN MINUTES AGO.

There it was in the hallway on the floor, behind the legs of the rolling typewriter table on which sits the paper-cutter that sits on top of the Random House Dictionary.

I've got my purple scarf -- my decoration, the prettifying frame for my face when I'm in my work outfit.

The symbolical essence of gone things has told me -- gone things are not necessarily gone.

(VIDEO) STAGED READINGS

Em wants to know how John Cullum enjoys doing "book in hand" performances.

John explains that the hard part of the job is preparing the script.

He describes what he has to do -- how he re-formats the script so that he can do the blocking and choreography,  with his eyes off the book -- focused on the dramatic issue.