I let the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street get by without posting about it, but we did sing “Mnumunum” at chorus that Wednesday. I was just describing to my friend Webb the taping my mother and I saw of a Sesame Street episode back around 1970 when Children’s Television Workshop brought her to NY to talk about having her on the show. She was on for several episodes, but didn’t become a regular character. What I remember about the taping, besides the actors occasionally cracking each other up, was the guy who played Big Bird. He has to keep one hand in the air all the time being Big Bird’s head, and his arm gets tired, so whenever he’s off camera for a minute he rests that hand in the other hand, which gives Big Bird an uncharacteristically thoughtful look. There were no eye-holes in the costume; he had a tiny TV inside so he could see where everybody was. It was hot inside all those feathers, so when Big Bird had a longer break, the guy would take the top of his costume off, and you would see him in a t-shirt and bird legs. He had straight red hair worn Prince Valiant style and looked both weird and cute in the half-costume. We had lunch with some of the producers and they were saying that the writers were impossible to work with in August when their analysts were away on vacation. We stayed at the Plaza, which would have been more thrilling without the jackhammers breaking up the street outside. Guess they were channeling Eloise.

 

“I was born in the town where trust is a banker’s name...”

 

gust • \GUST\ • noun

: keen delight

Example Sentence:

The hungry children ate every morsel with gust.

Did you know?

You're no doubt familiar with the simple "gust" that means "a brief burst of wind." But that word, which first appeared in print in 1588, was preceded at least a century and a half earlier by a differently derived homograph. The windy "gust" is probably derived from an Old Norse word, whereas our featured word today (which is now considerably rarer than its look-alike) comes to us through Middle English from "gustus," the Latin word for "taste." "Gustus" gave English another word as well. "Gusto" (which now usually means "zest," but can also mean "an individual or specific taste") comes to us from "gustus" by way of Italian.

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Banks assume names like First Trust

Then eat up your money with gust.

For each service, they charge.

The charges are large.

When they have their fill, they go bust.