Hot time, summer in the suburb

The cows had a boom box.  They were grooving to the Lovin' Spoonful.

Back of my neck getting dirt and gritty. The cows were all bunched in the shade at 9:45 this morning.  My walk buddy wanted to take photos of the Haggard Farm -- OUR farm -- across the street from our homes and our Walgreens.  The farm is soon to be housing built by Toll Brothers*.  The development will have a farmsy name to make up for the loss of the breathing room in the middle of Plano.

We weren't breathing all that well as we walked along the barbed wire fence with traffic whizzing past.  It wasn't that we had Dirk Nowitzki sympathy sinus infections.  We were being bombarded with massive doses of grass pollen.

The llamas were under a different tree, probably listening to Peruvian flute music.  We walked toward the farm's tree-shaded drive with its modern day recycling carts.

Much of central Plano was part of the Haggard farm at one time.  We have Haggard Library, Haggard Park, and Haggard Middle School.

Although W. O. Haggard, Jr. married Merle, it was NOT that Merle Haggard.

I am still pleased that none of my sons turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.

Part of the Haggard farm property will become a new city park.  We walked all the way east to take some photos of the horses there.

It won't be an massive soccer field park, but a real open space park, thank heaven.

 *I would be much more crabby about this if the Toll Brothers were not the sponsors of the Metropolitan Opera's live Saturday broadcasts that bring me great joy on WRR, 101.1 FM.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sprinksfiration OR Surfing for divas

It is Easter, and an appropriate time to celebrate the miracle of spring arriving on the prairie. I can think of few experiences so astounding as to demand a Divine Artist than spring in Oklahoma. That vibrant, transparent washes of cobalt violet, cadmium yellow medium, permanent green light, Alizarin Crimson and New Gamboge burst forth from the thick, opaque, almost oily Burnt Sienna is a painter's ultimate creation mystery.



Heading north after the glorious Chihuly experience in Oklahoma City, I visit one of my favorite places in Edmond. The little Fink Park sits across the street south from the University of Central Oklahoma campus. When we lived in Edmond, the college was still named Central State, which is why the university radio station is KCSC fm., 90.1.

I have fond associations with Central State, which was primarily a teachers college in the late 1980s. My mother and I viewed a Crayola Dream-Makers exhibit of outstanding elementary student art there that fueled my first teaching ideas. A retired CSU professor of educational measurements re-evaluated my oldest son for the Edmond gifted and talent program after a dreadful assessment by a school counselor.


Fink Park at Spring Break

Now I can add a fondness for the all-classical radio station. Glad to find KSCS while station surfing for the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on two Saturdays. The Edmond station brought me parts of "Peter Grimes" and "Tristan und Isolde," and two presto rounds of the Met intermission quizzes. I could listen from Oklahoma City to Perry one week, and for brief flashes at the tiptop of the Arbuckle Mountains north of Ardmore the next.



A painting I made almost twenty years ago is still one of my favorites. It is based on sketches and photos from Fink Park at Halloween, but the sense of energy in the soil, the trees, and the sky is still very satisfying to me.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Wait, wait, don't tell me when the Met Opera broadcasts begin!

I am a quart short of Margaret Juntwait. I long for a Saturday afternoon of opera on WRR 101.1.

Running low on Peter Sagal, too. My NPR station has been on a long, long pledge drive, so Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. I hear a prerecorded greatest hits broadcast of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz". These particular shows are already perforated for easy tearing away to the station manager's pleas for contributions.

Jeff. The station manager always seems to be named Jeff. "Jeff" is one of my very favorite names. That's why I named my firstborn "Jeffrey". I had no idea "Jeff" would become the generic name of public radio station managers begging for money on the air.

Fall is finally arriving in North Texas. The air has a tease of crispness. Crows are mobbing redtail hawks, while tardy monarch butterflies lazy-daisy their way south to Mexico. It is perfect weather for driving my Jeff to UT in Austin down I-35, then lazy-daisying myself back up 183, 281, and 67 to Dallas listening to any public radio or classical music station my car radio picked up. That is how I discovered the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, then hosted by Peter Allen. Alas, my Jeff received his degree from UT in 2004, and no longer needs to be transported to or from Austin with hawk-watching out the windows of the Buick.

Margaret Juntwait became "the voice" of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts about the time Jeff graduated. Maybe that is why I've always visualized Ms. Juntwait as a very classy hawk perched on a power pole along 281 north of Lampasas. When Ms. Juntwait's voice reaches my Buick on a late fall Saturday it hints she could be an observant, soaring, upper-level food chain predator, with lovely chest plumage and vivid tail feather coloring.

I look forward to the December eighth resumption of Met radio broadcasts on 101.1 WRR fm. I'll learn much about opera from the "gracious, personable, and knowledgeable" host of the program. Even though it is not her job, I bet Ms. Juntwait will help me win Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Moth of the Day

Audrey Hepburn would look great in this style! Nature is the greatest fashion designer of all. This beautiful moth was outside the door of the Highland Park Library when I went to work this morning. I'm very excited about the macro possibilities of my inherited camera.

It's nice to live in a city with a 24-hour classical music radio station. WRR 101.1 fm is owned by the City of Dallas. You can listen to its streaming broadcast. One of my favorites is the 7:35 a.m. weekday March of the Day. It helps the Buick and I both head off to work!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Can't tell the players without a program

I'm still pretty new at this opera stuff. I attended four of Dallas Opera's productions last winter, and surprised myself with how much I enjoyed them. My son and I have purchased nosebleed section season tickets for next winter.

Thoughtful friends are guiding me on this new adventure. I now have a copy of Fred Plotkin's Opera 101: a Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera, and it is very readable. I have recordings of all the operas in the upcoming season so I can become familiar with them. I have the promise of a backstage tour if I can ever find the stage door at intermission.

I'm acustomed to reading subtitles at foreign films, and nowadays we're all used to reading streaming weather warnings, stock tickers, and news bulletins on our computer and tv screens. I barely notice that I am reading the opera translation projected above the stage during a performance. One friend informs me the LED translation appears on the seat ahead at the Met.

The problem is listening to opera recordings in the car. The view through the window becomes the action to accompany the fabulous music. I keep glancing up at the sunvisor and map light expecting to see the translation projected. It's never there. Maybe if I rode in the backseat it would appear on the Buick's headrests.

No wine, no mink

Leaving Austin, & heading NW to Lampasas, I ran into a music lecture on the radio about soprano/piano songs of Massenet and his students. It was interesting, and the traffic was too crazy to find another station anyway. Plus I couldn't figure out how to spell "Massenet". That's how I got hooked into listening to Act Two of "Werther" on the Chevron-Texaco Metropolitan Opera Live. I was heading into the hill country, so the reception was off & on. I'd be driving along listening to Albert, Charlotte, Sophia, and Werther singing about butterflies and flowers, while I looked out the window at goat and llama farms and roadside stands selling deer blinds. Then I would lose the signal. A mile or two later, Sophia and Albert would be singing about the pastor's 50th wedding anniversary. I would figure out that all the guys standing around their pickup trucks & chatting on the shoulder of Highway 183 were actually hunters, and the radio would nudge itself over to a staticky mariachi or hiphop station. Two hills later, Charlotte and Werther would reappear singing about dueling pistols, and I would be in a reduced speed zone looking for Mobil station in a town dating from 1854. As a person who thinks "Goethe" is pronounced "Goyth", and that everyone in the story would feel a lot more relaxed if they had a couple Sloppy Joes and a Budweiser, this was a very culturally-improving weekend. I think I missed the part about Werther's pickup with the gun rack. Like a rock.