We interrupt our program of dance music

No, this is not coming to you from the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City. It's just an itty bitty pulp week here in north Texas. First, I was introduced to the entertaining Pulp-O-Mizer cover maker website. Find your own inner mad scientist or grab your ray gun!*

Amazing Wonder Stories is a book we kids read at the breakfast table all about worms of THE FUTURE.  Nothing like a bowl of two shredded wheat biscuits with two heaping teaspoons of white sugar floating in the bluish skim milk to start the day right.  KFOR Radio droned the local news and farm report in the background as the "shattered wheat" slowly changed from inedible haystack to incredible Blob.

Home from school for lunch we sit on the tile floor of the basement at the house next door drinking Chocolate Quik, eating hot dogs or tuna fish sandwiches, and watching Twilight Zone reruns. Giant ants. Black and white tv.  Alien abductions. Worse, the dark laundry room and wood shop workbench behind the curtained doorway. You get scared, kid, you gotta go upstairs to the bathroom and risk meeting the irritable mother of the house.


Jump into the time machine, boys and girls, and travel with me to THE PRESENT DAY.  Enter the circular parking lot at a favorite park in your cream puff low-mileage used car. Only later will we realize how obvious    a landing site this is for armies of revenge-seeking giant Frosted Mini-Wheats from outer space.

Yes, the disciplined invaders began their march from the circle's center. It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.

We interrupt this cereal take-over report with a special bulletin:

  METEOR HITS EARTH  

 BUT ASTEROID MISSES   

NASA says the meteor hit is unrelated to the asteroid miss. Yes, the last two are real, but don't let your cereal get soggy. Don't say you weren't warned.

* Being of a certain age, Reagan always made me think of ray guns.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Look, it's going to bubbles!

The ancient history of audio-visual instruction 

Once upon a time, boys and girls, just after God said "Let there be light" and there was light, the filmstrip projector came to school. It sat on top of two fat dictionaries on a desk pulled into the middle of an aisle.  Beside it on the desk sat a can holding a roll of film and knowledge, and a little easy-reader booklet.

What is film, Ms Nancy?...Never mind. We'll just skip over this part.*

In the Late Cretaceous, the filmstrip was accompanied by a 45 rpm recording with beeps in the narration indicating when the filmstrip should be advanced to the next black and white image. The beeps caused the student deputized to operate the projector to instantly forget which direction was forward and which was back. [This is similar to the nursing home phenomenon of elderly patients with tv remote controls.]

Why were film strips important?  Because film strips promoted napping at school. Napping is good.(1)

Nebraska was one of the first states to begin educational broadcasting. All the students would walk in two straight lines with their hands clasped behind their backs down the hall to the Eastridge Elementary School library, then sit on the cork-tile floor to watch Dolores Dudley read classic picture books like Rex Parkin's The Red Carpet, and Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats on the school's lone black and white television.  Mrs. Dudley was at the peak of her powers with Marcia Brown's Stone Soup. (2)

That's when I first wanted to be a storytime lady when I grew up. 

Creating bulletin boards was a competitive sport for elementary school teachers. An opaque projector enabled teachers to enlarge a student drawing on a big swath of butcher paper.  Then kiddies could paint the big image with runny powdered tempera paint mixed up in metal orange juice cans. (3)

Every December all the Eastridge students would file into the auditorium to watch a film about the composing of "Silent Night".  The film was quite blue, with people crunching around in the snow.  The highlight of this annual event was the inevitable breaking, splicing, and rethreading of the film into the projector.  We kids would be all hyped up on holiday anticipation, and be anything but silent.

At Millard Lefler Junior High teachers began using overhead projectors.  Students missed the chances to make dusty messes with the chalk erasers.  At least we still got to sniff ditto papers. And wouldn't The Sniffing Dittos be a good name for an oldies cover band?

In Speech class we were allowed to use a tape recorder for the group project "radio broadcast". The technological biggie was the foreign language lab. Each student sat in a carrell that looked like a prison visitation booth and put on headphones. While Srta. Diaz allegedly eavesdropped on our performances, we repeated phrases like

 I would like the chocolate cake.  Yo quisiera el pastel de chocolate.

High school brought new AV technology. Learning to drive meant sitting in a simulator watching films of roads and turning the steering wheel.  Each simulator looked like a cross between an opaque projector and an immovable carnival bumper car.  Crazy that twenty years later my young sons were"flying" simulated dogfights on our computer games with realistic graphics.

Ah, college! Dark lecture halls. Watching art history slide shows. Remember, napping is good. To this day I don't use the exhibit audio tours at art museums. It would be so embarrassing to fall asleep and start snoring and drooling...



Fast forward FF. I still can't cope with the tv remote, but I'm making computer slideshows for my young art students. Trying to connect with kids who can scroll on an iPhone before they can wipe and flush. Trying to connect the raccoon's tail without too many technical diffooooculties.

What do my students like best? Look, Ms. Nancy.  It's going to bubbles!

Footnotes

(1)  Concurrent technology available in homes included single view handheld slide projectors, and tray or carousel slide projectors for subjecting the neighbors to long evenings reviewing your tent-camping trip to Yellowstone. Comic relief came in the form of slides loaded upside down or backwards.

(2) We also watched Mercury and Gemini blast-offs in the library.

(3) The View-Master was a concurrent "educational slideshow".  Children could click through images of Our Nation's Capitol including Jackie Kennedy's White House renovations, Disney's Peter Pan, and Yellowstone geysers.

*Judge Maxwell: I think I want to skip over this part, too. 
Howard: That night, I went back to my room and she was in the bath. 
Judge Maxwell: Who was there? No, don't tell me, just go on. 
Howard: When Eunice walked in and the drapes caught fire, everything burned. They asked me to leave. I really don't blame them. 
Judge Maxwell: Good boy. Is there more? 
Howard: Sure. 
Judge Maxwell: There's more. 



© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Mercury memories

I have a favorite childhood memory from the Sixties, back before we knew that absolutely everything is dangerous. I remember playing with mercury bubbles on the blue bathroom linoleum after a thermometer broke, chasing the bubbles, merging and separating them. It was so cool and well worth working around the glass slivers!

Friends report similar experiences. One wrote:

I did the same thing! It was such fun to collect those tiny balls together, almost like magic the way they melded into a large ball. Don't remember telling Mom that I'd broken the thermometer, just the simple pleasure of playing with the mercury.

That's probably why I can't wait for my May trip to Chicago--well, aside from Danger Baby's law school commencement and meeting his future in-laws. I can't wait to finally visit Millennium Park to see "Cloud Gate". Anish Kapoor's sculpture is like a giant reflecting blob of liquid mercury. Sounds like my childhood dream come true!

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA are busy protecting today's kids from lead and cadmium in cheapo Chinese toys, and that's a good thing. Alas, in the trade-offs between safety and wonder, wonder usually loses. In the Sixties we often got small plastic maze games containing a drop of mercury as birthday party favors. In the late-Seventies a fancier elemental mercury maze toy called "Quicksilver" was popular.

Another mercury memory from the Sixties still doesn't have anything to do with the Friendship Seven astronauts. When you skinned your knee, your mom was likely to paint the scrape with a fabulous stinging, smelly, magenta, microbe-killing concoction of mercury plus bromide or sodium. Mercurochrome and Merthiolate are now known to inhibit healing, and aren't used much. There was a strange rush to having your knee painted with merthiolate. The knee scrape and the sting were often worth it to smell the pungent odor and be decorated with the gorgeous stain. Both products were pulled from drugstore shelves late in the last millennium.

Sixties moms chose up sides based on their preferences for merthiolate or mercurochrome. Later parental popularity contests pitted Bactine against Jaohnson & Johnson's First Aid Cream and Neosporin.

Kids today have a better chance of learning about mercury at the EPA's superfund cleanup site than by breaking an oral thermometer. Practical clean-up instructions can be found at this Colorado website. I sure hope kids get to visit Chicago at least.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Creating space

Our first elementary art project of 2010 is finally finished. We made it into space!

When a project takes four class periods, it's a relief to have it be worth the effort. I wasn't too sure we'd get past the first morning doing a reprise of the the shaving cream printmaking the kids loved in December. The second time the kids loved wallowing in the mess even more, so I need some space and a few light years to recover before I try it in a large group again. We got great marbled effects on some old, faded construction paper, though.



The second morning we did a calm color-mixing experience while painting to the space music mix cd the Woolly Mammoth made for me years ago. A little Star Wars, some Star Trek, Holst, and a final frolic with the Purple People Eater were a treat while trying for a a wide range of tints and a soft, feathery brush stroke. Using some freebie overhead transparency sheets for palettes made for easy clean-up, plus we used the last of the paint on each palette for a couple of monoprints.

By the third week, each student had several interesting papers to use, tracing and cutting circles to make planets, asteroids, and other orbs of various sizes. At ages six to nine they feel competent at tracing and cutting, so that class had a relaxed mood. They could trade their leftovers with classmates to get different colors.



Now for the tricky part--how to introduce composition to get the best space, the best illusion of depth, so the circles wouldn't be glued on like polka dots or domino spots. Our eyes and brains play such wonderful tricks on us. The small circle seems more distant than the big circle. The circle that interrupts the picture frame seems closer still. The overlapped circle is automatically more distant than the overlapping one. A small shape interrupting the edge of a large circle seems to be moving in front of it!

The kids were delighted with their results. Their planets and moons weren't just in space. Some seemed to be rotating and revolving thanks to the patterned papers. We even had a few eclipses, and we got safely back to Earth.



© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Free Spirit

Thank heaven the Martian winds have cleared the solar panels on "Spirit", the long-running Mars Rover. Now Spirit can receive instructions from NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on how to get unstuck from a sand dune.

Since Spirit may or may not act on the engineers' instructions, I feel their frustration. It's the frustration of MOBOs everywhere, when grown sons choose whether to acknowledge receipt or actually implement maternal suggested guidelines. Once sons and Martian rovers reach a certain age, moms can't dictate their behavior. No remote control can steer guys out of a rut they've dug themselves into, but moms can occasionally suggest driving options.

Moms wait for the moments when sons' energy collectors are blown free of dust by the Martian winds. Perhaps we can sneak a message in before the system shuts down again without seeming to nag.

This weekend one son is driving to the White Sands National Monument, his seatbelt buckled, I pray. Another is sailing off the coast of Massachusetts, and he better be wearing that life jacket! The oldest is navigating wedding plans and true love. They all have selective reception from my maternal wavelength.

The words I don't want to hear--"I'm sorry Mom, I'm afraid I can't do that."

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

A Jarful of Marbles

Just wanted to write about a successful art project, but I was jarred by a bombardment of spelling and usage questions. The summer school elementary students are learning to play marbles, or at least how to use their thumbs to shoot taws at a cardboard box with openings cut to resemble a Firestone garage.

I love marbles, but I never played the game. We used marbles to play Chinese checkers. As kids we spent time sorting marbles by color and style in the same way we "played" with buttons and polished rocks. I have a big jar of old-timey marbles just because I like looking at it. So I took the jar to school for this week's art project.

Marbles fit in well with the preschoolers' unit on outer space. The kids thought the marbles looked like planets in the solar system. I had a photo of a very fancy marble with a solar system inside it. We also considered how gravity holds the marbles down to the bottom of the jar. What would happen if the jar was spilled in the space shuttle? It's plenty scary if the jar spills on Earth!

I had a lot of trouble writing about squirrels recently. When you write a word, and then look at it in several different sizes and fonts, it often starts to look improbable, if not impossible. Today I'm having that same difficulty with jar, jarful, and jar full. Is my glass jar full of marbles? Is it half empty? Is it a jarful? Or was a "jarful" one of the creatures described by Lewis Carroll?

jar (n.)
"cylindrical vessel," 1421, possibly from M.Fr. jarre "liquid measure" (smaller than a barrel), from Prov. jarra, from Arabic jarrah "earthen water vessel" (whence also Sp. jarra, It. giarra).

jar (v.)
to startle or unsettle; to shock or jolt




jarful (n.)
as much as a jar will hold

I don't want to get involved in the tussle between those who claim the nursery rhyme Ring Around the Roses refers to the Black Plague, and those who debunk their assertions. Putting posies in your pocket makes more sense than putting monkeys in a barrel, but is it a "pocketful of poseys" or a "pocket full of posies"? Both seem to be acceptable.

A tussle, of course, is a rough-and-tumble scuffle, but a tussock is a clump or tuft of growing grass, hair, or feathers. A tussock is closely related to Miss Muffet's tuffet, which was either a clump of grass or a low stool. My grandma Halma had a hassock, which my 1973 American Heritage Dictionary defines as "a thick cushion used as a footstool, or a dense clump of grass.

An earful (n.) doesn't have anything to do with either grass or wax:

1. An abundant or excessive amount of something heard, such as talk or music.
2. Gossip, especially of an intimate or scandalous nature.
3. A scolding or reprimand.

Getting an earful is different, and probably less effective, than having a grandma [with her feet upon a hassock] making the alveolar clicking interjection to exclaim her disapproval, disdain, contempt, or impatience. Tsk-tsk! For shame!

An anthem based on Psalm 98 from my old high school choir days is playing in my head ... Make a joyful noise*. Make a joyful jarful of marbles! These art works are by students ages four to eight.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. The Psalms 98
Praise for God's Righteousness
A Psalm.
1 O sing unto the LORD a new song;
for he hath done marvelous things:
his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.
2 The LORD hath made known his salvation:
his righteousness hath he openly showed in the sight of the heathen.
3 He hath remembered his mercy and his truth
toward the house of Israel:
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth:
make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp;
with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.
6 With trumpets and sound of cornet
make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.
7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
8 Let the floods clap their hands:
let the hills be joyful together
9 before the LORD;
for he cometh to judge the earth:
with righteousness shall he judge the world,
and the people with equity.

Supplies needed: Transparency sheets, crayons, glue sticks, colored cellophane, colored plastic shopping bags, giftwrap, scissors, construction paper scraps, some scraps of coffee filters painted with liquid watercolors.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Lunchbox gravity

This week I'm grateful to teach here on old feet-on-the-ground Mother Earth. As I begin to understand the complexities of dining in outer space, I'm so thankful not to have lunchroom duty on the space shuttle.

It's good to work in an environment where unzipping a lunchbox doesn't send Newton's red delicious apple floating about the room. And crumbs! Oh my gosh! Our newest preschoolers pulverized their Lunchable crackers and squooschy-mooosched the cheese slices. In space those cracker crumbs would be floating around the shuttle getting into vents, disabling sensitive equipment, and tickling astronauts' noses. I'll have nightmares about floating space cheese globs.

I hope making pretend space meal trays and pseudo-dehydrated food pouches has helped the children get an inkling about gravity. The project gave the kids a chance to practice fine-motor cutting and twisting skills. We exercised our pretending abilities when we launched our imaginary shuttle on a lunch mission. The project let me use some of the W.A.S.T.E. materials I've stockpiled, like plastic boxes, mylar ziplock pouches, and blue spongy packing sheets.

All those Capri Sun juice pouches in Earth kids' lunchboxes seem ready for blast-off. Our school just discovered the TerraCycle website, and we're considering enlisting in the Drink Pouch Brigade. TerraCycle produces new office supplies from collected empty drink pouches.

Click here for info about food in space. I hope the astronauts are tidy lunchers. O, say can you say your PB&J won't float away?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Magic Ovens

"Gooschy Bread" was the name my younger sibling gave to Wonder Bread* back when we were growing to 90% of our adult height and eating lots of peanut butter sandwiches. We were building strong bodies 12 ways with a product that was almost as good as Play-doh for molding and didn't dry out as quickly.

When I saw the photos of items created by a 3-D printer known as Desktop Factory in the May fifth New York Times story, "Beam It Down From the Web, Scotty", I remembered shaping the Wonder Bread. Why didn't we ever think to bake the gooschy bread in the Creepy Crawler Thingmaker molds by Mattel? It would have been cheaper than Plastigoop, and just as edible!



What is 3-D printing? You put a picture of a pizza into the machine, and a real pizza comes out hot and ready to eat...Close, but not exactly. According to the Desktop Factory website, a 3-D printer "turns digital data from computer-aided design (CAD) programs, 3D graphics and animation software, and scanners into sturdy physical models." This process is "commonly referred to as 'rapid prototyping'." And here I thought that was something police weren't supposed to do.

It's still easier and cheaper to obtain a vintage Easy Bake Oven or a Mattel Vac-U-Form, but prices for 3-D printers will be dropping below $5000 soon:

Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab, says the technology it has developed, which uses a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, will allow the price of the printers to fall to $1,000 in four years. “We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” he said. “The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials.”

In 1963: America's first working toy oven, was turquoise and had a carrying handle and fake stove top. It was invented by designers at Kenner Products (now a division of Hasbro). In its first year, over 500,000 lucky kids talked their parents into spending $15.95. By its fifth birthday, the EASY-BAKE Oven was a household name.



The toy oven used an ordinary light bulb as a heat source. I didn't have one, of course, but the first kid on our block did, and we were invited over to make brownies that tasted like cardboard. She had the Chatty Cathy doll and the Schwinn Stingray bicycle with banana seat, too. Still, it was an era of amazing possibilities and turquoise Ford Mustangs...



Our first molding model experience was creating a hollow rubber model of a Mercury space capsule using a science kit my dad got at the toy store and saved for a snow day. I still have the mold, and use it as twin paperweights. (Many things in my house fall into the euphemistic "paperweight" category.)



We had a Mattel Vac-U-Form/ThingMaker, a toy for molding little plastic race cars and burning ourselves on the 110-volt hotplate. We also made lots of Creepy Crawlers, Creeple People, and Fun Flowers. I don't know why we never baked fishhooks into the Creepy Crawlers to make our own artificial bait. At the neighbors' we could make Incredible Edibles out of Gobble-Di-Goop, and those were as tasty as the Easy Bake brownies.



Vac-U-Form enabled you to melt a sheet of styrene plastic and quickly make a mold of any item. This toy is not only desired by collectors, but by model makers to make molds of small parts. The original styrene sheets, called "Material Paks" are difficult to find these days. "You can tell it's Mattel, it's swell."

*The term "Wonder Years" was coined by the Continental Baking Corp. (Wonder is now made by Interstate Bakeries Corp.) in conjunction with its "help build strong bodies 12 ways" advertising campaign. Wonder Bread defines the "wonder years" as ages one through 12, when children grow to 90% of their adult height.

By 1967 I was in junior high. The magic of ovens was being replaced by 4-H and Home Ec class. I trudged home each afternoon to eat French Vanilla Creme cookies (made by Keebler, I think), and watch Perry Mason, Star Trek, and Gilligan's Island reruns before doing homework for an hour or two.

The original Keebler "jingle" reads like this: "Man, you never would believe where the Keebler® Cookies come from. They're baked by little elves in a hollow tree. And what do you think makes these cookies so uncommon? They're baked in magic ovens, and there's no factory. Hey!" (Lyrics by Tom Shutter, copywriter, Leo Burnett, 1967)

I'm sure owning a home version of a rapid prototyping 3-D printer is just around the corner. I know it will be just as useful as the office laminator at the hardware store where the teen evening staff encases pizza slices and cockroaches...Incredible Edibles and Creepy Crawlers!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Memory Seven

It started simply--just a few tired teachers and worn-out moms discussing embroidery and quilting while students made the transition from school day to home evening. The kids were taking apart the space stations they built of bright plastic construction pieces.

"Reminds me of those Star Trek characters with the embroidered faces and quilted eyebrows," I said. My kids used to watch that show all the time while I was making supper. It was bad enough hearing it, but when I watched bits of shows the make-up gave me piercing headaches (speaking of needlework faces)! Trapunto might be a more descriptive term for the bad alien skin conditions.

We after-school adults pondered which Star Trek incarnation had the most annoying characters, and tried to remember names, while the little students located their lunchboxes and changed into soccer and gymnastics outfits. The parents aren't much older than my own sons, so we grew up in different Star Trek generations.

This evening I'm adding a list of the Star Trek shows to my bathroom drawer of insomnia reminders:

Star Trek (The Original Series) 1966-69 I can name seven of the eight main characters, and I still look for tribbles when I clean under the bed...Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, McCoy, Chekov... (Chapel)

Star Trek: Next Generation 1987-94 Our Reading Rainbow hero, Lavar Burton, became Geordi, wore weird sunglasses, and hung out with Data and Capt. Picard...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1993-99 I couldn't bear to watch the Worf'n'Quark show...

Star Trek: Voyager 1995-2001 One unnamed son had his first celeb crush on Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway and wrote her fan letters. He still goes for strong, decisive women!...

(There's even a newer series, Star Trek: Enterprise. Thank heaven I was spared that! 2001-05)

Sleepy
Grumpy
Sneezy
Doc
Dopey
Happy
Bashful

Effa Dale
Billie
Vin
Loy
Alice June -- my mom's aunts

Eric Clapton
Ginger Baker
Jack Bruce -- the members of Cream

Bobby Gentry --the Ode to Billy Joe

John Glenn
Wally Schirra
Gus Grissom
Deke Slayton
Gordon Cooper
Alan Shepard
Scott Carpenter --the Mercury astronauts


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Mission Control

The preschoolers love talking into their microphones to communicate with the class pet rabbit during his imaginary space mission. They direct the astrobunny when to wake up, to blast off, to fix the rocket, take space walks, to exercise, snap photos, and build the international space station.

They think the best way for astrobunnies to stay in shape out there in space was to do some karate. Yikes! Weightless lagomorphic tae kwon do!

The kids push buttons on their egg carton computer keyboards when they want to capture an image of a passing meteor or asteroid (or the ubiquitous smiling sun in the upper left corner of every picture). The "screens" of their computers are clear plastic bags. That way, they can change which of their astrobunny drawings is on view by slipping in a new picture. We included some colored cellophane to alter the look of their drawings. It also resembles the dreaded "blue screen of death" every PC owner fears. The kids spoke clearly into their microphones telling the astrobunnies to hurry back to Earth to fix the broken computers! Classroom pets have to be multitalented heroes. Give that bunny a sip of Tang!

At the spring music program a few kids spoke into the microphone as narrators. At our egg carton Mission Control, everybody gets to talk into their own microphone!



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

You Will Go To the Moon

I never knew if that was a promise or a threat. I didn't want to go to the moon. I didn't want to be squished inside a tiny space capsule, or subjected to zero G's. The closest I ever wanted to be to outer space was drinking Tang while building a Lego lunar lander, or as my students would say, "a Yego yunar yander".

My copy of the Beginner Book, You Will Go To the Moon, by Mae and Ira Freeman, copyright 1959, is in bad shape. Robert Patterson's illustrations still seem part Norman Rockwell and part Twilight Zone.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Before this decade is out

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project...will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important...and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish...".

President Kennedy issued his challenge just as I was finishing kindergarten with Mrs. Ballard at Eastridge Elementary. I'd made a snowman from three balls of clay, and identified the beginning, middle, and end of a picture story, so I understood three, the number of stages of an Atlas Mercury rocket. Seven was important because of John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, and Deke Slayton. My mom was sad that Deke Slayton had a heart murmur and couldn't go into space. My favorites were Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper.

Kindergarten was so lovely. We played in the kitchen, listened to poems about umbrellas, had a mid-morning carton of milk, put on our own boots and mittens in the cloakroom, and walked in a straight line with the other boys and girls. Artistically, I moved beyond eating white paste to choosing pieces from the scrap box for making collages on construction paper.

Mairzy Doats was impressed that my telephone number had the IV8 prefix. She knew the little lambs ate it.

Tomorrow my little students will make Mission Control computers out of egg cartons. Then we will send the classroom pet rabbit on an imaginary space flight. Thanks so much to Potsie, Fritzi, Inez, Vic, Gus, Mairzy, Norton, and Gordie. Thanks to all the little bunnies who made it possible.





© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Veni, vidi, vici

On August 2, 47 B.C. Julius Caesar took off his shoes in Syria after he conquered, but history does not record that part of his pithy dispatch to Rome. Yes, he came, saw, and conquered, but Suetonius fails to mention if he remembered to buy groceries on the way home.

On July 20, 1969 A. D. the erupting celebration at Mission Control drowned out the last of Neil Armstrong's famous communication from the moon. [Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.] Buzz and I are putting on our bedroom slippers and having some instant cocoa with freeze-dried marshmallows. (+ Play Audio)

On November 1, 2006 A. D. I came home, took off my shoes, and was finished for the day. It didn't matter that I forgot to buy milk, bread, and lightbulbs on the way home. Once the shoes are off, they don't go back on! I wanted to translate my motto into a catchy and pithy Latin slogan I could have printed on t-shirts, but the Inter Tran free web site translation server for English to Latin was unsuccessful when it came to shoes.

"Veni domus, I took off my shoes, meus dies est perfectus" isn't going to sell on t-shirts and coffee mugs. Inter Tran couldn't handle Julius either:

EGO venit , EGO saw , EGO victum.

So I'm going with this for the t-shirts:

The EGO has landed, but she forgot to buy bread, milk, and lightbulbs.

Order your shirt now in S, M, L, or XL. [minimus, medium, magnus, susicivus amplus]

It's as confusing as going to Starbucks. If EGO could figure out the small, tall, grande, and venti cup sizes, she could probably conquer the world, get the 2% at Albertsons, and even keep her shoes on after seven p.m.

Mozart's earwax reveals secrets of the universe

What a joy exploring today's New York Times online! Everything will be revealed in it's own due Times. Breathe in and breathe out through the top of your head. Let the energy flow!

My morning's first delight is Arthur I. Miller's essay, "A Genius Finds Inspiration in the Music of Another" about Einstein and Mozart. So much was written about Mozart last week during the 250th anniversary of his birth. Some critics seem to rate his music as lightweight wallpaper classical Muzak. Mozart's music feels effortless and obvious, which is either a sign of a hack or a sign of nirvana. For me, it is a channel of cosmic order and energy. Oh, that my art compositions would seem that beamed down from the stars! The essay discusses Einstein's inspiration from Mozart's music, described as "plucked from the air."

I'm also exhilarated by the news that scientists have found the gene that controls whether your earwax is moist or dry. The earwax gene is, "known to geneticists as the ATP-binding cassette C11 gene." Read on, and find that earwax, "seems to have the very humble role of being no more than biological flypaper, preventing dust and insects from entering the ear." I don't want to spoil the surprise, so read it for yourself.

You can also learn about NASA's Stardust Mission, and the collection of comet dust on a gunky substance known as aerogel, science lingo for Mozart's genius earwax, in today's New York Times. Matter. Energy. Space. Earwax. Beauty. Truth. Truth. Beauty. Q-Tips. Comet dust. Calculus. Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear. Put some Mozart in the cd player, and do a bit of stargazing.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats. 1795–1821
Ode on a Grecian Urn, from high school English class

Technology Disparity

"Roving Mars" opened at the IMAX today. I admit to having an anthropomorphic fondness for Spirit and Opportunity. They are each such a charming and amazing cross between a praying mantis and a Lego construction, that they tug fond memories from my childhood.

The movie is great fun, and should be a hit with families. I know my kids would have loved it when they were younger, and will be intrigued even in their twentyish sophistication. The footage of engineers in their white industrial Teletubby suits building the rovers, and later awaiting the landing on Mars are fascinating. The explanations are clear enough for my unscientific mind.

What an accomplishment! The scientists were able to build these incredibly complex robots and safely transport them on a seven-month journey through space, unfold and direct them to motor around the rocky surface collecting data long after their expected ninety days.

This brings me to my question: Why can't I buy a crockpot built to work longer than ninety days?



Philip Glass composed the soundtrack, but I was unaware of it, unlike his soundtrack enhancing the 2003 Robert McNamara documentary "Fog of War".

The Blog Doctor Is In

The big employee lunchroom discussion was about using Coca Cola to remove car battery corrosion. We also discussed why you can't grow green mold on hot dog buns.

I sure hope the space shuttle launch and mission goes well tomorrow. Maybe the astronauts should pack some Coke Classic along with the Tang. Never know when it might come in handy.

The authblogger/blogauthor of "Screaming Thighs" needed some html voodoo. Having watched educational videos about the rainforest all Sunday, I was well equipped to perform a shaman dance with face paint, poison dart frogs, blow guns, and bromeliads. After two hours dancing around in the blog template shaking gourd rattles, burning sage, and spraying Coke on the terminals, I'm all worn out.

I'm either a flying purple people eater or a blog witch doctorette. But I never, ever leaked the identity of a CIA agent.

....Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang Walla walla, bing bang
Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tangWalla walla, bing bang...
Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang Walla walla, bing bang
Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang Walla walla, bing bang

Eggplant

Technology is either the hero or the goat tonight, as Charlie Brown would say. I'm looking at the marvelous images of Tempel1, the pickle/potato/eggplant comet, on NASA t.v. over the internet, and hearing the Mission Control communications for the impactor maneuvers. It's worth staying up past my bedtime.

There are some things technology couldn't handle today. Efforts to rendezvous at Kaboom Town, Addison's large fireworks display and festival, with several other parties failed. We were all trying to communicate by cell phone to find each other in the crowd, same as thousands of other folks. The network overloaded, and we never managed to rendezvousie-vousie with my friends or my guys' college friends. Smoke signals would have been more effective. We did have a great time watching the vintage aircraft from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum flying in formation in the lovely sunset sky. The fireworks were impressive, too.

Once we managed to find our car, we were trapped in parking garage gridlock for a full hour. Only my youngest's trusty iPod full of music kept us from going stir crazy! Not the same as being marooned on a desert isle, but frustrating all the same.

My gosh! I hope you are watching these images from NASA!

What a fun month this has been!

Deep Throat revealed, and now Deep Impact. At about one a.m. CDT today NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully released its impactor into the path of the pickle-shaped comet Tempel 1. That was just about the time the tiles on the wall surrounding the upstairs bathtub fell off. When I did the major clean of the bathroom Friday, I noticed that the tiles were pulling away from the wall, so it was probably all damp behind them. Swell. That tile wall has been a source of periodic headaches starting when the ceramic soap/washcloth holder fell off three summers ago.

I would like to hurl an 820 lb. washing machine at the tile wall, but it probably wouldn't tell us much about the origin of the solar system. According to NASA's website, the Deep Impact spacecraft is about the size of a VW Beetle. The impactor has been described as the size of a washing machine, or a coffee table. With an impact velocity of 23,000 m.p.h., it could take out a lot of bathroom tile. Scientists expect the crater caused by the impact will be the size of a football field.



In case you think this is the work of Bill Watterson's "Spaceman Spiff", there's really a lot of valuable information to be gained by this mission. David Grinspoon, planetary scientist and author of "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life," has written a helpful op-ed in today's New York Times:

We stand to learn a lot about impact cratering - one of the major forces that has shaped all the worlds of our solar system. We will also have the chance to peer into the newly formed crater and observe the ice and vapor blasted back into space, thereby learning what lies within this frigid little world. .. Deep Impact will simply make one more small hole in an object that, like all planets large and small, has been repeatedly dinged by colliding space debris since our solar system's origin 4.6 billion years ago. ..It is those dusky beginnings that this experiment can illuminate. Beneath the dirty ice crust of a comet like Tempel 1 is material that has been in deep freeze since the birth of our solar system. Mixed into this timeless frozen treat are organic molecules like those that seeded the young Earth with raw materials for making life. This ice may hold some buried chapters of the story of our origin.

And maybe, just maybe, scientists will discover a material to keep the tiles stuck on the bathroom wall. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Tonight, just as fireworks displays are in full bloom in Dallas, the VW Beetle will be at its closest approach to the pickle.

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/press/050703jpl.html

Houston, we have a problem or two

I grew up in the Space Age with the Friendship Seven, and JFK challenging us, "Before this decade is out..." The Space Age seemed to promise that if I drank Tang like the astronauts, learned fractions and decimals, and did fifty sit-ups for the President's Physical Fitness Test each year, that the technological benefits of Our Race To The Moon would belong to me and my generation. We went to sleep each night secure in the belief that by the time we were old enough to work at Spaceley Sprockets, flying cars would be ready to get us there. Like his boy Elroy, we would have robot maids to make beds, and taking care of our homes would be as easy as pi.

Yes, some Space Age Technology did trickle down to those of us still earthbound. We got Teflon and no-wax floors, frost-free refrigerators (as long as our spouses didn't leave six-packs of diet Coke in the freezer overnight), microwave popcorn, fiber-optic Christmas trees, Velcro shoes that light up, 24-Hour fitness centers and titanium golf clubs, Stain Defender pants, Thanksgiving turkeys with pop-up thermometers, and self-cleaning ovens. We got computers, which I appreciate. We got MTV, Talk Radio, and grocery self-checkout lanes, and whose fault is that??? Okay, maybe not NASA's. But did we get the flying cars?

Through Space Age Bureaucratic Oversights we also didn't get:

1. Self-degreasing mini-blinds
2. Self-returning library books
3. A universal sizing system for clothes so if you wear a 10-12 in one brand at Foley's you wear a 10-12 in all brands at Mervyn's
4. Clean air in our cities
5. Leaf-blowers and weed-whackers that operate on Silent Drive
6. Dog poop atom-blasters so you don't have to take Spike for a walk and carry around a ziplock baggie of hot ....
7. Outfits like Jane and Judy Jetson's
8. Everlasting elastic in boxer shorts
9. Steerable grocery carts
10. An understanding of that view of Earth from the moon that we are all on the same small planet and need to be respectful of each other and our Mother.

Cole Porter

Enjoyed looking at some road maps from the Fifties and Sixties last week. I got a kick out of the Skelly and Sinclair maps. We didn't buy gas at the Skelly station when I was a kid, but we did go to Jerry's Sinclair on the northeast corner at 48th and Randolph. As kids, we lusted after the Sinclair inflatable Dino dinosaurs displayed in the window.

The movie "De Lovely" has renewed interest in the music of Cole Porter. That was the music I grew up with. I would lounge on the wall-to-wall carpet near the hi-fi trying to memorize the witty lyrics. On Sunday evenings, very late, like eight o'clock, I think, after Ed Sullivan, we would watch the "Dinah Shore Show". Of course my younger siblings would already be asleep in crib or bassinet. This was Big Girl Time! This was time for Skyline Dairy Swiss Almond Ice Cream.

So, to get back on track, I bought a cd of authentic Cole Porter recordings last week. It included Dinah Shore singing, "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To". I really only remembered her singing, "See the USA in your Chevrolet!," and twirling about in a satin gown in front of a car the size of Delaware. I was little. I was pretty sure Dinah Shore was somewhere in the kitchen strumming on an old banjo.

During a big blizzard in about 1965, my dad had to get back to Eastridge from downtown Lincoln. He was able to inch the pea-green '54 Chevy to somewhere near 40th and J Street before it got stuck. He left the car, and headed out on foot wading through the over-the-knee drifted snow. He trekked through the Tabitha Home area and over to Jerry's Sinclair.

Meanwhile, back at the Strauss House Eastridge ranch, we were playing Chutes and Ladders and working jigsaw puzzles on folding card tables in the living room. We were very worried about Daddy, lost out there on the Siberian tundra! Remember the first time you watched "Dr. Zhivago"? It was a thrilling moment when we caught sight of an Abdominal Snowman slowly making its way from Cotner Blvd. through the poplar and pine trees into our backyard. Daddy was home! Our hero! Our frosty daddy, just as brave as those Friendship Seven astronauts we watched on the only tv* at Eastridge Elementary!

By the way, I am so old I remember Gas Wars and 21 cents a gallon gas. Usually the guy who pumped our gas also offered us free steak knives, or tropical-hued thermal tumblers, mugs, and pitchers.

*Yes, Eastridge School had a tv. For all NASA space launches the students would gather in the library to sit on the floor and watch. Some other day I will share my favorite memories of early educational television