Optical high jinks

 

Molasses stickiness on the lazy Susan started a cupboard cleaning attack. Before long the spice jars and three bottles of vanilla extract were all over the kitchen counter surrounding the colander.

I love this colander.  Picked it out as a gift for my mother in about 1969.  The orange/yellow/navy enamel wasn't really right for Mom's Mondrian color scheme preferences.

All those circle jar lids, circle oranges, and circle strainer holes demanded their camera moment. The images were an eye-popping op-art experience reminiscent of old Kodak flash cube afterimages.  If you want to feel a bit dotty and spotty, look at these photos, then look away to a white screen.

By the way, I worry about Kodak.  I sure don't miss the film camera process, just those plastic film cans with snap on lids.  They were so very useful.  As for George Eastman, the Kodak founder was a kid just like me once upon a time in those "Childhood of Famous Americans" books.  George Eastman, Young Photographer was one of many in the series I read at Eastridge Elementary.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Communing with balloons

Took flowers for Dad's vase after lunch.  He'd been pretty sharp in the morning, just uncomfortable being folded wrong in his bed.  Dad doesn't weigh much these days, but still enough that I need an aide's help to scoot Dad up toward the pillow.  Then I can raise the head of the bed so Dad can sit up to drink coffee, always important!

After lunch I stopped back with the bouquet.  Dad was still sitting up, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth agape, and hands tracing the route of the suspended ceiling's grid.  He looked like a flight attendant pointing to the exits during the safety demo.  Oblivious to me, I arranged the flowers, chatted about lunch, took off his glasses and cleaned them.  He grabbed the glasses back and returned to communing with the ceiling.  Pair of L lines receding toward the horizon.

Spur of the moment, I headed to downtown Dallas for free admission First Saturday at the Nasher Sculpture Center.  I needed art.  I needed free.  I needed driving directions!  "You cain't get thar from hyere" should be the Mavs welcome to Heat fans.  Downtown is a massive detour due to construction on the Woodall Rodgers deck park that will change the freeway into a tunnel with a giant urban park above (take a virtual fly-through at the link).   For now you cain't fly through.  You cain't exit.  You cain't backtrack.  You cain't find the parking garage at the Dallas Museum of Art to save your life.  Not even from the three-point line.

While I was struggling to get off of Woodall Rodgers to circle back to the Arts District, I got a view of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, also under construction.  The bridge is the first of a proposed trio designed by Santiago Calatrava for the Trinity River Project.  It would be nice if the construction went as quickly as this time-lapse video.

While it looked like I might be stuck on the Interstate all the way north to Denton, I was able to exit at Victory Avenue.  This was as up-close as I've been to the site of tonight's game three of the NBA Finals.  It figures that I was lost at the time.

This is not a map of downtown Dallas with detours, but there's a resemblance to my completed Worm Knot textile project.

The good news is that my auto travails were completely worth it.  The Nasher Center has an outdoor exhibit, "Statuesque" with very fun works by Aaron Curry in blazing pink and lime green.

The bright colors contrast with the dark figures of  Thomas Houseago.  (Both these artists were born in 1972).  Hut, hut, hut!  The works resemble football centers from this angle.

And Curry's "Horned Head Trip" looks a bit like my new "CollageMama" Chinese chop:

What about the balloons?  What about the communing?  That's a whole different exhibit on the lower level of the Nasher Center.  "Whole different" doesn't begin to describe the experience of "Sightings:  Martin Creed".

Walk down the stairs, and the balloon-filled room grabs your vision.  But, wait, these are musical stairs.  Each step plays a tone.  You and everyone else is making the strange music filling the museum.

Wait in a long line with anticipation building for your turn inside the balloon room.  A few people lost their nerve, as I would have in my anxiety days.  When you get to the arrangement of cacti you are on deck.  No eyeglasses allowed in the balloons.  It would be easy to lose them.  You begin to anticipate the static effect on your hair before you even enter.  The atmosphere is that electric.

You are in!  You are pushing your way through balloons.  You push them up for a glimpse of the ceiling.  It takes surprising effort to move.  You push until you find a wall, then turn.  It's loud.  Kids are shrieking with joy.  You push through balloons to find a person pushing toward you and both shriek with surprise!  It is cool, and not as humid as expected.  There's plenty of air, of course in all the spaces between balloons.  You breathe and fill with joy.  All other thoughts are gone.  You are IN ORANGE BALLOONS.  What else could there be?

Your five minutes are ending.  You find the windows, and then the door.  People are taking photos of you through the windows, documenting reactions.  You are pleased to emerge without letting any balloons escape.  You feel a bond with everyone who has been inside.  You may never be quite the same.  You have been on a very odd detour!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

"It's gonna be okay, maam," the kind officer said.

O-o-o-ostrich.  O-o-o-onomatopoeia.  O-o-o-o-otter.  Olive!  O-o-o-omelet.  O-o-o-orange.  O-o-o-occupant.  O-o-o-o-o-o-Osterizer.  Octagon!  Opera.....

"Don't worry, folks, she's not choking.  She's not off her rocker.  She's a preschool teacher," said the officer.  "Step back everybody, give her some room.  Make way! Clear a path! Short vowels coming through!"

"The phonetimedics are here, ma'am.  We're gonna start you on an IV drip of initial letter sounds right away.  Get you some oxygen, too."

Thank heaven the emergency phonetimedics made it through the snow and ice.  I survived to live another snow day.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Goatweed leafwing

My one-block walks are solidified in my MWF afternoon routine. The walks take close to an hour now, since I'm drawn to both sides of the creek. Wednesday afternoon I finally got a photo of the illusive orange butterfly. My knees are complaining about the scrambles up and down the creekbank.

I've lived in subdivisions as flat and "earth tone" as a camouflage leafwing butterfly in a pile of old leaves. The streets had names like Bankside, Creekside, Parkside, Whispering Creek, Stone Creek, Ripple Creek, Sandy Creek, Timbercreek, Timberview, Stepping Stone, Hickory, Shadybrook, and Edgewater.

None of these street names have hinted that boys wading in the creeks would stain their socks a rusty red no amount of Clorox could remove. Even the most rustic appellations did not suggest there was a six-lane street two blocks over.

This vanishing artist is also one block from a six-lane thoroughfare. Maybe somewhere there are streets named Goatweed and Leafwing. When the Goatweed Leafwing flies, its wings are a bright and velvety rusty orange.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Lemongrass Dressing

It's possible to spend a huge amount of time looking at recipes on-line, as I discovered when I decided to make a spinach and orange salad with lemongrass dressing for a festive occasion. First I looked at variations of spinach/orange salads, or "spinage" as I just typed. Yikes. I wanted the salad to be really colorful, with red bell pepper, green sugar snap peas, and sunflower seeds. I was planning a red wine vinegar dressing for the salad, but couldn't find a recipe that seemed quite right.

Then I went off on a lemongrass tangent, to see if the herb could be used in a salad dressing. I needed basic information about what parts of the stalk should be used, how much to peel away, and what quantity might be appropriate.

To be honest, I didn't follow any of the recipes, but the salad turned out pretty tasty. Just a few days ago I made the world's worst pesto by attempting to follow a recipe. For some reason, I confused "clove" with "bulb", and put about twenty times too much garlic in with the basil, pine nuts, and olive oil. I also didn't know that using a garlic press results in a ten times stronger flavor than slicing cloves with a knife. We sure haven't seen any demons, werewolves, or vampires around the condo this week.

This was my concoction for a lemongrass dressing, but don't follow it too closely. Like a big truck, it might make wide turns.

In a blender:
Juice of a lime
2 whole cloves of garlic
3 peeled stalks of lemongrass about 4" long
A big dribble of soy sauce
A lot of fresh ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup cooking oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. sugar
Pinch of salt
4 fresh basil leaves
Add more sugar, salt, and black pepper to taste after blending.

The preschoolers were playing a choosing game by telling their favorite color, finding something that color in the classroom, and thinking of rhyming words for their color. In a survival of the fittest evolution, this game weeds children who prefer orange or purple out of the breeding pool.

According to the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary, "Orange is one of those words that famously has nothing perfectly to rhyme with it. The other one is silver."

I've never met a preschooler who prefers silver. Silver is an acquired taste. Just ask any woman over fifty if she saw Bjorn Borg sitting in the front row of the Wimbledon men's final last weekend!

Purple is problematic, with no rhymes in the vocabulary of most English speakers. Thanks to the wttygrrl blogger for reminding me that door hinge rhymes with orange. Tasting my pesto effort was like pinching your forehead in a big door hinge. Spinage! Yikes!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Padlock Spider

Isn't this the cutest little yam/pumpkin/carrot spider for Thanksgiving? It's the latest resident on the metal gate to the playground, probably having eaten the previous occupant. Its abdomen is the size of my pinkie fingertip.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder