Get away bliss

Road trip!  Road trip!  I need to get away, as Southwest Airlines would say.

A girls' art weekend in Fort Worth's Cultural District is almost in view.  Caravaggio at the Kimbell.  Diebenkorn at the Modern.  John Marin watercolors at the Amon Carter.  Barbecue at the Stockyards.

Then a grandma-to-be getaway to the wilds of Oregon and Powell's City of Books. Lots of unknown territory out there for a CollageMama who has never been much west of Moab, Utah. 

Thank heaven neither of these trips will require salt pills for heat prostration or carrying a heavy backpack.  Will either make me happy?  Will either refuel my creative gas tank?

I'm racing through The Geography of Bliss:  One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.  What is the recipe for happiness?  Can it be pinned to a place like the hummus notecard under the magnet on my refrigerator?

Eric Weiner's book has not addressed the matter of landscape compatibility so far, and I am up to Thailand.  I am always more content, at ease, and happier when I can see a long way to the horizon.  I'm a prairie/plains girl.  I love mesas, but get anxious hemmed in by mountains.








What I've gleaned from the book is that personal happiness requires:

1. An atmosphere of trust
2. Participation in useful work
3. A good personal fit with societal expectations
4. A strong cultural identity
5. Freedom from excessive poverty
6. Freedom from excessive affluence
7. Tolerance for boredom, failure, and waiting
8. Habits of mindfulness and attention
9. Choices that matter
10. Experiencing and practicing kindness
11. Moderation--Knowing when enough is enough
12. Cohesive family relationships
13. Being fully present in the moment
14. Realistic expectations
15. Freedom from envy
16. Connection to nature
17. Opportunities for creative expression
18. Belief in the act of believing in Something Other
19. Knowing that the author of Flow's name is pronounced "Sticks in my eye".  

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

I see the white horse! I win!

A dad came into the library to check out the limit of seven DVDs.  "You must be planning to hole up with air conditioning  all week to beat the heat," I said.

"Oh, no.  We are heading out on a family road trip,"  he replied.

"Gosh, when I was a kid we looked out the window and counted windmills," I said.

"Things are different now," he said, obviously sure that the differences were improvements.

And that is a big chunk of what's wrong with the world from where I sit.  There's not much wrong with modern day families that couldn't be bettered by a long ride west on two-lane Highway 6 in a '54 Chevy with a few gravel road detours and the aromas of hot tar and cattle lots.

Kids learn pretty fast how not to push grown-ups over the edge with endless questions and bickering.  They learn that annoying your siblings just makes everyone hotter, sweatier, and more stuck to the vinyl backseat.  That's a big incentive to get along and to find pleasant diversions.  Looking out the window observing the towns, fields, trucks, signs, and windmills might help build a connection to the landscape that might eventually become a sense of stewardship for the planet.

It's not the destination.  It's the road trip.  And if you see the first white horse, you win.



© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Miss Frizzle goes ruleless

My inner junior high guidance counselor has finally given up urging me to "make good use of my time" on these snow days.  I just want to sit here in my Van Gogh starry night fleece robe and stare at the freezing precipitation.  I can't psych up to turn on the Weather Channel, even with the remote control, and I sure don't want to iron while I watch tv.  Just paging through the Sudoku book to find a fresh puzzle takes more zip than I can muster.  Thank heaven I don't have to drive a Magic School Bus full of kids on a learning adventure today.  Make the bed?  You must be kidding.  I'm climbing back under the covers and pulling them over my head so as to miss the end of civilization as we know it.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Still life--Small stone #7

Dad naps, I read.
Dad wakes,
"I am ready for the full heat."
Another blanket, thermostat change?
No.
Dad wakes and pushes the call button,
"I am ready for the full light."
The aide shrugs. 
Dad wakes,
"Do you want to go now?  Are we ready to go?  Can we leave now?"

Unfortunately for most elderly people there is a long disconnect between being ready to go and being still life.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

What did we do without them?

Mary Jacobs has an op ed piece in today's Dallas Morning News called, "Hey, Mom and Dad, kids really can create their own fun" . Good golly, yes, and it's a weird form of almost-abuse not to let them. Boredom is one of the best things to ever happen to a kid.

I won't go into my long rant on the subject today, as I have so many things I want to do. That's what happens when you are privileged enough to be bored as a kid. You get curious about many subjects. You use your imagination. You create games and cooperate with other kids. You plan. You acquire these wonderful lifelong habits because you weren't rescued from your boredom by your parents.

You also burn a lot of energy playing outside. A dear demented friend and I have just been reminiscing about all the wonderful time spent running, chasing, and hiding in our childhoods (right after the dinosaurs died out). My neighborhood called this everybody's-welcome-to-join at-any-time-game, "DuntalaUt", and we sang our own soundtrack as we ran. This is how it goes:

Dunt a la ut,
dunt a la ut,
dunt a la Dunt A La Dunt A La Ut.

The tune may have been Keystone Kops, or some other classic black and white movie chase theme. The game can be played in any weather. Send the kids to the bathroom, bundle them up, and shoo them outside. Smile and wave when they run past the window.

Coo Coo Ca-Choo

Last Sunday Dave Barry wrote about that tasty paste we ate in kindergarten and at Sunday School. Robert Fulghum explained that all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten. Today I'm laughing about the equally important things I learned babysitting.

In sixth grade in 1966 I discovered pop music. I moved beyond my red crystal radio kit to a little transistor radio in its vinyl case. Every Saturday afternoon I would listen to the top 49 countdown on KLMS, 1490 AM with my earphone that looked like my grandmother's hearing aid. I could listen while I dug dandelions in the front yard. Any time we complained of boredom, my mom told us we could chose whether to darn our socks or to dig dandelions. That was excellent incentive to learn to entertain ourselves. [Imagine that! We didn't even have a VCR in the backseat of the Chevy. Heck, we had just gotten seatbelts.] And, thank heaven I had a mom with a constructive cure for boredom!

Cue the memory soundtrack:

• Georgy Girl
• To Sir With Love
• What's It All About, Alfie
• Penny Lane
• Ruby Tuesday
• I'm a Believer
• Don't Sleep in the Subway
• I Dig Rock and Roll Music
• I Think We're Alone Now
• Feeling Groovy

I bought 45s for eighty-eight cents in Kresges at the only mall in town. My allowance for four weeks was enough to buy a 45. I put those plastic swirly adaptors in the record centers so I could play them on our hi-fi. I wore Yardley white lip gloss and blue eye shadow, and read both Sixteen and Seventeen magazines. My PaperMate pen was designed by Marimekko, and I was introduced to pizza and Doritos.

The next year I started babysitting for a couple with two daughters during all the Cornhusker home games and the chamber music concerts. This is significant in that

1. I began developing my skills entertaining and educating kids which have served me well as a mom and art teacher
2. I was introduced to the lifestyle of a more affluent socio-economic group
3. I was the beneficiary of football tickets when they couldn't attend
4. They convinced my mom that I was old enough to see Franco Zefferelli's beautiful Romeo and Juliet
5. I developed the ability, now long lost, to visualize the action of a football game from the radio announcer's descriptions
6. I was paid a whopping seventy-five cents an hour, when most of my other "clients" paid thirty-five or fifty cents
7. I had the opportunity to read their copy of The Graduate, or I might still not have a clue what sex is.

Slow down. You move too fast. Got to make the morning last.