Rose-scented handkerchief

Started this month searching for a rose-themed Valentine's Day art project for my young students. Inspiration arrived with the International Quilt Studies Center and Museum "Quilt of the Month" email.  You can search on IQSC's website by keyword, so I looked at lots of rose quilts from various eras.  I made a collection of my favorites that you can view here.



After more googling, I found the rose image to the left that made the art project click into place. The children were very excited about their rose art. It made a nice gift for their families on Valentine's Day.

We dyed coffee filters in liquid watercolors.  These are not, I repeat, not made from pastel scented Kleenex. Oh, that favorite kiddie craft of the Sixties! My mom used to get so ticked off when we used expensive Kleenex for something other than sneezes. Yes, people actually carried cloth handkerchiefs when I was a kid. Washed them. Ironed them! That's how little girls learned to iron. Little boys did not learn to iron in the Sixties!  At birthday parties we played Drop-the-Handkerchief, and Ring-Around-the-Rosy.

We've come a long way, baby, except we make twice as much waste per person as we did in 1960. The average American makes 7.1 pounds of trash a day. Some of my preschoolers make that much just in tissues, toilet paper, Pull-Ups, and juice boxes.  Alas.  Thanks to Edward Humes' Garbology for the statistics.






And thanks to Marie Hall Ets for one of my favorite read-aloud picture books of all time, In the Forest. I wish it would be republished, perhaps as a board book.  Rose still rhymes with nose, the original reason for the art class theme.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Red roses for a blue lady

 Art class plan for next two Wednesdays
Theme  roses
 rhyming noses
Valentine-zy without being Valentine's
Valentine-ish without smooching or Saint

Please no movie product tie-in Happy Meal toys
A rose by any other name
would smell as sweet
Peppermint tea remember
when white paste was to eat

A dozen for counting
a horse for Robert
the Rose Horse
but No Roses for Harry
that dirty dog

My luxurious gift

what girl can resist
a $313 Buick window regulator
sure beats a push-up bra
from Montgomery Ward



Pull out the old wallpaper sample books
All those princesses pricking their fingers on thorns
Outlook less Gypsy than Grimm

  


© 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

On tree ornaments and sadness

Right after I shipped gift boxes to my sons I discovered The Gift of Nothing by Patrick McDonnell. Shipping a big box of nothing via UPS or USPS would cost less, but would my sons still know their mommy loves them?

Decorated my Christmas tree during odd moments this week, for the first time in two or three years.  Haven't felt very Christmassy during the years of tending to my dad. I opened the boxes of my mom's ornaments.  Many were decorations I'd made or purchased for her, just as many in my own collection were gifts from Mom. It was a tradition we loved sharing, marking special memories with tree ornaments.

Didn't open the boxes of decorations from my sons' childhoods this time as the tree was already full. That was before the horrors at the week's end.  Now I keep thinking of the mothers and grandmothers who won't get to collect tree ornaments marking the milestones of childhoods.


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Asp not what your condo can do for you

Glanced out the laundry room door to the patio when I got home. Worked some yesterday out back removing canna plants and sweeping away the soapberry tree debris. I was motivated by the mice... yes those spots before my eyes during my headcold.

No matter how Beatrix Potter cutesie you might look in the book, I got no use for yoose mousies running up the legs of my gas grill. You are going down!

Instead of mice, my little laundry room glance eyes spied a snake in the canna bed. Had it enjoyed a nice mouse brunch? Was it a condo neighbor's escaped pet, "Fluffy"?

Thanks to my high school buddy, Rosencrantz, for the likely ID. Texas rat snake seems to fit.

And yes, asp is a good crossword puzzle word when viper and cobra are too long.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Hotter'n blue blazes

98° and it's only two o'clock. Just finished cooking out burgers, corn, and skewered veggies. Pretty tasty. Cleaned up inside, then went back out to clean the grill. I picked up the tongs, spatula, and skewers. Yowzah!
What in blue blazes was I thinking?!

So now I'm temporarily detoured from my nap plan by searching for origins of "blue blazes", and also the proper spelling of yowzah, which is not in my big red dictionary.

I knew blue blazes was a Grandma-speak euphemism for Hell, and didn't have much to do with gas flames or water heaters. I'd never considered the expression "blazing a trail", and had long since forgotten about a blaze on a horse's face. My horse-crazed little brother always wanted a horse with a star, not a blaze. And then there's the blast or blare of a trumpet to consider.

I won't reprint the explanation of all this by the Word Detective. You can read it here should you happen to burn your fingers or lose the trail. But, wouldn't "you meaningless alliterative intensifier" be a good euphemistic insult? And, I hope your library hasn't withdrawn all the classic Billy and Blaze books by W. C. Anderson enjoyed by generations of horse-crazed young readers.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

The lime tree that Jack grew

It started with the Teacher Appreciation lunch. We were being appreciated in such a creative way. The parents had brought story books to accompany their food contributions, and excerpts were read to us while we dined on fabulous veggie soup, Indian chicken, artichoke bread, spinach quiche (Green Eggs and Ham, of course), fruit salad (The Very Hungry Caterpillar), and so on through the chocolate parfaits. The centerpiece was sculptures from Play With Your Food.

Then we were each given a lime tree with a reading of a poem by a parent about nurturing children. Wow! My very own thornless key lime pie, no I meant TREE, with matching lime green gardening gloves. So I stopped at Calloways Nursery on the way home to get expert advice, a very large pot, a saucer with wheels, plus a big bag of tree/shrub soil mix. The tree has to grow in full sun outside, but be covered it if gets below forty degrees, and brought inside if it gets below thirty degrees. This is way beyond my normal gardening method of sticking plant in pot and promptly forgetting it.

When I took the trash to the dumpster I met my neighbor's son who was digging out bushes on the side of a condo building. The condo association is gradually moving to heat/drought resistant landscaping, so Knock-out roses will be planted. Plus an older woman who lives in that unit will be safer without overgrown shrubs hiding her entry. I talked to the son about removing my patio bushes. I don't know what the bushes are, except that they are prone to some kind of mite infestation and have an unruly growth pattern. Every few years I take out my frustration and prune them way back. I've only kept them because the anole lizards use them for cover.

One thing led to another and I started sawing the bushes. It was therapeutic. Got four out of five down to the stumps before the rain started. I'll get the son to remove the stumps. I'm hoping to move all my cannas right next to the fence so the lizards will have their shaded hiding places back. Then there will be room to transplant some of my other plants in front of the cannas and reclaim most of the paved patio for humans, chairs, and grill. The hardy mint, mums, and giant sedum might be able to fight back against the aggressive myrtle.

I get volunteer plants sprouting from the vermicompost I add to the pots. Some sort of surprise squash plant was already growing up and over the ugly bushes and blooming.  It might not survive transplanting. And then there's the volunteer tomato that is doing better than the intentional tomatoes of last summer. Add a hummingbird feeder, and let the wild rumpus start!.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Michiko Kakutani's New York Times 3/20/12 review of John Gertner's book, The Idea Factory : Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, crossed my table last Saturday.  Would I actually read the book?  No, although it is "utterly comprehensible--indeed thrilling--to the lay reader".  Trouble is that I keep falling asleep in the limited hours available outside of work.  The review is a delightful, brief explanation of Bell Labs and the visionary leadership that promoted a culture of highest level creativity, innovation, and cross-disciplinary scientific research.  This paragraph caught my attention because of interest in early childhood education and nature awareness, crisscrossed with memories of my father.  Dad had the small town background of those Bell Lab scientists:

Many Bell Labs scientists, including Brattain, Kelly and the Nobel Prize-winning physicistCharles H. Townes, who helped develop the principles of the laser, grew up on farms or in small towns, which Dr. Townes argued were the perfect “training grounds for experimental physics.” Such childhoods, he contended, taught a person how to “pay attention to the natural world, to work with machinery and to know how to solve practical problems and fix things innovatively, with what is on hand.”

Dad was a supreme practitioner of the "fix with what is on hand" mentality.  Once he had rigged a slapdash repair he was oblivious to the aesthetic realities of his idea.  That is, when the man fixed the dang shower drip by stretching a heavy-duty rubber band he didn't care that his family had the ugly, mildewed rubber band in the bathtub for the next two decades.

During a recent windstorm my gate got blown out of its lock lever. I didn't want it to keep banging and twisting off its hinges, so I grabbed the nearest coat hanger.  My fix worked, but I don't want to look at it for very long. I'm a child of a child of the Great Depression, but I'd like a prettier solution long term.

I love stories of resourcefulness, and especially stories that include a pair of pliers in the back pocket of overalls. When I read Andy and the Lion to the preschoolers I worry that they are just too far removed from washing behind their ears out on the back porch to get it.  Then I worry that children won't get to hear this story because hunting lions, even in a tall tale, is not politically correct.  Plus, I worry that kids don't even get to walk to school on their own feeling like intrepid adventurers.  

Dad had few vices, but this vise and lots of C-clamps.  I'm trying to rig a way to hang our coat hanger wire sculptures from the top edge of a cafeteria stage backdrop so they blow in the nonexistent wind.  In the middle of the night I'm pondering how to do this with no money and no knowledge of the depth of that stage back wall prior to the performance day.  And no really big rubber-bands!

Bark is on my mind for good reason.  The school music festival is based on Leo Lionni's very 1968 parable, The Alphabet Tree about "the power of the written word in a democratic society":

The wordbug teaches the letters on the alphabet tree, torn and tossed by a windstorm, how to become stronger by banding together to form words. Then a clever purple caterpillar teaches the letters to become even stronger by forming sentences with a message of peace. 

The costumes for the kiddies are even tie-dye t-shirts!  Did the dyeing on the playground this afternoon.  Stirred the dye with a shovel handle for more problem-solving with material at hand.  Groovy.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Resolution #3

You may wonder what happened to 2. It is in the comments to Resolution #1, and the bean soup is on the stove.

Resolution #3 is to sew some placemats that coordinate with  my new plates and the dining area "graph paper" wallpaper.  I am so excited to have a real set of turquoise Fiesta Ware.

"You must be a grown-up," said my longtime walking buddy.  "You have plates that match."  When she said it I knew she must be a friend.  She would probably sew a button on my overalls, just like Lisa did for Corduroy.

"I like you the way you are," she said "but you'll be more comfortable with your shoulder strap fastened." "You must be a friend," said Corduroy, "I've always wanted a friend." "Me too!" said Lisa, and she gave him a big hug.

I have a few cups and saucers in very old Fiesta Ware colors.  They won't commune with the new place-settings except for historic occasions.

Sending all of you a big New Year's hug. Wishing that everyone everywhere had nutritious food, clean water, adequate sewage disposal, and the opportunity to grow up and find sustaining work.  Is it so much to wish that every child born on Earth could be loved, read aloud to, and learn to read?




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

A dinosaur in the late afternoon woods

Excuse me. For just a second there on the Willow Springs/Rowlett Creek Trail I thought a two and a half year old was with me. He had his spear, and was keeping a sharp look-out for a brontosaurus or maybe T-Rex. They live in the woods, you know, so you have to go hiking to find them.

True, that little fella is old enough to have his own hiking companion one of these days, and has probably stopped looking for extinct animals. I'm almost teary remembering that on one of those hikes we actually came around the bend and found a buffalo blocking our trail.

Having demanded hundreds of readings of Peter Spier's Gobble, Growl, Grunt, my son wanted the buffalo to say, "BALLOOOOW!"  We were on a trail near our rented primitive fishermen's cabin in Custer State Park, South Dakota, 1985.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Can't blame it on the heat wave

With cooler temps and even, gasp, significant rainfall, a fungal ugliness is showing itself.  Bad mushrooms and predatory slime molds are manifesting in places of employment.  It's enough to kill the old king in Babar.  Just by the way, my brother-in-law was so traumatized by that story he still won't eat mushrooms and he's over fifty.

Actually, science shows that slime molds cooperate better than many groups of workplace "team members".

We were so psychically pulled down just trying to get through each blistering day of the record-breaking hellish summer that comparatively petty, but consistently disrespectful behavior had to be ignored and pushed under the rug for survival.  

Now it's flagrant, and spores are being released. Old photos from my files are helping me put the fun back in dysfungtional and the like back in lichen.  Just don't make me read Babar.  Never did like that dude. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sunny with a chance of hamburger buns

Bakery debris on the 75 expressway  was strangely peculiar.  First, I drove south through crashed pieces that might have been bakery trays. Then suddenly, I was driving though hundreds of sliced hamburger buns bouncing around, blown by passing cars, and getting squished between the Campbell and Arapaho exits.





After work I headed north up 75.  Took  the George Bush Turnpike exit on the high overpass through WHAT?  Remains of a watermelon hailstorm on the George Bush overpass!  Curving around the ramp to head into the sun and pulling down the visor, when bunka chunka chunka, I was zooming through the middle of the mess. Am I a road warrior or a picnic caterer?

Friday's walk along the  Rowlett Creek Trail  found me jumping the fallen log to photograph a fast moving skink.  As I went over, it zoomed under.  When it climbed up the other side of the log to see if I was gone, I wasn't.  Peek a boo.  It hid in a  pile of leaves with just the last blue inch of its tail visible.  We played peek a boo two more times before we both got tired.  According to the Texas Monthly Field Guide Series book A Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Texas by Judith M. Garrett, my log-jumping partner is a five-lined skink, Eumeces fasciatus.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Hemingway's rosy wallpaper

Or  not so macho.  

Once upon a time in a lovely, small library where I happen to work, there was a copy of Death In the Afternoon.

For some reason, the book wasn't circulating, even though there was a resurgence of interest in Ernest Hemingway's wives, boats, and feasts.  I have to wonder about the sensible shoes librarian or her assistant, (Igor) who used this pinkie floral wallpaper scrap for the dust jacket many decades ago.

All I know about bull-fighting I learned from Bizet's opera, "Carmen" and from The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.  One is all about passion, death, blood, lust, jealousy, and fate.  The other is about smelling the flowers in all the lovely ladies' hair and declining to fight.

Was the old librarian being frugal, using whatever material was at hand to protect her precious books?  Or was she making a statement and trying to dissuade manly men from reading Hemingway's non-fiction reportage?

Matadors wear pink hose.  Library books wear dust jackets with a protective plastic cover to increase their longevity.  The rosy wallpaper on Death In the Afternoon might have come from Grandma's house in Pierce, Nebraska, already faded in the early Sixties. The style of plastic book jacket cover on our book would have looked old, cracked, and marginally appealing at the Pierce Library in those same years when I was being Grandma's little library assistant:

The seeds of Brodart took root in 1939, when a young Columbia University student named Arthur Brody invented the plastic book jacket cover.  Involved with architectural photography as a student, one day Mr. Brody washed the emulsion off some film and folded it around his books for added protection.  When the cover’s popularity grew among his fellow students, the plastic book jacket cover was officially born, as was Brodart.  Today, the covers are used to protect the original paper jackets of library books, giving them a longer shelf life and increasing their circulation.
  
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

The Little Buick Headlight and the Great Gray Bridge

The officer was very polite, confident, and young when he asked for my license and proof of insurance.  He had noted the bottle of Australian wine in the cupholder, and saw it was unopened.  He asked where we were going.  "Home," I said, "to Plano."


Where had my sister and I been?  "We were having supper at a friend's house."  I considered mentioning the fabulous shrimp Louie salad, and the odd recipe for Lemon Crunch that used pecans and cornflakes.

The officer was patient while I dug around in the glove box for the current proof of insurance, then explained the drivers' side headlight was out.  Got a new headlight bulb at Auto Zone first thing this morning.  My sister insisted the used bulb looked like a lighthouse.

 The Little Red Lighthouse is a precious talisman from childhood.  My parents brought it back to me from New York City in 1961.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Chewandswallow and billow, too

Envious of my inept, yet refreshed preschoolers. I am teaching them to fill watering cans from the big yellow bucket without getting completely soaked.  This is way more complicated than we remember.  You have to turn the bucket on its side and hold it under the water, then watch the bubbles. When the bubbles stop, the can is full.  Do not, I repeat, do not try to water your tongue.  


Walk, don't run. Use at least two hands to carry your watering can toward the garden.   Don't forget to check for the toad that frequents the subterranean space by the faucet.  Please don't intentionally water your own shoes or anybody else's.  Try to point the watering can spout toward the dirt near an actual plant!  Don't worry, your clothes will dry very soon in this heat.  Look.  Orville Redenbacher popcorn clouds are billowing in the glaring blue sky.


Billowing   A great swell, surge, or undulating mass, as of smoke or sound.[From Old Norse bylgja, a wave; see bhelgh ]


So next time I say bhelgh, I will try visualize billowing sails filling with wind, purpose, and imagination on sailing ships of long ago. We need to get out of the doldrums.


Sitting in the traffic jam caused by a signal light outage at Coit Road and The George Bush, I listened to a story on NPR about protecting my internet transactions from hacking.  Yes, it is possible to enable a secure sockets layer or SSL on Facebook.  No, some drivers could not keep their vehicles from overheating in the 106 degree heat index as we limped along at three mph.  What a weird place to be stalled and sweltering at an impasse!  Our 190 tollroad is named for Bush The First, but I still blame Dubya for the economy.  That Obama has been unable to steer the plane out of the dive he inherited is unfortunate, as is his inability to extricate us from wars where our soldiers are always over 106 degrees.  I am sick, sick, sick of politicians seeking reelection and of the complete lack of inspired leaders, statesmen, concensus-builders.  

It is so hot here the windshield sponge-O-squeegee at the gas station dried out before I could clean the front window of the Buick.  It's so hot here that I'm instantly coated with sticky, itchy cedar mulch while lifting handfuls out of the bag to pack around the bean, pepper, and tomato plants. During the mulch operation we realize we've got camouflaged  hornworms on our tomato plants. Hornworms are big, disgusting and reliable.  We can count on them to provide class lessons.  Hornworms chew and swallow and leave a trail of frass.

Chewandswallow is the land in the book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  Dad is not in that land.  He still chews ... and chews ... and chews ... but he's forgotten how to swallow.  And it does not rain maple syrup.  It does not rain at all.



© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Library collection count

Adding two new libraries to my life list, bringing my count to sixty-two.  Today I visited the Carrollton Public Library at Hebron & Josey.  It seemed like a user-friendly, efficient public library with helpful staff.  I'll be presenting a program about worms and worm composting at the library during the Texas Summer Reading Program.  The theme this year is "Dig Up a Good Book", hence the worm connection.
 
 

I was delighted to finally stand by one of the New York Public Library lions.  I've wanted to do that since I heard Andy and the Lion on Captain Kangaroo's tv show in the early Sixties.  Andy is one of my heroes.  He checks out library books AND he keeps pliers in his back pocket.  Between wire sculpture and Buick difficulties, I often have pliers in my back pocket.  James Daugherty's picture book was a Caldecott Honor Book in 1939.  Just realized when I was asking students to squeeze the clay with all their might last week, I was channeling Andy!

Andy braced one foot against the lion's paw

and pulled with all his might

until the thorn

 CAME

OUT.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder