Caillebotte drops his chewing gum

If you walk all the way north on the High Line and then look down you might be able to spot the pink blob of Bazooka bubble gum on the pavement far below.  Gustave dropped it intentionally even though his mommy said "No," in a very firm tone of voice.

Caillebotte's On the Pont de l’Europe (1876-1877) is one of my favorite paintings at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth. I love the close-up, cropped gentlemen, the almost monochromatic color, and the structural steelwork shapes.

This was my first visit to the High Line, and only my second trip to New York, so please excuse me for gawking like a yokel. Sorry that "Jeremiah Moss" is crabby about tourists and gentrification in his Chelsea neighborhood according to the 8/21/12 NYT column.  Maybe there's an anger management group for him that meets in the High Line amphitheatre.

The High Line has almost everything I could want in a destination:

Domino 1 2 3

• Cool design
• Repurposing of industrial space
• Native plants
• Awesome views of the city and river
• It's free
• A breeze
• Gelato
• All sorts of photo subjects
• Benches for sitting down
• Giant domino building and fire escapes

Construction zigzags

• Oh, and zigzags. My tiny French student likes saying "zigzag". We fold our nap mats like zigzags at preschool.

Did I mention gelato?

Perhaps there will be another High Line post tomorrow. True, it will be the first day of preschool and then Gustave and I have to take a CPR certification renewal class. And where would we rather be?

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Formica shades of gray

Walking shoe and Formica chips

Rooting around in a disorganized teacher box in search of a piggy finger puppet I find a cache of Formica samples circa 1965. Give myself  The Talking To where I insist that something I haven't needed or even known existed should be thrown out in the interest of leaving less mess for my kids should I happen to die. Then I talk back to myself and whine.

I fail to put myself in Time Out.  Instead I reach a compromise whereby I keep the gray samples since they are relevant to an ongoing discussion, and chuck the others in the dumpster.

The Formica samples provided some further names for gray:

Bunny grays

haze
platinum
seagull
stardust
white kid leather

Newport, Oregon beach in December

ninja
orchid
optix
graceful oak
ice
surf




Just getting warmed up to the challenge plus inspired by Formica, I add these shade suggestions:

Very large sauerkraut crock

crock
tomato cage
bubble wrap
mystery meat
Duct tape
mockingbird
junco
freezer burn

Hairstreak butterfly

window screens
retro diner
comfy sweats
nap-time tantrum
no bars of service
mirror
shining armor
flashlight batteries
Velcro
wasp nest

Rock and roll is here to stay

fan oscillations
typewriter ribbon
Tut's tomb
tar pit
rocks
aspen bark
tumbleweed
windmill

Remote grays

Miss Haversham
sorry old guys' nasty undershirts
Brillo
air quality alert
technology
obituary
socket set

VCR gray

coming down with something
paper shredder
cable service outage
coin collection
dog-eared textbook

Hindenburg
tax return
charm bracelet
armadillo
clean the grill

Scared of the basement gray

furnace filter
tinted window
dryer lint
cafeteria fork
Mt. St. Helen's
required reading
sensible shoes
emery board
Dragnet
stink bug

Pale bucket gray

lichen
safe deposit box
pewter
tarnished
Edward R. Murrow
toad
cream of mushroom soup
mercury

Lichen or not

but fear itself
jammed stapler
fish scales
snowed-in

teen car oil spot
utensil
Stonehenge

Cozy afghan knit sofa snoozy gray

AV club
pencil shavings
galvanized bucket
pocket protector

dried Elmer's
firework snakes
desert lizard

toenail fungus

Fritzi's wastebasket

aging Tupperware
sink caulk
laundromat
padlock
snowplow
wet mitten
small kitten


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Stile queen reverie

Not crossing over the fence in the photo, but sitting atop the stile. A rare photo of me from that era when I was the family snapshot taker. The SLR camera was new, so '91 or '92, an extravagant gift from my husband who wanted it himself and bought with time payments. First roll of black and white film out at Connemara. Oddly calm, almost bemused, pleased with my aviator sunglasses and bargain tan mohair cardigan, and for one tiny second sure my three sons are not breaking arms or legs or needing stitches. All the anxiety seems to be stored in that skinny, clasping wrist.

A stile is an arrangement to allow passage for creatures smarter than sheep and cows. Today I barely qualify, having left the wrong key when I dropped off my car for service. The stile photo is part of a collage about myself made a few years later while I was climbing over the fence of divorce, so '96 or '97. It hangs on the wall behind a door that's always open, so I'd forgotten the stile collage.

The collage is glued to a blueprint, appropriately.  My engineer parents created my blueprint, and regularly inspected the construction site. It is in heavy-duty laminating done by Kinko's that cost a fortune.  I hadn't asked the price, and was horrified to be spending the grocery money on laminating.  The collage was to be a talking-piece at my session with the therapist, but now I would have the dragonfly encased in amber forever.

Today I would say I'm still not over the fence, but I am not immobilized in amber or otherwise. I've supported several people making their passage to new meadows. I've watched hawks, bats, and scissortails swoop, hummingbirds and herons feed. My wrist is not so bony, and the hand not so clenched. I'm still borderline panicked about the grocery money.

Thanks to Kathleen for the image and poem that provoked this meditation. Thanks, too, to my extrovert sister, the Nebraska 4-H Style Queen winner. What year was that?

stile 

O.E. stigel "device for climbing, ladder," related to stigen "to climb," from P.Gmc. *stig- "to climb," (see stair). An arrangement to allow persons to pass but not sheep and cattle.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Doctor, doctor, doctor give me the news

DR3 starts my new license plate (aka "tag" in Texas). Time to learn the number using mem nonic devices. Or pneumonic. Pneumatic?  I get confused, and having Wild Bill on the phone while I'm searching for a large Phillips screwdriver doesn't aid my concentration.  I need the screwdriver to put my tags on the new Buick. Wild Bill lives in the condo next door and is nearing 89 years of age. He and his little-dog-not-named-Toto are watching me out the doggy-peek window. A WWII vet whose airplane went down in the Pacific, Wild Bill is a frequent reminder of my dad.  And Dad's veterans life insurance paid for my new/old car.  Dad played complex games with himself to remember names and nouns in the last five years of his life.  So this is the circle of life.

Just returned from meeting my grandbaby in Oregon, so I'm aswirl in  baby fabulousity and grandparent love. Earth's axis has shifted. Most of the things I can't remember just aren't that important at the moment.

Still, it might be good to know my tag number. Doctor Three, Doctor Three, Doctor Three .... paging DR3. Mnemonic device needed STAT. ("Stat" in medical parlance is actually not an acronym; it's short for statim, the Latin word for immediately.)
"Mnemonic" trips me up and makes me seem really clueless because I always say it wrong. The m is silent. ( Everybody is silent if and when the grandbaby goes to sleep!)  


Turns out Henry F. Phillips started the Phillips Screw Company in Portland, Oregon, and I have  three Phillips screwdrivers too small for this job.  My shoulder still hurts from lifting my carry-on into the overhead bin at PDX. It doesn't want to torque: 


Torque is a measure of how much a force acting on an object causes that object to rotate. The object rotates about an axis, which we will call the pivot point, and will label 'O'. We will call the force 'F'. 


We will call the grandbaby "O".  We may call the whole screw project "F" if I can't get Wild Bill off the phone and the license plates onto the car!  DR3 give me the news.  I've got a bad case of Phillips screwdrivers!

Dr. J wrote out prescriptions at my appointment, and I went straight to my WalMart pharmacy to get them filled.  I was down to my last blood pressure pill.  Standing in the line at the Drop-Off window, I was fascinated by the pharmacy tech's nametag.  It was on backwards, and showed a grid of emergency situations and store code words:

•  Lose your child at WalMart?  Code Adam.  
• Fire?  Code Red..  
• Bomb in the store?  Code Blue.
• Chemical spill?  Code Orange.
• Accident?  White.
• Hostage situation?  Code Green.
• Tornado about to blow the roof down?  Code Black.
• Terrorist or shooting?  I forget because I drifted into a scary daydream.  That would be the pits to be waiting for a Zoloft refill when terrorists take over the WalMart!  

As a preschool teacher I suspect Code Yellow would mean somebody peed in their pants while driving around on a motorized shopping cart in the Twinkie aisle.

Way back in my hospital kitchen hairnet days we were always agog about "Dr. Red" and "Code Blue" alerts on the PA.  Code Blue was a cardiac arrest call for the crash cart.

Remembering to say the tags are successfully attached to the vehicle.  The Grancy is totally bonded to the grandbaby.  Holding said infant reduces blood pressure significantly and causes euphoria. Wild Bill and his little dog are good for right now.  Can't lift the toolbox back up on the shelf...

© 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

Spelling Man, injuns, and the C.I.A.

Spelling Man phones asking about concrete, pouring concrete.  "Where does the a go?"

There is no a in concrete, just cement, water, and aggregate, I don't actually say.  

c o n c r e t e

I do not say, "Hey, my dad was a structural engineer.  My sons knew the recipe for concrete at age three."

The blond kid at the computer hollers to his mom across the library, "How do you spell engine?"

She answers from far away

I  N  D  I  A  N

"Mom, come here!," the kid demands, "big red engine!"  

I  N  D  I  A  N

"Anchor," Spelling Man asks, "like anchoring something to the floor, not like a boat."  In that case, it is

a n c h o r 

"I wasn't even close," he says.  He was away, my boys, anchors aweigh.

"Bolting?"

Like bolting out the door, sir?  Making a break for it?  Just strike me down now, Zeus!

"No, like using bolts to put something in the wall."

Oh, I say, b  o  l  t  i  n  g."

"O B O L T I N G?" 

"No, sorry.  Just  b  o  l  t  i  n  g ."

"And building is b  u  i  l  d  i  n  g ?, " Spelling Man asks last.

Right, you got it, but what are you building, sir?

"I'm writing how to anchor my safe to the concrete floor with bolts."

Hmmm, thank you for calling.

"Thank you."

No, thank U.

A handsome, polite young father explains, "Last week my wife checked out a book for me.  I want to get another one like it."

Hmmm.  Who was the author?

"Can't you just see what she had checked out?"

No, the system doesn't save that information for your protection.  You really wouldn't want the library testifying in court about your book-borrowing habits.  We could try to look it up by the title.  Do you remember the title?  Well, who was the main character?  Was it fiction or nonfiction?

"It was good.  My wife said she got it by the columns."

The display books on the shelf-ends change all the time.

"It was about the C.I.A."

What color was the cover?  This is a silly question because all novels about the C.I.A. have jacket designs in red, black, and silver.

We send the young man away with six books.  Maybe next time he will jot down the title on a piece of paper, put it in his pocket, and promptly put his pants in the laundry basket.  That would be a concrete step in the right direction.

Anchors Aweigh, my boys

Anchors Aweigh

Farewell to college joys

We sail at break of day, 'ay 'ay 'ay

O'er our last night ashore

Drink to the foam

Until we meet once more

Here's wishing you a happy voyage home!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Feng shui and shrimp salad for old farts

OR


Pelvis From a Distance With 3D Glasses

Dad was so excited to see me!  This is amazing right there, but it got better.  I brought a new art poster, a rolled up Georgia O'Keeffe, and dubbed him "Sir Howard" with the tube.  Dad raised his arms from the bed in a papal blessing pose with a big smile on his face.

Dad, are you glad to be centered?  Yesterday I wrote a note to the social services woman requesting that Dad's bed be re-centered under the light fixture.  Somehow over the weeks since Dad moved to the private room, his bed has been pushed closer and closer to the exterior wall.  I could barely fit the tray table around the bed, yet most of the room was empty enough for a square dance.  A low-grade annoyance, a persistent aesthetic gnat, an unnecessary accessory to the crimes of nonexistent privacy, incessant beeping alarms, blaring tvs, and pill-chopping guillotine of the med nurse must be a major source of stress for Dad 24/7 if it grates on me during my daily visit.

Dad was a structural engineer.  Controlling, balancing, supporting lines, angles, and spaces were at least as integral to him as they are to his art teacher daughter. Moving a hospital bed is not a hip-shove matter.  This monster is suctioned to the floor with some kind of clamps.  But now, OMMMMMM, it is away from the wall and centered under the light.

Dad, I've got Georgia O'Keeffe for you.  Should I put her below the fur traders, or replace them?  Dad pointed that George Caleb Bingham's fur traders had descended the Missouri long enough.

I told Dad my good news.  I didn't start a single fire all day!  Hey, high-five me!  Dad high-fived.  Tomorrow's the last day of summer school, and I won't have to be around those kids for two whole weeks.  Dad high-fived me again with gusto.

It was good to breathe in the recomposed space of Dad's room.  Supper arrived, and he fed himself the watermelon, milk, shrimp salad, croissant, and tomato juice.  I haven't seen him eat with such enjoyment in ages.

A nurse came in to measure Dad's oxygen level with a finger clamp.  She explained that Dad had received oxygen earlier in the day after a low reading.  Maybe more oxygen was helping as much as the new feng shui.  Either way I felt like my real father was back.


You look nice.  Did Mary give you a shower today?  The best that we could do, Dad answered.

The social services woman had also handled my request that Dad get a remote for his tv.  Dad seemed aware of the CBS news as he ate every last morsel of shrimp salad. I watched a shark attack program earlier, he volunteered.

When Dad was finished with supper, I wiped his chin and washed his hands.  Did I do okay?  Dad, you did terrific!  You ate like a man possessed!

Who is that old guy?  It took a few missteps to realize Dad was asking about the picture of a white-bearded waterfall in Oregon.  We played again with the 3D glasses that arrived with the waterfall card.

I needed to go home, check on my air-conditioner, and call my sister.  Why?  She wants to come visit you, but we have to work out the dates and air fares. Hurry back!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Diverting floodwaters (not funny)

Until this week, my knowledge of water treatment systems was limited to Ms. Frizzle's explanations in The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks.  Becoming more water savvy has become a theme for my year, a belated resolution provoked by a coworker's offer to order an EcoSpout for me.  Although I went in on her order, and now own the EcoSpout and AdaptAJug, they haven't changed my life, and are now gathering dust on a shelf.  What intrigued me was my coworker explaining that she captures the gallon of water from the bathtub faucet that runs while the water gets hot enough for a shower.  Why didn't I think of that?  Ooh!  I just hate being out-greened!

While my friend uses that water for her plants, I've started using my captured water in the toilet tank.  I quickly realized that it takes a lot of water to flush.  And I requested Charles Fishman's recent book, The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water from my library.  This is enjoyable reading for folks who enjoy man-made calamities, natural disasters, environmental issues, and clear nonfiction writing.  

A few years back Rose George's book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, convinced me that the United States needs to rethink foreign aid on a very basic level.  Big Thirst reminds me that our country needs bold, visionary, convincing leaders who can rise above bought-and-paid-for politics as usual to provide for population growth and climate change.

Tonight the media news focus is on Minot, North Dakota becoming submerged under floodwaters released by the Army Corps of Engineers from an upstream dam.  This water management system seems extremely wasteful and destructive.  Is it any less devastating than periodic natural disasters?  How could it be more effective and beneficial without destroying habitat?  I'm just musing, as there are many more chapters in the book for this slow reader.  Still, I am taken by this section about Patricia Mulroy, the woman who directs the Las Vegas Valley Water District:

Mulroy told President Obama he should consider a major public works water project, on the scale of Hoover Dam itself.  She thinks the federal government should create a system of canals to capture, then divert Mississippi River floodwaters straight to the Midwest.  When the Mississippi River floods, whole communities are devastated; the water they are devastated by is largely wasted.  Mulroy isn't talking about diverting the Mississippi itself--she know something about the politics of river water--just the floodwaters.


The result, in theory, could save the Mississippi River basin from periodic natural disasters, it could allow states east of the Rocky Mountains to access a new source of water, it could even all the United States to replenish the desperately falling Ogallala Aquifer in the high plains.  "One man's flood control is another man's water supply," says Mulroy.  "you could capture 9 million to 14 million acre-feet of water a year."  That's more than all the water Arizona, California, and Las Vegas take from the Colorado River.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Spring Break guest

"Honey, I'm home!" 

Don't usually get to holler into the empty nest, but the preschool class rabbit is chilling with me this week.  Norton has his preferred corner of the living room with sunshiny windows on two sides of his cage.  He's been coming to this resort for school breaks for years now, but this is the first time since I moved the Eames furniture down from the house in Lincoln. 

I'm sure Norton will learn to appreciate this design aesthetic, but his initial impression regards the lack of shadowy places for curling up to snooze. Sometime during Spring Break I'll show him the TED Talks video about Charles and Ray Eames. Then we will build with my Eames House of Cards picture deck.

In rabbit years Norton is the same age as my father, and has many of the same problems. He has watery, mattering eyes. There are incontinence issues. Norton's appetite is better, I regret to report.

Norton is either ten years old and weighs nine pounds, or weighs ten pounds at nine years of age. And after one slow gallumph around the living room he is sound asleep next to the Eames rocking chair. Alas, that is similar to my exercise regimen.

Tonight I gave Norton a full report on the visit to Parkland Hospital to tell Felecia good-bye. I pray this fantastic drama teacher's stage exit will be any hour now. My dear friend is ravaged and reduced to an ineffective gasp of her fabulous self, and every minute is precious torture.

I told Norton how Felecia once sewed Robert Plant into his tight pants. And how she was always the first person to notice the monarch butterfly migration high in the Dallas sky. Glaring blue. Orange wings. How Felecia poured her compassion into tiny glasses of German wine to toast the New Year 2005 when Fritzi was dying.

Who else would savor a drive-through lunch at Burger King with the same connoisseur's relish as a Dallas Opera performance of "Tosca"? What a gift to have shared nine operas with Felecia, and also wandered away from the guided tour to find Nedda's pink trailer from "Pagliacci" in the DO's prop storage? 

Please let the former drive time DJ at KGUS in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have "twenty thousand watts of sparkling clear power" sending her off.  Soon.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Not a right angle in the bunch

Flat on his back in bed, Dad scans the suspended ceiling left to right, right to left, toes to head, and back again.  His eyes are watering.  He says he's been doing "close work all day long". After one bite-size Milky Way, Dad asks, "What do you call a full volleyball court?"  This is not an elephant riddle.

After my bite-size Milky Way I remind Dad I don't know much about volleyball.  Any version I played in junior high PE class was very tame.  I just tried to move any ball that I couldn't avoid away ASAP to become someone else's problem.  I tried to become ill enough to go to the nurse's office before any chance of my having to "serve".  Thank heaven there would be a written test over the rules and rotations of volleyball so I could cancel out my hideous skills drills results!  Dad chuckles, seeming to recognize my self portrait. 

There's some very serious athletic womens' competitive volleyball out there.  Did Dad see some on t.v. today?  "No," he reports, "I don't need t.v. to see volleyball."  Yikes.  There's some seriously demented spectator ceiling volleyball going on out there!  And the court is not square.

"There's not a right angle in the bunch," Dad says.  He claims to have worked all day starting at the upper right hand corner to correct the problem.  He couldn't get any help from "all the people crowding in here", no doubt wearing hard hats.  Dad's mind has jumped from the grids of the volleyball net to his many construction site review gigs as a structural engineer.  We climb around the infinite Escher staircases and weave through the unraveling graph paper of the mind.


I sit for many minutes, eyes closed, knees sore. Climbing stairs in and out of the NY subway stations and the grander Metropolitan Museum of Art, I'm tired. "How far off is it?," I vaguely ask Dad. "Will it get worse than 89 degrees?" No, Dad assures me. It's only a little way off.

Walked through this public hall on Wall Street Saturday afternoon.  M.C. Escher was there playing volleyball. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Math man

My dad is turning eighty-seven this weekend. It's sad. He can't do the math to figure out his age. He only vaguely remembers that my mother was five and a half years younger. Our shared birthday once added to our deep emotional connection. Now we just "check in" daily if Dad can hold the phone right-side-up.

This is the man who taught me to do square roots to pass the time on long car trips in the '54 Chevy with no air-conditioning. We practiced whistling, too, and reading maps. Way before the energy crunch, Dad helped me understand miles per gallon. He taught me to draw floorplans, and to delight in the pristine beauty of a multiplication table written on graph paper. Our after supper strolls around Pierce, Nebraska, made it easier to comprehend story problems about people living in the white house with the pet giraffe.

Eighty-seven is not a prime numer.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Civil Engineering

There's some question how long the condo residents will remain civil when their building foundation repairs are delayed. AGAIN. We thought we had a date certain, but received a vague notice of postponement from the homeowners association board of directors.

I believe that the foundations will be repaired about as much as I believe in leprechauns. The community has known the repairs were needed for nearly a decade. My building has four condos in a row. At its midpoint the building is twisting the way you would twist open an Oreo cookie.

If the Spanish conquistadors had known about foundation problems and termites, they would never have considered Texas suitable for human habitation. Termite elimination requires divine intervention. Foundation repairs require "hand-digging 2'x2'x3' holes then using small hydraulic equipment to install piers directly under the perimeter grade beam of the foundation". I have no idea what this means, but understand that residents are not to allow small children to fall into the holes.

As the daughter of two engineers, it's probably inexcusable that I don't understand hydraulics. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with fluid pressure, similar to having root beer shoot out your nose when a seventh grader tells a really good joke.

Once or twice a year I drive through Wichita, Kansas, and wonder about the exit signs for Hydraulic Street. Why is this major north-south road named "Hydraulic"? I asked a friend who grew up in Wichita, but she had no idea. I spent an embarrassing amount of time this week wondering about the history of Wichita.

The street already had its name by 1886, but I'm stuck. Does the street name relate to the city waterworks? The March 6, 1879 Wichita Eagle reported that the Wichita Water Mills burned down the previous Sunday. The cause was a mystery. There was hope the water mill would be rebuilt.

Wichita was a booming young city in 1879. Its Turner Opera House was constructed that year. Was "'hydraulic" just a buzz word for all things technologically up-to-date?

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Power Series

In the last two weeks I've had the great luck to see paintings of powerful machines. The Dallas Museum of Art is showing paintings by Charles Sheeler known as the "Power Series". Sheeler made the paintings on commission for Fortune magazine in the late 1930's to celebrate mankind's attempts to harness nature. The images are of an old-fashioned waterwheel, a coal shovel, a steam turbine, a hydroelectric power turbine, an airplane propeller, the wheels of a locomotive, and electrical power transmission towers at Boulder Dam.

Sheeler referred to himself as a "Precisionist". His paintings show no brush strokes, and are closely related to his photographs. They are completely unlike my own artistic tastes, and yet I've always been fond of them. This piece is owned by the Dallas Museum of Art, and always holds my attention:



As the daughter of engineers I visited construction sites, industrial plants, hydroelectric dams, and noteworthy architectural sites as a child. I was well aware of the construction of Interstate 80 across Nebraska. The highlight of any trip to McCook, Nebraska, with the Interstate construction detours, was a visit to the bridge over the railroad tracks at the train station. Watching trains pass beneath the bridge was as much fun for me as it was for Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham. I thank the Out of Lascaux blogger for these images of Sheeler's paintings.



Now it's time for a different Power collection, painted by a five-year-old boy. Here are two tempera paintings from Sam's "Three Machines" series. How terrific that his concepts of machines include both grid structures and radiating energy!

Conquistadorette

It's really going to happen! I am going to meet my parents in Santa Fe in August. We have talked about this for a long time, and we are really going to do it. They will drive there in a leisurely fashion, and I will fly there with the wonderful free ticket I received for my birthday.

Once we meet up, we will take it slow. That's the Santa Fe way, right? We will go to the O'Keeffe Museum, the International Folk Art Museum, maybe Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, and Taos. My dad wants to see some of the acequias. The engineer is still curious at eighty-one. I am hoping to go to the Santa Fe Opera, perhaps for a performance of Don Giovanni. I have been curious about the opera in Santa Fe ever since my aesthetics professor, Nelson Potter, first talked about it in 1975.

We have the whole summer to fine tune the plan. For now I need to figure out the plane ticket. What a delightful gift for all of us!