When I grow up

Maybe someday I will have a sense of style.  For now, I just accumulate interesting things that don't go together at all. 

I've just shipped an ABF U-Pack Relo-Cube from the house where I grew up to the condo where I live.  Neither location feels like home at the moment.  One was my parents' residence for fifty-two years.  The other has been my abode for a decade.  Being stiflingly stuffed with possessions does not make a house a home.  Being a warehouse for generations of mementos isn't necessarily conducive to healthy living.

This afternoon I've tried to compile an inventory sorted by color and historical era.  I wish I could step back three giant steps to get an overview.  In the meantime, I am washing items to get rid of the cedar chest smell that makes me sneeze.


© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Economy and efficiency in nature

I'm loving watching a bundle of okra pods weather on my patio. They become more sculptural as the browns fade to black and white. The seeds line up efficiently inside the long channels of the pod. It's one of nature's designs for fitting the most seed into the smallest space.

Tiny holes are lined up along the edges of the canna leaves. The hole-maker must be nature's own 3-hole punch.




© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Feng shui app

The very competent young woman in the office down the hall joined our table at lunch. It was crowded, and a bit jumbly. No worry, she took out her cell phone and used her feng shi app "in real time" to improve the seating arrangement. It's not often someone uses three phrases that make me nervous in just one sentence. I can't pronounce fong schwee, my understanding of apps in hazy, and I don't get what other kind of time there is besides real. If she could have fit "paradigm" into the sentence, I would have had to go home sick.

True, my condo home is sick. It's very crowded and super jumbly, and it's even blocking my creativity. Not in a Zen sense, though. I just have too many boxes of saved recyclables for future class projects, too many stacks of unfiled files, and all the stuff for managing my dad's care and bills. Trying app magic, I held up my cell phone and pointed it toward the mess. The mess did not realign serenely.

Now I've embarked on a Big Clean. This is scary territory causing interior and psychic turmoil. Everything has to get very bad, indeed, before anything will get better. To complete the distress, the World Cup in on the cable tv, with the constant tooting of plastic horns.

Please point your feng shui app in my direction any real time soon. Thanks.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Why worms? Why opera?

The beauty of having one thousand red wiggler worms as pets is not having to walk along behind them scooping poop and picking up steamy droppings in a plastic bag before dawn. To worms it is pretty much always before dawn, except for those occasional solar flares when I take the lid off their worm bin. The whole point of having worms is to collect their castings (aka poop), but I don't have to put them on a leash and go out into the cold night wearing my bathrobe and slippers.

All my red wigglers are named "Dave". Dave is a good, solid name. My first boyfriend was named Dave. True, we were both toddlers, and the relationship didn't last. We shared some good skinned knees and graham crackers, though.

Dr. Seuss created Mrs. McCave, who "had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave". The story is part of The Sneetches, one of the greatest books ever for kids or grownups. I only had three sons, but it often felt like twenty-three!

And so, my little Daves are making new and improved dirt that I'll eventually use in my garden. While that is the projected product of this endeavor, the process is intended to make me more mindful of my personal kitchen waste. Beyond that, it is about being part of the most basic cycle of our earth, and acknowledging the efforts of the smallest participants in this contract.

Why opera, then? While the worms break down life to the simplest of sitcoms, opera piles everything on like a cultural game of Dogpile with the Princess and the Pea's mattresses. At it's best, an opera brings everything down to a gut level of rich improved soil, while showing off for every sense like a gleaming scarab beetle.

What are we made of? If we pile all our leftovers in a heap, then let them be digested, can we become as rich and layered as the arias of "Tosca"? Can we also become the form of the most elemental nourishment for garden and soul?

I love the dirt, the sounds, the color, the dark, the rich complexities, and the simple worms.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Deciding where to crop

My honeysuckle/sphinx moths stitchery is going to take longer than the Bayeaux Tapestry at the current rate. Having set my self a difficult problem with several background fabrics, including a sari print, I'm now trying to pull the image together.

I'm using my new hand-me-down camera help me analyze how to crop and fix the composition. It's a new version of the old saying, "Measure twice, cut once." I can cut the photos, and not regret the finality of the decision!




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Memorable staging

In my dream I stomped about in purple spike-heeled knee-high microfiber boots, ready to impale grapes, not just mash them. Alas, I had to bleach a Chef-Boyar-Dee stain off a table in the school lunchroom. Some of the Comet cleanser dusted down onto my boots, leaving faded spots. What a metaphor for womanhood! Bathtub cleanser ruins sexy boots--I can just imagine the verismo soprano aria! Welchismo Squelchismo... Okay, maybe it's time for jelly opera glasses...

The most memorable stagings by the Dallas Opera since I began attending in 2003 follow. Some had boots. Some had purple. A few had cleanser. All had amazing women:

Jenufa 2004
Cosi fan tutte 2003
Nabucco 2006
Pagliacci 2005
Magic Flute 2006
La Boheme 2003



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fresh Ink

This year's coveted Golden CollageMamaDrama Award goes to Dallas Theater Center's Fresh Ink for the outstanding staged reading of Denis Johnson's "Psychos Never Dream". This free event last Monday evening knocked my yellow gox box socks off. The writing was tight, profound, powerful, and hilarious-- Sophocles meets the Coen brothers. The cast* was extremely strong, and the experience was theater boiled down to the essential characterization through voice, physicalization, expression, rhythm, and timing. Fresh Ink productions have no set, no props, and next-to-no costuming.

I work with small children. If there is a loose thread in a sock, or a snag in the rug, they will pull on it and be unable to concentrate. If one child adjusts the velcro strap on a shoe, the carefully woven classroom chemistry will disintegrate. If there's a loose corner on the wallpaper, the children will pull at it until the room is a disaster. It is difficult to explain the art concept of form.

Form is when an art work has no velcro shoe strap! This staged reading was so perfectly constructed and executed there was not the tiniest chance of unraveling. Seventy-two hours later, I'm still held in it's orbit. That's gravity!



Notable Mentions for the 2005 Golden CollageMamaDrama Award:

Second Thought Theater's "Wonder of the World" by David Lindsay-Abaire.

Theatre Three's production of "Going to St. Ives" by Lee Blessing.


Wingspan Theatre Company's "Blind Date" by Horton Foote presented as part of the Festival of Independent Theatres (FIT).


*Psychos Never Dream cast
Critter--Raphael Perry
Floyd--Bruce DuBose
Red--Tina Parker
Sarah--Sally Vahle
Man's Voice--Lee Trull

BRAVO!!!

I like to box.
How I like to box!
So, every day,
I box a Gox.
In yellow socks
I box a Gox.
I box in yellow
Gox box socks.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
Dr. Seuss

Chex and balances

The sights, sounds, and especially the temperatures of fall bring a satisfying form to my life. The cooler weather* gives me more energy, and the earlier darkness sends me into my cocoon at a healthier hour. The crunch of acorns under car tires in the parking lot, and the galoomphing of crazed squirrels across the roof propel me to the grocery store for baking potatoes, brown sugar, flour, nuts, Old-Fashioned Quaker Oats, and Tollhouse chocolate chips. Since much of my autumnal wardrobe needs ironing, I spend time with the t.v. tuned to football and soccer, even if I don't actually give it my full attention. Just the smell of the steam iron is soothing on a Sunday afternoon.

My striped shirts are shifting to charcoal, maroon, rust, pimento, salmon, olive, camel, and dark chocolate. No more cotton candy, Starburst, and gumball colors. Fall stripes have tang, and dirt, chili powder, sauteed mushrooms, molasses, and simmered meats.

Thank God for corduroy and Chex Mix, plaids and crimson, garlic and red-tailed hawks! Sing praises to suede, barn jackets, flannel, sage stuffing, and great aunts who pressed pretty leaves in the complete works of Shakespeare.

Amen, and please pass the Rice Krispy Treats.

*It still gets up in the eighties here in the afternoons. At least it cools down more at night.

Training Wheels

Spent time recently teaching an art project about bandannas. The kids became a bandanna, lining up on the edges, sharing the corners, and filling the middle. In a moment of inspiration I had them sit facing out from the middle of the rug, shoulder to shoulder, and do some goofy positions of the legs and wiggles of their feet, ala the June Taylor dancers on the Jackie Gleason Show.



My dearly demented friend brought up the subject of bicycles recently. Remember how grown-up and powerful you felt when you first got to ride your bike around the neighborhood, as long as you didn't cross any major streets? Have you ever felt that free and in control of your own destiny since? That might have been the pinnacle! Riding my bike to the swimming pool for an afternoon of swimming, diving off the board, and lying on the hot concrete was about as splendid as it gets!



Now we are considering Franz Marc and the Blue Rider painters. My used Schwinn bike was blue, but it had book baskets on either side of the rear wheel. Convinced some of my students that those gymnastic stunts are called "Car Twheels," because they are intended to be performed in their mothers' cars, not in my art class where other kids could be kicked.



I taut I taw a twaining wheel!

Missing Luggage?

I arrive in Santa Fe without my sense of direction. Don't know quite when or where I misplaced it. Fortunately, I'm so atypically serene that I don't get worked up over the large amount of time I spend being lost in Santa Fe. When I'm not lost, I'm looking for a parking place. By the time I find one, I don't know which direction to walk to my intended destination.

I remember my dear composition professor giving the lecture about form. Classical form is based on a geometric grid. Symbolic form is based on spirals and starbursts. Natural form is related to the land, the rocks, the shells... My comfort zone is the grid. Numbered streets crossed by lettered avenues at right angles and regular intervals.

Santa Fe is illogical, symbolic, and natural. Yoda wants me to become one with my light saber and fly blindfolded. Use the force, Louise. Alas, my time in Santa Fe is not long enough to complete my Star Fleet Academy training.

Mary Lou Williams

The three calligraphy brush strokes I learned are "bone", "needle", and "growth & decay"

Just last night I wrote a little story about the three college painting professors in the art department at the University of Nebraska thirty years ago who influenced my life. The story wasn't quite ready for prime time, so I only sent it to my college friends. By email reply I learned that the last surviving professor passed away yesterday. My reaction was immediate and physical--goosebumps, a sense of neon energy shooting through my arms, and a kick in the gut.

All day my mind has replayed scenes from Mr. Butt's classroom where I studied drawing, composition, and watercolors. In my mind's eye, the day is an overcast April Saturday. The air is heavy with tornado potential The sculpture garden below is rich in greens and pinks. The trees Mr. Butt has taught me to read are swaying and floating. I draw them with cobalt violet, and trace over the lines with a watery brush.

I have a privileged key to the classroom. The room is my sanctuary. I add silver ink and rubbing alcohol into the Windsor Newton "Neutral Gray" washes to create the loaded storm clouds above the paths of the sculpture garden.

Mr. Butt arrives. He lights a cigar, and unlocks the stereo cabinet to play some Mary Lou Williams piano jazz. I am mixing olive washes with hints of gold ink. Mr. Butt is watering his bromeliads. Bromeliads line the shelves in front of the windows, in all their varied greens. The clouds outside turn to charcoal and resemble a pregnant woman ten days after her due date.

To Mr. Butt for teaching me to know when the painting is finished, and to strive for clarity within richness.

Spending Wolfie's Birthday On the Mars Rover

Tuesdays, I sometimes muse on intelligence, genetics (nature vs. nurture), and music on the drive home from work. I have the treat of teaching the 4-yr.old son of the symphony conductor. The little guy is very verbal and formal, meticulous, has a sense of humor, is social without being rowdy, and has a long attention span. He processes verbal instructions, and can also give clear verbal instructions about abstract spatial concepts..."Ms. Nancy, could you please hot glue the spoon onto the red lid so that it can shoot the Martians in this direction?" After several tries we both conclude that the spoon cannot be attached to the syrup bottle lid atop the Rx bottle on the egg carton in the way he wants. I ask him to think about a different way to position the spoon to shoot the Martians. While he is problem-solving, the next kid walks up to me and says, "Ms. Nancy, I have poopy all over my hand." Indeed he does, and he has smeared it everywhere. There I stand holding a very hot glue gun in one hand, and placing my other hand on top of the pooper's hair to keep him immobilized so he won't touch me. I look around for the two most responsible kids who aren't actually reenacting professional wrestling moves to summon adult reinforcements. I give them explicit permission to run in this one-time situation, then I try to get two other kids to stop waving pipe-cleaners near each others' eyes, redirect the attention of the class now getting into the whole poop stand-up comedy scene, while continuing to weave away from the hand of poop like some sort of professorial caterpillar in a Fantasia-esque cartoon. Alas, the messengers have run off in the wrong direction to get help, so I wave the very hot glue gun to point them in the other direction. Now, at my other side, the conductor's son appears. He has found a new solution to the spoon gun problem that he would like to explain to me!

After class I explained to his mother how impressed I am with his verbal and problem-solving skills. She says he loves to build with Legos, but that his creations are always symmetrical. I look down at the junk-art Rover. It is not symmetrical. Maybe I'm a good influence, in my own crazed little tp tube way.

So, it was fun to hear the classical music radio DJ explain that today is Mozart's birthday. Genius, reason, creation, form, chaos, focus, and bodily functions!