It's a woodchipper day in the neighborhood

They're back!  They're whiny!  No, not the preschoolers.  Not even the cedar waxwings.  It's the condo lawn service pruners and their woodchipper truck.

Pretend it is Hendrix playing guitar...

What would Mr. Rogers do?  WWMRD?  I'm still having those "Fargo" associations, but I know Mr. Rogers would want me to celebrate these helpers in my neighborhood.

This helper dude is cutting back the soapberry tree on my back alley neighbor's patio.  The soapberry is a volunteer tree that has grown rapidly in the nine years since a shade tree fell down in a big wind.  Some would call the tree a "trash tree", but it makes red admiral butterflies and cedar waxwings very happy.

I suppose the waxwings will cope just fine with their diminished soapberry.  The ring-necked doves will adjust slowly as they are not ever going to be academic scholarship recipients. I worry about the hummingbird that had preferred seating on a branch that is now gone, but its arrival is many weeks in the future.

Back in high school I joined the Columbia House Record Club because of those ads in the Sunday newspaper.  What a lesson in consumer skepticism that provided!!  Oy.  I can't go into it here.  One of the albums I purchased by choice rather than default was an LP set of the history of jazz.  One of the selections was Woody Herman's "At the Woodchopper's Ball".  Check out the groovy dashikis on Woody's band members in this 1969 video!  I want to see the ring-necked doves it these outfits.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

I shot the faucet

...but I did not shoot no drippity doo.  All the run off I'm trying to catch until I have time to deal with plumbing. Oh, my my we are ten inches plus below the average rainfall this year so far. Wasting water is taboo. Grilling outdoors is a capital offense.  Bob Marley, Eric Clapton and I are trying to ignore the darn dysfunctional faucet until next payday.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Mix Forever

The post office has "Forever" stamps that make you think you are investing for your retirement. Seems like the time is here for a "Forever" music format.

Some people want Jetson flying cars and colonies on Mars. I want to buy a Layla recording that will keep updating to new technology forever guaranteed.

Like Tommy Lee Jones' character, Kay, in Men In Black, I keep buying the White Album again. And Workingman's Dead and Dave Brubeck's Take Five.

The US Postal Service announced Cowboys of the Silver Screen stamps for release in April, 2010. I get a kick out of the Tom Mix stamp because Mix allegedly tended bar at the Blue Belle Saloon in Guthrie, Oklahoma before his movie career. We spent a lot of time in Guthrie a couple decades ago. My sons barely remember living in Oklahoma, and rarely use snail mail. Movie cowboys were already disappearing from the silver and technicolor screens when I was in elementary school.

Have movie cowboys made the many technology transitions from the Silver Screen to DVD and beyond? Becoming postage stamp idols probably won't create a new generation of fans. Forever is getting more elusive all the time.

Tom Mix from the USPS website:
Tom Mix (1880-1940) was one of the most celebrated Western film stars of the 1920s. He wowed movie crowds and live audiences alike with his daredevil riding, expert rope handling, unerring marksmanship, and rugged good looks. He also served as a role model for a generation of schoolchildren, maintaining a wholesome screen persona that involved “no cussin’ and no drinkin’” by his characters. A legend in his own time, Mix wore oversize Stetsons, fancy suits, and handmade Texas boots with engraved silver spurs. He rode “Tony, the wonder horse,” who also became an audience favorite.

The stamp art is by freelance illustrator Robert Rodriguez, whose work has been featured on more than a dozen previous stamps. Rodriguez based his portrait of Tom Mix on a likeness of the actor that appeared on the Cupid’s Round Up (1918) movie poster.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Sir David up the Tollway and in my corner

On the hottest day of the year, so far, the Woolly Mammoth took his old mom to see FC Dallas play the LA Galaxy. We had been looking forward to the game for a couple weeks. Sure it was a hundred degrees in the shade, but what's a little heat when you've got good soccer and David Beckham?

Odd, really, sitting in the stands with my youngest, but I enjoyed it completely. I loved being a soccer mom, watching him play for so many years. We watch bits of an occasional game on t.v. together now. Still, I think of him as a player, not a spectator. Of course, I expect his soccer socks to reach his shorts, and am sometimes stunned to find we've all grown up, even me. Heading up the Tollway he told me the wild tale of his trip to see Lazio v AC Milan in Rome last fall. Language and transportation confusions played more prominently in the tale than sport.

On the drive to Frisco's Pizza Hut Park we also reminisced about a hot shared experience in the presence of stars--Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival at the Cotton Bowl in 2004. So what is the big deal with David Beckham? Is he a "guitar god"?



The deal with Beckham is he's part of our cultural awareness in the same way as Tiger Woods. I don't even watch much soccer on t.v. and couldn't pick out a Spice Girl in a police line-up, but Beckham's walk, posture, manner of wearing clothes, and movements are instantly recognizable to me from clear across the field. How did this recognition seep into my working memory? Not sure. At least with Tiger, I've done my time watching golf with my father. Although I can't verbalize it, I would know Tiger by the way he adjusts his shirt before a putt even if I was standing at the opposite end of an airport runway from him.

The sell-out crowd loved booing Sir David, but also cheering and photographing him. He is good for Major League Soccer. Beckham had the lead role for the LA team, but wasn't particularly effective, even though he got three tries on one corner kick. FC Dallas won 4-0. Kenny Cooper had two goals within one minute of play. The Dallas goalie, Dario Sala, had eight saves. You can look it up, as James Thurber would say.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Preschool organic control of ICW

At recess the preschoolers rush over to the garden to examine the lacy damage to the broccoli and brussel sprout plants. They are excited, at least for these few days, to search for the offending imported cabbage worms (ICW), and quite willing to pick them off the leaves. Cupping the caterpillar in their palms, they run to the other end of the playground to release the very hungry caterpillars on different sorts of plants.

ICW are soft and unthreatening. If you were going to sew one, you would use a spring green sueded polyester fabric of just the sort your great granny might have for a special occasion pantsuit with elastic waistband for bingo nights at the assisted living center. Then you would stuff the polyester worm with old snagged knee-high nylons.

The preschool girls aren't the least bit squeamish about touching these cabbage granny caterpillars. The trick is to find the darn things! ICWs are perfectly camouflaged against the leaf veins. They are just as hard to see when they are an inch long as when they were at a quarter-inch. The five year old girls are getting better at this tricky sport. I can almost hear Curt Gowdy's breathy "American Sportsman" delivery commenting on the hunt.

The smaller girls are glad to hold, cuddle, and relocate the caterpillars. Interestingly, the preschool boys are only interested in this process if they can put a caterpillar in their pants pocket and take it home. O, ye snips and snails!

Like most of March Madness, I don't care who wins this game. Unfond as I am of brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli, I just enjoy watching the competition. I'm putting some J. J. Cale in the cd player. Eric Carle is playing Eric Clapton in the semi-final! I'm a lucky mom to have attended the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival at the Cotton Bowl with two of my sons!

Kale or Borecole is a form of cabbage (Brassica oleracea Acephala Group), green in color, in which the central leaves do not form a head. It is considered to be closer to wild cabbage than most domesticated forms. The species Brassica oleracea contains a wide array of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. The Cultivar Group Acephala also includes spring greens and collard greens, which are extremely similar genetically.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Accessorizing

Never underestimate the importance of color-coordinating and finding the right handbag. A matching guitar is always a fashion plus!

Smashing my guitar

About a year ago, at the time of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas, a Dallas Morning News critic named Thor Christensen wrote a piece on the history of rock star guitar smashing as ritual. It started off, "The rules of romance say if you love something, set it free. But the rules of rock tell you to smash it to smitereens."

When I first got the sofa, it was true love, but our relationship had lost the spring and shine of love about a decade ago due to trauma inflicted on it by the four men in my life. Sons are rough on a couch, and so is being hauled around to different apartments in a divorce. Too bad I didn't set it free in the property settlement and stick my ex with it. For several years now, the couch has been held up by three sturdy under-the-bed boxes from Target jampacked with National Geographics, debate trophies, Magic cards, and role-playing game books. The guys and their friends still found it comfortable enough to throw themselves onto it perfectly so that the three threadbare cushions were never properly pushed down and back under the upholstered back.

Gradually, the sofa became the symbol for my suppressed aesthetic needs, my overcrowded, cluttered condo, and my chronic low-grade financial frustrations. Basically, it came to represent the dark side of being a single mother. Don't get me wrong. My sons are fantastic young men, and I have loved every bit of being their mother. I love being single, too, and this condo has been a wonderful haven for rebuilding a family.

Over 66% of my sons has shared a fondness for Classic Rock with me. My youngest's most vivid tantrum was thrown in the Penneys store at Quail Creek Mall in north OKC while I was trying to purchase a red polo shirt for his dad's thirty-fifth birthday. He threw himself out of the stroller onto the floor, sobbing, kicking, and screaming, "I NEED my Classic Rock!!!!" And that was just last March.

No, not really. It was March, 1989, but it's gouged in my memory like the carving on a junior high school desk. His room, his incredibly messy, overflowing, sweaty, and oppressively stacked room (See Exhibit A) where he managed to write his scholarship applications, is decorated with Led Zep, Beatles, Who, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, and Doors posters.

Exhibit A

His brother took the poster of Jimi Hendrix burning his Stratocaster off to college, along with a great one of Stevie Ray Vaughan. The guys have shared John Mayall, Santana, and Steely Dan concerts with their old mom, along with the aforementioned Crossroads festival.

So perhaps it isn't entirely peculiar that after we received the long-awaited word of my youngest's college destination and the way to finance it, I smashed the davenport. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to set it on fire out in the parking lot. I hauled the cushions to the dumpster, then cut off all the padding and upholstery. I sawed the frame up enough to collapse it for ease of dragging across the parking lot to the dumpster. Climbed up on each side of the dumpster to tip open the double lids, and was well on my way to sliding the sofa carcass up and over, into the mosh pit when a passing jogger decided to help. This is my cathartic transition into empty-nesting------tidy, spacious, relaxing, soothing, white-walled, fingerprintless, tastefully decorated, eclectic-style empty-nesting (See Exhibit B)!

Exhibit B

You're never too old to rock and roll. On guitar-smashing, Eric Clapton told Christensen, "To me, it's show biz. I don't see much value to it, to be honest." I didn't see much value in keeping the sofa, either. Now, I've got to find my cd.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

I've got a headache. The theatre next to my classroom was the site of a high school student rock band's performance this afternoon while I was teaching preschoolers about making tints and shades of blue.

I needed a break from the tints and shades of red after three days with Lettice the bunny. The children were quite taken with Polar Bear Night. They had different opinions about whether the polar bear cub really went exploring alone, or if the cub was dreaming. The illustrations were definitely ice cool and dreamy.


With the bass, drums, and vocals of the teen band thrumphing the classroom, we took time out to do do some Chuck Berry and John Travolta imitations, to play air guitar and applaud. Just another weird day at work!

Our health class teachers in the late Sixties-early Seventies told us psychedelics could cause us to suffer flashbacks without warning any moment making us strip off our clothes and jump out of high-rise hotel windows. I don't know about that. I did suffer a flashback of sorts this afternoon to the ninth grade dance at Millard Lefler Junior High in 1969. In those days the school colors were pink and black, due to the school being built in the poodle skirt era. We bore the burden of that "sissy"image at the time we were dealing with our early adolescent gender awareness, and it made us stronger. Remember, this is the same year Johnny Cash recorded "A Boy Named Sue" at San Quentin Prison!

As for the ninth grade dance, I was terrified about the upcoming event, and managed to get a horrible headcold in my anxiety. My nose could have guided Santa. I had a legit excuse to stay home, but wiser forces were conspiring otherwise. I wore an itchy brown wool pantskirt, a white sweater, and "suntan" nylons, Yardley white lip gloss, bronze blush, and "kitty cat eyes" green eyeshadow. Pocketless, I had to fold Kleenex tissues and tuck them into the cuffs of my sweater. Staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I was paralyzed. Mom suggested that if I wore her favorite hot pink mod daisy pin no one would notice my raw red nose. It was a hard sell, but I ended up at the dance in the gym. The lights were low. The folding divider between the Boys Gym and the Girls Gym had been opened. Boys loitered next to the wall of the Boys Gym. Girls stood in huddles near the wall of the Girls Gym. Across the north end of the combined gyms were the food tables, laden with plates of cake donuts. Under the basketball hoops at the south end was the band. The band was playing its version of Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida", which was way longer than seventeen minutes.

If you were to ask me if I would rather experience several hours of back labor or relive the ninth grade dance, I would choose labor. If you asked me if I would rather have impacted wisdom teeth removed or relive the dance, I would choose oral surgery. Would I rather deviate my septum crashing on the saucer sled or go to that dance, I would endure a two-day nosebleed. Would I rather eat cold cooked brussel sprouts or go to the dance? It would be a draw.

As the drum solo dragged on, the ninth grade boys and girls got relaxed enough to meet in the middle of the gyms for a donut food fight under the disco ball. I wanted to go hide in the girls' bathroom, but, horror of horrors, a boy asked me to dance to a Jackson Five song!

Did I mention that I was on the staff of the Millard Lefler Mascot newspaper under the editorial leadership of Beverly Renee Austin, a teacher stuck with the monogram "BRA"? I can still smell the blue stencils and stencil-correction fluid. My sister found an advertising poster I made for the Mascot today in the closet of the room we shared back then. It took a bit of description, but then I remembered the large poster I drew with very Monkees-style lettering, flowers, and a beautiful girl. My sister asked if we would have to have a big fight over who got the hot pink mod daisy pin. She found it in the jewelry box in the drawer in our closet. My memories are way too vivid to need the actual pin, even though it would be back in style this spring. Maybe the health class teachers were right about flashbacks.

"...'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' by Iron Butterfly was the first rock album ever to go platinum. For 140 weeks it stayed at the top of the Billboard charts and was spun millions of times in living rooms and at make-out sessions across the country..."

"Iron Butterfly's 1968 album veritably defined the burgeoning genre of hard-rock, primarily by way of its utterly over-the-top title cut. Reportedly composed by keyboardist/lead singer Doug Ingle in such a stoned-out, numb-tongued condition that he couldn't properly pronounce its intended title--'In the Garden of Eden'--the track seemed almost a parody of every excessive inclination of psychedelia. Melodramatic vocals, repetitive riffing, aimless solos--you name it, this 17-minute behemoth had it. Aided by FM DJs who loved to program it in its entirety so they could take "legitimate" breaks, it became an unavoidable hit--and an anthem of its era. "--Billy Altman

"...With its endless, droning minor-key riff and mumbled vocals, 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' is arguably the most notorious song of the acid rock era..."

If this memory is a monochromatic exercise in the tints and shades of red, I can tell a parallel tale in blue of a high school Fifties dance in the cafeteria with a student band playing a mind-numbing version of "Duke of Earl":

Duke, duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl
Duke, duke, duke of earl

Thanks to Gregg & Duane, and Dickey Betts

Late last evening I popped the Allman Brothers "Decade of Hits" into the cd player while I worked on a millipede wire sculpture. The Allman Brothers may have saved my life in the early Nineties. I always say a little prayer of thanks when I hear "Jessica" or "Revival". Gregg, Duane, Dickey, and the guys made anthems of pure joy. One particularly hideous day those anthems probably kept me alive.

In the early Nineties my marriage was imploding, but I didn't realize it. For several years I'd been having extreme allergies and chronic sinusitis. The allergy symptoms were being mimicked in the manifestations of a severe depression and massive panic attacks. I was using sinus and allergy medicines to treat the depression and anxiety episodes. My self-confidence and self-esteem were so eroded that I doubted I could sit in a meeting of the parent-teacher organization board, let alone keep coherent minutes of the meeting. I was on the edge of agoraphobia, and my behavior was getting erratic. I had serious insomnia, and spent some nights sitting in the living room counting the bricks in the fireplace as a lifeline. Caring for my three small sons was the only thing giving my life form and routine.

One evening my husband actually came home for supper so that I could go to some sort of meeting. I got in the van shaking all over in anxiety. The radio was on, and the station started playing "seven at seven" (seven hits by a band at seven p.m.). It was the Allman Brothers Band. I chose to keep driving instead of going to the meeting, just so I could listen to the seven hits. I headed up highway 75 toward McKinney, out of suburbia and into farm country. The music was golden. The countryside was lush and green. The sunset was the pinks of roses, lantana, melons, and plum dumplings. It was overpowering the panic. I kept heading north toward Sherman feeling the first sense of calm in months. Somewhere between "Ramblin' Man" and "Midnight Rider" I got angry enough at my situation to vow I wouldn't let it destroy me. I had great little boys. The earth was a beautiful place.

I would love to report that my life was transformed in that moment. I turned around and headed home to my sons. I stayed in the horrible marriage for several more years, but I did get medicine for the panic attacks. The power of my drive north with "Melissa" was in reviving my sense that I had options and that life could be better.

Whatever type of music reminds you to watch the sunset, pop it in the cd player, and crank it up! Life is good.

Patio Umbrella Olympics

There was a finch fight tonight at the condo. The rosy house finches were being downright ugly and territorial, and making a racket. At the same time, two mourning doves were using the patio umbrella as a trampoline. If you are of a certain age you will remember waterbeds. These mourning doves act like they have been beamed down on a waterbed. Whoa, dude, maintain!

To complete the circus, a lime-green anole is traveling the circumference of the umbrella stopping at each spoke to do a throat display dance. Reminds me of the time I saw Chaka Khan, the Eagles, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. This line-up makes me giggle, but without the brownies.

Superdiva

In a post back on 4/25 I pondered the meanings of the word diva. Since then I have worried about the term for the male version of a diva. Finally, after the Crossroads Guitar Festival, I was feeling comfortable that a male diva is a "guitar god". That supports the use of "diva" as a positive term. Now I have support for the term as a negative term, and for the male version, too!

Dallas Morning News, 6/19/04 pg. 3A

"Actor Russell Crowe has now been labeled a "superdiva" after furiously fencing off his entire trailer during shooting on his upcoming boxing movie in Toronto, IMDb.com reports. The famed bad boy stunned the cast and crew at the shooting of The Cinderella Man--in which the star plays celebrated pugilist Jim Braddock--by blocking people out of his dressing room with black curtains, forbidding the crew to use his gym and giving no warning when he chose not to turn up on the set.

Died & gone to heaven

Mind-boggling day at the Cotton Bowl for the Crossroads Guitar Festival. Ten hours of music, never mind the uncomfortable seats and cramped space! Larry Carlton, Pat Methany, John McLaughlin in a zen jam, Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, a run to the porta-potties, Booker T & the MGs, Bo Diddley (WHO do you love?), a guy from Los Lobos, Joe Walsh, Vince Gill with Jerry Douglas on slide guitar, some awesome duo from India, James Taylor (disrespectfully upstaged by Joe Walsh), BB King (everyday & everyday I have the blues)....

...joined by Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan, Buddy Guy, and eventually John Mayer. Taking turns. Jamming. Call & response for over an hour.

Then Santana. Carlos. I love you. Joined by EC. I love you. Then EC with Doyle Bramhall II doing Robert Johnson songs. Busting loose with "I Shot the Sheriff", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman", "Badge", "Layla", "Wonderful Tonight", and "Cocaine".
EC & Jeff Beck jamming.

The weather is getting weird. Lots of lightning. ZZTop comes on, but I am still so wowed by "I Shot the Sheriff" that I can barely inhale. And should I ever catch my breath, there's a pervasive whafting of ..

Called my parents after work today. I was worried that they would be worried because I didn't call all weekend. My dad informed me I misspelled Slowhand's name. "There's an M before the P," he says. It's Clampton. Eric Clampton.

Did I mention that my dad's ship came in. All my life I've heard the expression, "When my ship comes in". Well, Howie, come on down(!) You've won the Miller Genuine Draft drawing at the
Hi-V grocery store. You've won the portable Weber tailgate gas grill and the hundred dollar beef shopping spree!

Dad. Dude. Jed was on the Beverly Hillbillies. Dude. Peace. And Alleve for old ladies the next day.