The tenor takes a nap

Last Sunday the tenor stomped around swooshing his cape.  Why Aida and Amneris thought Radames was worth getting all hot and bothered about escaped me.

Took this photo of a snoozing caped moth at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens yesterday.  I couldn't tell if it was a Liberace moth with Elvis hair or an Elvis moth with a Liberace cape.

No guides online for pronouncing Tolype velleda, but it must sound like a good name for either an opera character or an undecided Ohio chihuahua.

Tolype velleda (Stoll, 1791)

Who was Stoll?  What was he doing in 1791?  Did he fall asleep during the opera?

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Sad underwing

Thank you, Judith Viorst, for your children's books. Alas, this very minute I can't put my hand on my copy of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  It may be in Australia.

When I walked in the warm noon woods today I had to tell myself, "My mama says there aren't any zombies, ghosts, vampires, demons, monsters, fiends, gobins, or things.". It was just an itty-bitty bit scary because there were these big camouflaged moths with sad underwings flying out at me from the tree trunks along the trail.

How big? Nine centimeter wingspan, and hey, there were a whole lot of 'em! Five or six on some trees.Catocala maestosa is the Sad Underwing Moth (Hulst, 1884). Sad Underwear is Viorst's book of poems for children. It may also suggest it's time to clean out the top drawer of the dresser.

Invisible and odorless

The spider usually sets off the smoke detector in August, so I was surprised to arrive home and  hear a repeating piercing beep.  Went upstairs and opened the smoke detector carefully, not to spoil Mario's handiwork. Replaced the 9v battery.  The alarming beeps continued.

Back downstairs, I gingerly opened the thermostat, again remembering Mario's electrical rescue, and replaced the AA batteries.  The beeps were giving me goosebumps.

Upstairs again to check the doorbell chime.  Back downstairs I found a forgotten smoke detector that's wired-in. This was turning into an Edvard Munch moment with bonus stair-climber workout.

Rounding the corner into the bathroom I find the beep source, the carbon monoxide detector I saved from my parents' house. Isn't carbon monoxide a winter killer?  Every CO horror story I've ever heard clamors into my anxiety between the shrieking beeps.

I move the detector to different electrical outlets feeling guilt for never pushing those TEST MONTHLY and RESET buttons. Should I be getting myself outside into the hundred-degree fresh air before I become woozy and unconscious?

There was that spell in junior high when I wouldn't ride in the car in the Nebraska dead of winter without the window open because I was so sure we were all a-gonna die from fumes. It's a miracle my family didn't just drop-kick me out into a snow drift and drive away. This anxiety was between my two phases of moth phobia, but smack in the middle of the pancake anxiety year.


Now, I could just unplug the *%! bleaking CO detector and throw it in the dumpster, then toddle off to beddy-bye. That story would have the pride-goeth outcome where I drift into a happy sleep with a tad bit of nausea before death.  Or I could let the CO detector keep shrieking, and have a sleepless night worrying about dying, kind of like a bad night camping. Or I could maybe call the Fire Department and have them check it out.


Feeling too torn to actually call 9-1-1, I looked up the phone number in the Yellow Pages for our Fire Department.  Sure, wasting those precious seconds could be the difference between life and death, between dying in my sleep and going outside into the hundred degree fresh air to live another dang hot day. Apparently when it is not a 9-1-1 emergency, the Fire Department phone is answered by a cleaning woman who might be your mom. She hems and haws with you about whether or not your CO detector might have gone a little funny in the head.  She reassures you that putting your call through to dispatch will not cost you hundreds of dollars and could be good for your peace of mind, which you are rapidly losing what with all the shrieking barks of that Tasmanian devil CO detector.

So that's how I ended up with four hunky Plano firefighters in their turn-out pants and suspenders in my kitchen taking readings on their carbon monoxide gizmos and filling out official forms.  They took readings near my gas water heater and upstairs near the gas furnace.  When I mentioned that my fireplace is gas, they ask if I had used it recently.  It was clear they might would drive me straight to the loony bin if I answered yes.  

I thanked them profusely for retrieving my peace of mind, and told them I would be calling my 89 year-old next-door neighbor right away.  "I don't want him to have a heart attack seeing the firetruck."  


"We don't either," they said sincerely.








Let's review what we learned in this Unit, boys and girls:

• Firefighters are our community helpers.
• Check your smoke detectors regularly.
• Stock up on batteries.
• Test your electrical outlets monthly.
• A carbon monoxide detector is a good thing to have, but they don't last forever.
• It's good to know a Mario who can fix electrical problems.
• It's wise to check on elderly neighbors in this heat.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Weird world of insects

Oh, no, not another bug post. Yes another bug post, and with no pronunciation. But first a bit of culture. I always love seeing the Bruce Wood Dance Project perform. His choreography is so fresh and different from anything else.  And inspirational.*

My volunteer watermelon is hanging from a tomato cage, but now it has support hose.

The same watermelon plant was the scene of nature in action, straight out of Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  This teeny predator stunned a fly and dragged it across the leaf and  to the underside to get away from the camera lady. 

This gorgeous visitor to the school zucchini plant has fuzzy pantaloons AND iridescent wings. He even wears a black cape sometimes. Naturally, he is a bad boy, but wouldn't that be a fabulous dance costume?

Squash vine borer

And two moths had me searching for the "belief in things unseen" quote.

Catocala moths at Oak Point Nature Preserve

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

*Martha Graham, not Bruce Wood.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Choreographing a swallowtail ballet

Inspiration plus perspiration plus going where angels fear to tread into the thistle meadow in search of the dramatic black swallowtail photograph.  The butterfly always one more giant prickly weed beyond the range of the sun-dazed photographer with her tiny camera. Digital click click click zoom point zoom out of focus tangled on thorns wondering about snakes click click swing zoom. Percussion mostly.  Vertical stripes pink black glaring white yellow greens.  A Seventies disco floor flashing backdrop. Exaggerated prickly prancing silhouetted photographer sharp shadow dancing spiky.

Corps de ballet in pink tutus.  Male corp in shades of green-- vertically striped tights. Photographer frames shots larger and smaller circles. Lighting changes from soft to stark contrast.

Floor a glowing pink light projection.  Back a bokeh of greens and bright whites. Dancers in yellow leotards and tights with black markings, orange and blue spots on the floor.  Legs open close angle point pivot from floor. Small shifts to other pink circles of light.

Solo.  Black swallowtail prince.  Slightly battered.  Short movements between vertical green translucent banners.  Sense of confinement.  Needing nourishment.  Corps returns in front with windy shielding and frustrated photographer.

Sphinx moth interlude.  Low to floor. Two moths with three fading thistle flower dancers.  Hovering with strobe.  Rosy hues and browns.

Color invert dance.  Black light effect.  Sharp wire sculpture wings with pearls and jewels.  Neon edges glowing.  Sphinx moths, dragonflies, damselflies, hornworms, wheelbugs, tiger beetles, orb spiders, weevil, caterpillars, praying mantis.  Grand, triumphant, dark. Sousa meets Pink Floyd.

Brown.  Roly-polies.  Millipedes. Snails--how to leave a sparkling silver slime trail??  Worms slightly pink by comparison. Cicadas. Dark background and floor.

Grand finale starring fabulous black swallowtail male in dances with strong, leaping yellow swallowtail female.  Occasional entrances of small groups of female yellow swallowtails. Prolonged threesome frolic with black swallowtail and two yellows.  Exit into dark woods.

Finale--Black swallowtail emerges from shadows and flies weightlessly toward the glittering crystal sunlight on the creek.  Ode to Joy?

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

"That bad man will come and get us"

We have nothing to fear but fax machines and finger fumbles that wipe out lengthy blog drafts.  And miller moths flying up the legs of our bell-bottom pants making us lose control of our 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury.  The evaporated verbose entry began with the bell-bottoms and the proclamation about the "bad man" by a three year old student.  We were out for a little nature walk just listening to birds, feeling the wind on our skin, seeing squirrels in the trees, and noticing the guy in the parking lot talking on his cellphone.  My what big eyes he had.  My what big teeth and a coffee mug.  My what big ears and a cigarette, and that same navy striped knit shirt he wears any day when he's not meeting clients.

Fear.

Three year olds are afraid of many things.  This is a countdown of things that send them into a mass tizzy:

1. thunder
2. ants
3. garbage trucks
4. loud toilets
5. fresh fruit
6. sirens
7. spiders
8. bees
9. fire trucks
10. power failures
11. new vegetables
12. foods touching each other
13. paint on hands
14. strangers
15. shots

Once upon a time I was frightened of big cities, not having ever visited one.  I called my fear "metrophobia".  On my first trip to Washington, D.C. I overcame much of that fear by learning to negotiate the Metro transit system.  Twenty-five years later I still love the DC subway system except for the out-of-service escalators..

We have nothing to fear but faxing itself.  FDR did not say that, but it is still true.  My metrophobia is mostly gone, but I'm holding firm to faxophobia.  There are things in this world that are really scary--hunger, abuse, exploitation, lack of clean water, war, gang violence, long-term unemployment.  I was going to make jokes about credit card debt, termite swarms, old age, and other things that will come and get us.

I don't know whether to read an old Nancy Drew mystery with a black widow spider, or to watch the quicksand scene from Lawrence of Arabia.  It is thundering.  Angels are bowling.  Christian soldiers are marching onward.  Mothers are serving brussels sprouts to innocent preschoolers.  Moths are just waiting for you to flick on the bathroom light in the middle of the night.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Have I mentioned how much I miss my digital camera? The poor baby has been sent off for repairs after I dropped it on Dad's basement floor and jammed the lens.

Today a student found a caterpillar on our crispy, dying tomato plant. It was rather striking in a rockhound way, like a crawling banded agate. Mainly black, the caterpillar had two prominent lengthwise stripes the color of split pea soup. Lower to leaf/tummy level, it had a series of brown stripes in decreasing values.

You never know with caterpillars. The most flamboyant, outrageous, drop-dead gorgeous ones turn into nondescript moths like aging punk rockers with adjustable mortgages. On the other hand, a small, drab specimen may metamorph into the moth equivalent of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. You wish you'd been nicer to it back in high school.

The caterpillar is in the bugbox with plenty of tomato leaves to get it through the night. With luck it will make a chrysalis and turn into David Bowie.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Gorgeous gray

This tiny moth is sunning itself on the west wall of the school. It is less than three-quarters of an inch long. In the 3:30 winter light its scales are almost silver. The digital camera lets me see the furry and feathery edges. The wings overlap like royal kimona sleeves.


Can't decide if this moth would best inspire a gown with translucent layers of mottled gray chiffon, a full-length fur coat, a silk cape sewn with silver threads and beaded with hematite, mica, and pearls, or a ski sweater of Peruvian alpaca yarn! I doubt there will be many designs as breath-taking on the Oscars red carpet.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Arachnophobia and Other Fears

Spiders are cool. They pose for the camera in their designer outfits. They are so much more cooperative than flying insects in that regard. They are artists, too, or at least skilled craftsmen.

Sure, there are a few kinds of dangerous spiders. Texas has nine-hundred types of spiders (all of them working full time to fill my condo with cobwebs for that Miss Haversham wedding cake decor). Two or three of the types are dangerous to humans. It's always a good idea to shake out shoes and boots that have been sitting in the back of the closet or behind the garden door for months at a time.

The macro function on my hand-me-down camera has brought me up close with spiders, and I'm anxious to learn more about them. The more I learn, the more curious I'll become, and the more in awe.

Our teaching intern is arachnophobic, but she is getting bolder being exposed to our infectious enthusiasm for spiders. When she finally got to see a spider catch and wrap its prey in silk she was cheering like a sports fan. This is her spider in action:



Phobias are irrational and persistent fears that interfere with normal life, coupled with excessive avoidance behaviors. At times in my life I've been pretty irrational and afraid of making telephone calls, and of big cities. I somewhat jokingly called these fears phonophobia and metrophobia.

I still avoid making phone calls, but I can mostly function in regular society nowadays. There are many of us out there who would rather write than call. We have the ability to edit and also to control the speed of communication when we write. Some people are just afraid their fingers are too fat for the buttons on the cell phone, or more painfully, too fat for the rotary dial. I looked at the Reverse Index of Phobias, but didn't find "fat finger phobias".

"Metrophobia" seems to mean fear of poetry, which I don't have! Thank heaven there's hope for poetry-phobic folks if they use their fat fingers to dial the 1-800 number right now.

Maybe I had metropolitanophobia, BigApplophobia, or urbanophobia. Could have been a case of SMSAophobia (fear of U.S. Census Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas). Anyway, I'm mostly over it.



Back at Eastridge Elementary I suffered from Neapolitanophobia. The possibility that three-flavored ice cream slices would be served at a birthday party filled me with dread. I knew I could eat the chocolate and vanilla, but was afraid I wouldn't like the strawberry. I was paralyzed by fear that the mom next door would yell at me for not eating the strawberry ice cream. I was creeped out knowing the whole thing would melt into one very ugly color of goo while I was worrying. I'm a grown-up now, and I can just eat the chocolate and vanilla if I want.

For most of my Wonder Years, I was truly, persistently, and irrationally afraid of moths. That is Mottephobia according to the Phobia Index. [You just thought Mottephobia was the fear of apple juice boxes!] Fortunately, the more I learned about moths, the less fearful I became.

I took these photos at the Elm Fork Nature Preserve in Carrollton today. I'm embarrassed to admit that when I saw them on my computer screen, my brain started playing an ancient recording of Glen Campbell singing "Wichita Lineman".





(Written by Jimmy Webb)

I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road
Searchin' in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin' in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation but it don't look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

By the time I get to Phoenix I'll be over my Glen Campbellophobia!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Moth of the Day

Audrey Hepburn would look great in this style! Nature is the greatest fashion designer of all. This beautiful moth was outside the door of the Highland Park Library when I went to work this morning. I'm very excited about the macro possibilities of my inherited camera.

It's nice to live in a city with a 24-hour classical music radio station. WRR 101.1 fm is owned by the City of Dallas. You can listen to its streaming broadcast. One of my favorites is the 7:35 a.m. weekday March of the Day. It helps the Buick and I both head off to work!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

It's a Jungle Out There

The hummingbird aerial battles are heating up in the condo patio airspace. Closed the big patio umbrella to give the combatants more maneuvering room. The entertainment will more than make up for the loss of shade.



A lovely yellow butterfly, probably a cloudless sulfur, checks out every red canna blossom. A small skipper leaves tiny white eggs on each canna leaf, but a strange insect that looks like a big black waspy ant or anty wasp scurries about eating the eggs and declining to pose for photos.



Another big black insect whirs in from my left just over my shoulder. It settles on a bush for a photo op once the shivers leave my neck.



I've got a couple chrysalids from my vinca caterpillars in a jar. Unfortunately, I ended up with a very tiny caterpillar in the jar as well. These guys have already demonstrated the ability to get out through the holes in the lid and practice their leafrolling in my blue bedroom curtains.

In the deep shade of the cannas, a beautiful white moth sleeps. It's wingspan is less than an inch. I'm really enjoying my newly inherited digital camera with its four megapixels. My woolly mammoth son upgraded to a seven megapixel for his photography classes just as my one megapixel bit the dust.



All this action and beauty distract me from my latest failing appliance, the over-the-range microwave with its deceased touchpad Start button. I can't spare the time to nuke anyway, and can barely remember to eat!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Burchfield's Nature

Thirty-seven years ago I flipped through a TIME magazine and spotted an image that still haunts and inspires me. I tore the story out of the magazine, and filed it in my first file cabinet. That image was Charles E. Burchfield's painting, "Dandelion Seed Heads and the Moon." It felt true to my experiences watching sphinx moths around the honeysuckle, catching fireflies, clover, dandelions, playing hide and seek outside just before bedtime, and spitting watermelon pits in the dark. It was beautiful, eerie, and symbolic.



Charles Burchfield's painting gave me a new way to look at the soft, rich, dark colors of evening, the glows, hums, and flutters against the window screen. It was a wonderful bridge between my personal summertime experiences, and Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Twenty-five years passed. I became an accidental art teacher and sometime storytime lady. I pasted the Burchfield image on a sheet of paper with another saved image of a dandelion seed head. This week I dug that paper out of an old file to show students.

Children are so involved in organized activities from dawn to dusk now. Do they ever get to sit on the warm concrete driveway watching for sphinx moths, listening to cicadas, watching fireflies, and eating fresh strawberries dipped in powdered sugar? Do they have to register for a team for competitive watermelon pit-spitting or an enrichment class to learn Bing cherry fence crooning? Does anyone have an old canning jar for catching fireflies?

From the 6/15/70 TIME:

"As an artist grows older," Burchfield explained, "he has to fight disillusionment and learn to establish the same relation to nature as an adult as he had when a child." That was no mean task. His greatness was that, through the alchemy of paint, he was able to restore that childhood wonder for others too. As the [Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, N.Y] Institute's Joseph Trovato put it: "It is not given to any one man to tell the whole story of the world of nature, but Burchfield tells a very important part—a part that touches us all. We will never be able to see the world in the same way again."

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Tell Santa I'm being very good

We had the pea green Chevy until about 1972. Then my dad bought a red and white 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury with push-button transmission and rectangular steering wheel. The windshield was tinted so the whole world looked like "South Pacific" in Panavision. That is the car I used to load up with 4'x4' canvases. It is also also the car in the Unfortunate Incident When the Moth Flew Up My Bellbottom Pant Leg. The 1961 Sport Fury is quite probably the greatest car ever made, and I would very much like one in mint condition if you happen to be out shopping. Make sure it is red and white. Thanks.