Formal attire for Thanksgiving feast

We're going formal for our annual school lunchroom feast. Besides the table runners depicting turkeys running races, and the decorated brown bags, the preschoolers have made turkey neckties for everybody to wear.



The turkey feathers are made from that dreadful craft material known as "twisted paper cord". Even places that sell it admit the stuff is an arthritic pain to untwist, so it is often donated to art teachers! The preschoolers liked having purple turkeys on their neckties.

I'm always thankful for the folks who donate neckties for art projects. Have a happy holiday, everyone.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Check out next time through Kansas

I'll be going to Lindsborg the next time I drive. I need to visit the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery in Little Sweden USA. Birger Sandzen painted gorgeous, exuberant landscapes and created block prints of great vitality.

This Swedish painter came to the campus of Bethany College in Lindsborg in 1894 at the age of twenty-three to teach art, art history, French, and to sing tenor while assisting the vocal music classes. Although he exhibited extensively and was offered other positions, he loved Lindsborg and lived there until 1954.

I've had many years to enjoy two of Sandzen's large, vibrant oil paintings, "At the Timberline", and "Mountain Lakes" at the Highland Park Library here in the Dallas area. Ten of his lithographs are also on display in the upstairs Reference Room. Several of the lithographs remind me of my hikes, campsites, and attempts to draw in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The works urge me to put on hiking boots and a backpack and breathe in! The brush strokes suggest the power of geologic forces, while the colors bring the tension of ice melting on a mountain pond. It's partly the cobalt violet, of course.

Sandzen's landscapes are probably from Estes Park and Colorado Springs, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, not South Dakota. He taught summer classes at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado. In mid-1930s, as part of the Federal W.P.A. program, Sandzen painted post office murals for Lindsborg, Halstead and Belleville, Kansas. I'll try to visit the post offices too, next time.

The Sandzen art was presented to the Highland Park Society of Arts in 1926 by Mr. and Mrs. E. T. Moore. The Society had a gallery in the Highland Park Town Hall. After the Society disbanded, its art collection became part of the Highland Park Library.

On school photo day, several of the students dressed up in their Sunday best. "I like your bow tie," one five year old told another. "It's not a bow time," he responded, "it's a next time."
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Grandpa's lunchbox

Went to the library to pick up the books I reserved about lunch and lunchboxes. Fifteen books, and half of them are about bad manners, and far worse nutrition. I ended up with six that I will share with students. Three of the books are about grandparents. Maybe there is a way to connect our nutrition unit with our grandparent project:

Oliver's Fruit Salad, by Vivian French, is about a boy who has been helping his grandfather in an orchard. He likes to help, but he doesn't like to eat fruit. It involves going to the grocery store with his mom to buy fresh fruit instead of processed. Then the grandparents arrive, and they prepare a grand fruit salad, and the boy eats three helpings.

Grandpa's Garden Lunch, by Judith Caseley, goes through the process of planting and tending a garden (vegetables, flowers, and herbs) shared by a little girl and her grandparents. Then one day they "have the garden for lunch", salad, spaghetti sauce, mint iced tea, zucchini cake, and flowers on the table.

Lunchtime for a Purple Snake, by Harriet Ziefert, is about a girl and her artist grandfather. They take turns painting parts of a picture, and talk about color-mixing. Their collaboration is about a snake's lunch.

It will be fun to use our current supply of ugly neckties to make "purple lunchtime snakes"... I'm getting excited about the oral history dictation:

At Grandma's house I don't kick my brother under the table.

When Granddad takes us out to dinner we "have reservations". We order from the menu, but he says our eyes shouldn't be "bigger than our stomachs". Granddad also says the pelican's beak holds more than its belly can.

My grandma says it's bad manners to burp. Mom says that "under no uncertain circumstances" are we to burp at Grandma's house. She said that at Grandma's house it is "better to squelch a belch and bear the pain than to belch a belch and bear the shame."

My grandpa eats pickled herring and teeny tiny ears of corn from a jar for lunch. It's very scary.

Grandmother pours my breakfast cereal in the special chickie bowl that my dad used when he was just my age. If I eat it all, I can see the chickie. She pours my orange juice in the bluebird glass. After breakfast I use the red watering can to water her African violets. Grandmother's kitchen floor squeaks.

When Grandma and I go to the zoo, we take a picnic lunch to eat at the sea lion pool. We have iced tea with our sandwiches and carrots so yellowjackets don't bother us. I got a bee sting when we had ice cream cones... Grandma and I talk about the elephants when my brother has a bad diaper, then we ride the train.

Gramps says "take all you want, but eat all you take."

When we drive away from Grandma's house, Dad says, "throw momma from the train a kiss goodbye."

My grandma is the best cook in the whole wide world.

If my grandparents came to my school for lunch, I would show them _______________________ and ____________________________.

My grandpa likes to take a nap after lunch. So do I!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Never Smile At a Crocodile

Once a year I turn into a wild woman for the camera. It's not quite those aura polaroids at the metaphysical bookstore. Still, each year's photo shoot reveals something about me.

We dress in costumes for the staff Christmas card photo, and for individual photos for the school calendar months. Yes, I'm a calendar girl. I worry for 360 days about what I will wear for this event. Then I plan and collect everything I need.

This may have been my best. I was the crocodile in Kipling's The Elephant's Child. I had the green Master's Championship look-alike blazer over a poison lime green shirt. Then I wore a truly reptilian donated necktie, a leaf lei, a split pea soup green fishing net from Oriental Trading Co. over my shoulders, a plush elephant puppet, a large and bendable bicolored python rock snake, and a straw safari hat with a leopard print band. Instead of saying, "Cheese," the photographer let me snarl, "I collect really BAD neckties."

Truly Ugly Neckties

Came home from work today to find a bag of thrift store neckties on my doorstep. Some people would take that as a sign that a Mafia hit had been put out on them, or the condo homeowners association's self-appointed planetary overlord was highly displeased by the oil leaks in the parking lot. I had a rough day at work. My coworkers might have left the neckties as a symbol of my future noose should the electronic payroll transmission have been disrupted by my inadvertent logging on to the internet and bumping our bookkeeper off. Oops! If you don't hear from me, it will be because I'm swinging from the yardarm.

Went to a meeting about colleges with my son. Not to disrupt the presentation, I scooped around in my purse to find my phone, and turned it on to make sure it was turned off. Holy schmoly! I had two voice messages. The first message was an entertaining recording from the anonymous necktie donor wandering around my condo complex with a bag of unmarked neckties asking the residents about the location of my condo. The recording is so funny that I'm surprised no condo resident notified the police department bomb squad. "Hey, I've got these neckties. I'm in your complex. All the apartments look alike. You already knew that, but I've got these neckties. Do you live in 1703, 'cause I'm at 1703? I'll see if anyone knows....Hey! Do you know Nancy, the art teacher? I've got this bag of neckties and I....no, wait, I just want to leave these neckties. Do you know where she lives? No please, wait. Don't slam the door. I just want to find Nancy to give her these neckties... Yeah, some of them are really ugly, but some of them aren't so bad. I really thought they were nice, but my wife made me give them away...So do you know which apartment?"

And so, you ask, why would Anonymous leave a grocery bag of truly ugly neckties on an art teacher's doorstep? Because ugly neckties are sooooo coooool. My young students make the neckties into snakes and dragons. Sometimes my preteen students just decide to make weird fashion statements with my collection of neckties. Steven has photographed the most outstanding ties left on the doorstep. There are two I may need to keep! If you have neckties, there is probably an art teacher near you who could use them. And thanks for the good laugh!

Wish List Revisited

You are blowing me away with your willingness to collect Primo Junk. I can't thank you enough. Your donations sustain my efforts, and often propel me in new directions.

Due to storage limitations it is time to update the recycling wish list. I'm imagining myself as some sort of public radio pledge drive moderator here. Thanks for your wonderful contributions of quilt batting and fiberfill. You will be receiving a pledge gift of an invisible travel coffee mug.

Donations of plastic Easter eggs have astounded me, and launched a project for constructing imaginary orchestra instruments. We are reading the new Manuelo the Playing Mantis , by Don Freeman ( though he's been dead for ages). Alas, I can't store any more eggs. This reminds me of a job long ago as an apartment building manager. Every week I had to vacuum the stairways. It took months to rid the carpet of Christmas pine needles and Easter plastic grass.

Prescription bottles are a component of every construction project. I don't know about you, but sometimes the labels are easy to peel off my Rx bottles, and other times impossible. The recycling fairies will understand if you discard the sticky-icky bottles. Save the lids, though. We love the lids!

I can always use the shoeboxes with a one-piece construction instead of a two-piece box and lid construction. We use them for creating inside/outside castles and haunted houses.

Buttons and sewing notions are always coveted. So are workbench and junk drawer hardware items. Keys. I want your keys!! The ones to the padlock from your junior high PE locker...The eyeglasses your broke when you were showing off about your unbreakable titanium frames? I want them! Buttons. Snaps. Zippers? You betcha.

Wire. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways....Different kinds and sizes of wire are used to develop fine motor twisting and threading skills.

NEW!! I can always use the styrofoam trays from grocery meats. I do need them to be the kind without creepy absorbing materials attached. Obviously, I need them to be washed.

I always, always, always need buttons, wine corks, and ugly neckties. With your support I may someday become a Primo Junk Diva!

Call of the Wild and Crazy Art Teacher

This is my wish list for summer art supplies:

"Hawaiian" shirts in sizes from 4 toddler to XXL adult (needed for drama)
Neckties, no matter how ugly
Trouser hangers with the cardboard tube--I need hundreds
Sewing scraps of fabric and trims
Quilt batting and polyfill stuffing from those craft projects that never really happened
Rx bottles
Plastic Easter eggs
Buttons, snaps, zippers
Wine corks--no questions asked
Styrofoam containers from grocery fresh mushrooms
Cardboard rings from rolls of masking tape
Old keys
Old eyeglasses
CDs--we use hundreds
TP and paper towel tubes
Film cannisters
Altoid boxes