Titanic going down

"To Ms. Nacy [sic] from Sophia"
reads the note on the back of the drawing placed in my teacher mail box. Nothing like a seven year old's drawing of the Titanic listing at a 45 degree angle and sinking fast in red, blue, and black crayon to summarize my week. Going down with the band still playing and the lifeboats overcrowded.

Yes, teaching is so rewarding! Dang, if I don't feel as perky as Debbie Reynolds in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". Or else not.

This has been a draining school year. My lead teacher and I have had so many major personal, life, automotive, and health stressors it is a wonder we can slap the snooze buttons on our alarm clocks, let alone get up, dressed, and to work each morning.

Four more class days, not that I'm counting.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Spring cheers and Shipoopi dances

Twiggy the cheerleader wants me to give her an S.  Give her a P.  Give her R--I--N--G!  What's that spell?  What's that spell?  Spring!

Twiggy has her pompoms.  She's doing a Herkie.  If you squint you can see her tiny top and hot pants.

The preschoolers celebrated Pee In Your Shoes Day with an outpouring of, shall we say, enthusiasm.  Who marked the calendar for this special occasion?  No one consulted with me, or I would have brought more towels and disinfectant, plus spare socks. 

Spring is sprung.  The grass is riz.  Entirely too much puddle-wonderful wiz on those goat feet.  The grape hyacinths are channeling the Buddy Hackett "Shipoopi" number in The Music Man.

Well a woman who'll kiss on the very first date
Is usually a hussy.
And a woman who'll kiss on the second time out
Is anything but fussy.
But a woman who waits 'til the third time around, 
Head in the clouds, feet on the ground!
She's the girl he's glad he's found--she's his 
Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi!

My biggest moment in theatre occurred in the summer of '95.  I was subbing for the children's theater director doing the lights, woefully unprepared, and excited to blow the train whistle.  My eldest was holding the heavy satchel as Charlie the anvil salesman.  

Danger Baby had the words for "Rock Island" written on his hand.  The youngster portraying Marcellus Washburn deserved an Oscar for staying in character all the way through the "Shi-poo-pi" number even though his belt broke and his trousers sank further and further toward his shoes as the song went on.

Whatddya talk?

Thanks for the hyacinths.

Thanks for the daffodils,

jonquils and narcissus.

Ever met a fella by the name of Hill?

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Filberts frugging in an endless fog

Still in Willamette Mission State Park north of Salem, Oregon I had a Bob Fosse moment. Be glad you didn't see me attempting the "Rich Man's Frug" from "Sweet Charity". I was just angling for a better macro shot of the filbert catkins on the trail to the Willamette River's bank.

The Filbert Grove Day Use Area seemed like a nice place to picnic on a balmier day.  In a fog about filberts along the Willamette River.


Now, back in the real world of Google I find filberts are a type of hazelnut, and a cup of hazelnut coffee sure would be nice.  The Frug was a dance back in the Laugh-In era.  It is not an overpackaged squeezy fruit puree kiddie lunch product. Don't get me started on that!  Well, I'm already started.  We consume way too little fiber, and now our children are moving from an apple a day to a squeezable fruit puree that costs a buck a serving???

So, I wonder as I wander out under the filbert trees down toward the Willamette River what in the hey-ho is wrong with the world.









My sister and I have been on a collision course of wandering wondering about the Christmas LP recordings remembered from childhood.  She sent me a CD of this old Firestone album my dad probably got with a new set of studded snowtires:

If I had the energy to crawl into the far dark back of the bottom kitchen cabinet there might be an old tree trunk nut bowl and cracker.  Tonight I'll go nuts in other ways. Nighty-night.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Tilting at paper wasp nests

Dad grinned. He was clear-eyed and engaged in my tales.  When I said I was so glad he was in a better frame of mind, he slowly got out, "I am in a better frame."

He was grinning at my Pancho Sanchez role in a playground quest to remove wasp nests from the roof above the sandbox.  My boss loves all nature to the extent that she practices catch and release with wasps.

She loves nature so much she collects the Sunsweet Ones cannisters from her elderly mother and other residents at the independent living center for the express purpose of catching and removing wasps from the school playground with the cannisters.


I collect peanut butter jars for worm shows, but consider prune can collecting for wasp relocation borderline insane.  I am not nearly so charitably inclined toward wasps, and only eat prunes in kolaches.

Usually I can remain undrafted for wasp removal efforts by supervising children on a far end of the playground.  Having sounded the warning about the diggity-dog wasp nests, I felt obligated to assist in this catch and release effort.  Two big dang nests high up in the pointed roof, each with many wasps fanning the nest equal a bad situation on the playground.  

Temp around ninety-eight, and did I mention my boss has one arm in a sling recovering from a fractured shoulder?  "How brave are you?," she asks.  

So, yo, Pancho Sanchez hauls the stepladder and prune cannisters out to the playground, and offers to spot for Ms. Quixote on the ladder.  Cue the "Impossible Dream".  We shoo the kids to the other end of the playground and plan our mission.  My goal is to keep Ms. Quixote from falling down the ladder and refracturing her shoulder.  

Her first two attempts at tilting the wasp nest into the prune can are near misses.  One wasp clings to the outside of the can each time.  We regroup and make a final effort, but the wasps are ticked off now and ready to counterattack.  I keep Ms. Quixote from rebreaking her shoulder, but she ends up with four superficial stings.  For a sec it seems like a wasp flew in my mouth.  The kids are rushed back into the school.

Hearing the tale, Dad shuts his gaping mouth to keep wasps out.  Then he grins.  It is a sweet Tom Swiftie moment. The blind carpenter picked up his hammer and saw that wasps are not to be messed with when you are a one-armed paper hanger.  Next time I hope to stay pure and unchased from afar!

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ... 
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ... 

I'm pretty sure Hell has lots of wasps.




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Another hundred jellyfish just got off of the train...

...and got into my brain.  And another hundred jellyfish got tentacles today on their way to becoming the cover art for the Montessori school music festival programs.  It was mass production medusas this afternoon. 

I don't know my Stephen Sondheim from my Susan Sontag.  Driving home after the play Saturday night, hearing  A Night On the Town on WRR 101.1, I listened to songs from "Company".  The one that became an auditory barnacle was "Another Hundred People".  It's stuck in my head.  I can't get it out.  It's making me dread another hundred programs, but we're forging ahead.

Now to get medusa I go to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

"jellyfish," 1758, as genus name, from the name of one of the three Gorgons with snakes for hair, whose glance turned to stone him who looked upon it (attested in English from late 14c.). Her name is from Gk. Medousa, lit. "guardian," fem. prp. of the verb medein "to protect, rule over" (see Medea). The zoological name was chosen by Linnæus, suggested by the creature's long tentacles.

My big red dictionary explains tentacle (and also tenacious):

An elongated, flexible unsegmented protrusion, such as one of those surrounding the mouth or oral cavity of the hydra, sea anemone, or squid....Something resembling a tentacle, especially in ability to grasp or hold. [New Latin tentaculum, from Latin tentare, variant of temptare, to touch, feel TEMPT.]

Our tentacles are tissue paper, cellophane, and the irridescent crinkly plastic for filling gift bags.  Grasping and gluing it requires tenacity.  Photos soon.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Von Trapp Family mangled

[This is not a story of mayhem.]

 
We had a lovely day of rain turning to snow in North Texas.  I watched the snow with Dad, and read tidbits from the Sunday paper aloud.  He eventually requested the sports section and the Parade magazine, and perused them without squinting. 

 
The weather outside is frightful, but the roses are delightful.  The timing is unfortunate.  With this being Sunday afternoon I have little hope for a "snow day" tomorrow.  The big fat flakes are almost gone.


Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

The roses at the condo entrance look magical in their snow bonnets.  I was humming about snowflakes on roses and whiskers on mittens plus great Keystone Koppers while I snapped these photos.  Dad had just opined loudly out of the blue that the Plano police are just a bunch of Keystone cops.  Where on earth did he get that?  He's only been in town a week!


Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

My sister's choir rode around Austria in a bus with an ad for the Trapp Family Singers on the side, or some such story.  I probably have the details skewed, but she did go to Austria with her choir, and we did talk about "The Sound of Music" last weekend.  She was reading the autobiography of Agathe Von Trapp to learn the real story of the family compared to the movie.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

The 1965 movie didn't work for me.  It was a goatherd problem.  Even at age ten I didn't like things too sugar-coated.  I had been listening to the original Broadway cast album with Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel for eons by then.

In 1963 my grandma Halma and I received tickets to see the touring Broadway show at Lincoln's Stuart Theater.  What a Christmas present!  We sat "in the loge".  It was a major event of my childhood.  It was snowing.  Dad couldn't find a parking place for the '54 Chevy, so he let his mother and I out by the Miller & Paine department store to walk across "O" Street to the theater.  We stepped across the steam vents in the sidewalk.  I'm pretty sure we wore overshoes--the better to cross the Alps!

My parents had seen the travelling Broadway show at Omaha's Music Hall in the spring of 1961.  Florence Henderson starred as Maria.  I know this because I have the programs my mom saved.

The big red dictionary says "in the loge" is "in the front rows of a theater's mezzanine".  Magical words and places for a young girl. 

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sweet pea in a bag

It was confusing for Sixties kids sitting too close to the tv in the dark basement. It was sort of "Don't ask, don't tell." We couldn't figure out how Popeye and Olive Oyl got Swee'Pea. The mystery added to our storky worries about the source of babies. Swee'Pea did not seem to have legs. He/she/it crawled around in a bunting jammie bag wearing a goofy bonnet or a captain's hat.

Without help from me, my Sweet Pea Seed Kit is growing on the window sill. I forgot all about it for at least a week. Thank heaven the vines haven't started weaving upward through the mini-blind slats.

Pre-adolescents on the loose at Gateway Mall in the mid-Sixties used to nab freebie datebooks at the Hallmark Card Shop. These month-by-month calendars were about 4" square, so too big to be magazines for our Barbie dolls. The calendars were just big enough to write in names on the birthdates for friends and family. The calendars were also a much-studied source of information about birthstones and birthmonth flowers, plus traditional wedding and anniversary gifts. We expended great effort memorizing this information, and a whole generation of female shoppers was trained to buy birthday gifts and cards OR feel very inadequate.

I read another horror story of bullying in the newspaper this morning. A young teen hung herself after months of bullying. I know of only one case of true bullying in my growing-up, and I occasionally wonder how that incident impacted the victim and the perpetrators over the decades.

Teasing was rampant back then, if bullying was rare. I was a victim of birth month flower teasing, if you can comprehend this offense! Due to my April birthday I was scorned for my sweet pea birth flower by playmates jealous of my diamond birthstone. These were the years when diamonds were a girl's best friend, gentlemen preferred blondes, and sweet peas were assumed to be stinky pee-you!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Smart Cars and Cautious Lizards

You can't really blame Stubby for being a bit tense. The little anole lizard who lost his tail in a close encounter three weeks ago is a wiser reptile now. When I go out to the patio to take his photo, he wears his fig leaf. I did get a photo that showed Stubby had also been injured above his left hip when he lost his tail.

Stubby is getting around well now, leaping from shrub to shrub, and climbing to the top of the fence. Each day he looks less like a Smart Car, as his tail is growing back.



I can almost hear Robert Preston singing "The Sadder-But-Wiser-Girl For Me" from The Music Man for little Stubby:

I snarl, I hiss: How can ignorance be compared to bliss?

I spark, I fizz for the lady who knows what time it is.

I cheer, I rave for the virtue I'm too late to save
The sadder-but-wiser girl for me.

The smarter lizard for me!

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Lovely Colorado Lady Engaged to Wed Elwood P. Dowd

Got to laughing about some of the characters my eldest son played in his childrens' theatre years. As our family learned lines together, these plays became part of our family lore.

I trust his beloved is not marrying him because his name is Ernest. Perhaps at the wedding rehearsal cucumber sandwiches should be served.--Algernon Moncrieff in "The Importance of Being Earnest".

This lovely lady with the bearing of Audrey Hepburn must have passed a rigorous language investigation by my dreadful Hungarian.--Zoltan Karpathy in "My Fair Lady":

And although she may have studied with an expert dialectitian and grammarian, I can tell that she was born - Hungarian! Not only Hungarian, but of royal blood.

She's sharp enough to follow a "Who's on first?" explanation, and find her way out of the muddy base path. I think she even knows the territory as well as any Iowa anvil salesman.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

A good excuse

The first of the sons has arrived. His plane got in a bit late. He ate spicy soup and watched tv. About two a.m. it became clear that he had fallen asleep on the couch because I could hear an old musical on the tube. I'm betting it was in black and white, and definitely not his choice of viewing while awake.

After dropping fifty degrees yesterday, it wasn't worth going out to the living room to turn off the tv. The flannel sheets were too toasty, so I just rolled over and let the musical become part of my dreams.

Danger Baby is still asleep. I've read the paper and finished the crossword. The sudoku was way too difficult. Now I'm reading Devil to Play by Jasper Rees while all wrapped in quilts, being quiet. It's good to have an excuse for a relaxed morning.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

October Open House wreath

This was my dream. In the beginning there was a giant corrugated cardboard circle with the middle cut out. Then children began making orange and ochre paper rings like they do at Christmas for tree chain decorations. But they were gluing the paper rings onto the cardboard circle. When the whole cardboard circle was covered in rings, the children began thinking about initial sounds and prefixes, to make a wreath of October work for the school Open House.

Now in the musical, "Fiddler On the Roof," Tevye tells a dream like this:

All right, This was my dream. In the beginning, I dreamt we were having a celebration of some kind. All of our beloved departed were there. And the musicians...Even your great uncle Mordichai was there. And..and your cousin Rachel was there. In the middle of the dream in walks your Grandmother Tzietal, may she rest in peace.

Golde: Grandmother Tzietal? How did she look?

Tevye: Well for a woman who's dead 30 years she looked very good. Naturally, I went up to greet her.

Now in no way am I comparing meeting the families of my students at Open House Night with greeting Grandmother Tzietal, but the song did pop into my head. These things can't be helped. I'm not even thinking about Orack Borama.

But back to the October wreath, I dreamt that all the students made prints of an owl or an octopus, and each hung one print on the wreath. Then we could add some of our overwhelming okra harvest. We could take funny photos of the smallest students turning the lights or faucets ON or OFF, and let them trace those letters to add to the wreath.

Slightly older students could cut out red octagons and make STOP signs to hang on the wreath. Some of these students have been doing work about opposites. They could draw OPEN & SHUT, OVER & UNDER, INSIDE & OUTSIDE, and OLD & YOUNG, or do math work about ODD & EVEN numbers. Young observers might consider OPAQUE & TRANSPARENT. We could hang their drawings on the wreath, or weave them in and out of the paper rings.

We have been studying occupations since the semester's onset. Some students would be happy to draw opera singers, oceanographers, organists, Olympic athletes, opticians, astronauts in orbit in outer space, baseball outfielders, ornithologists, orthodontists, mommies and daddies working at "the office", and surgeons performing operations.

Montessori students love studying animals, so they would be glad to draw an okapi or ostrich, an otter or ocelot, an orangutan, oryx, or ox. A teacher might share her photos of Phil, the patio opossum.

The music teacher must surely have some ideas about ocarinas, octaves, opera singers, and orchestra conductors. The art teacher could contribute outline drawings and Georgia O'Keeffe orchids to the olio. The elementary teacher might offer students some opportunities for studying Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Oahu, Omaha, and Odessa, TX. Her assistant would contribute original recipes with oregano, olive oil, or onion.

I hope an octegenarian great-grandparent will attend Open House to observe our community of learners. "Our" is a very important word for the school. Students come from diverse backgrounds, but at school we are one community.

Parents at Open House could hang other "O" words on the wreath--oxygen, opals and obsidian, ovens or ogres, omelets at one o'clock a.m., Oman, ounces or orchards. Sure, someone might need to oversee and organize the project, but there are some outstanding options.

I've obviously gone overboard. I'll start my little outboard motor and putt-putt offshore.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Don Quixote--The Man of Gazpacho

Making gazpacho is as easy as falling off a bicycle. Get right back in the saddle, the saying goes, after an accident, but I didn't.

True, it was really my spouse's blender accident, not mine, but a quarter of a century has passed without my attempting to make gazpacho. Guess that's because I got to clean up the kitchen mess.

My spouse should have known better. A blender must be respected. It should not ever be used to make mashed potatoes unless your true intent is to make an adhesive substance somewhere between caulk and Gorilla Glue. One must learn from one's mistakes.

Similarly, overloading a blender (even a Harvest Gold 1977 blender) with homegrown garden tomatoes, kohlrabi, and boiling water, then hitting the High 10 Blend button is a good way to blast the lid off the small appliance and spray hot tomato juice in an impressive 360 degree fountain. That sort of behavior does not respect and honor the blender. It gives bad Amana kharma or evil eye GE.

Hot tomato juice and projectile chunks. Dripping. Everywhere. In a kitchen already aesthetically-challenged with its Pepto Bismal pink wall paint and original Fifties pink refrigerator. Sprayed across my eyeglasses and cheeks and hair. A lovelier sight you'll never see.

In the present, the Woolly Mammoth reports that his college rental house has an add-on room with an air hockey table and a broken jacuzzi filled with stagnant water. His kitchen has an orange built-in dining nook booth. Ah, yes. I understand the sensory overload issues, and I truly sympathize. BUT, does it have pink walls and dripping gazpacho chunks???

Back to 1981, I couldn't get the tomato splatter stains off the already hideous cracked vinyl window shades after the gazpacho incident. I tossed the shades, then sewed some ridiculous tutti-frutti Hawaiian print voile curtains. I learned from that major lapse in design sense.

Sometimes I dream that Don Quixote, Dennis Hopper, Betty Crocker, and Jackson Pollack walk into a K-Mart, all wearing Hawaiian shirts, to buy a blender. It's the K-Mart in Omaha at the meeting of Ames and Military Avenues with 72nd Street, just across from Benson Park. Windmills, choppers, tomato splatterings...

Gazpacho was a trendy liquid quick-loss diet food favored by womens' magazines in the late Seventies. You know the periodical article type. Fast for two days. Drink tea and broth for two days. Slurp gazpacho for two days before reintroducing solid foods. Look great in that bikini in less than two weeks... Oh, yeh.

Betty Crocker insisted that "men like gazpacho!" Her twenty-four page 1970 advertising cookbook, Foods Men Like, included gazpacho.

I entered wedded-bliss life with advertising cookbooks from Bisquick, Campbells Soup, Betty Crocker, Tollhouse, Quaker Oats, Jello, Gold Medal Flour, La Choy, and Old El Paso. Digging through my recipe box, I find one torn recipe from Foods Men Like, but it isn't the gazpacho recipe.

So, ditch the spouse. Another dozen years, and I'm ready to make gazpacho with roasted Hatch chiles. Comparing instructions for roasting Hatch chiles, and recipes for gazpacho online. Loved this recipe entwined with esoteric "Princess Bride" references. Check it out! My Hatch chiles are out on the little Weber broiler.

Tilting at blenders...My destiny calls and I go!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Kansas wind, grass, hills & meadowlarks

Heading to Nebraska, I drove the Kansas Turnpike (I-35) northeast from El Dorado to Topeka. I loved the serenity of the Flint Hills landscape, and made a plan to see more of it on my way back to Texas. It surprised me not to see any wind farms in this almost vacant, and definitely windy, area.

Kansas Highway 177 heads south through the Konza Prairie Biological Station for Long-term Ecological Research, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, and the "Heart of the Flint Hills". Part of the highway is designated both a Kansas Scenic Byway and a National Scenic Byway. There's no traffic, the drive is like a cleansing meditation, and it goes through the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World*. What more could you want?

The Konza Prairie Biological Station is a joint effort between The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University to study interactions of grazing, climate variability, fire, and animals, to put it in very simple terms. The website is intriguing. KPBS is also home to the Konza Environmental Education Program for K-12 students.

The Konza Prairie Scenic Overlook on Highway 177, halfway between Manhattan and I-70, offers a panorama of the hilly tallgrass prairie. The bronze plaques in the shelter provide excellent explanations of the geology, ecology, and history of the area.





Heading on south, I saw lots of meadowlarks on fences, and I wondered again about wind farms. The western meadowlark is a very handsome songbird, the state bird of Nebraska, and the only bird I know that looks like Gordon McRae in "Oklahoma"! It's the bandana, of course. And you know how that wind comes sweepin' down the plain.



Next stop was the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve north of Strong City. This is the only unit of the National Park System "dedicated to the rich natural and cultural history of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem". It's also another cooperative venture. The Nature Conservancy owns nearly all of the land, with the National Park Service owning the tiny remainder. The NPS operates the preserve, while the Kansas Park Trust is charged with enhancing the visitor experience. I arrived too late for tours or an extended hike, but was able to wander around the 1880's buildings of the Spring Hill Farm and Stock Ranch built by cattleman Stephen F. Jones and his wife Louisa.

The limestone just below the surface of the Flint Hills prevented plowing, and preserved this area of tallgrass prairie. Limestone supplied the building materials for everything from fences to the massive three-story 60 x 100 foot barn.











This view looks from Spring Hill toward the Lower Fox Creek Schoolhouse:



Kansas does have a number of wind projects, with more in various stages of planning and implementation. Governor Kathleen Sebelius has worked to ban wind farms from the scenic Flint Hills with arguments of stewardship for this ecological gem. If I didn't have to iron today, I could spend much more time trying to understand Kansas energy politics, but real life makes demands on even the most relaxed of returning bloggers.

*Cassoday, Kansas

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Bells are ringin'

Unseasonably warm today, up in the eighties--the kind of weather that gives me a headache and sets off my tornado storm senses. On the phone with my dad, the wind suddenly changed, and all the wind chimes in condo alley were set to clanging.

The song in my head is "The Bells Are Ringin'" from the 1942 musical, "For Me and My Gal" (Gene Kelly and Judy Garland). The picture in my mind is from 1981's movie, "Body Heat", with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt and many windchimes on her porch.

Maybe the warm afternoon encouraged these baby spiders to emerge from the silky egg case down in the hole of the plastic playground barricade. Maybe it was just the RIGHT TIME.

Each tiny spider looked like a grain of cornmeal, smaller than a pinhead. Each one climbed up the web strands, and headed off as fast as possible for parts unknown.








© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Survivor Rose

Hallelujah! My lead teacher has returned from her ski trip, and none of my little students are any the worse for the wear while I was manning the store, holding the fort, zipping the coats, and keeping the home fires burning. Things went amazingly well, and the class continued learning about backyard birds in her absence.



The barbershop quartet from "The Music Man" was playing on my mental cassette even before a sweet parent brought me this rose to help me hang in there! The rose smells fabulous. The song goes:

Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
To get the sun back in the sky.

The rose reminds me of my youngest, off in Italy, and without his essential accessory. Yes, my photographer son is a camera battery charger shy. He left it plugged into an outlet when he was here for Christmas. My "survivor rose" reminds me how much I miss the Woolly Mammoth, plus how much I'd like to tell him off for forgetting this important item. I'll be mailing it to him tomorrow, of course. If, and that's a big if, his camera was working, he would take a far better photo of my refreshing and replenishing orange rose than I can.

Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
About a thousand kisses shy.
Ding dong ding
I can hear the chapel bell chime.



This image is copyrighted, but the Woolly Mammoth must let his mommy post it OR he won't be getting his charger in the overseas mail!

Now I'll be sniffing a rose and chanting home and om!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Look For the Silver Lining

My hat is off to Jerome Kern, who wrote this song for the musical "Sally" in 1929:

Look for the silver lining
When e'er a cloud appears in the blue.
Remember somewhere the sun is shining,
And so the right thing to do,
Is make it shine for you.

A heart, full of joy and gladness,
Will always banish sadness and strife.
So always look for the silver lining,
And try to find the sunny side of life.

My current stitchery project includes a piece of shiny gray lining fabric, so I can't help but hear Andy Williams or Judy Garland singing Kern's song about the silver lining.

Perhaps the first time I made the big journey to Omaha as a child, we dined in the fancy Silver Lining restaurant at the Omaha Municipal Airport. In that era of sophisticated airline travel one was more likely to dine on scallops or steak than McMuffins while watching planes take off and land.

Jumping ahead twenty years, my optimistic sister-in-law had a fabulous gift for mangling idioms. To her, "every hat had a silver lining." Guess my glass was half-empty on those frigid Nebraska nights, as I paraphrased, "every hat gives me static hair cling."

Every cloud has a silver lining
A poetic sentiment that even the gloomiest outlook contains some hopeful or consoling aspect. Cf. [1634 Milton Comus I. 93] Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

‘Every cloud’, says the proverb, ‘has a silver lining.’[1869 P. T. Barnum Struggles & Triumphs 406]


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Folding laundry with Gordon McRae

There's a thick linty fuzz on the condo.
There's a thick linty fuzz on the condo.

Went looking for clean, matching socks in the basket. The pile of unfolded clothes was getting as high as an elephant's eye. Time to bite the bullet and fold the laundry.

It slowly dawns on me that everything in my tiny laundry room is coated with gray dryer lint. It looks like we had a little eruption and ashfall from Vesuvius. My woolly mammoth son visited Pompeii and Herculaneum last week. What would happen if my whole condo filled with dryer lint. Would archaeologists and tourists come to see the devastation?

Nothing like a workout shoving, pulling, and climbing over major appliances to reconnect the dryer flex hose and clamps to start your morning.


(Apologies to RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN II)

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks like it's climbin' clear up to the sky.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Trouble with a capital "T" in Yutan

Thirteen and a quarter miles west on 275/92 aka W. Center Road from my former home in the Omaha suburb of Millard, is the little Nebraska town of Yutan. I'm referring to my Millard home where I planned to raise my sons and live the rest of my life. I loved that house on the lot backing up to the greenbelt where I could watch swallows flying loop-de-loops and awaken owls in the trees along the creek. Life took different loop-de-loops.

Doin's in Yutan aren't usually front page news, but "Break-ins to view porn raise issues: Yutan officials, library debating legality of using Web filters on computers for public use" was printed on page 1A of the Lincoln Journal Star last Tuesday. Five times in the last three weeks two young teens, ages thirteen and fifteen, have picked the lock to enter the library after hours to view porn on the Web. The Yutan library shut off all internet access until the library board purchases filters for the computers.

Nobody wants kids to see online porn, especially at their public library. Does that mean libraries shouldn't have public access internet computers? No. Does that mean libraries must have filters on their public access internet computers? No. Does that mean libraries should have better locks on their doors to protect their materials, records, and equipment after hours? You betcha.



The Yutan Public Library is only open 26 hours a week, and has a staff of two half-time employees. Over half of the town residents are library users. Are those residents flocking to the library to view porn during regular hours? Of course not. They are likely using the internet to get the trade-in value of their F-150s, research the genealogy of the Hillvandelmer family, find better deals on auto insurance (especially with that cute lizard), view Doppler weather radar, learn about the life cycle of our friend the beaver, ponder trendy baby names, find lyrics to that Creedence Clearwater Revival song about the "bathroom on the right", analyze regional variations in sloppy joe ingredients, and verify the legal drinking age in each of our fifty states just like you and me.

Must a library limit the access of these regular internet users during normal business hours to prevent the illegal after-hours viewing by petty teen criminals who, GASP, leave their 7-11 Slurpees next to the computer when they flee? That would be like tossing out all the Snickers bars from the freezer next to the cooler containing cartons of live bait just because some kid drove off without paying for a tank of unleaded at pump #3. It just doesn't make sense.

Yutan doesn't need internet filters. What Yutan needs is a boys' band! Let's call in Professor Harold Hill:

Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a library computer in your community.
Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say,
trouble right here in River City.

Why sure I'm a internet user,
Certainly mighty proud I say
I'm always mighty proud to say it.
I consider that the hours I spend
With a mouse in my hand are golden...

We've surely got trouble!
Right here in Yutan!
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule!




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Don't Let It Be Forgot...

...Before there was a spot,
For one brief shining moment,
I had clean Carpetlot!

Looking forward to seeing Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" at the Dallas Summer Musicals this weekend. I'll be leaving my Spot-Shot carpet stain remover at home. My favorite mud-tracking knights are grown up now. I could only find armored photos of two of the guys. Any Guenevere would fall for them. Still, over the years, they've been pretty tough on carpets.



Went to see the 1967 movie version with my junior high girlfriends. Seems like it played at the Varsity Theater, and it may have had an intermission. Movie intermissions went the way of the dinosaurs not long after.

The 1960 Broadway production starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. Two out of three of them could sing. That was many more than in the movie with Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero.

Richard Harris also "sang" the weird 1968 hit song, "MacArthur Park". That song pops into my head when the preschoolers leave loosely-capped drinks and unsupervised choices to melt and ooze in their lunchboxes:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down--
Who thought it was a good idea to pack a popsicle in a lunchbox anyway???
Someone's crumbled cupcake made a stain. I don't think that I can take it...

Oh, no!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Three Bras Before Breakfast

Thank heaven for Target! It is good to be able to shop before it gets hot on a Sunday morning in North Texas. It is especially good to be able to buy a toaster oven on sale, Cover Girl tinted sunscreen moisturizer, and three bras before breakfast.

My college son, home for the summer, requires bagels. Bagels are one of his Basic Food Groups. Bagels, in turn, require toasters or toaster ovens. Toasters and toaster ovens fit in the category of small appliances where my luck is mighty poor. Coffee makers are my most ungrateful and noncompliant small appliances, followed quickly to that Big Kitchen Counter In the Sky by crockpots of assorted sizes. I must say in my own defense that I have excellent luck with handheld mixers and hair dryers. Professionally, I slay no glue gun before its time.

Yesterday I heard just enough of the NPR Studio 360 segment about vacuum coffee makers that I'm wondering about my grandma's stainless coffee maker that sat on the wheeled tea cart. It looked like a stainless steel laughing Buddha. Coffee smelled better in Grandma's kitchen than anywhere before or since.



Anyway, I got a good ten hours of sleep last night, and then set out to Target for a toaster oven. Found some bras. Three, in fact. Three bras before breakfast. I'm bursting into song! Three bras before breakfast, sung to the tune of "Three Coins in a Fountain," the Academy Award Best Song of 1954 by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, recorded by the Four Aces and Frank Sinatra.