28th Regiment Illinois Volunteers

On August 1^st 1861.  I enlisted in Camp Butte near Springfield Illinois in Company:,, Co:”  28^th Regiment Illinois Volunteers infantry:,, I served in the 3d Brigade 4 Division 13^th Army Corps -- -- Army of the Tennessee. -- -- [  ] part of my time, we were attached to the 16^th Army Corps; not having enough men left in our own Ranks; to keep our own Corps Complete. I was honorably discharged on September 10^th 1864.  at Springfield Illinois, after having served my time of enlistment, of three years and month!!!  -- -- --- -- --- ---

What shall I say of all the bloody fights and skirmishes? – or the more important Battles;,, such as Fort Henry & Heiman.—Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing – Corinth Miss:  Matamoras – Hollys [farm] Black River – Grand Gulf; -- or yet the more bloody ones of: Vicksburg – and Jackson Mississippi

             

Page 8.  National Park Service Regiment information link. Confirmation of August Sasse, private in regiment link. 

With the thought of all these slaughtering days it makes me shudder even now; and I wish they had not been:!’ -- -- -- -- --

Counting the skirmishes, and all other small affairs:,, where blood flowed freely:,, I have taken part in 28 fights or Battles – in fact from Cairo Illinois or Birds Point Mo.”

To Pittsburg Landing.  Then the Siege on Corinth Miss; where we had a fight every day –and every night dug trenches – to protect ourselves; the following day- from the rebel hordes; and that on from the [7]th day of April, until the following 30^th day of May; when the Rebels evacuated the City;, after setting fire to all their Commissary stores, and forage, which they could not take away with Them! – and when we marched in; The whole City was indeed a glare of fire brands in all directions!!- from here we were on many weary marches, Through the interior of The States of Kentucky = Tennessee – Mississippi – and Louisiana:”—On These long marches, we had many little [straches] near Bolivar Lagrange – Collierville and Hollysprings:,, -- -- -- -- --

As before stated, I was discharged in September 1864 at Springfield Illinois –

Page 9

from there I went for a short visit to my old Camping ground; Havana Illinois – then went on a trip across the Ocean to my old Birthplace and found my dear old Mother alive and well!! – In my stay there that winter, -- I saw – admired – and loved your dear old mother;,, in The Lutheran Church at Bramsche = Your Mothers Birthplace;; in The presence of your Aunts:,, Elizabeth [ hland] – Anna Mundt – Hermione Kreiling – Caroline Rentsch – and your Uncle C. J. W. Sasse and many other relatives of your mother. ==

On the 20^th day of February 1865, your dear old Mother and Myself, bid farewell to our beloved ones: and one month later, arrived at Havana Ills: where we rented a farm, and went to housekeeping.  In this part we rented and farmed for 7 Years in which time four Children were born to us:”—Caroliene September 26^th 1865. Anna [Novor] = 1867 who died when 10 months of age:,,  Minnie Febr 18^th 1869 – August, October 15^th 1870 -- --

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Ox team mired in mud

You bet I earned them, and lots of other stuff beside for I had then learned already, how to get my Clothing free:,, -- The third year I hired at $120 and a free horse to ride, every other Sunday;;,, which was my day off – to see the girls of course, [illegible] had no other ones to see!! – Yes I forgot – 10 Times a year a Preacher would come in our settlement – which is called to this day:,, Long [Pond?} or [ ]uiver settlement;, and such a day would be a big Jubilee; when old and young would turn out, on foot or with the [  ]wagen, to see the great and holy men.,, -- By this time I was well initiated in the farm work, and always willing to do my share; -- I hired to Wm Bruning, for the nice sum of $240.00/100 a year; besides all the Overalls and workshirts I needed, and washing and mending of Clothing Thrown in, besides two horses and a second hand lumber wagon, were at my command: at any time on Sunday – If I wanted to take my best girl to Lumberwagon riding; “ on moonlight nights These several years, I would be at the Creek or a rich Cornfield, with my shot gun;,, to Kill Duck Geese - - or any other game, that came in my way and There was a great abundance of all kinds,

     Especially Ducks -- -- Geese & Cranes –

The meat I gave to the farmers, for the shot and powder I needed – and the feathers and skins, I saved up, until the end of the season, and sold them for a nice little pile of Cash. -- -- --

After these years of hard knocks, and making a little money besides ; -- I rented 40 acres of fine land. – boarded with a friend at $2.00/100 per week – bought a Yoke of Oxen, and went to farming on my own hook; I helped around in The neighborhood for 50 Cent a day, and boarding myself – That Year I had a good Crop, and made some money;,, -- so I traded my Oxen for an old mare, and bought a filley to work with her –rented a 120 acre farm about one half very sandy, and the other good, but low bottom -- -- so the high water took everything; and This brought me back, to the Year before; besides being in debt, for about one half years board money. -- -- The next year I went to Prairie breaking --- traded my horses for two yoke of Cattle – and that year I made enough money to pay my debt; and had $175.00/100 to the good -- -- Now I felt encouraged – bought 80 acres of bottom land – paid $200.00—down, and the balance in two years. -- -- --- --- I worked here – There – Everywhere – at good wages. ---

  

Of my own land I broke about 30 acres, planted the same in Corn, and harvested a [illegible]  The next year I broke some more of the corn land, and served Timothy, on the [   ] years everything.  The spring showed up very nice, and my Corn showed up very fine – Then a very rainy time set in – and I lost everything!! ---- Even one of my Ox teams, mired in the mud, and perished after night -- -- Now I sold off everything that I had left – so as to get enough money together to pay for my Land; and get my Deed! –

Yes; Prunes! – When I offered the money; I found the man had no tittle [sic] to the land himself and I had to loose my $200.00/100 besides some interest I had paid:,, -- -- -- -- - -

Now I took my money and bought me another span of horses; rented better and higher land – and till the War broke out; I had accumulated a nice sum of money ; and about 1500 bushels of Corn in The Crip, on the place where I boarded:, We had now gotten to the Year 1861 -- -- the Year of the Rebellion had  broken out!!  -- -- --- -- I studied every [     ] of Newspaper, That I could get hold of: ,, listend to the many speeches, of The great men, Especially to our afterwards beloved Abraham Lincoln and Stephen [ ] Douglas  The best speakers of them days;,, and many others: ,,  What I didn’t understand, I talked over, with my dear old friends;,, in Bruning – Westing – Walker – [ eikirk]. – Yes, and a number of others; whose memory will not be forgotten; for they were all dear to me; and had always treated me as one of Their Son’s:” -- -- -- --

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Worm whereabouts and library life list

Two more libraries for the life list!  That brings me to sixty-four.  Today I visited the Carrollton Public Library At Josey Ranch Lake.  My worm presentation has been changed to this location, and I wanted to check it out in advance.  The library has a virtual tour online.  It's embarrassing to know so little about the next major suburb one giant step over on the tollroad.  The library is connected to a senior center, looks out on a lake with a loop trail, adjoins a park and an athletic complex, and has a natural plant area.

It was exciting to see the Summer Reading Program poster with the worm event listed, and to see the Carrollton Leisure Connections catalog:

I'm planning to make a soft sculpture Can'O'Worms for the event, sort of a Claes Oldenberg meets Popeye visual aid.  Picked up the "wine" RIT dye and rubber bands at Albertsons.  Heading to the upstairs linen closet to find a well-aged white bed sheet for dyeing.

Walking the library lake 6.4 mile loop trail included views of swans, ducks, red-winged blackbirds, white egret, little blue heron, and green heron, all at no extra charge.

And the other life list library?  My visit to the U.S. Institute for Peace include a quick walk through the Ron Silver Library.  Ron Silver did not mean anything to my son/tour guide.  I had a vague idea Ron Silver was an actor or a political activist.  As it turns out, Silver was both.  In 1989, he co-founded the non-partisan social and political advocacy group Creative Coalition with colleagues including Alec Baldwin, Christopher Reeve, and Susan Sarandon.  I still don't know how the library came to be named for him.

As I read about the USIP's library, I learned about a fascinating woman, Jeannette Rankin.  The library's program is named for this pacifist, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.









You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. 
Indira Gandhi


You can't shake hands with a fistful of spinach.  
Popeye

You can't shake hands with a can of worms.

CollageMama

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Visualize whirled worms

World peace is beyond my control.  "Whirled peas" always brings mental images of bad junior high cafeteria tricks back at Millard Lefler in the late-Sixties.  Whirled worms might be manageable with a touch of Doppler radar.  

Whirred worries about worms are causing an undercurrent of anxiety as my Worm Show moment of fame approaches.  In just a few weeks I'll be presenting a "We Dig Worms" event for a nearby public library summer reading program.  My worms are not at the peak of their training, ready for Olympic competition.  And the worms are far ahead of me!

Tuesday evening I sorted worms from humus while tracking weather watch radar on t.v.  Joplin, Missouri was on my mind, as were memories of Omaha in 1975.  I moved my worm bin to the living room so I could sort while watching t.v.  I was afraid I'd have to take my bin of little critters with me into my "safe room" (aka downstairs bathroom).

We were lucky.  It rained hard, but my area didn't get any hail.  This weather dude kept talking about the curving tail motion on the storm cells.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Believing in peace

Good design, bad idea, don't get bogged down:

Today I planned to write about the splendid architectural spaces in the new headquarters of the United States Institute for Peace.  Instead I learned that Republicans are trying to kill the agency forever.  Excuse me!  Did those guys and gals grow up sitting on their hands when the rest of us were clapping to save Tinkerbell's life?  Were they rooting for the flying monkeys?

I'm pretty discouraged about the prognosis for peace.  My current preschool students wear glittery peace symbol t-shirts with their sequined shoes and purple sparkle nail polish.  The peace symbol seems to be enjoying a marketing resurgence while the real concept gets flushed.  This could send me into a real slough of despair, except that I would have to admit never reading Pilgrim's Progress even though I wanted to be Jo March when I grew up, nor can I pronounce "slough", which seems to be the past tense of creamy cole slaw when it gets too warm and runny and potentially bacteria-filled at the picnic.

Keeping me out of the slaw-slew-slow-bog, I'm celebrating not having to use the plunger at work yet this week.  Also, Eeyore the tailless squirrel just ran across my patio fence top.  

In the dean's address to the graduating students of the Elliott School of International Affairs at GWU, he kept it simple.  Go forth, he told them:

SAVE WORLD,

HAVE FUN.

The employees of the U.S. Institute for Peace have a softball team, just like every other agency and Congressional staff in D.C.  The U.S.I.P. folks work hard and play hard.  Their team is named the Screaming Hawks.

Henry Kissinger was addressing a group about China and Pakistan in this space when I arrived for my tour.  The window faces the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.

I love the building.  I love the agency and its mission.  Glad, too, that my son is still employed there for the summer.


Let's choose for peace, and not just for cheapo t-shirts.  SAVE WORLD, HAVE FUN.


Go, Mavs!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Triple C 3-D darn Dubya

C

construction

cup

cave

cuddle

cluster

C

concentration

careful drawing

finding calm

clasping our hands

behind our backs

observing our constructions
from last week

@


I'm so immature

I still get a thrill

typing the AT in my email address

drawing the treble clef

curling an ampersand

circling the covered wagons

cooking chicken chili in the crockpot of letter sounds and fonts

uncapping the colored markers to write on the white board

C

collage

composition is improv, says the ballet student

in art composition is the play

the arranging

the dance with the elements I did not tell the kids

Sometimes you slide your whole collection of shapes off the paper and begin to create again.  

C

Self-publishing has a

concentric


convenient

lack of constructive criticism.

C

There are crocodiles in the moat.

C

calls today

from the care center

Maybe Dad was always a crabapple cluster bomb

I thought he was the master of self-control

critical he was of couse

but combustible not

kicking the bath aide in the abdomen and

throwing his shaver across the room

I just bought him the darn shaver last November

C

The cradle will rock

Considering various theories

tonight about just when

Dad got so angry.

W

When

Why

I blame it on Dubya.

Dad his old self would approve

Tonight Dad careemed

himself down the hall

in his wheelchair to shake a skinny

blue finger at the nurse and yell,

"You're a damn liar!" 

The supper trays weren't there yet.

He used to save that up to scream at Bush on tv

"You lied!  They died!"


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Super powers are not for squirrels

In the hierarchy of playgrounds that has existed since the very first slippery slide was invented, the cool/older/savvy kids were planning the game for after lunch.  I was dining and eavesdropping with three boys, ages four to five, at a picnic table. 

Boy #1 to Boy #3 after conferring with Boy #2:  We are going to play Power Ranger Squirrels with Buffy and Twinkie [girls' names changed to protect minors].  We don't have any colors left, but you can be a squirrel.  You won't have any super powers, but you can climb trees. 

Buffy and Twinkie to the younger girls:  We don't have any Power Ranger colors left, but you can be rainbows.  When we freeze you, you have to stop.

. . .

I had no idea the Power Rangers were "re-versioned" in 2010, or that they visited Millennium Park in Chicago.  I bet they skipped the Art Institute:
...A new generation of Power Rangers must master the mystical and ancient Samurai Symbols of Power which give them control over the elements of Fire, Water, Sky, Forest, and Earth. Under the guidance of their all-knowing mentor and the aid of their devoted animal Zords, they battle the dark forces of the Netherworld ... .

Peace on Earth with Welch's grape jelly and whirled peas.  Be nice to the folks on your playground.






© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Gratitude

Ada and Emma were young working women helping support their mother in Verdigre, Nebraska.  They taught school, sewed, and made hats.  They had beaus fighting the Germans in France in World War I.  They had a hope chest packed with many never-used linens and clothing items. 

I'm unpacking the hope chest and pondering the meanings.  I have Ada and Em's scrapbook albums and photo postcards of young men in uniform on motorcycles.  Other albums show photos of young women wearing fresh, simple, white outfits and eccentric hats.  I just don't have time to connect all the dots right now.


This lovely knit garment is Munsingwear size 4 with a dropseat for ease of use in outhouses.  Tonight I am grateful for indoor plumbing and Charmin. 

Entirely too much of my day teaching preschoolers involves their ability to flush and wash their hands.  Thank you, Lord, I don't have to worry about kids managing their dropseat undies or falling into the primitive Port-a-Potty!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Interspecies warfare

Stubby, the anole lizard, climbed leaf by leaf through the Asian jasmine to reach the wrought iron birdfeeder hook by the patio. Up the hook he went to reach the hummingbird feeder. There he coiled himself along the rim to catch insects attracted to the sugar water.

The hummingbird did not find this reptile incursion amusing. She flew down and hovered menacingly until Stubby leapt back to the wrought iron hook. Generously, she allowed Stubby to slowly slink back down to the patio under her guard, then took full control of the feeder.

Alas, I haven't developed a successful analogy for Afghanistan to send to General McChrystal. I can only pray that American troops will be safe this holiday weekend.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Guilt by association

Breaking news: Barack Obama has a supporter who drank beer mixed with lemonade back when she was a college kid, and debated the possibility that violent methods might be necessary and justifiable to end a war and provoke positive societal change. We discussed major issues of the day from every conceivable viewpoint because that was the purpose of higher education back in the Seventies. It is still the purpose of higher education, and don't forget it! True, we discussed it in unheated apartments while wearing goofy clothes and eating carob chips. We were young. There is a tendency, if not a statistical assertion, that college students change their minds and behaviors after graduation! I haven't knowingly eaten carob chips for a quarter century.

Our philosophy professor used to host "Large General Parties". He invited everyone interesting he knew, and they invited everyone interesting they knew. He filled his refrigerator with quart bottles of cheap beer and pitchers of lemonade. Everyone added lemonade to their paper cups of beer. At one of these parties a sociology professor showed a film about the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. It was probably the 1976 film, "Underground" about Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. None of the people at those large general parties became domestic terrorists. Nearly all of us got jobs, got married, had kids, and don't want to relive the Viet Nam Era. We mostly worked to improve our neighborhoods, our kids' schools, and the environment. We changed our minds sometimes, and had a tendency to stay informed about current events. We kept listening to philosophers while finding the most appropriate and practical way to live in the real world.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

1968

Two words on the radio news hit me--Recreate 68. Why would I want to recreate the scariest year I can remember?

Becoming a teenager is a universal acne festival of junior high anxiety. Ask around. If you can find a person who would like to relive being thirteen years old, I'll be amazed. Most people I know believe Hell, if there is one, is being trapped in junior high for all eternity.

Becoming a teenager in 1968 compounded the personal angst and turmoil with a sense that the world was also going straight to Hell. Do not pass Go with your handbasket. Do not collect $200. Only Walter Cronkite kept the whole world from total conflagration.

• From January 1968 on each evening's CBS news about the Tet Offensive was bad.
• In March the appearance of segregationists presidential candidate George Wallace led to rioting in Omaha.
• Three weeks before I turned thirteen, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
• Five weeks after my birthday, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
• Another two months, and Soviet tanks were rolling into Prague.
• Then the next week protests and rioting began at the Chicago Democratic Convention.

The Omaha riots brought racial tension closer to my little world than ever before. When an Omaha Central High School basket ballplayer was arrested just three days before the 1968 state tournament for suspected possession of gasoline bombs, the Nebraska School Activities Association moved the Class A tournament from Omaha to Lincoln. The tournament has remained in Lincoln for forty years. I'm endebted to Prairie Bluestem for the citation confirming my hazy memories of that time.

1968--I hadn't figured out the secret of life. I could barely manage the combination for my hall locker at Millard Lefler Junior High. The whole thing was going up in shattered glass and smoke.

I began attending the youth group supper meetings at my church in the late winter of 1968. In fact, I learned about Martin Luther King's murder from the church custodian who chatted as he mopped the foyer before one of those suppers. Waiting with me was Phoebe. She befriended me, and showed me the routine for the group meetings, for which my shy and nerdy self was grateful. I'd never met anyone like Phoebe. She was different, but nice.

The other church group kids soon informed me that Phoebe was a "feeb," and a "retard," and taught me to shun her. Guilt for my rejection of Phoebe mixed with my desperate need for peer acceptance to amp up my anxiety. In the forty years since, I pray we have all become more tolerant and compassionate, and slower to use insulting labels.

From a different viewpoint, one might understand 1968 as a year full of hope, promise, change, and empowerment. At thirteen I didn't understand the hippies in San Francisco any more than the Soviet tanks in Prague or Mayor Daley's Chicago. I didn't fit in with the youth group kids who could play "Sunshine of Your Love" on the church organ after choir practice.

What of the "Recreate 68" on the radio news? From the Recreate 68 coalition's website:

The 1960s were a time of profound, positives [sic] social and political change in this country. The civil rights movement ended legal segregation and broke down barriers to the full participation of African Americans in American life (still yet to be fully achieved). Other movements followed that achieved the same for women and for other oppressed communities of color. That in 2008 the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for President are an African American man and a woman¬something unimaginable at the start of the 60s¬is a direct result of the changes brought about in that decade.

Those changes were eventually codified in law. But they were brought about not by political “leaders,” but by mass movements of people who demanded that America live up to its own democratic rhetoric, by grassroots movements that forced the system to respond to their demands, and opened up new political space for ordinary people to participate in the decisions that affected their lives.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

A-mouldering in the grave

Amy Stewart’s book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms begins with a chapter on Charles Darwin's studies of worms. Darwin wrote The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits in 1881. Apparently, "vegetable mould" was the term for soil at that time.

Thank heaven, Darwin, and Ms. Stewart for that missing link of information! Growing up where Mulder Drive met Eastridge Drive in the early Sixties, life was simple if mysterious, and school was delightful. "Writing" meant printing in pencil on wide-lined newsprint. "Music" didn't require carrying a tune when we sang "the worms play pinochle on your snout. " We learned to read with Dick and Jane, and spent our fifteen-minute recesses climbing on the jungle gym and chanting, "I see London, I see France, I see someone's underpants." It was okay to get dirty if we were wearing our Play Clothes, but not in our School Clothes. At the pool we got our faces wet and blew bubbles.

On some level, we little kids knew that when we crossed into third grade life was going to get much tougher. We would have to learn the elementary backstroke and the breaststroke. We would start reading Childhood of Famous Americans biographies, and have to "carry" in addition. We would try to get pigs in the pigpen playing jacks with a golf ball on the concrete slap at recess. It wouldn't be a picnic, that was for sure!

Still, for fear factor, the worst was knowing we would be in Mrs. M and Mrs. S's Sunday School class. These two pillars of the church had been teaching third grade Sunday School since before Eve bit the apple. They ran the class like a miniature kiddie church service. The kids sat on wooden benches on either side of an aisle, and opened kiddie hymnals to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" each Sunday. The goal must have been to prepare eight year olds how to behave in an actual church service.

If we didn't actually sing the verses of "John Brown's Body" as part of "The Battle Hymn," we must have acquired that knowledge at the same age:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.

He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on.

We also sang a dreadful parody with "teacher hit me with a ruler" that is too eerie to print in this age of school shootings.

The Online Etymology Dictionary redirects me from moulder to molder, but not to Mulder Drive:

molder (v.) "to crumble away," 1531, probably freq. of mold (3) "loose earth."

Thanks to a Library of Congress website for teachers I learn the John Brown song predates Julia Ward Howe's writing of the Battle Hymn:

The original version was a religious camp meeting song written in the 1850s and began "Say, brothers, will you meet us? On Canaan’s happy shore?" The song eventually spread to army posts, where its steady rhythm and catchy chorus made it a natural marching song.

Soon, though, a new version appeared that hitched the old tune to a more militant cause. When the abolitionist John Brown was executed in 1859, someone created a new, fiercer set of lyrics; the song now declared that "John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on!"

By the time the Civil War began in 1861, the John Brown version of the song had spread throughout the Union army. Soldiers added new verses as they marched through the South, including one that promised to hang Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, from a tree. Meanwhile, Confederate soldiers answered back with their own version, in which John Brown was hanging from a tree.

The version that we know today came to be when an abolitionist author, Julia Ward Howe, overheard Union troops singing "John Brown’s Body" and was inspired to write a set of lyrics that dramatized the rightness of the Union cause. Within a year this new hymn was being sung by civilians in the North, Union troops on the march, and even prisoners of war held in Confederate jails.

Which brings me back to my moldy memories of third grade. That year we took a family road trip to Nebraska City to see Arbor Lodge and John Brown's Cave. I was very leery of looking into the cave, for fear of seeing his body a-mouldering. It was disappointing to find the cave was really a tiny basement under a pioneer cabin. There were no trains to be seen either, on this stop of the Underground Railroad!

JOHN BROWN'S CAVE

John Kagi, one of abolishionist John Brown's most trusted collegues, went to stay with his sister and brother-in-law Allen Mayhew. It was the early 1850's and the area was the Nebraska City area of Nebraska. Their cabin was very close to the Missouri River. Across the river was Iowa and Missouri. John Kagi, under the instruction of his friend John Brown, dug an underground room underneath the Mayhew cabin. It was accessible only from a ravine leading into a creek. The entrance was well camoflauged. There was also a hollow log put into the wall that lead to fresh air outside. This helped the ventilation when the entrance was closed up. This cave was to be used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At night, slaves would cross the Missouri River from Missouri (slave state) to Nebraska (free state). They would hide out in the cave for the night. Mrs. Mayhew would bring them cornbread. After a short stay, they would be ferried across the Missouri River again. They would be taken a little more north to Iowa (free state), to another stop on the Underground Railroad. Or else, as more recent evidence shows, they would proceed toward Lincoln to hide out in Robber's Cave (see Nebraska haunted sites on Nebraska page). This cabin and cave are still standing where they were over a century ago. The Mayhew cabin is said to be the oldest standing building in Nebraska. It is open to tours and well worth the time.

And now, after this morning of mental mouldering, I may need to find Flashman and the Angel of the Lord at the library. The late George Macdonald Fraser's novel explains John Brown and the Underground Railroad better than any history class from third grade on.



---------------
Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Chorus
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on."
Chorus
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Chorus
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
-----------

Darwin, C. R. 1881. The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. London: John Murray.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Chia Korea and Animal Rummy

Spring has sprung.
The grass has ris.
I wonder where de birdies is.


Tome Toles' editorial cartoon for the Washington Post made me think if Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez were a Chia Pet, he would grow to become Kim Jung-Il.




Played Rummikub with the afterschool four-year-olds. The game is similar to rummy, but I've next to no memory of ever playing rummy or animal rummy. The little kids have a better grasp on the game, so they are teaching me.

Animal Rummy was one of the childrens' card games made by Whitman Publishing Company. To the best of my recollection, the others were Go Fish, Snap, Crazy Eights, and Authors. I loved playing Authors and saying the names of the books aloud. Do you have "The Courtship of Miles Standish"? Do you have "The Charge of the Light Brigade"? Do you have "The House of the Seven Gables"?

Boys always preferred the interminable card game "War". They still do. Just ask Bush's own Rummy. Tole's cartoon accompanied an op ed suggesting Alberto Gonzalez may not have any more job security than Rumsfeld did. If need be, he could always get a new job selling Chia Pets on infomercials. Now then, do you have "The Prince and the Pauper"?


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Flag-folding

Seeing the U.S. flag draped over a casket is such a powerful image that the Pentagon banned photographing military caskets returning from war since 1991. Experiencing the ceremony when Marines in full dress uniform fold the U.S. flag from over a casket stays in the mind's eye and in the heart. I witnessed this ceremony at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery over a month ago, and I remember it several times a day. That flag is burned on my brain in a way I'm sure The W Team would wish to ban.

I don't know if the experience is so powerful because I have seen the ceremony only a few times. Would it lose its meaning if I saw it everyday? If so, perhaps the Pentagon's ban is actually keeping Americans from losing their outrage over the senseless loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. I need to believe that U.S. soldiers are the epitome of respect, honor, duty, and sacrifice. I need to see the flag-folding presentation ceremony as a beautiful expression of gratitude by all of us to the widows and families who have experienced the ultimate loss for this country's and the world's good. I want the ceremony to represent the best of our nation, not the throw-away attitude of a greedy oligarchy.

Perhaps I'm still the third-grader watching the Marines in their dress uniforms and gloves folding the flag that covered JFK's casket, then solemnly presenting it to Jackie. I watched the funeral procession on a black and white television. My memory was colorized by LIFE Magazine images in red, white, blue, black and pink. It remembers John-John saluting and the riderless horse. It recalls a nation's hope for a government of ideals and chivalry lost to an assassin's bullets.

As an art teacher, I wonder if my fascination with folding spatial exercises was inspired by a President's funeral. Can the orderly transformation of a rectangle into a triangle reconnect any of us with higher aspirations, peaceful methods, a respect for other peoples and nations, or a resolve to prevent the squandering of a single American soldier's life? If a child's brain can grasp the process of changing a two-dimensional surface through a three-dimensional manipulation, could our elected officials grasp a process for changing the world without destroying it?

Fold carefully. Fold mindfully. Fold with sorrow, grief, respect, honor, courage, hope, gratitude. Match corners to corners. Use one hand to keep the corners together while the other hand creases from the center out to the edges very neatly and precisely. Fold with calm and peace and breathing. Fold each new piece with the same clarity of purpose and respect for the paper as you did the first time. Have patience. Refold the map the way it was before. There is a reason for doing things this way. Find the reason in your heart. Act the reason in your life everyday.

If only Dubya were more like the Cat in the Hat

One of the greatest joys of my job is reading my favorite picture books aloud to students. Lately I've been able to read both Chris van Allsburg's, Jumanji, and The Cat in the Hat to students aged three to ten. It is funny when I realize that I am also reading the books aloud to myself!

Remember how The Cat always picked up all his playthings and so ...? The beauty of both Jumanji and The Cat in the Hat is that their scary, but instructive outrageous experiences are completely tidied before Mother returns. Thing One and Thing Two are back in the big red wood box, all shut with a hook, which is exactly where Darth Cheney and Rummy should be. The python and the monkeys disappear once Judy yells, "Jumanji," and Peter is wiser by far for playing Van Allsburg's board game.


And so,
so,
so,
so...

shouldn't Bush be able to pick up the mess his blue-haired Things have created in Iraq? Shouldn't the steam from the volcano blow out the open window, leaving Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge with two whole legs? The fish in the pot tried to warn us about The Cat. Is there any chance Dubya will clean up his own mess????

"Follow Me"

The motto of the United States Army Infantry is also the title of Bruce Wood's ballet about the service, sacrifice, interdependence, and brotherhood of infantry soldiers performed Wednesday evening at Bass Performance Hall by his Bruce Wood Dance Company. In just eighteen minutes of dance, I received a transfusion of understanding about my father's long reluctance to talk about his WWII experiences, the life of friends' sons and son's friends currently serving in the armed forces, and even the army play of my young sons.

Wood is a Fort Worth choreographer of great originality and very professional production standards. The dance's physical power, intense repressed emotion, and symbolism are still with me. I wonder if Mr. Wood created an eighteen minute dance because so many army recruits are just eighteen years old.

Mr. Wood and I are about the same age--Sixties kids too young to have been in Viet Nam but too old not to have been impacted by it. At or about age fifty, we are both grieving over the deceased hope that our generation would bring about peace, justice, and tolerance in the world.

There were many children in the audience, and they were all enthralled and marvelously well-behaved. A nice couple with two fifth-grade boys were seated ahead of me. The boys had an animated discussion after the first piece on the program, the world premiere of Wood's "Dust, Texas," mainly about the small, quirky movements of the barn dance section, the actions that resembled windmills and farm machinery, and the athletic feats of the dancers.

After "Follow Me" I asked what the fifth-graders what they thought about it. They informed me that the ballet was set to music from "Band of Brothers". They told me they really liked WWII history, but they had some trouble finding the word they wanted to describe "Follow Me". The father helped them by suggesting "solemn". The boys reminded me so much of my own sons at that age. We chatted a bit more about how to build a theater like the beautiful Bass Hall out of Legos, then laughed at the idea of little Lego people as ballet dancers.

I really regret not taking my sons to modern dance or ballet performances! We try so hard as parents to expose our children to all the fabulous opportunities. Those efforts are not wasted. Every outing or event opens a window for new ideas and appreciation. We all need the arts. They are carefully planted seeds, crisp spring breezes and cooling summer rains for our brains.

Before the final work on the program the young family had to weigh whether to stay up late just this one evening. So many students seem to not get enough sleep on a regular basis. I really respected the couple's concern that the boys be well-rested for school the next morning, but I did hope they would stay for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." I just knew Bruce Wood's choreography of that favorite would be fabulous. I was wishing that my mother could have been with me, and also my sister and niece. Fritzi would have loved the dancers in their blue satin, and the playful leap-frogging to Gershwin's rhythms. And I would have cried if the fifth-graders had missed the literally glittery finale and final slide through the sparkles.

The story of Wood's "Follow Me" commission and the creative process it involved is intriguing reading. There are also some photos of the dance on the web at http://www.popphoto.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=47834. For additional fun, watch the video clips.

Unaware of the drilling

Parenthood and the demands of job and family act as an anesthetic that keeps the bulk of Americans too numb to stay informed and angry about the direction the U.S. is taking. This is not meant to be an excuse for an uninvolved citizenry, but just an observation. Being fifty is a good thing. It gives me fewer anesthetic demands on my energy, and allows me more time to be informed and angry. Being fifty also gives me more time in the dentist's chair.

After the early morning dental appointment my face, mouth, and brain were pretty numbed, plus it was raining. I felt too drooly to accomplish housework, and almost drooly enough to fit in with the unusual characters who attend movies on weekday mornings. So I figured it would be a good time to go see Eugene Jarecki's documentary film, Why We Fight.

The film is informative and detailed, but done well enough that it doesn't feel like a junior high filmstrip (except to that one guy who was snoring. I wanted to put his ponytail in the inkwell.) Mr. Troester's eighth grade social studies class is where I first heard of the "military-industrial complex". The complex has only grown in the decades since. The military-industrial complex controls our elected representatives, and dwarfs our president (who is not exactly fighting back against Mr. Tooth Decay). It keeps citizens numbed on propaganda and platitudes. We don't really feel the grinding away of our beliefs and values, our rights and representation, our respect worldwide.

Chris Vognar's review in the Dallas Morning News.

From President Eisenhower's Farewell Address, January 17, 1961:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Hot-Air George

Dubya gave us Speech Two of his plan for victory in Iraq this week. Condi explained how torture was illegal under U.S. law. Don't you feel better? I love a good story or fairy tale after some milk and cookies.

"Reconstruction has not always gone as well as we had hoped," Mr. Bush said, in an admission that paralleled his concession last week, in the first of four speeches laying out his Iraq strategy, that the United States had not properly armed and trained Iraqis to resist insurgents. --NY Times 12/08/05



I want our soldiers, heck, all the soldiers of the whole dang Coalition of the Willing, to be home by New Years. They are risking their lives daily for Dubya's Web of Evil Deceits. What really bothers me, as a mother and a citizen, though, is the big mess the U.S. has created in Iraq. Who is going to clean up this mess? I look the part of Mama Bear, I'm disgusted enough, and I could probably find a big enough box, but I can't just stomp in and throw the whole mess in a box. When you make a mess, you are responsible for cleaning it up. My mama told me so. Didn't Barbara ever mention it?

Better Together
Buy The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room and The Berenstain Bears and the Truth by Stan & Jan Berenstain today!


Buy Together Today: $6.50 --Such a deal, George! Better than the story about the goat.

I do wish Stan and Jan could have a session with Brother George and Sister Condi!

1433 Q Street

Dad was a young college student at the University of Nebraska in 1941, about the age of my youngest son. He first heard about Pearl Harbor at his boarding house near the campus. That is on his mind tonight.

Difficult to imagine, but when Dad was living in that boarding house he would mail his dirty laundry to his mom. She would mail it back clean and folded, with homemade cookies tucked into the box. What a different world!

This is what Grandma's house looks like now, but in those days it was surrounded by tall, gracious elms, spirea bushes, and hosta. The porch floor was painted gray, not covered in outdoor carpet escaped from a miniature golf course.

Grandma was a fabulous cook. She could womp up a "midnight lunch" more satisfying and fun than you can possibly imagine. When I was small, my sister and I always slept in the Pink Bedroom next to her dining room when we visited. No matter what time I was sent to bed, I would keep myself awake so I could eavesdrop on the adults' conversation and stories during "midnight lunch". Sometimes I would sneak out of bed to open the door just a crack. If it was warm, I would be listening to the bugs and small town night sounds through the open window, so it was very difficult to wait up. I had to make up stories about the porcelain figurines on the dresser to stay awake. The porcelain bride and groom would dance on the lace doily, circling the hairbrush. The bride would sing a song with the words in the frame on the wall.

It's easy enough to be pleasant
when life goes by like a song,
but the man worthwhile
is the man with a smile
when everything goes dead wrong.

Look! It's Blue Dog vs. Blue Rider

"Prussian Blue" was the name of a Crayola crayon in my sixty-four crayon set as a young artist. I never did get a real clear understanding of "Prussian", and I was not alone. Binney and Smith changed the crayon name to "Midnight Blue".

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

Learning to read in Mrs. Erickson's first grade class was a joy back in the fall of '61. We learned to read and write the name of a new color every few days. Red was first. We also learned to read "Look". When we learned to write "Look" we turned the o's into eyes, complete with eyelashes. Being able to read the labels on my crayons was a big thrill, and I'm delighted to report my young students still get just as excited when they reach that milestone.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

Franz Marc is one of my dad's favorite artists. I grew up with reproductions of Marc's horses and deer. Marc was one of the "Blue Rider" group of artists that included Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Paul Klee, and a few others. Both Marc and Macke were killed in WWI, bringing the Blue Rider group to a premature end.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

I wanted the students to consider movement or action in a painting. Marc's paintings have wonderful curves and overlapped shapes that move the viewer's eye around the painting. His bold, symbolic use of color sings.

The bad news is kids are totally intimidated at the thought of drawing a horse. So are adults and some art teachers! After the first day on this lesson, I had to change it. First we compared George Rodrigue's "Blue Dog" paintings to Franz Marc's "Blue Horses". We all pretty much agreed that Blue Dog has tension and interest, but no movement. A few kids want to know how Blue Dog moves between the pages of my book, Blue Dog Man. They have figured out that I'm not showing them nearly all the pages in the book, and they suspect Blue Dog goes crazy chasing cats and cars on the omitted pages. I suspect Blue Dog just goes by taxi downtown to stare at the ceiling from his psychoanalyst's couch.



Kids like the crazy colors in Franz Marc's paintings--red horses with blue manes, yellow horses with green manes, red deer and yellow dogs in white snow, a parade of blue monkeys. We look at "Cows: Yellow, Red, and Green," and I tell them that I believed that picture was the cow jumping over the moon when I was their age. It's easier for them to accept jumping yellow cows than me ever having been their age!


A perfect union of Blue Dog and Blue Rider!


The hills are alive with the sound of music.


I love the eye in the underwater cave, the scorpion, the happy turtle,

...the smiling swamp monster, and the pirate ship. The next one reminds me so much of watching the bats fly out from under Austin's Congress Avenue bridge last April! The one below pleases me greatly as a teacher, because it is the painting of a first grade boy on his own after we had completed the directed assignment. He was obviously applying everything we had learned:



How sweet it is!

Now it's time to pop the Allman Brothers in the cd player.