No Chidl Left Benihana

This country is experiencing a disastrous shortage of an essential resource the likes of which this Mama has not seen since the Carter Administration. I'm not referring to El Busho's belated request for citizens to conserve gasoline after the hurricanes, or to the search for untapped spelling words above the Arctic Circle. Don't even get me started on SUVs!

I could easily rant from now until breakfast about the complete lack of competent help at Comp USA, and of cashiers at Super Target. Why does the store have twenty-four check-out lanes, but only three cashiers?

Tonight's rant, my chidlern, is that this formerly grate country of hours is bereft of spellers and devoid of those old maid schoolteachers, like my great aunt Em, who paid attention to these tiny civilizing details. Many times every day some raging hormonal nitwit connects to CollageMama's ramblings while searching for "collage males naked" or "hot collage mamas". I want to slap them all on the knuckles with my ruler, and send them back to the McGuffey Reader, but that will only bring on a new readership of "collage ruler slapping" spelling-impaired deviants. Plus, I want them to work out 754.9 divided by 17.3 in long division at the blackboard and stay inside from recess. Who is paying for these Googlers to attend college? They must be buying the face paint and cheese heads in bulk at Costco.

I don't care much what they do or say, as long as they Google it properly. Henry Higgins would have a stroke.

Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters
Condemned by every syllable she utters
By right she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue...

This is what the British population
Calls an elementary education...
It's 'ow' and 'garn' that keep her in her place,
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique.
[To Pickering] If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why you might be selling flowers too...

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek
In France every Frenchman knows his language from 'A' to 'Zed' -
The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
The Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening.
Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak.
Oh, why can't the English -
Why can't the English learn to speak?

col-lage (ko-lazh') n. An artistic composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface, often with unifying lines and color. [French, from coller, to glue, paste, from colle, glue, from Vulgar Latin colla (unattested), from Greek kolia. See kolei- in Appendix.*)

And I can attest to the vulgarity of the whole misspelled business!

Quick Acting Peter Doig

Expected to spend the whole weekend being miserable, waiting for the antibiotic and decongestant to cut through my evil ragweed allergy turned sinus infection. Shazam! These drugs work much faster than the ones I got back in Oklahoma in the late Eighties! Twenty-four hours of moaning and trying to sleep sitting up, then 10-9-8-7-6- blasting off with cleared eustachian tubes and a mega-fix of pseudoephedrine!

The Peter Doig: Works on Paper exhibit at the Dallas Museum of art is not only rich, luminous, immediate, romantic, expressionist, and haunting. It is also a visit deep into the working process of an artist using color, composition, excellent figure drawing, and a collection of glorious influences. The DMA sneaks a peek at related paintings in the southeast quadrant gallery with Rothko, Stella, Motherwell, Still, and Gorky. The Doig works bring Diebenkorn and Thiebald, Winslow Homer, and Gauguin to mind. Doig cites Hopper, Munch, and Matisse as major influences. I laugh, thinking Gauguin has done a study of frisbee players on the beach. And there's even a pirate under a palm tree!

Right Guard

Phone rang at 6:40 a.m. Friday waking me out of fitful sinus headache sleep. I went stumbling about in the dark, but by the time I made it to the phone the voice mail had kicked in. The whole message was, "Hi, it's Mike." Now it makes sense. The phone rang one other morning this week at 5:52. I wondered all day about that.

This global time travel is still odd to me. The phone connections are much clearer than when my brother studied in England twenty-plus years ago.

One reason for Mike's call is the apparent lack of anti-perspirants in Italy. I tried to convince him it would be okay, that Europeans just aren't picky about body smells. My preconceived notions of Europe involve bad teeth, greasy hair, and sweaty people dressed in black sitting at outdoor cafes drinking wine all hours of the day, including 6:40 a.m. CDT. It doesn't sound all that bad, except for the greasy hair.

Mike patiently explained to me that although Europeans might not care about sweat-stained t-shirts, he is living and studying with a bunch of American kids, aka young adults. Americans obsess about sweat and body smells. Okay, I agreed, but maybe he could shop for deodorant when he goes to Prague this week. Surely Bohemians are more cognizant of the need for anti-perspirants! Surely that would be more cost-effective than his old mom mailing personal hygiene products around the globe. And don't call me Shirley.



Sometime in the night I woke up remembering how this condo used to smell like a locker room before it became an empty nest. This morning I put the Right Guard in the mail with the Customs declaration, "For Personal Use Only. No Commercial Value." I'm calling it one private citizen's international humanitarian relief effort. It should be tax-deductible.

I draw the line at mailing Lady Bic razors to Botticelli's Venus!

Too many answers, not enough questions

I have an idea that kids need mysteries as much as they need answers. They need unstructured time to ponder the mysteries, to let their questions steep like a jar of sun tea on the front step. Mysteries fuel our imaginations, spur our studies, and add layers of richness to our human experience.

As parents it is often easier to give a snap answer to a child's question than to ask, "What do you think happened?," "What ideas do you have about that?," or "How would you fix that?" We often feel like we have failed as parents when we see our kids lying on the floor staring at a sunbeam, or digging a canal in the dirt with a stick. We rush to enroll the kids in yet another adult-structured activity to "better use their time".

My third grade teacher read a chapter about Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb to the class every day after lunch recess. She was reading a chapter when we learned that JFK had died. My curiosity about ancient Egypt helped me through that difficult time, and I may have linked JFK with the "Boy Pharoah" for several years. I wondered if other tombs and treasures awaited my patient and meticulous discovery in Egypt. I still read both fiction and nonfiction about ancient Egypt over forty years later, even though I didn't become an archaeologist. Maybe it is a romantic notion, thinking that our life is enriched by a sense of wonder about other places, other times, but I think it helps us find both our life's work and our most restorative leisure.

The mysteries that intrigued me as a child were not very scientific or mechanical. They were mostly historical or mythical, with an occasional dose of biology--Atlantis, Knossos, Incas, Easter Island, Odysseus, Roanoke Colony, wagon trains to the West, cave paintings in France, Viking exploration, the Anasazi...butterfly cocoons and praying mantids, family trees. Finding out for myself how many different greens I could mix with a simple set of watercolors, or how many ways I could rearrange a set of square tiles set me off on my path as an artist and teacher. Reading narratives and journals of women pioneers headed west colored the way I look at our modern lifestyle and conveniences.

This week I got to chat with a group of kids about the Anasazi cliff-dwellers of the Four Corners region. The kids had so many great questions. Their brains were really storming! They are obviously aware of hurricanes and flooding, but quickly latched onto the ideas of drought and irrigation. They got intrigued by the ideas of the wearing down of teeth by the sand and grit in the corn flour diet, and of the T-shaped doorways for people carrying backpacks or heavy baskets on their backs. They have questions about why people used to be so much shorter (5' 4"), and only lived to be forty or so. They wondered if cancer killed the Anasazi. They began imagining mesas--teeny tiny people living on table tops! They liked the "camoflague" stone buildings and wondered about how the Anasazi trapped food, and why they grew corn, beans, and squash, because ew-ick they don't like those vegetables. And they loved the idea of standing at the corner of four states.

I intended to tell them about the Wetherill family finding the cliff dwellings in the late 1800's, but I'm still reading a biography of Marietta Wetherill. ...Then I need to read Nebraska author Willa Cather's novel about Mesa Verde, The Professor's House. In about 1964 I read a story in National Geographic, or maybe National Geographic School Bulletin, about Richard Wetherill riding off looking for stray cattle on the mesa and discovering Cliff Palace. The image I created in my mind of that moment of discovery is still there, even though I know it probably didn't happen quite that way. I also have a strong memory that I read the story while lying on the living room carpet with sunbeams pouring through the window. I'm betting I had Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite playing on the hi-fi. I'm thankful that my parents gave me that time to wonder and hear my own questions.

There's are hummingbirds, lizards, and butterflies out on the patio. It's time to do some restorative recreational wondering.

Doppler Mama

First order of business this morning was folding up all the plastic drop cloths covering our computers at work. They hadn't been needed. Our area received not one single solitary drop of rain from Hurricane Rita. My son in Indiana saw more Rita rain than we did.

Second order of business is kicking the Weather Channel habit. For the last month I've spent way more time in front of the tv than normal, mostly looking at reporters wearing hooded raingear and standing knee deep in dark, oily liquid.
It never occurred to me while perusing the Occupational Outlook Handbook in the early Seventies that live disaster reporting would be a growth occupation.

I look at these soggy cub reporters saying, "I can barely see my hand in front of my face," and, "we've been unable to verify the reports of a downed street light in the next block," and wonder what special qualifications they have. Do they just show up for the job with a willingness to have buckets of cold liquid dumped down their neck like a football coach?

I grew up with Barbie dolls and Dare Wright's books about the Lonely Doll. For better or worse, these still influence me.


Houses, hotels, pets, automobiles, and ships were all caught up in the disaster.

This is not a comment on the Halliburton subsidiaries' lucrative contracts to clean up after Katrina, even though it is "Monopoly".

Who is this chicken? Is he here for a photo op?


Back to you.

Teaching

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

Mark van Doren, American writer and educator, 1894-1972

What are we teachers up to? What role are we playing on our best day?

Art provides preschoolers the laboratory for developing essential fine-motor, thinking, and social skills needed in elementary school. It enhances visual awareness and appreciation, individual expression, and creative problem-solving. Through art we have the chance to inspire connections with our world. Preschoolers develop the capacity to observe and wonder at our rich and varied world, and enjoy life in it.

Dates, figs, and prunes

What is it like to be single at the age of fifty? For the first time in a gazillion* years, I have the time to contemplate my status as a single female. No kids at home. No soccer games. No lunches to prepare. Not even that many checks to write.

Who am I? Can I be who I am by myself? Do I want to savor my long-delayed and richly deserved peace and quiet? Should I be panicked about getting older alone? Do I want to try an internet dating service?

Well, at least I know the answer to the last question! No.

I don't usually look for relationship insights in the Business section of the Dallas Morning News. It's a rare day when I read more than the headlines in that section. Somehow I was enticed into a feature by Scott Burns, "American Generations: Part 2" this noon. Mr. Burns (not the Simpson's Mr. Burns) is a generation half step between myself and my parents, and I enjoy his financial columns. His thoughts about the enormous "investment in human capital" known as the G. I. Bill were intriguing. And then, suddenly, he was talking to me:

"Relationships at 50 are a lot more difficult than at 25, Bobby realized.

"'It's the hormone-to-identity ratio,' the algebra lover liked to say. 'When you're 20, it's nearly infinite. Who you are hardly matters. What matters is finding a plausible excuse to get naked. But at 50, the hormone-to-identity ratio is less than 1. You're actual people.'"

Really getting to know the actual people of both genders that I meet is way more important to me these days. Really getting to know myself is essential, too. I'm not dried out and wrinkly, but I'm sweeter, smarter, and more complex with aging.


*An elderly woman and her son are listening to the news on the radio. "Twelve Brazilian soldiers were killed today," they hear. "How many zeroes is a Brazilian," she asks her son.

Getting windy

An hour ago I was watching a hummingbird visit the red cannas and butterfly weed on my patio. Now, when I walked outside to go get the mail, I could hear a little screech owl calling. Screech owls aren't very loud birds, so I knew it was very close. A few steps across the parking lot, and I could tell it was in the tree above me. It flew off to the north, probably still annoyed at being awakened midafternoon.



Now the sun is back out. It's still windy. I wonder what will happen next.

The Emergency Preparedness Diet

If Rita doesn't arrive in the DFW metroplex soon and knock out all the power with Category One winds, I'm going to be stuck with the six cans of tuna fish, the large bag of charcoal briquettes, the Tang, and that big jar of creamy peanut butter ("Choosy mothers choose Jif"). Now that I consider the menu options, it sounds just like the miracle three-day diet my friend is trying, except without the cottage cheese.



I figured I would use the charcoal to broil the frozen chix boobs, petite sirloin, fish, and hamburger that would go bad in the freezer during a prolonged power failure. When that was gone, I would start in on the canned tuna fish. Spoonfuls of PB would be my high-pro breakfasts, washed down with Tang. Maybe I would lose ten pounds the first week!

While none of us want to be a storm evacuee, and we would not wish the loss of home and community on any person, some folks are experiencing disaster envy. What people in North Texas could really use is three to five days snowed-in by a major blizzard! Inability to leave home by the forces of Mother Nature could be such a gift! What opportunities to finish projects, relax with family, or listen to real weather itself, not weather radio. In the spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I could burn all the magazines I don't have time to read in the fireplace to keep from freezing! Of course, I would worry about the hummingbirds and butterflies that were flying around my patio just now...

Yaupon Conspiracy Theory

A condominium complex is much like a tin of sardines each wearing a teeny tiny cowboy outfit and spurs. That's right. Closely packed eccentrics with the shoewear to be very irritating.

My condo complex is currently embroiled in the Rottweiler-Pruning scandal, as I learned while going door-to-door with the recycling program leaflets. Some condo owners allege that when they complained about a large dog leaving sizable unscooped deposits around their shrubs, the dog-owner retaliated by ordering a "hatchet job" of bad pruning on the aforementioned yaupon shrubs. The dog owner is alleged to be a member of the powerful Landscape Committee mob family. The Rottweiler poop victims also believe Neo-Nazis may be involved in espionage.

Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of attempting to explain that the Landscape Committee is not recognized by the bylaws of the condo owners association or the management company and has no authority to make personal requests to the landscape company employees, let alone order hits. Do not, I repeat, do not suggest to anyone that the shrubs might have been pruned because they hung way out over the sidewalk. Don't suggest "getting over it and moving on because it will grow back" [just hum "I'm Gonna Wash That Poop Right Off of My Shoe" to yourself] unless you want to experience counter-retaliation. AND, be exceedingly careful not to step in that Rottweiler mess the size of a cow patty! That would smell just like the Iran-Contra Affair.



This is a yaupon [ilex vomitoria] that has not received a retaliatory "hatchet job", at least not yet. Yaupons are ridiculous looking on their best day. Small ones look like they have been styled by Fifi's Poodle Grooming. Large ones look like the mythical ostrich with its head buried in the sand. Contrary to popular opinion neither ostriches nor poodles bury their heads in the sand. They just lay their heads against the sand in sadness and nausea about the appearance of the shrubs outside their condominiums.

Yaupons do have red berries that birds feast on in the winter. I don't have the energy to report on recent intensifications of hostilities between the bird-feeding owners and the owners who allege that little birdie's dirty feet are scratching the finish on their cars. I kid you not. I'm expecting to hear reports of greasy grimy gopher guts on doorknobs, and all-purpose porpoise pus being left on leather car upholstery sitting out in the hot Texas sun.

Yaupon holly's official name reminds me of my high school Greco-Roman History teacher. She loved the shock value of teaching about "vomitorium":

vomitorium
1754, "passage or opening in an ancient amphitheater, leading to or from the seats," from L. (Macrobius, Sat., VI.iv); see vomit. Erroneous meaning "place where ancient Romans (allegedly) deliberately vomited during feasts" is attested from 1923.

My son conveniently took these vomitorium photos in Rome last weekend:




I'm giving my stomach a few days to settle before I venture back out into the lion's den with my recycling pamphlets. Just look at those pruning shears laughing their diabolical laugh!

My grilled cheese never looks like the Virgin Mary

Sigh. I was hoping that when the shower wall dried out after the tiles fell off, there would be a clear image of a major saint so I could sell my condo to a Vegas casino on eBay. Now I will have to repair the shower so my dad can come for a visit, and a son or two can come home for Thanksgiving.

The tiles started falling off the wall just before my youngest took off for college in Albuquerque, and my middle son headed off for his junior year in Italy. Some of the tiles broke when they fell into the bathtub. We couldn't deal with it right then. More tiles fell off later.

There's a window in the shower, so I can't put in a handy dandy Home Depot "tub surround". The tiles have to be replaced.

My condo building will have some siding replaced next week. The notice I received informed me that I should remove "valuable wall hangings due to possible vibration of the walls". Will more tiles fall down?

The wall is not a hidden pirate treasure map or guide to Atlantis, either.

This is the bathroom in the Italy dorm. It looks pretty good by comparison. My son knew enquiring mamas want to know.

If you look up a definition of hubris, you'll see it means overbearing pride or presumption. I'm presumpting that I can replace the tile all by myself. Sure, I don't have all the tiles to fill the space, since some broke. Sure, I don't know what I'm doing. But I do have three boxes of ceramic tile samples that date back forty years or more. I want to make a mosaic!

A coworker suggested that I have a postage stamp fetish. That sounds more kinky than she means, as I don't lick & stick! I just like stamps and squares, and arranging them. I've liked tiles and paint samples since I could barely talk. It's time to create. And the Lord said, "Let there be grout." Aesop said, "Pride goeth before the caulk."

The Ill-Tempered Beast Wakes and Growls in Her Cave

The four o'clock class of kindergarten/first grade kids was explaining Fun Racing. Fun Racing is when you take a magazine around to grown-ups and ask them to sign. You take the magazine back and get a toy. If a lot of them sign it, you get an electric scooter. There's Fun Racing at school, and Fun Racing at Girl Scouts.

Heaven knows there's Fun Racing at Little League, French club, debate team, marching band (ESPECIALLY marching band), Cub Scouts, and every other activity or organization children are involved in. Serving on the board of a public school parent-teacher organization, I became very skeptical about Fun Racing. The funds raised too often went for happy face sticker and candy "incentives" for teachers to give students. They frequently paid for annual appreciation gifts for the school principal, or the board members (and fundraising chairpersons) of the very same organization.

Fun Racing creates ridiculous competition between students and grade levels, while taking time away from homework and family togetherness. Fun Racing does not create young entrepreneurs or teach poise. Worst, most Fun Racing gives only a tiny percentage of the sales money back to the organization.

Somewhere along the line of having three kids in three schools, and each in a minimum or three sports or enrichment activities, I shorted out. Blue smoke came out of my ears. I started writing a check, one hundred percent of which went directly to the organization, and a note that I declined to give permission for my children to participate in Fun Racing. I admit that sometimes when I was extremely harried as a single parent, I wrote that Fun Racing was against our religion.

I know it's harsh, but the only ways to curtail the endless Fun Racing is to decline to participate as a student/family, and decline to enable as a giftwrap purchaser. When you notice something positive in your school zone or district, send a note and a check. A child may say "thank you", and a worn-out mom may hug you!

Sci-fi Day

Sci-fi guys will be guys. The preschool boys got into a typical guy activity [as applied to movie tie-in action figures]--"My Yoda is bigger than your Yoda."



As Mae West might have said, "Is that a light saber, or are you glad to see me?" There's no record of Mae West ever appearing on "My Favorite Martian" with Ray Walston, but she did make a guest appearance on "Mister Ed" ("Mae West Meets Mister Ed" Episode: #4.21 - 22 March 1964).



When the students were arriving for the four o'clock class, they were discussing where I might have "learned art". One kindergarten girl offered the theory that I learned it "on the Planet Ars". She laughed hysterically, and I really wished I had Ray Walston's antennae.

Gullywashing

It finally rained in Dallas on Thursday after a long dry spell. This was the first rain since Katrina. My students, age 5-8, looked out the window saying it was flooding and we might have to be rescued. Did my best to reassure them, but I have to write a new lesson plan for this week. Big rain storms are not a good topic at the moment!

I'd planned to use Joyce Rossi's book, The Gullywasher, as an introduction to watercolors. The illustrations in the book are lovely and after-rain fresh. The story of the elderly vaquero and his granddaughter is very cute. It's a cowboy tall tale about how getting caught out in a giant rain storm is the cause of old people's wrinkles. Grown-ups get fat because they eat corn and hot chile peppers at the same time. The heat from the peppers makes the corn pop in our stomachs, which get larger and larger. If we take a siesta outside the hummingbirds will pluck out each dark hair on our heads for their nest, causing old folks to have gray or white hair. It explains so much!

I must have taken a long nap on the patio! Might need to stop eating the chile peppers, too.

Dislocated Persons

There are so many things to consider in the Katrina disaster, and the magnitude is so far beyond my comprehension, that I get hung up on small things. There are refugees, evacuees, and displaced persons, some of whom are being relocated from domed stadiums. I can fathom all that. It's the newscasters' use of the term "dislocated persons" that throws me. When I hear it I land in a heap of distracted collarbones far away from the breaking news I was intended to understand.

My online dictionary brings up the scary concept of being separated at the joint:
Adj. 1. dislocated - separated at the joint; "a dislocated knee"; "a separated shoulder" disjointed, separated injured - usually used of physical or mental injury to persons; "injured soldiers"; "injured feelings"

I will not get into dislocated musings about persons "separated at the joint", but it sounds like somebody went to the can at the tavern to read the graffiti, and all his buddies adjourned to the pizza place over in the next block, next door to the Toot'n'Tote'Em.

My high school graduation gift from Uncle Milt and Aunt Margie, the American Heritage Dictionary, c. 1973, that I have used at least once a day for over thirty years, supplies this entry:

Dis-lo-cate...1. To put out from the usual or proper relationship with contiguous parts; displace; shift. 2. Pathology. To displace (a limb or organ) from the normal position; especially, to displace (a bone) from the socket or joint. 3. To throw into confusion or disorder; upset; disturb.

"Contiguous" is joined at the hip in my mind with "Alaska and Hawaii". You got them there contiguous states, and then you got them there noncontiguous states...

My little students spend a surprising amount of time and energy in their "Finding Nemo" underwear manually verifying that their contiguous parts have not been dislocated. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will refrain from mentioning the delay in the federal response to the disaster at this point.

Is your organ dislocated? Did you hear that piece on NPR about a woman in Mississippi trying to find her baby grand?

This funny Halloween book may be out of print now. It addresses dislocated dogs thrown into confusion, so it may be the story W was reading this time.

I'm discombobulated lately. I picked up the 2004 World Almanac and Book of Facts one morning, and took it to work instead of my sack lunch. And speaking of ham and cheese sandwiches left out all day in the hot sun, please compare the stink with the olefactory mess in Louisiana!

It's time for this evening's photo op and live broadcast of the Katrina Song'n'Gong Show:

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea. ...

Head, shoulders, knees and toes,
Knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes,
Knees and toes.
And eyes, and ears, and mouth,
And nose.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes,
Knees and toes.

(Place both hands on parts of body as they are mentioned. During the second term in office speed up, and get faster with each verse. )




Your toe bone connected to your foot bone,
Your foot bone connected to your ankle bone,
Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone,
Your leg bone connected to your knee bone,
Your knee bone connected to your thigh bone,
Your thigh bone connected to your hip bone,
Your hip bone connected to your back bone,
Your back bone connected to your shoulder bone,
Your shoulder bone connected to your neck bone,
Your neck bone connected to your head bone,
I hear the word of the Lord!
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun'
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun'
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun'
I hear the word of the Lord!

Michael, row the boat ashore,Hallelujah.
Michael, row the boat ashore,Hallelujah.
Sister, help to trim the sails,Hallelujah.
Sister, help to trim the sails,Hallelujah.
River Jordan's deep and wide,Hallelujah.
Milk and honey on the other side,Hallelujah.
River Jordan's chilly and cold,Hallelujah.
Chills the body, but warms the soul,Hallelujah.