When the down escalator is down

Missed the train after the rehearsal this evening. The escalator down from the Park & Ride level to the track was broken. Plus, the elevator was unavailable because repairmen were moving loads of escalator stairsteps down to the track level. By the time I found the stairs and went down the three or four flights, my train was pulling out of the station.


With a half hour to wait, I moseyed over to watch the action at the repair site. I did not say, "Pardon me, boys, is that the broken escalation? Woo-o-woo!" They were very polite and glad to talk about their work, but I didn't want to scare them breaking into a song and dance routine.


An escalator step looks much bigger laying on the sidewalk than it does when you are standing on it. The repair guys told me each step costs five hundred dollars, and they were going to replace fifty steps. That amounted to half the steps on the Mockingbird Station down escalator.




As subway escalators go, Mockingbird Station's is a baby. I've never been down the Wheaton Station escalator on the DC Metro. It descends 230 feet, making it the longest in the Western Hemisphere. DART's longest escalator descends ten stories at the Cityplace Station, and has 213 steps.


Dupont Circle is my favorite Metro escalator. I love riding up into the Circle. Best of all, I love the anticipation of going to the Phillips Collection nearby. An afternoon at the Phillips can't be beat.

Growing up in the Sixties, I watched shopping mommies in pointy-toed/pointy-heeled shoes ride the escalator at Miller and Paine department store standing on their tiptoes so their heels wouldn't get stuck on the steps. In those days one still had the option of telling an elevator operator, "Three please," instead of riding a "heel-catcher".

Millions of kids have probably had escalator nightmares of forgetting to jump off an escalator and being sucked into the netherlands below the floor. Isn't that how Pinocchio ended up in that place where kids were turned into donkeys? My best friend, Janice, had escalatorphobia to the point that we ALWAYS rode the elevator, not just at the downtown department stores, but also at Gateway Mall. To balance that, my Danger Baby had elevatorphobia, so we always rode the escalator or climbed stairs.

Similar shoes are in vogue now, so I asked the repair guys if the escalator broke because obese women in pointy-heel shoes got sucked under the floor to donkey land. No. It's the wheely briefcase carts that get stuck. No, obese white-collar workers don't usually get sucked under to donkey land holding onto their wheely carts. The white-collar workers yank their briefcases free at the bottom of the escalator, damaging the stairsteps. If you see those people, better warn them about the donkey ears.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Technology peachick yelps

This week's art class project was about peacocks, continuing our bird unit. I needed a good, quick introduction to peafowl, which I found in the Plano Library. Colorful Peacocks, by Deborah Underwood, published by Lerner, was an excellent start, and the children retained the information. They especially liked learning the terms for the peafowl family--peacock, peahen, and peachick. Kids are kids, and they will forever like to snicker about bathroom words. The students were also impressed that a peacock grows its tailfeathers and becomes a grown-up at age three. I bet they get possession of the remote control, too.

My little students were born into a completely different technological world than their teachers. We have trouble rewinding the VHS tape about birds using the "universal remote". It's definitely a universe removed for me. If we handed the remote off to our college interns they'd have the video set instantly and tell us we were using an outdated media format.

In 1960 we went on a Colorado vacation and visited the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The strongest memory is of the peacocks hollering "yelp" as we walked among the animal cages. I was amazed that a bird so beautiful could have such an ugly call.

Wanting to share the call of the peacock with the kids, I went Googling. Finding peacock sounds online was easy. Getting one saved and burned on a cd was a struggle. Windows Media Player rejected my burning proposals on grounds of copyrighted materials. My cd player rejected my burnt offerings with no explanation. After an hour of effort, I had one peacock yelp burned on a cd that only played on a computer.

All over the world billions of people are legally and illegally downloading copyrighted music and videos. They do it as easily as I flick a light switch ... or dial the kitchen rotary phone!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Charley Harper's Desert

There we are in 1992 inside La Ventana, the grand stone arch in El Malpais National Monument. Danger Baby is on the left, then me, the Woolly Mammoth, and Mr. Speech and Debate. If ever I was going to post CollageMama's legs online, the 1992 legs are probably the best. Back then I was running 10K races and weighed about 120 pounds. True, I was suffering debilitating insomnia, eating disorders, and panic attacks, and my marriage was beginning to shatter.

Otherwise, it was a great New Mexico vacation! In the visitor center shop, my youngest and I were fascinated by a poster of birds and animals around a desert cactus. Although it would add to the complications of the flight home with three young sons, we had to have the poster.



Charley Harper's poster of desert animals for the National Park Service remains one of our favorite things. Later that summer of '92, the Woolly Mammoth would break his arm, and then start kindergarten. Pretty amazing that the poster is tacked up in his bedroom, three homes and sixteen years later, as he's now a junior in college. More than his brothers, he has chosen and arranged everything in his space, so I know he is still fond of the poster design.

We have an identical Desert poster in our preschool classroom, and it has the same intrigue for the students. They love finding the nocturnal and diurnal animals and naming the birds. I'm amazed to find that the poster is still available through the National Park Service for only nine dollars. Maybe I should order some back-ups for future generations!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Sleepless Walking Down O, P, and Q

More thoughts on moving mental furniture:

By the time I was seven, I was spending lots of mental energy fighting off sleep by visualizing the route from Lincoln to Pierce, Nebraska. I would imagine walking the 120 miles from my house to Grandma's, by way of Seward, Columbus, Madison, Norfolk, and Hadar ("Hello Hadar, See Ya Later!"). I would visualize the Blue Boot shoe store signs and windmills along the two-lane highways just in case I ever had to run away from home, or perhaps be called upon to assume the role of my parents just like Bert Park's description of the duties of Miss America's runner-up.

What are my little preschoolers visualizing to keep from surrendering to a nice afternoon nap? What mental furniture are they rearranging? What routes are they reviewing? Why do they fight so hard against the after-lunch siesta cherished by everyone from college freshman to senior citizen? It's the sort of thing that makes me lose my marbles...

We all have things we fret about to ward off sleep or to retrieve sleep at two a.m. I review the Seven Dwarfs, the Seven Deadly Sins, the strange names of the Goss sisters (Loy, Billy, Vin, Effa Dale, and Alice June), the three members of the superband Cream (I forget Jack Bruce). "The whole nine yards" refers to machine gun ammo. It was Bobby Gentry who sang "Ode to Billy Joe". Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. The Greek alphabet--pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi psi omega won't ya go to sleep!

Yesterday at the post office after writing out the Express Mail and customs forms to mail the camera battery charger to Italy, I couldn't remember the four number PIN for my debit card. Yet I can blurt out the fourteen numbers of my library card with ease.

My dad and I have tried mental strolling down the main street of Pierce from the 1920s through the 1970s. Other times I contemplate the shimmering, revolving Hamm's beer sign with the bear in the canoe I saw walking into the package store in Columbus, Nebraska, that time when the public restrooms in the park along the river were locked. Must have been my first time in a tavern, as I can still see it clearly over forty years later. Maybe 1963... Hamms the beer refreshing...Hamms the beer refreshing...



I've lost the ability to name the counties of Nebraska by their assigned car license plate numbers based on population. Yes, Lancaster was 2, Douglas 1, Sarpy 3, Hall 8, and Platte 10. I've forgotten the rest, even Red Willow County. Colfax? That's something to worry about at two or three a.m.



Some nights I attempt an imaginary 1974 university pub crawl. These sleepless icy sidewalk treks begin at 13th and Q Streets inside the Hong Kong Pizza King, the spiritual home of ham fried rice. They head west to Casey's at about 11th and P with the chili dogs, then across the street to the tavern that had dime draws. What was its name? Across P again past Der Loaf Und Stein, the Greek hangout, which was later transformed into a quiche/french onion soup/spinach salad/fern bar. Then down the alley from 13th to 14th, from O to P to Barrymore's.

Barrymore's was my favorite space. The bar was in the backstage area of the old Stuart Theater. What could be finer than sipping a bourbon sour while staring up into the catwalks? Maybe having a sandwich of cream cheese, walnut, pimentos, and olives on rye?

Back into the icy alley toward 14th and the Zoo Bar. Paying the cover charge for live blues from Chicago. Or maybe a stop at The Watering Hole where the decor was peanut shells and lost car keys nailed on the wooden beams?

Do rabbits contemplate their fortune cookies after lights out? I've been dreaming that Norton, the class rabbit, got loose in the Walgreens where my sons used to work. The bunny would be better off picking up take-out from Hong Kong Pizza King and planning his next escape up Highway 81 through Humphrey and David City.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Losing my marbles

I just wanted some spares to keep in the glove compartment of the Buick. Haven't you ever wanted to rush out to your car in the parking lot when you felt like you were losing your marbles?



No? Then you might not work with children! My test group of teachers all reported experiencing this phenomenom.

It's not easy to find replacement marbles these days, probably thanks to consumer product safety litigation. No one wants a child to choke on an aspirated marble. We don't want anyone [especially middle-aged teachers] to slip on a marble on the floor.

Still, I needed some marbles. Will the world be safer if I can't find any marbles at Toys R Us on a Sunday afternoon? None to be had at Hobby Lobby either. Bet kids are still sticking beans, pencils, and Legos up their nostrils in this brave new marbleless world!

Now I was obsessed. I drove to Hobby Town, the store where my kids bought models, paints, and miniatures for tabletop battle games like Warhammer. Hobby Town only had little bags of serious marbles for players who know the rules--$3.99 for a dozen and a half.



Thank heaven for US Toy/Constructive Playthings new store in Plano. That is where you can still buy a little party favor bag of marbles for seventy cents.



These are the marbles from my childhood, and possibly some considerably older. Should you be nutty enough to wonder about the origin of the expression, "losing one's marbles," I recommend this column by Ian Mayes in The Guardian. Then you can spend your Sunday afternoon wondering if this expression comes from the Elgin marbles, the game of marbles, or movable French mental furniture. I didn't even know the French had mental furniture, but if they do, the rabbits will chew on it.

This is from Wikipedia:

The little boy's mother was off to market. She worried about her boy, who was always up to some mischief. She sternly admonished him, "Be good. Don't get into trouble. Don't eat all the cabbage. Don't spill all the milk. Don't throw stones at the cow. Don't fall down the well." The boy had done all of these things on other market days. Hoping to head off new trouble, she added, "And don't stuff beans up your nose!" This was a new idea for the boy, who promptly tried it out.

© 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

On top of spaghetti

I lost my poor meatsauce when somebody sneezed. It slid off the platter and into the silverware drawer. I'll be running knives, spoons, and forks through the dishwasher forever more.

Thank heaven for Soft Scrub, as it's cutting the tomato and grease combo to get the red stain off the white counter. The sauce splashed everywhere, so I'll be finding reminders for weeks!

It was a sad end to a culinary masterpiece, if I do say so myself. The sauce had ground Italian sausage, fresh cilantro, garlic, celery, zucchini, Roma tomatoes, and mushrooms, all sauteed in olive oil my son brought from Italy, parsley, basil, oregano, and a big can of crushed tomatoes.

This is the way we used to sing this favorite scout song:

On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese.
I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed.
It rolled off the table, and onto the floor,
And then my poor meatball rolled right out the door.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The parsnip stands alone

What would Beatrix Potter do this weekend to mollify the preschool class rabbit? Offer parsley and parsnips? Lettuces and salsify?

Norton only wants to chew on items in my condo that are expressly forbidden. Most of the time he is quite happy sleeping in his cage with his head upon a parsnip. I felt bad about my tough love approach the first night of his visit, so I got a small bag of parsnips at Albertsons. This was a first, as I'm generally afraid of white root vegetables. It's a long story involving creamed turnips and future in-laws, but I'm out of therapy now, and we just won't mention it.

I cut up two parsnips for the ham-bone crockpot soup, and gave one to Norton. Then I went back to hoeing just like Mr. MacGregor. Norton snorted at the parsnip, and went back to flinging hay around his cage. Clearly, he was not placated. I offered him three delicious and nutritious cooked edamame, and he dumped them to the cage bottom newspaper. He'd already made his opinion of fresh green beans known. Nothing was going to do but a carrot, an apple core, and a celery heart, pronto!

Two days later, the parsnip is still vegetabla non grata. My soup was delicious, but Norton still snorts at his veggie. He would rather hide in a watering can than nibble on that parsnip. I haven't asked about his former in-laws since I don't want to search the Yellow Pages for a rabbit psychologist.

My young sons and I loved listening to cassette tapes of Bunnicula stories on long car rides. James and Deborah Howe's stories of the vampire rabbit presumed to suck the juice out of vegetables would have us laughing so hard our seatbelts hurt. The Celery Stalks At Midnight is one of my all-time favorite book titles.

Just as an aside, I was sad to read the obituary for Suzanne Pleshette this weekend. It seems completely plausible that her Emily Hartley would give Bob Newhart her support and sardonic advice for dealing with Norton's parsniphobia. Suzanne Pleshette ranks second to Barbara Feldon for favorite voices.

Montessori mat work observation

In a Montessori classroom students choose the work they will do, then prepare a space on a rug or table mat before retrieving the materials for the work. If the student has already had a lesson on the work, he/she is able to proceed. If not, the student waits for a lesson with the teacher before beginning the work.

This orderly process is one of the things that attracted me to my current job in the preschool classroom. It is a lesson I often need myself. For instance, today I am fiddling around the condo instead of

• choosing to pay bills
• preparing a table for that task
• getting the checkbook, pen, box-o-bills, stamps, and household ledger
• sitting myself down and doing the work!

Like many of the preschoolers, I would rather visit the US Postal Service website to find out about my new Jimmy Stewart and Jury Duty stamps, edit photos in Photoshop, or go with my walking buddy to Bath & Body Works at the mall (even though I'm not a fruity fragrant lotion cult member).

I'm so impressed that Norton, the class rabbit has been spreading his table mat before beginning new work this weekend. I haven't had to suggest work for Norton, although I have needed to redirect his attention when he wandered off to nibble on baskets and slipcovers.

"Observing One Child" notes from Montessori For Everyone:

• Is the child able to choose work independently? If not, who suggests the work, the teacher or another child?

• Do they get work out in the correct order - rug or table mat first, then the materials? Are the materials used for their correct purpose? Was the work complete, or did the child need to get materials from another area of the room?

It's a rainy day. It would be so much more fun to watch Jimmy Stewart in "Harvey" than to pay those bills! I think Norton would enjoy it, don't you?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

"I got my mind right, Boss"

Norton, the class rabbit, was annoyed. His owner went skiing without him. He let us know his disapproval with the situation early in the morning by attacking his hay box with pro wrestling flair. The children loved the display as Norton flipped the cardboard box around his cage, bit it, tore it apart, tackled it, and held it down for the count. Maybe he should run for governor!

Norton let me know I forgot his apple core and romaine heart, and was not impressed with my story of taking my son to the DART station before work. He jumped up onto flower pots fifteen inches tall to bite the plants, and tested every opportunity to escape the room. The children were delighted with the rabbit rodeo.

Norton climbed all over one teaching assistant, and piddled on another. At the end of the day he sulked and snorted half in and half out of his pet carrier before the ride in the Buick.

I was sorry to do it, but this rabbit needed to spend a night in the box, Cool Hand Luke style, to get his mind right. He snorted at the carrot, green bean, and lettuce amenities I provided, but eventually sneak-ate the carrot and lettuce. Still grumpy, he shoved the green bean around his cage like a preschooler with a plate of brussel sprouts. I gave him a ragged old placemat, and he did a fine matador imitation with it. That seemed to wear him out, so we both hit the hay.

This morning Norton seems to have accepted the situation. He came out of his cage to inspect the living room, but did not venture into the kitchen. I think he got his mind right, but he may just be biding his time till he can escape to grin his Paul Newman grin.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Feels like painting in oils

This stitching project feels the most like painting yet. I'm playing with layers of opacity and translucency, with line and shapes. My goal is a backlit view of a gourd vine on a fence with a majestic orb spider and web among the browning leaves.

The colors are the earth pigments Richard Trickey listed for our Oil Painting 201 palette in the drafty Richards Hall classroom: raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue. Colors of rich compost, primordial stew, and fossil fuel meet mixtures of turp and linseed oil...

The design uses positive and negative collage concepts from Gail Butt's Drawing, Composition, and Watercolor classes. How many times do I contemplate his definition of drawing as "linear, monochromatic, or incomplete"? Whether I cook, write, or stitch, I think of his color lecture about "delicate, rich, or bold".

The process of stitching is my on-going internal discussion with James Eisentrager about saving and discarding parts of a painting. Eisentrager particularly warned about avoiding "the precious save" of the favorite section when it impairs the development of the whole form. In my mind he sits at that gray university desk in his smoky office patiently opening my mind to large decisive areas of creamy cake frosting or clear broth, instead of a picture full of anxious narrow strokes (or stitches).



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Birds, Squirrels, and God's Little Lice

What to name the two groups of children for preschool art class? A new semester means shuffling the groups as a few kids moved up to elementary class, and we have some new students. Because most of the children aren't readers, we post a symbol for each group with photos of the students in that group.

Last semester we had the Color Wheel Group and the Baked Potato Group. That's because everybody can draw a potato. Even the preschoolers who say, "I can't...," or, "it's too hard," agree that a potato is easy to draw.

When you break things down to the simplest part, the baked potato, drawing gets easier. That's my philosophy of life--find the baked potato, then take the decisions as butter or sour cream instead of life and death. It's warm, satisfying, simple, and sure takes away fear of failure.

Now it is time for new groups and symbols. Shirts and Skins won't do! Neither will Curly Fries and Hash Browns.

My dad told a memorable tale of his Pierce Congregational Sunday School class back in the late-1920s. His group was named "God's Little Lights" as opposed to "God's Little Lambs". Of course, the kids referred to themselves as "God's Little Lice". This story was recalled when the first President Bush used the slogan, "a thousand points of light." Now I remember "God's Little Lice" every time we have a case of head lice at school.

"Head lice" are two words teachers dread even more than "pink eye". Head lice are equal opportunity vermin, and no school is spared. By the time every child's scalp is inspected, most teachers feel itchy all over! I've been having waves of psychosomatic itchiness at a thousand points of lice for several days now. Oh, the power of suggestion!

No, no, no. We can't name the art groups The Head Lice and The Pink Eyes! That will never do. How about calling them the Birds and the Squirrels?

And so, I have out my copy of Everyday Doings At Home this evening, looking at Mother, Bobby, and Bettie Squirrel. My schoolteacher great-auntie Em used this book to teach courtesy on weekdays to the same kids who were "God's Little Lice" on Sundays. Kids haven't changed all that much in the past eighty years. I bet Auntie Em had her occasional thousand points of itchiness, too!





© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Nancy Lou and the East German judge

Talk about Olympic pressure! I did fine on the compulsories in the Albertson's self-checkout: carton of OJ beep; Ragu beep/bag; can of beans beep/bag; Rotel beep; bag of little carrots beep; bag-o-frozen-tilapia beep; dishwasher detergent beep/bag.

Just when I started my free-style performance of the choreographed items with their much higher degree of difficulty, the East German judge showed up behind me in line. He announced is disgust with my technique with loud "hvrumvphs" and steroid-packed sneers. I could do nothing to please him.

The roma tomatoes lacked a sticker so I had to Look Up Item. I stuck the birthday card into my purse, which set off demands from the checkout machine to bag the item. The plastic bags developed static cling and refused to open. The beer required store approval, and the attendant was off somewhere in la-la land and slow to key in the code. My purse bumped the machine, setting off the Unexpected Item In Bagging Area complaints, and then my debit card wasn't scanning right. That must be the grocery store equivalent of failing to stick the dismount. From the corner of my eye it was obvious the judge was marking down my scores and bristling with Cold War animosity. One more "hvrumvph" and I might have Tonya Hardinged the guy with my balky grocery cart.

Stick: To stick a landing is to land, and remain standing without requiring a step. A proper stick position is with legs bent, shoulders above hips, arms forward. Sticking consistantly takes regular practice. http://www.drillsandskills.com/definitions

Sticking a landing with two full grocery bags in each hand consistently takes nerves of steel. Now there's a reality show for the writers' strike! "Where are they now?'' Vote for your favorite Olympic skaters and gymnasts as they duke it out for charity dollars in the Albertson's

Check-Out With The Stars:

Mary Lou Retton

Michelle Kwan

Dorothy Hamill

Nancy Kerrigan

Olga Korbut

Nadia Comăneci

Peggy Fleming

Jayne Torvill

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cupholder Bamboo

For Christmas I received a "lucky bamboo" cutting. The giver explained that its three stalks would bring happiness. I missed the whole feng shi phenomenon, oblivious to the language of the stalks:

Three stalks for happiness; five stalks for wealth; six stalks for health. Four stalks, however, are always avoided since the word "four" in Chinese sounds too similar to the Chinese word for "death"!

It sounds a lot like the language of the sidewalk that I learned in kindergarten:

Two's company; three's a crowd; four on the sidewalk is never allowed.

I had a lot more to learn about my lucky bamboo. Interesting to find it isn't bamboo at all, but Dracaena, "a resilient member of the lily family that grows in the dark, tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia and Africa." Sounded just like the upstairs of my condo when my sons were home taking multiple showers and heaping stuff all over the bedroom floors.

Now it's more of a desert up there, so I brought the bamboo back downstairs. I wouldn't want it to be lonely, just sitting up there plotting some sort of curse.

What I really need is a bamboo that brings luck to my Buick. How many stalks should I plant in the cupholder?

My Seussian Printer

This one, I think, is called a Yink. I've had so many printers over the past two decades, and they all drink ink. My Canon iP3500 prefers pink ink.

True, it could be I've demanded much of my magenta cartridge. I prefer to imagine one of the creatures from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is slurping all the ink.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder