Husband Goes, Collar Stays

Back in my other life there were always collar stays lurking on counters, dressers, and inside drawers. My spouse's main incentive to keep our marriage together was his need for somebody to pick up his starched shirts at the cleaners.

This section of my current box collage project looks like a quilt block for the heavily starched. I needed a plastic collar stay for my collage. Been through all the drawers, closets, and ironing basket in my search.

After lunch we stopped in at the Jos. A. Bank store where we did our Christmas shopping. Silly me, I imagined they might have collar stays littering the floors of their dressing rooms. My art will have to do without! Jos. A. Bank would be happy to sell me a seven dollar box of collar stays, but had none for free. The arrow points to

YOU ARE HERE.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Valentine Hummingbirds

Our preschool art project this week was making drawings of hummingbirds flying around and sipping nectar from bright red flowers. It isn't hummingbird weather here in North Texas, but it was a good excuse to practice drawing Valentine hearts to make the red flowers hummingbirds love.

It's not snowman weather, either, but the kids loved the idea of starting their hummingbird with a green snowman. I'd love to say I thought that up all by myself, but I got the idea from Drago Art online. What I didn't anticipate was how alive the birds would seem in the kids' drawings. You can almost see the blur of the fast-beating wings!

Prior to the drawing class, I shared three books with the children:

• A Hummingbird's Life, by John Himmelman.
• Little Green, by Keith Baker.
• The Hungry Hummingbird, by April Pulley Sayre .

The preschoolers are still excited about hummingbirds, and the elementary students caught the fever, too. They are drawing imaginative and colorful hummingbird pictures in their free time. I can't show any of those, as the kids took them home to give to their mommies. Bet they are gracing lots of refrigerators!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

My county loves me X O X O X

It's so nice to know somebody wants me for their Valentine. Unfortunately, it is Collin County. Yes, McKinney is beckoning me to spoon and swoon beneath the moon with an outlaw beau. I'm thinking our county seat must be a porch swing.

Roy, Dale, and Trigger are there on the lacy paper doily perimeter singing, "Happy trials to you, Until we meet again. Happy trials to you, Keep smilin' until then." Next Valentines Day I hope Collin County just sends roses!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Perfect attendance perk

The Early Birds herd the worms. That is the reward for having perfect attendance at roll call in January. You get to be a worm wrangler, or a vermimaestro, or even a red wiggler rodeo queen. This is not an infomercial for a miracle-working exercise machine with operators standing by now. This is definitely NOT Ginsu Worms!

We are raising worms in a covered Rubbermaid tub under the restroom sink. The worms are transforming newspaper, autumn leaves, and lunchroom vegetable waste into "castings" or dirt. For the elite Early Bird Worm Herders, each new day is a chance to stir through the tub with a garden fork to create air pockets and bury new compostibles.

This isn't a stinky job, I'm glad to learn. When we opened the tub, I had an olfactory flashback to going fishing in the rain. It smells like fresh dirt--the dirt in that container of worms from the bait shop. My brain supplied the rest of the scene with the red and white bobber and the cane pole at no extra charge!

Our worms are red wigglers. They aren't really those fishing worms of my memory, nightcrawlers. I have much to learn about worms:

Red worms are composting worms, and they turn organic garbage into a manure called castings so high in nutrients it is now known as "black gold." The red worm must have a constant supply of organic material—manure, decomposing fruits and vegetables, leaves, grass, newspaper, cardboard, etc., in order to live. The nightcrawler tunnels around in the soil making it easier for roots to grow and absorb water and nutrients. (From The Red Wriggler Teaching Manual:A Teacher's Resource for Ecology Education.)

I'm tempted to start worm composting at home. The UNL Extension in Lancaster County has an excellent information page. In the meantime, I want to find that funny chapter in Beverly Cleary's classic chapter book, Henry Huggins, about a third-grade boy digging up worms. Maybe I can read it to the students.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Migration in a handbasket

Lucy Locket

Lost her pocket
Kitty Fisher found it
Nothing in it
Nothing in it
But the binding round it

It's a bad sign when two people ask me the same day about the meaning of "to hell in a handbasket." It could be further evidence of the impending apocalypse, but then again it might just be clutchless artisan-roasted beans jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Years ago a coworker convinced me a "handbasket" was the woven repository of thieves' hands chopped off as punishment on a precinct-by-precinct judgment day. Such a visual image! Sort of like the bucket of slippery bluegills, sunfish, and bullheads after a nice day fishing the dredged lakes near Lincoln, but with heavier Biblical overtones.

Best as I can find, the expression "to hell in a handbasket" is just over a century old, and it's closely akin to "going to heaven in a wheelbarrow". A "handbasket" is just a basket with a handle. The term is similar to "handbag," and of the same vintage. Going to either hell or heaven in a handbasket just meant getting there rapidly, portably, and easily.

My apocryphal ancestor, "The Unknown Liska", allegedly walked from the Ukraine to Bohemia with a wheelbarrow. He probably didn't think the trip was rapid or easy. Some versions of this family tale have him pushing his portable mother in the wheelbarrow, and she is clutching her pocketbook. I can see her now, with her nylons sliding down in rolls around her ankles (and her hair done up on pink rollers!).

Nobody calls their purse a handbag now. My grandma used to call her purse a "pocketbook". She had some really groovy crocheted and beaded drawstring bags. These days the term "pocketbook" usually refers to your [always limited] financial resources as in "prices to fit your pocketbook".

A-tisket a-tasket

A green and yellow basket

I wrote a letter to my love

And on the way I dropped it

I dropped it, I dropped it

Yes, on the way I dropped it

A little girlie picked it up

And took it to the market

--obviously that little girl was the aforementioned Kitty Fisher. An apoplectic apocalyptic moment came when my second-graders told me about their on-line chat room. YIKES!



During preschool group time I read the kids a Joanne Ryder book and talked about wild birds flying south for the winter. No, the kids insisted, they fly Southwest. Wanna get away?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Porcine Valentines

This is one of the funniest, most creative pieces of student art in my files. It was created during "free art" time by a six year-old using found items in the scrap box just after we all survived Y2K. I'm so glad she gave her creation to me as a generous plus-size Valentine and cautionary tail.

In the seasonal specials aisle at Albertsons, all the kiddie Valentine cards are actually ads for Disney Princesses, Princess Barbies, and Pixar movies. You gotta love registered trademarks, product tie-ins, and the minds behind them. Only in America could you pay so much for the privilege of advertising someone else's product!

por·cine (pôrsn) adj.
Of or resembling swine or a pig: "a bald porcine old man" Vladimir Nabokov.
[Middle English, from Old French porcin, from Latin porcnus, from porcus, pig; see porko- in Indo-European roots.]


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Hyphenated married bird names

The preschoolers are learning to identify common birds. Red-headed woodpecker, ruby-throated hummingbird, red-winged blackbird. The older children are learning more exotic birds, like the scarlet macaw.

I'm thrilled that they are learning synonyms and subtleties for red. Crimson, scarlet, and ruby just make language more interesting!

To hyphenate, or not to hyphenate? That was my question. Some of our bird materials hyphenate "red-headed" and "red-winged". Others do not. My trusty Birds of North America prefers hyphenation across the board.

Visiting with one girl about the woodpecker, I remarked that it is a "very handsome" bird. "Yes," she said, "he looks ready to get married." She seemed to think the bird's markings resembled a rented wedding tuxedo! I can see her point. He just needs a bowtie. What will the bride be wearing? Are the owl and the pussycat invited?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Recalibrating expectations

What basic best practices benchmarks do you use to decide if your day belongs in the + or - column? This was not a stellar day in the preschool classroom. Still, I can honestly place it in the Hello, Win Column:

• Blood on the rug? I expected my adolescent sons to problem-solve and negotiate most situations themselves with out phoning me at work. I had a job to do, and they did, too. Their job was to avoid creating situations that could lead to permanent carpet stains and loss of damage deposits!


• Trip to the emergency room? As a play-date and birthday party mom, I rated any gathering of small children that didn't require tetanus shots, ice packs, insurance ID cards, or stitches as a success.


• Details at six? A day of parenting or teaching when I don't show up on the video footage from the local station is a good day.


• Bon Appétit? Anything I cook without alarming the smoke detector.

"Hello, Win Column" was the signature phrase of longtime Texas Rangers broadcaster Mark Holtz. It is also the name of a fund to host cancer patients and their families at Rangers games.

A stellar day does include some bird-watching. A Steller's Jay is darker than a blue jay, but has a similar crest and loud, harsh call. It lives in the western mountain regions of North America. The Steller's Jay is named after Georg Steller, a German naturalist who accompanied the Vitus Bering expedition to Alaska sponsored by Catherine the Great in the 1740's.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Green-feathered friends

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Preschool Geographic

"Hey, look at these boombahs!," one kindergarten boy told another. "Wow!," said his friend. They were sitting side-by-side in the library looking at a book.

Was this a flashback to my Sixties male classmates pouring over National Geographic pages to marvel at large, dangling gender differences? Yikes! I'm not sure I want the preschoolers discovering this stuff while I'm overseeing after-lunch free time.

Was it a case of phonic huh-huh-hubba-buh-buh-bubba? I tuh-tuh-tuh-tippy-toed up behind the boys, who were still gazing appreciatively at the picture.

"Guys," I said in my most Jane Goodall-ish voice. "Those animals are called baboons, not boombahs." [There must be an inflection of "dudes" to convey this information!] "Oh, yeah," they remembered.

:

Baboons who live in the African plains spend about one-third of their time sleeping, and when awake they divide their time between travelling, finding and eating food, and free leisure time - which basically consists of interacting, or grooming each other's fur to pick out lice. It's not a very exciting life, yet not much has changed in the million years since humans evolved out of common simian ancestors. The requirements of life still dictate that we spend our time in a way that is not that different from the African baboons. Give or take a few hours, most people sleep for one-third of the day, and use the remainder to work, travel, and rest in more or less the same proportions as the baboons do. And as the historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has shown, in thirteenth-century French villages - which were among the most advanced in the world at the time - the most common leisure pursuit was still that of picking lice out of each other's hair. Now, of course, we have television.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from Flow.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Truckin' Parrot

The big disappointment of our preschool study of birds is the reluctance of birds to come to our birdfeeder outside the class window. It may be time to bite the bullet and move the feeder to a different side of the building. This is my current three a.m. fret.

The children are enjoying working with a small box of parrot feathers. They count feathers, arrange them in order by size, look at them with the magnifying glass, and make feather pictures.



This student's feather design tickled me. The bird has the footwork of R. Crumb's old "Keep On Truckin'" comic drawings from the early Seventies.

In art class, we are still using letters and basic shapes to start our bird drawings. We made a parrot using a raindrop and a large S. We were sure to give our parrots little surfer shorts. Back when Bob the Bird had his broken leg I realized the importance of bird shorts. Poor Bob looked so strange without the feathers at the top of his leg.

The children painted their parrots bright green, red, and orange--no Norwegian Blues. I'll post some of their images soon. In the meantime, I might have to find that Tom Robbins book about the parrot and the pyramid, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Ginko and Bertoia

The postcard from Valley House Gallery announcing its exhibit of recent paintings and sculpture by David Dreyer has been sitting on my desk since early January. The gray painting with the lemon yellow ginko leaf, black and white shapes reminds me of my dad's living room. I grew up with a yellow Eames rocking chair just about that ginko's color, black Bertoia chairs, and white tables. I turned the postcard image upside down, and it looked even more like a table in the living room.

Yesterday was perfect for visiting the Valley House Gallery and its sculpture garden in between errands and searching for red and white peppermint beads at craft and art stores. It was a sunny, calm, light-sweater-only day after a bleak and very windy week.

The postcard was sitting next to my new AARP magazine with Jack Nicholson on the cover and an ad for replenishing, radiant makeup on the back. My visit to the gallery was replenishing, too!

I have no idea if David Dreyer, adjunct instructor of art at SMU, ever sat in a Diamond Chair designed in 1952 by Harry Bertoia for Knoll. He would recognize the airy wire framework and sculptural form, though.

The Valley House Gallery exhibit continues through next Saturday. David Dreyer's works will be on display at The MAC (The McKinney Avenue Contemporary) March 8-April 25.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Werewolf bath maneuvers

Things got muddled when I started looking for the origin of the childrens' song "Looby Loo". I remember singing this song with the words "all on a Saturday night" instead of "hickory dickory dock." The Saturday night reference might be to the tradition of the family Saturday night bath in the galvanized tub in the kitchen.

Alternate versions of "Looby Loo" include the familiar part of the Hokey Pokey about putting your left hand in and out. They may be about testing the temperature of bathwater heated on the cast iron stove....

Then there's the barnstorming aeronautic version of the song preferred by most male children:

Here we go loop de loop
Here we go loop de lie
Here we go loop de loop
All on a Saturday night.

A loop is simply a 360 degree change in pitch. Because the airplane will climb several thousand feet during the maneuver, it is started at a relatively high airspeed and power setting (if these are too low, the airspeed will decay excessively in the climb and the maneuver will have to be discontinued.) The pilot, once satisfied with the airspeed and throttle setting, will pull back on the stick until about three Gs are felt. The nose of the airplane will go up and a steadily increasing climb will be established. As the maneuver continues, positive G is maintained by continuing to pull. The airplane continues to increase its pitch until it has pitched through a full circle. When the world is right-side-up again, the pilot releases the back stick pressure and returns the aircraft to level flight.

This makes me want to watch my VHS tape of "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines!" Or you could view my walking buddy's son's You Tube flight simulation videos.

And where's the werewolf in this swampy mud mess? The Cajun legend of D'loup-garou would make a good Saturday night lullaby. The Blue Dog painter, George Rodrigue, gave me my first hint of this cautionary canine lurking in Louisiana, just waiting to scare the holy hokey pokey right out of wayward kiddies.

The "Looby Loo" song has origins in America, Ireland, Canada, and England. And so I close this post with a link to Warren Zevon singing "Werewolves of London." Just remind him to flush and wash!

I saw a werewolf drinkin a pina colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect.
ahhhooooo, werewolves of London
ahhhooooo, going Looby Loo!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Intermission at the Met

During the second intermission of the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's "Die Walküre" today (heard on WRR 101.1 fm), there was a brief interview with David Sylvester, the Assistant Wardrobe Supervisor. His job is making sure each singer arrives on stage wearing his costume just as the designer intended.

Sometimes singers are not thrilled with their costume and pretend to have lost part of it. Sometimes they want to wear their costume in a manner they consider more personally interesting, comfortable, or flattering.

Oh, geez, can I relate?! My students are always trying to lose their hats or wear their jackets upside down. Sometimes they get confused about which coat hook is theirs. More often they have pink furry princess parka envy, and just "borrow" someone else's coat.

Does this David Sylvester person ever have to teach the singers to spread their costume out on the floor, stand by the collar or hood, put their arms in the sleeves, and flip the whole garment up over their head? Does he have to stand behind them and reach around to zip their zippers, lining up the engine and coal car before pulling the train along the track?

I have a lot of experience reminding my little singers to fetch their lunchboxes and the notes from their cubbies. I could easily expand my repertoire to remind singers to fetch their swords, veils, and mustaches. True, my little singers are singing Looby Loo* in raspy false baritones with contorted lyrics, but the skills required for the job are the same.

Most tellingly, Mr. Sylvester reports his essential role reminding soloists to use the facilities. "Did you go before you put on your costume?," he asks them. "Are you sure?"

I've been asking this question professionally since I went back to work in 1994. Before that I asked it at home for a decade. True, I was the Assistant Wardrobe Supervisor for snowsuits, swim lessons, karate class, scout meetings, and peewee sports teams, not the Metropolitan Opera. But David Sylvester didn't say anything about asking the singers if they remembered to fuh-fuh-fluh-flush and wah-wah-wash their hands!

*My students prefer these Looby Loo lyrics:

Here we go looby loo
Here we go looby light
Here we go looby loo
Hickory dickory dock!

[repeat ad nauseum]


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cense and Sensorbility

My Buick, a '96 Skylark, has a new crank sensor in this week's effort to make it start reliably. My unfortunate repair shop has been sucked into the vortex for "Stump The Mechanic"--yet another excellent reality show to get us through the writers' strike.

What is a crank sensor?
Let's ask Wikipedia:
A crank sensor is a component used in an internal combustion engine to monitor the position or rotational speed of the crankshaft. This information is used by engine management systems to control ignition system timing and other engine parameters. Before electronic crank sensors were available, the distributor would have to be manually adjusted to a timing mark on the engine....
That sure clears it up for me!

What is Crankshaft?
Crankshaft is a spin-off from the popular Funky Winkerbean comic by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers.

Does my Skylark have a crank sensor?
Does a 1994 Buick Skylark have a throttle position sensor or a crank sensor?
It has both.

Does my Buick have a Crank censor?

Only if it gets really crabby!

Why does my car need one?
A good question. Maybe to eat up finances. Possibly to deal with objectionable, harmful or sensitive situations when it fails to start. [See censorship]

Does my car have Spell Check???
From the web: Has anybody had any experience with the crank position censor? I have herd from somewhere that when it goes out, the Jeep will not move. The motor will just keep cranking over and will not start. Where can I get one online that is cheeper than a dealer?

Or as one parakeet cheeped to another, "Y'know what I herd? .... "Sheep!"

What is a censor?

As any of June Williams' former Greco-Roman History students will tell you, a censor is a Roman magistrate in charge of the census, finances, and public morality.

Or from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

censor (n.) 1531, Roman magistrate who took censuses and oversaw public morals, from L. censere "to appraise, value, judge," from PIE base *kens- "speak solemnly, announce." Transferred sense of "officious judge of morals and conduct" is from 1592; of books, plays, later films, etc., 1644. The verb is from 1882.

[Is "officious censuses" the same as that time the Oklahoma allergist asked my kids to sneeze on a piece of Reynolds Wrap for lab analysis? Or was that offensive sinuses?]

What is a crank? For that we must search the Online Etymology Dictionary:

O.E. cranc- preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument," from P.Gmc. base *krank-, and related to crincan "to bend, yield." Eng. retains the literal sense of the ancient root, while Ger. and Du. krank "sick," formerly "weak, small," is a figurative use. The sense of "an eccentric person," especially one who is irrationally fixated, is first recorded 1833, said to be from the crank of a barrel organ, which makes it play the same tune over and over, but more likely a back-formation from cranky "cross-tempered, irritable" (1821), and evolving from earlier senses of "a twist or fanciful turn of speech" (1594) or "inaccessible hole or crevice" (1562). Popularized 1881 when it was applied to Horace Greeley during Guiteau's trial. The verb meaning "turning a crank" is first attested 1908, with reference to automobile engines.

Guiteau, as we all know, assassinated President James A. Garfield.

What is a sensor?

This noun dates from circa 1928:

a device that responds to a physical stimulus (as heat, light, sound, pressure, magnetism, or a particular motion) and transmits a resulting impulse (as for measurement or operating a control)

How is a censer used in the Greek Orthodox Church?

I was really amazed the first time I visited the Greek Orthodox Church in Lincoln with my junior high Sunday School class. The use of burning incense in the swinging metal censers was so different from my Congregational-UCC church experience. Incense is the symbol of prayers rising to heaven, and we all know the Buick could use some divine intervention!

Bonus question

Who was James Ensor?

He was that Belgian symbolist painter of grotesque masks, skulls, and corpses. The mechanics look more like Edvard Munch's "Scream" when they see me drive up in the Buick.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder