Magnets on the move

Have appts. Need magnets. Sounds like a cheap classified ad.

My walking buddy moved her father out of his apartment into an "independent living facility with amenities." You would think the amenities would include fresh refrigerator magnets, but we are not living in utopia! This is not a nanny state. Sometimes we have to tough it out on our own.



Medicare doesn't cover refrigerator magnets even if yours are pitiful and don't stick anymore. My buddy's dad has doctor appointments to keep track of so he needs magnets.

Medicare doesn't cover my own dad's wheelchair now because he is in a skilled care facility instead of assisted living. This post cannot detail the convoluted thinking behind this ruling. I'm thinking that Dad's wheelchair has a lot of metal parts where we could use magnets to post advertisements at a price--Sort of like a slow-moving sandwich board to promote crocheted kleenex holders handmade by some lady named Ruby.

When I visit Dad it is depressing to see the family photos on the old fridge. My sister, brother, and I are gathered in these freeze frames from the weekend after our mom died in 2005. We look exhausted, stiff, and weepy stuck up with assorted magnets, frozen for the long haul at a very bad moment in time.

I'm opposed to grimy, old refrigerator magnets, and support No Refrigerator Left Behind. The other day I followed a pickup truck hauling a refrigerator. The fridge had been wrapped in many rounds of Saran Wrap to hold the door shut and all the magnets and photos in place like a sandwich-wrapped appliance mummy in situ. I tried to take a photo with my phone, but took a photo of myself instead!



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Limestone

Today I got sufficiently foolhardy to climb down the slope to the creek. I was following an orange butterfly, and hoping for a better view of the tiny fish enjoying the sun-warmed shallow water.

The butterfly was long gone when I got down there, but I got a good reminder that tree roots are holding this whole bank together. The limestone chips and erodes easily, creating concavities.



The macho mallards weren't interested in my insights into the precarious nature of the whole enterprise on their spring break afternoon.



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

The woodpecker of the day

Take my picture, please, please, please!


Today the red-bellied woodpecker wanted to appear on the cover of the supermarket checkout tabloid. It was jealous of yesterday's downy woodpecker. There's no other explanation for its cooperation with the papparazzi.



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Honoring a dead anole

Fifteen years ago when I desperately needed a connection to nature, I found small, color-changing anole lizards appearing on my patio, outside my workplace, and sunning on every rock. They were all telling me to Pay Attention, to start looking outside myself and my little drama. I probably wouldn't have noticed, except that they suddenly seemed to be everywhere. In a way, those anoles saved my life, or at least my sanity.



Now I am paying attention to the changes in an anole on my front sidewalk. He first appeared on my front stoop in mid-February, way too early for anoles to be out. When this lizard appeared again the first week of March, still stressed and brown. I hoped he was a sign of arriving spring. I put a warm towel on the sidewalk next to him and hoped he would feel better.

A few days later arriving home after work I found him again on the sidewalk, this time dead. Surely a cat, rat, or opossum would carry him off in the night.

It seemed too sad to scoop the lizard into my trash bag on the way to the dumpster. I could bury him, but maybe I should wait for insects to consume him and save his skeleton to show my students.

Each day for over a week I've expected the anole to disappear. Instead the skin shows more color everyday. No profound insights here about life, death, or returning to dust. I don't want to be morbid or gross. I'm just thanking the lizards for their insistent command to observe nature, and to notice by paying attention once again to a small reminder.




© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Princess socks and fairy shoes

Fairies will soon be dancing all along my creek judging from all the pink shoes and booties hanging from the branches of the redbuds. I suspect the tiny ruby-crowned kinglets will be their green-clad handsome partners. I'm remembering the many groups of children I've seen act out the story of the "Twelve Dancing Princesses".

For thirty-five years I've wondered what provoked my 300-level drawing teacher when he assigned our class to "change a shoe into a flower". The gruff, arrogant, heavy-smoking assistant prof did not seem likely to be inspired by a fairy tale or a spring walk along a creek. We believed he thought up the assignment as a particular torture for juniors who were starting to feel comfortable as art majors.

I'm still wondering, and that's more influence than I wanted to credit his teaching in the mid-Seventies. For today, I'll believe a redbud princess once danced before his eyes.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Accepting photography limitations

I've almost, but not quite, given up trying to photograph the birds I see on my one-block walks. Today's walk was a festival of woodpeckers, and this little downy woodpecker was a real show-off. It seemed jealous that I was slack-jaw agog over a pair of bright red-bellied woodpeckers higher up in the next tree.

The creek was a busy place. I backtracked several times savoring sightings of tiny ruby-crowned kinglets, slow-moving robins, flying ducks and a soaring hawk. I walked through several swarms of gnats and wondered about tiny gray birds flitting about much higher than the kinglets hop. Maybe they are gnatcatchers.

It's time to get out the bird book. I'm still pretty hopeless identifying birdsongs, but my slow walks have helped me notice the rhythm of rustles in the brambles that hint of kinglets.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Caps For Sale surprise

My brief run through the Sheldon Gallery offered a real surprise. I had no idea that the author/illustrator of the beloved Caps For Sale was a pionerring American abstract artist. I've never even been sure if Esphyr Slobodkina was male or female. Now I know she made wonderful, whimsical found-object collages in two and three dimensions. You can see the works of the exhibition "Rediscovering Slobodkina" on flickr.

Reading about Slobodkina brought even more surprises, although I suspected the connection to Margaret Wise Brown. Slobodkina was born in Siberia, and grew up in Manchuria, before traveling to the U.S. to study art in New York City. Plus, the wonderful peddler of Caps for Sale has a name! It is Pezzo.




© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

18-hour Playtex cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye

Thank heaven for the arrival of spring break. I'm hung-up, under-wired, and wrung-out. What that means in my fifty-something life is I'm as as tired as a bra-strap caught on the cosmic washing machine agitator. I've been pulled this way and that for a whole cycle, stretched thin. When I finally get into deep sleep, I have nightmares of shopping for bras.

Tide and Bounce sitting in a tree. K I SS I N G.

Cross my heart promise:

Phrase uttered by children after making a promise to indicate the depth of their sincerity: the speaker is so committed to the action just agreed to that they offer self-inflicted pain and a death wish as proof of their seriousness. Must be accompanied by a gesture of drawing a imaginary X across the speaker's own heart, or else it doesn't count.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

A wonderful idea for runners

A woman came into the library yesterday wearing a "Walk like a champion" shirt. We usually chat. She said she was involved with an Alzheimers walk and ended up with all the leftover shirts. I said art teachers need shirts, but she had a much better idea. She gave them to a Medicaid nursing home. She said the patients sometimes arrive there with nothing but the backless hospital gown they are wearing. What a great idea!


© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Looking for a sign

Walking along my usual route thinking it sure would help to receive a clear cut omen, directive, or prophecy. Nothing Delphic from some oracle who inhaled too much sulphur. I don't need, "Put your faith in a wooden wall," thank you very much.

Then, right at my feet in some worm castings I see the sign. The sign is 2. I was expecting doves or smoke signals, but the sign is a plastic square that probably escaped from a child's game. The surrounding clover isn't four-leaf, but I'll overlook that (with apologies to Mort Dixon).

So BIG!

"How big is baby? So big!"

We all want to know if how big we feel matches how big we look. That's the reason for all those newspaper comics and late-show monologues about whether this dress "Makes me look fat?"

My art students are delighted with our trace-around project. They get to see evidence of how big they really are, and then paint their paper twin.

It's been a few years since I tried this project. My current teaching arrangement doesn't have the big drying space that makes it feasible. I'm trying to work around the logistics problems because the life-size project is such a hoot!

The youngest group of preschoolers listened to the classic 1944 picture book by Marie Hall Ets, In the Forest. I'm sad that wearing a folded newspaper hat and imagining a parade of animals in the forest is too low-tech for children now. Will Peekaboo be the next to fall? When I am in charge of the world these things will be preserved as the Yellowstones of children's literature.

Two old-time (ancient Twentieth century) activities helped me understand my childhood stature. The first was the annual class photo shoot. You could always find me in the "short row".

The second activity was having my foot measured on the Braddock Device at our shoe store, Brady's Juvenile Shoes. I believed that Prince Charming traveled about the countryside measuring all the female feet using just such a device to find his Cinderella.

The kids love this book about life-size animals. Look for it at your library (even if you are a grown-up!)



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Nitty Gritty & it's a pity

This is not the first time I've ranted about lunchbox juice drinks, and it won't be the last. I've been trying to ignore the litter along the creek when I take my 365 Project one-block radius walks.

Toward the end of a glorious hour-long photo tramp and birdsong concert I spotted a mangled, upended grocery cart, half-buried in the mud and leaves near the water. The late afternoon sun glinted on the crossbars, making it resemble a Native American bone breastplate. Here lies the fallen warrior beside the clear-running stream ... Bury my cart at Wounded Knee.

I crossed the bridge to walk along the creekbank, following a smart-dressed sparrow and a cardinal's song. Listening to this little suburban creek trying its best to ripple reminds me of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In the middle of the stream there's a dang Capri-Sun drink pouch reflecting the low sun rays.

I've got ripplin' water to wake me
To the mornin', my woman, and love.
Tall pine trees are pointin' us easily to heaven above.
Blue spruce clingin' to the grate in the evening
They take the chill away fine.
Cut the telephone line and the story's the same.

There are senior moments and menopausal moments of forgetfulness. Then there are the John Denver moments. Did Jimmy Ibbotson write that song? Did someone forget to dispose of their juice pouch in a responsible manner?

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

The Kinglet on the Eightfold Path

My 365 photo project is getting me out for a walk most days. These are not the long, fast, aerobic walks my doctor recommends for my blood pressure. Nor are they the weekend venting waddles that have sustained my walking buddy and me for more than a decade. These are slow, seeing, sensing, solitary walks.

I walk the perimeter of the one-block radius that is my preferred source for 365 photo inspirations. When I get away from the traffic sounds, I'm surprised by the bird calls and flow of the creek. Wind rattles the dry leaves. My senses wake up step by step. It's the gradual rebooting of an older computer whose operating system isn't updated or supported by the company anymore. Still, it is opening windows.

I'm probably searching too much on these walks, hoping for obvious photo ops. Letting go of desire and control would lead to fresh surprises. Today I went looking for cedar waxwings, but found a woodpecker and several robins.

Spent ten minutes with a teasing ruby-crowned kinglet in the thorns, vines, and eye-poking branches without ever getting a good photo. The tiny greenish bird hopped about too quickly although it was often within six feet of me. It could hover like a hummingbird for a second or two. "Ruby-crowned" sounds too pretentious. The bird is less than four inches in length, and the "crown" is really a little red dot to help camouflage it in a berry bush.

As soon as I got home, started downloading my photos, and took off my shoes, the soapberry tree beyond my patio fence filled with cedar waxwings. Guess it is good I didn't go looking for gorillas to photograph, or I might have found a kitchen full of primates on my return.


© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

One-block radius

I took a slow walk around my one-block radius, being surprised by flocks of robins and cedar waxwings. I love cedar waxwings for their dramatic eye make-up, and their flash mob behavior. I love the way a flock will land in the bare branches of a winter tree and seem to be only yellow leaves hanging on late into winter. I adore the way the ends of their tail feathers look like they were dipped in bright yellow Testors model enamel paint. A cedar waxwing could inspire some excellent Olympic figure skating costumes.


The robins and cedar waxwings were taking turns drinking at a spot where fallen branches make a nice perch just above the water. I was surprised they were so close to a trio of pre-adolescent boys chopping and pounding. I tried to look like I wasn't spying on the guys. They are building a hide-out with scavenged rotten fence sections amidst exposed tree roots at the creek. They were just around a bend from the spot where my sons used to ride a rope swing across the creek a dozen years ago. This gives me hope for the future!

Got home at dusk to find this anole lizard on my front stoop. He seemed to have just molted, and was dark-colored, showing stress. I took several bad photos with my camera settings all wrong before he got perturbed enough to crawl sluggishly back to the shadows below the siding. It's only fifty-five degrees, breezy, and gloomy. Doesn't seem like anole weather at all, and not a good day to shed one's skin.


Last night the moon was a Cheshire cat smile when I took the recycling to the cart in between the men's figure skating performances. The moon reminded me of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harold's line follows wherever he goes, and the moon goes along. Harold likes nine kinds of pie. Some of my students are learning about the silent E that makes vowels say their names .... pie ... nine ... line ... skate ... shave ... smile.

How strange for a lizard to be roused out of winter slumber just to shed its skin. Talk about wanting to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock! I feel your pain, Mr. Anole. I was awakened by the recurring snooze alarm knowing I'd been invited to a sensuous paisley party, but had forgotten to shave my legs.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Nutrition experts debate food pyramid

The first preschooler announces that Cheerios are in the Crust Group. The second student is sure the base of the food pyramid is the Brain Group. We've been talking about breads and grains.

Preschoolers have been prejudiced against bread crusts for generations. I bet the prejudice goes back to the true crusts of home-baked bread, and was held over during the Wonder Years. The crust was often drier and more difficult for a youngster to chew. Still, it could be useful for leaving a trail away from an evil stepmother.

Now, if you tinted bread crusts neon turquoise, added Sponge Bob zinger exploding crystals instead of oats and seeds, and packaged the entire sandwich in a plastic squeeze tube you would become famous. If you could freeze-dry it, then reconstitute it with added sugars, run a steam-roller over it, roll it up, get a celebrity endorsement movie tie-in, and package it in a single-serving plastic container with a tiny dollop of Ranch Dressing dip you would make a fortune.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder