CollageMama's Itty Bitty Blog

2/26/12

Rapunzel's beanstalk

2/24/12

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Only after the project was complete did the lyrics corkscrew into my brain. "Windmills of Your Mind" was composed by Michel Legrand for the 1968 movie, "The Thomas Crown Affair". Since then it has been covered by numerous musicians.

This was a very satisfying project, and not just because we played the "Purple People Eater" song while we worked. It included three kinds of prints, drawing and cutting practice, composition, and a chance for each student to squirt a spray bottle in school!

It was a one-eyed, one-horned
Flyin' Purple People Eater
One-eyed, one-horned
Flyin' Purple People Eater
Sure looked strange to me
One eye

The recent rains have brought down lots of trees weak from the drought or just old and tired. The bark pieces are filled with mysterious messages.

More nature writing inside bark

Our art project and much of my musing the last couple weeks was inspired by a gorgeous picture book. Swirl by Swirl : Spirals in Nature has scratch board illustrations by Beth Krommes. Find it at your library even if you are a grown-up!

2/23/12

Trout lily handwriting

This premature spring has convinced the first grade girls they should really be writing "in cursive", so they are making looping nonsensical signatures. The five year olds are struggling to master printing on lined paper, working out which letters are tall, and which hang down below the line. Candy canes and fish hooks get larger and larger. The three year olds are documenting life in invented script and writing their names in all caps. Remembering my childhood fascination with my dad's drafting block print lettering.

2/21/12

Bourbon applesauce cake, bubonic plague, and buddies

My blogging friend Kathleen at Wait! I Have a Blog?! is always showing fabulous food art. My blog buddy Kim at Hummus Anonymous is on the lookout for recipes. I am on the lookout for rats, alas.

This photo shows the gorgeous bourbon applesauce cake sent me in lieu of tea and sympathy by my college friend Mary of Ohio. Yikes. Mary and I have been friends for thirty-seven years which is totally impossible!

The cake arrived today, but I'm a bit afraid to dive into it. Mary used my old recipe and I am not an elephant. Bourbon applesauce one-bowl cake is something I used to make as a newlywed. I remember enormous men eating a piece and then saying slowly, "That didn't just have applesauce in it, did it?" Then they would fall to the floor like elephants shot with tranquilizer guns.

D.U.E. first offense

The cake smells so earthy and wholesome, what with the wheat germ. I'll have an observer in my art classes tomorrow while we are doing printmaking. The observer is a parent of a student as well as a student teacher, so it would be a VBT if I fell over on the floor.

The bubonic plague will kill me first. The squirrel sat on the patio fence trying to use ESP to convince me to refill the bird-feeder. When the squirrel took a break, the ring-necked dove stood in the same place on the fence trying to guilt-trip me. I ignored them, so they called in the big guns.

Yes, the begging, pleading, cute-as-a-button junco! I am no match for the CAABJ. Your very wish is my command!

So I fill up the bird-feeder and the junco collects a paycheck. The ring-neck dove pigs out. Then the squirrel. Then, alas, the rat.

By refilling the feeder I resumed my enabling behavior. No little pink ears or tiny toes will make me feel better. Being a rat is a bad job, but I don't want to make it easier. Being a squirrel is just diurnal rat-being.

How are members of Congress and Presidential candidates any different than my fence-beggers? I'm just asking...

This is the recipe for Knock Over Elephants Bourbon Applesauce Cake aka KOEBAC (and I will eat some tomorrow, Mary!):

2/20/12

Never before with a hellebore

[In a would-you-could-you-on-a-train manner this post will ride hell-bent for leather all over the place, so be forewarned.]

The Dallas Arboretum cured my madness. Walked all around this morning taking photos and working out the Tristan und Isolde kinks. I came under the spell of hellebore in beds both shady and sunny.

hellebore

late 14c., from O.Fr. ellebore, from L. elleborus, from Gk. helleboros, perhaps meaning "plant eaten by fawns," from Gk. ellos/hellos "fawn" + bora "food of beasts," from bibroskein "to eat," from PIE base *gwere-"to swallow." Among the ancients, the name given to various plants of both poisonous and medicinal qualities, reputed to cure madness.

Perhaps the plant was eaten by fauns, not fawns. I never before saw a hellebore nor Nijinsky dancing to Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun". Nor Nureyev neither, no matter how many negatives that is. I was as spellbound by the flowers as by the classic ballet film from one hundred years ago that beckoned me from my search.

Something about these plants feels very ancient even before I learn their name. Is it the dusty, slightly faded colors? The quality of porcelain? The chalky '68 rouge on the withered cheeks of the junior high art teacher two years shy of retirement telling eighth-graders how to carve plaster of Paris into della Robbia rondels?

Dallas Arboretum test garden

Hellebore plants are known as Lenten roses even though they are not part of the rose family.

Hellebore for Lent....

Hellebore for lemons... also one lime, a clove of garlic, lite mayo, a red bell pepper, Tillamook pepper jack, today's newspaper, black olives... wait, wait, this is a grocery list!

Hellebore for leather?

Hell-bent for leather.

Hell-bent? Hell for leather? All in a lather?

What do these mean? Am I stuck in a dream? Why are my former in-laws in this dream? Well, that last one would take many more blog posts and an interview with Isadora Duncan to explain!

Hell-bent--with reckless determination; at full speed.
Ride hell-for-leather--early use of this phrase by Kipling in 1888 to mean desperately and/or swiftly causing a horse's skin to lather.

Now I'm all in a dither about daffodils, narcissus, and jonquils. Every spring Dad and I used to wonder about the distinction. We could never remember from year to year. This year Dad is beyond care, and I must dither on alone.

The library regular wants to check out two DVDs from the NEW shelf, but the circulation system allowed only one. We josh around a bit, both of us having mellowed over the years. He semi-jokingly claims I put the kibosh on his movie plans. I tell him I researched "kibosh" once, but now I've forgotten its origins. The regular says if I researched it I should remember.Trouble is, I joshed, my memory was kiboshed and my brains are goulash.

kibosh

1836, kye-bosk, in slang phrase put the kibosh on, of unknown origin, despite intense speculation. 

goulash

1866, from Hungarian gulyáshús, from gulyás "herdsman" + hús "meat." In Hungarian, "beef or lamb soup made by herdsmen while pasturing."

4 1/4 hours @ 44th opera

Dallas Opera's Tristan und Isolde just reaches in and sucks your whole consciousness up into the hovering UFO to perform brain swaps and other alien experiments. And you don't even care because you are so totally into the moment, the music, and the projections. That's right! You feel honored that you can sit in the uncomfortable chair with no room for your knees for four and a quarter hours of breath-taking music and incredible projected sets by Elaine McCarthy while almost nothing happens. Five stars in the Fabulousity column of your opera Life List.

This morning, though the English horn solo from Act III is still haunting you, symptoms indicate you have severe post-Wagner Winspear Syndrome. You feel like you were folded and packed in a very small box and then shipped by slow boat to Cornwall. Your thighs and upper arms hurt the most. You think Alberto Giacometti thoughts.

2/18/12

Waxwings whining over me my Lord

All night, all day,

Angels watching over me, my Lord.All night, all day,Angels watching over me.

Didn't know what hymn was playing just under my radar, but I knew the preschool classroom was becoming torture by cedar waxwing flock. Hummers of the preschool variety don't bother me much, but our class has two new stealth whistlers. The bird variety of whiny whistlers has been gathering by the dozens in the soapberry tree out back. Their thin, shrill sound alerts me to their presence.

Much as I love their handsome outlaw masks, the sound reminds me of my Grandmother's hearing aid shrieking for adjustment back in the early Sixties. We little grandkids would all do our best imitations of Munch's "Scream" to let Grandmother know she should stop drumming her fingernails on the kitchen table and fish around in her brassiere to find the Philco transistor hearing aid to adjust the volume control.

Grandmother's name was Effa Dale Goss Clark, (10/7/1894-2/6/1988). Besides being very hard of hearing, she had Addison's Disease.
My mother, Effa Dale's daughter, was Marjorie Lois "Fritzi" Clark Mastalir. Fritzidid not like us to be "obnoxious", "belligerent", or "shrill" when we were kids. "Shrill" was not as likely to get us into trouble as the other two. Lately, though, shrill is really getting on my nerves.
I'm not, not, not getting hard of hearing. I can hear an index finger entering a nasal cavity at fifty feet.

Preschoolers who decline to ever speak audibly to adults manage to use loud, artificial, high-pitched voices to speak for plastic critters in the marine animal toy tub.

2/16/12

Row. Such a simple word. Row.

Inspired by the rowing Geico guinea pigs, I am trying to teach penguins to surf. True, the penguins are inside a paperweight I received from a coworker on Valentine's Day. I've got time on my hands, though, since Windows insists on downloading and installing new updates by the hundreds.

Think outside the cube.

Mr. Hopper's penguins.

When penguins bowl.

Whistling in the glass elevator.

Huddle in the corner office.

Midnight in Paris.