Long-listed for [the coveted] Nancy Awards

In this year when I could not find a creative project to propel me, and felt the lack all year. I tried to fill the hole with books. Fortunately, there were some great reads crossing my desk. These are ones that have stayed with me long after the last page. Thank heaven for these books, fiction and non. In this dark year I am so grateful for sagas and modulated voices and atmosphere, for science and reason and introspection, for fresh viewpoints and researched history, for ambiguity, poetry, and scenic vistas, for close observation, moral dilemmas, context and humor, and especially for breathing room. The world is so much bigger and more beautiful than the shouting and harassing, the propaganda, the rats and the overalls.

  

    

      

    

  

Not a New Year's Day parade float after all

• What in the heigh-ho is going on down at the swimming pool? 
• Why is there a replica nuclear power plant in my backyard? 
• Is this some kid's science fair project? 
• Couldn't the kid just grow mold on bread? 
• When was the Three Mile Island accident? TMI was almost forty years ago! 
• When did TMI change from "Three Mile Island" to "too much information?"

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/7-things-simpsons-got-wrong-about-nuclear

TMI

TMI is an abbreviation that stands for too much information. The term TMI is usually used when someone is sharing too many intimate details, though sometimes TMI is used to describe when someone is sharing too many boring details. The origin of the abbreviation is murky, it is probably linked to the advent of online communities and the use of abbreviations such as LOL (laugh out loud), BRB (be right back) and AFK (away from keyboard). TMI is one of the few abbreviations that migrated from the computer screen into spoken language and is now an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. 

*The cooling towers turn out to be stacked ceramic planters wrapped in industrial-strength Saran wrap.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

A busman's holiday and the Battle of Philly

What is a busman's holiday?

For this busperson it was a very relaxing weekend. And the most relaxing hours were spent at my computer doing pretty much the same thing I do forty hours a week for peanuts and benefits; sorting, describing, categorizing a body of creative work so the individual pieces can be accessed in the future. Why my digital nature photos might be accessed is not the concern at this moment, but perhaps the subject collections will lead to new creative endeavors.

So: noun: busman's holiday

1. a vacation or form of recreation that involves doing the same thing that one does at work.
2. 
   

I always associate the idiom busman's holiday with "The Honeymooners," going for a weekend ride with driver Ralph Cramden, wife Alice, and the Nortons, Ed and Trixie. In the early Sixties Dad would set the black and white tv on the kitchen high stool for viewing during Saturday night supper. We didn't become a two-car family until about 1965, so Dad rode the bus to work.

Twenty-plus years earlier, Dad had a different bus experience as a sleep-deprived armed guard on the Philadelphia transit system during the "Battle of Philly."  This may have been his introduction to civil rights issues as a young white man from a rural mid-America community.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Great American taffy pull

This country has been heated to hard crack, pulled and stretched, pulled and stretched, and we are getting burnt and brittle. It's time to dig through the recipe box with the index cards and cursive handwriting for a new frame of mind.

Waiting at Walmart for the pharmacy to reopen from its lunch break, I pushed the cart through the cereal aisle. Thanksgiving is the traditional time to make our family's Chex Mix, known as "Kris Kringle Krunch." As usual, I got a big box of Corn Chex, when what I really need is the elusive Wheat Chex. It's okay. When it comes to Chex Mix we can all be a bit flexible.

Walmart on the Sunday before Thanksgiving is a great unifier. Where else can you find a man in a tailored suit holding a box of Reynolds Wrap under his arm right next to a full-bearded tattooed man in a full-length floral skirt peering together at the Ocean Spray cranberry sauce options.

Americans are divided into Pyrex bowls of polarized extreme disconnect. But this is not the first, nor the last time our nation will be challenged to find its moral center, its line in the sand of dignity, respect, and humanity. So let's chat about taffy.

In the late Sixties my mom, Fritzi, tried to reach a detente with her parents, Fred and Effa Dale by calling up the great memories of pulling taffy together in a farmhouse with kerosene lanterns and no indoor plumbing. We kids were just the hapless re-enactors, buttering our hands to pull and stretch the very hot taffy. We had already been tasked with preparing the squares of wax paper for wrapping the taffy. Grandmother Effa Dale was perched on the kitchen high stool to direct the fun, and her hearing aide was squawking.

We're gonna wrap the taffy in wax paper.      vs.     What's wax paper?

This potato looks just like Richard Nixon.    vs.    Who's Richard Nixon?

Each year American families gather to share Thanksgiving with a spirit of detente, an easing of hostility and strained relations. According to Wikipedia, the term is "most often used in reference to a period of general easing of the geo-political tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States; it was the distinct lessening of the Cold War. It began in 1969, as a core element of the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon, in an effort to avoid the collision of nuclear risks. The Nixon administration promoted greater dialogue with the Soviet government, including regular summit meetings and negotiations over arms control and other bilateral agreements."

These days just thinking about taffy threatens my dental work! No peanut brittle for me either. Must locate Wheat Chex, Cheerios, and pretzel sticks. (When I reached the self-check the box of Cheerios popped open like a bad 3 a.m. tweet.)

All we are saying is give peace a Chex.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

School supply envy

Typical. The grand Trunk Project began as an effort to cull, weed, lessen, unload, clear out, deselect, downsize, ship off, digitize, or all of the above, the contents of a decaying old trunk so as not to burden my sons when I am nearer the cul-de-sac on the road of life.



Allegedly, we can discard items that do not "spark joy." Trouble is, most items spark curiosity. I untied the bundle of letters, and opened the envelopes. Next thing I knew the contents of the trunk were fanned out all across the floor demanding to be read, related, curated, contained and preserved for perpetuity.

My father's letters home to his mother during World War II are now encased in seventy dollars worth of archival clear sleeves for 3-ring binder. The zippered giant binder with shoulder strap, accordion file, and zippered pouches was a bargain on clearance, just $10.75. It's not archival, but it is an ode to junior high school supply Spiderman fans everywhere. It is the Peter Parker of nerd notebooks. I should have bought two.

Maybe it's all about junior high school supply envy.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Canned food drive greatest hits

It's food drive time again at my place of employment, and probably yours, too. Again this year someone thought it would be fun to make the food drive a competition between departments. Again I am the volunteer team captain, which thankfully involves a spreadsheet, not pompons. We are collecting items for the South Dallas Community Food Center, part of the S.M. Wright Foundation.

Dropped my car for repairs on this beautiful afternoon and had time to ponder the food drive while walking home. Minnie's Food Pantry used to be housed across the parking lot from my mechanic's shop, spurring this reverie. The founder of Minnie's Food Pantry, Dr. Cheryl “Action” Jackson, is a rock star of food pantries. Oprah was the keynote speaker at the nonprofit's tenth annual gala.

So, my perambulating question is, "What do food pantries and those using their services really need?"  

• Food pantry clients include the elderly, persons with dietary restrictions, returning veterans, children, single parents, university students, families just "One Crisis Away."

• Clients need food they can use. They need food they can open! Consider donating food with pop-top lids for those who may have difficulty opening cans with a can opener.

• Many clients are children. Support their healthy food habits by donating food in kid-friendly sizes with easy-to-open packaging and no-cook food items. 

• Consider cash gifts. Food pantries may have bulk purchasing arrangements that stretch funds. Many employers have charitable giving matching programs. Monetary donations are used to purchase the foods that traditional canned food drives don’t bring in like fresh fruits, produce, meats, milk and eggs.

• Donate shelf-stable, nutrient-dense foods.

• Donate staples from other cuisines.

• Food pantries cannot use baby food, formula, alcohol, home-canned items, items in glass containers, items without ingredients listed in English.

This is not the time to pull all the fast food ketchup packets hoarded by your dad with dementia, and the three opened and expired jars of tartar sauce from his fridge. Don't even think  about those cans of beets and butter beans that have been in the pantry since the first Bush administration. The leftover Halloween candy is not appropriate. You think I'm kidding, but this is not my first term as food drive team captain! Don't waste food pantry volunteers' time and effort sorting out expired and inappropriate donations.  Now, GO TEAM GO!

History paused, or ...waiting for preservation

Sis, we were one of the Div. who stayed with the 9th Army last winter. It was mighty shaky too, our lines were spread mighty thin. By the way, the slide rule that didn't get home was probably a victim of the "Bulge." They picked off a lot of mail. You also remember how late it was during that time.

It's typical that Private Mastalir, (soon to be Tech Sgt. Mastalir), would attempt to mail a slide rule home to Nebraska for his sister to use in high school math class. That he posted it during the "Battle of the Bulge" was unfortunate, as it never got to perform calculations in Pierce.

Dad loved slide rules, and I remember how excited he was to bestow one on me in high school. Sadly, I have no idea how to use one any more, and no idea what those calculus algorithms were all about anyway! Still I remember sitting with him at the dining table long after supper while Dad demonstrated the slide rule's magic precision, efficiency, and cool design. Soon we would enter that ugly teenage daughter/square disapproving father dynamic, but at that slide rule moment we were still a team.

My WWII project has been paused while looking into storage and preservation options for the letters, photographs, clippings, and even ephemera! My order of archival sleeves will arrive any day now. "Ephemera tipped in" is probably my very favorite MARC field 500 general cataloging note ever:

EPHEMERA Printed material of passing interest in every day life (e.g.: advertising, ticket stubs, photos, postcards, programs, some booklets and pamphlets, etc.). Of interest to collectors because they are often the only record of many quotidian events.

TIPPED IN Paper, photograph, or print glued down by only a narrow strip.

The 1965 movie "Battle of the Bulge" was viewed sitting on the cold, hard linoleum squares of the next door neighbor's dark basement close enough to the t.v. to make us blind. It joins the "Outer Limits," the "Twilight Zone," some "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and occasional "Wonderful World of Disney," viewed in this venue. The "Battle of the Bulge" had lots of tanks, but no intergalactic giant ants as far as I can recall.

Dad's letter from July 1945 referring to the Bulge and the slide rule sent me to the mildewed booklet, 102 Thru Germany. Dad and the 102d were not in the Ardennes region during the "Bulge." His cookies and letters from home were slowed, but still reaching him along the Roer with the 9th Army for Christmas 1944 and New Year's 1945. His letters from that time took 4-6 weeks to reach Nebraska, and I can imagine the agony this delay was for his mother, aunts, and sister.

I was so glad to find 102 Thru Germany already available online at Lonely Sentry. Dad's copy is full of stains and mildew. The 406th of the 102nd was defending the Wurm River between the towns of Wurm and Barmen at Christmas 1944, although the letters just say "somewhere in Germany." By July 1945 Howard could give more locations in his letters.

Had another one of those heart breaking letters from a brother (a Lt. in the Pacific) of one of my buddies who was killed. I had written the boy's wife and this letter was a thank you for what comfort that gave them and also a request for more information. They are so hard to write.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Rothenburg on the Tauber

December 1945 finds Tech Sgt. Mastalir transferred to the 15th Tank Battalion in Rothenburg, Germany. As he writes home, he is in the redeployment pipeline, "but the pipes are frozen." He is staying with eleven guys in two rooms, and having trouble getting any peace and quiet to think straight. To add to the chaos, he has developed some sort of nasal blockage that will require surgery before he can finally travel back to the States. Plus, and this is a big plus, he has just gotten word that his older brother Milt has married Marge, a woman friend when Dad was studying at Georgetown. (Although he insisted she was not his "girlfriend.") Dad's aunts are sure Milt has "stolen" Dad's girlfriend. Never mind that Milt is six years older than Howard, and Marge is older than Milt. It must have been a major soap opera in tiny Pierce, Nebraska, considering how invested the townsfolk were in writing to their young soldiers and hearing readings of letters from overseas.



Growing up I was fascinated by three wood inlay pictures of a fairy tale village*. Both my memory and my photos are incomplete, but it looks like Dad sent the framed pictures home from this time in Rothenburg on the Tauber. They must have resonated with his interests in architecture and woodworking, and his need for clarity and order. The inlay pieces fit so neatly, while his life must have felt very disordered.

No date on the tourist guidebook

The town seems to have been both a symbol of Nazi ideology, and protected from shelling by the Allies due to its history and beauty.

One of the Rothenburg postcards in the trunk.

   

*Even Rick Steves calls it a "fairy tale dream town."

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Pacific Theater

Most of what I know about World War II in the Pacific comes from repeated viewings of VHS "Father Goose," and listening over and over to the 33 1/3 rpm Broadway original cast LP of "South Pacific" on the hi-fi as a kid. Oh, and that one time we took the boys to the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. Of that I remember most the serene Japanese garden of peace with the beautiful raked sand.

So now I am embarked upon the audiobook of Indianapolis at the same time I shuffle Dad's letters from Germany, 1945.  The book doesn't have the same page-turning suspense as Erik Larson's Dead Wake, but I have not reached the court-martial part.

Omaha newspapers from the trunk

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

The History Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away

Thanks for the input and questions after part one of this story! I assume the "H" in the center of the needlework book cover is for my dad, Howard. Here is the back of the cover:

As for the "Three Musketiers," I have a group of photos:

The dates in November 1945 match with letters written from Wunsiedel and Waldsassen, Germany. During this period Dad was shipping home nailed crates of glassware to use for Christmas  and wedding presents in the future. Some of that glassware graces my dining room now.

What else was he doing? Staging small raids on small villages looking for evidence of weapons or black market activities. Playing ten different versions of solitaire. Going to  a nice beer hall in the center of town with a good four-piece band. Going a little mad after three years in the service. Wiring the florist in Norfolk, Nebraska to send hydrangeas "to the most wonderful mother in the world." And apparently walking around "our lake" at 5 p.m. with the "Three Musketiers."

On December 12, 1945,  Dad left for transfer to the 15th Tank Battalion attached to the 80th Infantry Division, the first step in his slow return to the States.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Dot-to-dot, part one

Above the hi-fi behind the sliding cabinet door you may be granted permission to peruse the shelf of grown-up books. Such splendid, serene, sustaining times as a kid flopped down on the living room carpet paging through the big books, smelling the paper and ink and binding, saving the images to memory. I still have three of those books, though I occasionally regret letting go of the first 25 years of New Yorker cartoons, and a history of chair design. Dad was good about answering my questions if I didn't understand the cartoons. Dad would also talk about cartoons in Bill Mauldin's book, though he rarely mentioned his time in the service.

 

He didn't say much about the book in German with the cross stitch cover beyond that it was a gift, which made it mysterious. Seven decades after the gift, and more than five since I suspected it held more than it told, I am trying to decipher the meaning of the cross stitch book. 

Title page

Title page verso

Inscription

Bookmark 

  

After V.E. Day, Tech Sgt. Mastalir remained in Germany eight months. For the first he was just grateful not to be sent to the Pacific. Then he spent his time moving from town to town, packing up, setting up, packing up, setting up. His letters are typewritten, and tell of guard duty, occasional raids, and his overworked state when the First Sgt. was laid up with severe athlete's foot. 

My own toes are tired after a long week, and I am fantasizing about texting in sick due to severe athlete's foot. My boss would not believe I am a severe athlete... That is all for tonight history mystery folks.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Quick, hand me the pliers!

Enjoyed my trip to the dentist this morning, which is to say I did not gag or have a panic attack. I was truly dreading my second crown, as the first about ten years ago was a ghastly experience.

Last evening I reread Pvt. Mastalir's description of military dentistry to work up some enthuiasm for the civilian type. Also some gratitude for dental insurance...

When Dad was finishing his Army Specialist Training Corp program at Georgetown University in December 1943 he woke up with a very stiff jaw, sore throat, and sore tooth. He went to sick bay, and the doctor told him he was cutting a wisdom tooth, and the upper tooth was biting down on the gum.

The next day a dentist at Fort Meyer told a different story. Dad's lower wisdom tooth was embedded in his jaw. The upper wisdom tooth biting down had caused an infection in the gum and tooth. The only treatment would be pulling the upper tooth, then treating the infection before pulling the lower tooth. So the dentist yanked out the upper tooth, and Dad wrote his Ma before the feeling came back.

"Treating the infection" seems to mean mostly gargling with hot salt water for two weeks. Dad was a lifelong believer in this practice. A couple weeks after the first extraction he rode the bus back to Fort Meyer. He got in the chair at 1:15, and was all done and back outside waiting for the bus at 1:45. It was the easiest extraction the dentist had ever done, and he was sorry he sterilized so many tools he did not end up using.

Dad gloated about his free dental work that would have cost $25 for a civilian! Not today. Not this civilian.

I always feel like a total failure at the dentist. The dentist, hygienist, and other staff are all trying to carve Mount Rushmore in my teeth with their  picks and mirrors. My tongue is always trying to knock Gutzon Borglum off the mountain.

For the first time in my life I was offered nitrous oxide. Glory Hallelujiah! Then Denise used a magic wand to take digital CAD images of my tooth. I just kept thinking it was like the Google street view camera car back there and I hoped it wasn't bulk trash day on my cul-de-sac. That and trying to remember who sang the songs on the Dental Oldies Radio playlist. (answers below)

Little Ditty About Jack and Diane--John Mellencamp
Runnin' Down a Dream--Tom Petty
Still the Same--Bob Seger
Open Your Heart--Madonna
Gimme Three Steps--Lynyrd Skynyrd
Hit Me With Your Best Shot--Pat Benatar

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

It's Saturday night and I'm reading about mumps

Army immunization register

This might not be healthy. Mumps are on my mind. I had mumps in kindergarten or first grade. It wasn't fun.  I had to stay home in bed for at least a week drinking ginger ale. Mumps was as miserable as chicken pox in my childhood memory.

My kids did not get mumps because they received the MMR vaccine. They did get chicken pox during a memorably miserable spell between Christmas 1987 and Valentines 1988 in Edmond, Oklahoma.  Worse, they shared the disease with an adult male at a Christmas gathering.

My grandchildren will not get mumps, measles, rubella, or chicken pox. At least if they are not exposed to the diseases, before they can be immunized. How would they be exposed? By a child whose parents opted-out of vaccinations. So this Grancy is grumpy about mumps.

Private Howard Mastalir came down with mumps the last day of basic training at Ft. Belvoir, VA.  He was headed to the hospital for ten or twelve days when he wrote his Ma not to worry.  He would miss his TMD [troop moblilization departure] for ASTP [Army Specialist Training Program] but was developing a soldier frame of mind. Who cares? Let the Army worry about it. Never mind that mumps can cause encephalitis, deafness, and swollen testicles in adults! There were other guys with mumps arriving in the ward, and guys with measles down the hall.

Lunching with teachers today, I learned my city, Plano, is a hotspot for nonmedical exemptions (NMEs), children entering school unvaccinated.  With this many exemptions the greater population is no longer protected from illnesses. Parents who have never seen a case of mumps are less likely to understand the consequences to the community of a mumps outbreak. Why have they never seen a case of mumps? Because their generation had required vaccinations.

From the Texas Medical Association:

Researchers identified 15 large metropolitan areas where more than 400 kindergarten-aged children have not received their vaccines. Texas has the most “hotspots” with four. Michigan has three (Detroit, Troy, and Warren); Washington has two (Seattle and Spokane); and Utah has two (Salt Lake City and Provo). The other hotspots are Portland, Phoenix, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh.

“The high numbers of NMEs in these densely populated urban centers suggest that outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases could either originate from or spread rapidly throughout these populations of unimmunized, unprotected children,” the study says. “The fact that the largest count of vaccine-exempt pediatric populations originate in large cities with busy international airports may further contribute to this risk.”

Dad wrote about getting lots of shots in the army. What were those immunizations?  Smallpox, triple typhoid, typhus, and a flu shot after the war ended.

In the prevaccine era, mumps gained notoriety as an illness that substantially affected armies during mobilization. The average annual rate of hospitalization resulting from mumps during World War I was 55.8 per 1,000, which was exceeded only by the rates for influenza and gonorrhea.  --  How WWII spurred vaccine innovation.

A little evening reading while you are sipping ginger ale through a straw. We each have a responsibility to protect ALL of us.

• How General George Washington had the Continental Army inoculated against smallpox.
• How WWII spurred vaccine innovation.
• Smithsonian Institution history of the measles-mumps-rubella antibody initiative.
• Center for Disease Control description of complications from the mumps.
• Remember that part about busy international airports?

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder