Roll out the red carpet for the 2020 Coveted Nancy Award Winner!

As soon as I finished Interior Chinatown I had to start over and read straight through again. That still might not be enough. While the tv cop show screenplay format makes the book fun, the explorations of racism, marginalization, aging parents, and self-limiting interior monologues are heart-breaking and revealing. 

Mostly, I've been more aware of the way I flatten my experiences and limit my options by my own interior monologue. Now I am wondering whether all women my age become invisible, or if we allow ourselves to become Generic Gray-haired Female in the background.

Highly, highly rec! Of course. being the National Book Award winner for fiction might be almost as good as  winning a Nancy Award

Favorite childhood picture book...

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Living in Non-fiction 2020

When the whole year was a bad case of non-fiction, my reading choices veered to fiction. I do recommend three books, only one a new release.
Annoyed with the lack of historical basis in the satirical series, "The Great," I am currently devouring the lively, well-written, thoroughly researched Catherine the Great : Portrait of a Woman by Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert K. Massie. I plan to read more about Russia and by Massie in 2021. 

The long anticipated Churchill book by Erik Larson was definitely worth the wait. Reading The Splendid and the Vile in midsummer gave me perspective on real sacrifices and deprivations compared to the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask in the Covid era. We are such a bunch of whining weenies!

Hampton Sides's 2011 book, Hellhound On His Trail, reads like a novel, but the research into James Earl Ray's assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is impressive. Planning to read James Patterson and friends' Last Days of John Lennon to compare the approach.

 

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

A tree skirt of books and a train running round and round

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

In the giant hamster ball

Three Coronavirus novels for your consideration.

Early in the pandemic when I could still concentrate I read Lawrence Wright's The End of October about a global pandemic as told by an epidemiologist. The fictional doctor's explanations and musings helped me get a grip on the terminology and the workings of our nonfiction virus. Over half a year later, I mainly remember the description of the U.S. vice president placed in a giant hamster ball to keep him safe from the virus, and to protect the succession of power. 

There are many persons of power and influence I've wanted to put in giant hamster balls this year, more for my protection than theirs.

Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, considers the social aspects of a 1666 pandemic. How could a small village stop the spread of Bubonic plague to the rest of the country? How could the residents not destroy each other in the process? Told by a young widow who becomes a midwife and later n a healer, this is satisfying historical fiction with cautionary tales for our time. Rather than become a superspreader, the village self-quarantines at the urging of a popular pastor, but the experience brings out the worst in the residents' natures. The need to blame, to spread fake news, to hunt witches, and the struggles between religion, superstition, and science resonate in 2020.

The Silence, by Don DeLillo, is a very short, spare novel about a different cataclysm, a different type of disease, an existential epidemic that could happen any day now.

On Super Bowl Sunday 2022 an unexplained event makes screens go dark, and airplanes fall from the sky with no flight control, no technology. No media can bring an instant 24/7 news blitz about the cause, because there's no media. The novel is the best dark DeLillo distilled down almost to poetry. 

To paraphrase artist Paul Klee, science explains the visible, but fiction makes visible.

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Breaking Amazon

If you don't get your order in time for Christmas, it'll be my fault. I broke Amazon.

First I broke my cheapo immersion blender. It came all to pieces in the sweet potato hummus, which really needs more lemon juice and garlic than the recipe said.

So I ordered a tiny tot food processor. Then I ordered eight little stocking stuffers for a work gift exchange. Jeff Bezos thought it would be fun to combine the two orders in one very oversized packing box with a lot of bubble wrap. After bouncing back and forth a few times between Phoenix and Louisville, a delivery person managed to wedge the box into the Amazon hub locker in my neighborhood by crushing it a bit. 

I could not budge the box to slide it out of the locker. So I ripped the visible end of the box apart to pull out my orders and a bunch of bubble wrap. Stuffed the bubble wrap back into the mangled box and slammed the locker shut. The touch pad screen for the locker hub started freaking out. It kept telling me in larger fonts to reenter my code and remove the contents of the locker. 

So, if I can't bring down the whole grid, at least I can break Amazon! Sorry about your late order...

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Long, strange book trips

We joke that the library has the World's Largest Collection of Travel Guides, like it should be a giant ball of string or maybe Wall Drug. We've got your Fodors,  Frommers, and Rick Steves, Insight and Eyewitness, National Geographic and Lonely Planet, Michelin and Off the Beaten Path.  We've got at least a hundred places you must golf before you die. We are branching out into Falcon Guides for hiking , biking, and waterfalls. Whether you are into glamping or food trucks, we probably have your guide.

2020 was unfortunately the year of no travel. True, my buddy kept her Jeep filled up just in case Texas did something so incredibly embarrassing she had to drive off toward the horizon. This being a frequent occurrence, just saying.

Of the four long, strange trip books I read this year, the standout is Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, by Kent Nerburn (the 25th anniversary edition). A white writer is challenged with telling the story of a Lakota elder. How do these two learn to trust and listen to each other, and preserve the story for future generations? How can spirituality bring healing to both? By driving an ancient car off-road in the South Dakota Badlands. 

Out of Darkness, Shining Light tells how the African expedition leaders and slaves enabling Dr. David Livingstone to search for the source of the Nile carried his body 1,500 miles from the interior of the African continent to the east coast so he could be buried in his homeland. They also carried the doctor's expedition journals. The heavily researched novel considers colonialism from the Africans' viewpoint through the voice of an outspoken slave cook and road wife, and a pompous freed slave educated by Christian missionaries. Recommended by Nancy Pearl.

The Last Great Road Bum: a Novel, by Hector Tobar is an experiment that doesn't quite work, but has some good spots along the journey. It is the very Sixties tale of a real person, Joe Sanderson of Urbana, Illinois, who did a great deal of no-budget traveling, writing letters and diaries for a great road bum novel, without ever managing to learn much in the process. Tobar discovered the real diaries and in the course of his fictionalizing them the nonfiction Sanderson keeps interrupting.

Sometimes I just like the book jacket! Natural History, by Carlos Fonseca, is an even more complex experiment. Again a writer is given a packet of letters and notes, and embarks on geographical and philosophical journeys in search of truth or reality, or camouflaged butterflies and masked revolutionary guerrilla leaders. I didn't understand it, but it was appropriately surreal reading for the Covid shutdown. Oh, and there's a famous fashion designer with a mysterious disease.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Nominees in the Exploding Reptiles Fiction category

No year in my memory, at least not since I escaped Millard Lefler Junior High, has needed ravenous, swamp dwelling fictional reptiles like this one, 2020. 

Snakes, dragons, and alligators remind this reader that irreverent humor and satire are essential to good mental health in this messed up moment. Still, keep wearing your mask and using vodka hand sanitizer. And remember, next to bleach injections, laughter  is the best medicine.

Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen:  Skink, the former governor of Florida, hides out from the world in the Florida swamp just a bit down the road from the POTUS golf course. Enter a female wildlife relocation expert and very hungry pythons.

Highfire, by Eoin Colfer:  Vern, the last-of-his-kind fairy tale dragon hides out from the world in the  Louisiana bayou bingeing on Netflix. Enter a crooked sheriff, and let the airboats explode.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Having a wonderful time. Wish you were six feet from here.

Where will I be these next few days? Sadly not with my newest pandemic grandbaby and his parents in D.C.  Not with my first pandemic grandbaby either. These are strange, travel-free vacation days, but I'm ridiculously excited about my upcoming time off. 

"Don't worry that I have COVID if you don't see me around," I told the woman in the next office. "Just tell people I'm on a Buddhist silent retreat," I joked to the gal at the CIRC desk. We were wearing masks and talking through Plexiglass, plus neither of us hear as well as we used to. No surprise she thought I was going nudist skydiving.  

Bought some little fifty cent easy-open cans of pork and beans. Nothing says vacation as much as sitting on a rock and eating cold beans for breakfast. Except maybe dry Cheerios and Tang in Dixie cups.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

The Omen of the Exploding Kolache

So, I bit into the spicy, juicy Texas Hot sausage kolache at the intersection, and the melted cheese shot out sideways, splattering the driver's side window, door, my eyeglasses and work attire. I've consumed many kolache breakfasts on my commute, but this is the first one to explode. Thank heaven for the jug of disinfectant wipes riding shotgun in the Buick. 

Heading back home after a fun-filled day adding homeschooling math books to the library catalog, I was discouraged to find a new orange trouble light shining on the dash. Whaddya mean, service engine soon? I just serviced engine to the tune of $600 in June.  

In my dreams the cheese splatters merged with the check engine icon. One forty-five a.m. wide awake and panicked. This was scary stuff, and it's meaning could not be more clear if it was the call for Batman in the Batmobile. Time. Time for a monthly car payment.

Boa constrictor swallows goat. Details at ten.

The air is heavy and humid, and I don't like very much. Tomorrow I'm going back to work to wrangle again the boa constrictor that is our pandemic library circulation system, and the goat that it swallowed. 

Close your eyes and imagine a very, very large snake. This snake is the normal library circulation system.  About as many items check out on any day as are returned, so the snake looks like a snoozing garden hose.

Along comes a pandemic, trippity-tropping across the bridge like a Billy Goat Gruff. Library patrons, bless them, rush to check out everything they can carry.

We will visualize that large amount of checked-out library materials as a goat. 

That goat is being swallowed whole by the snake like a classic episode of Mutual of Omaha' s Wild Kingdom when a giant anaconda almost eliminates the host, Marlin Perkins. 

The snake will not need to hunt for food for many months or years. The goat is a massive blumpfh in the circulation system. The library staff still has to prepare for the eventual glut of returning books, movies, and audiobooks.

My job, strange as it sounds, is managing the goat. I go inside the snake to manipulate due dates and renewals so the staff doesn't find the entire goat in the book drop some morning soon. I've taken to wearing a khaki outfit complete with pith helmet. This may be the high point of my entire library career. Oh, heck, oh heck, I'm up to my neck.

  © 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Squirrels in the kitchen numbering one to twenty

At Eastridge Elementary we had perfect oblong pieces of lined paper especially for spelling tests. The spelling paper had a certain smell. If you say to me, "Print your name on your paper and number from one to twenty," I can smell the spelling paper and the pencil graphite.

From the very beginning I loved everything about spelling tests. I loved sitting up straight in my desk that smelled slightly of Comet cleanser. loved the teacher pacing around the room leaving just enough time between calling out words for us to write them  in print or cursive. Seeing the letters in such fine arrangements of correctness was as satisfying as a time-lapse film of a rose blooming.

The spelling test may be my earliest understanding of "form."  This concept boggled my mind as a college art major, and yet I knew it when I saw it in second grade. The pieces, the letters danced themselves into a perfectly logical, complete, and correct oneness that made my little heart glow warm. Spelling, rhyming, indenting, punctuating to the aromas of mopped beige linoleum tile and dripping overshoes in the cloak room.

And so this problem presented. The horns of a  matter learned or mislearned or hallucinated. B.A. Paris has a new book out, The Dilemma. How embarrassing it must be for the author and publisher that the title is incorrectly spelled on the jacket. Or NOT!

The horns of the dilem-NAH. It's Greek, surely. A root word we will need on the SAT, Shirley. Probably the minotaur leading Theseus in two dark tunnels of the labyrinth. Alas, according to my big old red beloved American Heritage dictionary there's no N in dilemma, and Ariadne is left rewinding her thread.

Say the word. Use the word in a sentence. Repeat the word. Pause.

I will never forget the first two words I missed on a spelling test. It was a devastating blow to my self concept. Not perfect after all. Squirrels. Kitchen.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Four out of five wheels agree

Next week it's bye-bye work-from-home-office and hello dining room. AND I get to move the nice office chair Staples delivered to save my back on week two or three of this adventure,to my personal computer desk for emails, bill-paying and Sims.

The past two weeks when I had some time for my favorite Sim, Portly Chartreuse, or the odd Sim couple of Scary-Hair Tammy and Joe Biden, I felt out of balance. Was it my life-work ratio? Lack of exercise? Unhappy chakras? Nagging knowledge of the not-yet-unloaded dishwasher? Or was my tired old Office Max chair about to throw me to the floor?

Several times I've turned the chair upside down to see if it was the culprit (being the least damning of conclusions).  I couldn't see a problem, so it must be a personal defect.

This evening I rolled the old chair out to the dining room in a switch with the Staples chair. Voila! Four out of five wheels sit on the floor. Rolling the chair around the smooth floor there's always one bucking bronco in the wheel bunch.

Hooray! I'm not unstable and imbalanced! Sure, I could get outside more, eat fruits and veggies, get back on the meditation routine... but mostly it's the chair that's off its rocker.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

To get home eventually

The first traffic jam on my commute after over two months without jams and without traffic  and mostly without commutes was an alternate reality ninety minutes. Nearly all the drivers were staying at safe distances and signalling their need or intention to change lanes. Where was the typical panic to change lanes in any direction? Where were the arrogant pickup drivers plowing to the exit ramp or driving on the shoulder? What had occurred to shut down most of the freeway lanes? I felt an abnormal lack of Need-to-Know.

Every driver save one I observed seemed pretty calm, although that one woman did look harried. How odd to be wondering where she needed to be, who she needed to pick up at an appointed time.  I did not seem to need to be anywhere but where I was. I bet she was finally going to a haircut appointment!

No big lighted signs alerted us to the coming traffic slowdown, or to take alternate routes. I'm still blissfully ignorant of traffic apps or the cause of the shutdown.  Why were there so many white semi-trailers? The cars all seemed to be white or silver. The sky had that late afternoon cloudy gray glare so typical here.

Strange sense of floating for a very long time on a very slow river, probably getting sunburned with my arm roasting on the black inner tube. Tubing on a Texas river of traffic.

My personal inconvenience, my individual delay, my normal aggravation were next to nonexistent. Just floating along. Check my blood pressure. Am I even breathing?

Maybe we could come out of this tragic pandemic with a brief and temporary sense of being part of a grand organism that works together, that allows space between beings,  that breathes in and out. Maybe we will improve our ability to wait, and not take it as a personal affront.


© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Risk assessment haiku with generous tip

Not safe Safe No mask
Mask Cut hair myself Just don't
Salon Sane Not sane

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Harrowing haircuts

... or Fiskars and sickles. We visited Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska a few times as kids, and wandered through the huge shed of farm implements. I was a city kid in a rural state. As a mom I was great with all the types of railroad cars and different trucks, plus the dinosaurs (who mostly have different names now). I even knew my logging and construction vehicles, but I hadsome sort of block with the farm implements. Old McDonald had a tractor, EIEIO, was as far as I went.

Somewhere in my hundreds of untitled, unidentified scan files there's a classic Christmas letter my mom received from her high school friend who stayed on the farm. The friend's husband dropped the harrow on his foot, but his wife could not drive a stick shift. So the farmer had to drive himself to the hospital. When the going gets tough, the tough heave the harrow off their foot and put pedal to the metal.

One of my most vivid memories from teaching summer art programs was the girl who showed up for performance day (in August in Dallas) in her green velvet Christmas dress. She had played connect-the-dots of the mosquito bites on her legs with black Sharpie marker. And she had cut her own hair so it looked a cornfield with rows of stubble, thankfully not when I was handing our the Fiskars scissors. I have been leaning toward the same style. It's so hard to resist the Fiskars when my bangs are in my eyes. 

Thanks, Wikipedia for this image of the agricultural tool.



Brush up on your farm implements here at Toy Tractor Times.

Paintings links to click on while you are NOT cutting your hair:

"Brush Harrow" by Winslow Homer link
"Reaper" by Eastman Johnson link
Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with a Reaper" link
"The Sower" by Jean-Francois Millet for Nebraskans link
"Harvesters" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder link
Thomas Hart Benton's "Ploughing it Under" link

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Extreme excelsior birthday

Hail, excelsior! Such an imposing name for basically wood shavings. This birthday I received several gift boxes with goodies nestled in excelsior (!) Cheeses, chocolates, licorice, caramel corn, gourmet pancake mixes, syrup and spice. Gloriana, Alleluia, and Britannia rules the waves!

One box had faux excelsior made of crinkled and crimped brown kraft paper.  Faux Excelsior sounds like a cross between Pomp and Circumstance and Hail to our current, alas, Chief.

And now that I read about it, the stuffing in my great aunt's rocking chair is excelsior. From the Latin for high, elevated, and lofty, I lift this toast.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Self-quarantined for bad attitude

The wind picked up while I was on one of my Easter family Skype sessions, but the real chiller blasts hit in the middle of the night. Beer cans kept rolling and rattling around the parking lot. Of course, I had a coughing attack and sore throat, signalling the end. Back to sleep, one of the smoke detectors had a freak-out for no reason.

I was still staring at the cup of blah coffee when the maintenance guy left the note on my door. A person in our apartment community ... quarantined ... proximity... wash hands. Oh, crap. Even though my sinuses were protesting the forty degree temperature drop, I clearly needed to get out in the sun on what was likely to be my last day. AND I hope I cough as LOUD as the couple upstairs tromps in their apartment!

Texas bluebonnets helped some, as did a Coke from Sonic, but my grumpiness was still high as my temp was sub-normal. 

Back home I managed to reread the apartment notice. "...a member of our community has been directed to self-quarantine because they may have come  in close proximity to a person that tested positive for the COVID-19. This is a precautionary measure and does not mean that they have or will develop COVID-19." In other words, keep staying home, wash your hands, and don't freak out. Yes, somebody may get sick, but this is actually better news than my usual imaginings, and the action steps are still the same. Plus, I have plenty of canned low-sodium black beans and Minute Rice.

So I just took a nap.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Bangs in the Time of Coronavirus

...

There's got to be something besides the part & barrette look and the half-inch-long bangs... I need a motion-activated voice in the bathroom that says, "Step away from the scissors!"


© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Weekending From Home #2 Takeaways

Solitude is not the same as loneliness.

"Use your time wisely" is not the same as productivity.

Sitting around the dining table listening to humorous survival stories of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII gave me powerful resource for this moment.

Creativity doesn't require a finished product.

Adaptation and change take a lot of energy, and sleep is a reasonable response.

Bacon is a powerful force for good. No Jedi required.

If I don't protect and take care of myself the people who love me are going to be seriously pissed off.

It's good to have a tire pressure/inflation kit in the trunk of the Buick.

Tastees:

1 lb. ground beef, not browned
1/2 cup water
2 T vinegar
1 t dry mustard
1/4 cup catsup
2 T horseradish sauce
1/4 t chili powder
(1 medium onion, chopped)
Ground black pepper

Worchestershire?

Mix together and cook 1 hour, uncovered. Serve on bun with sliced dill pickles. Inhale steam.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Who owns the zebra?

Like you, I've been home mostly working, but also watching, aware of even the slightest happening outside my window. When there's so little to see, we really want to see it! I haven't yet reached the desperate need to create a matrix to figure out the relationships of apartment dwellers in my small nook of the big rental complex, but know that day is approaching. In this Time of Curious Social Distancing you might want to answer the classic deduction puzzle linked below.

For now, I just have questions. So many questions:

• Why does Pacing Woman always wear saggy pants and who's she talking to on the phone?
• Where are the parents of the little boy playing in the big puddle? 
• Who orders Grub Hub from Panera, for heavens sake? I mean really, just make yourself a PBJ sandwich!
• If I go to the store to buy toilet paper will I ever get a parking space again? 
• Why does Day-Glo Wizard T-shirt Man eat all those pork rinds from the bicycle seller?
• Is the guy upstairs auditioning for All Star Wrestling with a kangaroo or just clog dancing? 
• What days of the week does Fleece Pajama Pants Man babysit the little girl who pretends she's driving the minivan? 
• How many days can Purple Polo Shirt Man spend topping up the fluids in his car?
• What's wrong with the German shepherd wearing the cone of shame?
• Will the Red-headed Girl's roommate succeed in taking away her car keys while she's "in this condition?" 
• Is Scrubs Gal with the red Ford Fiesta still caring for the elderly on the night shift in a nearby nursing home? I salute her!
• When will High School Drum Major practice his routine on the bank of the flood control canal again?

Short on statements:

• The classic Who Owns the Zebra puzzle is a series of statements. 
• A second test to try is READ EVERYTHING BEFORE DOING ANYTHING  

Nope. Still nobody twirling banners out there, but I keep watching for the return of the drum major.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Nancy Book Awards

Don't know if my choices were not memorable, or if I have memory loss, but 2019 was not a stellar year for books. You might give these a shot.

Audiobooks

 
  

Fiction

    

Nonfiction



Previous years:
2018
2013

That's all folks! Better luck in 2020.



© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder