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

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

Fifty mile field trip with phonetic spelling

It's getting trickier to see any fields on a drive north in Collin County. In celebration of sunshine after a miserable gray week we went for a little road trip up Texas State Highway 289 aka Preston Road all the way to Celina.  As we drove, we kept saying, "This used to be way out there." It all used to be WAY OUT THERE, but now it's not.

Between the sprung-up subdivisions, the Sinacola and Komatsu heavy equipment scraping away, and restaurants lined up to the horizon, there are a few longhorn cattle. Not sure if the longhorns are there for real, or for faux Western ambiance. I'd just had a dream that I was smoking a Meerschaum pipe while sitting on a buffalo wearing a Disney princess costume, and Monday's sunlight was preternatural. 

*To clarify, I was wearing the Disney princess costume and smoking the pipe. The buffalo was not wearing a costume or smoking. The dress was yellow. I had slept straight through sixteen hours due to a sinus headache, and the dream was extremely vivid.*

Celina, Texas, is a pronunciation problem. According to the Texas Pronunciation Guide, Celina is pronounced suh-LI-nuh. But Salina, Kansas is pronounced sal-eye'-nuh (i.e. singular, with a long I in the second syllable), as distinguished from the city of Salinas CA, which is pronounced sal-ee'-nus (i.e. plural, with a long E in the second syllable). 

If you need to say, "This used to be way out there," it is ðɪs juzd tu bi weɪ aʊt ðɛr. 

Gawking at the subdivisions filled with two-story, tall-roofed houses a song fragment bopped me on the head: 

They're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

Whuh?  Sparing you the googling, the song is "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds, most notably recorded by Pete Seeger, not Burl Ives , Roger Miller, or the Kingston Trio.  The houses sprouting from here to the county line are not cheap ticky tacky, but they do look all the same. For safety sake, we waited to google until after the fifty mile field trip.

And because it all used to be way out there, if you can remember the Viet Nam draft, I recommend Richard Russo's Chances Are....

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Scanning self-compassion

The person I was 25 years ago went through an outer ring of Hades, and I am cutting her some slack.

Mother's Day is a time to appreciate our moms, and thank the daughters-in-law who are amazing moms for our grandchildren. Today I am also sending a little cosmic white light and pink bubbles to the young woman who raised my three sons to be responsible citizens of the world. She made many mistakes and had some skewed priorities. She let the guys eat way to many yogurt-covered raisins and watch an excessive number of Ninja Turtle cartoons. She did not shield them from current events. She let them wear camouflage and play with toy guns. Worst of all, she didn't keep them up-to-date with dental check-ups.

Today I've scanned another two photo albums and a vacation album from the years of her mismanagement. Some pages bring up pain, and some bring up accusations. Over all, though, I see a mother who needs a big dose of self-compassion.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Hope, park, purse, fly

In a year-end display of flagrant optimism I purchased a new purse at DSW today. It is not a perfect purse, or a stylish handbag, or even vaguely appealing. It just seemed workable, and the extremely workable purse of the previous 2.5 years bit the dust.

Yes, it has come down to workable. How will this purse work traveling through the TSA screener and under the seat in front of me? Does it have a cross-body strap? Can it be cleaned up with a Clorox disinfecting wipe after a bad Panda Express moment? Will it hold a bagel sandwich, a library book, or all of my prescriptions? Will it preserve my invisibility as a woman of a certain age? Please don't let it make a statement!

The 2017 fiction audiobook that rises most often to mind is not the amazing Lincoln in the Bardo, performed by a full cast. It is Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Katherine Rooney, narrated by Xe Sands. New Year's Eve 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish, former ad copywriter genius, takes a ten-mile stroll around a gritty Manhattan in her mink coat ruminating over her six decades in NYC. How do we travel? How do we stroll? What's in our heavily-packed psychological wheelie luggage?

I would not want to lift the karmic baggage of 2017 into the overhead carry-on bin. The stress of 2017 won't fit in the bin, and I don't fit in the ever-shrinking airplane seats. It's all I can do to stow my purse under the seat.

Not to be downer Debby Dystopia here, but life in the Trump administration has been a drag on my in-town miles-per-gallon in 2017. Being hopeful, or at least staying calm, is an everyday challenge. That's why I love leaving the Buick at Park'N'Fly. 

The guys who drive the shuttle vans have a unanimous appreciation for the 2002 Buick Century. They tell me I could sell this beauty for big bucks. They rhapsodize on its fine points and pristine condition. They ooh and ah about its mileage total. It's Mad Max meets Fidel: Road Warrior. 

I drive off in my magic pumpkin coach with my purse of invisibility. Maybe we can survive after all.

And hey, there's a purse museum in Little Rock. And hey, there are some Buick museums, too.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Abby Normal

Our favorite yard decorations on the every Sunday morning walking route are these delightful dancing ghosts. The slightest breeze gets them doing a bit of a shimmy. In the early dark of October evenings the ghosts are lit by a long string of lights that form their "arms." It is the ghosts' second year in the neighborhood. My walking buddy and I find they make us ridiculously happy in the era of dismal news, disasters, lies, predators, massacres, and on and on. I don't know if Trump has brought back Christmas as he proclaims, but I am sure glad for Halloween. If I had a yard and a tree, I would sure make some dancing ghosts! Here's how.

When the "Addams Family" television series premiered in 1964, my dear parents, Howie and Fritz, took their big book of New Yorker cartoons off the high shelf and introduced me to the cartoons of Charles Addams, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, Syd Hoff, Peter Arno,  and James Thurber. Dad would patiently explain the historical and political back stories of cartoons I did not understand. I've been hooked on political cartoons ever since. They gave me an insight into history, but also into my parents' takes on the history they had lived through. Later they would introduce me to World War II through Bill Mauldin's cartoons in Up Front.

Saying "Merry Christmas" again.

Instead of cartoons, I've spent the day studying a cookbook! Talk about abnormal behavior! This is one very practical and inspiring cookbook, with great color photos and explanations. Since it is finally cool enough to consider cooking, I am hooked. Look for it at your library, and request it if they don't have it! America's Test Kitchen's One-Pan Wonders may change your life.

And just in case you haven't taken this trip:

Get on the bus, Gus.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Where's Waldo wildlife photography

Took a crazy number of photos on my two day trip, trying to catch bees, lizards, ground squirrels with fluffy silvery tails, and jack rabbits on the go. I saw more jack rabbits on this trip than ever before. They pop up, zigzag off at great speed, then freeze completely blending into the vegetation.

Back home I've downloaded the photos and fired up the Photoshop. Let the search begin! There are about seventy images that must have some creature in them...

1. A cooperative Painted Lady butterfly at the Elena Gallegos Picnic Area in the Sandia foothills. The million dollar views up there cost one dollar admission weekdays.

2. Also at the picnic area, a jack rabbit. Yes, there really is one hiding in this photo. Hint--it's on the right half. Out of all the photos, this is the only one I where I can spy Waldo.

3. Piedras Marcadas Canyon of Petroglyph National Monument was full of jack rabbits. I'm not making this up.  See half a dozen of them in this photo? Me neither! Remember the olden days of film cameras? My photo failures would have cost a fortune!

4. My walk in the canyon was accompanied by a constant low hum. Bees! Big, small, tiny, all very busy and not the least interested in people. The petroglyph symbol lower right looks like a bee to me.

5. Turtles at the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park.  Three more dollars well spent to see this nature center and learn much about the ecology of the Rio Grande River. Walked the Bosque and River trails, and had enough sense not to attempt hummingbird photos.

  

 6. The lizards were surprising willing to pose for pictures. Note the blue-tailed juvenile.

I wish all the moth-makers of the Moth Migration Project could visit this enchanting state and experience the creative refueling I always find. And good luck with the jack rabbit photography!


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Mural walking in Duke City

Popsicle stick fence in melted ice cream colors

Flew into Albuquerque for two days of creative refueling. I was there to see the Cross Pollination exhibit at 516 Arts in downtown. Started my adventure with the downtown mural walking tour.  This was one of two Cross Pollination theme murals new this summer:

Botanical Mural Project by Argentinian artist Pastel

Sam-I-Am takes the train to Night Vale

I really liked the mural at Silver Street Market. I would have taken better photos if standing in the middle of the street was a good plan. Albuquerque is a slow-moving small city most of the time, but getting run over would be a bad thing for the rest of the already short-staffed folks at my workplace. It reminded me of Green Eggs and Ham, Roswell aliens, and the Night Vale podcast. That's just the kind of place ABQ is. Would you, could you on a train?

Albuquerque has been called "Duke City" since conquistiadors arrived to complicate life for the Pueblo Indians who lived there. The minor league baseball team was named the "Dukes." Nowadays the baseball team, the Albuquerque Isotopes, is named both for Homer Simpson's Springfield Isotopes, and for New Mexico's connection to nuclear energy and science.

My other favorite was the 2016 mural "Color Sphere" on Gold Street. It looks like my friend Bonnie's blouse on a much larger scale. Bonnie and the blouse are not larger, just the mural. It's an unusual mural because of its loose, watercolor painting style.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

OJ with Fritzi

Smile

On special Sunday mornings we would beg our mom, Fritzi, to use her "roly poly" glasses for our orange juice. I have the few surviving roly polies in my cupboard, and they still put a smile on my face, with or without vitamin C.

Roly poly on the counter

A Thursday car chase news flash involving a possibly stolen orange juice-colored Chevrolet naturally reminded me of the OJ Bronco chase.

OJ

In other orange juice smile news, I'll be breakfasting at Frontier Restaurant across from the UNM campus later this summer. The Frontier squeezes the best orange juice on the planet. I will lift my glass to toast Fritzi and smile.


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Step Inside This House

Tonight I am filled with gratitude for the two gracious, kind, wise women named Janie who independently and separately introduced me to the music and storytelling of Guy Clark twenty years or so ago when that was exactly what I needed.

Hold this piece of glass up to the light comin' through the door.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Blue is my world now I'm without you

Health class teachers warned us about flashbacks. They could occur at any time because of dangerous choices we might make in our adolescent years. White Rabbit... Stairway to Heaven... Truckin'... These might sneak up on us at any time in our life and we'd be sent straight to the loony bin.

I didn't expect to have a severe flashback while waiting my turn to have fabric cut in JoAnns. Nobody expects the Paul Mauriat "L'Amour Est Bleu" flashback. My mental turntable was spinning at 45 r.p.m., a floral corduroy Nehru dress was floating above my eyes. I'm sure I was on my back in a yard of mostly crabgrass and clover with a transistor radio earpiece wrapped around my ear, clutching the KLMS 1480 Superhit 1+ 48 Survey.

Factoid: Paul Mauriat's orchestra easy listening single was a number one hit in the U.S. for five weeks in early 1968, the only record by a French artist to every be #1, and the second longest instrumental behind the theme from "A Summer Place". Oh, geez, I never even warned my sons about the dangers of Percy Faith and his Orchestra! Talk about a gateway drug!!

Too much squinting at the sun and then at my watch might have been the trigger. Used the last square of cyanotype fabric in our short patch of sunshine, and rushed to order more. How would a sunprint addict make it until delivery?

Of course, by choosing blue quilt fabrics at JoAnns...

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

My life as a charm bracelet

Sixth grade snags aqua mohair
Trout's flashing tail caught in so much monofilament

Significant animals exchange idle chitchat with Neil Armstrong
first man on the

Roadrunner
Barnum and Bailey moon hanging up in the I-80 Stuckey's sky
Chipmunk souvenir

Old woman chooses new shoe hue repainting touching up
Giraffe

Mermaid in the museum with the crayon Clue.
Lizard and owl pea green boat

So many children didn't know what to do didn't know what to do
Sailboat escape


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Aaron and the porcupine eggs

For spelling questions I start with the which-looks-right test before trying Spellcheck, Google, or the dictionary. Two of us were dueling through all the options trying to sort out "bur". We had seen "bur" and "burr" so many times they both looked wrong and were both likely correct. With prickles in my brain I headed home.

After a deep cleansing breath I opened the dear old Big Red Dictionary. Had to dust it off and apologize for my long neglect. A true servant should not be relegated to the bottom shelf. I had forgotten the sensory pleasures of the indented letter tabs and the light, thin pages.

The lesson plan under construction is using our senses to learn about seeds, seed pods, and a bit of seed dispersal for young children. They will not care if "bur" or "burr" wins. They will be unimpressed by the rough trilling of the letter r, as in Scottish pronunciation. Floating bur oak acorn caps in the water tub is more their style. And yes, bur oak seems to need only one r.

What burs attach in the memory? What hooks on the seed pods? I know exactly what I was wearing the day my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Rollie came to visit us in Edmond, Oklahoma. I bought the outfit at Anthony's on Broadway, not the Bryant store. That pink shirt is in the Great Shirts of the Late Eighties Museum collection. It was a stripe print over-dyed. Rollie, ever the bull**** storyteller, brought my kids a small box of carefully cushioned ancient "porcupine eggs". The boys were appropriately impressed, and did not touch the artifacts. We kept that box of cocklebur prickles in a drawer for at least a decade. Bur. is the abbreviation for bureau and Burma.

http://essmextension.tamu.edu/plants/plant/cocklebur/

cockle n. Any of several plants often growing as weeds in grain fields

cocklebur n. Any of several course weeds of the genus Xanthium bearing prickly burs. 2. The bur of any of these plants.

Cockleburs are poisonous to livestock in the seedling stage, and were used in Greece as hair dye. I'm guessing we are trying for blonde, since xanth- indicates the color yellow.

Burrs (or burs) are an amazing adaptation for seed dispersal. The curriculum guide suggests I put a big sock over one shoe and leg of each preschool student and send them out to wander in the meadow to unwittingly pick up Velcro-esce seeds, The guide doesn't explain what to do with all the stickers in their jeans on the other leg.






bur oak  A timber tree. Quercus macrocarpa, of eastern North America, having acorns enclosed within a deep, fringed cup. The Big Red Dictionary is positive about the spelling of this name.

bur1 n. Also burr. 1. a. The rough, prickly, or spiny fruit husk, seed pod, or flower of various plants, such as the chestnut or the burdock. b. A plant producing burs. 2. A persistently clinging or nettlesome person or thing. 3. Any of various rotary cutting tools designed to be attached to a drill. [Middle English burre, probably from Scandinavian, akin to Old Swedish borre.]

bur2 1. Variant of burr (rough edge). 2. Variant of burr (guttural trill). 3. Variant of burr (washer)....a washer that fits around the smaller end of a rivet... Not your Maytag.

Bur and burr keep dancing around doing variations on a theme. For most situations you can spell it whichever way passes your looks-right test.

Burr, which follows burp gun, is the name of the Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson (1801-05). That would be Aaron Burr, 1756-1836, who famously fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Burr (copyright 1973) was the first novel by Gore Vidal I ever read. Checked it out at the Benson Branch of the Omaha Public Library in about 1984.

Xanthippe  the wife of Socrates; proverbial as a shrewish and scolding woman....You could say she was a prickly presence in the philosopher's life, or a burr under his saddle. Page from my Greco-Roman notebook project with Xanthippe in a VW:

Nuts!? Am I nuts?! Surely not, Shirley. We will discuss seed dispersal by wind, water, gravity, and scat some other time.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

"I just want to play store."

Last week the preschoolers played "Have you got the bags!?" This game was about reminding parents to take the reusable bags into the grocery store. We played grocery store with plastic veggies, a toy cash register, and a bunch of fabric shopping bags.

Afterwards, I had to pack up the plastic vegetables, little shopping baskets, and cloth bags in the big Rubbermaid tub. It was sad. My coworker stood looking wistfully at the most realistic of the toy carrots. "After a long day," she said,"I tell my husband I just want to play store for awhile." It's their code for needing some relaxing imagination refueling time.

No pressure. No goals and objectives. No metrics. I just want to cut and paste sometimes, with round-tip safety scissors and the white paste from the big jar. Paint samples from Glidden, bits of rickrack, a bit of fuzz. It was enough to get the paste on the scrap of fabric or paper, turn it over, and stick it down on the faded construction paper.Any aesthetic decisions were only to please myself. Any story I told to adults asking, "What did you make, Honey?," could be short, cryptic, and changed for the next time. "It's a big brown bear." "It's a slippery slide." "It's my baby brother." But you don't have a baby brother, Honey! Doesn't matter. "It's my dad who never ever takes a bath..." Ahhh. The grown-ups looked at each other knowingly.

So this week, I'm bringing back the plastic veggies. After we read Growing Vegetable Soup, by Lois Ehlert, we will harvest vegetables from the pretend garden, "wash" them in plastic colanders, chop them on cutting boards, and stir them in big stew pots. Then we will do potato and pepper printmaking on kid-size paper chef hats to take home. I don't know about the kids, but it feels therapeutic to me.

Good vegetables, good soup, good pretending, good Earth.

Fresh plastic veggies from and imaginary garden are bound to taste better than plastic veggies from the "gorphries store."*

* Pronunciation from my real baby brother.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Way back in the before time with Iguana Bob

Had to make a brunch casserole for a departmental staff meeting and it turned out edible, so I'll spare you the details except that I cheated and used store-brand seasoned salad croutons.

Yesterday I took my recyclables to the big collection dumpster in the parking lot of the public library. Behind the dumpster is a small strip mall with this new addition:

Yes, indeedy, pizza acupuncture! I love it! I just wish Iguana Bob could share this discovery with me as he did Wok Bueno so many years ago. Many's the time Bob and I drove around with the top down singing "Wok This Way" and eating peppermint ice cream cones.

Iguana Bob ditched me years ago and drove off into the sunset. Now I hang out with Arlo the Air Quality Armadillo. Arlo needs a car with fins in my opinion... an electric car with fins!

Arlo should not stop for an ice cream cone.

Before what time? Before digital cameras and cable internet. Back when I spent real time making real things, quirky but real. My sons shared our condo with a variety of papier mache lizards, dachsunds, penguins, an owl, a giraffe,a monkey, Ma Chicken, Wally the wall alligator, and some giant insects. AND the kids turned out okay.

Bob's convertible was about the same size as the Smart Cars we used in D.C. last month:

 

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Refueling: postcard from an introvert

Having a wonderful time
you did not hear
from me

Moving walkway strides five a.m.
just a carry-on roller bag
memorizing parking location
3H

Lifting off not
completely under seat ahead of you
Electronic devices in flight mode
Slow taxi to hangar

No calls please no texts
No decisions what to do next
Refueling

Contents may have shifted
Prepare for descent
the wing dip
wading green heron along the bank

Cabin pressure

Refueling



© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder