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

The plastic solar lotus Buddha next door

Love my new apartment. Been here a couple months. It has good vibes, maybe because of the guy next door.

My neighbors have a solar-powered LED lighted lotus Buddha figure by their front door. Sadly, the little solar collecting panels have been ripped out of Buddha's knees. I feel compassion for the Buddha, as my knees often feel powerless.

The neighbors with the Buddha hauled a couch to the dumpster. First they tried to get it out the dining room window. Then they took it out the back siding door, over the railing, and all the way around the building. 

One Sunday they loaded up a U-Haul, but they left the Buddha, a floor lamp, a green lawn chair, and a bunch of trash bags out front. Eventually the floor lamp and trash bags disappeared. Management sent workers to install new window blinds, carpet, and paint the place. Peeking in, I could see new black appliances waiting for installation. A van of women came to do a make-ready cleaning. Still Buddha sits out front. 

Since then a college student in a Yogi Bear costume has moved into another apartment. A family has moved out leaving a toy kitchen beside the dumpster. That delighted a crew of barefoot, unsupervised kids for a couple days.

A young woman hospital worker arrives home each morning about the time I'm waking up to do my knee exercises before breakfast. When I head out the door I smile at a woman in an orange sari sitting on the steps leading upstairs. She looks drowsy, but the infant in her lap is bright-eyed and surveying the world.

 

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Time-shifters and singing crawdads

If you check out a library book today, it won't be due until Spring. When will Spring walk in and drop your book in the return slot? In a couple weeks, but beware, Spring, in its toga togs,  must pass the Ides of March first to slide any DVDs you have borrowed into the book drop. I bet even Brutus, whom you knew et tu, was sometimes tardy with his graphic novels.

The library will be open two evenings a week beginning this Tuesday. That's one hour sooner than necessary due to Daylight Saving Time. Going to work later on Tuesday adds more time for my annual vehicle inspection which is on some completely altered space-time continuum. I swear I just sat there in that grungy waiting room with its moisture-damaged Field & Stream magazines holding my "new" purse on my lap just a week or so back while my Buick was inspected.

Back behind the curtain with the man to whom you pay no attention, I was shifting time on behalf of the singing crawdads. Delia Owen's book, Where the Crawdads Sing, is in high demand with book club members. Our little library has fifteen patron requests for four copies. Et tu? Are you on queue?

Cue the crawdads!

Crawdad choir director

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Name that emperor!

This Byzantine emperor during the Fourth Crusade was nicknamed for his unibrow or sullen countenance.

Who was Mourtzouphlos?

This 1953 gold record about a city name change brought a  Canadian quartet its first big success.

What is "Istanbul (not Constantinople)?"

His audiobook narration of The House at the Edge of Night received AudioFile Best of 2016 Fiction notice, but his readings of Beautiful Ruins, Last Painting of Sara De Vos, and two Andrew Gross historical thrillers are all outstanding.

Who is Edoard Ballerini?

Two subjects personally revealed as almost completely forgotten by Thomas Madden's history of the city at the center of the world.

What are history and geography?

This goofy puppet variety show helped my dad in the worst of his grief after Mom died in 2005.

What is "The Muppet Show?"

Pierce Brosnan wears a giant shrimp costume spoofing his James Bond movie roles but can't quite match an audiobook narrator for these qualities.

What are suave and debonair?


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

I contain multitudes : unhappy macnam

Many people on this ride have been wondering how to put the President in maintenance mode today. Never imagined I'd be turning on extra lights and peering through my bifocals to find "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus," in a stack of dusty CDs. While the chief executive is a whirling vortex of contradictions, the general sense of his messages sinks lower and lower.

On lunch break I started reading Ed Yong's book, I Contain Multitudes. It is much less upsetting to my innards to imagine my body full of whirling microbes than it is to listen to the latest news. The gut microbes are my friends. With this President, who needs enemies?

Walt Whitman's quote from "Song of Myself" inspired the book's title:

Do I contradict myself? 

Very well, then I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.

On the gut scale between beneficial microbes and nauseating news there is the eerie experience of the remote I.T. contractor roaming around inside my work computer. I can watch the progress via a teeny tiny camera on the nose of a giant intestinal worm. Occasionally my physical effort is required to to reboot or type in a password. 

Are the billions of microbes within each of us the original I.T. department? Have they been making adjustments and corrections invisibly since we slithered from the cesspool?

I hold out small hope for Clem to say, "this is Worker speaking." If you don't know Firesign Theatre, it's not too late!

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Eclipse brunch pizza

Pizza in totality quickly became partial. With special glasses zucchini, mushrooms, spinach, arugula, basil, green peppers, black olives become visible.

We gave away all the eclipse viewing glasses at the library. That's okay. Nice strangers at the park were happy to share.

I saw several people with cereal box viewers. Using a colander for a viewer is not impressive, but you can summon Batman:

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Eclipse of reason produces squirrels

Merlin whispered to me that a miracle may occur Monday, August 21st, in the early afternoon. There's a slight chance a significant number of Americans may look up, up and away from screens of their phones, tablets, and computers, the wizard mused. Even the toddlers!

Wooooee cool, I whispered back. I didn't know they could still do that! Will it be dangerous???

Indeed, hinted the magician, this foretells an era of liability, litigiousness, and neck strains. These are anxious times deep in the pit of your being. Lo, the tower will fall in darkness and dragons will battle in the sky.

On the upside, there will be increased tourism on Guam. You can watch it all in real time on your devices with hashtags and tweets. Just don't look directly!

Resources:

• Cut and paste optometrist warning. 

We have received numerous calls regarding the proper way to view the solar eclipse. None of the glasses, sunglasses or dilating glasses provided by our office are safe to use during the viewing. Glasses must be stamped with an ISO 12312-2 certification. Any product without that designation is to be deemed unsafe. Looking at the sun without proper protection can cause irreversible retinal damage and is not advised. Unfortunately, our office can not supply you with this product.

• Your library might still have free viewing glasses. It definitely has information on making a cardboard box eclipse viewer as a family bonding DIY project.  
• Prefer your device? There are apps for the eclipse.
• Unlike the Super Bowl, there won't be fantastic Frito and beer commercials, or sparkly scantily-clad lip-syncing superstars. This is not a real spectacle!
• Check in with NASA for science! Science is a real thing! We used to study it in school!
• Merlin and Walter Cronkite looked alike with those bushy owlish eyebrows.
• Planning to try the interlaced fingers and kitchen colander methods myself.
• History of astronomy? Be brave.
• Solar research? 
• One more interesting video on your device.

Merlin has drifted off on a time-travel nap, and I'm trapped in the body of a squirrel.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Heavenly IT

A shortage of stars is preventing me from rating the audiobook of George Saunder's Lincoln in the Bardo. It is like nothing I ever experienced before, except that it is a type of collage. It is radically original and completely realized. If I could have listened straight through I would have, but 7.5 hours far exceeds my commute.

Nearing the end of the book there is much meeting of the minds in a cosmic intersection sense. Do not laugh, but it seemed appropriate that the remote I.T. techs had to take over and enter my computer to download an updated driver for my balky, stubborn HP printer. The cursor was possessed by an Other, and I could only listen for my few phone cues to log back in or unplug cords.

Energy! Light! Matter! Will! Acceptance! Plus Abraham Lincoln!



© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Going over the falls in a barrel

Juggling Deepak Chopra, cosmic consciousness, OCLC, and disturbances in the Force. Having bees live in your head is not the same as having ants invade your apartment. Only one of these things crawls all around your shower curtain!

What are the proper subject headings and Dewey decimal assignment for a book about cosmic consciousness? OCLC WorldCat suggested "Reality" and 111.0. But what about time and space, mind and body, energy, matter, quantum physics, spirituality, cosmology, rainbows, electricity, not to mention the 1901 PanAmerican Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.?

The Exposition included President McKinley's assassination and Annie Taylor's barrel ride over Niagra Falls, plus the electrocution of the assassin and the rise of the Humane Society.  Margaret Creighton's book, The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City, presents an intriging, depressing, and surprisingly timely look at American attitudes and prejudices. It's not as compelling and creepy as Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City about the Chicago World's Fair, but still worth your time.

But what is cosmic consciousness? How to you get it? Is it contagious? Is there a cure? And where should the book be shelved?


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Screened porch painter's fantasy

Whitney

"I know that woman," I thought approaching the large painting of people on a screened porch. The woman looking in from outside on the far right was the lady I'd met before, but where?

Sheldon

Hirshhorn

The Woolly Mammoth and I were celebrating Black Friday with ever so many New Yorkers. in the "Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection" exhibit. The last time we'd seen the woman was at the Hirshhorn in D.C., but I knew her from way back at the Sheldon Art Museum in Lincoln where she was acquired in 1962.

All that time it never occurred to me the artist Fairfield Porter might be a man. The Sheldon's painting seemed a descendant of Mary Cassatt to me with my inaccurate assumption. Various online sources tonight explain Fairfield was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter. The Woolly Mammoth and I shared an amazing Eliot Porter exhibit at the Amon Carter. The sources cite Vuillard and Bonnard as influences on Fairfield Porter, two of my favorites. I also see some Diebenkorn. Life is good. Art is fine. I'm so grateful to have a son who likes to visit art museums with his mom. 

AND how cool would it be to paint family portraits on a screened porch after a breakfast of hashed browns, scrambled eggs, polish sausage, and strong coffee in the chilly morning?

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Ptah and the Four Nums

Princess Peony, my granddaughter, created the universe through the thought of her heart and the utterance of "Ptah." She is totally in the toddler moment, and her special utterance happens to be the name of an ancient Egyptian god, one of those tightly wrapped dudes I vaguely recall from Peter Worth's art history class at UNL. You don't need a lot of words if you use one word with wisdom and generosity. I wanted to know what "Ptah" meant in toddler-speak. 


"Ptah" is a useful expression conferring multiple meanings by way of different tones, volumes, and punctuation. It's like "Dude," but without any negative connotations.

From Wikipedia:  

Ptah (ptä), in Egyptian religion, great god of Memphis. He was one of the important gods of ancient Egypt and, according to Memphite theology, created the universe through the thought of his heart and the utterance of his tongue. As master craftsman, he was a patron of metalworkers and artisans. The Greeks identified him with Hephaestus.

Pronunciation alternatives:

• ptah   
• ptah
• ptah

Anecdotal usage:

Received a "Num num num NUM" approval score.

1. Peony recognizes a favorite object, points, and says, "Ptah!"
2. Peony offers a favorite object to Grancy saying, "Ptah."
3. Grancy gives it back, and Peony says,  "Ptah."
4. Peony sees a favorite food on her highchair tray and excitedly demands a boost into her seat with, "Ptah!"
5. Peony wants a favorite food or toy delivered quickly...
6. She wants visitors to know she is favorably impressed with their presence in her realm,,,
7. Daddy gets home..."PTAH!!"

Conclusion:

Princess Peony utters "Ptah" to express pleasure, approval, significance, interpersonal connection, appreciation, the offering of a gift, wonder, the making of a request, recognition, adoration, and acknowledgment of existence in the present. Her "ptah" is pretty much the toddler equivalent of Ram Dass's BE HERE NOW.





© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Sun gets in my eyes

Alternate commute route. Alternate universe.

Went down Waterview after two mornings of dreadful drives, crashes, long delays, and emergency vehicles on expressways and arterials. Waterview is just a residential street through nice neighborhoods, sadly no longer a secret shortcut. There are 4-way stop intersections, small churches with changing messages on welcoming signs, mostly nicely mowed lawns.

Ronald Wright's "The Gold Eaters" in the cd player had just reached the epilogue wrap-up of hairy conquistadors and tweezed Incas when I spotted the pair of gold spray-painted yard flamingos standing planted next to a garage. Huh?

Back in the Sixties the summer library programs used to include traumatizing showings of the early Ray Harryhausen creepy puppet movie about King Midas and his daughter Marigold. Spray-paint was a new-fangled craft medium in those times, and scout troops gilded uncooked pasta, cigar boxes, and folded Readers Digest magazines, transforming cheap stuff into gold for festive kiddie Christmas gifts and sewing kits.

Four 4-way stops later I tried to focus on the message outside the little church. Was it political, or did I just need to clean my spectacles? Nevermind, it's all golden:

EYE EXAMS FREE OR DONATION 

or

EYE EXAMS FREE ORDINATION

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Apricot-filled Alghero

After breakfast of warm cornetti all'albicocca, espresso, meat and cheese on the cloister terrace at Hotel San Francesco, a walk in Old City Alghero provides wonderful images:

 

Upcycling

More research needed into the best shoes for cobblestone walks!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Motivate/meditate

Cleaning out my purse for the BIG MOG3 adventure I found one of the inspirational words I drew from a fishbowl at a nature education leadership institute last summer. It was right next to a fossilized stick of gum.

The inspirational word was not MEMORY. I have little motivational slips of paper on the desk to help me center, breathe in breathe out, stay in the moment, find joy, and pack toothbrush . They say:

COMB
eyebrows
WATER PLANTS



© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Don't screw it up, America

Tuesday I stepped out on my west-facing balcony and snapped these photos at 6:19 a.m. The three-day weekend was over. The nation's birthday had been celebrated once again. I wanted to crop the photos and post them with a note to the country that on the first day of its new year we Americans should try to not screw it up, but instead observe the beauty, be mindful of ourselves, and kind to others. But then I burnt the toast for my avocado/egg/cheese sandwich and had to leave for work.

Today was really rough, but tomorrow is going to be another new morning for the nation. We still have an opportunity to stop screwing it up. What say we try? Please.

 © 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Target with the Dalai Lama; commutin' with Putin

Groovy plastic lid slide-out under-shelf drawer from Target

 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a hot title at the library No, I've not read it. My life-changing reorganization was inspired by my son's small, well-arranged kitchen, and a chance meeting with His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was streaming live on my day off, explaining that change and peace will come from serious, continuous action, and then a little prayer. He said the diverse religions on this small planet are like a well-stocked supermarket. If there was only one religion there would be few customers in the supermarket. Education, connections with others, and compassion within ourselves are key to transforming the world in which the Orlando attack had just happened. He spoke of the importance of young persons and women in this effort.

The Dalai Lama has a delight-filled childlike sense of humor, and when I left for Target he seemed to be riding shotgun in the Buick and chuckling softly, his maroon robe flapping by the open window.  Emanating compassion and positive energy, he did not view my belated spring cleaning effort as a tiny pebble in a big stagnant pool of grime, but considered the organizing products with curiosity and wonder. When I got back to the apartment,  the Dalai Lama was not with me. I bet I lost him in the musical greeting card aisle, opening and closing the cards. Had to carry up the bags all by myself.

Another imaginary passenger, bobble-head Vladimir Putin rides on the dash instead of shotgun. If you need a powerful, absorbing audiobook for long commutes or a road trip, check out Red Notice, by Bill Browder.  Although the book came out in 2015, it's leading the nonfiction category for the next Coveted Nancy Awards.


Now, as often happens when I write, memories of my dad surface. This time it's his fondness for spiritual parodies.

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Petal dancer

On this, her nineteenth birthday, I celebrate my niece with blossoms and dance and petals, not for the first time. She is a poised, strong woman who acts on her convictions, lives comfortably in her own skin, and moves with style and grace. Clearly she is not related to my college freshman self!

 Geographical distance has limited our niece/aunt connection. Sad to say, when we were together it was often in high stress situations. I'm hoping she wasn't scarred for life.  She has an artist's eye, and I've always wanted to send her gifts for making art or of my creations. This year the gift is finished, but not yet in the mail.

Through sloggish commutes the audiobook, Art of Grace, by Sarah L. Kaufman plays on in the Buick. Its many good points are diluted through excessive repetition. Much as I love Cary Grant movies, is the actor really a saint?


Life maintenance tasks were shoved to the back burner this day off. Peony buds were blooming--

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Snail's progress with lazy Susan

Bet your bottom dollar the sun will come out tomorrow when I'm at the dentist or the day after when it's back to work. Today's gray skies, clouds of green pollen, and humidity were not working for a trial run of the cyano print/papercut process. My Cosmic Permanent Record was being stamped.

The sun made a half-hearted appearance at five p.m., shining through the balcony railing. Bad angle, bad shadows, bad girl for being so impatient!

[ ] This is a high tech solar energy experiment, and every delay adds billions to the National Deficit. Or not.

[ ] This is kitchen sink shoestring experiment proceeding at a snail's pace and requiring:

• A seven dollar picture frame from WalMart
•  A lazy Susan
• A cutting board of a certain thickness
• An adult beverage
• Toes to turn the lazy Susan
• A bathtub
• Hydrogen peroxide
• A sweater drying rack

[ ] Seated in the old-red-starting-to-rip-soccer-mom chair, turning the lazy Susan with my toe to mitigate the balcony rail exposure on the sun print I contemplated the nature of art, the art of snails, and my personal need to balance practical and creative pursuits while wearing a hat made of aluminum foil. Or not.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Sunshine daydreams

Odysseus Dreams of Home

E I  E I exam O

Dali Doesn't Order Dominos

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder