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

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

Omelet with mushrooms

The Renwick Gallery has become one of my favorite DC destinations, and the current installation of "No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man" is every bit as exciting as "Wonder" for the gallery's reopening in 2015-2016.

As an art teacher I emphasized the fine motor skill of paper folding and the transformations from two to three dimensions that this basic action could create. FoldHaus pushes the limits of size and kinetic movement, and I wish I could have beamed my former students into the exhibit with me.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Bathroom ants refuse to Brexit

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae, tiny socialist insects belonging to the European Union and colonizing my bathroom just as they do early every spring. You can set your calendar by their arrival, and pretty much nothing will hasten their departure, not TSA-Pre, and not those nice young men in their clean white coats.

We admitted we were powerless over hormigas and our lives had become unmanageable. Every March my big powerful rent-paying, lease-signing sanity is brought to its knees by these tiny black ants in the bathroom.  They show up first as a reminder of flashbacks warnings from Seventies high school health teachers. "We aren't really here. Nanny nanny boo boo!" Little spots before my eyes.

Getting home after six, the ants have become proud, brave, and bold. They are marching around in the white porcelain parade grounds of tub and sink. Their homemade banners proclaim they are not figments or flashbacks, and are not covered by vision insurance.

I press my fists to my closed eyelids. Inside the optical theater the ants appear vibrating orange against blue, then energized lilac against white. Rothko meets Orkin. The ants are colluding. I can't delete them.  They have Twitter and facebook accounts, and I am their hostage.

Apartment management sent The Pest Guy. He told me it would get a lot worse before it gets better. The ants circled his bait like frat pledges at a kegger. Indeed, it began to look like ant Woodstock as more and more arrived to partake of the electric Kool-aid, and wander around in circles before (according to the pest guy) taking the bait back to share at their hormiga commune.

The library has two new rock concert DVDs--"The Doors Live at the Bowl '68," and the "Monterey Pop Festival." It wouldn't be much trouble to show videos for the tiny ants in the bathroom, and the project might keep me from smashing them with my guitar or lighting them on fire. I could just turn out the lights and shut the door. Maybe tomorrow morning it will just have been a one of those health class flashbacks.

When the music's over

Turn out the lights

Turn out the lights

Turn out the lights, yeah

And thanks so much to Farmer Derek for his satellite image of cows saying, "hi."

© 2013-2017 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

The House At the Edge of Night

I have traveled so little, but I know we bring to to each new place and experience a brain desperately trying to make connections and draw parallels with previously visited places, to pull stories, histories, mental images, and other stimuli from the deep stacks and vertical files. Indeed, I think our brains are a bit like tiny shushing librarians in sensible shoes racing to be more spot on than Google. At the end of the day their support stockings sag, but they have won.

And so, in Sardinia images of scruffy New Mexico landscapes, Puccini opera stage sets, magical realism with/without cholera, Great War-era genealogical trees, watercolor mixing lectures, and Escher dorm room posters flooded my dreams and daytime musings. 

These three tiny clay houses smaller than my thumb are my main souvenir. They represent Alghero, but also remind me of the Alexander Girard arrangements of miniature villages and processions at the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe. I hear the church bells and shepherd's song at the beginning of Tosca Act III, see the fortress in Carmen. 

Listening to the audiobook of Catherine Banner's House at the Edge of Night was a perfect appetizer for my trip. I highly recommend this family saga set on a fictional island near Sicily if you are traveling or just taking your inner librarian on a much-deserved cruise.

War memorial in Stintino

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

I could make one out of tin foil!

Much needed fun came my way today as I considered the possibility of wearing a hat at the wedding of my youngest son. Could this mother of the groom even chew gum and wear a hat at the same time?

Not even if I trained all day on Lumosity! The last time I wore a hat for fashion and fun, Jean Shrimpton was on the cover of Vogue. My hat was a coral color, and I tied a silk scarf patterned like a peach petroglyph around the crown. I was seriously groovy in my own mind. My lipstick was frosted white and my eye shadow was Yardley blue or kitty cat green.

But, still, hats... vintage hats from my great aunts in that round hatbox, yes!

Seems like this hat would be perfect except for the color...If it were made of aluminum foil the extraterrestrials could tune in to the ceremony. With these antique hat pins I could increase my signal range.



© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Frosted Flakes Chatty Cathy

Technology demands upgrades. Upgrades demand online chats for service and support. 

Chat agent : Can I have you turn OFF your device and remove the SIM Card.

Me : Okay.

Chat agent: Perfect! Once your SIM Card is out let me know please :)

Me : do you have any hints for getting it to slide out?

Chat agent: Sure! You can do this with the back of an earring or a paperclip! :)

Me : now what?

Chat agent : 

I will ask you to blow on the SIM Card and the Sim Card tray please.

Me : LOL.  Done

Chat agent: I know! I know! It looks silly! But I promise you it works! :) Perfect!  Can I have you insert the SIM Card in and then turn ON your device:)

Me : okay ...  android is starting

Chat agent: Yey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me : It let me call a number!!!

Chat agent : Seee! I told you it worked! : ) Test it out! :)

 Me : just like fairy dust!

Chat agent: It was all you! :) You see you needed to give life to your device! :)

Me: Good night with sleepy sands my dears! 

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

I'm a waitress in a donut shop

In a flash of flames at the bagel shop the meaning became clear -- all the dreams, the omens, the acronyms, the spuds with SEE and SEE ALSO references made complete sense.  For once, it was not my green chile bagel setting off the smoke alarm, but the healthy nine-grain best-intentions/fiber choice for the elderly marathoner living longer and skinnier beside me in line.

Those dreams, nightmares really, flummox me in the cosmic extreme parking garage with NO EXIT EVER. The bizarre appearance of my sister wearing a pink Flo waitress outfit chasing me and haranguing my lack of diner hash lingo comprehension was a new and terrifying twist.

POTUS on a raft; SCOTUS with a shimmy and a shake, BOUTROS BOUTROS-GHALI and ATTICUS please use toll tag lane.  No wonder I'm craving baked potatoes with sour cream. POTSCUS!

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/277252920780923848/

The CD player on my ancient computer has gone AWOL. Dan Hicks made witty, wonderful music with a vintage radio jazz/folk vibe and a tiny dash of Sixties psychedelia I can't play on my darn defunct contraption. May he rest in sequined chaps swing.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

White out

Unprepared for the sudden snowstorm on a weekend trip to Grandma's house, we fashioned booties of aluminum foil and plastic bags to get out in the snow, 1967. A chronically "special" visitor to the library wear hats, foil helmets to protect from space rays, plastic bags like shower caps. Toilet paper bandages wrap around Jacob Marley's toothache. A Salvador Dali mustache of twisted Kleenex, 2016..

We are all in our assorted mental blizzards and white obsessions. Sometimes digging out. Other times hunkering down. Staying in touch with my family members in the East Coast blizzard this weekend. Watched the cell phone video of the bulldog running in the snow. The bulldog is sometimes running upside down or sideways.

Family vehicle owners shovel and shiver. Those who rely on mass transit play Monopoly, take artistic photos, and run low on wine. A good reason not to own a car!

I'm not making much progress reading Edmund de Waal's White Road : A Journey Into Obsession about porcelain and white clay. The book reviews didn't mention it was nap-inducing!

Cutthroat Monopoly : That sibling with the evil landlord gene. Piling on the houses and hotels, Park Place .Boardwalk. Making you PAY. What do you remember about blizzards? I spy with my little eye a lot of white:

White-haired great aunts and spinster schoolteachers doing jigsaw puzzles at folding card tables. Popcorn shooting from the air popper; potato soup with homemade egg noodles; wind-sculpted drifts overhanging roof eaves; staying under the quilt with Kerouac's On the Road and a bottle of port. That wine stain is still on the white quilt. Being trapped with the dorm roommate who played Nights in White Satin and A Whiter Shade of Pale over and over. The world covered in clean white snow before it all gets ring around the collar.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

The tiny niggle of dissatisfaction

Thank heaven the etymology of "niggle" seems to bear no trace of eels. Eels give me the willies. The word is probably late-16th century Scandinavian. My big red American Heritage Dictionary is atop one of the heaps of books on the floor, and so the verb niggle, -gled, -gling, -gles, is 1. To be preoccupied with trifles; worry over petty details; fret. 2. To keep finding fault: complain trivially; carp.

The adjective niggling leads to fussy via 1. Excessively concerned with details. Niggardly seems akin to stingy and miserly.
Upon first googling niggle: Syllabification: nig·gle Pronunciation: /ˈniɡəl/ I find the verb meaning Cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety: a suspicion niggled at the back of her mind, and the adjective niggling aches and pains.

The pea under the mattress of this whole niggle was the shortage of illumination provided by the golden globe hanging lamp over the breakfast table. Fritzi was always crabby if there wasn't enough light at the dinner table. The golden globe is an ugly retro piece that goes with the apartment. It never provides enough light to read while sipping coffee or other beverages, and it makes me almost as crabby as my mother.

As I wanted to finish the 95% delightful novel by Patrick DeWitt, Undermajordomo Minor, on my day off, the slight but persistent annoyance grew into a giant beanstalk of a plan to do a major reorganization of my apartment without the help of seven dwarfs whistling. 

Home Depot had no hanging lamp globes to replace the golden one. Target lacked cashiers, so I walked away from a cart of organization housewares spruce-ups. If Target goes belly-up, you will know why.

My week's reading of Michael Cunningham's The Wild Swan plus Undermajordomo Minor is the most fun following bread crumbs trails I've had since The Tiger's Wife and Night Circus. Tom Stoppard and Tom Robbins seemed to ride in my bindle on a stick. 

The apartment is still in upheaval, but I feel much lighter.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

A few new strings is all

Got it now. Thanks! Wrapping the stair rail with holiday lights did the trick.

Yes, it's late to be getting the Christmas commercial spirit. Not so belated for THE REST of the holiday outlook. You know, those parts with meaning, family, friends, gratitude, joy, wonder, waiting, weather changes, music, sharing, postage stamps, senses, and twinkly lights. Particularly blue twinkly lights, but also white, purple, pink, and assorted. As many strands of 70-100 lights as needed to make it seem complete, and just $2.98/string.

 

While I was a-wrapping the railing the little family in the next apartment emerged. How many months have they lived next door? Why do we never cross paths? Now we have exchanged greetings. It's not wassailing, but it's a start toward neighborliness.

Time is a-flying now. It flew up the flue while you gawked at the gorgeous, bright, soggy fall leaves. As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an atomic leaf-blower get sucked into a giant plastic bag.

So few days left in the year to tell people I hold them dear. The days are so short I don't even unplug the extension cord for the lights.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

If at first you don't succeed

Opening night and world premiere of the Dallas Opera's "Becoming Santa Claus" was a strange and wonderful event. To begin with, I dribbled toothpaste on my black opera attire, and had to start over dressing in my dark chocolate opera outfit. We will not even get into my failed frozen pumpkin experiment except to say the thawing sections are too gooey for the intended bird feeder craft project. Now I'm attempting a slow drying in a low oven. The theme of the day is Plan B.

The Dallas Opera commissioned Mark Adamo to create a Christmas opera in hopes it would become a reliable Nutcracker/Christmas Carol/Polar Express-style annual money-maker. I admire the motivation, but I'm not sure they succeeded.


Good news first--the production has successful sets and costumes designed by Gary McCann.  It's quite Through the Looking Glass, complete with portraits that express more emotion than the living characters.


Bad news is the intentionally shrill, shrieking music, especially the vocal parts of the elves. I don't expect new operas to be hum-friendly toe-tappers, but they should not cause physical pain! Oh, and the wigs looked like they came from Party City.

I remain fascinated by the huge collaborative undertaking required to create a new opera or a new production. For the 50th season of the Dallas Opera local sculptors Tom Orr and Frances Bagley were invited to design the sets and costumes for Verdi's "Nabucco", and the results were stunning. Attending the premiere of the Dallas Opera's commissioned "Moby Dick" with mind-blowing projections was an amazing five star experience. Already in 2015 the Dallas Opera presented two brand-spanking-new very successful operas, "Everest" and "Great Scott". The mountain-climber opera made the audience part of the oxygen-deprived challenge. "Great Scott" was a delightful Rossini-does-NFL soap, enjoyable and even thought provoking, but nothing I can hum. Of course I am basically tone deaf.

In all of those bold ventures the Dallas Opera  created works where I felt totally engaged. At "Becoming Santa Claus" there was no personal engagement, no emotional connection, no likeable characters, and no transporting music. I kept trying to imagine any child of my acquaintance sitting through it (with no potty breaks or snacks).

I sincerely hope the Dallas Opera can do a major reworking of this opera to fulfill the possibilities of an annual family tradition/money-maker. And this time Dallas Morning News opera critic Scott Cantrell and I agree!


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Peripheral sprinkles

Write your name at the top and number your paper from one to ten. Handwriting will count on this spelling test.

1. peripheral
2. silhouette
3. pastiche
4. squirrel
5. kitchen
6. blue jay
7. sweetgum seed pod
8. fritillary
9. toroid
10. vet

Bonus words: business ethics, Ricola

I challenge you to pronounce "business ethics" with a Ricola cough drop in your mouth. Say it again, three times fast!

Spell check will not like two Ts, or two Rs, or two Ls in fritillary. If I ever captain a pirate ship, I will name her The Gulf Fritillary. Robert Kurson's Pirate Hunters is proving interesting, but not as spell-binding as his 2004 Shadow Divers.

When we check out the sources and data in a story, are we vetting it like a Corvette or like a veterinarian. The stories are going to be peripheral, but for the life of me I could not spell paraferal for the minutes. Contemplating paraprofessional felines got me through a long stretch of the meeting. If you can't get your pet an appointment with the vet would you be interested in seeing the paraferal?

As a kid I could not spell "kitchen" or "squirrel". Those two evil words kept me from being a sparkly gold stellar speller award winner. This week we are studying compound words, and struggling with bluejay, sweet gum, and seedpod. No matter which way I merge or split, I am wrong.

And shouldn't a pastiche be an savory, crusty French stuffed egg dish? But, no, that was the opera within the opera in the bel canto style. Please don't make me write an essay question or use this word in a sentence!

Silhouette is next to camouflage on my personal spelling nemesis list. And we must not forget the donuts. We will not diverge on the road not taken when the asiago bagel caught fire in the toaster and made me late for work.

My granddaughter can sit up now and play with the Fisher-Price donut ring Rock-a-Stack, just like every kid born since 1960. Some things stay the same, thank heaven!









© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Shelf shifting, continental drifting

Work-out #1

Two days, two work-outs.What does peckish mean?  This English word meaning hungry dates from 1785 "literally disposed to peck". Other slang meanings dating from 1902 are outside the scope of this post.

My mission was to shift the periodical shelves down to get more magazines into the reach of more users, and to cull back issues so they would fit in the reduced spaces. For eight of the nine sections of the shelves this was a simple task. Count the holes. Position the brackets. Slide the wooden shelves onto the brackets. The wooden shelves were not light, though, especially not the front display shelves. Lifting stacks of back issues was a pretty good work-out by itself.

But for one section of shelves this was a woodpecker-drilled nightmare. Perhaps the section was installed upside-down. The bracket holes did not line up with the other sections vertically. So someone, probably a woodpecker, drilled many more holes. These holes were spaced too far apart front-to-back. The brackets were not long enough. The installer must have been the poster child for Measure Twice, Cut Once.

Woodpecker work

I had to look up peckish again. It never seems to fit its meaning when I see it in a book.

Work-out #2

Craving autumnal food despite the temps in the low nineties, I had an attack of recipe posting on Pinterest, then wrote a very long grocery list based on the recipes. Never mind my failure to ever actually follow recipes.Then I went digging for quarters to use at the car wash.

After the wash, the grocery list was nowhere to be found. I would just have to shop by memory! The answer sheet for this test was probably on the kitchen table.

garlic fail sweet potato pass chicken broth pass ginger thought better butternut squash pass can of chickpeas reassessed Greek yogurt pass fruit for smoothies pass zucchini pass couscous pass tomato paste pass canned tomatoes pass fresh mint fail fresh sage partial credit for a jar of dry sage potatoes pass lemon pass parmesan pass rice vinegar pass bread pass eggs fail fail milk fail butter fail sparkling grapefruit soda partial credit birthday card partial credit gift card short ribs fail partial credit for getting close pork roast partial credit pie crusts partial credit for a bargain chicken thighs fail bratwurst fail turnip fail breast cancer donation fail yellow squash

The real work-out will be convincing myself I want those breakfast fruit smoothies.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Teaching art uphill both ways

You can just check out right now with an x in this box [   ].
This post is a nightmare.

D'you have "Don't tell me what you dreamed last night!" tattooed on your neck right behind your ear? You can order the t-shirts, hoodies, and bumper stickers on-line.

I'm not saying I've got a technicolor dreamcoat, but all of a sudden the dream struggles teaching art became the real-life nightmare of managing the refugee crisis. My old counselor would advise the dream is never about Them. Dreams are always about You. For the moment, this dream meaning is the uphill struggle of the refugee crisis, and not so much about whether I am symbolically cleaning the paintbrushes of my life.

My teaching dreams often tumble from an almost-manageable classroom to an overwhelming slanted situation. I'm instructing from the pit of a sloped lecture hall, but more and more students keep arriving tardy through the doors at the top of the hall. They are unruly and loud, but the problem is my lack of amplification to deliver the art project instructions. We will be painting with poster paints and cheap brushes with the bristles all worn down. There's no way to distribute the papers and paints and brushes, especially with the continuing influx of students. We don't have enough tables, and the crowded children are beginning to bicker and wrestle. There's no time to explain the choices the students must make outlining shapes in their compositions. There's no procedure for cleaning the brushes or putting art in the drying racks, especially not before the school bus schedule begins. I didn't even have enough art smocks for all the kids. Nobody writes their name on their paper. I can smell the powdered tempera paints and the crumbling, faded construction paper. The sink is clogged again.

Oh, Lordy, we's all a gonna die. And, yes, we all are. That we ever get to make art or express ourselves is a miracle.

The refugee crisis is a recurring nightmare nearly as ancient as mankind. We are never prepared, supplied, able to communicate, or to handle the clean-up. We can't decide how to outline the shapes in dripping black with worn-out brushes.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder