Straight talk from Our Nation's Capital

Washington D.C., no matter your political philosophy, is That Place Where Everyone's Thinking is Seriously Skewed. We can blame this misalignment on many things, but for the moment I am leaning toward the Washington Monument. Even if you back out into the middle of the street with red taxis rushing past, you will still not get a photo at 90 degrees, high noon. So most people, tourists included, just walk around looking at their phones until they suddenly find themselves encircled by a dangerous herd of Segways blocking the crosswalk. And that is why I am grateful for the Jefferson Memorial, a much easier shoot, just a tad off horizontally.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Size, numbers, space

My kids are buying an enormous house OR the inauguration was the biggest crowd ever. All spatial awareness is in question since I scraped the bumper of a Texas-size pickup truck with my tiny Buick while parallel parking shortly after a breakfast of mini-cinnamon rolls and two fried eggs over easy. Imagine the trouble I'd be in if I'd had scrambled.

The damage looked really minor to me, but the pickup owner may have a significantly different perception. We will work it out without 3 a.m. tweets. I feel pretty silly and incompetent because I was listening to the audiobook of the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu discussing suffering and joy. Just when I was flying with my caped serenity superheroes I misjudged the size of a police officer's truck and the curve of the street.

Just how gigantic is the palace my kids are buying? It's a matter of comparison to every home I've lived in distorted by time, emotion, and memory. My homes have been plenty large for riding horses in the living room, resident alligators and hamsters, whole neighborhood Barbie doll cities,  and medieval jousts.

Where in the brain is our spatial perception? Where is the part that counts the crowd attendance and voter fraud?

First I lived in a third floor apartment in a large house at the corner of 20th and B Street where my parents had a green sectional sofa. The apartment was hugely full of my parents' love and care for me, but the details are hazy.

 

Then we lived in a duplex on Franklin Street that had a basement for my dad to build projects plus a sidewalk that led around the corner to Dave's house. The sidewalk had uneven spots that led to Band-aids, but the Dalai Lama says suffering is inevitable, and Bishop Tutu emphasizes love and human connections are essential for finding joy.

Not because of climate change, but the snow is always deeper in one's memory. We cannot deny the photo evidence of my brother Roger who shall remain nameless in a typical winter accumulation. Our new house was not a palace. Three bedrooms and one bath, all indoors, a GI Bill wonder! What was the threat level of my mom's pressure cooker? Dad studied fallout shelter design. It was the Cold War with snow pants. Did we fantasize about adding on another bedroom and bath? You bet. 1293 sq ft was a tad too cozy and short on privacy, but a family of five could be really happy there.

Skipping over college and early married life apartments, we arrive at the 974 square foot mansion with pink kitchen appliances and a mildewy basement. It looks pretty depressing in this current Google street view, but it was big enough for two small boys to have a diaper car race course.

Next we had a house big enough for horse races in the living room and birthday parties in the kitchen. Zillow alleges 1476 square feet, obviously an alternative fact. This house seemed huge. Our lack of furniture added to the spacious feel of the place. We could build a fire, pitch a tent, and go camping in the living room.

Our first rental house in Oklahoma looked out across a creek and a big field of nothing but rodents and hawks making lazy circles in the sky. The kitchen was plenty big for an artist to paint while covered in calamine lotion recovering from chicken pox. Three bedroom, two bath with a great room open floor plan. There was no real way to arrange the furniture, and the invading mice tweeted all night. 

 

The next house did not have a sporty red car when we lived there. It had over 1700 square feet, snakes in the garage, and not a single tree on the lot. It housed Cub Scouts, Ghostbusters, Boomer Sooners, and a computer. Asthma,  allergies, and anxiety filled this house. It seemed very cramped. But it had mauve wallpaper, and the bigamist next door had another family in Louisiana.

Everything's bigger in Texas. We made it past 2200 square feet, with four bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a great U-shaped kitchen plan. AND  two really nice trees. There was a small back patio for roasting marshmallows, and a sunken living room  for watching the Branch Davidian compound burn on t.v. If we needed more space we could go west playing "Oregon Trail."

 

How much space does a family need? Enough room for survival? For hobbies? Beginners practicing tooting large band instuments? For large reptiles? This condo of 1200 sq. ft. plus or minus seemed emotionally vast if physically cramped. 

So, there was a point to all this. The question of how big is big enough for a house has a major emotional component as well as practical considerations.

What is the psychological component behind an obsession with a big enough popular vote that makes one holler "fraud." Is it a personal reaction? Or is it a plan to bamboozle a population into acquiescing the loss of convenient voter registration and balloting?

This nation is our house. It's cozy. It's a bit cramped, but plenty big if we avoid the distorted sizes and numbers, threats and frauds. Reason makes things roomier.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Threads spooling

Denver Art Museum textile exhibit

Visiting the Denver Art Museum to view the special exhibit "Star Wars : The Power of Costume" last weekend was a joyous reminder of costumers and seamstresses. I so wish Fritzi and Felecia had been there with me, but in a way they both were.

My mom has been gone twelve years now, but she made many costumes for Natalie Grossman's modern dance productions in Lincoln in the 1960s. A perfectionist seamstress, she was also a creative problem-solver sewing unusual materials to create animal headdresses for dancers. Fritzi would have loved sharing the art museum with her grandson and great grandson, just as she loved bringing her own children to the Sheldon Art Museum so long ago.

Wizard friend Felecia is always present when the subject is capes, and Star Wars is a cape carnival! Felecia has been gone almost six years, and I still feel robbed of her artistic enthusiasm. I wanted so much to share the exhibit costume shop with her, reveling in the lush textured materials, glorious vintage 1920s fabrics, stage combat aspects, theatrical illusions, and Samurai influences.

Fritzi's spool shelf above her sewing machine

Others join the memory dance -- makers of papier mache helmets, fans of Japanese kimonos, embroiderers and stitchers, students of imperial Chinese robe design, sisters posing in great aunts' hats, kids with Halloween costumes of their own design. But in the present moment my grandson, son, and I pin fabric scraps, foam packing pieces, CDs, ribbons, coils, and straws on a life-size mannequin to design a "Dark Vader." The Force is definitely with us in the hands-on studio!

Pattern pieces hang in the recreated Star Wars costume shop.

Threads pull and wind, bind and weave, tangle, mend, unravel.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Able to leap tall buildings

Gothic-Catalan bell tower of Cattedrale Santa Maria

This little early bird climbed stairs to the terrace top of Torre de San Giovanni in honor of my muse who loves tall buildings. Huffing and puffing, I was grateful it was a short tall building.

On the way up I caught my breath at the large model of Alghero circa 1865, and remembered how my three little sons had loved the model of the Alamo way more than the actual Alamo.

Persevering, I gracelessly ascended the uneven stone stairway with no handrail to emerge into the sunshine.

Dome of Chiesa San Michele

Fort Magdelena with port in background

Bell towers of San Francesco and Santa Maria

One of several towers

Via Sassari and the park

Looking toward Lido beach

And closer, old city streets and rooftop spots:

No, it wasn't nap time when I got back to ground level.



© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Grateful for responders

Much has been written about the horrible, heinous crime against first responders and against all humanity in Dallas this week. I'm not going there. My story is little, but it brought it all home.

Saturday morning in my fog I headed to my Einstein Bros. Bagel shop. It's a hangout for long distance runners, but they let me come in anyway. Runners were chatting about the heat, and I was thinking, "Duh, running in this weather is pretty crazy. A person could have a heart attack."

After ordering my breakfast, I wandered over behind the coffee carafes to wait. That's when I heard the odd whining and gurgling. Must be that fancy doo-dad coffee machine... All of the customers were just trying to come up to the level of consciousness pre-caffeine.

That's when I saw the extremely fit gray-haired runner bending over and clutching his chest. The shop manager was dialing 911. My past first-aid training sessions did not kick me into action. I am embarrassed to say it crossed my mind that my bagel would burn if the paramedics came.

Instead, another gray-haired runner walked through the door, instantly assessed the situation, and performed the Heimlich maneuver several times, grabbing the man around the chest from behind and lifting him off the ground. That response dislodged the ice cube choking the man.

He gave a gasp, then thanked his rescuer in a low-key mano-a-mano manner. I wanted to apologize for not responding, but he was apologizing to patrons and employees for disrupting our morning.

I'm so grateful for the person with the training and instant ability to assess a situation and move to help. Thanks to the anonymous Bagel Ranger who saved the day!


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder