Canned food drive greatest hits

It's food drive time again at my place of employment, and probably yours, too. Again this year someone thought it would be fun to make the food drive a competition between departments. Again I am the volunteer team captain, which thankfully involves a spreadsheet, not pompons. We are collecting items for the South Dallas Community Food Center, part of the S.M. Wright Foundation.

Dropped my car for repairs on this beautiful afternoon and had time to ponder the food drive while walking home. Minnie's Food Pantry used to be housed across the parking lot from my mechanic's shop, spurring this reverie. The founder of Minnie's Food Pantry, Dr. Cheryl “Action” Jackson, is a rock star of food pantries. Oprah was the keynote speaker at the nonprofit's tenth annual gala.

So, my perambulating question is, "What do food pantries and those using their services really need?"  

• Food pantry clients include the elderly, persons with dietary restrictions, returning veterans, children, single parents, university students, families just "One Crisis Away."

• Clients need food they can use. They need food they can open! Consider donating food with pop-top lids for those who may have difficulty opening cans with a can opener.

• Many clients are children. Support their healthy food habits by donating food in kid-friendly sizes with easy-to-open packaging and no-cook food items. 

• Consider cash gifts. Food pantries may have bulk purchasing arrangements that stretch funds. Many employers have charitable giving matching programs. Monetary donations are used to purchase the foods that traditional canned food drives don’t bring in like fresh fruits, produce, meats, milk and eggs.

• Donate shelf-stable, nutrient-dense foods.

• Donate staples from other cuisines.

• Food pantries cannot use baby food, formula, alcohol, home-canned items, items in glass containers, items without ingredients listed in English.

This is not the time to pull all the fast food ketchup packets hoarded by your dad with dementia, and the three opened and expired jars of tartar sauce from his fridge. Don't even think  about those cans of beets and butter beans that have been in the pantry since the first Bush administration. The leftover Halloween candy is not appropriate. You think I'm kidding, but this is not my first term as food drive team captain! Don't waste food pantry volunteers' time and effort sorting out expired and inappropriate donations.  Now, GO TEAM GO!

Scrabble eggs and bacon

The second grader held the plastic fork in front of his eye and squinted. His teacher suggested he wouldn't want to poke his eye out, and moved the fork away. The little boy held the fork back up to his eye. This time the teacher asked why. "I'm putting her in jail," he said, pointing at the little girl sitting on the other side of the cafeteria table.

Is that brilliant?! So very useful in these trying times.  I've been practicing for the next time I watch the news.

It would not work with a spork, the utensil of my sons' school lunch years. Glad kids get knife, fork, and spoon nowadays.

And speaking of sporks, a deceptively brilliant coworker complemented my new coffee cup while we were not riding in the elevator. "There's a name for that thing," he said. "Huh?," I said. "That thing around the cup," he said, "There's a name for it." Then he pushed the floor button, and the elevator was not as slow as it seemed.

As soon as he could look it up, he reported back. "Zarf. It's a zarf." "Is that like a spork, like a scarf for .......   for coffee?," I asked. He was smart enough to push the elevator button, but did not know the word origin.

Apparently zarfs are a thing, and way beyond Starbucks. Without knowing their name, I spotted some in an easy-to-knit book. The word is Turkish or Arabic dating from 1836 and meaning "vessel", and it's worth a lot of points in Scrabble. True, you would think many of the folks you see on the news would be in hot water. The idiom "to be hot water" may or may not date from the Middle Ages and trial by ordeal. We can be sure that watching the news is an ordeal.

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

Cramped quarters -- freedom within structure?

• Amor Towles' novel, A Gentleman in Moscow begins with Count Alexander Rostov sentenced to lifetime house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel for the crime of writing a poem. The count is removed from his suite in the hotel and sent to a sixth floor cubby of a room with a low ceiling and barely enough square footage for a pirouette. 
• When the Woolly Mammoth and I visit the Whitney and I am fascinated by Andrea Zittell's 1993 "Living Unit." Everything one needs for life packed in a box!
• For twenty years my walking buddy and I have been scouting places where we could live in a cardboard appliance box when we are old or broke.
• My walking buddy just got a new refrigerator. Where is the box?
• Also at the Whitney, a corrugated cardboard and notebook clip geodesic dome. Aw, Howie, why didn't we try that?!

• I'm wishing for a snow day to hunker down under a quilt dome and read in a very condensed version of home. Om. Instead we get a the coldest temperatures in two years. I must bring in the ridiculously huge pineapple plant from my balcony. Its circumference is the same as my dining table. 
• Nina, a major character in Towles' book, drops a pineapple off the Metropol's ballroom balcony to test Galileo's theories.
• Like a Christmas tree the novel is a structure for hanging bright ornaments of philosophy, Cold War history, literary criticism, etiquette critiques, and Russian culture observations.
• Where on earth would I fit a Christmas tree, fake or "real," in this apartment? Besides the giant floor space-eating pineapple plant there's the sweater drying contraption in the living room next to the ironing board.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

The mummy of the groom toast and the haunted hotel

"Boodmo" (Будьмо) is Ukrainian for "cheers"  ...

Now that my brief moment of fame as the ToastMama is over, I have to admit it was fun. My ancestors were Ukrainian, Bohemian, German, Irish, and English, but I must be part ham.

ToastMama is different from MummyToast. Food Network Magazine mummy toast is made with string cheese, sliced black olives, pizza sauce and toast. When I get to the store to buy bread, I plan to make an avocado version. Sure beats those weird wax lips for Halloween.

After checking in at the haunted hotel in Baltimore's Fell's Point area it was time for serious speech practicing in front of the mirror. But the menu  on the desk for the meatball sub restaurant next door was haunting my hungry thoughts. How could I concentrate on toasts, hosts, satin slippers, and parallel parking with that distraction?

After our subs and a local brew, the groom and I walked around in the gray rain looking at boats.



Two mangled tidbits of advice I couldn't work into the speech, with fond memories of my former sister-in-law:

• If the shoe fits, buy it.

• Every hat has a silver lining.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Sam and Janet evening

Just two weeks from now I'll have to say goodbye to my wedded skinny son and new daughter-in-law on the island of Sardinia. They will be as cute and starry-eyed as my parents look in this snapshot from September 1951.

If one doesn't know, the black and white photos hold endless outfit color possibilities. But I know. My mom's snazzy jacket with matching belt was this color green. It was the Peter Pan costume in our red dress-up box. Was the dress black and white? Maybe navy? Maybe the wavy signal when the little black and white tv with rabbit ear antennae had difficulties...

Added this new biography of Mary Martin to the library collection this week. I hear the songs playing on the mono hi-fi. My parents had many Mary Martin musical soundtracks on 33 1/3 and 78 rpm.





© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

The eyes have it -- disasters in simpler times

Fritzi and I saw "Airport" at the West O Drive-In during the summer of 1971. Mom must have read Arthur Hailey's novel. At least in my memory we sat in the '54 Chevy, but it might have been that awful Ford Fairlane.

Putting together a collage about my day picking up my new eyeglasses and shopping for wedding mother attire in Macy's at our formerly bustling mall, I had a vivid flashback to the snow-plowing runway scenes with George Kennedy chomping a cigar. Lights mark the edge of the tarmac. D.O. Guerrero, Dean Martin, and Jacqueline Bissett collide in the aisle of the doomed 707. A special evening with my mom before the ugly mother-daughter battles of late adolescence...when the rain began we continued to watch the outdoor movie with windshield wipers..

© 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

Manet at a loss with albatross

June is almost half over, and not going fast enough. The page on my Cornell bird calendar is giving me such weird vibes! Since I received two copies of the catalog one hangs to the right of my home computer, and the other to the right of my office screen. Seen from the corner of my eye, the image sparks elusive Rorschach images on my mind's eye. They are gone before I can catch them.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

His boy Elroy

What I will remember most about our Memorial Day visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore is our rush to find the "Jellies Invasion" exhibit before closing time. We had the place to ourselves but so little time. 

The Woolly Mammoth had his giant fancy-schmancy camera. I had my old reliable Canon PowerShot. My future daughter-in-law was taking one-second videos with her phone. We were in a cave of wonders!

These Jetson jellyfish are Blue Blubber Jellies.

The only things missing were a tall glass of Fresca over ice, the Sixties Sunday evening treat while watching "The Jetsons" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" on the black and white t.v., and We Five singing "Beyond the Sea".







© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder