Ginko and Bertoia

The postcard from Valley House Gallery announcing its exhibit of recent paintings and sculpture by David Dreyer has been sitting on my desk since early January. The gray painting with the lemon yellow ginko leaf, black and white shapes reminds me of my dad's living room. I grew up with a yellow Eames rocking chair just about that ginko's color, black Bertoia chairs, and white tables. I turned the postcard image upside down, and it looked even more like a table in the living room.

Yesterday was perfect for visiting the Valley House Gallery and its sculpture garden in between errands and searching for red and white peppermint beads at craft and art stores. It was a sunny, calm, light-sweater-only day after a bleak and very windy week.

The postcard was sitting next to my new AARP magazine with Jack Nicholson on the cover and an ad for replenishing, radiant makeup on the back. My visit to the gallery was replenishing, too!

I have no idea if David Dreyer, adjunct instructor of art at SMU, ever sat in a Diamond Chair designed in 1952 by Harry Bertoia for Knoll. He would recognize the airy wire framework and sculptural form, though.

The Valley House Gallery exhibit continues through next Saturday. David Dreyer's works will be on display at The MAC (The McKinney Avenue Contemporary) March 8-April 25.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Big game hunters, or maybe big purse hunters with matching shoes

I'm perversely intrigued with the tale of Gwendolyn Wunneburger, the 77+ Texas woman, 4' 5" tall, who killed two large bull alligators one afternoon in the Paradise Ranch bayou, as reported in an AP wire story. Gwendolyn and friends were spending their Wednesday afternoon trying to catch seven hundred pound alligators on hooks baited with whole chickens. I only do that on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, myself!

Once the gators were hooked and entangled in the line, Gwendolyn got out of the boat to shoot the gators right between the eyes from twenty feet. Did she use her twenty ri-two-fle? Did she sing, "You can't get a man with a gun"? Why on earth did Gwendolyn sing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" while sitting atop the deceased 750-lb. gator?

When I'm with a pistol
I sparkle like a crystal,
Yes, I shine like the morning sun.
But I lose all my luster
When with a Bronco Buster.
Oh you can't get a man with a gun.
With a gun, with a gun,
No, you can't get a man with a gun.

Shouldn't Gwendolyn have chanted the jump rope rhyme about the lady with the alligator purse?

Mumps," said the doctor.
"Measles," said the nurse.
"Hiccups," said the lady
With the alligator purse.

Back in the mid to late Sixties I had to attend what seemed like millions of Cub Scout pack meetings in the basement of Eastridge Presby Church. My favorite Cub Scout song was the one about the lady and the crocodile, which could be a cautionary tale for Ms. Wunneburger.

She sailed away
On a bright and sunny day
On the back of a crocodile
You see, said she
He's as tame as he can be
I'll ride him down the Nile
Well, the croc winked his eye
As she waved them all goodbye
Wearing a happy smile
At the end of the ride
The lady was inside
And the smile was on the crocodile (clap, clap)

Those were the years when I watched "The American Sportsman" on ABC Sports on winter Sunday afternoons. Narrated by Curt Gowdy, the show featured celebrities stalking big game, with lots of heavy breathing, whispering, bootsteps, and wavering tall grasses, all in black and white on our little television. As the winter sun set early, we might watch "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom".

Marlin Perkins was the host of those Sunday evening broadcasts of "Wild Kingdom", and Jim Fowler was his sidekick. It seemed like Jim hollered, "It's got Marlin!," at least once each show as a large and dangerous animal threatened dear Mr. Perkins.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

We kids all sang the song as an white-light-in-the-tunnel experience--Now I lay me down to sleep...If I should die before I wake...Bring back my body to me, to me. Not to be confused with Michael Row the Boat Ashore Because I'm Being Eaten By a Boa Constrictor and I Don't Like It Very Much!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Speed-dating with a troll under the bridge

According to AARP Magazine [Sept.-Oct. 2007], senior citizens have discovered speed-dating. Speed-dating is popular with young professionals like my eldest. Events are for meeting many people quickly, and discovering any sparks of interest in three or eight minutes of chatting.

True, I'm old enough to be an AARP member, but I prefer to imagine a seriously senior citizen speed-dating scenario. Some enchanted evening you may find that special someone across a crowded room of entangled walkers and wheelchairs .

The story suggests asking the person you just met to list their medications and to tell how many times they've been married. After team brain-storming, here are some other questions:

Do you mind if I tuck my napkin under my chin?

Which “big war” did you mean?

Are your pills in 7 or 30 day plastic containers?

Do your children cook Thanksgiving dinner for you, or do you still go to your mom's house?

Name your top five favorite Campbell's soups.

Does the phrase, "TED hose," remind you of Mary Jo Kopechne?

Who has your Power of Attorney?

Any grown kids living in your basement?

What flavor of Boost is your favorite?

How old is your poodle?

How many cats do you feed?

Care to join me for The Weather Channel local on the eights?

Wanna watch some Efferdent bubbles with me?

Earlier this summer the AARP Magazine featured a bizarre Kevin Costner photo on the cover. My immediate reaction was, "He must be starring in a Three Billy Goats Gruff movie!" Who's that trippy-tromping on my bridge?




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Slow Travel: Episode One

It is 5:10 a.m. at Dallas Love Field. Those passengers who have forgotten to check in on-line, like me, are lining up at the Southwest Airline counter. Passengers who are unable or ineligible to do on-line check-in are with us, including minor children who will fly unaccompanied, persons in wheelchairs, kids on crutches, persons without computers (gasp!)... We make a nice orderly line of yawners skootching baggage across the grimy tile floor, but there's no one working at the counter. There's a low vibration of anxiety flowing in the line. We have arrived the required hour-plus before our flight for security measures and baggage-handling, but the airline seems not to have taken the same approach.

It is 5:15 a.m. An employee begins barking at us to divide into two lines. One line is for persons deemed able to use a touch screen computer self check-in. The other is for those poor unfortunates considered by the airline to be outrageously demanding individuals who actually need to deal with a human to check-in. It's a wonder Southwest allows them to fly at all!! We split into two orderly lines with nervous yawns.

It is 5:20. A few employees straggle to the counter rolling their eyes at us. The barker looks at the white-haired blind man with his white cane and his hand placed on the shoulder of his daughter in front of him for guidance. The barker chooses this moment to divert our line into the corded maze known as the "queue corral". Instead of walking twenty feet to the counter, the blind man and his daughter must thread the maze down and back, down and back, down and back, down and back. They do so without a word of protest. I am embarrassed to admit I did not protest, even though I would have argued if the blind man were exchanged with my walker-using father.

The barking woman orders us to the touch screens. Then employees behind the counter snarl at us for needing the tag on our baggage that only they can provide.

Just as males became confused about whether holding the door for a female was an insult to her abilities and equality a generation ago, we are now confused about our impulses to assist the disabled. Common sense and common courtesy have been lost to equal access curb-cuts and anxiety about political correctness and disability-based discrimination. I don't know if the barking woman employee was insensitive, unobservant, advised by an attorney, or just plain mean. One would hope that airline employees and security workers who are supposed to be on heightened alert for suspicious terrorists could also be sufficiently alert to spot a blind man with a white cane.

If I were standing in line I'd have time to read the National Council on Disability's POSITION PAPER ON ACCESS TO AIRLINE SELF-SERVICE KIOSK SYSTEMS. Also useful is the U.K.'s Tiresias Organization, an information resource for people working in the field of visual disabilities, and its guidelines on accessible tourism queue management. Should you want to continue the fun by playing airport at home, here's where you can order your own Tensabarrier retractable queue control system.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ducks Like Rain, Root Beer, and Pretzels

The thunderstorm hit today slightly before class dismissal, a mite earlier than yesterday when we had already taken the children to the playground. Two things surprised me as we sat in a circle for a sing-along:

1. These children are too young to remember Hurricane Katrina. For months after the hurricane kids worried about Katrina flooding whenever we heard thunder.

2. I couldn't remember the words to the Raffi song, "Ducks Like Rain." In the late Eighties I thought those lyrics would never, ever leave my head.

My Woolly Mammoth son doesn't remember back when he was a Raffi duck song addict. It's one of those things I'll toast him with at his wedding rehearsal dinner, along with his fondness for the music from Disney's "Little Mermaid" at naptime (Everything's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!), rainbows, goldfish, and hot air balloons.

I drove thousands of miles in the blue Ford Aerostar minivan with Raffi singing duck songs for little Steven in his carseat. When we weren't driving, I was pushing him in his stroller around the Hafer Park duck pond on Bryant in Edmond, Oklahoma. [It's a very nice duck pond, renovated in 2004.] Once little Steven could walk, I hauled him out of the duck pond when he fell in due to over-duck-dose excitement. His older brothers tended to fall into fishing lakes and the prairie dog habitat at the Henry Doorly Zoo. It's good for each sibling to find his own niche!

In searching for the "Ducks Like Rain" song I found an online video as performed by Dubya. It's not a great video, but it has the whole song.

Ducks like rain! Ducks like rain!
Ducks like splishy splashing in the rain.
Ducks like rain! Ducks like rain!
Ducks llike the rainy weather
Water running off their feathers
Ducks like splishy splashing in the rain

In those politically incorrect Aerostar days the Duck Trifecta was "Ducks Like Rain", "Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play", and "Six Little Ducks That I Once Knew." The six little ducks included:

Fat ones, skinny ones,
Fair ones, too
But the one little duck
With the feather on his back
He led the others
With a quack, quack, quack

When the five little ducks went over the hills and far away back in those days, only the mother duck went quack, quack, quack to call them back. Papa Duck was probably staying at the Embassy Suites and enjoying the complimentary breakfasts and happy hours.

If you are of a certain AARP-age, you may remember "Little White Duck." It was recorded by Burl Ives, Danny Kaye, and others for children's records in the Fifties:

Little White Duck
Written by: Bernard Zaritzky and Walt Barrows - © 1950

There's a little white duck sitting in the water
a little white duck doing what he oughter
he took a bite of a lily pad
flapped his wings and he said
"I'm glad I'm a little white duck sitting in the water
quack! quack! quack!"

There's a little green frog swimming in the water
a little green frog doing what he oughter
he jumped right off of the lily pad
that the little duck bit and he said
"I'm glad I'm a little green frog swimming in the water
ribbit! ribbit! ribbit!"

There's a little black bug floating on the water
a little black bug doing what he oughter
he tickled the frog on the lily pad
that the little duck bit and he said "I'm glad
I'm a little black bug floating on the water
bzzz! bzzz! bzzz!"

There's a little red snake playing in the water
a little red snake doing what he oughter
he frightened the duck and the frog so bad
he ate the bug and he said "I'm glad
I'm a little red snake playing in the water
hiss! hiss! hiss!"

Now there's nobody left sitting in the water
nobody left doing what he oughter
there's nothing left but the lily pad
the duck and the frog ran away, I'm sad
'cause there's nobody left sitting in the water
boo! hoo! hoo!


My little sister had an Australian preschool teacher who sang this song, so we always sang it with an Aussie accent. We loved rhyming water with daughter:

Have You Seen the Little Ducks

Have you seen the little ducks
Walking to the water
Father, mother, baby duck
Grand-mama and daughter

Root beer and pretzels were the special treats I used for distracting my little sons during tornado warnings in Omaha and Oklahoma. I have some fond memories of our basement storm parties. Having a festive family ritual for potentially scary events kept us calm and focused on the joy of family. If I'm ever going to be wiped off the face of the earth in some act-of-God catastrophe, please let me enjoy my last moments with good company, duck songs, pretzels, and root beer!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Flagrant squirrel

My dad is a bad influence on me. No, he doesn't smoke in the house or bet on the greyhounds. He doesn't squander money on Elvis decanters, or drive around without buckling his seat belt.

At age eighty-four, it's hard to revel in many sins and vices beyond hoarding a huge collection of condiments in the refrigerator. Still, Dad manages to model behaviors that his youngish daughter shouldn't pick up.

Yes. You guessed it. Dad yells at squirrels. Sometimes he slams the windows shut-open-shut to emphasize his disgust with squirrels. And now, I'm embarrassed to admit, I've slammed a door and yelled my displeasure at a squirrel.

True, the squirrel deserved it. I kid you not. The squirrel deserved to be handcuffed and sent up river to the Federal Pen at Leavenworth for tax evasion. The squirrel showed absolutely no remorse and exhibited every indication of being a serial finch feeder criminal. The only good thing I can say about the aforesaid squirrel is that it had no visible tattoos or piercings. I'm betting it used steroid performance-enhancers, though.

Dad has lived in the same house since he bought it with a VA loan in 1958. The house sits on an oversized lot, and if you climbed the hill in the backyard back in 1958 you could look out to the far horizon in three directions. You could watch for the Echo orbiting satellite or the country club's Fourth of July fireworks display without anything obstructing your view.

The tiny pine trees planted on the perimeter of the backyard were about knee-high to a three year-old. Wildlife in the neighborhood consisted of large, plentiful, scary grasshoppers, bagworms on the juniper bushes, and the dogcatcher chasing after our neighbor's runaway springer spaniel.

Dad's backyard looks like a wildlife refuge these days. Peaceful, idyllic, Disneyesque? No. That's just a veneer, an illusion... Dad claims the Squirrel Mafia controls the turf, and barely deigns to let him keep living in the house, even though the mortgage was paid off years ago.

I know next to nothing about Tony, Carmela, and Paulie Walnuts. When I've caught the occasional "Sopranos" rerun on A&E, I've thought Tony looked like one of the very well-fed squirrels in Dad's backyard. A squirrel who wants you to know it will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, no matter who gets whacked. A squirrel who munches maple tree whirlybirds while it chooses oldies on the jukebox.

This arrogant behavior can unleash a certain level of resentment that plays out as ineffectual yelling and slamming. The resentment is passed along to the next generation.

Back home, this resentment breaks out when a squirrel pillages my thistle seed-filled finch feeder. I come unglued at the squirrel's in-your-face leap from fence to feeder. The invader slurps down the food honestly and legitimately provided for hard-working small business-owning rosy house finches.

I slap the window glass. The squirrel keeps slurping. I open the patio door. The squirrel eyes me with the contempt a gum-chewing eighth-grader extramural star gives the teacher who sponsors the AV club nerds.

I explain in loud and no uncertain terms that the squirrel is an unwanted intruder at the finch feeder with no legal rights or privileges. The squirrel just dares me to do something about it. The Squirrel Mafia already controls both the condo association board of directors and the management company.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Class acts

There are tough jobs I'm grateful someone is able to perform, because I sure wouldn't want to do them. I wouldn't survive a day as a roofer in the summer in Texas. I wouldn't want to fight oil well fires with the late Red Adair. I just don't have the stomach to be in the press corp covering the presidential candidates, especially Hillary. And I really wouldn't want to be the preschool class pet the first week of summer school.

Talk about a tough assignment! For most of this first week of summer school the real class pet rabbit must have wished he was a velveteen rabbit. Being real is a really hard job in the preschool classroom. The new students are split between those who are screaming mimi terrified of the pet, and those who are crazed in their vigorous pursuit and high-volume loving of the bunny.

Somewhere there ought to be a Velveteen Class Pet Rabbit Rest Ranch and Retirement Community (gated) for those bunnies who have so bravely served our nation's preschoolers. I want to know where the candidates stand on improving conditions for elderly preschool pets!

Think on that a bit, then think on this sculpture in the garden of the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa. Is he wondering how the tortoise beat him, or the preschooler? "Thinker on a Rock", 1996, by Barry Flanagan, bronze.

My dad has bunny babies in his backyard. They have more to worry about from the neighborhood dogs than from overly enthusiastic three-year-olds. Thought I knew a lot about rabbits, having read Watership Down once. North American cottontails are very different from the Northern Europeans rabbits in that work of fiction.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's Nebraska Wildlife Species website includes this information on eastern cottontails:

A rabbit uses above-ground structures called "fomms" and underground holes such as those of badger, prairie dog and woodchuck for escape and shelter. Fomms are pockets the rabbit creates by trampling down small areas of grass and small shrubs. It uses fomms at night and during daytime rest periods throughout the year, even during the reproductive period. After her litter is born, the female cottontail stays in a fomm near the nest, only visiting her nest at dawn and dusk. The cottontail uses underground holes for emergency escape throughout the year and during winter for shelter.

A rabbit nest is a shallow depression that the female digs and lines with grass and fur. Because the female does not stay at the nest after the litter is born, she covers the young with grass and fur to help protect them from predators while she is away.

The breeding season begins in February in Nebraska. With a gestation period of 28 days and the capability of a female to become pregnant the day after giving birth, litters can be produced on a monthly basis. By late June this efficiency breaks down and the female may not breed for several days or not at all after giving birth. A female cottontail may have five to seven litters of four to five young in one year. Therefore, many rabbits can be produced in a year that has suitable weather for food availability and nest survival. In several studies the number of juvenile cottontails taken by hunters in the fall compared to the number of adult rabbits is 80-85%, which is an indication of very high reproductive rates.

Young rabbits are an easy-to-catch and plentiful food for many predator species from weasels to coyotes to birds of prey, making them a very important part of the food chain. As vegetative habitat dries in the fall, escape cover is reduced and the rabbits become more and more exposed to predators. Many of the young produced each spring and summer are not alive by winter and even fewer are available for breeding the next spring. This is the typical reproductive strategy of such a highly used prey species -- produce large numbers of young quickly to ensure that some will survive to reproduce the next year.

Wild rabbits would probably wish to have the easy life of a classroom bunny. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Retirement planning

Guys,

Don't get embarrassed, and don't put your fingers in your ears. I changed your diapers, though I know you don't want to contemplate that. At this point I know way too much about your grandfather's plumbing as related to his quality of life. I'm just asking that you stay informed about prevention of prostate problems the way that women have learned to stay aware of breast and cervical cancer prevention. I don't want to talk about urology over our future Thanksgiving dinners with your lovely wives and remarkably well-behaved children. I don't want to talk about it at all, and I know you are squirming. We are all more comfortable discussing gingivitis, root canals, and preventive dental flossing. When you think about your daily (and nightly) quality of life, the way you want to live as an older person, don't just plan for your financial needs in retirement! Order the grilled salmon and steamed fresh veggies. I won't mention it again.


Diet and prostate cancer
Much of the research on prostate cancer prevention focuses on nutrition. Key factors include:

Fat. Prostate cancer rates vary greatly from one country to another, with the highest rates appearing in countries where people tend to eat a lot of fat. In fact, the number of prostate cancer deaths in a given country rises in direct proportion to the average total calories from fat in that country's typical diet.

Vegetables. Some studies link a diet high in vegetables to a lower risk of prostate cancer. For example, one study found that men who ate 28 or more servings of vegetables each week had lower rates of prostate cancer compared to men who ate less than 14 servings.

Fish. In one study, prostate cancer was two to three times more common in men who ate no fish as in men who ate moderate to large amounts of fish. Types of fish that are rich in the fatty acids that protect against prostate cancer and other diseases include salmon, herring, and mackerel.

So far, research does not support definite nutritional guidelines for preventing prostate cancer. However, you can reasonably act on these suggestions:

Eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
Reduce intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.
Limit sweets and salt.
Drink alcoholic beverages in moderation, if at all.
Eat moderate-sized portions and control calories.

Your mommy said so.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Hot asphalt

"The Buick's air conditioner isn't cooling much", I told Dave at Goodyear. "Not at all?", he asked. "Not nearly enough to drive across Kansas", I replied. Dave spoke from personal experience when he said the only way to get any relief on that drive is to get your clothes soaking wet, roll down all the windows, and drive over eighty m.p.h., preferably at night. This is not a particularly appealing visual image for a woman of my AARP age, although it might have been fun in the mid-Seventies! I had Goodyear add lots of freon instead.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Condo Collapse Disorder

Maybe, just maybe, beehives are condominiums. Living in the close quarters of a hive can be stressful. If I could just fly on out of this condo association, I would.

First we learned that frogs are early indicators of Global Doom. Frogs don't live in condos. They are single-family dwellers. Some frogs have McMansions and drive convertibles. The coolest frogs live in tropical rainforests and appear on "Dancing with the Stars."

Now we are learning that another early indicator has taken a ride and never come back. The media is abuzz about honeybee disappearances. The cellphone as culprit theory is fading. Bee rapture is another theory. I will refrain from bad puns about the Second Humming. The tribble/trouble with this hypothesis is its disregard for Scotty's bee me up ability.

The "Over the Hedge" comic strip suggests that the honeybees are living it up in Las Vegas. Maybe Firesign Theatre and Elmore Leonard have been trapped in an apian cable t.v. poker championship. Maybe we have an Animal Planet reality show to piggyback on Meerkat Manor!

In the middle of the night, stuck in my thermostatically-challenged middle age insomnia, I've added the honeybees to my worry list. They join the missing Anasazi, the vanished colony of Roanoke, and the lost civilization of Atlantis buzzing in my mental honeycomb.

Bluetooth technology has made it desirably mainstream to walk around in public gesturing and talking to the air like the marginal members of society in the previous millennium. I'm becoming more sure that we are all bozos on this bus:

“Sure, living in today's complex world of The Future
is a little like having bees live in your head --
But... there they are."

Belonging to a condominium association is a lot like having bees live in your head. My elderly neighbor, Wild Willy, resembles an aging meerkat. Wild Willy has two cars, each with lots of VFW stickers and some parts held on with duct tape. Wild Willy wears his PJs all the time, except when he puts on a too-large vintage suit and a threadbare shirt with cuff links (no undershirt) for the condo association meetings. Everytime I meet him outside, he tells me how he flew bombing missions in WWII, and how he's licensed to carry concealed. I respect our Greatest Generation vets, but I don't want them shooting my visiting sons and friends. Since a recent burglary in the complex Willy has taken to walking to the mail kiosk with a loaded gun in his PJs pocket.

Another neighbor exhibiting symptoms of condo collapse disorder dug out all the landscaping outside her unit today. She wants to plant purdy widdle flowers. This would be so hunky-dunky, except that she has confused condo-ownership with single-family-dwelling-ownership. The main reason people buy condominiums is their wish to escape lawn chores. That's why condo associations own and maintain the common areas outside the units. Oops. She has basically removed an asset belonging to all members of the condominium association.

Having received notice of a significant monthly condo fee increase, I'm a tad annoyed about the gun-toters and shrub-whackers. If I could just buzz away and leave my condo obligations, I would.

Clearly the honeybees have been listening to Springsteen:

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that dont know where its flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Stitching with C-SPAN 2

Way over on the upper left side of the map, an old friend is creating a blog for her knitting for peace and charity group. I don't plan to knit until I become a grandma, and there's no rush on that! It's just that I'm best at small knitting projects.

My walk-buddy says only old people watch C-SPAN. Okay, that must be me. I like to have C-SPAN 2 as background noise while I'm working on textile art projects. Parliamentary procedure makes me happy. Quorum counts give me the calm to thread small-eyed needles. When I glance up from my work, I can see which senators have $400 hairdos. I can hear which senators are jumping on The World Is Flat bandwagon.




On the good side, I'm not yet stitching pale yellow and green covers for toilet paper rolls or Kleenex boxes.
© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

The way to a man's heart is through his toes

Holy cow! I had no idea the way to enlightenment was through your socks. Plus, I had no idea my Mr. Moderation father was in a cult!

Dad needed new socks, but he didn't want just any socks from Shopko or Target. Only Gold Toe socks would do. Dad said he didn't know where to find Gold Toe. I think he just didn't want to reveal the secret handshake and password of the sock cult.

I went on the offensive. I would find Gold Toe socks for Dad. I would even find Gold Toe socks on sale at J.C. Penney in the Mall Formerly Known As Gateway.

I've heard of people meditating upon their belly button lint. Then there are folks who clean the sock lint out from between their toes. The Gold Toe cult combines the two. You can actually join the sock cult online by registering for the Gold Toe email newsletter, Three Steps to Enlightenment:

Travel the golden path in a series of three emails.
The first illuminates the Gold Toe difference.
The second shows you the way to the right socks for your lifestyle.
The third offers an exclusive, one time promotional discount code to use for purchasing socks from www.goldtoe.com.

GOLDTOE'S HISTORY

Bally, PA - During the early part of last century, two German immigrants founded a small mill in Bally, Pennsylvania to manufacture men's hosiery and as a tribute to the country that adopted them, they named their company Great American Knitting Mills. From the start, Great American set out to look for "golden opportunities" in the marketplace. Ironically, the most fruitful and long lasting reward was to come from Great American's humble efforts to answer the needs of Americans hard hit by the Great Depression of 1929. Consumers wanted hosiery that would wear better and last longer than ever before, so Great American introduced a sock with a gold reinforcing yarn sewn in the toe. Before long, Americans everywhere were asking for the durable "sock with the gold toe." GOLDTOE® hosiery had emerged as one of the leading brands in America, and The Standard of Quality in the Industry. During 2002 the Company changed its name to Gold Toe Brands, Inc.

Today, the GOLDTOE® brand represents more than one-half of all department store sales of men's dress socks in the United States. And in recent years, GOLDTOE® has been making its mark in new segments of the hosiery industry: in 1983, GOLDTOE® introduced a women's line, followed by a boys line in 1986 and a women's tights line in 1992.

GOLDTOE®'s Executive Headquarters are in New York and Operations Headquarters are in Burlington, North Carolina.

Assisted living is completely wasted on the elderly

College provides us with our very best and most appreciated napping opportunities. College students value naps. They tweak their napping performance. They seek out heightened napping experiences. They nap-train for both time and distance. We will not even ponder how they season and spice their nap creations.

Toddlers and preschoolers mostly resent their naps as a conspiracy by exhausted grown-ups. Old folks don't even appreciate that they have been snoring the afternoon away on a major nap they don't remember.

Parents of toddlers, preschoolers, and college students wish it was their turn for rolling up in a Smurf comforter and listening to a Raffi tape. Middlish-aged children of snoring old folks envy the chance to doze off sitting straight up in the wheelchair.

Assisted living: A small apartment with staff to help you put on your socks and change your sheets. Your own tiny kitchen and a dining room where you can order off the menu. Managing your investments online and a Texas line-dancing club. My walker is better than your walker. Someone to drive you to appointments. Time to wonder what driver the pro will use on his tee shot.

Dad doesn't want to move to assisted living. I do. When can I start?

In the next novel by Stephanie Kallos there will be a character partially named after my dad. I don't know if the character will be in assisted living. Being in fictional living is good, too. Now, then, it's time for my nap.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Irresponsible and frivolous

Taurus (April 20-May 20): You've worried about important things long enough. Give it a break. Surround yourself with frivolous friends and be irresponsible.

Opened the Sunday paper after a bad night's sleep. The horoscopes were right column, front page, front section. I never read the horoscopes, but there they were, just staring at me.

Got back from my spring break trip to move my dad home from the rehab/therapy hospital yesterday. My luggage arrived later, just after midnight today after a wrong turn. Woke up about 4 a.m. to worry if it was my fault that my little wheelie suitcase "failed to transfer" at St. Louis Lambert International. Woke up again at 6:30 to worry if Dad was waking up, and wondering how his first night on his own had been.

Might as well make coffee and get the paper. What's this?? Frivolous? Irresponsible?

My brother will visit Dad today, and my sister will phone him. I've been so focused on every detail of Dad's homecoming that I'm cross-eyed. It is indeed time to "give it a break". My walking partner isn't exactly a frivolous friend, but she might be convinced to understudy the role. After fifty, going to Corner Bakery for a salad/sandwich combo involving lime cilantro mayo is considered living on the edge. Running the dryer without a sheet of Bounce counts as irresponsible.

I'm popping Led Zep in the cd player and letting the important things worry about themselves for a long time--at least fifteen minutes. Please don't sue me!

frivolous
1549, from L. frivolus "silly, empty, trifling, brittle," dim. of *frivos "broken, crumbled," from friare "break, rub away, crumble."

irresponsible
1648, "not legally answerable for conduct or actions," from in- "not" + responsible (q.v.). Meaning "not acting with a sense of responsibility" is from 1681.

zeppelin
1900, from Ger. Zeppelin, short for Zeppelinschiff "Zeppelin ship," after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917), Ger. general who perfected its design.

Many is a word that only leaves you guessing
Guessing 'bout a thing you really ought to know, ooh!
You really ought to know...



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Even my resolutions are belated

The Christmas cards never happened. The thank you notes have been slow. Already missed Miss Mary Melissa's birthday.

2006 gave me several unpleasant opportunities to learn an important lesson. 2007 will be the year I keep my computer files backed-up. Go ahead and put on your Spandex. Eat your Weight Watchers frozen pizzas. I'll be copying files to my cute little blue Lexar JumpDrive.

It's Thursday on Tuesday

We are way overdue for a new word, and this one is a doozy! A sweet, smart kindergarten student came to me today to share, "My baby brother was babmitized at church on Sunday."

Oh, my gosh! I hope they didn't throw the badminton out with the bathwater! I was so tickled it was hard to keep a straight face.

Here in Plano the Episcopalians are revolting. One of the largest congregations in the nation is all in a dither about the denomination confirming gay bishops, recognizing gay unions, and electing a, gasp, woman as the presiding bishop. I'm not an Episopalian, and I don't play one on t.v. I do think we should all pour ourselves a big glass of iced sun tea, stir in some serious sugar with a fancy-handled iced tea spoon, and sit our bezoozies down in the swing on the porch. Then we'll open the essays of Virginia Cary Hudson and laugh ourselves saner through O Ye Jigs and Juleps!

Martina Navratilova, who is almost my age, is playing in the Ladies and Mixed Doubles at Wimbledon in hopes of breaking Billie Jean King's record of twenty Wimbledon titles.



"Forty is the new 30 and I am a bit beyond that," she said. "I am a pioneer, and I think many great players will play to a great age in the future." I'm a bit past the new 30, but maybe I can stay at the new 40 if I keep smiling about my little students' vocabulary words.

Paring knife

The older and wider I become, the more I think about narrowing. How do we pare our lives down to what make it sustainable, meaningful, and enjoyable? When I was young, skinny, and feeling invulnerable, my goal was to become more open, to widen my world, to accept all random stimuli, and so I accumulated images, articles, memories, colored papers by the boxfuls.

My octegenerian father dreams of planning and preparing his next breakfast. My twenty-something sons aspire to experience the wide world through study exchanges, study abroad, internships, and (hopefully) challenging jobs. They don't tell me their nighttime dreams, and that is probably a good thing. I dream of packing--packing for trips, packing for moves, packing without any assistance against impossible deadlines--too much stuff. I wake up exhausted after working all night to sort and pack everything in my dream house into boxes to load into a lifesize Fisher Price Schoolbus. I stuff the stuff of a real life alongside sequined dresses for unattended proms, place-settings for unserved dinner parties, and files of maintenance records for cars I never owned.

A collage is not art unless considered choices have been made by the artist. We can take in so much stimuli, and stuff it into our memories, our file cabinets, our garages, and our computers. Meaning and art do not come from amassing, but from chosing and narrowing the material.

Last evening I attended a preview for a play written by an actor whose performances I've admired. The subject is obviously precious to the writer, who wants to share his enthusiasm for the life and music of Jimmie Rodgers with an audience. Unfortunately, the result is not drama. The show is educational, in the same way a filmstrip was educational in 1960's junior high social studies classrooms. It had the excitement level of an overwarm classroom with the venetian blinds closed after a cafeteria lunch of fish sticks and canned peas.

As a third or fourth grader my son read a biography of Marco Polo. He was so excited about Marco Polo he convinced a drama teacher to have his class make up a play about the man. The class play may have interested a few kids and parents in Marco Polo's travels across the known world, but it suffered from too much material and too wide a scope.

Jimmie Rodgers and Marco Polo could both be the subject of an interesting hour on PBS or the History Channel. For live drama, both need to find the single relationship and dialogue, the tension of a single conflict, that exposes the core meaning. I found myself wondering most about the relationship between RCA Victor and early recording artists like Jimmie Rodgers (but not like Marco Polo).

I'm not critiquing or preaching this to anyone but myself. What needs to be pared away to find a meaning for this blog with its all-over-the-map subjects? What needs to be narrowed and harvested from the masses of material I've accumulated in my life and my file cabinets? Maybe then I would have the focus to write a play about my dad's relationship with his next breakfast.

Will Smith in Aisle Three

My memory was erased again in Albertson's this evening. Stopping on the way home from work to get some Swiffer Wet, I scored a parking space right next to the shopping cart corral. Yee-haw, baby, I am cooking with gas!! I'm still in The Zone when I find Pledge Wet Grab-It on closeout, so I get twenty-four for the price of twelve. Minute Rice, check. Mushrooms, check. MGD, check. Mac & Cheese, check. And that's all I remember.

Flash! Blink! Huh? Whuh? The Men In Black have zapped me again with their grocery store memory reset neuralyzer. Mind Is Blank. I check out, and scoop the bags out of the cart to carry to the Buick.

"But wait," you say. "Weren't you parked right out next to the cart corral? Isn't this the perfect time to drive the cart out to the Buick??"

Feeling down and squeezed

I did not live through the Great Depression, although my students believe I was born just before the dinosaurs died out. I'm not old enough to be wise, just disgusted. I am old enough to be invisible, but that's not a superhero power. It's a fact of life for the working poor who used to consider themselves middle class.

My parents were children of the Great Depression. Their families passed down the cautionary tales of that era whenever we sat together for a Thanksgiving dinner or other occasion. The stories influenced each of our personal relationships with money, material objects, employment, and the environment.

I have lived in a community blanketed in the fog of psychological and economic depression. We moved to Edmond, Oklahoma at Thanksgiving in 1987 when my oldest son was in kindergarten. It had been just over a year since the Edmond Post Office Massacre. Patrick Sherrill killed fourteen people and wounded seven, and to city residents the impact was far more significant than the origin of the terms, "going postal" and "disgruntled employee". We arrived a year and a half after a significant tornado hit parts of the town, including the subdivision next to ours. I met residents who still kept a mattress in their bathroom to place over their heads in a tornado. (Basements are mostly unknown in central Oklahoma, and the safest place in a storm is usually the bathtub.) The region was also submerged in the banking crisis of the 1980s, with residents trapped in negative equity mortgages and facing foreclosures. The city was growing rapidly, but was expanding in an enveloping aura of community-wide depression.

I wouldn't mind going back to Edmond to live. I loved the slightly scruffy Oklahoma landscape, the hawks and the scissortail flycatchers. I loved the outlaw Wild West history, and the comparative newness of the whole state. I just didn't like the mass depressive funk. I had enough anxiety of my own without the community piling on.

On our walks, my exercise buddy points out the places where she thinks she could live in a box when she becomes homeless. Down there along the creek, or back behind that hedge... She says I'll be glad that she's scouted out locations in advance for us when things really get bad. Thank you for planning ahead, I say. I know I will save the box next time I replace a decrepit home appliance.

We are squeezed. As a small child I used to watch with wonder when my mom put on her longline eighteen-hour girdle. It was a bizarre and uncomfortable squeezing dance. My generation rejected those undergarments, but now we have the economic equivalent. We are squeezed by gas prices, utility prices, the strangle-hold of health insurance, prescription costs, and the rising costs of a college education for our children. We see government's ineffectiveness in natural disasters, its arrogance and ignorance in environmental and energy policy, and the daily horrific events in Iraq. We are squeezed and existentially depressed. To top off the insults, my pharmacist says Zoloft is unlikely to go generic anytime soon.

It's cheering to know President Alfred E. Newman got off his bicycle long enough to get a briefing about avian flu. He's back to pedaling, while we are up shit creek without a paddle.

Dates, figs, and prunes

What is it like to be single at the age of fifty? For the first time in a gazillion* years, I have the time to contemplate my status as a single female. No kids at home. No soccer games. No lunches to prepare. Not even that many checks to write.

Who am I? Can I be who I am by myself? Do I want to savor my long-delayed and richly deserved peace and quiet? Should I be panicked about getting older alone? Do I want to try an internet dating service?

Well, at least I know the answer to the last question! No.

I don't usually look for relationship insights in the Business section of the Dallas Morning News. It's a rare day when I read more than the headlines in that section. Somehow I was enticed into a feature by Scott Burns, "American Generations: Part 2" this noon. Mr. Burns (not the Simpson's Mr. Burns) is a generation half step between myself and my parents, and I enjoy his financial columns. His thoughts about the enormous "investment in human capital" known as the G. I. Bill were intriguing. And then, suddenly, he was talking to me:

"Relationships at 50 are a lot more difficult than at 25, Bobby realized.

"'It's the hormone-to-identity ratio,' the algebra lover liked to say. 'When you're 20, it's nearly infinite. Who you are hardly matters. What matters is finding a plausible excuse to get naked. But at 50, the hormone-to-identity ratio is less than 1. You're actual people.'"

Really getting to know the actual people of both genders that I meet is way more important to me these days. Really getting to know myself is essential, too. I'm not dried out and wrinkly, but I'm sweeter, smarter, and more complex with aging.


*An elderly woman and her son are listening to the news on the radio. "Twelve Brazilian soldiers were killed today," they hear. "How many zeroes is a Brazilian," she asks her son.