Heckle, Jekyll, and pleats

What is kilter, and why am I out of it? I had plenty of AA Energizers to replace the thermostat batteries, but the temperature sensor still seems out of whack. It's quite comfortable in the condo, but the thermostat is displaying the temp as 80 degrees.



The expression "off-kilter" uses the word kilter, which means "good condition". To be off-kilter is to be faulty. The word is first seen in the 1630's and 40's, as the English word kelter. Other than this, the origin is unknown. The related expression "out of kilter" indicates being way into disorder and confusion, and does NOT mean dancing without one's pleated skirt! You can be thrown out of kilter, and you can be thrown out of some bars for dancing on a table without your skirt, whether or not you have tattoos. It's a Tricki-Woo world!

Maybe kelter is kin to helter and skelter, hurly-burly, harum-scarum, and pell-mell. They all appeared in English usage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to express uncontrolled motion and direction.

My preschool girl students are on-kilter, not off. Pleated skirts seem to be their new favorite style. Most of their pleated skirts are skorts with built-in shorts. The term skort is much more recent than helter, kelter, or skelter. Part culotte and part miniskirt, skorts were a huge improvement on bloomer gymsuits for active females beginning in the 1960s.

Since the Buick went cracker-dog and flop-bott this weekend, I don't want the air conditioner to be out of whack. Out of whack means confused and not working as it should, although I'm still unclear about the origin of whack. Whatever it is, I bet I can't afford the repairs right now!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

1968

Two words on the radio news hit me--Recreate 68. Why would I want to recreate the scariest year I can remember?

Becoming a teenager is a universal acne festival of junior high anxiety. Ask around. If you can find a person who would like to relive being thirteen years old, I'll be amazed. Most people I know believe Hell, if there is one, is being trapped in junior high for all eternity.

Becoming a teenager in 1968 compounded the personal angst and turmoil with a sense that the world was also going straight to Hell. Do not pass Go with your handbasket. Do not collect $200. Only Walter Cronkite kept the whole world from total conflagration.

• From January 1968 on each evening's CBS news about the Tet Offensive was bad.
• In March the appearance of segregationists presidential candidate George Wallace led to rioting in Omaha.
• Three weeks before I turned thirteen, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
• Five weeks after my birthday, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
• Another two months, and Soviet tanks were rolling into Prague.
• Then the next week protests and rioting began at the Chicago Democratic Convention.

The Omaha riots brought racial tension closer to my little world than ever before. When an Omaha Central High School basket ballplayer was arrested just three days before the 1968 state tournament for suspected possession of gasoline bombs, the Nebraska School Activities Association moved the Class A tournament from Omaha to Lincoln. The tournament has remained in Lincoln for forty years. I'm endebted to Prairie Bluestem for the citation confirming my hazy memories of that time.

1968--I hadn't figured out the secret of life. I could barely manage the combination for my hall locker at Millard Lefler Junior High. The whole thing was going up in shattered glass and smoke.

I began attending the youth group supper meetings at my church in the late winter of 1968. In fact, I learned about Martin Luther King's murder from the church custodian who chatted as he mopped the foyer before one of those suppers. Waiting with me was Phoebe. She befriended me, and showed me the routine for the group meetings, for which my shy and nerdy self was grateful. I'd never met anyone like Phoebe. She was different, but nice.

The other church group kids soon informed me that Phoebe was a "feeb," and a "retard," and taught me to shun her. Guilt for my rejection of Phoebe mixed with my desperate need for peer acceptance to amp up my anxiety. In the forty years since, I pray we have all become more tolerant and compassionate, and slower to use insulting labels.

From a different viewpoint, one might understand 1968 as a year full of hope, promise, change, and empowerment. At thirteen I didn't understand the hippies in San Francisco any more than the Soviet tanks in Prague or Mayor Daley's Chicago. I didn't fit in with the youth group kids who could play "Sunshine of Your Love" on the church organ after choir practice.

What of the "Recreate 68" on the radio news? From the Recreate 68 coalition's website:

The 1960s were a time of profound, positives [sic] social and political change in this country. The civil rights movement ended legal segregation and broke down barriers to the full participation of African Americans in American life (still yet to be fully achieved). Other movements followed that achieved the same for women and for other oppressed communities of color. That in 2008 the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for President are an African American man and a woman¬something unimaginable at the start of the 60s¬is a direct result of the changes brought about in that decade.

Those changes were eventually codified in law. But they were brought about not by political “leaders,” but by mass movements of people who demanded that America live up to its own democratic rhetoric, by grassroots movements that forced the system to respond to their demands, and opened up new political space for ordinary people to participate in the decisions that affected their lives.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Permanent vs. temporary

Digging into the clay soil with my garden trowel, ever so sweaty last Sunday afternoon, I pondered the concept of permanence. My two tomato plants needed bigger pots on the patio, so I went on the rampage creating space "out back".



The condo "backyard" is about 7' x 11', with maybe thirty-five square feet of dirt, and the rest concrete. When we moved in as renters, I stuck some red canna bulbs, myrtle groundcover, ivy, and wandering purple stuff into the mud around the four silly shrubs. We were "just renting," aka "temporary," but I couldn't live with the mud and dead leaves out by the patio slab. A mismatched collection of pots holding miniature roses, dusty miller, and eighty-eight cent mums and Home Depot lantana gradually encroached onto the patio slab in the years since. When you feel temporary, you don't plant things in the real ground.



"Permanent" in the early Sixties meant something briefly stinging, drippy, and smelly "given" to you by your mom to cause your hair to break off and frizz for several weeks. I received the occasional Tonette permanent wave on weekend afternoons while sitting on the tall kitchen stool watching roller derby, Mr. Wizard, Jon Gnagy drawing lessons, and Green Bay Packers games on the small black and white t.v.



"Permanent press" was an advertising phrase of the early Sixties. Women's sportswear maker Joseph Koret developed the permanent-crease process in the late Fifties. Fabrics were coated with a resin solution and baked to set a crease. Koret used this marketing phrase to proclaim the emancipation of homemakers from their ironing boards. My mom sewed our clothes, so they were not "permanent pressed". She spent two or three hours every week ironing clothes for our family of five.



Digging and sweating, my tomatoes are in the big pots, and my herbs are replanted together in a dish-shaped pot. How will the mums, dusty miller, and lantana cope with being plunked into the seriously unimproved soil around the patio?



Kelly Girls temporary services were advertised on 1960's KFOR radio. It's strange to consider the heavy load of baggage packed into the words "Kelly Girl". My gosh! Bad enough that a woman wouldn't have the time to iron her family's clothing, she might have to get a job, but not a real job, just a temporary staffing job popping in and out of offices to do typing, and having to buy permanent press clothes and nylons! Sheez! This was the sort of woman who might phone in an order to Chicken Delight, the only delivery food in town. "Don't cook tonight! Call Chicken Delight!"


In college I used Permanent Pigments paints. The Permanent Pigments Company developed the first water-based acrylic gesso in 1955, and called it Liquitex. Like permanent-press store-bought garments and temp service stenos, acrylic paints weren't considered the proper way to do things!



In Gail Butt's composition and watercolor classes we used the combination of cadmium red #2, cobalt blue, and permanent green light to solve many creations. This green paint is semi-transparent due to it's recipe of phthalo green and hansa yellow.

I've never given myself a permanent green traffic light. But I've replanted the mums into the unimproved dirt of my "out back". It's been six years since I became an owner instead of a renter, but I still feel temporary. Maybe the experience of divorce makes my inner understanding of permanent vs. temporary less clearcut.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Memorial Day picnic brunch

This Memorial Day weekend I am finally writing last winter’s Christmas letter. Perhaps arriving at the beginning of summer it will be seem less bloating than roast turkey with stuffing and sauerkraut--still newsy, but more like fresh fruit ambrosia or a melon boat.

Ah, yes, the nectar of the gods!

Ambrosia, favored food or drink of the Olympians, from the Latin ambrosia, from the Greek ambrosios, literally “of the immortals,” from a- “not” + mbrotos, related to mortos “mortal”.

In the early Sixties a neighbor over on “L” Street had a holiday brunch open house in her backyard. My memory is a Technicolor scene of green grass, swing set, card tables, and kids in bright sunsuits and sundresses. The centerpiece was a splendid watermelon boat cut with dramatic zigzag edges, filled with fresh watermelon wedges, cantaloupe balls, green grapes, and canned pineapple “tidbits” and mandarin orange sections.

Sometimes Aphrodite demands cut strawberries, and Hermes hollers for honeydew in Olympus. In Nebraska in the Sixties nobody knew about kiwi, although it does add nice color in the melon boat.

I have no idea what else was on the menu at that backyard brunch--maybe muffins, donut holes, and Little Smokies. The family’s obese long-eared dog waddled around the lawn looking for dropped goodies under the card tables. It was quite the most elegant event I had ever attended!

This holiday weekend my condo is the cut and hollowed watermelon boat for the ambrosia. The boat is very full of immortals from the Latin and Greek, or at least a junior home from a year in Italy.

My year with the Montessori preschoolers has been filled with daily delights and insights. I love photographing school happenings and the insect visitors to our playground garden. We help introduce the children to nature at its most basic level, including worm composting, and I get to teach art with an emphasis on nature. Next weekend I will attend the Ft. Worth Opera Festival’s “Turandot” with friends in the very elegant Bass Hall. There probably won’t be a melon boat or a long-eared waddling dog, but it will be lots of fun.

Have a great summer!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Story-starters, fagot-finders, and flame-broiled whoppers

"Did you attach the key onto the outside of the Buick with a Band-Aid?," I asked the Woolly Mammoth. It wasn't a good start to the morning. He had left the car at the train station for his brother in the wee hours by my standard--after eight p.m. The three of us are sharing one working vehicle, one non-working vehicle, and a mass-transit system that leaves something to be desired for these few summer weeks. Our jobs and schedules are not yet braiding together in seamless harmony like the warf and woop of the cosmos, but the candle of hope flickers still.

In the evening, waiting for the charcoal to reach the perfect degree of orange and gray to cook the marinaded chicken, I drift into a Camp Fire Girl reverie:

Burn fire burn
Burn fire burn
Flicker flicker flicker flicker flame

My baby Weber is still six briquettes short of a flame-broiled whopper. Should I feed it tinder or kindling? Should I paint the heads of wooden matches with nail polish, and store them in a metal Band-Aid box? That was one of the survival skills I learned in Camp Fire Girls in the mid-1960s. So far, I've never needed a waterproofed match to survive, although I did fantasize once or twice about painting my spouse's head with nail polish and then stuffing him in a metal box.

I have a fondness for vintage metal boxes, Band-Aid and other. It's funny what sticks, and what doesn't. What sinews bind us to things and to people?

At one a.m. I fret. Did my son collect the Buick at the train station? To ward off worry I try to remember the girls in my Camp Fire Girl group so many years ago. The names sound so old-timey compared to my students' names:

Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Prissy, Julie, Julie, Judy, Jody, Wendy, Wendy, Hilde, Debbie, Laurie, Donna, Janice, Dee-Dee, Linda, Susan, Margaret, Pam...

Margaret's mother taught us the "Burn Fire Burn" song:

BURN, FIRE, BURN!

(Adante moderato)
Burn, fire, burn! burn, fire, burn!
Burn, flicker, flame!
Whose hand above this blaze is lifted
Shall be with magic touch engifted,
To warm the hearts of lonely mortals
Who stand without their open portals.
The torch shall draw them to the fire,
Higher, higher, higher, By desire.
Who so shall stand by this hearthstone, flame-fanned,
Shall never stand alone;
Whose house is dark and bare and cold,
Whose house is dark and cold;
This is his own!
Flicker, flicker, flicker, flicker, flame!

Such tiny diversity within our group! One girl with a divorced mother, one girl living in an apartment, one Jewish girl, one Unitarian... Five daughters of engineers, two daughters of doctors plus one veterinarian, one daughter of a minister, at least five daughters of university professors. All of us save two walked home from school for lunch with our moms everyday, and then walked back for the afternoon class. When school dismissed at 3:15 we walked together to our Camp Fire meeting at one of our homes.

Camp Fire Girls worked their way up from Wood Gatherers to Fire Makers and Torch Bearers. The way was perilous, hidden under tinder and kindling, fraught with fagot-finders, and mired in the classic contest between wiggly loose front teeth and homemade popcorn balls.

WOOD GATHERER's DESIRE (1914) (spoken)

As fagots are brought from the forest
["Fagot" here means "a bundle of sticks tied together."]
Firmly held by the sinews which bind them,
So cleave to these others, your sisters,
Wherever, whenever you find them.
Be strong as the fagots are sturdy,
Be pure in your deepest desire;
Be true to the truth that is in you;
And--follow the Law of the Fire.


The five year olds are beginning to write stories. They choose a photo from the box of story starters, then make two to four sentences about the picture. Usually they write who is in the photo, what they are doing, and where. Sometimes they tell when, but rarely why. I keep trying to get them to spice up their stories.

Surprise me. Tell me something I don't already know. Tell me something exciting. Make me laugh. What did the flamingos play?

WE BIRDS
PLAY NOW
FLUTE AND CELLO?

And no, the Woolly Mammoth did not use the Band-Aid to stick the key on the Buick. The Band-Aid wrapper was left on the car seat because he cut his finger while hiding the key.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cam Phone Spam Scram Gravy Ain't Wavy

Here in Plano voter interest in the municipal election is up one mild eyebrow twitch above the usual total apathy. We have a, gasp, openly gay candidate for city council. We have a $490 million school bond proposal when many families are cutting their driving and eating lots more beans.

Speaking of gas, the candidates have ALL figured out how to use automated annoying phone calls. I was home this afternoon because of school conference day, and the phone rang every five minutes with a robo-candidate urging me to vote.

Somehow, I got off the campaign track into a discussion about gravy. Growing up, it was a given that during any meal served with gravy someone would remark, "Scram gravy ain't wavy." What did it mean?

Googling "scram gravy" I learned that the expression probably derived from an old-timey newspaper comic about a fireman called "Smokey Stover". If you happen to remember anything from "Smokey Stover" about Molly freezing on the trolley*, PLEASE leave a comment! Dad and I have been as far up and down the sidewalk of Memory Lane as he can go pushing his walker, and I barely remember the comic in the Omaha Weird Herald.

As a kid in the Sixties, I believed that "scram gravy ain't wavy" was a jab at our neighbors who made lumpy gravy with flour and milk instead of using the inherently superior smooth cornstarch recipe seasoned with brown sauce. I have to laugh, but we kids must have had playground taunts like, "my mom's gravy is smoother than your mom's gravy!" It was an era of Meat and Potatoes.

Fritzi's Gravy

Yield: 2 cups


2 Tbsp fat drippings
2 cups hot water drained off the boiled potatoes you are going to mash
2 Tbsp Argo® Corn Starch
1/4 cup cold water
1 tsp Gravy Master or other brown sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove all but 2 tablespoons fat drippings from roasting pan. Stir in hot water. Cook over medium heat, stirring to loosen browned bits. Remove from heat.


Put corn starch and water in a small jar with a tight lid, then shake until smooth; stir into pan. Add seasonings. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil over medium heat and boil 1 minute.

*Dad is probably thinking of Walt Kelly's Christmas classic:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Worming Its Way Into Snack?

Fresh vegetables were a tiny fraction of our diet back in Lincoln in the early Sixties. Except for carrot sticks and corn-on-the-cob, I thought the Jolly Green Giant and Del Monte put all veggies into tin cans. I willingly ate canned green beans, wax beans, niblets, cream-style corn, sauerkraut, and diced beets. Under duress I ate the minimum amount of canned peas. Sometimes Fritzi would serve canned lima beans or butter beans. Those were always suppers that led prematurely to bedtime. At Christmas and Thanksgiving we ate fresh celery sticks.

Nearly all my little students eat a wide range of fresh vegetables on a regular basis. Lunchboxes often hold sliced peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, edamame, broccoli, cauliflower, bean sprouts, sugar snap peas, and jicama.

In the upper elementary grades after 1964, I learned to eat chopped iceberg lettuce with Kraft Italian salad dressing, stewed tomatoes, and canned spinach with lemon or vinegar. It was high school before I ate baked squash. In college I pushed the limits trying fresh spinach, asparagus and mushrooms in some quiche/crepe fern-decor restaurant downtown. It was a wild and crazy time!

Sometime after I got married, but before I had kids I encountered eggplant and avocado. The charms of eggplant still escape me.

Tomorrow will be a challenge. My little students harvested the garden broccoli heads today. I've expended much attention removing the green caterpillars known as Imported Cabbage Worms from the broccoli plants over the past few weeks. The caterpillars are fiendishly camouflaged. When the broccoli florets are served with a dip of Ranch dressing, I will want to holler to the caterpillars, "I know you're in there! Come out with your hands up!"

Barbara Damrosch writing in the Washington Post, 7/5/07, calls those green larvae of the cabbage butterfly, "unintended garnish" and says they are harmless if accidentally consumed:

The green worms hide so well in the broccoli heads that you rarely see them until they are cooked, at which point they turn a conspicuous, incriminating white .... But there will always be a moment when you've just served an honored visitor a beautiful plate of homegrown broccoli and there's that little extra ingredient. Proper etiquette requires a guest to move it inconspicuously to the side of the plate and exclaim "Good protein!" if caught in the act .... Soaking produce in a sink full of salt water before cooking will send most worms flocking to the bottom.

Fritzi told me over the phone long distance that a salt water soak brought all the little creepies crawling out of a broccoli head. I can't recall why she actually began to use fresh broccoli in her kitchen. I was already married and living in Omaha, but we still had to live through Reaganomics before the first President Bush would proclaim his dislike of broccoli. By then my dad had decreed that he would not eat any salad that didn't have at least two ingredients besides the iceberg lettuce. That would be not counting the cabbage butterfly larvae.

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli." George Bush, U.S. President (1990)

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Unsavory type

My neighbor spotted an "unsavory type" going through the condo complex recycling bins to collect all the cans. She also used the term "hobo", which I hadn't heard in decades. She was glad to report she had successfully "run him off the property". This gave me a wonderful mental image of an elderly woman shaking her cane at a tramp fleeing with his bindle on a stick.

First, the lesson to remember--Items placed in recycling bins and dumpsters are not secure just because they are surrounded with disgusting or decomposing material. Private, personal, and financial information, including those endless offers of credit cards, should be shredded. This "unsavory type" did his scavenging in broad daylight and seemed to just be collecting cans to sell.

Second, what is an "unsavory type" or "unsavory character"?--Without getting into the Spitzer scandal, the implications seem to include disagreeable, morally offensive, and suspected of criminal behavior. "Unsavory" can also mean tasteless or insipid.

But, third, what is "savory"?--I thought it was an herb, but it is actually two different Old World herbs called "summer savory" and "winter savory" whose leaves are used as seasoning. My 1976 Joy of Cooking explains:

The leaves of winter savory are used in stews, stuffings and meat loaves. Sauteria montana, a rather resinous perennial evergreen sub-shrub, grows to 18 inches and tolerates lean soil. Summer savory is a much more delicately flavored herb and has many more uses. It is classic in green beans and green bean salad; in horseradish sauce and lentil soup; and even in deviled eggs. It is also used with fat fish, roast pork, potatoes; tomatoes and French dressing. Sauteria hortensis, which grows to 18 inches, needs light, well-composted soil.

I'd never heard of herbs until Simon and Garfunkel sang "Scarborough Fair" in 1966...
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

To further complicate the issue, "savories" are a course served in English dinners before the fruit or after the sweet, "to cut the sugar taste before the port is served". Some of them are fishy. The whole situation is getting fishy, if you ask me! Some savories suggested in Joy of Cooking are oysters or chicken livers wrapped in bacon, sardine crepes, tomato tarts, curried seafood tarts, and toasted cheese rolls. I might be inclined to fake a nosebleed during this course, and return just in time for the port!

Fourth, what's the origin of the term "hobo"?--To me, the term conjures a boxcar hopper who uses a secret code to mark the houses of kind women who will offer food.

I grew up still close enough to the Great Depression to know at an early age that running away from home required tying my belongings in a bandana and hanging that bundle on a stick carried over my shoulder. That bundle on a stick is known as a bindle. This meant that if you couldn't tie, you couldn't run away from home. If you couldn't fit what you wanted to take along in a bandana, you couldn't run away from home. If your mom didn't let you play with sticks, you were probably never going to get a breakout opportunity, and you probably still live with your mom. Also, if you wanted to run away from home, you had to smear your cheeks with Crisco and slap on coffee grounds, which is a fairly significant deterrent to riding the rails.

These theories of the origin of the word "hobo" come from Wikipedia:

The origin of the term is not confirmed, though there is a plethora of popular theories. Author Todd DePastino has suggested that it may come from the term hoe-boy meaning "farmhand", or a greeting such as Ho, boy!.[2] Bill Bryson suggests in Made in America that it could either come from the railroad greeting, "Ho, beau!" or a syllabic abbreviation of "homeward bound". Others have said that the term comes from the Manhattan intersection of Houston and Bowery, where itinerant people once used to congregate.

Still another theory of the term's origins is that it derives from the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, which was a terminus for many railroad lines in the 19th century. The word "hobo" may also be a shortening of the phrase which best describes the early hobo's method of transportation, which was "hopping boxcars", or of the phrase "homeless body" or "homeless bohemian". Additional claims about the word's origin include derivations from the Japanese word houbou 方々, meaning, in reference to travel, "various places", and from the Spanish word jobo, meaning, in the Cuban phrase correr jobos, "truancy". Some Hoboes claim it stands for Helping Our Brothers Out...Hoboes differentiate themselves as travelers who are homeless and willing to do work, whereas a tramp travels but will not work and a bum does neither.

The Online Etymology Dictionary offers fewer choices:

hobo
1889, Western Amer.Eng., of unknown origin, perhaps related to early 19c. Eng. dial. hawbuck "lout, clumsy fellow, country bumpkin." Or from ho, boy, a workers' call on late 19c. western U.S. railroads. Hence facetious formation hobohemia "community or life of hobos," 1923 (see bohemian).

Fifth, what about street people, panhandlers, the homeless, vagrants, swagmen, tramps, and bums?--We hear so much about The Homeless. I don't have time to study the various words, but they seem to indicate different reasons for homelessness. The person spotted "on the property" taking cans from our condo recycling bins seems to have a plan for making a bit of cash. Maybe shelters for the homeless could be supported by collections of cans. And, ho, boy, aren't there some seriously curried fishy tarts out there holding high offices?



Just so you don't join me in insomniac mental scrolling searching for the lyrics to that bad Cher song about people taking Bud cans out of the recycling bin:

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Lining up

In elementary school my teachers used to think up different arrangements for students to line up--alphabetical by first name, or last, or both; by birthday, by height... We did a lot of things by height back then, in a form of discriminatory shortism. We lined up for the class photo or the Christmas music program by height. When we chose up sides for recess games like Red Rover, the two tallest kids were usually the captains making the choices. These were scary times for skinny short kids. The outcomes were more influential than any NFL draft, at least for a generation of psychologists and licensed family therapists with kids to put through college.

I like to use categories that don't scar students for life:

If you have pink socks you may line up.
If you have white socks you may line up.
If you have no socks you may line up.
If you have two socks you may line up.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Nehi to a grasshopper OR the boy who cried barf

It is fitting on this day, my brother's fiftieth birthday, that I should spend a moment in contemplation of queasy stomachs. These musings have nothing whatsoever to do with the grown-up person my brother became, but more to do with the way life imitates and aggravates Aesop.

One of my young students tells me often that his tummy hurts. His tummy hurts a lot when he doesn't want to do something. I understand that ploy, having used a similar tactic, "the faked nosebleed" to exit third year Spanish class rather more often than believable, it is embarrassing to admit. An actress I wasn't.

As a young boy my brother told us often that his tummy was upset. Because we almost always saw the proof of this queasiness, and then tried to get the stain out of the rug, my brother had credibility. Orange soda pop is a very persevering stain.

"Credibility Gap" was a phrase of the Viet Nam Era. It indicated "public skepticism about the truth of official claims and pronouncements", according to my dictionary. My brother had no such gap, but my student does. He has been the shepherd boy calling the warning of "wolf" far too often. He is Weapons of Mass Destruction without the orange Nehi.

That is why we were surprised when he suddenly went chalk-white and blew chunks all over the sidewalk. In Aesop, the villagers just ignore the boy's warnings, and the wolf eats all the sheep. In real life, the teachers ignore the warnings, and get it on their shoes. In the Bush Era we forgot the Credibility Gap, and never will get that orange soda out of the rug!

Happy birthday, Rog.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Napkin collection

Way, way back in The Beforetime we did not use scrapbooking as a verb. The compilation of scrapbooks was not a trendy and expensive hobby. It was a compulsory archival duty of all female children over the age of six. Newspaper clippings, party invitations, blue ribbons, and report cards were all adfixed into fat albums of black paper with rubber cement or white paste. Black and white Kodak snapshots were added with little lick and stick photo corners.






Maybe because we had so much less stuff generally, or maybe because "special" events were so rare and spread out as to be truly special, we saved momentos of the slightest occasion or diversion. Unlike recent generations, our itty-bitty self-esteems weren't being perpetually inflated with pink and sparkly atta-girls, so we saved any schoolwork with a twinkly star drawn by our teacher (our school PTAs didn't spend fortunes on stickers and other "classroom incentives".) Much of childhood was an exercise in oral history not unlike the retelling of Homer's "Odyssey" and "one potato, two potato" to each new generation, so we hoarded the visual evidence of our existence.

Small children were allowed at any neighborhood event as long as we didn't pick our noses, stick our fingers in the cake frosting, or otherwise disrupt the proceedings. Indeed, we took our responsibilities as honored young observers and civilized-persons-in-training at least as seriously as the papal representative to the United Nations, and the runner-up to Miss America. How else were we going to learn to play those shower games and swallow sour punches made with pineapple juice, pink lemonade, and Sprite after eating frosted cupcakes?

These were the Napkin Years. Most girls had a department store gift box filled with commemorative napkins under their bed. Attending any special event required keeping your paper napkin spotless for archiving. Sugar packets were added to note the rare meal in a restaurant. When your grandmother bought you an Andes Mint after supper at Larry's Cafe in McCook, you might preserve the green foil wrapper. If you had the good fortune to have your father go out of town on business, you could add little cocktail swords and umbrellas to your collection. Poking your little brother with the cocktail sword would result in summary loss of all accumulated napkins and twinkly stars, but it was still a strong temptation.

My napkin collection is long gone. I can find only four in my scrapbooks. Three are from weddings printed in silver:

Crys and Jim

Catherine and Frank

Jan and Bill

The fourth napkin is from Fred and Effa Dale's fiftieth wedding anniversary. That oppressive New Years weekend spent holed up in a McCook motel right there on Highways 6 and 34, wearing itchy new clothes and dreading a command piano inferiority performance with cousins I barely knew would have stayed in my memory even without the napkin.

I don't have many personal convictions about an afterlife. I do strongly believe that there is a circle in Hell for hostesses who force guests to play moronic games at wedding and baby showers. There is no question that every adult who ever coerced a child into performing at a piano recital against her will has an eternity ahead in Hades. I'm sure Dante would back me on this.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Rocky's Pancake Ranch

Not all that long ago, just forty-five or six years, our favorite Sunday morning restaurant in Lincoln was Rocky's Pancake Ranch on North 48th Street. In the Sixties dining out for any meal was reserved for special occasions. What a contrast to now when a sit-down meal at home is reserved for special occasions in many families.

Rocky's wasn't fancy, but it had "Fabulous Flapjacks", darn good golden brown waffles, three or four syrup flavors, and coffee for a dime. The cowboy decor appealed to my little brother, but the cast iron spurs on the hanging light chandeliers made me nervous. Growing up in an age of falling cartoon anvils and pianos, I worried about sharp spurs crashing down from above.

My walking buddy's retired dad is worrying about iguanas falling out of the trees during Florida's cold snap. I just hope the iguanas don't land in the syrup.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Cuff Shooting Gallery

My oldest needed dress clothes for work this Christmas, so a concerted effort was made by all gift-givers to get him items he can really use. My Mr. Speech and Debate has never been very interested in attire, partly because it is so difficult to don apparel while holding an open book. His dad and stepmom got him a sport coat and shoes. His brother, Danger Baby, and I took him shopping for khakis, a pair of wool slacks, a dress shirt, and socks at Jos. A. Bank. His Woolly Mammoth brother brought him a handsome neck scarf from Italy for Ohio's winter weather.

On his last day in Texas, Speech and Debate dressed up in his new duds for his flight. He struck poses for the camera, clearly enjoying himself. As I look at my photos*, I see the only thing forgotten was "shooting his cuffs". His shirt cuffs need to project a bit beyond his coat cuffs.

What a strange expression, "shooting his cuffs"! When we see it in print, we understand the meaning. Unlike "shooting oneself in the foot," or "shooting off your mouth," it doesn't involve ammunition. It's closer to "shooting the rapids", sending a whitewater raft full of cuff through the narrow canyon chute of the suitcoat sleeve.

Wisegeek.com explains cuff-shooting is "the male preening gesture that aligns jacket sleeves and shirt sleeves". Not being a guy, I can't pretend to accomplish this action, but it must make the arms and shoulders more comfortable. Nothing feels worse than having a sweater blobbed up at my elbow inside my winter coat.

Answers.com has help for the guy who doesn't have the moves of, say, Robert Redford, Sean Connery, or George Clooney:

One who is unable to throw his wrists gracefully may try another way to shoot cuffs: with the thumb and forefinger of one hand pull sharply on the sleeve of the other arm, to expose the cuff, and then switch hands and repeat.

The idiom also conveys a dandy suddenly showing off an unnecessary amount of cuff or a flashy cufflink.

About 1963 my brother received a "shooting gallery" for Christmas. It was a cardboard replica of the carnival midway game, intended for kiddie pop-guns. During cold winters we played in the basement, galloping around on stick horses, taking target practice, and writing on slates in the schoolmarm's classroom. Upstairs, we built with LEGO bricks. I don't think we ever made a LEGO shooting gallery, though. I'm trying to imagine a LEGO casino with guys shooting their cuffs and setting up the big Sting!

*My kids let me blog as long as I don't post their photos or otherwise blow their covers as 007 operatives.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Look For the Silver Lining

My hat is off to Jerome Kern, who wrote this song for the musical "Sally" in 1929:

Look for the silver lining
When e'er a cloud appears in the blue.
Remember somewhere the sun is shining,
And so the right thing to do,
Is make it shine for you.

A heart, full of joy and gladness,
Will always banish sadness and strife.
So always look for the silver lining,
And try to find the sunny side of life.

My current stitchery project includes a piece of shiny gray lining fabric, so I can't help but hear Andy Williams or Judy Garland singing Kern's song about the silver lining.

Perhaps the first time I made the big journey to Omaha as a child, we dined in the fancy Silver Lining restaurant at the Omaha Municipal Airport. In that era of sophisticated airline travel one was more likely to dine on scallops or steak than McMuffins while watching planes take off and land.

Jumping ahead twenty years, my optimistic sister-in-law had a fabulous gift for mangling idioms. To her, "every hat had a silver lining." Guess my glass was half-empty on those frigid Nebraska nights, as I paraphrased, "every hat gives me static hair cling."

Every cloud has a silver lining
A poetic sentiment that even the gloomiest outlook contains some hopeful or consoling aspect. Cf. [1634 Milton Comus I. 93] Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

‘Every cloud’, says the proverb, ‘has a silver lining.’[1869 P. T. Barnum Struggles & Triumphs 406]


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Three Little Ducks SRO

In a simpler time with fewer electronic screens, our handheld diversions were more likely to be the buttons in our mother's sewing basket, or the pins and earrings in her jewelry box. Playing in Mom's jewelry box was a rare treat, usually connected with her preparations for an evening with the bridge club.


A jewelry box is like a theater, but the audience is the star attraction. Open the jewelry box, and the tiers of burgundy velvet seating appear with little compartments, sections, aisles, rows, even a loge and an orchestra pit. As children, we would spread the necklaces and bracelets out on the bedspread around where we had set the jewelry box. The Sixties costume beads were the footlights around the stage. Mom's wild red glazed pin and earrings were the Spanish "Chocolat" dancers of "The Nutcracker". The duck pins danced "Peter and the Wolf", and ended up quacking in the wolf's stomach about the time Mom served dessert to the bridge club.

The duck pins will be played by the oboes!

Three little ducks that I once knew,

Fat one, skinny one, fair one, too.

But the one little duck with the feather on his back,

He ruled the others with his Quack Quack Quack.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

The Red Book of Birds of America

One of the most prized possessions in my extended family is a little and incomplete set of books far from mint condition published by Whitman in MCMLIV. Two generations have learned their birds at an early age by paging through these little guides just right for a child's hands. Two generations have been mesmerized by the poetry in a list of bird names when read aloud.

The Red Book of Birds of America is our favorite in what was originally a set of four tiny books. My thirteen year old nephew hated to part with this precious token of his childhood long enough for me to scan some of the loose pages. I understand completely.

My oldest son with his precocious auditory memory learned the duck names in order by age two, and was particularly fond of the "blue winged teal".


The Yellow Book of Birds of America vanished or crumbled before my kids were born. The Green, Blue, and Red books are held together with clear Contac paper. Some child teethed on the upper page corners of the Blue book with its "Jays, Larks, Orioles, Grackles, Finches, Sparrows, Grosbeaks, Blackbirds, Buntings, etc." The lower corners of the red-winged blackbird and the meadowlark show gnaw marks, too.



The Green book was the best at bedtime. The pages of the preface have been decorated with drawings of houses and apartment buildings in blue and purple crayon. A child has done some pencil arithmetic there, too.

In your insomnia consider:

Scarlet Tanager
Western Tanager
Summer Tanager
Cedar Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing
Golden-Crowned Kinglet
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Red-Eyed Vireo
Blue-Headed Vireo
Yellow-Throated Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Black and White Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Blue-Winged Warbler
Golden-Winged Warbler
Black-Poll Warbler
Chestnut-Sided Warbler
Orange-Crowned Warbler
Parula Warbler
Ovenbird.....

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Halloween role-call

Dad had only a handful of trick-or-treaters to enjoy the candy bars. The kids on his block have suddenly grown too old, or else attend church alternative costume parties.
Halloween was pretty simple when I was a kid. We decorated a paper grocery sack with orange and black crayon drawings. We wore a mom-made costume from a McCall's or Simplicity sewing pattern. Raggedy Anns had braided yarn wigs. Ground Folger's stuck to the cheeks of hobos. Kids all walked like Frankenstein's monster due to wearing snowpants and parkas under costumes. A designated dad went with us, or a mom in her winter coat and holding a flashlight.

What ghouls came to the preschool class at school?

• Two knights
• Dora and Diego, the explorers
• Two ballerina/fairies
• One Home Depot guy
• One pumpkin girl
• One religious objector to Halloween
• Spiderman
• One Gypsy girl
• Buzz Lightyear
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• One each cowgirl, surfer dude, and witch
• One firefighter and one police officer
• One Disney princess
• One royal queen with her king/All Star baseball player

© 2007 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

Light Fuse Get Away Fast

"When you were a child, you always said the Fourth of July was your favorite holiday," Dad remembered. Those childhood Fourths were filled with family traditions, friendly gatherings, anticipation, and sensory delights.

First thing in the morning we marched our American flag out to the front yard to display it for the day, then we launched our parachutes before breakfast.

We would have purchased our firecrackers days before, each with a crisp five dollar bill. The best prices were usually found inside the Walgreens store at Gateway Mall. Buying our own fireworks was a big incentive for learning to do arithmetic in our heads so we could literally get the most bang for our bucks. We had to decide whether to buy the large economy package of bottle rockets, or just buy a dozen at a higher price each in order to have more money to spend on fountains, helicopters, and grasshoppers. We did math to determine how many packs of Black Cats we needed to get through the day with no leftovers, but not run short. Although our neighbors insisted that children must have the very long metal sparklers, we decided we prefered the little Chinese paper sparklers that changed colors better, and didn't spend our money based on peer pressure!

A trip to the swimming pool took up the middle part of the day, and in later years, sailing at Holmes Lake. Sometimes a relaxing nap was required, and other years just suggested. Then it was time for the three family get-together, with eight kids of stair-stepping ages, and six parents. A different family hosted the event each year, so we got practice being good hosts and polite guests. Big kids were expected to include the little ones in our activities so no one felt left out. We kids would make crayon drawings on red, white, and blue construction paper for placemats, and use our best handwriting on placecards. We had to budget our annual package of assorted colored paper to have enough red for Valentines, the Fourth, and Christmas!

After perfectly broiled Nebraska corn-fed T-bones there would be hide-and-seek until it got dark. Each family had a designated launching pad in the yard, and safety was the rule. While dads launched the more dangerous firecrackers, children were taught to light their five-dollars' worth carefully and one person at a time. The result was as much a proud moment celebrating our developing skill as it was a pyrotechnic display! By evening we would have carefully analyzed our purchases to choreograph how to build the excitement toward a grand finale, alternate sound and light impressions, gold and colored, ground and sky.

The smoke kept away the mosquitos. At the end of our family display we could climb a hill or get up on the roof to watch big displays out at the country clubs. Disappointment and let down that the Fourth was over for another year was balanced by personal satisfaction, and physical exhaustion after a day spent outside. We shared slices of chilled watermelon, spitting pits for distance and accuracy, while the moms collected their dishes and coolers.

The Fourth of July was more problematic when two of my sons had asthma, and fireworks became illegal except for large civic displays. Not all parents supervised children to ensure a safe, happy Fourth the way the three dads had in my childhood. An attitude that city regulations were intended to be broken as far as possible unless the police arrived ran counter to what I tried to teach my children the rest of the year.

This year I spent the Fourth of July with my dad. I watched rabbits playing chase and leapfrog amid the fireflies, and later in the evening being backlit by fireworks and hazy smoke. I wondered if Van Gogh's "Starry Night" might actually be a bunny silouette against firefly and firework light.

When I returned to class after the holiday, I told the older students about the bunnies and fireflies. We had studied "Starry Night" together, and offered our personal interpretations year before last. And so, I was very touched yesterday when a dear student gave me a thank you note written in her beautiful cursive and illustrated with the bunny rabbits' Fourth of July.

Since moving to Plano in 1990, I've looked forward to the first appearance of the ruby-throated hummingbirds in my yard. The date is always uncertain, but the sensory delight is guaranteed. So nice that it occurred on my oldest son's twenty-fifth birthday today!



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ready to cut

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder