Sarkozy envy

There are many reasons why John McCain picked the young former beauty queen governor of Alaska to be his running mate. My theory is that the presumptive GOP nominee didn't want to be bested by that Frenchee Nicolas Sarkozy on "Dancing with the Stars". Cyd, Leslie, Adele, Gwen, and Ginger weren't available.

Tonight I'm wishing Ann Richards was still around just to hear her dancing convention thoughts: Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels. I think Ann would be reminding us look past the purdy smiles, tap shoes, and cummerbunds to figure out which candidates can go past dancing up the walls of the box to thinking outside it.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Credit Crunch Charleston

As we cut up our credit cards in this economic downturn/identity theft era, imagine what fabulous outfits we could create for dancing. Much better than sequins and fringe when twirling!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Not your middle-aged Olympic torch relay

If I were the Statue of Liberty, Tom Bodett would have to leave the light on for me. Having a terrible time turning twist-knob switches at the bottom of lamps lately.

I've given up a few times and just crawled under my desk to unplug or plug in the lamp cord. That limbo-limbo solution may be temporary. So far, I can still twist knobs at the tops of lamps, but my professional underhand pitching career is probably over for good.

"The first things to go are the_____." We've heard that phrase since Phidippides ran the first Marathon in 490 B.C. Fill in the aging blank with knees, eyes, hearing, memory, neck, sex drive, stomach muscles, shoulders, or ankles. For me the answer seems to be "wrists". Did this ever happen to Chubby Checker? Come on baby, let's use that wrist:

Come on baby let's do the twist
Come on baby let's do the twist
Take me by my little hand and go like this
Ee-oh twist baby baby twist
Oooh-yeah just like this
Come on little miss and do the twist

Actually, this is my third thing to go. First I lost my ability to thread needles. Then I lost all interest in ...


...


...


...


...


dusting!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Your supermarket checkout tabloids

Celebrity Worm Week paid Verm-Gelina a ridiculous sum of money for the exclusive rights to publish the first baby photos from the worm bin. This tiny fellow, barely a half-inch long, is one of several crawling on the wall of the worm bin tonight. He was a little fussy when the paparazzi aimed their cameras at him, so it's not the clearest photo.

Like tabloid cutest couples, compost bin redworms are hermaphroditic. Their names are shortened and hyphenated, but they have both male and female sex equipment. Still, it takes two redworms to tango.

So, I'll just have to surmise that those weekend assemblies up in the bin handles were really tango lessons. If you've never seen a worm clench a long-stemmed rose in its teeth while clicking castenets, you've just never truly composted!



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Worry worms and worry warts

I didn't fret much about leaving my worms in charge of the condo over Spring Break. Didn't figure they would serve liquor to minors or host loud toga parties while I was gone. I was pretty sure they couldn't use the phone to order late night pizza deliveries, and that they couldn't escape from their Rubbermaid home to play Twister in the living room.



Our weather has been so crazy I didn't know whether to set the thermostat on heat to come on at sixty degrees, or to air condition if the indoor temp rose above eighty. After some two a.m. pondering, I decided to program the furnace. Worms can't wear hoodies*.

Since worms will eat and re-eat their available kitchen waste several times, I was sure they had plenty of goodies to get them through a week. It was all healthy and organic--no Slim Jims, Twinkies, or Doritos. They would probably love the dark peace and quiet, since I wouldn't be popping the top off the worm bin twice a day to see if they were behaving themselves! Maybe they would chant "Om".

So before leaving I just popped the top of the worm bin one extra time to holler, "Keep the home fires burning," and "hold the fort!" Then I hit the open road and forgot all about my little vermi pets.

After a week, I found the red wigglers all down in the bottom half inch of bedding. None of them were up in the trendy penthouse bar. I was so proud of them! They deserved a reward, so I added a bit of watermelon rind, a dead houseplant, a rotten piece of red pepper, and all the inedible parts of a fresh pineapple from Kroger to the worm bin. Too, too, too much! Little worms who had been wearing saffron robes and carrying begging bowls were suddenly in Las Vegas. Now I had created a situation requiring worry!

Each time I opened the bin, a small flying insect zipped out. I could smell the contents from a foot or two away, which isn't a big deal, but still a sign of imbalance. So the worms are on a new diet this week. Read my lips, as Bush The First said--No new fruit. Just egg shells, coffee grounds, and cardboard for awhile, guys.

Worry warts are a different animal than worry worms. Being a nerdy little kid back in sixth grade P.E., I had to be square dance partner to the kid with warts all over his hand. His name was Brent. I bet nobody names their baby boy Brent nowadays, since it's an acknowledged pre-existing indicator for warts.

Do you want to do-si-do and Allemande Left with the wart boy?? There are many reasons why I haven't done much dating since my divorce. Fear of wart square dancing is a major one!*

But what about warts? They don't come from toads. According to MotherNature.com,


...warts are benign skin tumors that can occur singly or in large packs on just about any part of the body. And while each type carries its own special name, all are caused by various trains of the fiendish papilloma virus. It masterfully tricks the body into providing it with free room and board in a sheltered "house" that is know medically as the wart proper...


Medical treatments don't seem to be any more effective than old-timey remedies. Some people rub warts with a raw potato. In my family, we sold our warts to my Granddad for a dollar. He got the wart. We got the buck. The wart went away eventually, and we bought Tootsie Rolls or malted milk balls with our dollar. The power of suggestion, removal of stress, and strong belief in a cure can knock out many warts. Which reminds me, worms can't wear boxing gloves.

*Worms can't wear petticoats!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cross-Dressing Ostrich Does Charleston

If you look awhile at the little students' art you begin to see a storyline for the ostriches. The birds start off cautiously, and one surreptitiously hikes up his sagging pantyhose.


They settle into the march, ready to go a long distance over the parched grassland of Africa.


Some are afraid of their shadows. Others are more bold and confident.


Getting up to full stride, one runs like crazy. Others do chest bumps, endzone victory displays, and the knee-swapping move of the Charleston.

Male ostriches have black and white feathers. Females have brown and gray. All of them have fabulous long eyelashes.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

You make me feel like dancing

Forget dancing with stars, and go to dancing with leaves!





© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

You dance funny!

That's what the three-year old told me this morning. "You dance funny, Miss Nancy. You dance with your body instead of your hair!"

So that's what I was doing wrong.

A Congregational Celebration of Complementary Colors

Although it might be bad luck to proclaim it, autumn seems to have finally arrived in North Texas. True, we can wear sandals and capri pants for another month or so (as long as they aren't white). Maybe, though, just please-please-PLEASE, we won't need air-conditioning.

I love fall. It has always been my favorite season. I love the contrasts, the tang and tartness, and relish the increase in my energy. More than spring, autumn is a time of promise. Maybe it's the gratitude factor. I'm so diggity-dog filled with joy and thankfulness each six a.m. when I walk out the front door into the crisp air to find my newspaper that my whole day is colored with optimism. Between classes I step outside to watch the lopedy-dopedy-dope flight of thousands of Monarch butterflies headed to Mexico in no particular hurry, and thank heaven for forces and patterns way beyond my understanding.

I strain my eyes to spot the highest orange butterflies against the piercing blue sky. The energy is in the vibrating boundaries between intense opposites. I admit to teaching about complementary colors through experience, not through science or theory. I want kids to have their very own Oh, Wow! moment when they paint with orange and blue. There's all that energy created by completing the whole in a composition of opposites. I love showing them that artists modulate the values and the dominance of the opposing forces to create extremely satisfying works of art. I love showing photos of landscapes with Nature's own color lessons. I pray that my students occasionally look away from the obnoxious animated farting warthogs and belching squirrels on PG-rated dvds playing above the back seats of their SUVs, and turn their gaze out the window to a bright cobalt sky, pale peach ripples on water, or shadows of darkest violet.

Fall is all about the vibrating boundaries between the catsup and mustard on the steamed hot dog from the chilly football concession stand manned by those long-suffering band booster parents. It's the bee-busy mauve blooms against the 15" tall light green leaves of Sedum spectabile. Five more weeks, and autumn will be shiny wet cadmium yellow leaves against pale lavender drizzle. Then it will be time for hooded sweatshirts, plaid flannel, and corduroy.
Glory hallelujah!



To everything there is a season... This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it:

Let our hearts lift up like hot air balloons at dawn and float over the early youth soccer games played on the chilly, dewy city parks & rec fields. Let our spirits alight between sweet-smelling hay bales next to impressive sun-warmed pumpkins for sale in the parking lots of suburban mega-churches.

Let us call up our maturing sons on their cell phones or Skype and feel humbled in conversations with self-sufficient young adults. Allow us to cherish the knowledge that each son belongs to something far greater than their parents' clueless efforts.

Let our souls rest and replenish on river sandbars with 4-H recipe oatmeal cookies and the college football game on a transistor radio. May each of us be fed by the memory of church youth group road trips in rusty pale blue hot rods to Waubonsie State Park across the Missouri River in Iowa.

May we leap and dance with Frisbees and tamborines. Let us be jubilant with vibrating color boundaries and homecoming mums. Aunts Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy will remind us to buy a half-gallon of icy Nebraska City apple cider and a jar of clover honey on the way home!

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the Moon & the Stars & the Sun
I came down from Heaven & I danced on Earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth:
Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said He.

"Follow Me"

The motto of the United States Army Infantry is also the title of Bruce Wood's ballet about the service, sacrifice, interdependence, and brotherhood of infantry soldiers performed Wednesday evening at Bass Performance Hall by his Bruce Wood Dance Company. In just eighteen minutes of dance, I received a transfusion of understanding about my father's long reluctance to talk about his WWII experiences, the life of friends' sons and son's friends currently serving in the armed forces, and even the army play of my young sons.

Wood is a Fort Worth choreographer of great originality and very professional production standards. The dance's physical power, intense repressed emotion, and symbolism are still with me. I wonder if Mr. Wood created an eighteen minute dance because so many army recruits are just eighteen years old.

Mr. Wood and I are about the same age--Sixties kids too young to have been in Viet Nam but too old not to have been impacted by it. At or about age fifty, we are both grieving over the deceased hope that our generation would bring about peace, justice, and tolerance in the world.

There were many children in the audience, and they were all enthralled and marvelously well-behaved. A nice couple with two fifth-grade boys were seated ahead of me. The boys had an animated discussion after the first piece on the program, the world premiere of Wood's "Dust, Texas," mainly about the small, quirky movements of the barn dance section, the actions that resembled windmills and farm machinery, and the athletic feats of the dancers.

After "Follow Me" I asked what the fifth-graders what they thought about it. They informed me that the ballet was set to music from "Band of Brothers". They told me they really liked WWII history, but they had some trouble finding the word they wanted to describe "Follow Me". The father helped them by suggesting "solemn". The boys reminded me so much of my own sons at that age. We chatted a bit more about how to build a theater like the beautiful Bass Hall out of Legos, then laughed at the idea of little Lego people as ballet dancers.

I really regret not taking my sons to modern dance or ballet performances! We try so hard as parents to expose our children to all the fabulous opportunities. Those efforts are not wasted. Every outing or event opens a window for new ideas and appreciation. We all need the arts. They are carefully planted seeds, crisp spring breezes and cooling summer rains for our brains.

Before the final work on the program the young family had to weigh whether to stay up late just this one evening. So many students seem to not get enough sleep on a regular basis. I really respected the couple's concern that the boys be well-rested for school the next morning, but I did hope they would stay for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." I just knew Bruce Wood's choreography of that favorite would be fabulous. I was wishing that my mother could have been with me, and also my sister and niece. Fritzi would have loved the dancers in their blue satin, and the playful leap-frogging to Gershwin's rhythms. And I would have cried if the fifth-graders had missed the literally glittery finale and final slide through the sparkles.

The story of Wood's "Follow Me" commission and the creative process it involved is intriguing reading. There are also some photos of the dance on the web at http://www.popphoto.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=47834. For additional fun, watch the video clips.

Rite of Spring Weekend

Taxes and cleaning made up most of my weekend, and I had that splendid sense of accomplishment and relief I get when I've finally behaved like a grown-up and bit the bullet. Today was a time for rewarding myself with artistic refueling.

As I performed my solo piece, "Interpretive Dance with Swiffer Duster," through the condo in my spring green leotard and tights* Saturday I decided I needed musical accompaniment to cover the sounds of creaking knees and scare the spiders away before I whacked the cobwebs. Ah, yes. Stravinsky. Pagan frenzy with new furnace filter and vacuum cleaner bag!

A few years back I read Howard Gardner's book, Creating Minds, about Stravinsky, Einstein, Freud, Martha Graham, Picasso, Eliot, and Gandhi. The seven subjects illustrate Gardner's theory of seven types of intelligence, as well as his pondering of the sources and price for creative genius. I do not think any of these people followed instructions for fluffing their Swiffer Duster "like it's never been fluffed".

So, what Stravinsky should I hear? Was there one cd I could buy with my gift certificate that would do the cleaning frenzy and educate me about this genius? I put the question to my panel of experts--family and friends on my email list. I put weird questions to them all the time, so this is nothing new. When I asked for input about Igor they probably thought I meant I-gor from "Young Frankenstein". Anyway, they sent wonderful responses. Perhaps my panel of experts would rather write their thoughts and memories about Stravinsky than participate in those other rites of spring--cleaning and taxes.

And yes, I spent the gift certificate on a double cd of the London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado conducting.

*Okay, this part is fiction. You can relax and erase that scary mental image.

Training Wheels

Spent time recently teaching an art project about bandannas. The kids became a bandanna, lining up on the edges, sharing the corners, and filling the middle. In a moment of inspiration I had them sit facing out from the middle of the rug, shoulder to shoulder, and do some goofy positions of the legs and wiggles of their feet, ala the June Taylor dancers on the Jackie Gleason Show.



My dearly demented friend brought up the subject of bicycles recently. Remember how grown-up and powerful you felt when you first got to ride your bike around the neighborhood, as long as you didn't cross any major streets? Have you ever felt that free and in control of your own destiny since? That might have been the pinnacle! Riding my bike to the swimming pool for an afternoon of swimming, diving off the board, and lying on the hot concrete was about as splendid as it gets!



Now we are considering Franz Marc and the Blue Rider painters. My used Schwinn bike was blue, but it had book baskets on either side of the rear wheel. Convinced some of my students that those gymnastic stunts are called "Car Twheels," because they are intended to be performed in their mothers' cars, not in my art class where other kids could be kicked.



I taut I taw a twaining wheel!

Anti-Spandex

Spandex exercise requires changing clothes and taking showers, and often driving to a gym or pool to work out. It's not that I dislike exercise, but that I'm opposed to excessive clothes-changing and showers.

When my walking buddy phoned this morning, I croaked and snarled that my throat was raw and I was going back to sleep. Once I did get my motor going an hour later, I considered driving over to the mall for some air-conditioned dork-walking. Wandering out to the kitchen to make coffee and poached eggs, I discovered that the package of chix boobs I was thawing in the fridge had leaked all over. Gross! My mom would be horrified. Time to clean and disinfect!

An hour later I had taken all the food out, and removed and washed all the parts of the fridge, even ones I never knew were removable. Stood on the stepstool and cleaned the top of the fridge.

Another hour, and I had pulled the refrigerator out. Mopped the floor underneath. Vacuumed the fuzzy dust off the back and pulled off the back panel to vacuum the dust-packed innards. Emptied the beverage storage cart next to the fridge (one of the best $21.95 purchases I ever made), and washed it in the shower. Started the self-clean cycle on the oven, and washed the burner drip-pans. The Ventures and the Spencer Davis Group were in the cd player, and I was doing the Swim, the Pony, the Frug, and the Limbo as cleaning fumes altered my reality.



Another hour for cleaning the counters, the inside and out of the microwave and toaster oven, and removing the glass globes of the dining area light fixture to wash. Up stepstool, down stepstool. Feel the burn!



By now I had entered that rare primitive berserko cleaning rhythm where no grime is safe. I vacuumed baseboards and under the oven. I cleaned the counter backboards (or are they backsplashes?) with Clorox disinfecting wipes that work better than anything I've ever used. I was in The Zone! Don't stop me now! I put Old English on all the cupboard doors. Hauled trash bags to the dumpster. Swiffered Dry and Swiffered Wet. Cleaned the exhaust fan.

Would I clean more often if it required a day-glo Spandex outfit? Hardly. Do I feel ten pounds lighter? You bet!

The Three Baffled Goats Gruff

What in the hey-ho is a Billy Goat Gruff?? As a kid, the troll made a lot of sense, compared to the goats. Who was Billy? Was he as cute as Bill Z. in Mrs. Erickson's first grade class? Bill Z. had a buzz cut, and big, dark brown eyes.

And what's up with "Gruff"?
Gruff is much more worrisome than troll!
The definitions say "course, thick, large, rough, surly, brusque, and forbidding."

When my sons were little they demanded that I say, "Who's that TRIPPY TROMPING on my bridge?" "It's just a little billy goat was the answer." You tell it that way once, and you are stuck for the next seven years! Children crave repetition. They need grown-ups to always read or tell the story the exact same way. We gain the confidence to change the elements only when our safe grown-up has given us the firm foundation of repetition-on-demand.

Last week my little students gave me a new insight on this tale first recorded in 1845 by Peter Christen Asbjornsen. "What's a belly goat?" "Do the goats dance on the bridge?" The image lurks just off-stage in the absurd theater of my over-active mind. That poor troll! I'm sure the belly-dancing goats have rubies in their belly buttons as they play finger cymbals on the bridge!

It's an image to keep in mind during long rainy days with small children. I am closing my eyes really tight, but the belly goats seem to be singing, "You've Got To Have a Gimmick"!

The Paint Fairy and Fluffy

Back on 5/19/04 I wrote about how to play "Pass the Paint" in your art class. I don't think I explained about Fluffy the Paintbrush, but I will do that someday soon. "Pass the Paint" is like Musical Chairs. It is a chance to review how to hold and treat Fluffy the Paintbrush, to recap the shapes we've been learning, and cut loose with bright tempera paints. "Pass the Paint" is also a chance for me to dance around as the silly Paint Fairy, and to play lots of good music. I play lots of Mozart and other classical favorites, Linda Ronstadt, and Buddy Holly:

Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue,
Oh, my Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh, well, I love you gal, and I need you, Peggy Sue.

The preschoolers especially like "Peggy Sue", but they think the song is "Baby Sue".

Baby, baby, baby, baby, Baby Sue! They start singing their version and playing air guitar. I twirl about in my imaginary pink poodle skirt and saddle shoes, while I wonder about my sister's doll with the bad haircut. The doll was named "Baby Dear", and my sister mastered her left-handed scissors by giving "Baby Dear" a really bad haircut. My students sometimes give themselves equally bad haircuts when they learn to use scissors. It doesn't happen often, and we usually take it in stride, unless the student is scheduled to be a flower girl or ring bearer (aka "Pillow Boy") in the near future.

Ms. Wednesday

On Monday my students told me that they knew about another Ms. Nancy. "He's a spider, and he plays tricks," they said. It's true. Anansi the spider is a trickster of African folktales. I am sometimes a trickster of art classes, and have been known to teach spiderweb weaving projects. I only have two legs, though.

On Tuesday my students told me my name was Ms. Wednesday. It had never occurred to me how similar that sounds. I kind of like it. It's not as racy as Miss November, or as literary as the new novels about Thursday Next, but it's fun.

On Wednesday a student told me he knew another Ms. Nancy. "She is my French teacher, and she is really old, just like you." Great. You can see why I prefer being Ms. Wednesday! I also like it when a parent nudges his child and says in a stage whisper, "Look! It's Ms. Nancy, the craziest art teacher on the planet!" Boy, that makes my day.

Perhaps inspired by the woman I watched doing Tai Chi exercises on the lawn of the Santa Fe Post Office, I've been teaching line lessons through movements that are a mix of pantomime and modern dance. My goal is to impress on the kids the importance of using one hand to hold their paper on the table while they use the other hand to draw big, strong lines. I'm teaching them that pulled lines are stronger than pushed lines, that little snail lines only need our hands and fingers, but big whale lines need our whole arm and shoulder, and some hip-hop hiccup mountain lines (not to be confused with mountain lions) need us to move us our hips, knees and ankles. My knees and ankles haven't moved this way since I practiced tae kwon do side kicks with my boys when they were pretty little. It's been fun and effective. The kids are all game to mimic that old lady, Ms. Wednesday. They are all getting the idea of holding the paper in place while drawing. I believe occupational therapists call that a bilateral skill--your left hand isn't doing what your right hand is doing. If these little kids can get this skill by mimicking me doing a silly dance, it is worth it. But after Day Three I can barely move! Don't ask me to do the limbo.

Kia Rio

Center-pivot circles of lush green within squares of tan always look like a quilt to me. I drift from watching the ground, to reading the Grisham book, to drowsing, (lather, rinse, repeat)...This Grisham book, King of Torts has many characters, but I can't work up enthusiasm for any of them. Long ago I read a story about lawyers, possibly related to a Native American legend. It seems that our conscience is a rough stone in our belly. It pricks and pokes us, and reminds us to do the right thing. A lawyer's conscience stone is worn as smooth as a river rock, and it bothers his tummy not one little bit.

The flight seems way too short the way a haircut often does. I claim the belly-flop bag, and board the shuttle to the car rental Sunport center. It's so great to be on vacation that I babble to the young mother behind the Dollar Rent-a-Car counter about the last time I was in Albuquerque, twelve years ago. We took our three little boys to a July 4th fireworks display at Kirtland AFB, and my ex locked the keys in the rental car. We had to get the armed forces to break into the car so we could take the tired, dehydrated, over-excited boys back to the motel. I promised the woman that I would NOT lock the keys in the car.

"What are your travel plans?," she asked. I babbled on about going out west on I-40, and up I-25 to Santa Fe. She told me that the Kia Rio I had requested was only good for in-town driving. "It goes great downhill," she says, "but you have to push it uphill." I envision myself driving a Model T across the desert in a grainy sepia photograph. It's not a good visual. Remember the hilarious scenes in "The Gods Must Be Crazy", and the disasters in "How the West Was Won"? You will understand why I upgraded to the Dodge Stratus. As newlyweds, we owned a rusty puke-yellow Chevy Nova called "Old Paint". In the winter it would stall at stoplights in the worst part of town. I would have to jump out of the car, open the hood, unscrew the butterfly wing nut to open the lid to the air intake valve, stick a screwdriver down in the opening, jump back into the car, start it, jump out, remove the screwdriver, screw the lid back on, shut the hood, jump back in the car, turn onto 27th St. and drive off on the ice when the light changed. Each time I did this I recalled a vague story of Isadora Duncan being strangled by her silk scarf while driving her roadster. (Don't quote me on the details.)

I am too old for that stuff. I succumb to the pressure to upgrade to a Dodge Stratus. The Stratus doesn't have much more power than the Kia Rio, but it gets great gas mileage.

Gauguin's Shadow, by Fred Curchack

Greatly enjoyed a play at the Undermain Theatre (www.undermain.com) last weekend. It was a one-man show about the painter Paul Gauguin, based on his letters and other writings. The performance was a collage of recordings of the letters and of music, slides of Gauguin's paintings and family photos projected onto a gauze screen and onto the actor and his puppets. As a collage artist I loved the layering of collected images and sounds.

I also loved the basement performance space with exposed structural supports, pipes, and wires. The effect made me wonder again about the cave paintings of Lascaux. I imagined shamans dancing in torchlight before the marvelous animal images.

What I got out of the play was a strong reminder that the aesthetic experience for each art viewer is as much a function of the accumulated experiences that viewer brings to the performance as it is a function of the experience of the performance itself.

This is important to me. As a teacher, I am always bringing different experiences and observations to an art example than my students. One of my main goals is challenging kids to increase their observation of the sensory world. If they have never paid any attention to a tangerine harvest moon in a Prussian blue sky, how will they marvel at the beauty of complementary color schemes? If they have never seen a time-lapse photograph of car lights in an intersection, how will their race car paintings be limited? If they have never looked out the window to see a rose sky reflected in a river, how will they ever get beyond drawing those damn smiling suns in the corners of their pictures?

One of our biggest challenges in teaching art and drama is working with kids who have not experienced books and stories, music and museums. They do not know story themes, sequencing, plot conflicts and resolutions, life in other cultures, anything beyond their personal experience and tv viewing. They are bringing a very limited bag of experiences to their viewing and making of art, and that bag is overloaded with adult-theme shows, lyrics, and images. Still worse, the kids are bringing a serious shortage of curiosity. They are not noticing and wondering.

Think about it. Are the kids on the airplane looking out the window observing the curvilinear variations of the earth's surface and the geometric marks of civilization, or are they playing their Gameboys? Are they looking out car windows at the homeless person on the corner, or are they being jollied by a video in their SUV?

Our experience of a play, art work, or musical performance is as much a function of every aspect of our life up to that moment, as it is of the art event. Our kids need lots of enrichment. They also need time and space to do their own observing and wondering.

Thanks for all the shrimp

A 4-yr. old girl in the morning class asked me, "Are you a grown-up?"

Two other girls announced, "She said, 'Are you a grown-up?"

Two other kids said, "Teacher, he stepped on my hand."

One boy said, "Her name is Miss Nancy."

I said, "Do I act like a grown-up?"

"No," they all said, "You act like a flamingo ballerina!"

And now, do you like my tutu?