Into the Wild

Awake at 4:42, I made the pot of coffee (with no bats), and wrapped in my "vision quest" quilt to watch the rest of "Into the Wild". Something made me check out the dvd when I worked at the library Saturday. Since then I've watched a bit of the movie each evening. Several times I discovered tears sliding down my cheeks.

The movie is so beautiful, so well played by Emile Hirsch and Hal Holbrook. I'm am trying to recover my limited understanding of "aesthetic distance" from Nelson Potter's philosophy class of thirty years ago. The story seems only an onion skin away. Finishing my viewing left me with a raw, scraped feeling, and again the tears.

We each want for our children happiness, of course. I hope they find wisdom, as well, and enjoy self-motivation and self-discovery and great contentment, as I do for myself. Still, as a mother, I can't imagine the pain if one of my sons felt he needed to disappear to find those things.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Tres Perro Noche

The assembled repatriated juniors were discussing the disgusting trend toward dogs being taken everywhere in North Texas. I agree with them that it's very annoying, but don't Italians take their dogs to the sidewalk restaurants? Certainly, the returning students say, "but Italian dogs are so much better trained!"

Not being really connected with celebrity trends and gossip, I don't know who to blame for the teacup dog craze. Last week I watched a woman smoosh her dog down into her totebag before she walked into Chipotle to order her lunch. My weekend lunch buddy and I are displeased when diners on the La Madeleine patio retrieve their dogs from the car, let them off leash, and leave them unattended while they go inside to get more coffee and jelly.

It's an arrogant assumption that everyone dining on the cafe patio will be as enchanted with your precious wuzzum woggy-doggy as you. I don't want to share my dining experience with your uzzy-wuggy muffy-wuzzum.

The college students all applaud my oration on the subject. They add that if children can't behave in a restaurant, their parents shouldn't bring them! Bold opinions from the upcoming generation of parents, so I'm noting the date on the calendar. We will check in with them on that subject in another four years!

In 1982 my spouse decided that we should take our six month-old son to a trendy fondue restaurant in Omaha. Geez! "Trendy fondue restaurant" sounds sooooo long ago! No wonder that baby has a master's degree. It was named "The Golden Apple" (the restaurant, not the baby). When we walked in with our baby, a collective gasp of horror went up from the dining customers and the waitstaff. Did we get the hint? No. Did we make that mistake again??? No.

I've been plagued by mangled mental music from Three Dog Night, circa 1970 :


Want some wuzzums at your restaurant,
Teacup doggie by your knee
What's all these crazy questions they askin' me
This is the craziest party there could ever be
Don't turn on the lights, 'cause I don't want to see
Mama told me not to come
Mama told me not to come
That ain't the way to have fun, no

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Irresistible force meets immovable alphabet?

"Could we play the rhyming game again? Can we make pig wig?," the preK student asks.

"Absolutely! That would be fun," I say, impressed that she considers our recent word-building endeavor a game. "What do we need?"

"The at bat hat book and the immobile alphabet," she says, and scurries off to find them.

There's a funny mental image. It must be wheelchair day at the double A baseball game! I'm putting on my rally cap for this at bat.

Her "immobile alphabet" is really the classic teaching movable alphabet. Maybe writer's block is just a bad case of immobilized alphabet...
"Can I play, too? I played yesterday!," a second girl asks. She's a bit older, and can think of sat fat rat. Of course she may join us.

Speaking of fat rats and immobile alphabets, my Cingular cellphone service recently changed to "AT&T Mobility". What a silly name! The word mobility doesn't inspire thoughts of untethered phoning freedom. It instantly conjures its opposite, immobility. Oh, great. I've got a cellphone that needs a ramp, and I'm paying how much a month?!

Back with the rhyming preK girls, we play the "game" with at, it, ox, ig, og, ug. I'm delighted when they put their consonant heads together to figure out twig. Sure, they have some ideas that don't make words. The best is vog. "You know, Ms. Nancy, vog, when you can't see anything!" That vould be a Transylvanian fog.


Why am I wearing my at bat hat rally cap on this voggy day? CollageMama is celebrating in the dugout on the twenty-first birthday of her youngest son. Pour that nice ice lime rhyme cooler of Gatorade on her head!

Put the rhyme in the coconut, shake it all up. Put the rhyme in the coconut, call the doctor, wake him up.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Scene of the crime

My little sons used to fall into duck ponds, fishing lakes, and prairie dog enclosures at zoos. They survived, none the worse for wear, and don't even remember those soggy OOPS moments. One son tried hard to fall into geysers in Yellowstone National Park, and his mom's nerves are still frayed. Another son loved playing in the waves at South Padre, and I never relaxed a minute on those beach vacations being ever vigilant for an undertow.


On my last drive through Oklahoma I checked out Edmond's Hafer Park, the scene of a particularly memorable duck pond dunking. The park is lovely, well-kept, and well-used. Families were picnicking at every available table. A group was hosting an event in the pavillion at the duck pond. Teens were reenacting a medieval battle while dressed in cardboard armor and pillowcase chain mail.

Red marks the very best spot for falling into the pond.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

What Would Jesus Laminate?

I made two expeditions into unfamiliar territory this week in the pursuit of twenty-five cents per foot self-serve laminating. Laminating is a soul-searching effort for me, as I have to weigh the non-recyclable and non-biodegradable effect on paper against the sturdiness, weather-readiness, and preservation of the art or teaching items being laminated. Plus, I have to go to the friendly neighborhood Christian bookstore, home-schooling supply center, and vacation Bible school headquarters to get the best do-it-yourself laminating price.

It's a busy time at the bookstore. The woman ahead of me in the check-out line had her entire cart filled with identical ceramic nativity scenes that looked like Fred Flintstone's house spray-painted with gold glitter paint. The woman ahead of her wanted to use expired limit-one-per-customer coupons to buy three soft Christian rock music cds.

The three kids behind me in line were whining and badgering their mother because she had only said they could LOOK at the new "Veggie Tales" video, not that they would BUY it. Down the aisle another family values drama was being performed about a boy's desire for a Bibleman laser sword. I thought it was just kids in Target who threw tantrums over GI Joe, Star Wars, and Disney Princess videos. When my sons acted like that we knew it was time to read The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmes.




Bible action figures are hot toys. Who wouldn't want the Almighty Heroes action set? The characters have the physique of the Incredible Hulk, but cuter tunics and slingshots. I'm sure they can be entwined through the chainlink baseball backstop the same way my youngest posed his GI Joes. They can be buried in the playground gravel and lost just as easily as a Ninja Turtle.



We agonize as parents over the toys we buy and media influences on our children. If we let our children play with toy guns, are we raising the schoolshooters and mallshooters of the next decade? If we give our children plastic action figures with Bible verses, will they become the peacemakers, the philosophers, the charitable and ethical leaders we desperately need? If our daughters dress Queen Esther and Deborah the Warrior dolls in their fashion sets with they live with more purity and purpose than if they played with Bratz and Barbie dolls? If our son prefers dressing Joseph in his amazing coat to putting on the Full (silver plastic) Armor of God playset, will he become gay? Is there really any difference between wearing a Power Rangers costume trick-or-treating, or wearing a Samson Super-Muscles costume to the Sunday School fall harvest carnival?



I don't know. My sons are grown now. They are already teacher, administrator, photographer, law student, volunteer, writer, artist, runner, chef, and traveler. They will work in many other fields in their lifetimes. They have a core set of values guiding their relations with others, a respect for nature, an inner motivation, an appreciation of art and the lessons of history, and they are kind to their mommy.

So what toys do they insist that I never give or throw away? The "good wood rifles" and the Legos. The toys of imagination, role-playing, empowerment, and construction--and of precious memories.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

My favorite Wild West characters

Why do cowboys need guns? Only to shoot the rattlesnakes disturbing the cattle. Why do bison need Tonka bulldozers? Why do alligators ride bucking broncos? Is Two Hat reading his Wanted poster? What do these cowboys eat? Beef, red beans, and coffee, of course!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Pony Rides

Spent the morning outside corralling twenty-eight preschoolers while they were having their photos taken on a pony. This once-a-year event requires standing in the grass slapping mosquitoes, making sure the kids don't run into the parking lot, making sure they hold onto their name card and don't cut in line, keeping them from touching and pushing everyone around them, all the while hearing them chant:

Inky Binky Bonky
Daddy had a donkey.
The donkey died.
Daddy cried.
Inky Binky Bonky.

That's the favorite recess rhyme this week, but it seemed rather dismal next to the long-suffering photographer's ponies.

I'm sure the photographer and his wife thought it would be a fun business when they started taking Wild West kiddie photos years ago. Imagine how many times in a quarter century you could put a child on the pony, put the bandanna, vest, chaps, and hat on the child, get the child to look photogenic, take off the costume, and transfer the child to another pony for a three minute ride.

A quarter century ago I became a parent. Thank heaven the job of parenting has much more variety and a lot more laughing over the long run. On any given day it can seem a lot like pony ride photography though:

Change the diaper
Put on snowsuit
Buckle in carseat
Sing "Old McDonald Had a Farm" while driving
Get out of carseat
Take off snowsuit
Change the diaper
EIEIO!

I was already having pony ride flashbacks when I opened my morning newspaper to read about the Texas State Fair is opening with a new sixty-five-foot high gondola Texas SkyWay ride. Pony rides and state fair gondola tragedies are forever linked in my mind.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Dropping like flies

(Flies are on my mind, but this blog is still rated PG.)

Many of my little students are doing work related to insects using larger-than-life plastic figures. Bee, butterfly, spider, beetle, termite, scorpion, ladybug, praying mantis, dragonfly, ant, grasshopper, and house fly are represented. The house fly has creepy red eyes, and the model is even larger than the horse flies that scared me on my first horse ride in Estes Park, Colorado when I was about ten.

There's a stomach bug going around--nausea, chills, low-grade fever. Students were "dropping like flies" yesterday. Many of our students and their parents do not speak English as their first language. They probably wouldn't understand the idiomatic expression.

Idiom Meaning - Falling down ill and in large numbers, often associated with a highly contageous illness. One possible origin is the Grimm Brothers' story of "Brave Little Tailor". The little hero strikes seven flies dead with one whip of his belt.

Speaking of flies and belts reminds me of raising my preschool sons. Seems like I spent most of 1984-1990 toilet-training the three of them. After a day asking, "Did you flush and wash?," it was difficult relating to my spouse's adventures in the outside working world of finance and law, business travel and Embassy Suites.

Small boys seemed to lack Early Warning Systems for restroom emergencies. I told my kids, "__________, you're doing a heckuva job!," any time they made it to the toilet, so basically, Dubya was quoting me after Katrina. Cute as they looked in overalls or little Levis, they just couldn't manage the buckles, belts, snaps, and zippers in what we might call a "timely fashion" when the need arose.

Living in Oklahoma in the late Eighties, I was able to buy sweatpants and other elastic-waist pants for the guys at the Anthony's store. In the early Nineties in Texas, the Mervyns Cheetah brand sweatpants made fly-less operations simple and swift, and probably saved my sanity.

I love this example of the idiom:

The words were so difficult that the spelling bee contestants were dropping like flies.

For my tenth birthday I received a dragonfly-blue fishing rod all my own. There is something transcendant in casting a line in a perfect arc and dropping the fly on the surface of a pond.

An even better gift was when my sons all managed their own flies and cast perfect arcs in a timely fashion for my thirty-fifth birthday. They even washed their hands with soap!

Perhaps our next preschool language exploration will be "dropping our drawers".

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Life is short. Don't spend it erasing.

I teach thirty minute art classes. During those classes I prohibit using erasers. It's cruel and unusual, I know. Erasers may be appropriate for addition and subtraction problems that have one correct solution. Erasers are counterproductive in most creative efforts. In a half-hour class, erasing can take a big bite out of the time needed for thinking, practicing, rethinking, imagining, and enjoying the experience.

In our half hour class we:

• Get lined up with our group.
• Transition to a different room, get settled, and ready to learn.
• Listen to a short story or the introduction to an art concept.
• Look at an example by a famous artist.
• Have a group discussion where everyone has a chance to contribute ideas.
• Review instructions for the project.
• Learn to use a new material or technique.
• Enjoy making the project.
• Talk about our creation.
• Make sure our name is on our work.
• Put the art work into the drying rack.
• Wash our hands.
• Line up again!

Much in life doesn't have one correct answer. We've all got to teach our children decision-making skills and creative problem-solving in a very brief period. The process of teaching young artists isn't very different from the process of parenting anywhere on the continuum from toilet-training to teaching your teenager to drive. As parents we can't let our kids get bogged down in erasing. Our parenting/teaching process involves:

• Helping children make their own good decisions by providing them essential information, frequent opportunities to make choices, and an essential underlying sense of safety and consistency.
• Helping children evaluate the outcome of their choices and decisions. Using questions to learn how they would like to change their decisions.
• Letting kids revise their work and explain their reasons for revisions. Applauding their improved choices.
• Saluting their effort, thought-process, exploration, contributions to the group, self-motivation, creativity, and perserverance.
• Patiently offering opportunities to improve skills through repetition while gradually increasing challenges and responsibilities.
• Respecting our kids' doubts and quandries; refraining from providing instant answers and evaluations.
• Letting them know that many situations have more than one possible choice, but that some choices are completely unacceptable--painting on a classmate's picture, drawing on the wall, not washing hands after flushing, or squeezing nine friends into the family car to drive to South Padre!
• Allowing children their private world of imagination. We all like to imagine being on the beach at South Padre sometimes.
• Challenging children to carefully observe what happens around them, and to be CURIOUS.
• Stepping back and letting them feel CONFIDENCE, MASTERY, PRIDE, and JOY!

Go ahead and draw yourself a picture of your fantasy beach, but don't spend your time erasing. Life is too short!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Perturbed? Oh, no.

Next week my youngest, the Woolly Mammoth, leaves for a semester or two studying art, art history, and Italian studies in Viterbo, Italy. Like his brother, Danger Baby, before him, he has arranged all the financing, scholarships, passport, visa, immunizations, transfer credits, and arrangements to meet his father in Europe all by himself. I'm enormously impressed and proud of this effort.

"All by myself " is an issue best addressed before kindergarten. It's a huge developmental step. When children feel unsure and want help, it's good to ask leading questions that allow them to work out their own solutions.

I keep reading about "helicopter parents" swooping in to micromanage problems for their college students, most recently in Mirage Magazine, volume 26, number 1, fall 2007 , the University of New Mexico alumni publication. Parents who are involved with their college kids on a daily basis resemble VTOL aircraft even more than helicopters. Vertical Takeoff/Landing aircraft are "transformers", shifting shapes to drop straight down into a problem, and occasionally lift back up out of it. Parents project the fx message that despite their own job responsibilities and personal activities, they are instantly available to morph into The Amazing Fixer and descend into any difficulty for their college student.

What does that tell the college-age child?

• You can't make decisions.
• You can't solve problems.
• You can't communicate effectively with teachers, advisors, or dorm staff.
• You can't find your own interests, talents, passions, or bliss.
• You can't take care of yourself when you have a cold.
• You don't have enough sense to know you should go to Student Health.
• You can't learn from your mistakes.
• You can't allow yourself to make mistakes.
• You can't manage money.
• You can't plan long-range.
• You can't decide if a person is a true friend.
• You can't remember to put a sheet of "Bounce" into each dryer load.
• You can't trust your own gut.

On the cover of the alumni magazine there's a very handsome photo of dramatic clouds and the ladder down into a kiva. The poster will be available for sale soon, as part of the Lobo homecoming this fall. I love the idea that going to college is like climbing the ladder into the kiva. It is a developmental step, same as the preschooler demanding to do something "all by myself". The kiva signifies greater self-awareness and self-confidence. It acknowledges accepting guidance from elders and shaman, as well as parents. It symbolizes community, friendship, and responsibility. Most of all, it represents wholeness and health. Everything we wish for our children. We just have to let them descend the kiva ladder alone.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Where is his mommy?

The bright green anole walked down the black cast iron birdfeeder hook this hideously hot and humid afternoon. Less than two and a half inches long from its nose to the end of its pencil line tail, and maybe a quarter inch from right foot toe to left foot toe--much too little to be unsupervised on the patio playground. Where is his mommy? Is she drinking iced tea over on a shady bench with the other mothers and chatting about potty training? He's going to burn his toes, his tail, his tummy on that broiling metal slippery slide!

Everything is shimmering in the heat, and the sweat is dripping in my eyes. The little lizard is Jeffy, almost three, insisting that he try the McDonald's playground slippery slide in Tyler, Texas on a day just like this--1985. Burning the back of his legs although the metal slide was less than four feet tall. The horrible parenting moment still blistering my conscience this month as little Jeffy turns twenty-five.




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Cross stitch and gingham

Last time in Lincoln I slept on the pillowcase I made in the mid-Sixties. It's a bit threadbare, but the embroidery is stonger than the gingham. I remember it being a difficult project, so I must not have been very old. Later I made cross stitch pillowcases as gifts, stitching my friends' names on their cases.

Cross stitch requires perserverance and patience for the student and the teacher. I'm beginning to understand those Quaker samplers! Embroidery is also a very calming, focusing practice for students. Our kids need projects that counter balance all the point/shoot/instant/gratification/flashing/images of our current technology and culture.

With my ET tremor it takes perserverance to thread needles for the kids. Fortunately, they are doing most of their current embroidery project with their classroom teacher. The boys are every bit as into it as the girls, and they need the fine motor skill development. They are making lovely pictures, not simple cross stitch. If your child doesn't want to sit in a treehouse and embroider this summer, maybe they need their own special shady corner of the garage to paint scale models.

Learning to separate two strands from the six-strand embroidery floss was a personal goal as satisfying as learning to shuffle cards, roast the perfect marshmallow, use a key to open a lock, cut paper snowflakes and hearts, play jacks, ride a bike, tell time, tie a square knot, address an envelope, or scoop ice cream. I was on top of the world when I learned to make Jello Instant Pudding in a double boiler, and to open a can of tuna. Making french toast and grilled cheese sandwiches for my family gave me enormous satisfaction. I was proud to learn to whistle, light a match, identify butterflies, prune a rosebush, and jiggle the handle on the toilet so the water would stop running! Reeling in a fish was the best of all.

My sons loved learning to make smoothies, boil spaghetti, and make hot garlic bread. Their fingers learned to string beads and twist rubber bands to tie-dye t-shirts. They enjoyed taking photos with disposable cameras. They worked together to make Wally, our family papier mache alligator.

Our kids need to know personal satisfaction deeper than levels of video games and plastic soccer trophies. None of these accomplishments require sign-up fees. They don't take much electricity or transportation. They don't involve costumes or uniforms. Some of those childhood accomplishments nurture life-long interests.

It's hailing like crazy here in Plano. I'm so grateful I learned to sit and watch a storm by the front door with my dad. What a gift that my family applauded my first unburnt french toast! How funny to sleep on my forty-year-old cross stitch!

Sweet dreams!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

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

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.

Playground Games--Changed and Same

Do you want to go to the Tank Playground, the Rocket Playground, or the Ninja Turtle Playground over by Schimelpfenig Library? That used to be the question for my young sons on a nice afternoon like this. The City of Plano Recreation Department had different names for the parks--Liberty, Copper Creek, and Memorial--but the boys knew them by their favorite games on each playground's equipment.

Burning off energy was the main goal of playground outings. Put a check by each outing objective:

Gross motor skills--Coordination, balance, strength.

Social skills--Coexisting with other groups, collaborating with your group, giving every child a role.

Imaginative play--Designating the play space, developing the characters, considering conflict, sequence, and consequence. Assigning specific abilities to each character. Respecting each character's ability.

Sensory awareness--Rocks in shoes, splinters in fingers, sunshine on shoulders, chilly breeze on ears, rhythmic swinging, watching tadpoles, throwing rocks into the pond...

Game skills--Taking turns, following rules, persevering from start to finish.

Bodily functions--Learning to use the bathroom in a preventive preemptive practical way. Go now so you don't have to go then. Maybe this was cruel psychological repressive inhibiting bladder tyranny that will require years in therapy, but I suspect it is just learning to plan for future contingencies.

Delaying gratification--Finishing the juice box and sandwich before playing. Eating the candy and chips after the sandwich, placing trash in can.

Handling disappointment--Accepting that thunder, rain, lightning, bees, and fire ants are facts of life. Learning to brush off minor injuries and get on with life. Most boo-boos do not require band-aids. Most bumps don't require tattling.

Getting really tired before naptime.

Twenty years ago when my sons were small, the main playground games involved becoming one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and making the right mouth sound effects for that Turtle's favorite weapon.

Main article: List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters

Leonardo - The de facto leader of the Turtles, Leonardo is courageous, decisive, and a disciplined student of martial arts. As a strict adherent to Bushido, he has a very strong sense of honor and justice. He wears a blue mask and wields a pair of katana. He is named after Leonardo da Vinci.


Raphael - The team "anti-hero", Raphael has an aggressive nature and seldom hesitates to throw the first punch. His personality can be alternately fierce, sarcastic, and full of angst. He wears a red mask and wields a pair of sai. He is named after Raphael Sanzio.


Michelangelo - The easy-going and free-spirited Michelangelo provides much of the comic relief. While he loves to read comics and eat pizza, this Turtle also has an adventurous side. He wears an orange mask and wields the nunchaku. He is named after Michelangelo Buonarroti.


Donatello - The brilliant scientist, inventor, and technology geek, Donatello has a reputation as something of a smart aleck. He is perhaps the most non-violent Turtle, preferring to use his intellect to solve conflicts. He wears a purple mask and wields the bo. He is named after Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi.

This week I've been on playground duty. I've watched elementary school girls trying to jump rope. Bet it's been forty years since I jumped rope or twirled. Had to travel way, way, way back in Mr. Peabody's Way Back Machine to find the long-term memory for jump rope. Once I got there, I remembered how we "choked up" on a rope to make it the correct length for our height.

The girls who weren't jumping rope were playing "avatars"! The leader of the girls was assigning the avatar roles--earth, air, fire, and water. Good grief! Whatever happened to playing Beatles' Stewardesses?! John, Paul, George, and Ringo?

According to Urban Dictionary, there are "elemental television series" out there somewhere--

... series where the central characters have the ability to manipulate the classical elements (water, fire, earth, air/wind, and aether/metal depending on the culture). Some series include extra elements, such as ice, spirit, darkness, light, thunder, metal, etc. in the series, the elementalists must battle an evil, and when one element is absent, they usually cannot carry out their objective. They are strongest when united. Also, each character's personality is usually reflected on their element. ex: fire is rash and impulsive; water is calm and collective; earth is nurturing and loyal; air is inquisitive and curious.

Some examples of elemental television series are:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
W.I.T.C.H.
Sailor Moon
Captain Planet
Xiaolin Showdown

Thank heaven I don't have to watch the shows! Joseph Campbell would be able to find the connections between avatars, Ninja Turtles, and Beatles stewardesses. For now, though, I'm going over to the playground patio to try mastering jacks. Please don't ask me to hula hoop, no matter how holistic it is for the "circle of life"! I think the sound of the bouncing golf ball doing "pigs in the pigpen" on the concrete will be very rhythmic and therapeutic.

Haunting Nabucco

When the Overture to Verdi's "Nabucco" began playing in my dark five a.m. condo, I woke wondering what phantom was in the condo. Who was in my condo? How did they get in? Why are they playing an opera cd? Is this a dream, or am I awake?

Mothers of infants and toddlers awaken at the tiniest of sighs or whimpers. Mothers of children sit bolt upright from a sound sleep because their sleeping subconscious has momentarily misplaced the mental schedule of soccer practices, scout meetings, allergy shots, and play rehearsals. The web has to be rewoven before we can sleep.

Parents of teens don't sleep all that soundly or often. We are waiting for the phone call telling us the speech team bus will arrive back at the school at 1:30 a.m., so please be there to pick me up. Then it's just a few hours until another child needs a ride to board the bus for the 8 a.m. cross country meet.

Parents of teens with drivers licenses have new ribbons of anxiety braided into their daydreams and nightmares. If they happen to doze off before the car is safely back in the garage, they wake up in a cold sweat. I know my mother didn't sleep back in the Seventies before the invention of cell phones. My kids knew that ignoring the agreed upon return time would ensure taking an embarrassing cell phone call in front of their friends. "No, Mom, I'm not dying in a roadside ditch somewhere. No, Mom, please don't call 911! I'm dropping ___________ at her house right now, and I'll be there in five minutes! I'm sorry I made you worry."

In the empty nest phase our college kids return for the occasional weekend, but can't arrive before Friday midnight. Mine let themselves in quietly, or not, and I might only roll over and murmur a sleepy greeting. They watch some cable t.v., nuke some popcorn, receive phone calls, start their laundry. They DO NOT play opera recordings! Never, ever.

That's what confused me. Who is here, and why are they playing Verdi? It must be a ghost! This is completely unacceptable. I've got to drag myself out of bed and turn off the music before it wakes my neighbor in the next condo.

The cd is playing on my computer, so I close Windows Media Player, and crawl back to bed. Perhaps the "phantom" was an automatic upgrade download that required the system to reboot. Like those public service announcements, it's five a.m. Do you know where your children are? Do you know what your computer is doing??

News Digest at Dinner

Back to the magic word pertinent. A large chunk of the childhood education workshop I attended Saturday dealt with managing the nonstop talkers, questioners, and interrupters in the classroom. None of the techniques presented were as powerful as the concept of pertinence.

Once my younger siblings had joined me at Eastridge Elementary School, our family dinner conversations became the time for reporting the highlights of our days. We each got a turn to talk as long as we wanted, with very few interruptions or additions from anyone. This could be a very lengthy experience on any given evening, particularly if one of our teachers was reading a Mrs. Piggle Wiggle book to the class. [When my sons were in elementary school I prayed I would not have to relive the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories! The guys had other favorites, I'm glad to say.]

We could only comment on a sibling's evening news report if our comment was "pertinent". Once the rule of pertinence was explained, it was used to self-manage the dinner conversation. It did not take our family of five long to decide by consensus if any interjection was "pertinent", or if it had to be stricken from the supper record. It was better to mentally apply the pertinence evaluation to a thought before it was spoken than to have it judged not germane by the rest of the family. Not that there was any sibling rivalry in our family, but it was the pits to have my brother or sister judge my interjection irrelevant. Maybe this sounds harsh, but it was a strong civilizing force. No fun was harmed in these mealtime experiments. I will never forget my sister's imitations of a group of baby goslings roaming around her classroom and tripping over the desks.

Is it pertinent?

Pertinent is a very powerful vocabulary word. How does it pertain to your life? Do you live with children, or work with them? If so, pertinent is the word for you.

Don't interrupt me now, unless you have something relevant to contribute to this discussion!

per-ti-nent adj. Of, relating to, or connected with a specific matter; apposite: a pertinent fact. See Synonyms at relevant

per-tain intr. v. -tained, -taining, -tains. 1. To have reference; relate: evidence pertaining to the accident. 2. To belong as an adjunct or accessory: the farm and all the lands which pertain to it. 3. To be fitting or suitable.

rel-e-vant adj. 1 Related to the matter at hand; to the point; pertinent ... Synonyms: relevant, pertinent, germane, material, apt, apposite, apropos

ap-po-site adj. Fitting; suitable; appropriate

"Relevancy" was a major higher education buzzword in the student activism of the Sixties and early Seventies. As an elementary student in the Civil Rights era, and a secondary student in the Viet Nam era, it was difficult telling the good guys from the bad guys. "Relevance" got a slightly muddied connotation.

Education at every level from preschool to grad school is on my mind today. What is the purpose of education? Is it to create philosophers, or to ensure employment for every graduate? Is it to warehouse kids so their parents can go to work? Is it about life skills and self-sufficiency, or about Ivy League admissions? Should it be about carrots and sticks, or about curiosity and self-motivation? Should education give students tools for appreciating the human experience, for expressing their ideas, for documenting their histories, for testing their theories, for challenging the status quo? I don't know, but I lean toward SSLL--self-sufficient lifelong learners.

If you have something pertinent to add, please comment! If you want to tell me about your band-aid or your super-hero powers, please don't interrupt.

Liberal arts and inevitable maternal mailing

When the human genome scientists find the gene causing mothers to mail newspaper clippings to their grown children, we can set up a foundation to fund research for a cure. I'm stuffing a fat envelope for my eldest who is gainfully employed in the realm of higher education administration at a nameless respected institution in the breadbasket of the United States. Today's Dallas Morning News has two stories about students without soul and institutions without education. The first essay by Thomas Hibbs, philosopher and dean of the Honors College at Baylor University begins:

You are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul? – Plato, Apology

The second DMN story considers the value of the classic liberal education.

Let me put it like this: I have two large books on my desk. One is The Complete Works of Shakespeare; the other is a phone book. One is a great work of literature; the other mere data. They differ greatly, despite their physical similarities.

Will I regret reading Shakespeare? Yes, if a broken pipe is flooding my basement. I might want to hold off on Hamlet and find a plumber instead. But if I want to know what it means to be human, if I want to open my heart and mind to the best that has been imagined and written, if I think that doing so is necessary to my soul – then the Shakespeare is incalculably more valuable.

Included in the first story was a reference to a book by psychologist Madeline Levine, Ph.D., The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. I was pleased to find an online interview with Madeline Levine at Eye On Books. It was ten minutes well spent. A long excerpt from the book is available online, too. I'm intrigued enough to track down Levine's book.

Our society across all economic levels must find ways to raise children to be curious and creative, to have empathy, to be self-motivated, self-controlled, and self-sufficient. It is good to live in a country where any child can grow up to be President. I would feel better if every child grew up with some inkling into the insights of a philosopher/king.

Green Eggs and Hummus

This Mom-I-Am was surprised to see that my son, Formerly-Known-As-the-World's-Pickiest-Eater, had added to the grocery list:

Pitas

Feta

Hummus


Ew, gross! I gave him some money when he drove me to the train station, and told him to go to the store himself as hummus is way too scary for me.

"What do you mean by too esoteric, Mom?"

"Not esoteric! Just plain scary."

"Scary? Have you ever tried hummus, Mom?"

"I could not, would not in a box. I will not, will not with a fox, and I won't even get into how I feel about feta."

"Mom, hummus is just a dip. I bet if you tried it you would like it."

"I will not, will not with a goat. It's sheep guts run over by a Hummer."

"No, Mom, that's haggis, a Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings, and boiled in the stomach of the animal."

"I don't care. I will not try it anywhere. Hummus isn't even in my dictionary."

"But, Mom, it's so good you see! It's hummus
1955, from Turk. humus 'mashed chick peas.'"

"Son, if you won't let me be, I'll take away your Buick key."