Acts of Light

You're going to have to trust me on this one because this is the best picture I have so far.

I've been warned that holidays can be tough after you've experienced a loss of someone you love. I had a bit of trouble—a grief spasm, I understand they are called—the day before turkey day. And I would truly like to not have any more. Tears—OK. Wracking emotional turmoil, not so much.

And in my book, Christmas is tougher than turkey day. So I'm doing my best to meet this head-on.

First up, dealing with the dark. We're coming up to Solstice and this year, it comes complete with a full moon and a lunar eclipse. Powerful stuff.

Now I love Christmas lights. There's a hill up above us in the town of Pomfret that has the quintessential white church in a setting straight out of Currier and Ives. As you drive toward it, there's a hillside you can see across a wide field where the houses with their Christmas lights just push any nostalgia buttons you may have. If you get it just right and drive up there with a very light snow just after the sun sets, the image is indelible.

Usually, we never get around to putting up any lights at all until way too close to the holiday and usually abandon the effort because it is WAY TOO COLD. So this year, I got going early.

These large branches are from a box elder that came down in a storm back in September. Their trunks are set in tubes of PVC pipe hammered into the ground. (Fortunately, the earth is not frozen in this spot yet.) We needed to keep the lights near the house because we can't have an extension cord frozen to the ground where we're going to snowblow and these temporary shrubs are perfectly placed to avoid that.

So this was a true family effort—my design idea and organizational skills. Jay helped me drag the branches to the house and hammered in the PVC pipe. Jesse wrapped the stems in lights with me yesterday when the sun was out and the air warm enough for me to shed my jacket.

I need to get a much better picture to show you but that requires a tripod which I have to locate. But in the meantime, believe me, they look very, very good.

For kickers, here's a picture of the branches wrapped in lights during the daylight hours.

Getting It Right the 20th Time

This time last year, I put out my first independently published how-to book, Gifting Green. I got into the process easily enough, planned the book from page 1 to page 20 and I was off and running.

But I was never completely happy with the photos, especially the ones I took in the house. To my eye, they all had too many shadows and a bluish cast.

Now I'm gearing up to tackle more how-to books and this time, I'm determined to get my photos looking as professional as any others you find in any books out there.

Over the weekend, I set up a small (small because there's no room for large) studio space to do photographs. I've eliminated all fluorescent lighting (which accounts for the bluish tinge I didn't like before) and am taking pictures in a vertical rather than a horizontal position. In other words, nothing's laying on the floor.

Today I made my first test photos and while I'm not tearing out my hair, there are issues.

Image manipulation is not my area of expertise. I can and do take some really good pictures but they are usually outdoors and my subjects are not moving. But when it comes to understanding how lighting impacts an indoors shot, I'm a bit lost.

So here's my baseline. Now I'm going to methodically work to get these better. I'm starting with the camera. My little digital is an all-auto, all-the-time snapshot taker. I've learned to manipulate some of its functions but my first foray into solving this problem means taking out the owner's manual and trying to understand what it says.

"Sometimes I Think...

...the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
—Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes, 1989

My husband, son and I are inveterate cartoon readers and when a cartoon is especially good, we save it.

They get a position on our refrigerator for a period of time and then get cycled off when something else good comes along.

I'm not sure why but I've been saving cartoons we like for over 25 years now. And I know this because the three of us sat down last night to sort through our collection to see if there was anything we wanted to toss.

I have to say, the dispose-of pile was miniscule.

But that, to me, was not as remarkable as how timely most of these cartoons still are. Change a name here or there and you could reprint them today.

This re-realization bolstered my feeling that ignoring most of what passes for politics and media in this country is not only a sane response to the garbage flowing our way, it is the only response that makes sense.

Some days, I just like the feeling of being justified and having my opinion backed up by such experts as Opus and Hobbes and Calvin and Mike Doonesbury and the whole family in For Better or For Worse and the characters in Shoe with an occasional Charlie Brown thrown in for good measure just sweetens that feeling.

So "click" the off buttons in your life, the ones connected to "talk" radio (actually, I think it should be "shout" radio), your television, even the hyper-partisan-websites of your chosen belief system. Remember, no matter how good the intentions of the people running these shows, their vested interest is really advertising sales.

You don't owe them your peace of mind. Honest. Turn it all off. You'll feel much better in the morning.

And if you doze off Rip-Van-Winkle-like for the next 25 years, you won't have missed a thing.

Eight Good Ideas

The day before Thanksgiving was kind of tough for me. I had an unexpected major case of the crankies and just wanted all of the holidays to go away.

I know that most people who lose someone they love have difficulties around the end-of-the-year holidays. Which is a bit of information that doesn't make anything easier except that the knowledge that I'm not nuts does help.

I told Jay that I wished I could find a good place to put that energy instead of letting it whirl me around, and he had a great idea.

Your Mom loved everything you created—your books (she actually sold several copies of my books to people who worked in the nursing home where she lived), your quilts, your crocheting, everything. Why not do a series of how-to books and dedicate them to her memory.

Now the number eight is definitely my Mom's number so, of course, I will do eight of them. This photograph is from a book I did last year. It's called GIFTING GREEN, and shows readers how to make these sensational drawstring bags. I've made a pretty fair number of these and keep finding more and more uses for them. They're great for gifts, of course, but I made a big one for the dog food drawer where we store Goldie's bones. I keep some of my prototypes in my clothes drawers and use them to wash items such as bras or wool socks. Keeping those items contained reduces wear and prevents stretching.

I bag up all of my writing materials (working on a novel) that I can take with me anywhere I care to write and everything is at hand. I have another one for drawing materials. There's one full of a knitting project. Another full of yoyos in my sewing.

You get the idea.

So eight how-to books. For Mom.

What fun.

Glazing Isn't Just for Donuts

We had a great Thanksgiving with three of our closest friends and lots of great food. Jay and Jesse helped out immeasurably, especially Jay who started prepping the food on Wednesday.

Now no one cooks in this house for the next three days, at least. And I have a big soup pot full of a boiled-down carcass and broth that I need to process and then put into the freezer for turkey soup, fricasse and chilis later on.

Early this morning, the first of the many-days-yet-to-come with weather called "wintry mix" began. This is the kind of stuff that every driver around here—if they dont have their heads tucked deep into their cellphones—learns to pay deep attention to.

It's raining, dripping really, but all of the surfaces of everything—steps, roads, birdhouses, etc.—are cold enough to take those drips and turn them into wet ice.

If the sun was out, this glaze would glint and sparkle like the diamond forest in the Twelve Dancing Princesses. But under today's gray sky, it's just wet, slippery glaze.

Another marvel brought to us by water.

Thanks

Thanks for family who understands and helps out without asking.

Thanks for friends who love me and know that just being there is what matters most.

Thanks for the opportunity to serve the Earth in this beautiful place.

Thanks for good food and the skills to cook it.

Thanks for good health, in spite of feeling a bit more creaky than I used to.

Thanks for creative passions and the ability to express them.

Thanks for water, earth, air and fire.

Getting Ready

Tomorrow is one of my husband's favorite days of the year—THE day given to one of his favorite activities.

Eating.

No gifts, no guilt, no hassles.

Just good food, good smells, good friends.

We've stayed in the Upper Valley for Thanksgiving for years now, instituting what we call the "orphans Thanksgiving" though I think we really need to rethink that name.

Some years, we've had as many as 20 people in our cozy little house, eating bird and enjoying each others' company. Believe me, that's a lot of folks to shoehorn in here.

This year, we have a far more manageable crowd of six.

Jay's home today so he's doing a lot of the prep work for me but I'm off to make pie crust and stuffing soon.

A warm holiday to everyone.

Caution: Left Brain at Work

Back at the beginning of October, we moved my office and studio into the finished basement of our house. Part of this walk-out area was once our bedroom, complete with a full set of built-in closets and cupboards and drawers built by my husband Jay.

There wasn't time then to put shelves in the former closet so the space got filled by plastic totes and then bags full of stuff. It was a challenge to find anything but I had plenty to keep me busy so waiting until Jay could get to this was fine.

Two weekends ago, he installed the shelving which you can see at the top. Now empty shelves and the opportunity to organize what goes on them is like a siren call to me. When it comes to having a place for everything, I'm pretty left-brain. I can and do make messes with the best of them but when a project is done, the first thing I do is put everything away. 

Like most projects around there, this one inevitably pulled in other parts of the house. My pleasure reading books were all downstairs but that part of my life gets carried out elsewhere. So those had to move.

I wanted everything to do with my office to get corralled into the spaces designated for that. 

But when I finally got to the point where I could pull out my stash and line it up by color on the shelves, it was so much fun.

Consider it the last act in a move well-moved.

Just Some of the Memories so far This Year

A white peony at Cider Hill Gardens, Windsor, Vermont on a rainy day. Photo taken by my husband Jay.

Blueberries ripening at Moore's Orchard, Pomfret, Vermont

The town beach in Falmouth, Massachusetts two days after Mom died.

A fan of Great Big Sea in Concert, August 21, 2010 at Suicide Six Ski area

Goldie enjoying the grasses of summer

A skunk cabbage in its autumnal attire at Woodward Reservoir when we kayaked there in September 2010

Buy Locally—Buy Secondhand

My husband and I have been together for over thirty years now. Yeah, we can't get over it either.

This longterm commitment to mutually supportive housekeeping means that our kitchen equipment—pots, pans, dishes, etc.—is pretty well set.

So it's an event if we need to add something to our repertoire. But it happens.

We don't use a blender every day but there are some family favorites (cream of carrot soup, potato-leek soup, etc.) when we really can use this piece of equipment.

About six months ago, the blender in our cupboard accidentally fell to the floor where the rim of its glass container got chipped, badly chipped, leaving a jagged, sharp edge. We looked for a replacement container for a while. (Replacement? Oh no, not a replacement—must buy new!!) But since nothing in our culture is manufactured so it can be fixed when broken, our search was futile.

It was with a heavy heart that we made our way down to THE shopping strip in our area, the dreaded, crowded, ugly Route 12A in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, that no-sales-tax haven where you can live, freeze and die waiting to make a lefthand turn.

There in one of the dreaded, crowded, ugly chain stores (I'm sure you can sense a theme developing here), we purchased a new blender, one that came with a second container claiming to be genetically linked to the food-processor family of appliances.

As I noted earlier, we don't use a blender every day but often enough to make this purchase worthwhile—or so we thought.

I was making supper not too long after this purchase, a soup that called for blending. It was only the second time we had a use for this whirling appliance. I turned the blending container over to make sure that the screw-on bottom piece holding the blade in place was tight—and the plastic of the screw-on bottom piece broke in my hand.

Less than one month old, used only once, now useless.

Which brings me to the merits of shopping secondhand. I LOVE secondhand stores, especially the two Good Buy Stores run by a non-profit called Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA). Whenever I need a replacement glass or something to toss over the chair that Goldie has claimed as her own, I hit the Good Buy stores.

Now I'm on a hunt for a new (to me) blender that I will purchase secondhand. No more chain stores for me.

I figure it this way—whatever gets donated to a secondhand store has already passed the ready-made junk test. In other words, only the good stuff (OK, sometimes the unuseable stuff as well) makes it to the secondhand stores because everything that's going to break is already in the landfill—which I will readily agree is a whole other issue to address.

I figure that whatever I pick up at a secondhand store is sure to be of better quality than anything I can buy at the dreaded, crowded, ugly chain stores that sell things with a planned obsolescence so precisely calculated, it kicks in at the point of purchase.

Buying secondhand should be right up there on the list of living-the-good-life virtues, right next to buying locally.

Enjoying Other Women's Work

Have I mentioned before that the women in my quilt guild are an amazing lot of talented people?

No?

Well, let me correct that oversight. They are.

For the uninitiated, let me describe some of the tribes within the quilting universe.

There are those who make a few traditional quilts a year and enjoy the craft as a hobby.

There are those who get quite competitive and enter their work in shows. (Believe me when I tell you that the judging in professional shows is very, very, very tough.)

There are quilters for whom "the rules" such as seam allowance, cutting specs, thread use, etc. are paramount. Some of these tribe members get a little carried away and become what other quilters call the "quilt police."

And there are folks who use traditional quilting as a stepping-off point for individual creative expression based on fabric but including many, many, many other materials.

The name commonly used for this latter group is "art quilters" though in all honesty, I think even that title can be somewhat limiting. But that's just semantics. What really counts is enjoying these incredible expressions of individual taste, design, and ideas.

There's a group of art quilters in our local area, some of whom are members of my guild. Together, they have a show of their work in the public library up in Lyme, NH, a really nice space. I was up to visit on Friday afternoon and just ooohed and aaaahed through the whole show.

This is one of the pieces in the show by a friend who's name is Dana Burrell. Thought you might enjoy seeing it too. And I heartily recommend that if you are in the neighborhood, to drop by.

Purple Coneflower

We interrupt this bare-trees day with its limited sunlight to recall a bit of high summer with this plant of health, Echinacea purpurea.

This tall daisy-like flowering plant yields an immune system booster when its roots are dried, ground and ingested. Around here, it's the first bottle reached for when a sore throat or a stuffy nose shows up in one of us. That plus red zinger tea and orange juice does help ward off the worst of whatever bug is coming.

Lovely color, isn't it?

Quick Before I Change My Mind Again

I have been working diligently on a website of my own that combines all the things I do—write, edit, design, publish books, artisanry and photography.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been adding in, taking out, rearranging, rewriting, banging my head on my desk (my forehead is very flat by now) and I finally put it up today in the form that's going to stay there for a while.

Whew.

Eventually, I'm going to move this blog over to sonjahakala.com but for now, or as soon as GoDaddy's systems get the forwarding in place, you can stop by and say hello.

Done and Gone

I stayed up past my bedtime last night to get my brother-in-law's birthday present completed.

And it is!

I'm off to the post office shortly to send it on its way.

Just wanted a record of completion.

Letting (My Brother-in-law's) Freak Flag Fly

I had a heavy Mom day on Sunday. It had built up over the preceding three or four days. I felt off, down, edgy. And then on Sunday, I was gripped by grief as profound as when she died.

Fortunately, I have a husband and son who hug. And as an extra-added bonus, I got a timely phone call from a friend in Colorado who, unfortunately, lost her Mom and Dad a year ago. She knew exactly what I was going through.

Friends in my quilt guild had warned me that these waves of grief could crop up months after Mom died but the ferocity of it shook me up.

This all a preamble to say that I felt boneless yesterday morning. But I have found that work and creativity are the best way for me to deal with difficult emotional stuff, something to keep my head and hands busy while my inner processing goes on without interference.

So what does that have to do with a freak flag for my brother-in-law? Terry's birthday is coming up quickly and this year especially, I wanted to make something special for him because he was so kind while I was living in his house while Mom died. Some brothers-in-law can be awful but I'm lucky my sister had such good taste.

Ever since my quilt guild did its first annual Ironing Women Challenge in early August (a design free-for-all done in small teams), I've wanted to play that way again. So last night, I pulled a bunch of fabrics out of my fat quarters and large scrap piles, found a panel from artist Laurel Birch and I was on my way.

Terry and my sister are big into their RV, a Bluebird, so that had to be part of this. In fact, it was the only design element that I knew for sure would be in this creation. It took me a while to find a clear image of the logo (Wikipedia comes to the rescue again) and it took some manipulation to get into a fusible-fabric form. But after that, it was play all the way.

This is not backed or quilted yet. I'll get that done today (I hope) and send it off so it will reach Terry before his birthday.

The morale of the story is, when life hands you garbage, compost it and make it part of your garden.

By the way, if you are on Cape Cod and need your car repaired, Terry is your man. He and my sister own Mr. T's Auto Repair in Mashpee. Tell them Sonja sent ya.

Finally Finished!

This is actually the third quilt I've started for my sister Heidi. The first one, which featured a fabric with a dark purple background and sweetpeas in bloom, got as far as the finished-top stage before I decided I truly did not like the pattern.

My husband, the great un-sewer, took the blocks apart for me and they will get used in something else. I have no idea what but not in the quilt I originally envisioned.

The second quilt never grew beyond a table runner that appeared in my second how-to book from Wiley, Visual Quick Tips Quilting. I liked the pattern as a table runner but I thought it was too complex to work as a larger piece. That plus the fact I had some doubts about an adequate fabric supply.

I still have a number of half-square triangles cut for that top and know exactly where they're going to get used. But not in a quilt top for my sister.

Back in, oh April or May, I picked up a book from my quilt guild's library that featured what the author called "Half Nine Patches." That's nine squares of fabric with three on the diagonal done as half-square triangles. They were featured in a Friendship star wall hanging in the book which I enlarged and expanded to become this quilt, which I truly like, for my sister.

This piece presented some difficulties even after the top was complete. I made one back, didn't like it, and did another. I embroidered one label, didn't like it, did another.

While quilting it, I broke a needle in my sewing machine that put its timing out of whack. Got the machine fixed (thank you Buzz at LGB Bernina Sales in White River Junction), got it back in place (where it purrs in contentment) and promptly had the bulb burn out.

I've been sewing on a machine since I was about twelve and I have NEVER had a bulb burn out on me.

But all that being said, I really like the way this one turned out.

It's on its way to the post office in just a few minutes. Can't wait to hear how my sister likes it.

Patterns

Part of a white peony with a yellow center taken on a rainy day.

A frosted leaf in shade and sunlight.

A slice from the bottom of a carnival squash.

I did our grocery shopping today and picked up a couple of winter squash of a variety called carnival. When I trimmed the stem end off, the contrast of the deep orange inside and the slight edge of deep green skin from the outside made me smile.

Then the wavy edge of the vegetable added another dimension of beauty.

That's one of my favorite things to play with in graphic design, taking part of an image in order to see something quite different.

These three photographs have all been cropped from something larger. How much does that slicing change your perspective?

I've had a difficult Mom day today, something that friends warned me could happen months after she was gone. This mourning is like an aching, deep ohm after a long session of yoga, a sigh that cannot be sighed.

So focusing on small parts of larger things somehow felt like a wise adventure to take today.

Frosty Visits the River—A Photo Journey

Ice forms on the rocks in places where the water is shallow.

Frosted sycamore leaves down by the river.

A frosted fern along our path in the woods.

A frosted comfrey leaf. Great design, eh?

Goldie waits for Jay as he takes pictures.

Failure to Complete

Tell me, what kind of reader are you? Are you one of the heroic types who must finish whatever you start no matter how boring, silly, annoying or cringe-making it is? Or are you the efficient type (like moi) who figures there are tons of good books to read so why bother with something that's boring, silly, annoying or cringe-making?

I wrote about finding this author, Catherine Cookson, by following a mention from a Netflix review to a movie that I added to my queue to Amazon to find out who this woman is (was? don't know if she's still with us) to my public library to take out one of her novels.

So I settled in for what I thought was going to be a whacking great read the other night before sleep took me away until morning and by page 19 (that's the end of the first chapter) I was annoyed by the writing style.

So what annoyed me? Sometimes, as with a Danielle Steele or something by one of those man-book writers such as Robert Ludlum, it's easy to pick out what's annoying. It's monotonous. All the sentences are approximately the same length and have the same rhythm, like Gregorian chant only without the haunting beauty.

There's other writing that strikes me as childish, full of so many adjectives and adverbs that it reads like something composed by an eighth-grader the night before it's due and jammed full of extraneous words to reach some teacher-imposed limit.

Another thing that puts me off is too much description as in "He was six-foot, three-inches tall with a full head of jet-black hair, and gray eyes." Somehow, that sort of prose sucks away all my imagination so that I cannot see the character at all.

Cookson has some of these traits but none in an overwhelming abundance. There is a sameness to the rhythm of her sentences and a facileness (is that a word?) to her prose that gives it a Teflon coating that simply slides off my brain before it can be absorbed.

Years ago, when I was a young teen, I developed what I called my "30-page test." If I didn't like a book by page 30, I didn't bother to finish it. I notice that in my more mature years, my judgments are more quickly made. Hence my stopping on page 19 of this book.

Ah well, at least I had some Alexander McCall Smith on my shelf. A nice compensation indeed.

The Month of Long Shadows

Generally speaking, Goldie and I take our daily walk somewhere between 10 and 11 in the morning at this time of year. Because of the slope of our land and the angle of the sun, any time after noon is sure to be colder because the hills block the sun on its way to our land.

In fact, at this time of year, there are places on our path in the woods and along our road where the sun's friendly cheer never reaches.

Think about that—a whole season in shadow.

And I know that may sound gloomy but really, the light this time of year just fascinates me because it so closely resembles the hour before dusk. It's the time of day when world vibrates with color, giving back to the sun what it has taken in all day.

So Goldie and I wind our way among the shadows, enjoying their stretch over the ground.

Every minute outside is a minute to be cherished.

The Bitter with the Sweet

When I wrote a regular column on the arts and entertainment (of which there is a bunch) here in the Upper Valley, I used to opine that January was the month of "eggnog fog withdrawal."

Well, November is the other side of that season and the opener came this Monday when Jay went grocery shopping and brought home the first quart of Hood's light eggnog.

You see, we all love it in coffee which is the way most of the eggnog in our house is consumed. Occasionally some will make its way into a glass with a splash of Irish Cream.

But here on the river, we'll be sweetening the bitterness of our coffee with the sweetness of eggnog for a while. Then in January, I'll be more than ready to go back to milk for lightness.

Try it and enjoy the comforting envelope of eggnog fog for yourself.

A Retrospective of This Summer All in Pictures Because Today Is Very Gray and We Need It

Goldie sitting in the observation seat while Jay paddles

A loon on Lake Ninevah

Spiky, a Cecropia moth caterpillar, found on a blueberry bush at Moore's Orchard in July

Water swirling at the north point of our land.

Painted turtle in the lake formed by the dam in North Hartland.

Water grass at Lake Ninevah.

The perfect water lily.

Whaddaya Think?

I've been teaching other folks how to publish their own books for a long time. As the technology and sales structures have changed book publishing, I've marveled again and again at how the circle of publishing—which once belonged exclusively to writers—has now come full circle so that writers are, if they want to be, in charge again.

In fact, the name of my publishing company is Full Circle Press LLC in honor of this phenomenon.

Over the years, I've lectured many times on this subject and have long wanted a book for my classes. So last spring, I started writing A HANDS-ON GUIDE TO BOOK PUBLISHING FOR EVERYONE.

Now I'm also a graphic designer which means I can and do create my own book covers and book interiors. I've been fooling with the cover of this book for months now but have never been quite happy with it.

I like the little guy holding the books and the books themselves but I wasn't happy with the rest of the cover. But inspiration struck while I was moving my fabric stash around the other day as I looked for something to bind my sister's quilt.

This fabric just screamed "background" to me so I scanned a piece of it and voilá, here's a new version of the cover that pleases me.

And one of the cool things about doing your own books is that you don't have to please anyone but yourself—at least on a certain level.

So, whaddaya think?

Of Apples Falling from Trees

Not long after my Mom died, I was getting my hair cut when a friend from my quilt guild walked in. For the next hour or so, Rita (the hairdresser), Karen (the friend) and I talked about the parents we've lost and how we deal with our grief.

Karen's Dad has been gone for a number of years now but she said, as her eyes filled with tears, that she still had her "Dad moments."

Grieving is an uneven process. I have my Mom's high school graduation picture on the windowsill next to my desk, and I turn to it with a smile or a "what do you think, Mom?" about once a day. I never kept a picture of my Mom on my desk before her death was imminent.

I once interviewed a group of older women for a series of newspaper articles about aging. They were all widows, and each of them talked about the comfort they derived from wearing something that their husbands once wore. At the time—and I was much younger then—I wasn't sure how this action could be comforting but now I know.

It just is.

I have some of Mom's jewelry. The necklace here is the one I bought her after my Dad died so she could wear his wedding band. That wedding band is now with my sister. The ring on the necklace now was Mom's. The profile head is a charm with my son's name on it, given to me when he was born. Of the two hearts on the necklace, the one on the left has my name and birthdate on it and was worn by my Grandmother Annie Hakala on a bracelet with charms for each of her grandkids that she never took off. The one on the right is one I bought with my husband's name and birthdate.

I found the solitary ring in Mom's jewelry box. The earrings were hers as well.

The ring I wear all the time, the earrings once in a while, the necklace on days when I am having Mom moments. I've worn it nearly every day this week. I wore all of these pieces yesterday because I spent the day with my good friend Sue, and I knew that she'd check in with me about my Mom and how I'm doing. When I know that's going to happen, I get a lot of comfort from having Mom close.

When I think back to how my Mom grieved my Dad, I think this is more of what she did—wearing something of his because it comforts in a grieving process that's more quiet and internal. That's how she handled all of the big things in her life, quiet and internal. For someone who was very sociable, she was intensely private. I guess my apple fell closer to her tree than I imagined.

One Thing Leads to Another

A lot of folks carp about how the internet has pushed its way into personal interactions. In fact, Isaac Asimov once wrote a mystery novel—that happened sometime in a future a lot like our own—in which people had become so little inclined to be in one another's company that they actually feared human interaction. (Which raises questions about how the next generation was to be created but that's another posting.)

And being the half-Luddite that I am, I buy a lot of that argument against the web.

But there are some ways that the web increases our interactions and here's an example.

As mentioned earlier, I'm a Netflix fan. I use my queue as a way to keep a running list of films I want to see some time or another. As of this writing, I have over 300 movies and TV series and documentaries on it which is going to take me a long time to get through considering I get only one movie at a time and average watching only one a week.

The one occupying the top spot in my lineup recently is a Brit series called Lark Rise to Candleford. Now I have a confession to make—I'm the type of reader who often flips to the back of a book to see how it ends long before I get to that spot in the text. I figure if I don't like the ending, it's not worth reading and time is short.

I'm also not above searching for episode descriptions so I'll know ahead of time what's going to happen to my favorite characters in a series. I've never bought the argument that it ruins the journey to know where you're headed.

So I was trolling on Netflix recently to see what I could find out about Lark Rise to Candleford and came across a member review that said something to the effect that "if you like the actor Brendan Coyle who plays Robert Timmins, you should see another BBC production called The Glass Virgin based on the Catherine Cookson book by the same name."

OK, I thought, who's Catherine Cookson?

So I flip over to Amazon, search for this author's name and lo and behold, this author is widely popular in Great Britain and writes books that look promising to my readerly eye.

One trip to the Quechee Library later and I have a Cookson of my own to peruse. I have no idea whether I'll like it or not but I love the idea that a retired Limey (as the Netflix reviewer called himself) could lead me to a new-to-me author with the potential of giving me hours of pleasure.

One things leads to another if you're willing to follow the trail.

Battling the Grays of November

It's gray here, rainy, low-clouds, cold, raw. Sometimes if you're out in this type of weather for too long, the only way you can get warm again is to stand in a hot shower while the water heats your bone marrow.

November has an outsized impact on people's moods, stirring up anxieties, feelings of loneliness. Meteorologically speaking, we have more cloudy days this month than at any other time of year. Good thing November's only got 30 days, eh?

So it's the best time of year to play with color. I'm nearly five months behind on this quilt. It's for my sister's 50th birthday which was way back in June. I had the top done by then but we got a trifle distracted as the weather turned warm.

So when my head finally got around to sewing again, her quilt was the first item I grabbed on my UFO pile. (That's unfinished objects to the uninitiated.) I'm nearly done with the quilting part of the project, a simple straightline on both sides of each seam. Then it's binding and off to the Cape to keep my sister warm in front of the TV or anywhere else she may desire.

When I got home from the Cape after Mom died, I spent a bit of time getting myself organized in every facet of my life because I needed to reset my bearings. I have a long list of UFOs and other, smaller project, stuff that needs fixing mostly. The goal here is to focus, get things done so I've set up a rhythm of UFO, fun project (which can come from the UFO pile), a fix-it then another fun, etc. Should be an interesting winter.

Will Says

I once read that in order for humor to work, to tickle our fancy, to make us laugh, it had to be based on truth. Perhaps that is why humorists such as Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Richard Pryor and George Carlin grab our attention and hold it.

One of my favorite humorists of all time is Will Rogers. I have a quote of his on a bumper sticker taped to the window of my car that reads: If stupidity got us into this, why can't it get us out?

Today is Will Rogers' birthday, a holiday celebrated in his home state of Oklahoma (don't you love that?). I found a website dedicated to the man, and it had tons of quotes from him. Here are some of my current favorites that I just gotta share.

A flock of Republicans will replace a mess of Democrats. It won’t mean a thing. They will go in like all the rest of ’em. Go in on promises and come out on alibis.

Papers say: “Congress is deadlocked and can’t act.” I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.

Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate Committee appointed to look into it.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it.

People don’t change under governments. Governments change. People remain the same.

Every guy looks in his pocket and then votes.

Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. It’s when they do something is when they get dangerous.

The United States Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.

Every nation must have its legalized form of gambling. We have our Wall Street.

When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.

America, Incorporated We Stand

Well, the midterm elections are FINALLY over and all we have left to get through is the hot air from the bloviators over the next couple of weeks before it all dies back into SOSO—same old, same old.

Back in 2008 when cable news and its hot air experts were getting hyper about Barack Obama and the return of the once-thought-dead Democrats, I read this interesting column (by Steven Perlstein, I think) in which he pointed out that no matter what party controls Congress, the outcome is pre-ordained so that nothing much happens and nothing changes.

So now we have a Dem President who is better than the media would allow you to think (you do think, don't you?), a media that's busy sucking the American brain into its 24-hour news hole, a Senate that makes glaciers look speedy no matter which party is holding sway, and a House of Representatives that will do its utmost to represent the interests of its corporate clients.

Repeat after me: Same old, same old.

You know, Jon Stewart had an interesting "closing statement" at his rally last Saturday in which he pointed out that outside of D.C. and cable news, we get a lot done by working with one another. His argument, which has been the one I've been making for years, crystallized the idea that we truly are a functioning country with a dysfunctional government.

I have to say that tuning out most of the media was a sanity-saving commitment on my part, one I plan to continue. My community—family, friends, colleagues, associates, clients—is the world in which I orbit and the news from there is what truly counts in my life. I guess it's my version of "Think locally, act locally."

But I will continue to vote (it's how I earn my right to complain) and pay attention to intelligent information about how we're all doing together when and where I can find it.

Now let's return to our own lives and take stock of what we know through our own experience, shall we?

Artigiano

Like all of us, I travel in a number of social circles, some that intersect, some that don't. Among my circles are folks who call themselves "artists" and those who consider themselves, well, not artists.

I've been in the same room with folks whose pride in the word "artist" perfumes the air around them. Their disrespect and disparagement for people who do merely "craft" is all too obvious. "I'm an artist—and you're not. You just make quilts or knit sweaters. I'm making a statement."

Back when I was a newspaper reporter, I adopted the arts and culture beat as something of my own. I've interviewed poets and novelists, actors, singers, sculptors and painters and dancers. You name the cultural venue and I've probably interviewed someone who practices it.

Over time, it became quite apparent that folks with lots of talent and the wherewithal to make their livings with it were, for the most part, kind of humble. I mean they knew they could sing or dance or paint or act far better than the norm but that knowledge gave them a sort of inner peace. They rarely behaved like obnoxious boors, rarely made outrageous demands. They just were.

On the flip side, the further down the talent tree you explored, the more behavior problems you encountered. It's as if that slight dollop less of self confidence has to be made up with attention getting statements such as "I'm an artist."

So what in the world does that have to do with this hat you see perched on this tree? It's mine. I made it from a pattern I developed for the easiest crocheted hat ever.

I like to have a mix of long and short-term projects going at any one time, and these hats—which I can pick up and put down whenever and wherever—fit the short-term project definition to the proverbial T.

It's a well-made hat, one that I'm going to photograph the making of so I can develop a PDF that folks can download so they can make it themselves. I designed it. I made it. I give away the finished hats to a local homeless shelter called the Upper Valley Haven.

You wear it. It serves the practical purpose of keeping your head warm. It's not meant to decorate a wall. So is it art or craft?

I actually think the difference between the two terms is a cartload of what gets left behind the bull as he ambles along to the next cow in his harem. I prefer the word artisan, someone who is a skilled maker of objects by hand. It's from the Italian word artigiano, one who instructs in the arts.

Artisan—yes, I like that title very much.

Autumn Joy

Leading us out from the fall to the winter, the succulent known as Autumn Joy gives my garden a dusky rose sendoff.

This plant is a Sedum, a hardy, thick-leaved botanical that seems to do well no matter where you plop it in the yard.

This time of year, I love to check out the flowers early in the morning before the sun warms the air to see the honeybees in still life on the blossoms. It's one of the only times you can get a clear picture of this blessed insect as it gives us the gift of pollinating our plants.