Eavesdropping

 

I am currently reading the Qur’an. It is full of fascinating material, and I have lots underlined from the last time I read it. I’m reading it for several reasons. I’m writing a history through literature curriculum and I couldn’t see how I could avoid religious texts when you consider their impact throughout history continuing to the present day. I also like to be informed about what other religions offer and require. I like to understand my neighbors a little better.

There are many beautiful parts to the Qur’an as well as terrifying and sad parts. They don’t seem to be particularly enlightened about women, but that’s normal for a text of this age. One of the best things is the chance to eavesdrop when Muhammed talks about my faith, Christianity. To hear that we are not keeping true to the revelation we’ve been given is disheartening when I know how hard I try to be faithful to the deposit of faith. To hear that we have been left behind by God, though we are saved by his mercy seems strange when God is so present to me especially in my faith. I would get upset, but then I pick up the chatter in my community, and we say similar things. We do so because all of us can’t understand why our fellow human beings would choose anything other than the things we have chosen for ourselves. Maybe if we listened a little more and a little longer we’d hear the reasons why.

Cathy Hay, Soothing Seamstress

I enjoy watching people make things, especially things I have no ambition to make myself. There is a whole, lively community I love of women who sew period clothes. It always pleases me to watch the pattern drafting, turning into pieces, turning into finished garments. One of my favorites is Cathy Hay. She is intimidated by nothing, but she is also comfortable with giving up. It is a beautiful life balance that inspires me.

Cathy inspires me in other ways as well. Sometimes I struggle with anxiety and she is so calming yet definite in her advice that I have her talk saved to watch again. I truly recommend her for either sewing adventures or adventures in self-esteem.

 https://youtu.be/R-qb4EdH4Do

If you like big words and you cannot lie…

 Comprehension can be overrated. Sometimes you just want to sit back and let the big words roll right over your head.This book does that. The Archaeology of Knowledge is about a way of thinking about the systems of knowledge and how they came to be. I think. I would like to understand it, so I may give it another read. For now I am happy to have enjoyed getting all my fancy vocabulary out and adding to my collection. I may read Madness and Civilization some time as it may have more easily followed references since it is limited to a single subject.

Big words. Such shiny bling. I wonder if it is Foucault’s fault or his translator.

More Widgets, Please

I have become very attached to goodreads. The opportunity to keep a fancy tbr with the click of the mouse and then to designate which books I’m currently reading and how much progress I’ve made is addicting. I find myself hurrying through pages so I can see how close I am to completion. Even when I haven’t read anything I still go back and scroll through my bookshelves, and add new books I’ve discovered. My only wish is that there was more to do. I want to record who recommended the books I’m reading. I’d like a cool invitation to friends to join a read-a-long. I should make better use of the review, but sometimes I don’t know what to say, and a prompt would be nice. 

I went to their section for making suggestions and it was crammed, which to me says I’m not alone in wanting more widgets.

https://www.goodreads.com/

 

Like wearing the scale

 I’ve been working on losing weight, and it’s going nice and slow. I’m intending that this will be the last time I lose these pounds. My focus has been on changing how I think about eating one new thought at a time. One major strategy I’ve discovered is forgetting about the scale. Numbers have never been my favorite. Instead I’m focusing on what size I’m wearing, specifically what size Gloria Vanderbilt Amanda jeans size I am wearing. I’m down two sizes and since I wear Amanda jeans almost every day how comfortable they are is a good measure of how I’m doing with my eating habits. My jeans let me know how I’m doing with a constant immediacy that no scale can match. I’ve found it very helpful. 

Brooke Whipple, Survivalist

 Survival has long been a fraught issue with me. I like to be the person who is ready for anything, hence the backpack and bag organizing systems. Growing up the world seemed really fragile what with the nuclear bombs and the Apocalypse and all. I made a habit of collecting survival tips, some more valuable than others, such as sucking out snake venom but only if you had perfect teeth. Church camp was the place to get the most information and training, otherwise nature shows and library books filled me in.

I do not camp. My husband is allergic to almost everything, so we stick to places with filtered air. This doesn’t stop me from dreaming. Costco puts out a range of reasonably priced camping gear every Spring, and I dawdle along absorbing the features and that new tent smell.

I was mourning the fact that my little ones are all mostly grown-ups, and I was unlikely to ever get them out in the woods when I discovered Brooke Whipple and a new idea—I could camp alone! (Mom, relax. It’s just an idea.) I didn’t need to take the kids. The joy of planning it alone will be great even if I never go. 

Brooke makes it look so easy. Build a debris shelter. I can do that. Build a fire. I can cheat that. Pack necessary items. I will overdo that. I was a full Whipple head before I realized that she was a star in the world of survivalists having appeared on Alone, twice. I haven’t been able to get her seasons, but from the other seasons I watched this is no joke. And she’s so nice. I have not yet heeded her admonition to “Get outside and get happy,” but it makes me happy to be so admonished.

Get into Brooke and get happy, building shelters, collecting knowledge, and enjoying the scenery.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWcHR3r4UTdEhKn9BUX72Gw

Bold and Spicy!

I grew up on Campbell’s Baked Beans, and I hate to say it, but they made me hate beans, blindly and vehemently. They weren’t as bad as onions, but if you were going to choose food for the week I would pray for better choices. Beans slowly worked their way onto my menu through chili and other recipes where the beans were supporting ingredients. I was doing my own shopping as a grown up woman with a husband who appreciated beans, so I was looking for anything other than Campbell’s. Busch’s seemed high end so I picked up a can of Bold and Spicy and fell in love. I still don’t like beans a lot, but Bold and Spicy tastes the way I always imagined beans should taste. I do enjoy them. I enjoy them a lot, but for some reason they are hard to find. I check almost every store I go in. If you have them, enjoy them, and let me know where you are. Maybe I could pick some up on vacation. 
 

Purity of Heart

 I complain a lot about growing up fundamentalist, but what they believed they believed sincerely with all their heart. When they markered up the church library copy of The Hardy Boys they were honestly trying to protect us from sin and the weary world. I get so grumpy about the Shakespeare shortage that I forget all the amazing gifts of love they gave me every day of my childhood. 

Children were clearly the priority at our church. To teach Sunday School was a grand ambition, we always had enough teachers to not only divide us by grade, but also by gender. Even so some people could only sit on the sidelines and watch. They had all kinds of trips and outings. VBS was just barely under Christmas as my favorite time of year. They started a school to protect us from worldly ideas and the seeming darkness of the times. Everyone poured themselves into the school whether it was fixing the water fountain, driving a bus, or fixing hot lunch.

Restricting Shakespeare meant there was lots of room for the truth they did want me to have, and they wanted me to have the best. We were Appalachian so we sang, all the time. It was glorious. The saddest thing was not to be able to carry a tune. Songs were a great medium for transmitting love, God’s love, their love, how we were to love each other. I could sing all day, but I’m just going to offer Down By The Creek Bank by Dottie Rambo as an example. I found myself singing “Being Me” and I started missing the whole album. I found it on You Tube, listened to the whole thing and cried until it stopped.

My heart is loaded with treasures of love. My fundamentalist community considered that to be fundamental. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owr7_EfLHUo

You know you like a book when…

I gave this book to all of my kids for Christmas. It is about having a growth mindset and developing successful habits, successfully. What makes this book powerful is the synthesis of thousands of bits of information marshaled into a useful and user-friendly framework that is easy to remember and easy to flow with. Everybody is reading it and the reason is—it’s good!

The only downside/thing to remember is that it is shallow. This book won’t search your soul and tell you why you want to develop a habit or if developing a habit is good for you. It is entirely possible that you could follow all this book’s precepts and build an impressive way of life that is entirely unsuited to you or morally wrong. This is a tool, not a guide.

That said, get reading.

 

Jason (who should be named Thor) of Epic Upcycling

 Mjölnir has never wrought magic like this before. Jason, who it seems is shy about his name and being in pictures, makes beautiful, useful furniture out of pallets and other discarded scrap. A treasure chest, Narnian wardrobe and a bed fit for a Narnian King are among my favorites, but there is lots more to see if you’re looking. The process is always rewarding. The heap of junk is milled up into little boards that are glued up to become panels. The cutting and measuring leads to tidy piles of parts that are then all screwed, nailed or glued into place. You never quite believe it is going to be as wonderful as it is until the very end which is always high end. Keep an eye out for the hammer.

https://www.youtube.com/c/EpicUpCycling?app=desktop

See Coast

 

whined down

flying so low

the foggy do hearticulate

Sailing Away

I have chosen and begun preparing my next cross-stitch project. I struggled a bit, but fell back on a family project based on my kids. Just Cross Stitching magazine is the most affordable magazine option. It has nice patterns, but none of the freebies and frills the other magazines offer. Short on pattern books at first I bought a few magazines and I bought one because it has a pattern of six stylized sailboats going along in a row. The boats are all equal in size, but different in design. The original is all red, white and blue, but I immediately saw the possibility of each of my six being remembered as one of the boats. It’s a sea theme, and an excuse to bond with my kids. 

The boats used four colors on each boat, so I asked my children to pick 4 skeins of their favorite colors at JoAnn’s crafts. Most ended up choosing from my stash, but they did it and I’m all set. I have no idea how all those different colors will look like in the end, but they are pretty on their floss drops. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

 

Vulnerable

I get attached to people easily, even people I’ve never met, but have only seen on tv or on the internet. I think that is a common human experience. People in general fascinate me, to the point that even though I do not think polygamy is a good way to form a family I have watched three separate polygamous family shows. There is a lot to learn about the problem of jealousy from polygamous families as it plagues everyone except, perhaps, the man at the hub of it all. He has his own crosses to bear. The best show was by the National Geographic Channel called “Meet the Polygamists.” It’s about a group with better moorings than the FLDS, but less dramatic and photogenic as the other polygamous Mormon families. The FLDS reminds one of labor camps or other horrors of that ilk. The more commercial families seem not so different from your weird Uncle Stan. In this group things are more fairly regulated and somewhat normalized. I particularly appreciated that the woman chooses her man—as inspired by God, of course.

The thing that held me riveted was the uncertain fate of a young woman named Rose. I was a little concerned about Hyrum, but he’s a man in a man’s religion. Some day he’ll be running the whole place. Rose had no guaranties except the hope of being given the name of her future husband, and it wasn’t coming. I like to think it was because she was more honest and willing to wait instead of peeking through her fingers and choosing a cute one. She sincerely seemed to be holding herself open to a lot of fates I found unspeakable, because that was what she believed God wanted her to do. I admired her courage and daring, but I also worried. She was so vulnerable in her family, in her church, in her relationship to God. I wanted to know what had happened, but National Geographic quit filming. I searched and searched, but could not find the fate of Rose, until this week when I came across a picture of what looks like her happily ever after. 

I hope she is happy. The brave and devout ought to be happy. It isn’t a life I would choose for her, but her life doesn’t belong to me. She is living it and offering it to God as best she understands, and really there isn’t anything else.

 

Christy Anne Jones, writer, YouTuber, traveller

Christy Anne Jones is also an excellent enabler of mischief. She was one of my first discoveries on BookTube, and I find her videos soothing while also being inspiring. She does things like write a thousand words and appreciate the progress that represents. If you are a writer you know the maturity of that and how hard it is not to want two thousand words. She also tries out famous writers routines, and this is where the mischief happened. She modeled Haruki Murakami’s routine which starts at the insane hour of four am and includes hard exercise. I don’t know what made me think I could do that, even a modified version of that, but I tried. Complete chaos with my circadian rhythm ensued. I did manage to get a glimpse at what my own working rhythm, but I could not even approximate Mr. Murakami. Neither could Christy Anne, and I love her for that.

More recently she tried out Virginia Wolf and Donna Tartt. They seem more reasonable, but I’m still muddling along with the wreckage of my Murakami efforts. Christy Anne is based in Australia and has lived in Japan for a time. She is organizing a trip to Japan that sounds wonderful and you could preview it sort of by reading her book A Year in Tokyo. 

Give her a watch. The quiet sense of moving forward is catching.

https://www.youtube.com/@christy-anne-jones/videos

Reset

 

I spent today shuffling around previously designed systems to make them work for this coming year. I filled project bags, shuffled the contents of project bags around, chose my next cross-stitch design, set the treadmill free. At first I felt that I was letting my new goals down, but the new goals will be so much easier to meet because I took the time to set things up rather than fight through the last year’s chaos. I’m hopeful that my brain will embrace the change too. This year is well-suited to a gradual ramp up of New Year’s resolutions, at least for us because we have the first week of the year as vacation. I’m trying to shadow in the time constraints and other problems of life with school, but if I don’t nail it it doesn’t matter.