Dust Ups: Shaun Overton

 

I fell in love with Africa when I was a child. I grew up in a mission-minded church that supported missionaries, and the missionaries would come back every four or five years and teach us where they’d been. They would bring back slides, items, but most of all stories. It meant a whole Sunday away from the monotony of our preaching cycle, and a glimpse of the exotic. We sent missionaries everywhere, even in the US, but my favorite was always Africa.

I meant to be a missionary myself, but God had other plans. In any case, I get excited about African content. I bumped into The Green Wall of Africa, where they are fighting desertification one hole in the ground at a time. I went through a lot of You Tube videos about it all, but they felt static, like encyclopedia articles. Shaun Overton sneaked into my feed with his project in west Texas. Buying a large ranch in the desert, he is deternied to raise up a desert forest. He was just this guy going out there with no real idea of what he was doing, but determined to do it. It is that grit that makes the show interesting. He hires experts. He chops up cactus. He takes a week a month to put in the hard labor his project demands. I just love it.

I wish someone would create the same long-format story-telling in Africa.

Mrs. Who Phase

 

In the past when I was making the choice about new frames for my glasses I tried to get the most flattering  one. Most of the time I chose the most unobtrusive pair, preferring to present my face rather than a mask, as much as possible.

I am slowly becoming aware that working with children is my thing. I like lots of things. There are many things I can do, but children make me the happiest. If you can help someone get their feet on the good path in their childhood you will save them so much grief. Things that are so hard to adopt in adulthood are simply accepted by children. The school I grew up in loved the quote, “It is easier to build a boy than mend a man.” Setting aside the sexism it is true. I’d like to build children.

Buying new glasses was different this time around. I bought them on line. They offered various ways to virtually try frames on, but I never quite got them working. In the end I just liked what appeared to be a light brown pair. It was a great experience, the glasses arrived swiftly and I love them. They are however, more of a mask. They remind one of Sybil Trelawny. I like to think of them as Mrs. Who from A Wrinkle in Time. Children do need some space from the adults in their lives. Adults carry all the broken things that come with maturity. 

I’m Back!

 

Somewhere around April I quit reading. I’m not sure why. I love the book I was reading at the time. I just couldn’t find the energy to invest in books and all the activities I center around reading. I tried to force it, but it just wouldn’t go. 

Setting that aside I turned to streaming and Redecor. Eventually it was just noise playing in the background while I thought about my life. Thinking about one’s life is generally a lonely experience unless you can afford a therapist or have very impartial and patient family and friends. 

For whatever reason, I’m reading again. Finally finished Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays. The book was as great as it was when I took a break from reading. The medieval vocabulary and interpretation of the Bible turn me on. It also puts me four books away from my current Crowhook goal. Lots of goals worth reaching, feel just at my fingertips.

Big Plan Books

 

When I was a child I loved gigantic books. Coffee table books weren’t a thing where I grew up, so anytime I found myself faced with a giant book on a coffee table I was impressed by how fancy this home was. My uncle used to give me some money just to see what I’d buy, and he was particularly pleased with the purchase of Vasari’s Great Masters. I was pleased because it was huge with great pictures and lots to read.

Homeschooling provided an excuse for buying more giant books, like world atlases, science omnibuses, and more art. I used to worry that I’d wasted money, but I recently looked them up. The spines are destroyed. They were getting read even if I wasn’t seeing it. 

I intend to spend significant time with my grandchildren, enough to need planning which is so fun. I’ve bought books (Cousin Camp, Camp Granny) and I’m doing lots of day dreaming. I’ve decided to incorporate a “Big Book Time” into longer stays. I’ll set a timer for 15 minutes or so and let them choose a giant book from the cram jam on the kid book case to explore. With such a variety it might fill an afternoon.

Here are some titles that’ll be on my shelf.

Hammond World Atlas

Vasari’s Great Masters

America’s Glorious Quilts

Earth by James F. Luhr

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Christopher Columbus by Consuelo Varela

The Illustrated Treasury of Classic Children’s Stories by Charles Santore

Bug Farmer

 

Bugs are fascinating. They can be gross, but bees are only a problem if they make a hive in the wrong place. My interest in bees as particularly interesting may have started when I spent the night at a friends house where they kept bees. I only saw the equipment and the box, but it was fascinating to imagine what was happening in the box.

YouTube lets me explore lives I won’t live, and I am enjoying the life of bees. I’m watching multiple channels, and offering advice as if I knew anything. A bee stung me once. It didn’t hurt very much. I’ve never been stung since. I like to think it’s because I am generally calm. 

Bug Farmer is an experimenter. He likes to try new hives and new ideas. He is always moving forward, forward, forward. I pick up a lot of information from his channel, and he keeps my interest.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BugFarmerBees/videos

Cozy

 

Redecor is now an entrenched part of my life. I ration myself to four designs and two redesigns a day. I also work all the places where you can earn coins each day. I do my very best to wait for good sales and ration my token money. I find it so calming. It has also taught me to respect my own opinion.

The judging is a perfect score of three hearts, descending to one heart. I get a lot of one hearts. At first this bothered me, but when I was judging other people’s designs I realized they aren’t like mine. I have a distinctive style I’m calling “Cozy”. There are two things that make my style. One is I’m cheap, so I have to make do with past colors and items. I shop my leftovers first and that provides a lot of inspiration and creativity. The second thing is I like a lot of color. The design above makes me happy with its primary colors. It comes from my happy place.

I’ve decided not to redesign the “one heart wonders” as I’m calling them. They make me happy, and that is enough.

Frozen

 

From my earliest memories I have always had projects I was working on. Simple things like making a bouquet of flowers for Mommy and how to get away with wearing shorts, kept my little brain chugging along, and that’s never changed. The projects are still there, all stacked up on top of each other and going nowhere. I’ve lost the energy to make things finished/real. My BUJO is untouched. My Zettelkasten has no new notes. The TBR pile is going backwards as the new books pile on and the old books aren’t read. Even the work of logging in the last couple hundred books is going nowhere. Forget about writing I can’t even get a Willow story out. 

I don’t know what to do to get back on track. Maybe I needed a break more than I ever thought I would. In any case the well is empty and all progress seems to be frozen.