My husband's grandmother Inge, who lived with us, was buried on what would have been her and her husband's 64th wedding anniversary. She was visiting her cousin (who was with her on the kindertransport, and who was the only remaining survivor of Grandma's life in Europe), and became disoriented in the dark, and fell down a flight of stairs. She fractured her neck, spine, ankle, ribs, you name it. She lived for two days, and died conscious and aware, with great dignity, with her family around her.
I miss her a great deal. We bought our house with the intention of living with them. We built an addition for them. And it feels terribly hard to come back to our home from our passover visit to my MIL, and face a house that is only us again. They lived with us for less than a year and a half, and she survived him by only 4 1/2 months. She was 80, in good health, and I cannot but think that this was no coincidence. She couldn't bear to be without her husband. Part of her left with him, I think - she no longer held herself as firmly together as in the past. I'm not sure I can blame her, despite the grief I feel, especially for the boys, who totally adored her, and are too young to fully understand why she is gone.
It has been a long, sad, passover holiday for us, and I admit, I'm grateful this week is over.
Sharon
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Ok, I'm a bad person
It has been a whole month since I posted to the blog. The big reason for my being so dilatory - I'm pregnant again, and barfing up a storm. This pregnancy was, umm, a major surprise for us, wasn't supposed to be an option any more, but we're very pleased despite the shock, and also despite the fact that this is putting a big crimp in my teaching plans for next year. But we wanted more kids, just had decided we'd had our share biologically, and would adopt.
I'm pleased, at any rate, when I'm not herking. I *hate* early pregnancy (not that wild about late pregnancy either). I get sufficiently ill that I've been hospitalized for dehydration or put on medication more than once. This time I managed to avoid it, but it has been tough to do much of anything. Ok, enough whining about vomitfest.
In other news - Eli is back to horseback riding, and loving every minute of it. We're having an unusual dry spell in April, and I'm actually going to get to plant something before Pesach! We leave for NYC, the annual pilgrimage to Grandma, the Museum of Natural History, and malaysian restaurants. I'm looking forward to it, but it always makes me nervous to leave my garden.
Our first batch of chicks were chilled during shipping, and we lost all but 13 of them. I think I need to stop getting chicks early in the season - they do better when it is warm. I wanted to up our fall egg production by having some hens just coming into production during the fall off, but I'm not sure it was worth it. Obviously, they'll be replaced, but this time not until May. I'm finally getting banties! I had a couple of cochin bantams I got at a livestock auction, but this time I'm getting a bunch of silkies to set the eggs.
More geese arrive in May as well. And I think we're finally going to try and acquire dairy goats in the fall - we're travelling a lot this summer because of family things (sister's wedding, Grandfather's unveiling, family bar mitzvah) so we just can't quite manage a daily care thing. But I will be happier when our supply of home grown milk is more reliable than the current "barter if they've got extra" system allows for. Our goose is laying, and I'm planning on turning the eggs into decorations for family gifts, in my copious spare time.
In other news, since my sole contribution to the household economy next year will be a little online teaching, a few freelance articles and our garden production, I've decided to write fiction. Or rather, I've been writing fiction for years, but never as a for-profit activity. But after reading a fair bit of dreck recently, I've been inspired to actually write for publication, rather than the amusement of my friends. I might even post my first bits here, if I can get up the nerve to be mocked.
I'm trying to get Eric to do the same. I'm convinced there's a comparatively untapped market for boy(ish) children's fiction of competence. By which I mean things in the Heinlein children's fiction/Tom Swift/Jean Craighead George tradition, in which young boys and girls manage to do fairly remarkable things, the details of which, and theory behind them are explained, both engagingly and clearly. I loved those books as a child - I remember how strongly fascinated I was by the description, in _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ of the process (inaccurate to modern science, but still) of rehabbing a space suit and making it space worthy, or how much I wanted to go live in a tree and tan skins in oak stumps as in _My Side of the Mountain_. Eric's best qualities as a writer are that he is concise, and he makes everything accessible and comprehensible. We routinely get stopped on the street or in restaurants by former students of his who say, "you were the only physics professor I ever understood," or "you were the best teacher I ever had." I'd like to see his gift for clarity shown to a larger audience.
Ok, enough rambling. I promise, I'll be back with an oil related rant, bit of my dissertation, or some other inanity much sooner. But the peepers are peeping, the potatoes need chitting, and I still haven't had dinner.
Cheers,
Sharon
I'm pleased, at any rate, when I'm not herking. I *hate* early pregnancy (not that wild about late pregnancy either). I get sufficiently ill that I've been hospitalized for dehydration or put on medication more than once. This time I managed to avoid it, but it has been tough to do much of anything. Ok, enough whining about vomitfest.
In other news - Eli is back to horseback riding, and loving every minute of it. We're having an unusual dry spell in April, and I'm actually going to get to plant something before Pesach! We leave for NYC, the annual pilgrimage to Grandma, the Museum of Natural History, and malaysian restaurants. I'm looking forward to it, but it always makes me nervous to leave my garden.
Our first batch of chicks were chilled during shipping, and we lost all but 13 of them. I think I need to stop getting chicks early in the season - they do better when it is warm. I wanted to up our fall egg production by having some hens just coming into production during the fall off, but I'm not sure it was worth it. Obviously, they'll be replaced, but this time not until May. I'm finally getting banties! I had a couple of cochin bantams I got at a livestock auction, but this time I'm getting a bunch of silkies to set the eggs.
More geese arrive in May as well. And I think we're finally going to try and acquire dairy goats in the fall - we're travelling a lot this summer because of family things (sister's wedding, Grandfather's unveiling, family bar mitzvah) so we just can't quite manage a daily care thing. But I will be happier when our supply of home grown milk is more reliable than the current "barter if they've got extra" system allows for. Our goose is laying, and I'm planning on turning the eggs into decorations for family gifts, in my copious spare time.
In other news, since my sole contribution to the household economy next year will be a little online teaching, a few freelance articles and our garden production, I've decided to write fiction. Or rather, I've been writing fiction for years, but never as a for-profit activity. But after reading a fair bit of dreck recently, I've been inspired to actually write for publication, rather than the amusement of my friends. I might even post my first bits here, if I can get up the nerve to be mocked.
I'm trying to get Eric to do the same. I'm convinced there's a comparatively untapped market for boy(ish) children's fiction of competence. By which I mean things in the Heinlein children's fiction/Tom Swift/Jean Craighead George tradition, in which young boys and girls manage to do fairly remarkable things, the details of which, and theory behind them are explained, both engagingly and clearly. I loved those books as a child - I remember how strongly fascinated I was by the description, in _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ of the process (inaccurate to modern science, but still) of rehabbing a space suit and making it space worthy, or how much I wanted to go live in a tree and tan skins in oak stumps as in _My Side of the Mountain_. Eric's best qualities as a writer are that he is concise, and he makes everything accessible and comprehensible. We routinely get stopped on the street or in restaurants by former students of his who say, "you were the only physics professor I ever understood," or "you were the best teacher I ever had." I'd like to see his gift for clarity shown to a larger audience.
Ok, enough rambling. I promise, I'll be back with an oil related rant, bit of my dissertation, or some other inanity much sooner. But the peepers are peeping, the potatoes need chitting, and I still haven't had dinner.
Cheers,
Sharon
Saturday, April 02, 2005
On Israel
Interesting short article on Israel in _The Atlantic_ this month. It does a quick but highly detailed analysis of the demographic and political situation in Israel, and asks, quite rightly, whether Israel will exist in 30 years.
I should say upfront that I'm ambivalent politically about Israel - I don't consider myself a zionist, and while I certainly don't want to see Jews harmed, I am troubled by our political past in Israel. What I am I unequivocably disturbed by, however, is the uncritical, "Israel right or wrong" input of American Jews into the situation, which annoys most Israelis I know as well. I'm always inclined to think something is truly wrong when someone who would never countenence an act by the American government tolerates it from Israel.
We all know that the central problem of Israel is demographic - and there is really only one way to resolve in a meaningful sense. That is, the two state solution isn't really a solution at all, when you are talking about cramming too rapidly growing populations into a resource poor area that cannot necessarily support them. There will be more war, more conflict, more territorial disputes, this time by two states both of whom get to have their own Cobra helicopters.
So the only way to fix the Israeli-Palestinian problem is to find another way around. No one is leaving. No one is willing to give as much as they should. So what alternatives are there, except to find a way to create one nation, not two, that captures the hearts and minds of both populations. A difficult call, that, but not, I suspect a totally impossible one. I do not believe it can be a Jewish state - and I do not blame Moslems for preferring not to live in a Jewish state, any more than I would prefer to live in a Christian or Moslem one. A secular democracy, however, with profound protections for both populations might conceivably be possible. I don't know - I know that it is *more* possible than continuing as things are.
The phenomenon of the religious state is fundamentally anti-democratic - you cannot simultaneously base your laws on theocratic principles and maintain an equal and truly democratic government. Moreover, in a practical sense, in very short order, Jews will be a statistical minority in Israel, and we all know how well a state run by and favoring a minority of the population fares in the long run.
The central tenet of democracy is that if you truly believe something, and your enemies outnumber you, you convince your enemies - you offer them something. No matter how much they hate you and you hate them, in a real and true democracy you must win your enemy's heart to move forward. Israel calls itself a democracy, but when its enemies outnumber it, it builds a wall. That's not democracy. Democracy is hard. It hurts. People die when real democracies are established. I am not suggesting this as a quick or easy solution - but I do think it may be both the right one and the only one. People are, after all, dying now.
Sharon
I should say upfront that I'm ambivalent politically about Israel - I don't consider myself a zionist, and while I certainly don't want to see Jews harmed, I am troubled by our political past in Israel. What I am I unequivocably disturbed by, however, is the uncritical, "Israel right or wrong" input of American Jews into the situation, which annoys most Israelis I know as well. I'm always inclined to think something is truly wrong when someone who would never countenence an act by the American government tolerates it from Israel.
We all know that the central problem of Israel is demographic - and there is really only one way to resolve in a meaningful sense. That is, the two state solution isn't really a solution at all, when you are talking about cramming too rapidly growing populations into a resource poor area that cannot necessarily support them. There will be more war, more conflict, more territorial disputes, this time by two states both of whom get to have their own Cobra helicopters.
So the only way to fix the Israeli-Palestinian problem is to find another way around. No one is leaving. No one is willing to give as much as they should. So what alternatives are there, except to find a way to create one nation, not two, that captures the hearts and minds of both populations. A difficult call, that, but not, I suspect a totally impossible one. I do not believe it can be a Jewish state - and I do not blame Moslems for preferring not to live in a Jewish state, any more than I would prefer to live in a Christian or Moslem one. A secular democracy, however, with profound protections for both populations might conceivably be possible. I don't know - I know that it is *more* possible than continuing as things are.
The phenomenon of the religious state is fundamentally anti-democratic - you cannot simultaneously base your laws on theocratic principles and maintain an equal and truly democratic government. Moreover, in a practical sense, in very short order, Jews will be a statistical minority in Israel, and we all know how well a state run by and favoring a minority of the population fares in the long run.
The central tenet of democracy is that if you truly believe something, and your enemies outnumber you, you convince your enemies - you offer them something. No matter how much they hate you and you hate them, in a real and true democracy you must win your enemy's heart to move forward. Israel calls itself a democracy, but when its enemies outnumber it, it builds a wall. That's not democracy. Democracy is hard. It hurts. People die when real democracies are established. I am not suggesting this as a quick or easy solution - but I do think it may be both the right one and the only one. People are, after all, dying now.
Sharon
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Happy Birthday Eli!!
Eli is five today. My mother claims that when I was a newborn, her mother in law told her, "You'll turn around and she'll have babies of her own." My Mom says she thought my grandmother was out of her skull - until it happened. I'm trying (and failing) not to let that happen with my own boys! I can't believe I have a five year old.
I will not claim that every day has raced by - the first four months of Eli's life, the ones in which he screamed 7 hours per day because of colic, passed more slowly than any days ever have in my life. But time is disappearing at an alarming rate - and yes, I know this is a deeply banal observation. Tough patooties - my blog, I can be boring if I want.
I always had a strange intuition that I would have a child with a disability. I don't know why. I remember thinking about it when I was pregnant with Eli, and praying for almost anything but autism. I thought that autism would mean that he couldn't love me, or acknowledge me. I was wrong about autism, and I'm not sorry my prayers were ignored. Autism didn't mean what I thought it did, and this is a case in which I was not a good judge of my desires or capacities. As so often is the case, either luck or
the hand of G-d or whatever...got me better results than my own choosing could have. I should try and remember that, next time I attempt to get all control-freaky about my future.
Motherhood and I are not a match made in heaven. Parenthood did not transform me instantly into the kind of person who is unfailingly loving, kind and generous. It is a bloody hard lot of work being nice when someone wants you to tickle them rather than permitting you to sip tea and read a long novel undisturbed. It is very annoying to have to be the grownup all the time. And no matter how much I love my children, becoming a parent did not transform me into the kind of person who wants to play peekaboo for three consecutive hours.
It amazes me that five years and two days ago that my leisure hours were my own, that my house was not decorate with brightly colored plastic toys and that cheerios were not a staple of both my diet and my carpetting. I miss that past in the nostalgic way that people who liked high school (not me!!!) miss high school - I don't think they'd really like to go back, just that they want a do over, a way to properly appreciate and enjoy what they have. But strangely, I like my life without free time, surrounded by noise and chaos and small people who want nothing so much as my undivided attention. I miss them when they aren't around (although I do make do with my novels ;-).
Anyway, Happy birthday Eli, from your chaotic, ambivalent, disorganized Mother. I love you even when you drive me nuts, even when I'm the most horrible Mom in the world and won't let you watch any tv. I wouldn't change a thing about you, except maybe the spaghetti stains on your shirt and ....socks?
Cheers,
Sharon
I will not claim that every day has raced by - the first four months of Eli's life, the ones in which he screamed 7 hours per day because of colic, passed more slowly than any days ever have in my life. But time is disappearing at an alarming rate - and yes, I know this is a deeply banal observation. Tough patooties - my blog, I can be boring if I want.
I always had a strange intuition that I would have a child with a disability. I don't know why. I remember thinking about it when I was pregnant with Eli, and praying for almost anything but autism. I thought that autism would mean that he couldn't love me, or acknowledge me. I was wrong about autism, and I'm not sorry my prayers were ignored. Autism didn't mean what I thought it did, and this is a case in which I was not a good judge of my desires or capacities. As so often is the case, either luck or
the hand of G-d or whatever...got me better results than my own choosing could have. I should try and remember that, next time I attempt to get all control-freaky about my future.
Motherhood and I are not a match made in heaven. Parenthood did not transform me instantly into the kind of person who is unfailingly loving, kind and generous. It is a bloody hard lot of work being nice when someone wants you to tickle them rather than permitting you to sip tea and read a long novel undisturbed. It is very annoying to have to be the grownup all the time. And no matter how much I love my children, becoming a parent did not transform me into the kind of person who wants to play peekaboo for three consecutive hours.
It amazes me that five years and two days ago that my leisure hours were my own, that my house was not decorate with brightly colored plastic toys and that cheerios were not a staple of both my diet and my carpetting. I miss that past in the nostalgic way that people who liked high school (not me!!!) miss high school - I don't think they'd really like to go back, just that they want a do over, a way to properly appreciate and enjoy what they have. But strangely, I like my life without free time, surrounded by noise and chaos and small people who want nothing so much as my undivided attention. I miss them when they aren't around (although I do make do with my novels ;-).
Anyway, Happy birthday Eli, from your chaotic, ambivalent, disorganized Mother. I love you even when you drive me nuts, even when I'm the most horrible Mom in the world and won't let you watch any tv. I wouldn't change a thing about you, except maybe the spaghetti stains on your shirt and ....socks?
Cheers,
Sharon
Sunday, March 06, 2005
DOE Actually acknowledges Peak Oil!!!
So the department of Energy published a report recently acknowledging the reality of peak oil, and that it will take a minimum of twenty years to prevent a crisis - and that no one knows if we have twenty years or not (hint, probably not!). They acknowledged massive disruption to personal transportation and the economy if the problem is not fixed in time - not, however, to the food supply, which is the most urgent concern.
Peak oil is coming. G-d willing, the government might even wake up soon enough to start making a little bit of difference (after the next election, at the earliest, I'm sure!) But the rest of us can't wait. The DOE, (who I think are radically underestimating the scope of the problem, but at least they've noticed) are saying we need twenty years *from when we make radical change* - and trillions and trillions of dollars in investment (love those deficits!). So we're talking 23 1/2 years at a minimum (assuming we don't elect another oilman), and a hundreds of trillions of dollars we don't have.
We can't wait for the government to fix it!!!! The only way this can be mitigated, the only way the next depression can be softened, the only way the danger of actual starvation, war on our soil, and social crisis can be averted (to any degree) is by immediate, grassroots organizing. That means everyone reading this. Personal preparations are great - you need to get your house in order, and be prepared to deal with this on a personal level. But that DOES NOT exempt any one of us from creating community solutions. This cannot be a wholly personal thing - if everyone else in your community is jobless and hungry, all the personal preparations in the world won't help you. If there are no jobs, you may not be able to finish your preps in time. If the economy tanks and inflation goes wild, you may lose your "safe" home with all its preparations. If war comes your way, you may be made a refugee with no where to go. As important as personal preparation is, more urgent is preparing at every level - family, neighborhood, town, city, state, region, nation, to face this collectively.
What do you need? Greenspace to grow food, and people who know how. Local, sustainable industry and home businesses. Low carbon or no carbon ways of distributing materials and resources. Ways of making and doing things that are environmentally sound and energy efficient. Strong family and communal ties, that encourage collaboration and cooperation, rather than conflict. Support services for the needy - it might be you one day. A commitment to maximizing resources for everyone, rather than individual profit.
How do you get those things? Talk about peak oil to everyone - with your family, in your church/synagogue/temple/mosque, with your neighbors. But don't make them crazy - even if they don't believe in peak oil, they probably believe in things like stopping sprawl, creating community canneries and food banks, creating community gardens and greenspace, reforming livestock laws, encouraging food and water security, providing emergency training for EMS and fire services, sustainable woodland harvesting, gardening clubs, etc... You don't have to spend all your time yelling "peak oil" out loud - instead, start yelling "let's make this a better, more secure place for everyone.
Run for office - anything. School board? Sure, you can encourage energy wise policies, get gardening programs and 4H into the schools, bring in guest speakers on fossil fuel issues? Town council? Keep those woodlands open, build community gardens, make it legal to keep chickens within the city limits, create mixed zoning.
Start a peak oil group - meet up with people who are as concerned as you are. You find them in the strangest places - a friend of mine from synagogue, who has never been very receptive on the subject recently brought her father over for dinner, and it turns out he's involved in peak oil in his area. Post signs at the library, at the bookstore, on the bulletin boards, at meet-up.com, at your local university.
Run a showing of the film _The End of Suburbia_ which introduces the concept in a friendly way. The DVD is cheap, and you can have a party in your living room. Talk about it.
Get involved in providing support systems for the poor - there are going to be more of them. Write/call/email your legislators. Help your neighbor plant a garden. Write an article for your local paper calling for victory gardens, gas conservation days. Organize a celebration of a local food or product. Start a home business that isn't reliant on fossil fuels. Prepare your children to live in a post-peak world. Do it today, and tomorrow, and again the next day - the government won't fix it, so everything depends on us.
Sharon
Peak oil is coming. G-d willing, the government might even wake up soon enough to start making a little bit of difference (after the next election, at the earliest, I'm sure!) But the rest of us can't wait. The DOE, (who I think are radically underestimating the scope of the problem, but at least they've noticed) are saying we need twenty years *from when we make radical change* - and trillions and trillions of dollars in investment (love those deficits!). So we're talking 23 1/2 years at a minimum (assuming we don't elect another oilman), and a hundreds of trillions of dollars we don't have.
We can't wait for the government to fix it!!!! The only way this can be mitigated, the only way the next depression can be softened, the only way the danger of actual starvation, war on our soil, and social crisis can be averted (to any degree) is by immediate, grassroots organizing. That means everyone reading this. Personal preparations are great - you need to get your house in order, and be prepared to deal with this on a personal level. But that DOES NOT exempt any one of us from creating community solutions. This cannot be a wholly personal thing - if everyone else in your community is jobless and hungry, all the personal preparations in the world won't help you. If there are no jobs, you may not be able to finish your preps in time. If the economy tanks and inflation goes wild, you may lose your "safe" home with all its preparations. If war comes your way, you may be made a refugee with no where to go. As important as personal preparation is, more urgent is preparing at every level - family, neighborhood, town, city, state, region, nation, to face this collectively.
What do you need? Greenspace to grow food, and people who know how. Local, sustainable industry and home businesses. Low carbon or no carbon ways of distributing materials and resources. Ways of making and doing things that are environmentally sound and energy efficient. Strong family and communal ties, that encourage collaboration and cooperation, rather than conflict. Support services for the needy - it might be you one day. A commitment to maximizing resources for everyone, rather than individual profit.
How do you get those things? Talk about peak oil to everyone - with your family, in your church/synagogue/temple/mosque, with your neighbors. But don't make them crazy - even if they don't believe in peak oil, they probably believe in things like stopping sprawl, creating community canneries and food banks, creating community gardens and greenspace, reforming livestock laws, encouraging food and water security, providing emergency training for EMS and fire services, sustainable woodland harvesting, gardening clubs, etc... You don't have to spend all your time yelling "peak oil" out loud - instead, start yelling "let's make this a better, more secure place for everyone.
Run for office - anything. School board? Sure, you can encourage energy wise policies, get gardening programs and 4H into the schools, bring in guest speakers on fossil fuel issues? Town council? Keep those woodlands open, build community gardens, make it legal to keep chickens within the city limits, create mixed zoning.
Start a peak oil group - meet up with people who are as concerned as you are. You find them in the strangest places - a friend of mine from synagogue, who has never been very receptive on the subject recently brought her father over for dinner, and it turns out he's involved in peak oil in his area. Post signs at the library, at the bookstore, on the bulletin boards, at meet-up.com, at your local university.
Run a showing of the film _The End of Suburbia_ which introduces the concept in a friendly way. The DVD is cheap, and you can have a party in your living room. Talk about it.
Get involved in providing support systems for the poor - there are going to be more of them. Write/call/email your legislators. Help your neighbor plant a garden. Write an article for your local paper calling for victory gardens, gas conservation days. Organize a celebration of a local food or product. Start a home business that isn't reliant on fossil fuels. Prepare your children to live in a post-peak world. Do it today, and tomorrow, and again the next day - the government won't fix it, so everything depends on us.
Sharon
The Bird Boy
My 3 year old, Simon is an obsessive sort of personality. When he's interested in something, he eats, sleeps, breathes it. He's always been fascinated by animals, especially owls and bats, but has gone through fixations on rainforests, construction equipment, predatory animals, rhyming and others. Right now, we're on birds and nursery rhymes. We have a copy of Audobon's _Birds of North America_ (1935 edition, inherited from my great-grandmother) and Simon is totally obsessed with it. He carries it everywhere (an accomplishment - he weighs 36 lbs, and the book weighs at least 1/6 that), and he has memorized all of the birds in it - he can tell you the difference between Canada Warbler, Carbonated Warbler and Prothonotary Warbler (even after repeated examination of this book, I can't), and can recognize them on sight. He knows where the birds live, what they eat, what eats them, etc... and he will cheerfully tell you (and if he doesn't know, he'll cheerfully make it up. He's into predation, and often will describe very small birds eating very large animals - for example, observing that wood thrushes eat Jaguars. They don't, generally.) all about it.
He's also obsessed with nursery rhymes, and any short poetry suitable for children. The literary critic in me is so pleased to watch my son absorbing rhyme and scansion so happily. Eric and I have a gentle competition to make our children into humanists (me) or scientists (him), and I feel I'm winning. Even the bird thing is really much more old style philosophical naturalist than modern ornithologist, or so I like to believe ;-).
He makes up his own nursery rhymes - my current favorite (see if you can recognize his primary literary influences) is "What are little toothbrushes made of...made of... What are little toothbrushes made of? Toothpaste and Snails and Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. That's what little toothbrushes are made of." Toothbrushes are clearly more ominous than I had previously believed. After clarifying the meanings of each of the triad "gunpowder, treason and plot," Simon announced, "plot is my favorite." We have not yet explained how to make gunpowder, and I think we'll wait on that one for a while.
In other news, it looks like Eli will probably get into the kidnergarten program we want him to. We're very pleased, although a little nervous. It is an ABA program, and while his preschool education has contained elements of ABA (to which Eli has respondend very well) I'm ambivalent about the whole thing, but hopeful.
Otherwise, spring preparations are ongoing. I hope all is well with you!
Sharon
He's also obsessed with nursery rhymes, and any short poetry suitable for children. The literary critic in me is so pleased to watch my son absorbing rhyme and scansion so happily. Eric and I have a gentle competition to make our children into humanists (me) or scientists (him), and I feel I'm winning. Even the bird thing is really much more old style philosophical naturalist than modern ornithologist, or so I like to believe ;-).
He makes up his own nursery rhymes - my current favorite (see if you can recognize his primary literary influences) is "What are little toothbrushes made of...made of... What are little toothbrushes made of? Toothpaste and Snails and Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. That's what little toothbrushes are made of." Toothbrushes are clearly more ominous than I had previously believed. After clarifying the meanings of each of the triad "gunpowder, treason and plot," Simon announced, "plot is my favorite." We have not yet explained how to make gunpowder, and I think we'll wait on that one for a while.
In other news, it looks like Eli will probably get into the kidnergarten program we want him to. We're very pleased, although a little nervous. It is an ABA program, and while his preschool education has contained elements of ABA (to which Eli has respondend very well) I'm ambivalent about the whole thing, but hopeful.
Otherwise, spring preparations are ongoing. I hope all is well with you!
Sharon
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The Great Sock Rant of '05
The Great Sock Rant of Aught-Five.
Ok, I'm going to violate a personal rule against over-generalizing by saying that everyone preparing for peak oil ought to know how to make socks. I mean everyone - that means gentlemen as well as ladies, the crafty and the uncrafty, rural and urban. Why? Because the one category of clothing that someone is bound to run out of sooner or later is socks - the simply wear out too fast. And they are totally essential - ask anyone who has ever walked 30 miles in boots without socks how the experience went. Or ask someone living in a cold climate who doesn't have good socks how many toes he has left after working outside all day in -20 degrees.
Even if you live somewhere warm and your bare feet are as hard as diamonds, I'm going to suggest you know how to make socks anyhow - first of all, hard times make a lot of refugees, and none of us knows for sure where we're going to end up. Second of all, it is a simple, useful skill that could make you some money with little outlay of cash. For the disabled, elderly, pregnant and those tied down by infants, sock knitting is an essential service that you can provide and be useful with. With practice, it can be done by the blind or in very low-light situations, making it possible to do useful work while sitting around and singing, talking, but without extra lighting. It is a lot of fun, almost everyone can do it, and it can be done almost anywhere. You need not have a farm, money, lots of free time, expensive tools or anything else to start.
Basic information - socks are made from yarn. You could sew fabric socks with cloth and elastic, but the quality is not as high as knitted or crocheted, and they wouldn't stay up as well or wear well. Now where do you get yarn after peak oil? Well, first of all, you can store yarn for sock making. Socks can be knitted from any natural fiber (not sure how silk socks would work out), although wool and cotton make the most sense. Most sock yarn is pricey, and has some nylon in it to give it extra strength. If you have the money, you can buy that stuff, of course, but otherwise, you could easily buy any cheap wool, cotton or blend yarn and store a lot of it. Good sources for cheap yarn are www.knitpicks.com and www.elann.com. If you buy wool, keep it in a mothproof place.
Or, you can make your own yarn. Yarn can be made from a large range of animal fibers - urban dwellers without easy access to sheep, for example, might try using dog hair (although I'm told that it smells like wet dog when wet ;-P, or keeping a few angora or angora cross rabbits for meat and fiber). Neither angora nor dog will last as long as wool or cotton, but it is better than nothing, and both are tremendously warm. You also could buy roving or raw fleece from someone with sheep, or some raw cotton. You might find some to practice on at www.woolery.com but probably would get the best deals buying direct from shepherds or small scale cotton growers. If you live in a warm climate and have a garden, you can grow cotton. If you live somewhere cold you can grow flax for linen. If you have land and inclination, you can have sheep or rabbits, alpacas or camels, yaks or llamas or some other fiber animal. You might want to stick with wool and cotton to start, though.
Yarn is made by spinning, and you do not need an expensive spinning wheel to make yarn. You can easily buy a drop spindle on ebay or at www.woolery.com, or make one by following the instructions here and using a dowel, a metal hook and a freebie CD. Drop spindle spinning is considerably slower than wheel spinning, but much cheaper, the equipment fits easily in a pack or bug-out bag, and if all you are going to do is make socks, it probably isn't worth buying a wheel. Instructions for making a spindle and using it are available here: it takes practice, but it isn't a terribly hard skill to learn. Like all skills, it is best if someone shows you, but you can learn it fairly well from written instructions. If you do want to buy a spinning wheel, take a class or at least try a bunch of wheels. My personal recommendation is for a Kromski wheel - reasonably priced for a beginner, good enough for when you get better, and made entirely of wood and metal parts, so that it can easily be repaired or parts made after the peak (I have no connection to Kromski, other than owning and liking their stuff.) Lee Raven's book Hands On Spinning is a really good place to start learning. This website has some useful information as well.
Once you have yarn, you need to know how to knit or crochet. It is impossible to learn how to knit socks without learning how to knit other things. First you've got to learn straight needles. Knitting is definitely one of those things best learned from another person, so take a class in adult ed or at a yarn shop, get a friend or family member to show you, or try trading visits at a local nursing home for knitting lessons. But if you must learn from written instructions, the best book I've found is Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting - well worth the money or the interlibrary loan. The book is pitched to 8 year olds, but is great for uncoordinated adults like me who have trouble with visual instructions. It also has a very simple sock pattern, with no heel turning in it, not a terrible place to start. You could also try to learn from www.learntoknit.com but I've not tried it, and I can't promise anything.
The initial investment for knitting need not be large. In a pinch, you can make needles out wooden dowels, sharpened in a pencil sharpener. Otherwise, a good way to get a reasonable range of needle sizes is to buy a bunch from an estate sale or on ebay - large batches often go quite cheap. You could easily get away with one pair of straight needles, size 10 (for learning basic skills) and a couple of sets of double pointed needles, but more is better. You really can make them too. They come up cheap at yard sales too.
Socks are tubular, so they are knitted on double pointed needles, or on two circular needles. Here's a link to visual instructions and a basic sock pattern for dpns - most patterns are written for these. If you want to get fancier, Nancy Bush's _Folk Socks_ has wonderful patterns and a wealth of information. The most useful book on doing it with two circulars (which requires a larger initial investment but is my preferred method and IMHO is faster) is the inanely titled (but useful) Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles_ by Cat Bordhi. There's another book out there called _The Magic Loop_ (don't know the author) about doing them on one really long circular as well, but I know nothing about this.
Crocheting is easier than knitting, although I find it more irritating as repetetive motions go since I have carpal, and IMHO, not as versatile for socks, but you certainly can make plenty of socks by crocheting. To crochet, you need a couple of hooks, which could be easily made by anyone with a modicum of woodworking skill, or which can be bought cheaply in bunches on ebay or at walmart. A good size range of aluminum hooks costs about $5. One advantage crocheting has over knitting is that the hooks are not tied up in the piece of work - you can have six pairs of socks going at once using the same two hooks.
The best book I've seen for beginners is Pauline Turner's How to Crochet although it does not include a sock pattern. The best book on socks is Rehfeldt and Wood's Crocheted Socks! Again, you really only need one basic pattern, and can probably find some easily on the web. But if you can, get someone to show you the tricks - it really is easier.
Felted boots can be easily made by knitting or crocheting a large sock and then felting it - felting is what happens when you accidentally throw a wool sweater in the dryer - it shrinks, the material becomes less permeable to water, thicker, warmer - all good things in footwear. I don't know of a pattern for felted boots, but I more or less made up my own by knitting some really big socks on size 15 needles, and then felting them, and using laces (made of felted wool or leather) to tie them tight - it doesn't really matter if they are a little big. Felting only works with wool, which is why, unless you live in the tropics, wool is probably the most practical material for boot making - but if you live in the tropics, you probably don't need snow boots anyhow, and can simply use the tire sandals. A good book on felting is Knit One, Felt Too , although I've forgotten the author's name, but while it has some sock and slipper patterns, it doesn't have a scandinavian style felted boot - but you can figure it out. Crocheting should work fine too, but I haven't tried it.
Re:wool - lots of people think they are allergic to wool, and some genuinely are. But many are allergic to the chemicals used to strip the lanolin from wool, not the wool itself, and can use organic wool or handspun. If by allergic, you mean you find wool scratchy or itchy, you might try merino wool, which is very fine, and commonly worn next to the skin by babies. My mother, who has severe eczema and thought she was allergic to wool can easily wear merino handspun. If you are allergic to wool, you might still try the felted boot idea, if you can get someone else to make it for you, since there is no reason you can't wear socks of some other material between your skin and the boot.
HTH,
Sharon in upstate NY, where she is all set on sock yarn for the apocalypse
Ok, I'm going to violate a personal rule against over-generalizing by saying that everyone preparing for peak oil ought to know how to make socks. I mean everyone - that means gentlemen as well as ladies, the crafty and the uncrafty, rural and urban. Why? Because the one category of clothing that someone is bound to run out of sooner or later is socks - the simply wear out too fast. And they are totally essential - ask anyone who has ever walked 30 miles in boots without socks how the experience went. Or ask someone living in a cold climate who doesn't have good socks how many toes he has left after working outside all day in -20 degrees.
Even if you live somewhere warm and your bare feet are as hard as diamonds, I'm going to suggest you know how to make socks anyhow - first of all, hard times make a lot of refugees, and none of us knows for sure where we're going to end up. Second of all, it is a simple, useful skill that could make you some money with little outlay of cash. For the disabled, elderly, pregnant and those tied down by infants, sock knitting is an essential service that you can provide and be useful with. With practice, it can be done by the blind or in very low-light situations, making it possible to do useful work while sitting around and singing, talking, but without extra lighting. It is a lot of fun, almost everyone can do it, and it can be done almost anywhere. You need not have a farm, money, lots of free time, expensive tools or anything else to start.
Basic information - socks are made from yarn. You could sew fabric socks with cloth and elastic, but the quality is not as high as knitted or crocheted, and they wouldn't stay up as well or wear well. Now where do you get yarn after peak oil? Well, first of all, you can store yarn for sock making. Socks can be knitted from any natural fiber (not sure how silk socks would work out), although wool and cotton make the most sense. Most sock yarn is pricey, and has some nylon in it to give it extra strength. If you have the money, you can buy that stuff, of course, but otherwise, you could easily buy any cheap wool, cotton or blend yarn and store a lot of it. Good sources for cheap yarn are www.knitpicks.com and www.elann.com. If you buy wool, keep it in a mothproof place.
Or, you can make your own yarn. Yarn can be made from a large range of animal fibers - urban dwellers without easy access to sheep, for example, might try using dog hair (although I'm told that it smells like wet dog when wet ;-P, or keeping a few angora or angora cross rabbits for meat and fiber). Neither angora nor dog will last as long as wool or cotton, but it is better than nothing, and both are tremendously warm. You also could buy roving or raw fleece from someone with sheep, or some raw cotton. You might find some to practice on at www.woolery.com but probably would get the best deals buying direct from shepherds or small scale cotton growers. If you live in a warm climate and have a garden, you can grow cotton. If you live somewhere cold you can grow flax for linen. If you have land and inclination, you can have sheep or rabbits, alpacas or camels, yaks or llamas or some other fiber animal. You might want to stick with wool and cotton to start, though.
Yarn is made by spinning, and you do not need an expensive spinning wheel to make yarn. You can easily buy a drop spindle on ebay or at www.woolery.com, or make one by following the instructions here and using a dowel, a metal hook and a freebie CD. Drop spindle spinning is considerably slower than wheel spinning, but much cheaper, the equipment fits easily in a pack or bug-out bag, and if all you are going to do is make socks, it probably isn't worth buying a wheel. Instructions for making a spindle and using it are available here: it takes practice, but it isn't a terribly hard skill to learn. Like all skills, it is best if someone shows you, but you can learn it fairly well from written instructions. If you do want to buy a spinning wheel, take a class or at least try a bunch of wheels. My personal recommendation is for a Kromski wheel - reasonably priced for a beginner, good enough for when you get better, and made entirely of wood and metal parts, so that it can easily be repaired or parts made after the peak (I have no connection to Kromski, other than owning and liking their stuff.) Lee Raven's book Hands On Spinning is a really good place to start learning. This website has some useful information as well.
Once you have yarn, you need to know how to knit or crochet. It is impossible to learn how to knit socks without learning how to knit other things. First you've got to learn straight needles. Knitting is definitely one of those things best learned from another person, so take a class in adult ed or at a yarn shop, get a friend or family member to show you, or try trading visits at a local nursing home for knitting lessons. But if you must learn from written instructions, the best book I've found is Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting - well worth the money or the interlibrary loan. The book is pitched to 8 year olds, but is great for uncoordinated adults like me who have trouble with visual instructions. It also has a very simple sock pattern, with no heel turning in it, not a terrible place to start. You could also try to learn from www.learntoknit.com but I've not tried it, and I can't promise anything.
The initial investment for knitting need not be large. In a pinch, you can make needles out wooden dowels, sharpened in a pencil sharpener. Otherwise, a good way to get a reasonable range of needle sizes is to buy a bunch from an estate sale or on ebay - large batches often go quite cheap. You could easily get away with one pair of straight needles, size 10 (for learning basic skills) and a couple of sets of double pointed needles, but more is better. You really can make them too. They come up cheap at yard sales too.
Socks are tubular, so they are knitted on double pointed needles, or on two circular needles. Here's a link to visual instructions and a basic sock pattern for dpns - most patterns are written for these. If you want to get fancier, Nancy Bush's _Folk Socks_ has wonderful patterns and a wealth of information. The most useful book on doing it with two circulars (which requires a larger initial investment but is my preferred method and IMHO is faster) is the inanely titled (but useful) Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles_ by Cat Bordhi. There's another book out there called _The Magic Loop_ (don't know the author) about doing them on one really long circular as well, but I know nothing about this.
Crocheting is easier than knitting, although I find it more irritating as repetetive motions go since I have carpal, and IMHO, not as versatile for socks, but you certainly can make plenty of socks by crocheting. To crochet, you need a couple of hooks, which could be easily made by anyone with a modicum of woodworking skill, or which can be bought cheaply in bunches on ebay or at walmart. A good size range of aluminum hooks costs about $5. One advantage crocheting has over knitting is that the hooks are not tied up in the piece of work - you can have six pairs of socks going at once using the same two hooks.
The best book I've seen for beginners is Pauline Turner's How to Crochet although it does not include a sock pattern. The best book on socks is Rehfeldt and Wood's Crocheted Socks! Again, you really only need one basic pattern, and can probably find some easily on the web. But if you can, get someone to show you the tricks - it really is easier.
Felted boots can be easily made by knitting or crocheting a large sock and then felting it - felting is what happens when you accidentally throw a wool sweater in the dryer - it shrinks, the material becomes less permeable to water, thicker, warmer - all good things in footwear. I don't know of a pattern for felted boots, but I more or less made up my own by knitting some really big socks on size 15 needles, and then felting them, and using laces (made of felted wool or leather) to tie them tight - it doesn't really matter if they are a little big. Felting only works with wool, which is why, unless you live in the tropics, wool is probably the most practical material for boot making - but if you live in the tropics, you probably don't need snow boots anyhow, and can simply use the tire sandals. A good book on felting is Knit One, Felt Too , although I've forgotten the author's name, but while it has some sock and slipper patterns, it doesn't have a scandinavian style felted boot - but you can figure it out. Crocheting should work fine too, but I haven't tried it.
Re:wool - lots of people think they are allergic to wool, and some genuinely are. But many are allergic to the chemicals used to strip the lanolin from wool, not the wool itself, and can use organic wool or handspun. If by allergic, you mean you find wool scratchy or itchy, you might try merino wool, which is very fine, and commonly worn next to the skin by babies. My mother, who has severe eczema and thought she was allergic to wool can easily wear merino handspun. If you are allergic to wool, you might still try the felted boot idea, if you can get someone else to make it for you, since there is no reason you can't wear socks of some other material between your skin and the boot.
HTH,
Sharon in upstate NY, where she is all set on sock yarn for the apocalypse
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
We're upright and walking!!!
Isaiah took his first steps yesterday! 13 1/2 months - right on target for my kids. I'm always a little relieved when they start really walking - the proto-ambulatory stage tends to be one of the most dangerous for little people. Toddlers are so top-heavy, they fall right on their faces.
I had thought Isaiah would be an early walker - by the time of his first birthday, he had all the physical skills down - cruising, could stand unassisted, etc... But I did not reckon with creativity, a creativity that obviated the need for joining the homo erectus - he figured out a way to crawl with things in his hands, even both hands. Isaiah managed to create a weird, hunchbacked, Lon Cheney thing in which he used on knuckle and one leg to drag himself across the room with books, toys, etc... One has to imagine that had things evolved a little differently, we'd all be hauling around like that, and "Igor" would be a name of honor.
There was an article in the Sunday Times this week on family life blogs - about how there are thousands of the things, documenting every moment of family life, all giving comic exposure to the funny and dark side of parenthood. Now parenthood is indeed both dark and funny, and I enjoy reading about it in that particular tone. I write about it that way sometimes too. There's nothing in the world that can make you feel so stupid, and amoral and small as bad parenting (and I've done more than my share) and nothing funnier than watching yourself doing it with ironic detachment - except hearing it described the same way and having one of those "aha!" moments where you realize that you aren't the only one in the world who has actually named the cheerios that your children eat off the floor (ok, I think we probably *are* the only ones, and Eric coined them "floorios" when Eli first started throwing solid food).
And yet, despite the temptation, I try really hard not to write about my spouse or kids too much that way. Oh, there are moments. But I've been the subject of those stories as well, and I know that if they don't sound totally affectionate to me, they won't to my children. I'd like to think that if they ever cared, they could read the remnants of Mommy's blog, and not see themselves mined, however lovingly, for comic relief.
But the other thing is that ironic detachment is not how I connect to my family. I realize this sounds soppy and stupid, but I *ADORE* my husband and my kids - and I mean that literally. Of course they drive me insane. But then, I'm famously annoying, and they love me anyway, so that doesn't matter too much. I want to write about them as they deserve - and mostly, they don't deserve to be the subject of my humor. Instead, they deserve praise to the skies - I want everyone to know that my husband, despite having serious reservations, picked up and moved to the country for me because I couldn't stand not having a garden. He grew up in a household where you called the super to change the lightbulbs - but he learned to maintain small engines, shovel manure, hatch chicken eggs and build farm implements. He's cute and smart and funny, and he thinks I'm beautiful. You should understand how insane that last thing is - I am not even pretty, and while people who loved me have seen me, through the light of love, as attractive, even striking, nobody but Eric has ever thought me beautiful. And he thought it before he loved me, thinks it when I've been working in the garden on a 90 degree day, and says that he likes to "show me off." How many men are there like this?
The same is true of my kids. Eli works so hard to talk to me, even though language fits him about as well as my Dad's size 14WWWW shoes would. And he comes home from school and leaps into my arms and demands to be tickled, even though half the time I have no idea what he's saying or what he wants and needs. Simon sits on the potty even though he's scared to death of it, and explains to me (with total respect, although with some confusion as to why I don't get it) why he's picking invisible hummingbirds off the tails of our cats and Isaiah sees me as the source of all warmth, love, milk and goodness. So yes, they are funny. But they are sources of such profound joy that I can't bring myself to mock them, even with love. It's superstition, I guess - the belief that if you don't value things properly, you might not get to keep them.
Please don't take this to mean that when I write about my children it will be a Hallmark card, an unending sapfest that induces vomiting and seizures in the ironic. I hope not. I'm perfectly capable of making fun of them and myself. Nor do I think comic writing means lack of love. But I can't bring myself to make them the comic center of self-deprecating narratives, for fear that someday, they would feel (as I did before I had children) that I found them funny because I did not see them as worthy of my respect.
Shalom,
Sharon
I had thought Isaiah would be an early walker - by the time of his first birthday, he had all the physical skills down - cruising, could stand unassisted, etc... But I did not reckon with creativity, a creativity that obviated the need for joining the homo erectus - he figured out a way to crawl with things in his hands, even both hands. Isaiah managed to create a weird, hunchbacked, Lon Cheney thing in which he used on knuckle and one leg to drag himself across the room with books, toys, etc... One has to imagine that had things evolved a little differently, we'd all be hauling around like that, and "Igor" would be a name of honor.
There was an article in the Sunday Times this week on family life blogs - about how there are thousands of the things, documenting every moment of family life, all giving comic exposure to the funny and dark side of parenthood. Now parenthood is indeed both dark and funny, and I enjoy reading about it in that particular tone. I write about it that way sometimes too. There's nothing in the world that can make you feel so stupid, and amoral and small as bad parenting (and I've done more than my share) and nothing funnier than watching yourself doing it with ironic detachment - except hearing it described the same way and having one of those "aha!" moments where you realize that you aren't the only one in the world who has actually named the cheerios that your children eat off the floor (ok, I think we probably *are* the only ones, and Eric coined them "floorios" when Eli first started throwing solid food).
And yet, despite the temptation, I try really hard not to write about my spouse or kids too much that way. Oh, there are moments. But I've been the subject of those stories as well, and I know that if they don't sound totally affectionate to me, they won't to my children. I'd like to think that if they ever cared, they could read the remnants of Mommy's blog, and not see themselves mined, however lovingly, for comic relief.
But the other thing is that ironic detachment is not how I connect to my family. I realize this sounds soppy and stupid, but I *ADORE* my husband and my kids - and I mean that literally. Of course they drive me insane. But then, I'm famously annoying, and they love me anyway, so that doesn't matter too much. I want to write about them as they deserve - and mostly, they don't deserve to be the subject of my humor. Instead, they deserve praise to the skies - I want everyone to know that my husband, despite having serious reservations, picked up and moved to the country for me because I couldn't stand not having a garden. He grew up in a household where you called the super to change the lightbulbs - but he learned to maintain small engines, shovel manure, hatch chicken eggs and build farm implements. He's cute and smart and funny, and he thinks I'm beautiful. You should understand how insane that last thing is - I am not even pretty, and while people who loved me have seen me, through the light of love, as attractive, even striking, nobody but Eric has ever thought me beautiful. And he thought it before he loved me, thinks it when I've been working in the garden on a 90 degree day, and says that he likes to "show me off." How many men are there like this?
The same is true of my kids. Eli works so hard to talk to me, even though language fits him about as well as my Dad's size 14WWWW shoes would. And he comes home from school and leaps into my arms and demands to be tickled, even though half the time I have no idea what he's saying or what he wants and needs. Simon sits on the potty even though he's scared to death of it, and explains to me (with total respect, although with some confusion as to why I don't get it) why he's picking invisible hummingbirds off the tails of our cats and Isaiah sees me as the source of all warmth, love, milk and goodness. So yes, they are funny. But they are sources of such profound joy that I can't bring myself to mock them, even with love. It's superstition, I guess - the belief that if you don't value things properly, you might not get to keep them.
Please don't take this to mean that when I write about my children it will be a Hallmark card, an unending sapfest that induces vomiting and seizures in the ironic. I hope not. I'm perfectly capable of making fun of them and myself. Nor do I think comic writing means lack of love. But I can't bring myself to make them the comic center of self-deprecating narratives, for fear that someday, they would feel (as I did before I had children) that I found them funny because I did not see them as worthy of my respect.
Shalom,
Sharon
Friday, January 21, 2005
The Female of the Species, and children's books
Simon thinks that a "female" is a kind of bird. I was trying to explain that a "peahen" is a girl peacock, but what he took from that was that there was another kind of bird called a "female." When I tried to explain that Mommy was a female human, he told me that he was an owl-boy. So we've decided to let it go. I'll just hope he works this one out by high school or so.
My mother finally remember to send me a clipping she'd cut out a while back. My dissertation advisor wrote an article for the Boston Globe praising Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series, and incidentally dismissing JK Rowlings and the Harry Potter series. Check it out here: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/06/13/childish_things/
I'm generally inclined to argue with Billy just for the fun of it (and probably for some bizarre Freudian reasons caused by generally feeling inadequate around someone that smart), but I admit, since I got it on Monday, I've been mulling over, not so much his praise of Pullman, who is a good writer, although I'm not passionate about it, but the need to critique the Harry Potter books, which seems like a general compulsion for people who talk about children's books. I think that part of this analysis is wrong, and it bears looking at. Particularly when you compare the visions of childhood and the transition towards adulthood that are presented by Pullman and Rowling. In the end, I think Rowling offers up the more radical possibilities, and perhaps a more powerful way for young readers to think about the transformation they are experiencing.
Let me say upfront that I liked both series, but also believe there is plenty to criticize in both. (On no level do I think that Pullman is the "most electrifying piece of literature in 20 years, although I do admire him.) How could I fail to adore a vindication of Milton, Blake, Gnosticism and the fortunate fall? Pullman does a truly astonishing and wonderful job of introducing a new theology, and an old new way of reading Bible to people who are unlikely to pick up Blake at random (if only because voluntarily reading something you were assigned in high school is so painful.)
On the other hand, Pullman is clearly more interested in plot than characters, and it shows. The fall is ultimately played out through the awakening and maturity of his two main child characters, Will and Lyra. But neither character really changes very much in the course of the book - or rather, Will, who begins tediously and ends that way, remains much the same. Lyra, however, changes in disturbing ways. Adolescence and the beginning of sexual awakening transform her into a clingy, whiny, passive figure, who allows Will to rescue her (finally, in a soap-operaesque moment, from a drug induced coma caused by her badly torn mother who resonates wildly and creatively from bad Mommy to good, and is much more fun than Lyra) whenever times become hard. In the first book, child Lyra is a powerful and creative actor in her own world. By the end, Will is the actor and Lyra merely clings admiringly to his shoulder a lot. I admit, as much as I'd like to be pleased that Pullman placed a girl at the center of his novels, I can't be, particularly since his vision of sexual awakening is so damned boring.
Pullman's books are often ponderous and sometimes pretentious - my cousin told me that she gave up on the third book half way through the extremely lengthy "does she or doesn't she fall" section, and I admit, I put the book down then too. And he does an extremely poor job of showing why characters care for one another - they simply do, there are no explanations. We are told that the polar-bear mercenary and other adults love Lyra, but never shown how the love developed between them. Another adult character is more than willing to die for her, and then serve her needs in hell, but the evolution of his feeling for her is hasty, awkward and often left out. If love matters, as Pullman claims it does, if passion matters, it would be nice to see some genuine love, and it creation and complexity as an actual human thing, rather than a convenient plot device.
But the reason I really like Rowling better than Pullman (besides the fact that Rowling is funny and Pullman is painfully never so), is that ultimately, Rowling believes in growing up as a fundamentally positive (although painful) process, whereas Pullman's vision is another tedious version of Wordsworth, where no one ever really gets over the loss of becoming an adult. Rowling is a radical in the field of children's literature in that she presents the process of becoming an adult as a potentially exciting adventure, fraught with terrible experiences, but ultimately a liberation from the powerlessness of childhood. It is true that her children have special powers, but their powers aren't ultimately what saves them - it is their maturity, in the best sense.
I will admit, the last book (#6) was not one of her better ones, particularly after the Fifth book, which was remarkable both for its story and for its terrific portrayal of adolescent misery. The funniest moment in _The Order of the Pheonix_ (to me, at least) involves the portrait of a former Hogwarts Headmaster berating Harry for acting like an adolescent, and for believing he is the center of the universe (which is precisely the case). The headmaster announces that this is exactly why he hates teenagers, a sentiment I can identify with both in retrospect and from the perspective of a teacher. And Harry doesn't particularly like being a miserable, enraged, bitter, grief stricken teenager. Perhaps because Will and Lyra have so many other things to do, they never actually are children or adolescents, while Rowling's characters get to experience late childhood and puberty with all its myriad joys.
Rowling's best characters are grownups, but they are grownups haunted by their own (mostly unhappy) childhoods, trying as best they can to be adults, even as watching the teenagers around them makes it a struggle. But the remarkable thing about all of the major "good" characters is that they *are* adults when it counts. Severus Snape, the malicious, troubled, troubling (and really cool) potions master who hates Harry with all his might based on an old grudge against his father, is also Harry's savior, teacher and ally on and off. I won't mention what happens at the end of Book 6, but it really is the only good thing about the most recent book - that Snape, again, has not been sanitized in his ambiguity. Compare Snape, or Sirius Black (Harry's troubled, angst riddent, tortured guardian) with Lyra's mother or father, both of whom are amusing, but who really have no reason, other than loathing for each other, for acting like such twits all the time. Lyra's parents eventually sacrifice themselves for her, on the theory that "good parenting involves doing this" but that makes no more sense than their original acts of evil. Voldemort at least fears death, something that makes a disturbing amount of sense to me, at least, and something that is fundamentally an adult, fear. Harry and his friends are learning to fear and accept it too.
The Harry Potter books present two generations of teenagers (one now grown and mentoring the next), both badly damaged by war, attempting to transform their world. They do it with full, visual knowledge of the consequences of their actions. They know they can die, they know they probably will, they are afraid, they are angry and resentful of the necessity, they do not dream of innocence, but rather of peace. Personally, I find that resonates far better in the present world than an account in which innocents save the world and lose only their true love for each other and their virginity. The former is a vision of the world in which honor and maturity are virtues to be claimed, rather than losses to be mourned, and I strongly prefer it.
Sharon
My mother finally remember to send me a clipping she'd cut out a while back. My dissertation advisor wrote an article for the Boston Globe praising Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series, and incidentally dismissing JK Rowlings and the Harry Potter series. Check it out here: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/06/13/childish_things/
I'm generally inclined to argue with Billy just for the fun of it (and probably for some bizarre Freudian reasons caused by generally feeling inadequate around someone that smart), but I admit, since I got it on Monday, I've been mulling over, not so much his praise of Pullman, who is a good writer, although I'm not passionate about it, but the need to critique the Harry Potter books, which seems like a general compulsion for people who talk about children's books. I think that part of this analysis is wrong, and it bears looking at. Particularly when you compare the visions of childhood and the transition towards adulthood that are presented by Pullman and Rowling. In the end, I think Rowling offers up the more radical possibilities, and perhaps a more powerful way for young readers to think about the transformation they are experiencing.
Let me say upfront that I liked both series, but also believe there is plenty to criticize in both. (On no level do I think that Pullman is the "most electrifying piece of literature in 20 years, although I do admire him.) How could I fail to adore a vindication of Milton, Blake, Gnosticism and the fortunate fall? Pullman does a truly astonishing and wonderful job of introducing a new theology, and an old new way of reading Bible to people who are unlikely to pick up Blake at random (if only because voluntarily reading something you were assigned in high school is so painful.)
On the other hand, Pullman is clearly more interested in plot than characters, and it shows. The fall is ultimately played out through the awakening and maturity of his two main child characters, Will and Lyra. But neither character really changes very much in the course of the book - or rather, Will, who begins tediously and ends that way, remains much the same. Lyra, however, changes in disturbing ways. Adolescence and the beginning of sexual awakening transform her into a clingy, whiny, passive figure, who allows Will to rescue her (finally, in a soap-operaesque moment, from a drug induced coma caused by her badly torn mother who resonates wildly and creatively from bad Mommy to good, and is much more fun than Lyra) whenever times become hard. In the first book, child Lyra is a powerful and creative actor in her own world. By the end, Will is the actor and Lyra merely clings admiringly to his shoulder a lot. I admit, as much as I'd like to be pleased that Pullman placed a girl at the center of his novels, I can't be, particularly since his vision of sexual awakening is so damned boring.
Pullman's books are often ponderous and sometimes pretentious - my cousin told me that she gave up on the third book half way through the extremely lengthy "does she or doesn't she fall" section, and I admit, I put the book down then too. And he does an extremely poor job of showing why characters care for one another - they simply do, there are no explanations. We are told that the polar-bear mercenary and other adults love Lyra, but never shown how the love developed between them. Another adult character is more than willing to die for her, and then serve her needs in hell, but the evolution of his feeling for her is hasty, awkward and often left out. If love matters, as Pullman claims it does, if passion matters, it would be nice to see some genuine love, and it creation and complexity as an actual human thing, rather than a convenient plot device.
But the reason I really like Rowling better than Pullman (besides the fact that Rowling is funny and Pullman is painfully never so), is that ultimately, Rowling believes in growing up as a fundamentally positive (although painful) process, whereas Pullman's vision is another tedious version of Wordsworth, where no one ever really gets over the loss of becoming an adult. Rowling is a radical in the field of children's literature in that she presents the process of becoming an adult as a potentially exciting adventure, fraught with terrible experiences, but ultimately a liberation from the powerlessness of childhood. It is true that her children have special powers, but their powers aren't ultimately what saves them - it is their maturity, in the best sense.
I will admit, the last book (#6) was not one of her better ones, particularly after the Fifth book, which was remarkable both for its story and for its terrific portrayal of adolescent misery. The funniest moment in _The Order of the Pheonix_ (to me, at least) involves the portrait of a former Hogwarts Headmaster berating Harry for acting like an adolescent, and for believing he is the center of the universe (which is precisely the case). The headmaster announces that this is exactly why he hates teenagers, a sentiment I can identify with both in retrospect and from the perspective of a teacher. And Harry doesn't particularly like being a miserable, enraged, bitter, grief stricken teenager. Perhaps because Will and Lyra have so many other things to do, they never actually are children or adolescents, while Rowling's characters get to experience late childhood and puberty with all its myriad joys.
Rowling's best characters are grownups, but they are grownups haunted by their own (mostly unhappy) childhoods, trying as best they can to be adults, even as watching the teenagers around them makes it a struggle. But the remarkable thing about all of the major "good" characters is that they *are* adults when it counts. Severus Snape, the malicious, troubled, troubling (and really cool) potions master who hates Harry with all his might based on an old grudge against his father, is also Harry's savior, teacher and ally on and off. I won't mention what happens at the end of Book 6, but it really is the only good thing about the most recent book - that Snape, again, has not been sanitized in his ambiguity. Compare Snape, or Sirius Black (Harry's troubled, angst riddent, tortured guardian) with Lyra's mother or father, both of whom are amusing, but who really have no reason, other than loathing for each other, for acting like such twits all the time. Lyra's parents eventually sacrifice themselves for her, on the theory that "good parenting involves doing this" but that makes no more sense than their original acts of evil. Voldemort at least fears death, something that makes a disturbing amount of sense to me, at least, and something that is fundamentally an adult, fear. Harry and his friends are learning to fear and accept it too.
The Harry Potter books present two generations of teenagers (one now grown and mentoring the next), both badly damaged by war, attempting to transform their world. They do it with full, visual knowledge of the consequences of their actions. They know they can die, they know they probably will, they are afraid, they are angry and resentful of the necessity, they do not dream of innocence, but rather of peace. Personally, I find that resonates far better in the present world than an account in which innocents save the world and lose only their true love for each other and their virginity. The former is a vision of the world in which honor and maturity are virtues to be claimed, rather than losses to be mourned, and I strongly prefer it.
Sharon
Friday, January 14, 2005
What's new here.
What am I reading: Ferenc Mate's _A Reasonable Life_: Love it, love it, love it!!! How have I not read this before? Its a rant against...well...modernity, and it is totally brilliant. I don't always like other people's rants (infringes on my territory, I guess ;-), but I love this one. Run out and get a copy. Be a better person than me and buy it new, if you can.
What am I listening to: "Best of Solomon Burke" - really good bass voices just make me want to weep with joy, or throw myself onto the person who has them. Seriously, ex-spouse Matt's attraction was in large part his amazing bass voice. So Solomon Burke makes me seriously happy.
What are we eating, and where did it come from?: Oh, you don't want to know. All the rain we've had flooded even the pop-up greenhouses that are supposed to mean winter greens. Forget it. It mostly came from the supermarket, its probably doused in poison.
Oh, we're still eating our own pickles, kimchi, jams and squash, but that' about it.
What's new?: Grandma comes back from 5 weeks in CA Sunday, I start seeds next week, we're starting to debate new critter acquisitions for the year - another dog? Goats? How many more chickens? More geese? Turkeys? Barn cats? Honeybees? Definitely no more ducks. Sheep? We're still waiting for Isaiah to walk - he's been on the verge forever. We think he's waiting for Grandma.
The big thing that's new, however, is that Eric and I are (vaguely, generally, sometime in the future) considering moving. Now that shouldn't shock anyone who knows me - I'm into change, the more radical the better. But anyone who has met Eric should be stunned into unconsciousness by the idea that *my husband* would contemplate moving. And I admit, I've been very happy here. This is entirely in the "maybe one of these days stage" - first of all, I doubt Grandma will go for it. Second, Eric would need to get a job at a small rural college in this area - or I would. Finally, the right house and land would have to be available, at the right price. It requires a confluence of factors that seems extremely unlikely - the job, the house, Grandma's consent.
So why are we even talking about it? Because the one thing we both despise about rural living is *CAR OWNERSHIP* and we're fantasizing about getting out of the car game. The other thing we both hate is debt and high taxes, and we've got a little of both (small mortgage on the property, and growing taxes). We'd like to live off grid, and on the cheap if possible. Right now, that's not really feasible.
But if Eric could get a job at one of the small SUNYs (or I could) or Community colleges in a small community with walkable/bikeable/horseandbuggiable resources available within four or five miles of farmland, we could give up the car entirely. We'd probably keep something old and semi-functional with no reg or insurance for racing children to the hospital in the most major of emergencies, but otherwise, no car. Oh, we'd probably rent once in a while to visit family, maybe even barter produce for carpools in nasty weather, but oh, what joy. Even walking to work in sleet and snow would be a considerable improvement over the fucking car. Less convenient? Sure. Happier, healthier, cheaper, less smelly, less dependent, better? Absolutely.
We'd love to be completely mortgage free, and frankly, I think after Grandma is gone I want a smaller house. The new addition gives us lots of space, but I'd rather live in a smaller house and be more crowded, and have less to keep clean. And I want a good barn, land that isn't as wet, and maybe more of it around me.
These things are just fantasy. I write them down because sometimes, if you are very lucky or you make things happen right, fantasies come true. We love our home, we love our life, I have a hard time thinking about walking away from this beautiful place and our wonderful neighbors, from the quiet and the trees beneath which are buried some of our beloved animals. I'd be grieved to lose it. But the dream, the one where we are never more dependent upon gas prices, never again in any kind of debt, and free to live on less, and thus earn little and live more, draws me in.
Sharon
What am I listening to: "Best of Solomon Burke" - really good bass voices just make me want to weep with joy, or throw myself onto the person who has them. Seriously, ex-spouse Matt's attraction was in large part his amazing bass voice. So Solomon Burke makes me seriously happy.
What are we eating, and where did it come from?: Oh, you don't want to know. All the rain we've had flooded even the pop-up greenhouses that are supposed to mean winter greens. Forget it. It mostly came from the supermarket, its probably doused in poison.
Oh, we're still eating our own pickles, kimchi, jams and squash, but that' about it.
What's new?: Grandma comes back from 5 weeks in CA Sunday, I start seeds next week, we're starting to debate new critter acquisitions for the year - another dog? Goats? How many more chickens? More geese? Turkeys? Barn cats? Honeybees? Definitely no more ducks. Sheep? We're still waiting for Isaiah to walk - he's been on the verge forever. We think he's waiting for Grandma.
The big thing that's new, however, is that Eric and I are (vaguely, generally, sometime in the future) considering moving. Now that shouldn't shock anyone who knows me - I'm into change, the more radical the better. But anyone who has met Eric should be stunned into unconsciousness by the idea that *my husband* would contemplate moving. And I admit, I've been very happy here. This is entirely in the "maybe one of these days stage" - first of all, I doubt Grandma will go for it. Second, Eric would need to get a job at a small rural college in this area - or I would. Finally, the right house and land would have to be available, at the right price. It requires a confluence of factors that seems extremely unlikely - the job, the house, Grandma's consent.
So why are we even talking about it? Because the one thing we both despise about rural living is *CAR OWNERSHIP* and we're fantasizing about getting out of the car game. The other thing we both hate is debt and high taxes, and we've got a little of both (small mortgage on the property, and growing taxes). We'd like to live off grid, and on the cheap if possible. Right now, that's not really feasible.
But if Eric could get a job at one of the small SUNYs (or I could) or Community colleges in a small community with walkable/bikeable/horseandbuggiable resources available within four or five miles of farmland, we could give up the car entirely. We'd probably keep something old and semi-functional with no reg or insurance for racing children to the hospital in the most major of emergencies, but otherwise, no car. Oh, we'd probably rent once in a while to visit family, maybe even barter produce for carpools in nasty weather, but oh, what joy. Even walking to work in sleet and snow would be a considerable improvement over the fucking car. Less convenient? Sure. Happier, healthier, cheaper, less smelly, less dependent, better? Absolutely.
We'd love to be completely mortgage free, and frankly, I think after Grandma is gone I want a smaller house. The new addition gives us lots of space, but I'd rather live in a smaller house and be more crowded, and have less to keep clean. And I want a good barn, land that isn't as wet, and maybe more of it around me.
These things are just fantasy. I write them down because sometimes, if you are very lucky or you make things happen right, fantasies come true. We love our home, we love our life, I have a hard time thinking about walking away from this beautiful place and our wonderful neighbors, from the quiet and the trees beneath which are buried some of our beloved animals. I'd be grieved to lose it. But the dream, the one where we are never more dependent upon gas prices, never again in any kind of debt, and free to live on less, and thus earn little and live more, draws me in.
Sharon
Childhood and "The Farm"
My children have the usual component of children's books and toys, and I cannot but notice how central to their world as these things present it is "The Farm." One of the first things my son, Eli, knew for sure was that a cow said, "moo," and Isaiah's first word was "quack." All of which simply suggests the centrality of this imagined farm in the world of small people. It is always the same farm, a kind of diversified small farm that barely exists any longer, one with a house cow, a small flock of sheep, a few pigs in a sty, a barnyard full of chickens and ducks, and a cat with kittens. In stories, in imaginative play, through their toys, even regularly on the otherwise urbanized Sesame Street, my children visited "The Farm" more often than anywhere else, and I do not think that they are in any way alone. Every child I know grows up with these images, and on some level, "The Farm" is the dream of our collective childhood. Whether or not you actually had a farm to visit or live on, at some gut level we know that this is how children are supposed to live, milking cows, collecting eggs, growing food, running through open pastures, playing with animals, being part of a productive life, doing the ordinary work of sustenence. We represent to our children the possibility of this kind of life, take them on field trips to farms to pet the animals and give them the experience of picking fruit because the nurturing of other lives and the production of food is the most basic and essential of human activities, and as far removed as our adult selves can be from this work, we recognize its necessity in childhood.
The farms in my sons' stories have not kept pace with modern agribusiness. None of our library's portrayals of chickens shows debeaked, manure soaked chickens crammed into tiny wire cages that mechanically collect eggs. Nor do they include in their farm word lists, "hog manure lagoon," "Round-up ready soybeans" or "soil erosion." One of my son's books claims to be about tractors, but even it cannot resist adding, "On the way to the field he passes a wooly sheep, a brown cow, a hungry pig and her piglets and a noisy goose." The gigantic tractor with enclosed cab that the book shows probably works on monocropped fields raising a few thousand acres of corn, but there is so little to write about the tractor itself that the book must return to the (almost certainly absent in real life) pleasures of animal noises and barnyard diversity to have something to say. The actual living farms that resembled those portrayed in my son's childhood are in a very real danger of disappearing altogether, and becoming an imaginary places, like Fairyland. It is frightening to realize that Dorothy's Kansas where she walked the boards of the pig's fence and helped her aunt with the farm labor, for all its black-and-while dustbowl sorrow, is now a place as imaginary and lamented as Oz itself.
I am just old enough to remember an older-style farm. My great-aunt and uncle were truck farmers in (then) rural Connecticut, and I remember picking and loading produce in summers, and chasing my cousin Amy in and out of the cool, dark chicken house, collecting eggs, petting hens and wreaking havoc as we dared each other to crawl into the more spidery recesses of the barn. My father took us to pick apples at a family farm in New Hampshire, where we visited pigs kept not for agri-tourism but for meat, and where I chased farm kittens in the hay loft and climbed old standard apple trees to find the nicest unpicked specimens. No pick-your-own orchard I know of now permits children to climb into haylofts or trees, if only for insurance reasons. Both those farms and their owners are gone, as are most diversified small farms in the United States. The ones that remain are far from land that might be seen as desirable, or even reachable by cities and suburbs, so the majority of American children will never see them. If they visit a farm at all, it will be a farm designed for tourism, with a petting zoo and animals who are pets rather than livestock. We have one such farm near us, which showcases 2 baby goats, a single pig, a pair of turkeys (both male) and half a dozen other single animals who are there because they draw families to the farm's stand and apple trees. The animals disappear (without any explicit acknowledgement of their final destination) each autumn, keeping children firmly apart from the realities of farm-animals-as-meat.
I do not deny the virtue of a place that connects children, however tenuously, to the real feel and smell and taste and value of livestock and a farm, but if we truly believe (and I suspect we do) that contact with our rural past and future is necessary for children (and adults!), and that children should live in both the actual and imaginary life of the farm, then we need to make certain that such farms are real and available to them, and that we as a community are fully connected to them. That is, we need to patronize those farms, support them, make them possible, encourage laws that support those farms and discourage industrial agriculture, which has nothing at all to do with farms. And those of us so inclined need to live on farms, or small homesteads that resemble them. Even those in the suburbs can make a little life with a few hens, rabbits and a garden.
Eric and I have taken it upon ourselves to remake the farm, not out of nostalgia, but simply because the farm makes sense. There is a logic to diversification that no industrial agriculture can match - sheep and cows and geese can share the same pasture, each eating a different part of the grass. Chickens root worms and fly eggs out of manure of larger animals. The garden provides waste and extra to supplement the feed of an animal, the animal provides manure for the garden. And the child enjoys the tomato never touched by a chemical, the brush of silky feathers against his cheek when the hen nestles in his arms, the dog to play with, the apple trees to climb, the cornfield to hide it, the kittens to pet, the goat's milk that feeds her young and him, and the lamb to love and nurture. The diversified small farm is the world of childhood. That does not mean it is wholly innocent, or wholly pure, but at times, it is as close to those things as anything we can conceive or create.
The farms in my sons' stories have not kept pace with modern agribusiness. None of our library's portrayals of chickens shows debeaked, manure soaked chickens crammed into tiny wire cages that mechanically collect eggs. Nor do they include in their farm word lists, "hog manure lagoon," "Round-up ready soybeans" or "soil erosion." One of my son's books claims to be about tractors, but even it cannot resist adding, "On the way to the field he passes a wooly sheep, a brown cow, a hungry pig and her piglets and a noisy goose." The gigantic tractor with enclosed cab that the book shows probably works on monocropped fields raising a few thousand acres of corn, but there is so little to write about the tractor itself that the book must return to the (almost certainly absent in real life) pleasures of animal noises and barnyard diversity to have something to say. The actual living farms that resembled those portrayed in my son's childhood are in a very real danger of disappearing altogether, and becoming an imaginary places, like Fairyland. It is frightening to realize that Dorothy's Kansas where she walked the boards of the pig's fence and helped her aunt with the farm labor, for all its black-and-while dustbowl sorrow, is now a place as imaginary and lamented as Oz itself.
I am just old enough to remember an older-style farm. My great-aunt and uncle were truck farmers in (then) rural Connecticut, and I remember picking and loading produce in summers, and chasing my cousin Amy in and out of the cool, dark chicken house, collecting eggs, petting hens and wreaking havoc as we dared each other to crawl into the more spidery recesses of the barn. My father took us to pick apples at a family farm in New Hampshire, where we visited pigs kept not for agri-tourism but for meat, and where I chased farm kittens in the hay loft and climbed old standard apple trees to find the nicest unpicked specimens. No pick-your-own orchard I know of now permits children to climb into haylofts or trees, if only for insurance reasons. Both those farms and their owners are gone, as are most diversified small farms in the United States. The ones that remain are far from land that might be seen as desirable, or even reachable by cities and suburbs, so the majority of American children will never see them. If they visit a farm at all, it will be a farm designed for tourism, with a petting zoo and animals who are pets rather than livestock. We have one such farm near us, which showcases 2 baby goats, a single pig, a pair of turkeys (both male) and half a dozen other single animals who are there because they draw families to the farm's stand and apple trees. The animals disappear (without any explicit acknowledgement of their final destination) each autumn, keeping children firmly apart from the realities of farm-animals-as-meat.
I do not deny the virtue of a place that connects children, however tenuously, to the real feel and smell and taste and value of livestock and a farm, but if we truly believe (and I suspect we do) that contact with our rural past and future is necessary for children (and adults!), and that children should live in both the actual and imaginary life of the farm, then we need to make certain that such farms are real and available to them, and that we as a community are fully connected to them. That is, we need to patronize those farms, support them, make them possible, encourage laws that support those farms and discourage industrial agriculture, which has nothing at all to do with farms. And those of us so inclined need to live on farms, or small homesteads that resemble them. Even those in the suburbs can make a little life with a few hens, rabbits and a garden.
Eric and I have taken it upon ourselves to remake the farm, not out of nostalgia, but simply because the farm makes sense. There is a logic to diversification that no industrial agriculture can match - sheep and cows and geese can share the same pasture, each eating a different part of the grass. Chickens root worms and fly eggs out of manure of larger animals. The garden provides waste and extra to supplement the feed of an animal, the animal provides manure for the garden. And the child enjoys the tomato never touched by a chemical, the brush of silky feathers against his cheek when the hen nestles in his arms, the dog to play with, the apple trees to climb, the cornfield to hide it, the kittens to pet, the goat's milk that feeds her young and him, and the lamb to love and nurture. The diversified small farm is the world of childhood. That does not mean it is wholly innocent, or wholly pure, but at times, it is as close to those things as anything we can conceive or create.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Some plants and seeds I like
I started this list on the running on empty list on yahoo groups, but will continue it here, since I ran out of time for posting there. If you want to read the rest, you'll have to subscribe. It will likely be good for you ;-). Obviously, this is pegged to my climate (upstate NY) and my garden (clayey and rocky, with lots of chickens in it) so YMMV.
Sweet potatoes - mostly, I don't have to buy slips any more, since my original Georgia Jets and Porto Ricos usually last long enough to make more, but if I do, those are the two to get. Store sweet potatoes don't taste nearly as good as mine, and if I can grow them, pretty much anyone south of Montreal can. They store all year for me, and are an essential staple.
Peppers - I posted about peppers on the other list, but I wanted to ask here also - anyone know a good OP korean hot pepper? I can't live without my spicy korean noodles and kimchi, which require peppers. The only one I've found is a hybrid from Evergreen.
Also, anyone have a favorite habanero for the north? I like 'em fiery.
Eggplant - I love eggplant, and for some incomprehensible reason they grow really well in my cold, wet garden. Don't ask me. Ichiban has been most reliable for me, but is a hybrid. Pingtung long does ok - I had one strain that did much better, but I can't remember where I get it. Rosa Bianca didn't do well last year, but did the year before. And the Turkish Orange ones always go bananas, and no one but me likes them (kind of bitter). I find eggplant keeps best dried.
Huckleberries are amazing, and I don't know why everyone doesn't grow them. They grow just like tomatoes, are incredibly prolific, and you can have berries in one season. What's not to love? I get mine from Baker Creek, but I might try seed saver's wonderberry later.
Celeries and the like: The only celeriac I've ever tried is large Prague. Love it. The leaves make a good celery in soup. I mostly don't grow celery any more - too much work, too heavy a feeder, takes up a lot of space all season long, and what do you get? Celery. I do grow zwolsche krul cutting celery and lovage, both of which dried give that flavor to soups without all the bother.
Daylilies - Cold climate permaculturist's dreams. The petals are the best tasting flowers I've ever eaten - sweet and crisp. Mine bloom for a month or more. The buds are great dried in soup. The root is tasty, and the shoots are great in the early spring when not much is growing. And they are so pretty. Plant a lot.
Strawberries - for years I've been looking for "Fairfax" strawberries, and can't find them. Laura Simon, The Nearings, Ruth Stout, Gene Logsdon - every one of them say they are the best tasting strawberry out there, but they seem to be gone. Anyone know where to find them? I grow "Sparkle" their step-child, but it isn't as tasty or, I gather, as disease resistant. People are insane - they have a perfect strawberry, and they throw it away for something new and sparkly. May whoever is responsible have to eat supermarket strawberries for a long, hot, eternity, while the real things send their perfume from just out of reach. (Ok, maybe that's a little excessive. But I want that strawberry.)
Arugula - I'm excited to try seed savers astro, which supposedly has bigger leaves - I could eat arugula by the vat every day, and I can usually manage to keep it going from april to november, so I do ok that way. Ordinarily, I grow whatever, plus the sylvetta, which is a little pointier and, I think, a little spicier.
Chard - Customers like the five color silverbeet stuff - Seed savers has a great strain. But I admit, my two favorites are "Argentata" and "Fordhook" Chard is a wonderful plant and no one sings its praises enough. It will grow all through the hot of the summer and the cold of most of the winter. It is delicious, simple, nutritious and pretty. You can eat the ribs like celery, or put them in soup and dye it pink. As a baby green it makes one heck of a salad. And the more you pick it, the more there is.
Broccoli. I'm still working on a favorite OP broccoli - except that I really like "Romanesco", and Eric likes it because it is a fractal (and tastes good). Rosalind (Territorial) has done well for me, as has Purple Sprouting (I can't remember - maybe Baker Creek?). But I've been using hybrids for early crops, and they are more reliable. I've got to work on that. It isn't really a storage crop, despite its nutritional value, so it isn't a huge priority.
Squash - I love squash. I can't live without hubbards. I know they make small ones, but it seems so sad to grow a 5 lb squash when you can grow a 30lb one, and the chickens and ducks so love baked squash that if we actually leave some, they will. Plus you can put it in soup, bread, pasta... Butternuts are a main crop, and plain old Waltham is a proven winner. I love Futsu, which really does taste nutty - kind of of like beech nuts, and has a cool smell. Oh, and I love zucchini - all zucchini. That makes me weird, I know.
Borage - the blossoms really do taste like cucumber, are amazingly pretty, and fun. Plus, it will show up forever. Add salad burnet, and if your cuke crop fails (as mine mostly has two years in a row) you are set for that cuke taste. Tough to make pickles of, though ;-P.
Cucumbers and I have a hostile relationship - I've had dreadful crops the last few years. We are down to 1 jar of pickles - sigh. I love poona kheera, delicatesse, and national pickling, but they don't love my garden.
I'm sure I should post more, but I'm tired and lazy. My husband has promised me thai beef salad if I'll wind the skein of yarn for his next project, and I am a whore for anything in lime juice and fish sauce dressing. Sorry.
Sharon
Sharon
Sweet potatoes - mostly, I don't have to buy slips any more, since my original Georgia Jets and Porto Ricos usually last long enough to make more, but if I do, those are the two to get. Store sweet potatoes don't taste nearly as good as mine, and if I can grow them, pretty much anyone south of Montreal can. They store all year for me, and are an essential staple.
Peppers - I posted about peppers on the other list, but I wanted to ask here also - anyone know a good OP korean hot pepper? I can't live without my spicy korean noodles and kimchi, which require peppers. The only one I've found is a hybrid from Evergreen.
Also, anyone have a favorite habanero for the north? I like 'em fiery.
Eggplant - I love eggplant, and for some incomprehensible reason they grow really well in my cold, wet garden. Don't ask me. Ichiban has been most reliable for me, but is a hybrid. Pingtung long does ok - I had one strain that did much better, but I can't remember where I get it. Rosa Bianca didn't do well last year, but did the year before. And the Turkish Orange ones always go bananas, and no one but me likes them (kind of bitter). I find eggplant keeps best dried.
Huckleberries are amazing, and I don't know why everyone doesn't grow them. They grow just like tomatoes, are incredibly prolific, and you can have berries in one season. What's not to love? I get mine from Baker Creek, but I might try seed saver's wonderberry later.
Celeries and the like: The only celeriac I've ever tried is large Prague. Love it. The leaves make a good celery in soup. I mostly don't grow celery any more - too much work, too heavy a feeder, takes up a lot of space all season long, and what do you get? Celery. I do grow zwolsche krul cutting celery and lovage, both of which dried give that flavor to soups without all the bother.
Daylilies - Cold climate permaculturist's dreams. The petals are the best tasting flowers I've ever eaten - sweet and crisp. Mine bloom for a month or more. The buds are great dried in soup. The root is tasty, and the shoots are great in the early spring when not much is growing. And they are so pretty. Plant a lot.
Strawberries - for years I've been looking for "Fairfax" strawberries, and can't find them. Laura Simon, The Nearings, Ruth Stout, Gene Logsdon - every one of them say they are the best tasting strawberry out there, but they seem to be gone. Anyone know where to find them? I grow "Sparkle" their step-child, but it isn't as tasty or, I gather, as disease resistant. People are insane - they have a perfect strawberry, and they throw it away for something new and sparkly. May whoever is responsible have to eat supermarket strawberries for a long, hot, eternity, while the real things send their perfume from just out of reach. (Ok, maybe that's a little excessive. But I want that strawberry.)
Arugula - I'm excited to try seed savers astro, which supposedly has bigger leaves - I could eat arugula by the vat every day, and I can usually manage to keep it going from april to november, so I do ok that way. Ordinarily, I grow whatever, plus the sylvetta, which is a little pointier and, I think, a little spicier.
Chard - Customers like the five color silverbeet stuff - Seed savers has a great strain. But I admit, my two favorites are "Argentata" and "Fordhook" Chard is a wonderful plant and no one sings its praises enough. It will grow all through the hot of the summer and the cold of most of the winter. It is delicious, simple, nutritious and pretty. You can eat the ribs like celery, or put them in soup and dye it pink. As a baby green it makes one heck of a salad. And the more you pick it, the more there is.
Broccoli. I'm still working on a favorite OP broccoli - except that I really like "Romanesco", and Eric likes it because it is a fractal (and tastes good). Rosalind (Territorial) has done well for me, as has Purple Sprouting (I can't remember - maybe Baker Creek?). But I've been using hybrids for early crops, and they are more reliable. I've got to work on that. It isn't really a storage crop, despite its nutritional value, so it isn't a huge priority.
Squash - I love squash. I can't live without hubbards. I know they make small ones, but it seems so sad to grow a 5 lb squash when you can grow a 30lb one, and the chickens and ducks so love baked squash that if we actually leave some, they will. Plus you can put it in soup, bread, pasta... Butternuts are a main crop, and plain old Waltham is a proven winner. I love Futsu, which really does taste nutty - kind of of like beech nuts, and has a cool smell. Oh, and I love zucchini - all zucchini. That makes me weird, I know.
Borage - the blossoms really do taste like cucumber, are amazingly pretty, and fun. Plus, it will show up forever. Add salad burnet, and if your cuke crop fails (as mine mostly has two years in a row) you are set for that cuke taste. Tough to make pickles of, though ;-P.
Cucumbers and I have a hostile relationship - I've had dreadful crops the last few years. We are down to 1 jar of pickles - sigh. I love poona kheera, delicatesse, and national pickling, but they don't love my garden.
I'm sure I should post more, but I'm tired and lazy. My husband has promised me thai beef salad if I'll wind the skein of yarn for his next project, and I am a whore for anything in lime juice and fish sauce dressing. Sorry.
Sharon
Sharon
Prayer
Education and belief are often held to be incompatible. But for me, my education makes it possible for me to believe - the faith I was given as a child felt wrong, didn't accord with what I saw in the world. Only study, and knowledge, and conversion made it possible to accord my essential sense of immanence with the structure and discipline of a belief (not faith). I'm not sure that any of my college Professors would be especially proud to know that helped turn me into someone who believes profoundly in G-d, but I'm glad they did.
Unfortunately, a sense of immanence does damned little to make recent events comprehensible. Yes, I know that Jewish party line, but if you believe that G-d used to act in the world to make sure one couple got to have a baby, its hard to believe that G-d couldn't act to prevent the hideous deaths of hundreds of thousands. Ok, I can almost buy that G-d looks by sadly and can't stop the evil in the hearts of men all over the world, but no man orchestrated this (although a few did nothing to prevent it).
Believing in G-d doesn't really help that much, unless belief comes with some conviction of what in the name of Moses's left nipple G-d intends for the world. And in my case, that little bit was left blank. So I'm left with an earnest conviction that someone is running things, but He's either got an ineffable plan that involves drowning people for fun, wasn't paying much attention, or doesn't much care. Fortunately, Judaism steps in to reassure us that G-d does care, he just...oh yeah, no it really doesn't.
As I said before, the Jew's role in the world is to fix the mess that man and G-d combine to create. We do it with work, and we do it with prayer. My current prayer is "Hello? Anyone home?" My current best work - a little money and some blood donation. It doesn't feel like enough. And it isn't.
I am grateful that Eric's college buddy Prasath was on the other coast of Sri Lanka, and he and his family are fine. I'm grateful that my college friend who was supposed to be doing her peace corps work in coastal Thailand is actually in *central* thailand. And I guess I'm grateful that it wasn't an asteroid destroying all life on earth. But gratitude is a tough commodity today.
Shalom
Unfortunately, a sense of immanence does damned little to make recent events comprehensible. Yes, I know that Jewish party line, but if you believe that G-d used to act in the world to make sure one couple got to have a baby, its hard to believe that G-d couldn't act to prevent the hideous deaths of hundreds of thousands. Ok, I can almost buy that G-d looks by sadly and can't stop the evil in the hearts of men all over the world, but no man orchestrated this (although a few did nothing to prevent it).
Believing in G-d doesn't really help that much, unless belief comes with some conviction of what in the name of Moses's left nipple G-d intends for the world. And in my case, that little bit was left blank. So I'm left with an earnest conviction that someone is running things, but He's either got an ineffable plan that involves drowning people for fun, wasn't paying much attention, or doesn't much care. Fortunately, Judaism steps in to reassure us that G-d does care, he just...oh yeah, no it really doesn't.
As I said before, the Jew's role in the world is to fix the mess that man and G-d combine to create. We do it with work, and we do it with prayer. My current prayer is "Hello? Anyone home?" My current best work - a little money and some blood donation. It doesn't feel like enough. And it isn't.
I am grateful that Eric's college buddy Prasath was on the other coast of Sri Lanka, and he and his family are fine. I'm grateful that my college friend who was supposed to be doing her peace corps work in coastal Thailand is actually in *central* thailand. And I guess I'm grateful that it wasn't an asteroid destroying all life on earth. But gratitude is a tough commodity today.
Shalom
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Tikkun Olam - what really matters
Something to think about, whatever holiday you have celebrated, will celebrate or are at the moment recovering from...Perhaps there is someone out there who longs to hear their own life taken apart for its foulness, excess and banality, but I do not know them, and it would be a risky thing to write this blog hoping that there were thousands of such people. Most people (and I do include myself here) who decry the collapse of our culture into rampant consumerism, the environmental disaster that is modern life, and the sadness of our empty collective experience are extremely tedious, and they do so because they enjoy self-righteousness. Whether they do a great deal or nothing to resist and relieve these conditions, they enjoy the sensation that they care more than the rest of us, feel deeper outrage and are the better for it.
Outrage and compassion are good qualities, but in themselves, they take us nowhere - we may feel the better for experiencing them, but they alter nothing except our interior state, and when we imagine that what is important is our feelings, or our intentions, we glorify ourselves when we are most unworthy. There are two things better than self-righteousness, better than moral outrage, better than mere abstract compassion: courage and principle.
But I have a hard time fixing the problem of overconsumption, and the fact that our language does not really allow for an alternative way of thinking. I am the origin of the difficulty, abetted by corporations, by the notion that money and trade are what matter most, by the notion that being humane is too hard, by the sense that we cannot really make deep alterations in our state, that we are simply cogs in the wheel. But the bottom line is that I did not have to buy what they sold me. I did not have to buy the barbie dolls, the packaged mini-carrots, the notion that grandparents belong in a home because no one can be there to take care of them. And while I am skeptical, even ironic, about these notions, I also have given in at times, conceeded, kept my pleasures and polluted and enslaved and mistreated others.
The reality is that my wealth is borne on the backs of others who are less wealthy. I can have not only vaccinations and urgently needed medical treatment for my children, but they can have orthodontistry to the tune of many thousands of dollars for slightly crooked teeth. But other children cannot have vaccinations, can die from diarrhea or starvation. We all know this, we all believe in our hearts it is wrong, but there is something lost in the translation. Either we do not believe that the one depends on the other, that my wealth deprives another, or we want so badly to give the gift of everything to our families and children that we enjoy our wealth and close our eyes to the consequences. Or perhaps it is that we cannot see how depriving ourselves will help another.
But it is the simple truth that I am wealthy in goods because goods are cheap, and do not represent their ethical cost. I have cheap clothing because people who are effectively slaves sew it for me. I have cheap food because people who are effectively slaves fertilize and spray and pick it for me. I have cheap gas because it is extracted by oil companies who destroy wildlife, pollute seas and rivers, and prop up fascist governments so that I can take all the money I have saved and drive my kids to Disneyland. My wealth is built on slavery just as much as that of the plantation owners before me. And I'm not very wealthy. I struggle to pay my mortgage. I have credit card debt on which I pay the minimum. I am wealthy on paper, in calories and in objects, but my wealth does not translate to a sense of security or confidence, it does not bring me happiness (more people are depressed now than ever before), freedom from fear, or anything but more work to preserve my wealth and more stuff to fill my overflowing home.
Most reasonably well educated and socially conscious people realize that there is something horribly wrong with the way that they live. You do not need me to tell you that on hot days, you can scarcely breath for all the exhaust hanging in the air of your suburb. You don't need me to point out that because you cannot afford housing near your job, you spend an hour a day commuting. You don't need me to tell you that more of our children have asthma and psychological difficulties than when we were young. You don't need me to tell you that by letting our kids watch hours of tv, they are being influenced by powers that you cannot compete with. You don't need me to point out that teenagers (and younger children) are murdering, robbing, raping, abusing at a rate far higher than anything you knew before. You don't need me to tell you that your mortgage and credit card bills are leaving you hanging on the edge of bankruptcy, while things keep accumulating in your house. You don't need me to tell you that the truth is that the oil that finances our economy, that pollutes our planet, that feeds our unending lust for gas, is eventually going to run out, and that some scary things are going to happen in the meantime. You don't need me to tell you that you work longer hours than your parents did, and now, both of you work, and you rarely have any time alone. You don't need me to tell you that an economy based upon consumer spending, all financed with imaginary, credit-card money, is eventually going to collapse inward. You don't need me to point out that it feels increasingly hard to make good choices, to find a way to feed and clothe your family without putting chemicals that you disapprove of into the atmosphere, and without using slave labor to pick or sew or make the things you depend upon. You don't need me to tell you that something is very, very wrong.
We all know all of these things. We know it in our guts and our bones, and we're afraid. And we try desperately to fix some of these things - to make sure that kids at risk have more counselors, to get more exercise, to eat more veggies. Maybe we've even tried some of the more radical approaches, like taking the train instead of driving or eating less meat. Maybe you recycle everything, are a vegetarian, only watch PBS and ride your bicycle to work. You have courage and conviction, a set of principles that say you want the world to be a better place, and you want to do your part to make it that way. But you only have limited time. You can't ride your bike every day, because that takes away time with your children. You can cut down on tv, but not cut it out altogether, because your kids like it, and because you don't have anything to fill the void with - you have to work. You cannot fix it yourself, because you do not have the time and energy and resources and you don’t understand the complicated system that needs to be worked to enact major change. How do you contact your congressman? What does that do if you do it? How do you get a question on the ballot? How do you find like-minded people? How do you make them care?
Even if you care, when you are tired, you buy the grapes coated in pesticides. Even if you care, in a hurry, you drive in just this once. The piecemeal solution depends upon private willpower, individual engagement, and the vagaries of your life permitting you
to make the right choices. Modern, corporate life offers no incentives for you to succeed, and every incentive for you to fail, to feel that you tried biking and it was too time-consuming, too hard, too slow, and it took time away from your family. You give it up because the benefits to you are purely abstract.
The only solution I have been able to come to is the most radical one of all, and because it is radical, it is easier and better than the piecemeal solution. It is to make your life what you want, and to build into that life a set of rules and techniques to do what you think is right. You receive the reward and the incentive simultaneously. You start over, find what you want, and figure out how to make that come about. It involves great sacrifices, for you will get off that other man's back once and for all. It is difficult. But the reward is that you get the thing you most desire - yourself, your family, your love, your life.
It is not easy, and I can't tell you how to do it. I have not yet wholly succeeded in doing it myself. But it seems to me the only goal worth working towards and the only thing worth praying for - that I can break my dependency on doing wrong, and begin, at this moment, to do right, to take up my true share of tikkun olam, the repair of the world.
More on this soon.
Shalom,
Sharon
Outrage and compassion are good qualities, but in themselves, they take us nowhere - we may feel the better for experiencing them, but they alter nothing except our interior state, and when we imagine that what is important is our feelings, or our intentions, we glorify ourselves when we are most unworthy. There are two things better than self-righteousness, better than moral outrage, better than mere abstract compassion: courage and principle.
But I have a hard time fixing the problem of overconsumption, and the fact that our language does not really allow for an alternative way of thinking. I am the origin of the difficulty, abetted by corporations, by the notion that money and trade are what matter most, by the notion that being humane is too hard, by the sense that we cannot really make deep alterations in our state, that we are simply cogs in the wheel. But the bottom line is that I did not have to buy what they sold me. I did not have to buy the barbie dolls, the packaged mini-carrots, the notion that grandparents belong in a home because no one can be there to take care of them. And while I am skeptical, even ironic, about these notions, I also have given in at times, conceeded, kept my pleasures and polluted and enslaved and mistreated others.
The reality is that my wealth is borne on the backs of others who are less wealthy. I can have not only vaccinations and urgently needed medical treatment for my children, but they can have orthodontistry to the tune of many thousands of dollars for slightly crooked teeth. But other children cannot have vaccinations, can die from diarrhea or starvation. We all know this, we all believe in our hearts it is wrong, but there is something lost in the translation. Either we do not believe that the one depends on the other, that my wealth deprives another, or we want so badly to give the gift of everything to our families and children that we enjoy our wealth and close our eyes to the consequences. Or perhaps it is that we cannot see how depriving ourselves will help another.
But it is the simple truth that I am wealthy in goods because goods are cheap, and do not represent their ethical cost. I have cheap clothing because people who are effectively slaves sew it for me. I have cheap food because people who are effectively slaves fertilize and spray and pick it for me. I have cheap gas because it is extracted by oil companies who destroy wildlife, pollute seas and rivers, and prop up fascist governments so that I can take all the money I have saved and drive my kids to Disneyland. My wealth is built on slavery just as much as that of the plantation owners before me. And I'm not very wealthy. I struggle to pay my mortgage. I have credit card debt on which I pay the minimum. I am wealthy on paper, in calories and in objects, but my wealth does not translate to a sense of security or confidence, it does not bring me happiness (more people are depressed now than ever before), freedom from fear, or anything but more work to preserve my wealth and more stuff to fill my overflowing home.
Most reasonably well educated and socially conscious people realize that there is something horribly wrong with the way that they live. You do not need me to tell you that on hot days, you can scarcely breath for all the exhaust hanging in the air of your suburb. You don't need me to point out that because you cannot afford housing near your job, you spend an hour a day commuting. You don't need me to tell you that more of our children have asthma and psychological difficulties than when we were young. You don't need me to tell you that by letting our kids watch hours of tv, they are being influenced by powers that you cannot compete with. You don't need me to point out that teenagers (and younger children) are murdering, robbing, raping, abusing at a rate far higher than anything you knew before. You don't need me to tell you that your mortgage and credit card bills are leaving you hanging on the edge of bankruptcy, while things keep accumulating in your house. You don't need me to tell you that the truth is that the oil that finances our economy, that pollutes our planet, that feeds our unending lust for gas, is eventually going to run out, and that some scary things are going to happen in the meantime. You don't need me to tell you that you work longer hours than your parents did, and now, both of you work, and you rarely have any time alone. You don't need me to tell you that an economy based upon consumer spending, all financed with imaginary, credit-card money, is eventually going to collapse inward. You don't need me to point out that it feels increasingly hard to make good choices, to find a way to feed and clothe your family without putting chemicals that you disapprove of into the atmosphere, and without using slave labor to pick or sew or make the things you depend upon. You don't need me to tell you that something is very, very wrong.
We all know all of these things. We know it in our guts and our bones, and we're afraid. And we try desperately to fix some of these things - to make sure that kids at risk have more counselors, to get more exercise, to eat more veggies. Maybe we've even tried some of the more radical approaches, like taking the train instead of driving or eating less meat. Maybe you recycle everything, are a vegetarian, only watch PBS and ride your bicycle to work. You have courage and conviction, a set of principles that say you want the world to be a better place, and you want to do your part to make it that way. But you only have limited time. You can't ride your bike every day, because that takes away time with your children. You can cut down on tv, but not cut it out altogether, because your kids like it, and because you don't have anything to fill the void with - you have to work. You cannot fix it yourself, because you do not have the time and energy and resources and you don’t understand the complicated system that needs to be worked to enact major change. How do you contact your congressman? What does that do if you do it? How do you get a question on the ballot? How do you find like-minded people? How do you make them care?
Even if you care, when you are tired, you buy the grapes coated in pesticides. Even if you care, in a hurry, you drive in just this once. The piecemeal solution depends upon private willpower, individual engagement, and the vagaries of your life permitting you
to make the right choices. Modern, corporate life offers no incentives for you to succeed, and every incentive for you to fail, to feel that you tried biking and it was too time-consuming, too hard, too slow, and it took time away from your family. You give it up because the benefits to you are purely abstract.
The only solution I have been able to come to is the most radical one of all, and because it is radical, it is easier and better than the piecemeal solution. It is to make your life what you want, and to build into that life a set of rules and techniques to do what you think is right. You receive the reward and the incentive simultaneously. You start over, find what you want, and figure out how to make that come about. It involves great sacrifices, for you will get off that other man's back once and for all. It is difficult. But the reward is that you get the thing you most desire - yourself, your family, your love, your life.
It is not easy, and I can't tell you how to do it. I have not yet wholly succeeded in doing it myself. But it seems to me the only goal worth working towards and the only thing worth praying for - that I can break my dependency on doing wrong, and begin, at this moment, to do right, to take up my true share of tikkun olam, the repair of the world.
Shalom,
Sharon
Friday, December 24, 2004
Harper's Index
Harper's Index for this month has two interesting statistics in it. Take a look:
"Percentage Change since 2002 in the average U.S. price of gasline: +35.2
Change since then in the amount of gasoline Americans consume per capita: 0"
Interesting conjunction, those statistics. Part of the issue, of course, is that prices simply haven't gotten high enough to make people conserve. Only about 14% of the American population reports having to choose between gas and something else that matters as yet. More will this winter, as heating oil prices rise.
But most people have enough leeway in their budgets that they haven't changed their habits all that much. But I would argue that that lack of change isn't because they don't want to - its because they don't know how, or worse, they *can't*.
While there are certainly places we could easily consume, one of the things most people don't seem to notice is just how hard it will be to alter our usage patterns on any large scale. People *have* to drive to their jobs, and as gas prices rise, and employers find their margins of profit dropping because they have to heat their buildings, transport their goods, etc... their ability to move or be flexible will drop as well. I anticipate during the early stages of peak oil, that a lot of people will pick up and move closer to their jobs.
But that's not a long term solution, and we won't be moving. Because as the cost of oil and gas rises even higher, and salaries are cut (again, as those profit margins drop), those jobs will fold altogether. No employer in the world can operate without lights, heat, transportation. When those things get costly, and the average worker can no longer afford their product anyhow (since they have all they can do to pay for food, which is also rising radically in price), the jobs will be gone.
The simple reality of peak oil is that we have built up our infrastructure around oil to such a degree that we are no longer able to back away from the cliff we have made. Oh, wise leadership and serious attention to this issue could make it better - but not good. We won't stop burning oil until we either stop affording it or the last drops are pulled up - we can't. We no longer have the means to live without it. Only those who find a way as individuals or communities to step off the treadmill will be able to escape the end result - when they have to choose between heat and food, spending most of your salary on transportation to a job or not having one at all.
"Percentage Change since 2002 in the average U.S. price of gasline: +35.2
Change since then in the amount of gasoline Americans consume per capita: 0"
Interesting conjunction, those statistics. Part of the issue, of course, is that prices simply haven't gotten high enough to make people conserve. Only about 14% of the American population reports having to choose between gas and something else that matters as yet. More will this winter, as heating oil prices rise.
But most people have enough leeway in their budgets that they haven't changed their habits all that much. But I would argue that that lack of change isn't because they don't want to - its because they don't know how, or worse, they *can't*.
While there are certainly places we could easily consume, one of the things most people don't seem to notice is just how hard it will be to alter our usage patterns on any large scale. People *have* to drive to their jobs, and as gas prices rise, and employers find their margins of profit dropping because they have to heat their buildings, transport their goods, etc... their ability to move or be flexible will drop as well. I anticipate during the early stages of peak oil, that a lot of people will pick up and move closer to their jobs.
But that's not a long term solution, and we won't be moving. Because as the cost of oil and gas rises even higher, and salaries are cut (again, as those profit margins drop), those jobs will fold altogether. No employer in the world can operate without lights, heat, transportation. When those things get costly, and the average worker can no longer afford their product anyhow (since they have all they can do to pay for food, which is also rising radically in price), the jobs will be gone.
The simple reality of peak oil is that we have built up our infrastructure around oil to such a degree that we are no longer able to back away from the cliff we have made. Oh, wise leadership and serious attention to this issue could make it better - but not good. We won't stop burning oil until we either stop affording it or the last drops are pulled up - we can't. We no longer have the means to live without it. Only those who find a way as individuals or communities to step off the treadmill will be able to escape the end result - when they have to choose between heat and food, spending most of your salary on transportation to a job or not having one at all.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Chanukah is mercifully over!!!
I don't know what I was thinking when I bore two children between the end of November and the middle of December. In a three week period this year, we had Simon's third birthday, 8 nights of wretched excess, and Isaiah's first birthday. My kids got, umm, many, many presents. Far too many.
Actually, I do know why I have two children in such a short period - birthin' by the agricultural calendar. We have our babies at the most convenient time of year, when the garden is done and the next one not yet started, after the CSA deliveries, the canning and preserving, and garden clean up are finished, but before seed-starting, the arrival of chicks and poults, etc...
We have some strange rules about presents, nearly all of which we've violated now and then, but which keep the insanity from getting too intolerable.
1. Nothing that sings, dances, has no volume control or otherwise drives Mommy and Daddy up the wall.
2. Nothing that can only be played with one way - if it has "directive" qualities, it goes to the synagogue yard sale, particularly if it gives you verbal instructions on how to play with it. The sole exceptions to this rule are board games.
3. No batteries - or nothing that can't be played with without them. Many battery operated basic toys (like our otherwise beloved Fisher-Price farm, which sings and makes noises when you put the animals in the "right" place - grrr!) work just fine without batteries. I make exceptions for a few things - we have some musical toys that use batteries, but generally, we're opposed.
4. Anything that says educational, but means "sings the alphabet really loudly while otherwise doing a lot of stupid crap."
5. Natural materials whenever possible. Partly to reduce the appalling quantity of brightly colored plastic in my house (there was a time when I thought about thinks like aesthetics - ie, before I had children), partly to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals and non-renewable garbage, but mostly, because real materials feel nicer. So wood, wool, metal, silk, etc...
6. Mostly no tv/movie tie ins. We have always excepted Sesame Street from this rule - DH has a cookie monster thing. I have come to tolerate a certain amount of Disney Winnie the Pooh crap, since Simon is Pooh obsessed (we're reading _The House at Pooh Corner_ with both boys right now) and it is disturbingly hard to find Shepherd Pooh related toys. We own Thomas trains, but my kids have never seen Thomas, and don't know that it is a tie in. We own a lot of Bob the builder trucks, but since they are primarily trucks, not characters, I tolerate them. I suspect I'll soften further on this subject at some point, but I'm trying to hold a line - no Disney toys, no Halloween character costumes, no Blue's Clues flashlights.
7. No violent toys. This doesn't mean what you probably think it does. The issue is not guns, which so far hasn't come up. For me, the issue is *superheroes* - our neighbor's sons are allowed to watch anything they want, and their three and five year olds are Batman obsessed. All they want to do is play Batman - which pretty much involves kicking and hitting my kids. That's not to say my kids are incapable of violence (hardly), but their kinds of play rarely involve karate kicks...yet. So we're holding the line hard against superheroes. We love our neighbors - this is the only complaint I've ever had about them - but I wanted to cry when I found out that my 2 year old knew who spiderman was already.
For the record, I actually am not opposed to all toy guns. I think trying to make water pistols look like anything other than guns is stupid, and I don't necessarily think that the wooden toy flintlock I had as a girl made me any more violent than I am anyhow. But I suspect most contemporary toy guns violate at least one of the above rules. I'm sure we'll have our own little "Christmas (Chanukah?) Story" moment with guns sooner or later, and again, as long as they are made of wood or wool, have no batteries, make no noise and you can do more than one things with them, they can have as many guns as they want.
8. No toys that Mommy and Daddy deem stupid, gross, unappealing, inappropriate or worthless. This is the rule under which all others are subsumed. No playdough MacDonalds, no Mexican jumping beans on racetracks, no green slime in a tube, no books with farting and vomiting, no pointless commercial tie ins, no hideous clown face puzzles, no toys that indicate on the boxes they are only for girls (I still have not been able to find a tea set for my kids that has children of both genders on the box), no throw-away crap meant to be played with for two minutes and sent to the landfill.
We get a disturbing number of these toys (with three kids and multiple holidays, we simply get a disturbing number of toys), and they are returned, regifted or donated. My kids don't seem to mind (yet) that Mommy scoops up some of their toys and says, "these are for tzedakah" after the kind people who gave them depart. I'm hoping if I keep doing it, it will get to be a routine.
Despite all of this, our house looks like a giant playroom, and while it troubles me some (I am not a fan of excess), I'm happy that there is a lot of good stuff - I'm not a believer in artificial shortages. Just in the last few weeks, my children have received:
1. Woolen dolls (in Simon and Isaiah's case) and a woolen stuffed horse with leather saddle (for Eli). They are beautiful, warm and soft.
2. A table and a train set. This might actually have been for Eric, who is at least as into it as the kids.
3. Many, many, many beautiful children's books.
4. A new top - we break one from overuse every couple of years.
5. A wooden abacus for math games.
6. A puppet theater
7. Assorted trucks for my truck obsessed 1 year old.
8. Assorted stuffed animals for my animal obsessed three year old.
9. A wooden xylophone for my music obsessed 4 1/2 year old.
10. An enormous set of wooden architectural blocks.
My kids are so not deprived it isn't funny - in fact, even my rules aren't keeping the toy level respectable. I feel fortunate not only that my children have wonderful toys to play with, but that many of these will outlast my children, and on to the grandchildren I so fervently hope to have.
I hope your holidays are wonderful, fruitful and over soon!
Shalom.
Sharon
Actually, I do know why I have two children in such a short period - birthin' by the agricultural calendar. We have our babies at the most convenient time of year, when the garden is done and the next one not yet started, after the CSA deliveries, the canning and preserving, and garden clean up are finished, but before seed-starting, the arrival of chicks and poults, etc...
We have some strange rules about presents, nearly all of which we've violated now and then, but which keep the insanity from getting too intolerable.
1. Nothing that sings, dances, has no volume control or otherwise drives Mommy and Daddy up the wall.
2. Nothing that can only be played with one way - if it has "directive" qualities, it goes to the synagogue yard sale, particularly if it gives you verbal instructions on how to play with it. The sole exceptions to this rule are board games.
3. No batteries - or nothing that can't be played with without them. Many battery operated basic toys (like our otherwise beloved Fisher-Price farm, which sings and makes noises when you put the animals in the "right" place - grrr!) work just fine without batteries. I make exceptions for a few things - we have some musical toys that use batteries, but generally, we're opposed.
4. Anything that says educational, but means "sings the alphabet really loudly while otherwise doing a lot of stupid crap."
5. Natural materials whenever possible. Partly to reduce the appalling quantity of brightly colored plastic in my house (there was a time when I thought about thinks like aesthetics - ie, before I had children), partly to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals and non-renewable garbage, but mostly, because real materials feel nicer. So wood, wool, metal, silk, etc...
6. Mostly no tv/movie tie ins. We have always excepted Sesame Street from this rule - DH has a cookie monster thing. I have come to tolerate a certain amount of Disney Winnie the Pooh crap, since Simon is Pooh obsessed (we're reading _The House at Pooh Corner_ with both boys right now) and it is disturbingly hard to find Shepherd Pooh related toys. We own Thomas trains, but my kids have never seen Thomas, and don't know that it is a tie in. We own a lot of Bob the builder trucks, but since they are primarily trucks, not characters, I tolerate them. I suspect I'll soften further on this subject at some point, but I'm trying to hold a line - no Disney toys, no Halloween character costumes, no Blue's Clues flashlights.
7. No violent toys. This doesn't mean what you probably think it does. The issue is not guns, which so far hasn't come up. For me, the issue is *superheroes* - our neighbor's sons are allowed to watch anything they want, and their three and five year olds are Batman obsessed. All they want to do is play Batman - which pretty much involves kicking and hitting my kids. That's not to say my kids are incapable of violence (hardly), but their kinds of play rarely involve karate kicks...yet. So we're holding the line hard against superheroes. We love our neighbors - this is the only complaint I've ever had about them - but I wanted to cry when I found out that my 2 year old knew who spiderman was already.
For the record, I actually am not opposed to all toy guns. I think trying to make water pistols look like anything other than guns is stupid, and I don't necessarily think that the wooden toy flintlock I had as a girl made me any more violent than I am anyhow. But I suspect most contemporary toy guns violate at least one of the above rules. I'm sure we'll have our own little "Christmas (Chanukah?) Story" moment with guns sooner or later, and again, as long as they are made of wood or wool, have no batteries, make no noise and you can do more than one things with them, they can have as many guns as they want.
8. No toys that Mommy and Daddy deem stupid, gross, unappealing, inappropriate or worthless. This is the rule under which all others are subsumed. No playdough MacDonalds, no Mexican jumping beans on racetracks, no green slime in a tube, no books with farting and vomiting, no pointless commercial tie ins, no hideous clown face puzzles, no toys that indicate on the boxes they are only for girls (I still have not been able to find a tea set for my kids that has children of both genders on the box), no throw-away crap meant to be played with for two minutes and sent to the landfill.
We get a disturbing number of these toys (with three kids and multiple holidays, we simply get a disturbing number of toys), and they are returned, regifted or donated. My kids don't seem to mind (yet) that Mommy scoops up some of their toys and says, "these are for tzedakah" after the kind people who gave them depart. I'm hoping if I keep doing it, it will get to be a routine.
Despite all of this, our house looks like a giant playroom, and while it troubles me some (I am not a fan of excess), I'm happy that there is a lot of good stuff - I'm not a believer in artificial shortages. Just in the last few weeks, my children have received:
1. Woolen dolls (in Simon and Isaiah's case) and a woolen stuffed horse with leather saddle (for Eli). They are beautiful, warm and soft.
2. A table and a train set. This might actually have been for Eric, who is at least as into it as the kids.
3. Many, many, many beautiful children's books.
4. A new top - we break one from overuse every couple of years.
5. A wooden abacus for math games.
6. A puppet theater
7. Assorted trucks for my truck obsessed 1 year old.
8. Assorted stuffed animals for my animal obsessed three year old.
9. A wooden xylophone for my music obsessed 4 1/2 year old.
10. An enormous set of wooden architectural blocks.
My kids are so not deprived it isn't funny - in fact, even my rules aren't keeping the toy level respectable. I feel fortunate not only that my children have wonderful toys to play with, but that many of these will outlast my children, and on to the grandchildren I so fervently hope to have.
I hope your holidays are wonderful, fruitful and over soon!
Shalom.
Sharon
Sunday, December 12, 2004
100 Things About Me
I'm feeling narcissistic today, and have been reading too much Proust, since it is way too hot to weed the garden. So, to up the banality of this blog, 100 random facts about yours truly, virtually none of them genuinely proustian or of any great interest.
1. I am exactly 6' tall, and share a birthday (60 years apart) with Julia Child, who was also 6' tall. This means nothing, but pleases me.
2. I did not immediately feel overwhelming love for my children when they were born. More like interest, and a certain degree of abstract concern. Love came later, but hard.
3. I will eat pretty much anything except aspic. That has included many things not classed as "food" in this country.
4. I grew up in a family where people made things and did things themselves. I remember helping my father smelt bullets for his target shooting in our home furnace, and watching my grandmother's hands as she knit, thinking that if only I could learn to mimic her movements, I could do that too. My step-mother pretty much singlehandedly turned our house when I was growing up, from a wrecked stable with no heat into a gorgeous period home.
5. I was given at birth, by my grandmother and great aunt, lifetime memberships in the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and Eastern Star (women freemasons). For some strange reason, I have never pursued them, although my friend Steve and I have considered starting a Jewish chapter of the DAR for the fun of annoying them.
6. The Jewish thing isn't even the worst thing about me for the DAR - I'm part Cherokee, and my Mom was raised in a trailer park. I think I get my taste for country music from there. Oh, and Native American may not be the worst shadow on my racial purity, as Grandma took pains to deny strenuously. Terrible, ain't it?
7. I cannot follow any kind of diagram, no matter how obvious. I was 25 before I could read a map. Visual imagery in general doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I don't think in images.
8. My family has a Groucho Marx thing, and I grew up watching his movies obsessively. Simon's middle name is "Julius" for Groucho.
9. I have been truly, deeply in love three times. Only one of them requited. Fortunately, the requited one I'm married to.
10. I am a real pain in the ass to live with - I have this on excellent authority and with plenty of external corroboration by multiple sources.
11. I never really liked Middlemarch all that much, despite the name of this blog. I prefer _Daniel Deronda_ or even _Silas Marner_. Although, really, I'd just rather read Fielding.
12. I always claimed to hate Melville, but during my last pregnancy was seized with a sudden, desperate desire to read about whales. I didn't hate it, although I haven't changed my dissertation topic or anything.
13. I am a mean Mommy - I have a "only two repetitions of any story in one day" rule. And only one reading per day of _Green Eggs and Ham_.
14. I like cats better than dogs, but only slightly. Cats are less needy, and I already have children if I want needy things.
15. I remember my father heckling Ronald Reagan at a rally in 1980. He called him "Turkey," I think because he knew we were watching and did not want to curse. I was very impressed by this.
16. I really liked LSD the couple of times I tried it. I was fond of pot, too. I have not yet prepared my anti-drug speech for my children, although it will probably have to be a variation of, "Well, I did drugs. Your grandparents did drugs. Great-Grandma smoked pot a couple of times. Maybe you should think of a more original way to rebel, no?"
17. Despite the fact that I have 30+ hours labors, I love being in labor - it gets me the hell out of pregnancy. Pain, schmain, as long as I'm not pregnant any more.
18. I could eat sushi 3 meals a day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. This would probably not be good for me, nor for my budget.
19. When in doubt, I cook twice as much food as anyone could realistically need. I am nearly always in doubt. It is a compulsion, passed down through several generations, from at least my great grandmother. No one ever runs out of food at my house, although I am perpetually anxious that they will.
20. I am oddly flexible for someone not thin or athletic. I can still do a split and come up without using my hands. Given that I have had three children and am in my 30s, I am proud of this.
21. I made Eric promise to stay married to me at least 75 years. After that (he'll be 103, I'll be 101) we can date whoever we like.
22. I am bisexual. Since I am also monogamous, this is mostly irrelevant, but it makes it fun to go out girl watching with my husband.
23. My mother and step-mother (better known as Susie) got legally married last May in their hometown, Beverly, the first lesbian couple to do so in their community. I am so proud of them, and so pleased that I'm from the state of Massachusetts.
24. In all my years, it would never have occurred (until I read about it recently) to me that there was such a thing as a support group for children of gay parents. A support group for children of narcissistic baby boomers might have been a good thing, however.
25. My father thinks I'm his clone. There is some truth there, enough to be scary, but not quite as much as he imagines. Still, it is always sobering to know that your career choice is pretty much what your father would have picked for you.
26. I like red wine more than white. Last time we went to France, Eric picked Alsace for our wine tour. He owes me a week in Burgundy, maybe for our tenth anniversary.
27. I have had cats named: Gustave Mahler, Entropy, Turnip, Mr. Myxyzptlk, Mnemosyne, Alas Poor Yorick, Tycho Brahe and Angus Og. The dog is named Rufus T. Firefly (points to the first person who gets the reference.)
28. Although I despise virtually everything about pregnancy, I really like babies. This surprised me, because I expected to prefer older children who I could talk to. I like kids a lot too, but there's something about really little babies that I adore.
29. I have four different books in progress, and the worst case of publishing anxiety you could imagine. Expect them in print in 2092.
30. The smell of cabbage makes my happy and nostalgic for my Paternal great-grandmother. I suspect it is a genetic affection, on the polish side.
31. The smell of pipe smoke is pretty much an aphrodisiac for me, but I consider it unethical to press Eric to affect a pipe.
32. I have a fairly impressive vocal range, but a totally mediocre voice. But I can sing tenor, which makes up for a lot, since tenors are always in short supply. In my dreams, I can really sing, and sound a lot like Etta James.
33. The only things I miss about Christianity since becoming a Jew are the smell of pine trees in my house at Christmas (although not the pinetree dog barf on the rug ;-), not having to edit the words to "Chicken Soup with Rice" when reading to my sons, and the concept of poverty as a positive aesthetic virtue.
34. Even though it no longer bears any resemblance to the place I spent my adolescence wandering 15 years ago, I have a certain nostalgia for Harvard Square.
35. The older I get the less I like to read James Joyce (who I once loved) and the less impressed I am by Molly Bloom.
36. I like to organize things. As opposed to cleaning them. I especially like to organize books and yarn.
37. I own enough yarn to open my own shop. I'm gonna have warm socks at the apocalypse, dammit.
38. I like winding skeins into balls as much as knitting - I find it very soothing.
39. I have never read the ending of some of my favorite novels - I just couldn't stand to have them be finished. I still don't know what happens at the end of Nabokov's _Pale Fire_ although I can guess. And I won't tell you (lest someone who might hire me reads this) which one, but there's a Shakespeare play I've never read - I'm saving it as something to look forward to on my 100th birthday.
40. I have never read the end of Fanny Burney's _Cecelia_, but not because I liked it. I'm sure this matters to none of you, but it is a book I'm supposed to have read.
41. I mostly think American Literature before 1900 was a waste of time, with three exceptions -Twain, Dickinson and Whitman. They are the obvious and trite choices, but the only ones. Ok, I've softened a little on Melville, but he still wrote too much, too often.
42. I have two sisters. Rachael and I are 1 year and six days apart. We hated each other for most of our childhoods, but are finally mostly over it. I used to call her "Wurm" - with an odd degree of affection.
43. My other sister, Vicki, is very cool, and to top off her coolness, produced my perfect niece, Abigail. I like this aunt thing very much.
44. My husband's childhood has made me realize that I would not rather have been an only child, although it took quite a while to get there.
45. I was so terrified of motherhood (of the possibility that I might not love my child) that I almost didn't care that I was two weeks past due when Eli was born.
46. I had my third baby at the exact stroke of midnight on December 16. I did not realize, until I did so, that midnight between 12/16 and 12/17 is still 12/16 - it isn't the next day until 12:01. Had I thought about it, I might have been able to figure it out.
47. I am very good at taking other people's ideas to their logical conclusion. I'm not so good at coming up with new ones on my own. But people find the former impressive at times.
48. I don't really care that much for chocolate - except mixed with peanut butter or fruit. The more adulterated, the better.
49. I am not at all afraid of heights, and love to hang off the edge of high things. This scares the heck out of my husband, so I (mostly) try not to do it in front of him.
50. I had cooler taste in music (Punk vs. the ubiquitous boy music, Led Zepplin) that Eric in high school. It is quite a remarkable thing that I was cooler than anyone about anything - ever.
51. I am freaked out by horror movies, fake blood and guts, gross jokes on tv. I am totally unsqueamish about all those things in real life, and have had ample contact with them back when I was doing EMS. I don't understand this about myself at all.
52. I wrote forty pages this past week - and deleted 24 of them.
53. I hate driving - I will do almost anything to get someone else to drive instead of me. I would be delighted never to have to get in a car again.
54. I like to win. This can be very annoying, whether I win or not.
55. If you are sick, I am the nicest person in the world, even if I am sick myself.
56. I believe that the right kind of tea fixes any problem or illness. I own nearly every kind on earth.
57. My husband has been known to refer to me as his "beloved vagina dentata." This is more appropriate than I like.
58. I talk to myself, particularly when I am working out ideas. I particularly like to walk and talk to myself. I cannot chew gum at the same time, and do not try.
59. I have an extremely poor memory for fiction - I can read most mysteries at least twice before the ending isn't a surprise. I read extremely quickly, but I have to read twice to really retain things.
60. I wanted to be Joan Jett when I was 12. Secretly, I'd still like to be her.
61. I actually like doing Latin declensions and complex math problems.
62. If I had my way, we'd live much further from civilization than we do. I like quiet, space and no one remotely in sight.
63. I am wildly shy, and mostly hide it by being kind of obnoxious and talking too much. I hate meeting new people. Mostly, people do not like me that much when we first meet. I am an acquired taste.
64. My first memory is of my parents bringing my sister home from the hospital. We lived on the fourth floor of an apartment with very long, low windows, and I recall looking down with someone (my grandmother, maybe?) as my father helped my mother and the new baby out of the car.
65. I have a "save the world" complex. I used to run off and try and actually do it, now I write about it. This is, perhaps, why one shouldn't trust anyone over 30.
66. I have been pregnant or nursing for almost six consecutive years now. I anticipate at least another few months of nursing Isaiah (Simon stopped at 2, Eli at 3).
67. I have been sleep deprived for five out of the last six years. There is a connection between this statement and the previous one.
68. I am a semi-skeptic, in that I tend to doubt things but do them anyway. I am presently taking homeopathy for carpal tunnel syndrome, and, psychosomatically or not, I think it helps. That does not mean I believe in homeopathy.
69. I am torn between admiration for Romanticism and the wish that there would be a great movement of adult, rather than adolescent ardor. I mostly love Percy Shelley, have come to terms with parts of Wordsworth, and like Coleridge and Byron very much. _Wuthering Heights_, is, however, the most overrated book of all time, and Wordsworth the most overrated poet save Jory Graham.
70. I don't like most contemporary fiction I read, for much the same reason I don't like a lot of movies. You have to surprise me to get me paying attention.
71. I don't like to own first editions of books - I like books I can write in, turn down a page on, etc... The sole exception is the first editiion of US Grant's Memoirs my Dad sent me for my birthday. It was my great-great-great uncle's, I believe.
72. I probably should have gone into advertising. I'd be really, really good at it. Of course, I'd miss my soul. Eric particularly admires my campaign for "FauxFu" a meat-based tofu substitute for lapsed vegetarians.
73. In part, I homestead because no one seems to really believe it is possible to reduce one's consumption to a fair share of the earth's resources. I have not yet fully succeeded, but I believe it is possible, and that someone has to do it.
74. I hate it when people say "yuck" about food, or call something disgusting that they don't like. My children already know better. I've seen enough hungry people to find only that disgusting.
75. I love to teach. I can never believe they pay me for something that's so enjoyable. And I love to teach writing particularly. Lit people are supposed to hate it, to think it isn't very important. But ultimately, teaching people to write well is teaching them to think clearly, and there's nothing that matters more.
1. I am exactly 6' tall, and share a birthday (60 years apart) with Julia Child, who was also 6' tall. This means nothing, but pleases me.
2. I did not immediately feel overwhelming love for my children when they were born. More like interest, and a certain degree of abstract concern. Love came later, but hard.
3. I will eat pretty much anything except aspic. That has included many things not classed as "food" in this country.
4. I grew up in a family where people made things and did things themselves. I remember helping my father smelt bullets for his target shooting in our home furnace, and watching my grandmother's hands as she knit, thinking that if only I could learn to mimic her movements, I could do that too. My step-mother pretty much singlehandedly turned our house when I was growing up, from a wrecked stable with no heat into a gorgeous period home.
5. I was given at birth, by my grandmother and great aunt, lifetime memberships in the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and Eastern Star (women freemasons). For some strange reason, I have never pursued them, although my friend Steve and I have considered starting a Jewish chapter of the DAR for the fun of annoying them.
6. The Jewish thing isn't even the worst thing about me for the DAR - I'm part Cherokee, and my Mom was raised in a trailer park. I think I get my taste for country music from there. Oh, and Native American may not be the worst shadow on my racial purity, as Grandma took pains to deny strenuously. Terrible, ain't it?
7. I cannot follow any kind of diagram, no matter how obvious. I was 25 before I could read a map. Visual imagery in general doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I don't think in images.
8. My family has a Groucho Marx thing, and I grew up watching his movies obsessively. Simon's middle name is "Julius" for Groucho.
9. I have been truly, deeply in love three times. Only one of them requited. Fortunately, the requited one I'm married to.
10. I am a real pain in the ass to live with - I have this on excellent authority and with plenty of external corroboration by multiple sources.
11. I never really liked Middlemarch all that much, despite the name of this blog. I prefer _Daniel Deronda_ or even _Silas Marner_. Although, really, I'd just rather read Fielding.
12. I always claimed to hate Melville, but during my last pregnancy was seized with a sudden, desperate desire to read about whales. I didn't hate it, although I haven't changed my dissertation topic or anything.
13. I am a mean Mommy - I have a "only two repetitions of any story in one day" rule. And only one reading per day of _Green Eggs and Ham_.
14. I like cats better than dogs, but only slightly. Cats are less needy, and I already have children if I want needy things.
15. I remember my father heckling Ronald Reagan at a rally in 1980. He called him "Turkey," I think because he knew we were watching and did not want to curse. I was very impressed by this.
16. I really liked LSD the couple of times I tried it. I was fond of pot, too. I have not yet prepared my anti-drug speech for my children, although it will probably have to be a variation of, "Well, I did drugs. Your grandparents did drugs. Great-Grandma smoked pot a couple of times. Maybe you should think of a more original way to rebel, no?"
17. Despite the fact that I have 30+ hours labors, I love being in labor - it gets me the hell out of pregnancy. Pain, schmain, as long as I'm not pregnant any more.
18. I could eat sushi 3 meals a day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. This would probably not be good for me, nor for my budget.
19. When in doubt, I cook twice as much food as anyone could realistically need. I am nearly always in doubt. It is a compulsion, passed down through several generations, from at least my great grandmother. No one ever runs out of food at my house, although I am perpetually anxious that they will.
20. I am oddly flexible for someone not thin or athletic. I can still do a split and come up without using my hands. Given that I have had three children and am in my 30s, I am proud of this.
21. I made Eric promise to stay married to me at least 75 years. After that (he'll be 103, I'll be 101) we can date whoever we like.
22. I am bisexual. Since I am also monogamous, this is mostly irrelevant, but it makes it fun to go out girl watching with my husband.
23. My mother and step-mother (better known as Susie) got legally married last May in their hometown, Beverly, the first lesbian couple to do so in their community. I am so proud of them, and so pleased that I'm from the state of Massachusetts.
24. In all my years, it would never have occurred (until I read about it recently) to me that there was such a thing as a support group for children of gay parents. A support group for children of narcissistic baby boomers might have been a good thing, however.
25. My father thinks I'm his clone. There is some truth there, enough to be scary, but not quite as much as he imagines. Still, it is always sobering to know that your career choice is pretty much what your father would have picked for you.
26. I like red wine more than white. Last time we went to France, Eric picked Alsace for our wine tour. He owes me a week in Burgundy, maybe for our tenth anniversary.
27. I have had cats named: Gustave Mahler, Entropy, Turnip, Mr. Myxyzptlk, Mnemosyne, Alas Poor Yorick, Tycho Brahe and Angus Og. The dog is named Rufus T. Firefly (points to the first person who gets the reference.)
28. Although I despise virtually everything about pregnancy, I really like babies. This surprised me, because I expected to prefer older children who I could talk to. I like kids a lot too, but there's something about really little babies that I adore.
29. I have four different books in progress, and the worst case of publishing anxiety you could imagine. Expect them in print in 2092.
30. The smell of cabbage makes my happy and nostalgic for my Paternal great-grandmother. I suspect it is a genetic affection, on the polish side.
31. The smell of pipe smoke is pretty much an aphrodisiac for me, but I consider it unethical to press Eric to affect a pipe.
32. I have a fairly impressive vocal range, but a totally mediocre voice. But I can sing tenor, which makes up for a lot, since tenors are always in short supply. In my dreams, I can really sing, and sound a lot like Etta James.
33. The only things I miss about Christianity since becoming a Jew are the smell of pine trees in my house at Christmas (although not the pinetree dog barf on the rug ;-), not having to edit the words to "Chicken Soup with Rice" when reading to my sons, and the concept of poverty as a positive aesthetic virtue.
34. Even though it no longer bears any resemblance to the place I spent my adolescence wandering 15 years ago, I have a certain nostalgia for Harvard Square.
35. The older I get the less I like to read James Joyce (who I once loved) and the less impressed I am by Molly Bloom.
36. I like to organize things. As opposed to cleaning them. I especially like to organize books and yarn.
37. I own enough yarn to open my own shop. I'm gonna have warm socks at the apocalypse, dammit.
38. I like winding skeins into balls as much as knitting - I find it very soothing.
39. I have never read the ending of some of my favorite novels - I just couldn't stand to have them be finished. I still don't know what happens at the end of Nabokov's _Pale Fire_ although I can guess. And I won't tell you (lest someone who might hire me reads this) which one, but there's a Shakespeare play I've never read - I'm saving it as something to look forward to on my 100th birthday.
40. I have never read the end of Fanny Burney's _Cecelia_, but not because I liked it. I'm sure this matters to none of you, but it is a book I'm supposed to have read.
41. I mostly think American Literature before 1900 was a waste of time, with three exceptions -Twain, Dickinson and Whitman. They are the obvious and trite choices, but the only ones. Ok, I've softened a little on Melville, but he still wrote too much, too often.
42. I have two sisters. Rachael and I are 1 year and six days apart. We hated each other for most of our childhoods, but are finally mostly over it. I used to call her "Wurm" - with an odd degree of affection.
43. My other sister, Vicki, is very cool, and to top off her coolness, produced my perfect niece, Abigail. I like this aunt thing very much.
44. My husband's childhood has made me realize that I would not rather have been an only child, although it took quite a while to get there.
45. I was so terrified of motherhood (of the possibility that I might not love my child) that I almost didn't care that I was two weeks past due when Eli was born.
46. I had my third baby at the exact stroke of midnight on December 16. I did not realize, until I did so, that midnight between 12/16 and 12/17 is still 12/16 - it isn't the next day until 12:01. Had I thought about it, I might have been able to figure it out.
47. I am very good at taking other people's ideas to their logical conclusion. I'm not so good at coming up with new ones on my own. But people find the former impressive at times.
48. I don't really care that much for chocolate - except mixed with peanut butter or fruit. The more adulterated, the better.
49. I am not at all afraid of heights, and love to hang off the edge of high things. This scares the heck out of my husband, so I (mostly) try not to do it in front of him.
50. I had cooler taste in music (Punk vs. the ubiquitous boy music, Led Zepplin) that Eric in high school. It is quite a remarkable thing that I was cooler than anyone about anything - ever.
51. I am freaked out by horror movies, fake blood and guts, gross jokes on tv. I am totally unsqueamish about all those things in real life, and have had ample contact with them back when I was doing EMS. I don't understand this about myself at all.
52. I wrote forty pages this past week - and deleted 24 of them.
53. I hate driving - I will do almost anything to get someone else to drive instead of me. I would be delighted never to have to get in a car again.
54. I like to win. This can be very annoying, whether I win or not.
55. If you are sick, I am the nicest person in the world, even if I am sick myself.
56. I believe that the right kind of tea fixes any problem or illness. I own nearly every kind on earth.
57. My husband has been known to refer to me as his "beloved vagina dentata." This is more appropriate than I like.
58. I talk to myself, particularly when I am working out ideas. I particularly like to walk and talk to myself. I cannot chew gum at the same time, and do not try.
59. I have an extremely poor memory for fiction - I can read most mysteries at least twice before the ending isn't a surprise. I read extremely quickly, but I have to read twice to really retain things.
60. I wanted to be Joan Jett when I was 12. Secretly, I'd still like to be her.
61. I actually like doing Latin declensions and complex math problems.
62. If I had my way, we'd live much further from civilization than we do. I like quiet, space and no one remotely in sight.
63. I am wildly shy, and mostly hide it by being kind of obnoxious and talking too much. I hate meeting new people. Mostly, people do not like me that much when we first meet. I am an acquired taste.
64. My first memory is of my parents bringing my sister home from the hospital. We lived on the fourth floor of an apartment with very long, low windows, and I recall looking down with someone (my grandmother, maybe?) as my father helped my mother and the new baby out of the car.
65. I have a "save the world" complex. I used to run off and try and actually do it, now I write about it. This is, perhaps, why one shouldn't trust anyone over 30.
66. I have been pregnant or nursing for almost six consecutive years now. I anticipate at least another few months of nursing Isaiah (Simon stopped at 2, Eli at 3).
67. I have been sleep deprived for five out of the last six years. There is a connection between this statement and the previous one.
68. I am a semi-skeptic, in that I tend to doubt things but do them anyway. I am presently taking homeopathy for carpal tunnel syndrome, and, psychosomatically or not, I think it helps. That does not mean I believe in homeopathy.
69. I am torn between admiration for Romanticism and the wish that there would be a great movement of adult, rather than adolescent ardor. I mostly love Percy Shelley, have come to terms with parts of Wordsworth, and like Coleridge and Byron very much. _Wuthering Heights_, is, however, the most overrated book of all time, and Wordsworth the most overrated poet save Jory Graham.
70. I don't like most contemporary fiction I read, for much the same reason I don't like a lot of movies. You have to surprise me to get me paying attention.
71. I don't like to own first editions of books - I like books I can write in, turn down a page on, etc... The sole exception is the first editiion of US Grant's Memoirs my Dad sent me for my birthday. It was my great-great-great uncle's, I believe.
72. I probably should have gone into advertising. I'd be really, really good at it. Of course, I'd miss my soul. Eric particularly admires my campaign for "FauxFu" a meat-based tofu substitute for lapsed vegetarians.
73. In part, I homestead because no one seems to really believe it is possible to reduce one's consumption to a fair share of the earth's resources. I have not yet fully succeeded, but I believe it is possible, and that someone has to do it.
74. I hate it when people say "yuck" about food, or call something disgusting that they don't like. My children already know better. I've seen enough hungry people to find only that disgusting.
75. I love to teach. I can never believe they pay me for something that's so enjoyable. And I love to teach writing particularly. Lit people are supposed to hate it, to think it isn't very important. But ultimately, teaching people to write well is teaching them to think clearly, and there's nothing that matters more.
94 Years ago today
Grandpa died a week ago. It was a good death - he died with his family around him, and had a period of lucidity and energy greater than he'd had in a while. His wife and I were holding his hands, he had just eaten chocolate with almonds (his favorite food) and he was excited that his son and daughter in law were present.
Today would have been his 94th birthday. I feel most grieved for Grandma, who was his wife for 62 years, since she was 17. She was on the kindertransport at 12, and there were so many things she missed as a servant in England during her teens. So he was nearly everything to her - husband, teacher, protector, father figure. In the last years she devoted herself to caring for him, and I've never seen two people love each other more. It will be very hard for her.
Their daughter, Eric's aunt, was in transit from California when he died, and when she, her daughter and grandson went home from the funeral last night, they took Grandma with them for a month. Its a good thing for her to have a break, and I think a very good thing for us as well. I checked - until Saturday, except to attend the funeral, I hadn't left the house for 2 weeks, since Grandpa and then Grandma required so much care.
I planned the funeral. No one else wanted to do it, and I'm not a weepy sort of person. I'm good for about five minutes of hugging and crying, and then I get to work trying to fix what's broken, and get ready for what's coming. So it was easier for me to make the phone calls and speak all the harsh details, and better for me to have something practical to do.
So I made all the arrangements, and told everyone what to do and say, packed Grandma's suitcase, arranged her plane tickets, got the body sent to the cemetary, arranged the funeral lunch, babysat the kids during the hard parts of the funeral, cooked dinner for the relatives, explained death to Simon, Eli and nephew Jake, made everyone eat and sleep when they didn't want to, even arranged to remove and hide the birthday presents and cards from Grandma. And all because I've never yet been able to shake my basic degree of detachment in any crisis. Its a useful quality - everyone always comments on how calm I am when the chips are down, and I've used it at times in some scary situations. But it comes with a down side - others perceive me as cold, and I'm not sure they are wrong. There's a sense that even the strongest and most passionate moments of my life are always something I perceive simultaneously as though they were happening to me and as though they were occurring to someone else - I am always a little disconnected.
I think it was Emerson (John Burt, one of my wisest and best Profs told me this) who said something along the same lines about the death of his son. Now I've never experienced a death quite like that, and I don't begin to imply that the death of a 94 year old man who I'd known and cared about only 8 years bore any resemblance (God forbid!!!) to what it would be like to lose a child. But I have this evil sneaky feeling that I'd be the kind of person that even in the face of the ugliest of personal tragedies, who could to some degree watch herself mourning, and doubt my own sincerity.
Ok, enough about what a dreadful person I can be.
Sharon
Today would have been his 94th birthday. I feel most grieved for Grandma, who was his wife for 62 years, since she was 17. She was on the kindertransport at 12, and there were so many things she missed as a servant in England during her teens. So he was nearly everything to her - husband, teacher, protector, father figure. In the last years she devoted herself to caring for him, and I've never seen two people love each other more. It will be very hard for her.
Their daughter, Eric's aunt, was in transit from California when he died, and when she, her daughter and grandson went home from the funeral last night, they took Grandma with them for a month. Its a good thing for her to have a break, and I think a very good thing for us as well. I checked - until Saturday, except to attend the funeral, I hadn't left the house for 2 weeks, since Grandpa and then Grandma required so much care.
I planned the funeral. No one else wanted to do it, and I'm not a weepy sort of person. I'm good for about five minutes of hugging and crying, and then I get to work trying to fix what's broken, and get ready for what's coming. So it was easier for me to make the phone calls and speak all the harsh details, and better for me to have something practical to do.
So I made all the arrangements, and told everyone what to do and say, packed Grandma's suitcase, arranged her plane tickets, got the body sent to the cemetary, arranged the funeral lunch, babysat the kids during the hard parts of the funeral, cooked dinner for the relatives, explained death to Simon, Eli and nephew Jake, made everyone eat and sleep when they didn't want to, even arranged to remove and hide the birthday presents and cards from Grandma. And all because I've never yet been able to shake my basic degree of detachment in any crisis. Its a useful quality - everyone always comments on how calm I am when the chips are down, and I've used it at times in some scary situations. But it comes with a down side - others perceive me as cold, and I'm not sure they are wrong. There's a sense that even the strongest and most passionate moments of my life are always something I perceive simultaneously as though they were happening to me and as though they were occurring to someone else - I am always a little disconnected.
I think it was Emerson (John Burt, one of my wisest and best Profs told me this) who said something along the same lines about the death of his son. Now I've never experienced a death quite like that, and I don't begin to imply that the death of a 94 year old man who I'd known and cared about only 8 years bore any resemblance (God forbid!!!) to what it would be like to lose a child. But I have this evil sneaky feeling that I'd be the kind of person that even in the face of the ugliest of personal tragedies, who could to some degree watch herself mourning, and doubt my own sincerity.
Ok, enough about what a dreadful person I can be.
Sharon
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Winding Down
My husband's grandparents came to live with us this past spring. We bought the house planning to have them with us a few years ago, but they resisted leaving familiar surroundings (they've lived in the same part of NJ since they came to the US as refugees after WWII). When Grandpa started to seriously decline, we built an apartment onto the house, and they moved in this spring. And now, Grandpa, whose 94th birthday is coming up on December 12, seems to be coming to the end of his life. It is so terribly hard to watch.
I've worked in hospices and nursing homes, and done EMS for years, so I'm intimately familiar with the details death in a professional sense, but I had forgotten, somehow, how badly one longs for the mercy of death at the end. I am normally (more than normally?) afraid of dying - much more so since I had children who need me so desperately. I do not look on death as a friend or ally for myself. And yet I did not remember how I used to pray, really and truly beg God with all my heart, that a particular patient, reduced to suffering and endurance, would die, and be granted a little peace. I had forgotten how angry I used to get at the universe for allowing this kind of pointless misery. I am reminded.
And here I am again. Grandpa is in a moderate amount of pain, which no medication seems to relieve. He cannot enjoy his great-grandchildren, food, music or companionship. Life has been reduced to the hideous misery of having to move from one place to another, to endure another bathing, another meal, another toileting. Grandma, who is 14 years younger, is no longer his companion or friend, just his increasingly overwhelmed and exhausted nurse while Eric and I try to take what of the burden we can from her.
Suffering does not always, or even usually, have a purpose. I've seen little children, parents of small ones, people desperately loved and needed dying slowly and agonizingly sufficient times that I have long since made myself recognize that there is no meaning in pain. And yet I cannot reconcile myself to that absence of meaning. I still want God to relieve him of his suffering, to end 94 good - at times even heroic- years with dignity and peace. I find it nearly unbearable to watch him, confused, hurting and querelous, attempting to understand why it is that we are hurting him by forcing him to move, or eat again. And he tries desperately to be kind and dignified, thanking us for our kindness even when we are making things worse.
This is not a life tragically cut short - he had a good run. And while we will be sorry to see him go, that's not the point. The point is that we have no right or way to make his end anything other than a misery and a kind of tiny, personal tragedy, when it might have had grace.
I don't know if he'll live days or weeks or a couple of months. I doubt longer. I know I will pray (pointlessly, I suspect) as hard as I can that tonight, or tomorrow, or soon he sleeps and doesn't wake up. If God is real, he doesn't take requests. But I will keep praying, because it is better than any alternative that accepts this misery and indignity as inevitable or meaningful.
Shalom,
Sharon
I've worked in hospices and nursing homes, and done EMS for years, so I'm intimately familiar with the details death in a professional sense, but I had forgotten, somehow, how badly one longs for the mercy of death at the end. I am normally (more than normally?) afraid of dying - much more so since I had children who need me so desperately. I do not look on death as a friend or ally for myself. And yet I did not remember how I used to pray, really and truly beg God with all my heart, that a particular patient, reduced to suffering and endurance, would die, and be granted a little peace. I had forgotten how angry I used to get at the universe for allowing this kind of pointless misery. I am reminded.
And here I am again. Grandpa is in a moderate amount of pain, which no medication seems to relieve. He cannot enjoy his great-grandchildren, food, music or companionship. Life has been reduced to the hideous misery of having to move from one place to another, to endure another bathing, another meal, another toileting. Grandma, who is 14 years younger, is no longer his companion or friend, just his increasingly overwhelmed and exhausted nurse while Eric and I try to take what of the burden we can from her.
Suffering does not always, or even usually, have a purpose. I've seen little children, parents of small ones, people desperately loved and needed dying slowly and agonizingly sufficient times that I have long since made myself recognize that there is no meaning in pain. And yet I cannot reconcile myself to that absence of meaning. I still want God to relieve him of his suffering, to end 94 good - at times even heroic- years with dignity and peace. I find it nearly unbearable to watch him, confused, hurting and querelous, attempting to understand why it is that we are hurting him by forcing him to move, or eat again. And he tries desperately to be kind and dignified, thanking us for our kindness even when we are making things worse.
This is not a life tragically cut short - he had a good run. And while we will be sorry to see him go, that's not the point. The point is that we have no right or way to make his end anything other than a misery and a kind of tiny, personal tragedy, when it might have had grace.
I don't know if he'll live days or weeks or a couple of months. I doubt longer. I know I will pray (pointlessly, I suspect) as hard as I can that tonight, or tomorrow, or soon he sleeps and doesn't wake up. If God is real, he doesn't take requests. But I will keep praying, because it is better than any alternative that accepts this misery and indignity as inevitable or meaningful.
Shalom,
Sharon
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