Monday Poem

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It’s cara cara orange season and I’ve been buying bags of them and they’re so pink! and sweet! “But then I peel an orange” and yeah, it’s all pretty amazing when you think about it.

I Feel God in This Chili’s Tonight
by Lyndsay Ruth

Have you had a strawberry lately?
Seen a little birdie drink from a puddle?
Beheld how the mist kisses the lake?
Pondered the voting system of bees?
I’m often awestruck
at the spiritual fixation on the afterlife
when this one is right here, right now–begging
for the kind of care and curiosity that
devout folks seem to save for Kingdom Come
Some days I look around and think,
What in the hee-haw hell is this?
But then I peel an orange or play the piano or
hear a person I love laugh so hard they honk
And I have no doubt that what I’m glimpsing
right here, right now
is heaven

Friday Links

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1. I did some spiraling earlier this week, like I’m sure we all do. This didn’t make me feel better but it made me feel seen:

2. But there are still good things happening! Salt Lake City and Boise make pride flags official city emblems, skirting flag ban laws. We love to see a loophole closed like that.

 

3. This newsletter on having people over for dinner is really funny and accurate. Plus hanging out with your friends can fight the effects of all the stupid things going on out there.

I always forget that I like to host dinner parties. Always. The second there’s one on our calendar, I begin to preemptively resent it. In my head, a dinner party is this big stressful event requiring tons of prep and energy.

And that is… never true? It never is. We’re just having people over! And none of them care about anything except getting together! No one gives a shit about the food (as long as it’s edible), or the kind of wine we have, or the fact that the dogs patently need to brushed. And as long as the house is a baseline level of cleanish, no one ever notices the things that I notice about my house, like “there is dust on a bookshelf in a room that no guest would typically go in” or “there are too many sticks in the yard.”

No one cares! Everyone just wants to hang out and share a meal!

Pigeon Whistles

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The Present and Correct blog had a brief post on pigeon whistles, “a small musical instrument that is attached to the tail of the pigeon so that it produces a sound when it flies.” I read the linked article about the history (very cool) but what on earth would that sound like?

The modern internet is mostly a hellscape BUT you know you can find an example of just about anything… including the sound of pigeon whistles on a flock of birds.

Wednesday Essay

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This is from Mike Monteiro, a designer and writer and just all around smart guy. He’s been answering questions and this is in answer to, “How can we stay positive about the future these days?” His replies often have a lot of personal anecdote but they always work out as a metaphor–especially here.

… we couldn’t afford to heat the entire house. So during the winter, we heated what we could. And during those winter months, if you needed heat, you came to the living room …

Sometimes you cannot heat the whole house. The heat rises, it spirals. It escapes through every crack.

Sometimes you cannot be positive about the future.
But what if we redefined what we had to heat? What if we redefined the future to something we could actually manage. Because the future is too vague a term, and filled with too much uncertainty.

What if we could be positive about tomorrow?

[…] Spiraling into hopelessness helps no one. Giving an unhoused person $20 and a winter jacket that’s been sitting in the back of your closet might only help one person, but it also helps one person. When the systemic issues feel too big, we do what we can. When we cannot heat the whole house, we heat the core.

 

Tuesday Project Roundup: Big Pants

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I made another pair of Daughter Judy Monty Pants with the final pattern (not the tester version). My vision was a matching shirt and pants and I thought I had enough fabric, but I sure didn’t. But then instead of thinking through if I’d wear voluminous orange-and-black striped pants solo, I just cut the pants out anyway and sewed them up.

I wasn’t very enthused when they were done–so big! so striped!–but I’ve been taking video for the May outfit prompts, and seeing them in action, they’re actually not that sloppy? I think it helps that the prompt I styled them for was, “Dress like you just rage quit your job via voice note and are off to pottery.” Turns out, these are the perfect pants for that.


(That screenshot from my Instagram video isn’t the best quality but it gives the general vibe)

And a better look at the fabric–a really beefy shirting from Nick of Time Textiles.

It’s Monday

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And we’re still moving slow over here (well, I am). I didn’t end up shaking off my head cold so I spent all weekend surrounded by tissues. Nothing major–my main symptom is mostly being extremely!! annoyed!! by my sinuses–but enough to spend a lot of time with Dr. Toby on the couch. He did his best to stay awake on duty but you can see he dropped off a few times.

Friday Links

Karen

Yay it’s Friday! And I’m feeling better AND the sun is shining. How about some links?

1. Did you know you can look through Georgia O’Keefe’s recipe cards online? Her handwriting was amazing.

2. They bring up a good point: The kerning on Pope Francis’ tomb is really bad.

It really is quietly beautiful. But atop that marble is a tomb inscribed with the name “Franciscus.” Or what—due to terrible spacing between letters, known as kerning—reads something more like “F R A NCIS VS.”

3.  Speaking of popes:

 

Wednesday Poem

Karen

This has a line that’s on theme for the month (“What were you wearing? Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?”) and also a construction that makes me want to be in a poetry analysis class again–it looks like a sonnet and the internal rhymes make it feel like one, but it technically isn’t. Whatever it is, it’s a delight, like all of Ada’s poems.

 

While Everything Else Was Falling Apart
by Ada Limón

In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen
years ago now, the L train came clanking by
where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart
on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day
(brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon).
Above ground, the spring sun was the saddest one
(doing work, but also none). What were you wearing?
Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?
A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce
churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept
repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say
this made you want to live? No hand to hold
still here it was: someone giving someone comfort
and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.

Silly Little Outfits

Karen

It’s May and that means Sewing Instagram is full of people posting outfits with the clothes they made and calling it “Me Made May.” The last time I tried to join in was in 2018, when I’d say only 30% of my wardrobe was handmade. Now it’s about 90% and it’s “Me Made Every Day,” so documenting it for May just seemed a little silly.

But this year I saw an account propose a new idea: “Me Made May But Make It Weird.” What? “Weirdly specific and unnecessarily dramatic”? SIGN ME UP.

I missed a couple days of prompts in Moab but I’m back at it this week, because just look at the outfit prompts:

If you want to see my silly little outfit videos, my feed is here or check out the hashtag.