I’m working on some legwarmers for yoga (the yarn is making the colors, not me):
After yesterday’s bombing in Boston, the Elizabeth Zimmermann quote: “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises” is on my mind. This is, too. And this.
April 2013
Happy Birthday To My Mom
It’s my mother’s 65th birthday today! How do you even talk about someone who’s such a part of your life? I email her every morning, we talk nearly every day, and she’s just started going to yoga with me, too. (She’s fearless about trying new poses.)
I’m really lucky to have my family be my support and my safety net, and I’m extra lucky to have such a good mom. Happy birthday!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Pablo Neruda is on my list of favorite poets but he exists in a vacuum for me, since like a good American I’m pretty fuzzy on any other country’s history. So this was fascinating (and educational): Chile Exhumes Pablo Neruda Over Murder Claims.
2. Here’s something to remember for us (hippie) planners:
“What you can plan is too small for you to live.”
(From Mystic Mamma)
NINA
I’ve been on a big Nina Simone kick lately (and think her name should be all caps, the way the Go Fug Yourself blog refers to Tilda Swinton as SWINTON). What’s not to love about a classically-trained, turban wearing woman with that voice? Here’s my favorite cover of a sad song:
(I’m also pretty sure the photo on this video is not NINA, so try to ignore that.)
Wind
Reading The Little Duck must have gotten my mind thinking about other kid books, because in the last 24 hours of a north wind I could only think of this poem from an old anthology. (I wanted to say it was A Child’s Garden of Verses but I just learned that’s all Robert Louis Stevenson.)
Who Has Seen the Wind?
Who has seen the wind?Neither I nor you:But when the leaves hang trembling,The wind is passing through.Who has seen the wind?Neither you nor I:But when the trees bow down their heads,The wind is passing by.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Grawlix!
The company I work for makes printer-sized machines that cut paper, vinyl, stabilized fabric, etc. into shapes, kind of like a mini CAD/CAM system. This Thursday we’re launching a new material the machine can cut: Iron-on film. Prior to the launch, we got to experiment with it a little bit at work–so of course I decided to cut out a pink glitter grawlix. I finally got around to ironing it on to a t-shirt this weekend: 
I also got started on the tunic:
And I finally got all the quilt squares cut out for the t-shirt quilt:
Sunday Night Conversations
My best friend is not the Outdoor Type, and because I’ve known him for 13 years he remembers when I wasn’t, either. So this was extra-hilarious to me:
Me: “I went up to Snowbird for yoga Saturday and near the top of the canyon I see something big climbing up the bank above the road and it has a bushy tan and gray tail and I realize it’s a coyote. I’ve never seen one in Utah before!”
Him: “Are you sure it wasn’t a raccoon?”
Me: “…”
Him: “I know you took your animal tracking class, but how can you be sure?”
Friday Unrelated Information
1. RIP, Roger Ebert. I don’t think there was anything he wrote that I didn’t enjoy, and this 2011 essay from Slate is no exception:
I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
2. This has made the rounds but I keep listening to it because the commentary just tickles me: “Shake it off, shake it off.”
Hatching
Last week I had the pleasure of showing a friend’s toddler son a book that I loved as a kid: The Little Duck by Judy Dunn. I’m sure most adults my age read it growing up, but have you seen it lately? Go find your old copy because it is a delight. And it has a hatching sequence, which ties it in to yesterday’s quote:
Getting hatched is hard work!
Today’s Quote
Today’s super-duper inspirational quote is from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo:
When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped…
Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end…In that moment—growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking—the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn’t die, but falls into the world.
The lesson is profound. Transformations always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with a feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is…When faced with great change—in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling—we somehow must take in all that has enclosed us, nurtured us, incubated us, so when the new life is upon us, the old is with us.