Month: August 2018

Wednesday Poem

Karen

I have been thinking how lucky I am to have everything I do. This is a good one.

 

Otherwise
Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Another Willow Tank

Karen1 Comment

After I posted about it, I did go back and fix the fit issues on my Make Nine Willow Tank. But it’s a little bit of a chop job on the inside, and then I saw Catherine’s version in Kokka twill, and then Stonemountain had a sale, and if you give a mouse a cookie she’s going to make another sleeveless top:

I got a yard of fabric and had to cut the back in two pieces and upside down to get it to fit (looking at Catherine’s again, I think she cut hers on the cross grain) but the print really disguises it all. And the bust darts are in the right place this time!

 

The Big Yellowstone Trip

Karen1 Comment

We are back from a weeklong hiking vacation to Yellowstone to celebrate Doc’s 15th anniversary (and congratulatory sabbatical month) with REI. We took a guided REI Adventures trip and got a thorough view of the park, ate at all the different lodges, saw lots of wildlife (not shown: moose, marmot, elk, pronghorn, and fresh bear scat!), and hiked at least 5 miles a day. Hang on, there are lots of pictures:

Abyss Pool
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Grand Prismatic Spring
Forest at the base of Avalanche Peak
Sagebrush highlands on the way to Trout Lake
Yellowstone Lake from Lake Lodge
Jackson Lake from Signal Mountain Lodge and a new word (?)
Bison doing their thing. The rut was already on and it felt like fall up there.
Trout Lake
Wolf sighting! We saw three from maybe 50 yards away! Definitely the highlight of the trip. 

Week of Long Reads: Mr. Rogers

Karen

Today’s read by Heather Havrilesky made the rounds when it was published in May, as it deserved to do because it is beautiful. Yes, it’s a moving tribute to Mr. Rogers–but it’s also a clear-eyed look at the human condition, the “vast ocean of emotions” within all of us, the need to feel seen.

Why Did We Ever Leave Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?

As a parent, sometimes I have to remind myself that even playing games or having fun together isn’t the same thing as offering up time for kids to be seen and heard clearly. Because when you’re a kid, even good friends mostly talk over you and rarely listen. Childhood is lonelier and more isolating than most of us are willing to remember or admit.

But then, most people would rather avoid talking about dark emotions like fear, anger, melancholy, and longing anyway—a problem Rogers’s show always tried to address. And most parents don’t love the idea that children experience a vast ocean of emotions beyond happiness, in part because many of us don’t like admitting that we all contain volatile seas of rage and despair. Rogers’s quiet air of acceptance and love makes us squeamish because it exposes our own conflicted, avoidant natures. His silence challenges us to accept our own emotional complexity in ways that the whirring, buzzing, flashing simulacrum of global culture specifically discourages.

Short Read: Happy Birthday to My Dad

Karen

Yesterday’s sea shanty post was mostly for my dad, who also knows shanties and sings them and has, his whole life, dragged a “great weight” of some kind or another: Being responsible for a brother. Being the family breadwinner. And now, the weight of taking care of my mom as she deals with cancer, chemo, and (soon) surgery.

My dad did not grow up in a time of sentiment, so showing any vulnerability or “weakness” is hard. I think it’s hard for him to even see it in other people, because, to him, you just deal with whatever great weight you’re dragging. Sure, you could complain about it, but you’ll still have to move that weight, so just keep going.

I know Mom being sick has been hard on him–it’s been hard on all of us, but he’s the one there with her the most. But in his mind, his job is not to complain, not to fail, not to be weak. To drag the weight, no matter what it is.

So I just want to tell him today, “You are doing a beautiful job, Dad. Happy birthday. I love you.”

Week of Long Reads: Sea Shanties

Karen

Today, we have Blair Thornburg’s gentle, beautiful love letter to sea shanties and what they meant to her while she tapered off Seroquel: How Shanties and Songs of the Sea Helped Me Weather the Storm of Depression.

After his own bout of seafaring, Felix Fabri, a fifteenth-century Dominican friar, wrote that “work at sea is very heavy, and is only carried on by a concert between one who sings out orders and the laborers who sing in response [. . .] great weights are dragged by their means.” For a time in my life there was a great weight to be dragged, and with the sea shanties, I dragged it.

Week of Long Reads: Words

Karen

I have a backlog of recent and not-so-recent articles that are worth sharing but seem a little too long or Too Meaningful  to be a Friday Link.  So I’m calling this week The Week of Long Reads and posting a string of them.

First up, a recent one by writer Lyz Lenz, which…well, the title says it all: Why Writing Matters in the Age of Despair

Even as things have fallen apart, I’ve had these words. These lists. These texts sent to friends. These posts in secret Facebook groups. These emails. These conversations over coffee and whiskey. I now have legal documents and decrees. My therapist’s notes. My garden of Word documents, half finished, all trying to tell a new story, or just the old story that didn’t get told the first time. I still want justice, but I see it through words now. The balance of justice is weighed in story.

RIP, Aretha

Karen

The Queen is dead, as I’m sure you’ve heard. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online tributes and obituaries, but these two stood out:

“Soul Survivor” mentions a couple of her  stand out performances that I looked up, and yeah, that Kennedy Center Honors performance of “Natural Woman” is worth the hype:

And! This cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is sublime.