There hasn’t been been fresh snow in the mountains for a week or so but it’s been cold enough that the old snow has stayed on branches and collected frost, making some extraordinary crystals. I kept expecting the see the White Witch come around the corner in her sledge.
Author: Karen
Friday Links
1. Did I click through The Catalog Blog and want to look at most things? Yes. Is the J. Peterman catalog in there? Of course!
2. Speaking of ephemera, this recipe booklet/story book is astonishing–it rhymes, the art is exquisite and also just plain weird: The Prince of the Gelatin Isles from 1926.
3. I don’t want to get put on a watchlist so I’m not going to share a lot of what I’m seeing about the United Healthcare CEO, but I thought this summary by journalist Taylor Lorenz was good.
“People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. Again, not so they can be murdered, but so that we can change the system and start holding people in power accountable for their actions.”
4. OK, I do have to post this though. That last line!
@philiplabesAnd medical violence is always wrong, but only when it flows one way
Let’s Talk About Face Blindness
I learned the terms prosopagnosia–or face blindness–probably in my early thirties (I think because I was reading about Oliver Sacks, who both had it and wrote a book about an extreme case). A few years before then, I was talking to my BFF about a dream, and said, “You know how people’s faces in dreams are never really faces, they’re just a blur?” and he said, “No, that’s not how most people dream faces.”
I’m entirely self-diagnosed and in my 30s, the main tests out there were to check for the appercetive type, in which you don’t recognize ANYONE. I can recognize people but most of it’s from external cues–beards, hair, voices, clothing style, they’re where I expect to see them, etc.
I randomly decided to read the Wikipedia article about face blindness last night and learned that there’s a developmental type of prosopagnosia, too, which sounds like my case: It’s not an utter inability to recognize people, it’s just hard; it’s been around from birth; and it might even be genetic?
There’s even a newer test out there to screen for the milder types and wow, did that confirm my self-diagnosis:
There’s nothing to be done about it and, because my brain doesn’t know anything else, it’s not bothersome; it’s just an interesting neural thing (maybe something didn’t develop in the fusiform face area of my brain? Yes, I went on a deep dive last night). But thinking of my own history and just assuming everyone was like this, I thought, “Let’s talk about it!”
Wednesday Project Roundup: Pattern Testing Pics
I got some more pictures of the pattern I tested, which is releasing today: The Monty Pant from Daughter Judy.
Since testing, the designer has made the fit a little smaller overall and refined the zipper placket instructions, so you shouldn’t have any of the issues I did. Like I said before, I don’t think I would have picked this shape but I really love it. It helps that there’s an elastic-back waist and lots of room in the hip, but I also just like the vibes: a little 80s, a little modern I kind of want a corduroy pair now.
I just don’t wear office clothes any more so I styled these the way I’d actually wear them, but I think they’d really work with ankle boots and a button up, too.
Anyway, pattern testing was fun! Expanding my style horizons and getting to provide written opinions, what’s not to love?
Tuesday Dilettante Project: Watercolor Envelopes
The “cave paintings” I worked on last week were little watercolor scenes I doodled on the Christmas card envelopes for this year. I was inspired by The Graceful Envelope Contest but, as with many dilettante things, they’re definitely not at that level. But I had fun! And since I wasn’t able to really focus on knitting or sewing, it got me off the computer.
Primitive Human Times
My recovery last week was similar to the progress of early humans: Not leaving the warm cave, deciding to try some cave paintings, venturing briefly into the surrounding area, and finally going on a real journey away from the cave.
The ablation itself didn’t cause me a lot of trouble or pain, but the anesthesia hangover made Tuesday and even some of Wednesday a wash. My energy levels aren’t quite 100% (I think I had a nap after every trip out of the save) but we’re getting there.
Monday Memes
I forgot to mention on Friday that I wasn’t going to post this week–tomorrow is the ablation and then it’s knitting on the couch and re-watching 80s trilogies. So have some more ephemera for the week and I’ll see you on the other side.
(A spread from Austin Kleon’s Keep Going)
Maybe I’ll see you at the Utah State Capitol Sunday? “We will have many diverse speakers from throughout the SLC protest community, as well as a Druid grove opening ritual“? Sign me up!
Friday Links
1. I hope someone’s working on this:
3. Maybe we need 45 minutes of “Resting Place Beside the Soft Fern Stream.”
4. Another good thing: Feeding squirrels peanuts. This is exactly the vibe under the feeder:
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Ruins, Relief
In a recent newsletter, Austin Kleon linked to this quote from writer Sasah Chapin:
“When this happens—when expectation breaks down, and you are living in a shipwreck of your expectations—a precious state of being can dawn, if you’re lucky. This is the state of Playing In The Ruins. You’re not seeing the landscape around you as something that needs to transform. You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day. Who am I actually, in this fallen place, this actuality foreign to my hopes and dreams.”
Why am I thinking of “ruins” now? OH, NO REASON. But I guess I’m also ready to look around and say “what is actually here” and what that is is…each other. Government won’t save us but we can take care of our neighbors. We can be a kind stranger on the internet. Here are some ways to do that:
- Find your local mutual aid society and get involved. The Salt Lake City one has community fridges; I bet I can help keep them stocked.
- Go to GoFundMe, search “name change,” and filter by “close to goal.” Then throw in some money and help a trans person get their name legally changed.
- It’s also Transanta season, which lets you send at-risk trans kids things from their wish list. I’ve donated before and signing the gift notes with, “We love you,” honestly probably did more for me than the recipient, but it felt good.
Wednesday Poem
You know I love a sonnet, and this one has some great parts–“we’re all peninsulas, I guess, joined to the mainland, part of the shore”–plus it feels appropriate for the week before Thanksgiving.
Sonnet from the Ephesians
by Barbara Crooker
Ephesians 1:16
I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.