Better Living Through Literature

My father and my brother have birthdays withing a month of each other, so now it’s my brother’s turn: Happy Birthday! He used to pull me around on the sled when we were little, and now I sometimes get driven around on “the wheeler.” He’s a good brother.Eddy is in training to go for rides on the wheeler, too.

Yarr, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Here’s a list of piratical celebrations, online and otherwise, and if ye be a crafty pirate, here’s some embroidery patterns to do whilst sailing the seas, arrrrrrrr!

Back when I thought I wanted to get an English minor, I took a critical theory class, where I first encountered the prefix “meta” attached to something–in this case metafiction, which the professor defined as fiction about fiction.

Given the print of this skirt, I think I could safely call it metafashion, or fashion about fashion. It’s too bad that in the print the ladies aren’t wearing skirts with that print, because that would be another mind-bending effect. But instead of thinking that one through, I could just twirl in my puffy new skirt: Also: Boo ya!

Also: Tomorrow is INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY. Get ready!

I was given a book titled The Superior Person’s Book of Words nearly five years ago, but I haven’t opened it much, probably because 1.) I feel silly reading something like that and
2.) I secretly think I already know all the words in it. But I was stuck this morning for something to write about (other than goats and fabric and projects piling up) so I opened it and found this:

aporia. (n) Patently insincere professings, e.g. by a public speaker, of an inability to know how to begin , what to say, etc.

Who knew there was a word for what celebrities do at awards shows?

1. I went to the fair on Wednesday but only had the camera on my cell phone, which did not accurately capture the excellence of a goat I met in the goat barn. She was such a good, smart goat that I asked Mr. Isbell if he thought his parents would let her live in their backyard. He pointed out that she would eat the vegetable garden.

2. Something I just learned: A group of penguins is usually referred to as a colony of penguins. When they are breeding, their colony turns into a rookery or a peguinery . When they are floating out at sea, they are then a raft of penguins. When they are on land they are a waddle of penguins.

3. The Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair is going on this weekend. It’s at Wheeler Farm, so not only will there be the regular farm animals, there will be fiber animals and spinning wheels and yarn (oh my). PLUS, the Society for Creative Anachronism (“from the Medieval Times”) will be there! Don’t miss it!

4. Here’s a quote from the country home site I posted last Friday, about what happens when you plant sugar maples (“be not discouraged”): We have seen the maple tree no taller than a walking-staff, become, in fifteen years, so large as to afford sap and sugar. Be not discouraged by looking forward, and say it will be a long time before you can have any benefit by sugar. You must remember the timber is growing every year, and wait with patience, and be assured the other part will not fail.

Actually, that’s good advice for most things: “Wait with patience, and be assured the other part will not fail” (even if the other part is goat ownership).

(Morning glory. I wish I could find fabric that color.)

I think I posted earlier in the year about quail, and how they live all around my house, and how there was a bachelor quail I had named Buster Brown. (I think. I really need to get a search bar on the blog, and remove the link to J. Crew since we broke up, and un-install Google Analytics because I don’t think anyone at my old job where the account was based cares about how much blog traffic I get.) Anyway, there are quail around my house, but I don’t think Buster Brown is much of a bachelor:
In fact, he may be a polygamist quail, because this picture only got about half of them. We scared each other when I came around the corner (I think the “sportsman” term is flushing the covey?) but they came back around the door after I went in and I got a picture. I like quail. And quail plural marriage.

(I was going to call it “Fast And Easy Edition” but decided that wasn’t the best connotation for a dress that could be worn by a girl in a Bruce Lee movie.)
Anyway. Not only was this project fast and easy, it was really, really, cheap (ha!)–the pattern was a vintage one my mother had and the fabric was a gift. I even had a zipper on hand, so total project cost was a spool of thread. I sewed it up in about four hours, too, which is making good time.
Here’s a better shot of the print. The fabric is vintage, too, and I think in its past life it was drapery. But that just means it has a good weight and, well, drape to it.

You’ve probably heard this, but Ms. L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, died Friday at the age of 88. There’s a New York Times obituary that’s very good, which contains this quote:

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

1. Go to the State Fair, where you’ll see many blue-ribbon-winning dresses, hint hint hint.

2. I have all sorts of crafty deadlines coming up (an event-specific dress and two gifts)in the next two weeks. Good thing I have a period-costume BBC miniseries to watch.

3. Five great reasons to buy a Hummer

4. Here’s a site that tells you all about planning, building, and maintaining a home in the country (aka RANCH HOUSE), often through period writing. There’s even home plans. www.backroadhome.com

5. Have some pie this weekend! Think of how disappointed the kitty will be if there is no pie!