Universal
Saturday January 25th 2025, 11:31 pm
Filed under: Life

It’s late, we’re home, and we got to listen to a Tongan choir tonight.

One thing I like about living here, you get to meet people from all over the world. Sometimes you even get to hear them sing, in a language I do not know nevertheless fully shared in the music and the faces of the choir that was giving of themselves and their time to bring those notes to the rest of us.



A toddler gate for the weather
Friday January 24th 2025, 10:57 pm
Filed under: Life

It’s been in the low 30s at night and in the morning the family room has been very cold. Jacket required.

Richard got a box that came with much-regretted large pieces of foam and styrofoam padding. Non recyclable. Has to go in what is a very small trash can out there. I could drive it to another city and pay for it to go away, or we could just break off pieces and squish them in there over the course of at least a month if not two because man do those take up space.

I started with the two smallest pieces that didn’t need breaking down.

On impulse Monday night I put one of the big ones against the doorframe to the garage. We’ve never had mice in the house, but that rubber sweeper piece across the bottom of the door surely wouldn’t be enough to stop them if they wanted to badly enough so why not. The block came an inch short of filling the frame so I jammed in a smaller piece sideways at the bottom and what the heck, went and put another big piece on top of the first. Costco-sized un-rice cakes for rodents.

It did not make me the top home decorator of all time but at least it amused me.

I walked in that room the next morning and to my great surprise it was nearly the same temp as the bedrooms.

Huh. We don’t have that problem with the front door. But we do there. I had always thought it was all the window space, but those are double-paned and it’s clearly the door.

I stopped throwing away the foam for the moment while trying to decide: how on earth do you insulate a door for real? The freezer’s right on the other side, so we go through there all the time with our hands full and minds preoccupied; you wouldn’t want a wallhanging swinging in your face and catching on your frozen foods.

Meantime, that foam effect is definitely being real (I was starting to get cold at 8:00 pm and went oh, right) and I set them back up every evening now. So glamorous. Just don’t look.

I gotta do something about this. Somehow.



We could all use that
Thursday January 23rd 2025, 9:24 pm
Filed under: Life

It was a do you know somebody who knows somebody question, and in fact I did and they were happy to reach out and offer info and I’m hoping that works out.

Meantime, from someone else, did I have this person’s number? I did, and would you help this other person with…? He would.

Next: Would you say a prayer for, and of course I would and did and suddenly had a thought of something I could actually do that sounded really good that hadn’t occurred to me but was so obvious once I did so I did, and I’m hoping that turns out well for person four (or whatever number we’re on at this point.)

A busy day of logistics. A day of people looking out for others, some they knew, some they didn’t, just because they could.

A day of increasing hope.



They’re adorable
Wednesday January 22nd 2025, 10:19 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

Baby Mushroom corals can move! (Shared link, New York Times, it should work whether you’re a subscriber or not.) They take a deep breath and then go Pop!

Anybody up for a game of hop scotch down there?



Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged
Tuesday January 21st 2025, 11:00 pm
Filed under: Garden,History

Notable quote of the day from Robin Givhan of the Washington Post: “Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child; nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong.”

Meantime, I did six more afghan rows and I figure if I can keep that up I can finish it in under two months.

But what feels like the big thing is I went out there and pruned back the pomegranate tree by a third. Not even the tree companies like that job, or at least not their employees the one time I hired it out.

We were running out of January, though, and January is the time of year not only when it’s dormant but when its needle thorns are the least stabby (oh look there’s a splinter), though they are definitely still there. I skipped the pruning last year. Bad idea.

As I said to Richard afterwards, It was encroaching on the sour cherry and I would much rather have more sour cherries than thorny pomegranates. And not be stabbed at while I pick them.

So. Many. Branches. Thin, flexible, and in no way up to holding up the heavy fruit to come; instead they bow way down under the weight, like a cross between a porcupine and a weeping willow wearing jewelry.

Its haircut improved it immensely. I finally wised up and went looking for heavy gloves before reaching for the pile of cuttings.



Watch that sweet tooth
Monday January 20th 2025, 10:44 pm
Filed under: History,Knit,Life,Politics

Judging, wrote Carolyn Hax recently, is carbs for the ego: so satisfying at first but so easy to overdo.

And yet.

It is unfathomable that the day we remember and celebrate all that was good and noble and idealistic about Martin Luther King and his appeal to the best in our natures was the day we let the felon-in-chief back into the White House.

I do not want to see that face again. I do not ever want to hear that voice again. And yet, he’s managed to guarantee himself endless hourly media attention–again.

Any time he says something outlandish, the latest being wanting to steal the Panama Canal or invading Greenland–pay attention to what he doesn’t want you to see that he’s actually doing. It’s a tell, and it always was.

So to avoid all that I put in hours on the afghan. Six rows is the most I’ve done in a day, given that it’s such slow going. But in between I had to rest my hands, and would find email notifications; some, I just had to go look.

The richest oligarchs across the front row and the average joe left outside in the cold weather, no surprise there. Elon Musk, South African son of apartheid who came here illegally on a student visa because he never showed up at Stanford but stayed anyway, raising a Nazi salute–twice–not only in public but on camera in celebration of our newly sworn in racist-in-chief: that is staggering to the daughter of a man who put his life on the line to save the world from Hitler.

And it is so deeply sad to see those two in particular who have forsaken not just all those wives but the sense that we must all matter to each other in their zeal for power and money. If they had been in that Pacific Palisades fire like my sister, would they have cared what color the firemen who rescued them were? What *their* immigration status was?

In the end, which will come for them, too, everything they’re grasping at will become utterly nothing, and what on earth will they have then?



Whimsy
Sunday January 19th 2025, 10:10 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knit

(Picture taken most of a shark ago.)

Phyl, an experienced diver, looked at this and started naming the striped orange fish.

I looked at her and declared, G_d makes His creations, I make mine.

Well alright then! as we both laughed.



The birthday girl’s friend
Saturday January 18th 2025, 10:24 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knit,Knitting a Gift,Life

Nina threw herself a birthday party and invited her friends. She told me to bring my knitting so she could work on hers. So I did.

I pulled mine out first, a white lace cowl in Malabrigo Rios at about the 2/3 mark, and then she showed off her much more elaborate project. Gorgeous. Another friend there was also a knitter. And one said with some regret that it had skipped a generation and she didn’t–but she took a picture of what I was working on to send to her (daughter I think? It was loud in there) because she so admired it.

Turns out she was the woman who had translated all those letters Nina had found in her mother’s closet that had been sent back and forth between relatives in concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Pattern repeat #12, done. (Checking the time) it really needs at least one more after that, all I can hope for is she doesn’t leave early. She and someone else got quite into a conversation–good, good, keep talking, guys.

Repeat #13 got done. That’s shorter than I normally  prefer but it was just long enough to look okay to my eyes. I cast off.

Sitting next to me looking the other way as they talked, she didn’t notice at all.

I retrieved my purse, where there’s always a yarn needle in the change pocket of the wallet. I sat down on the floor in the kitchen where I knew her view of me would be blocked and wove those ends in. I should have some folding scissors in there somewhere… No sign of them. I asked Nina. She got hers and snipped those two little umbilical cords to its beginnings off and the thing was born.

The interpreter of those letters was dumbfounded. And ecstatic.

I explained that its nubbly texture would disappear and the lace lie flat and stretch out the moment it touched water, it’s the nature of the thing.

Totally fine by her, and she put it on and hugged me.

She took it off again to stroke the softness of the Rios.

And at last she did leave a little early, like I’d had a feeling she might.

I was a little wistful that I didn’t have one to give to any of the other friends but they all said that for all those hours she’d put into doing that great gift for our Nina and her family she had earned every stitch of it. And she had.

Nina said as we were leaving, That was the right person for that. That was perfect.



Save some room for dessert
Friday January 17th 2025, 10:24 pm
Filed under: Family,Food

The dinner was light. Fruit is healthy. We could justify this.

A bag of frozen berries. A quarter cup of sugar, a spoonful of cornstarch, nine minutes covered in the microwave stir stir stir at the end.

And now for the ice cream.

We tried to wait till the fruit had cooled but given that I had an oven mitt on as I brought its stoneware bowl to the table I’d say we failed. I handed him the vanilla ice cream container; he’s better at getting it out when it’s frozen hard.

….Did I want more?

No no stop thanks that’s quite enough.

Then I looked at his bowl. All those three sections needed was a carrot nose and a scarf. “Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman” I started singing (I think I learned that song when I was three, and so did he) “once there was a snowman, tall tall tall! In the bowl he melted melted melted” (pouring hot berry mix over it) “in the bowl he melted small small small.”

A few minutes later…

There’s a little fruit left. Did you want it?

No, he grinned, the proportions were just right.



If only, right?
Thursday January 16th 2025, 9:37 pm
Filed under: Family

Me: I’m putting in an order with Target for paper products. You need anything?

Him, scrunching face trying to think of something fast: A million bucks.

Me: In paper money? Nah, wouldn’t want that in the house.

Him: agrees. But still: Money in the bank and world peace!

Me: They don’t sell those at Target.



Woolly wonky
Wednesday January 15th 2025, 10:56 pm
Filed under: Knit

Thumper’s Admonition, I’ve been reminding myself the last few days.

But oh man this is such a howler of a mansplainer.

A cotton and ramie sweater from the ’80’s is good quality because it doesn’t pill much.

I can’t think of any cotton sweater I’ve ever had pilling.

This wool sweater (picture on left) has been worn by two generations!

Yeah, your mom wore that till one of her kids put it through the wash and now the body’s shrunk with the arms gone gorilla by comparison and your little sister wears it now. AmIright? Wool sweaters and high belly button exposures don’t normally go in the same season.

Manufacturers wash sweaters again and again like distressed jeans to soften them but it makes them wear out faster!

What manufacturer? Where? Has anyone ever heard of that? Yes a few bespoke ones will wash the mill oils out of the animal fiber yarns so that the customer will get the full effect of the softness they’re paying for. That coating is for keeping stray fibers from blowing all over the mill, but it feels like dried hair mousse (or whatever they call glop-for-hair now) so that’s something you want them to do. Again, that’s to remove part of the manufacturing process from the natural fiber and I can assure him they only do it once.

Then he goes on to say that the older the wool sweater, the softer. See this old Norwegian one? It’s soft because it’s old.

Absolute horsefeathers. If we dig a wooly mammoth out of the permafrost we should be able to just about melt into its butteriness, right?

Age has nothing to do with it. You cannot make it softer by wearing it more.

Wool’s softness depends on the micron count of the fibers, with much varying between sheep breeds and on how tightly it’s spun. I once made a bit of angora rabbit feel like the roughest burlap on my wheel. Putting twist into fibers is how you make yarn in the first place: you add friction to hold them together. The more twist, the rougher feel but also the less pilling, the harder it will wear and the less soft it will be. It is a direct tradeoff that every cashmere manufacturer in particular has to make on how they want to present their wares to their customers. Longevity? Or immediate swooning at first touch? With good hand washing either one should be fine.

He mentions sending it to the dry cleaner to keep it clean. I have a number of $5-10 thrifted cashmere sweaters that came my way because someone did exactly that and lost what they’d paid all that money for.

Dry cleaning wrecks the softness of cashmere. A very careful hand washing restores it. Like magic. A second hand washing even more so. Water+temperature change+agitation=felting. That means use lukewarm water, NOT cold despite anything anyone ever told you. Lower it into the soapy, still water, let it soak, raise it back out, fill the sink with rinse water without letting the water pour over the sweater–that counts as agitation–and lower it back into the now-full sink again. Lukewarm lukewarm lukewarm, I can’t stress it enough. Roll it in a white towel to get the water out.

You can spin it out in the washer *if* the water won’t spray on it, but the force of the twirl will encourage any fiber ends to fluff out of the yarn. A friend of mine who went with the washer kind of half-bemoaned that her cashmere looked like angora rabbit now and to her eye less professional wear when she wanted to be taken seriously as a lawyer.

Etc. Most of you all know all that, I know.

He recommends merino or (blink) shetland wool as a substitute for cashmere if you want something soft.

Now, historically one of the reasons for raising Shetlands was the variability within individual fleeces and their dual coat, rare in domesticated sheep. The neck hair was for the finest, softest fit-for-a-queen (literally, historically) lace shawl that you could pull through a wedding ring with the fiber as fine as 10 microns, and I’m sure that’s where the notion that shetland is soft comes from. Cashmere is under 19 microns, often 12-15. The rest of the Shetland is in the mid-20’s on up to as much as 35.

That scratchiness and the guard hairs help keep you warm when it’s really really cold. I never knew that scratchy wool was a plus till I lived in New Hampshire, but one -27F day taught me things I’d never known. Anything to keep your blood flowing near the surface. So go stab your skin a little.

I moved to California instead.

Anyway, so you have a male writer quoting a male blogger and trying to explain how to pick out a quality sweater, and his editor was surely male, too.

Because it clearly never occurred to them to run his piece past Robin Givhan there. Who wrote about fashion and style so well that she got promoted to more general commentary. She might be able to tell them something about choosing clothes well.

But she is female. And she is black.

And so the guy wrote this absolutely ridiculous piece full of misinformation that he was sure was true because what could she or any other woman who’s ever bought a sweater ever have told him?

And they not only put it on the front page, they put it in their Optimist newsletter to get it a bigger audience.

At that point it was, I’m sorry, Thumper. But I’m sure you understand.



Tree dormancy is so we don’t have to wait till spring to plant new things
Tuesday January 14th 2025, 10:30 pm
Filed under: Garden

My gardener cleared out a spot among the California Coffeeberry plants, dug a generous hole, didn’t knock himself out with the spade bouncing back at his head like I did one time when I tried to do that, and planted one of my Anya apricot seedlings that had been waiting for that moment for four years. Finally finally finally in the ground!

I may do some more pruning back of those Coffeeberries. Let some more light in.

I was feeling pretty exuberant about it all when the phone rang: my friend Karen, wanting to stop by. Sure!

We had a great visit and I dragged her out there to see my tree. I had four. I’d chosen the one that had leafed out the latest in the year last year so that its future blooms would be less likely to get hit with a freeze.

Which turned into her being thrilled that she got to go home with another one, the only one in a small enough pot that I could carry it to her car. The first time she’d driven, she told me, since breaking her arm. Much better now.

Ohmygoodness!

Her son would get it out for her and help her plant it, no worries, and meantime we were both pleased at how the tree and pot fit in there just so so that it wasn’t going to fall over and the thin limbs weren’t going to break.

Another hour or two and I was taking the trash to the curb. The new neighbor stepped out the door just as I got to the sidewalk, taking her toddler for a walk to see the sunset.

Even 350 miles away, we’re having spectacular ones from the fires down south. But anyway.

I mentioned about Andy’s and how they sell these particularly good and juicy apricots and (taking a leap) I had seedlings from them; would they like one?

Her face lit up. I would love an apricot tree! How big is it?

She had her choice, I said, with the biggest being 53″ tall, but they would have to help me get it to them. Check with her husband and let me know.

Meantime, if anyone wants to try to grow some of these from seed, let me know. I have some this year.



Rubin et al
Monday January 13th 2025, 10:09 pm
Filed under: History,Life,Politics

Like several hundred thousand others, I canceled my Washington Post subscription when Bezos interfered as he had promised the Graham family on buying it that he would never do, and killed its editorial endorsing Kamala Harris.

And then he flew to that place that had had the stolen–they were, they belonged to the National Archives, ie us–top-secret documents in strewed boxes in a gaudy chandeliered bathroom. To go kowtow to autocracy in person to show that he meant it.

But Jennifer Rubin, a fine legal mind, still wrote there. So did Dana Milbank and Alexandra Petri and Eugene Robinson. Robin Givhan, I want to read anything she writes. Monica Hesse, too. Oh wait they just eliminated her position.

Milbank wrote a passionate piece in defense of continuing to support the Post in spite of its owner (who let them publish that.) With very mixed feelings, I resubscribed.

It’s my hometown paper. It’s the one that reported NIH’s weekly press conference on the latest discoveries in the world of medicine when I was a kid and I looked forward to that every Wednesday. Watergate. Meg Greenfield. Didn’t find out till after she died of cancer that the reason she’d always had the inside story on what Washington insiders were thinking was because she regularly threw grand parties at her Georgetown house in DC and mixed all kinds of people in politics together at the table. Katherine Graham’s autobiography. Woodward and Bernstein. This was and had always been MY paper.

But now it’s the place that fired Wesley Lowery for writing too well about a white cop killing an unarmed black man.

So I was thrilled today to find out–not from the Post, which still hasn’t announced that Ann Telnaes angrily resigned after they refused to run her editorial cartoon blasting the obsequiousness of the various billionaires seeking the felon-elect’s approval–that now Jennifer Rubin is out.

And not just resigned! A new (online) paper! Norm Eisen, her co-founder of The Contrarian, was legal counsel to the first impeachment hearing. Look at this list! (scroll down to see it) of people who’ve signed on to write with them!

Completely subscriber-funded.

I know a quarter million like-minded people who would be interested, just for starters…

It’s like Katherine Graham, who embarrassed her atheist parents as a kid by asking one of her friends who this Jesus guy was and why was he a big deal because she’d heard his name but had no idea, just figured out how to do this resurrection thing. Of something she’d made her life’s work.

I am really hopeful about this. I hadn’t quite realized how much I’d needed that. Man, it feels good. Power will be met by truth after all.



So that’s why the sli rhymes with sky
Sunday January 12th 2025, 10:44 pm
Filed under: Knit,Life

The microphone wasn’t working and I couldn’t hear a thing and the Zoom seemed to be turned off during the second meeting because the mic wasn’t working and there was a borrowed temporary setup and the program’s attempts at captions earlier had been utter gobbledygook.

I got pulled away a moment and on coming back in at the rear found myself sitting in the way back so as not to interrupt.

Not at first, but eventually, I pulled out my carry-around project and hoped I wouldn’t bother anybody but there was no reason to waste the time and just sit there. I don’t usually knit in church. I knit in church.  Just not the main meeting.

Later I put in my two rows on the afghan and then played with colors to see what should come next. The sun sneaked off with their intensities though and I put the project on hold till it brings them back tomorrow and apologizes for the theft. Sunsets are like that. You’ve got to watch them.

I did my knitting group Zoom with my carry-around project in hand till my wrists needed a rest.

I sat at my computer awhile thinking, but nothing happened today. I didn’t do anything.

And half a merino cowl sitting there eyed me with a wry, And what am I? Chopped sliver?



Gapyeong
Saturday January 11th 2025, 10:05 pm
Filed under: History

We were invited tonight to a screening of the 11 minute film “Miracle at Gapyeong” by its producer, whose family we’ve known forever.

Brad and his wife gave a presentation beforehand to offer some background information on how the film came to be and the unexpected connections made between people who knew people who’d been there who had offered more information for it.

It’s the story of 240 soldiers from southern Utah who had been promised that if they stayed faithful to God they would come home from the Korean War. They were sent to back up the front with no prior combat experience and found themselves suddenly surrounded–and yet held off a major offensive of 4000 Chinese and North Korean soldiers who had just about surrounded them.

Per President Truman’s Presidential unit citation later, 830 soldiers surrendered to those 240 Americans! They were having to climb the mountain, where they were fully exposed, to try to escape our men’s fire.

Brad said the men asked each prisoner of war, as they were supposed to, why they were surrendering.  Again and again the answer was, We shoot you and you don’t fall down.

Fifty years later the Americans were invited back to South Korea to see a park built in their honor. That sculpture of a book? The pages on one side are written in Korean, on the other, English, telling the story of that battle.

And for those old men to get to see Seoul a beautiful city now, living in a democracy and free from war.