Moreover

There was a refreshing walk.
Multiple cats on a porch, playing, inviting trespass.
Multiple garden gazing balls surrounding a home.
Cloud formations and sunset.
Words on houses.
"God Will Provide"
"In God We Trust"
Orange trees, lemon trees, and
tops of palm trees resembling giant prehistoric pineapples.
(If such things existed.)

Knitting

Several things.
All in garter stitch.
One is with "Pooch" (boucle) yarn.

Some things

Certainly can exercise to any type of music. Sister's e-mail: Worried about unit mission. Father's e-mail: A few 4 star generals are known. Maybe they were in his class or now are on the e-mail prayer list. Who knows, perhaps they were at a childhood BBQ. For some reason this is more strange to ponder than the talk of the unit mission. Before: Celery and Greek yogurt and cayenne pepper. Good for digestion. After: Leftover broccoli salad, even though it was not that appetizing. Wolfed down in nervousness.
How many army brats are or aren't food wolfers? Could be an interesting study. One day there was a confession, tough to make. Hard to admit, when earliest years were spent waiting for the voice that read the books on tape to return from a foreign land, and objects like hard green hats meant for combat were beheld with love, and vowing to be...all you can be...
Confession: could probably never be in that profession, would probably collapse in a ball of shattered nerves.
Confessor's response: I think you're gonna be okay.

Tuve una idea

Send all the girl-books to prison.

On mind

Seaside
Anything I happen to currently know about crows and ravens.
Like how much bigger ravens are (it's shocking), and that crows are said to hold little "funerals."
Also, at the end of a documentary that was recently on TV, it said that 50% of female homocides are due to domestic violence! 5% for men.
Maybe also Starling.
And then Fast Horse...
Etc.!

Some thoughts on Dante or maybe the anti-Dante

Say you followed a person once
to help yourself make a work of art.
There's many ways to look at that,
but there can be this way:
You wanted moon-gazing innocence.
Yourself in another incarnation.
The followed one was only
one tiny facet
of She who is fairly large.

Reading and listening

I'm reading this book and it's funny because it addresses the topic of why do high schools almost always assign depressing books (like Lord of the Flies.) I have spoken with a friend or two on this topic. We remembered one class where the teacher tried to mix it up a little by having us analyze "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire." I have been thinking of it because some job applications ask if you got good grades in high school. In my case, the answer is, not really. But I went to college and grad school anyway.
I am beginning to avoid this book's characters and their poisonous marriage. I am making myself read it, but really only skimming. Sigh. Sorry, book. Might be better to read it later.
Again, The Garden (i.e. Berimbau remixed.)
Sometimes I listen to songs repetitively, it is true.

New kind of tea

Lemon Basil Oolong.
It's rather strange, but also good.
Finished True Notebooks.
Have begun Shadow Tag.
More Tombigbee...

&, &, &

Lost In Place &
Equal Pay&
Lost Sparrow&
Tombigbee

It's like, on a roll or something

The Paycheck Fairness Act did not pass yesterday.
"The clientele are all men," the job interviewer said, in a dream.
In the course of looking for knitting techniques, stumbled upon Jr. High Student gives her teacher dating tips.

On last night

Quite awesome.
Secrets of Stonehenge
And, a little earlier:
Singing Hound Picnic

Girls, girls

A dancer attracted some comments. Someone whose channel was full of aerobic videos and make-up tips was very insulting (i.e. calling her a slut and a whore.) Another person said she thought the dancer was "amazing" and that the one who was being insulting was doing that because she was jealous. I went to the channel of the one who liked the women's dancing. On her channel, this little girl dancing was featured, and it is really the cutest thing I've seen in a very long time. So thank you, commentators, (even you, misogynist one), 'cause the end result was a very cute surprise!!!

Things to learn about the world

I would like to see this documentary: Afghanistan Unveiled.
I have also learned of this: Nowzad Dogs.

Return to yarn and needles...

Sweater Quest.
Enjoy the inclusion of "quest" in that title.

Film about female soldiers

and combat, and life before and after~Lioness.

Lizards on the brain

Scientists discover unknown species at lunch buffet(!)
Cascade Experiment by Alice Fulton.

Casa de Jefferson

"Because of financial constraints and Jefferson's endless tinkering, Monticello never looked its best or even close to it. In 1802, when a Mrs. Anna Maria Thornton came to visit, she was shocked to find she still had to enter across wobbly planks. By this time Jefferson had been working on the house for over thirty years. 'Tho' I had been prepared to see an unfinished house, still I could not help being struck with...the general gloom,' Mrs. Thornton marveled in her diary. Jefferson himself never much minded the inconvenience. 'We are now living in a brick kiln,' he wrote happily at one point..." (296-297, At Home.)

Let's try to think positive

The system = scary. Yeah, Virginia. And it's attorney general. Frontline: The Confessions. Bullies who force false confessions do nothing to prevent violence against women. Funny, but now I remember a few things. One: someone who worked in a restaurant with me, a nice enough person normally, completely disgusted me with her views of on rape and women who "dress a certain way." She was training to be a police officer. I shiver. AND, when my paychecks were stolen from that job, I tried to go to the police department and talk to a police officer. I remember she pretty much acted as if she thought I was lying. Tone of voice, facial expression. Is bullying a special skill acquired in that job? It was a yucky experience. To be fair, I also talked to some officers on the phone and they were nicer. In the end, they could do nothing. The only thing that got me those paychecks back, 6 months later and far away from Virginia, was:
1) eventually the bank analyzed the signatures and determined forgery and possibly 2) the people at the company headquarters had a little more ethics than the people I worked with at the actual restaurant.
~~~~~~~
And now. Postive things!!!
A) The sheer joy I felt one night at a cute little place on this coast, listening to a band called Waldo Bliss. (They had a beautiful female band member, too, who is not on the website.) I was the patron of a good-seeming establishment called Gypsy Den, not an ill-treated employee. The music was so lovely. I felt bliss!!! And gratitude.
B) This is good stuff: Tina Frundt, award-winner, Free The Slaves.
Gracias, gracias, DEO GRATIAS...

suuuuuuu

What would a whistling sound be?
Whistling Diva.

Attraction

Encountered another female human.
FH: Did you go to the back? Any bears?
M: No! Have you ever seen a bear?
FH: My brother did! I kept telling myself to quit worrying about it, because that just attracts stuff.
M: I went in the woods a ways and I decided I had to go back, because it got to the point I wasn't enjoying myself.
FH: I need to be like you. I don't need to go to the back tonight. I'm just enjoying this walk here. And it's going to get dark soon.
M: Yes, it gets dark early because of the time change.
FH: What time is it now? Oh. Yeah, I need to go back. Well, thank you.
M: Have fun!
FH: Thanks! I need to meet a bear like I need a hole in my head, right?
Attracted another person with similar worries.

Programming

The lighter hearted stuff turned to war stuff and it came to me...
The way they treat their troops is the way they treat their children.
Maybe not on purpose. But so it is.
It's not a good way to treat a child.
But they were children once.

Songs of recent yesteryorn

Recently heard a song by a band called Warpaint. (Female band, cool!!!) Undertow. Well, I'm not so crazy about the video. I do like some shots in it. It has interesting parts but it kinda seems unfinished. I'm no expert on making music videos, but it also makes me think "this video could benefit with the addition of some older people in it," for whatever reason. I enjoy the song. I heard it on the radio shortly before descending down a trail into a canyon. And some people are not crazy about remixes of Nat King Cole, but I've found this Re: Generations album grows on me. For one thing, it livens up the housework (and that's awesome!!!) I was wroooong...
~~~~~
From about 20 years ago: Sadeness, Captives of Time, Melusine.
(Sigh, I cannot find the book cover I recall and prefer, of a brunette girl standing in tall grasses, with a serpent shaped path trailing behind her.)

Varieties of experience

Neighborhood(s). School(s). Homelife. Proximity to extended family. Relationships. Moving. Staying. Language. Race. Religion. Finances. Food. Clothing. Sex.

and then, and then, and then, and then

Hoped to have selected the proper spelling of "necessary," remembered the book that got written by a teenager, saw she wrote another one, pondered the name of the character in that one and searched for Bjork's "Isobel." Wondered if Amo's "Bachelorette" was like Bjork's.
(It's not.)
Bachelorette.
Books books books books books
Not superior to walks in the woods.

Inspired a frenzy of house cleaning

Bill Bryson: At Home.
The Study chapter.

History's interesting

We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears

Silly

I gave in and read this article.
Gasp! Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl"...
It was all over the MTV channel the babysitters loved.
Oh my little first grade mind!

Memories of B.

FIRST GRADE
1) B. is the kid with the cool motorized dirtbike. A real one. He rides it around the hills behind our apartment. We are the same age. Enviously, I watch B. ride freely on his bike, and talk a little to his father, who has long hair, even though he's a man. He tells me something interesting about the formation of the thin rocks that break cleanly and easily off the hillside. Perhaps seeing the look on my face, he asks if my mother would let me ride B's bike. I go and ask, but she says "absolutely not!" I report this to the Dad. He looks like he feels guilty for even suggesting it. And maybe he even commiserates with me, verbally. It is interesting to commiserate with an adult.
2) I go into B.'s apartment and meet his mother. She might be an artist. They have a cat. I tell them cats aren't allowed in the apartments. She laughs, says she knows, but they keep the cat anyway. I am shocked.
3) J., an older girl, teases me about B. She saw us holding hands. That means he's my boyfriend, she says. I disagree. I don't think holding hands with a boy means anything more than friends.
4) B. and I are playing and I begin to stare at him and tell him I think he could come from a spaceship, like maybe be a martian or something. He doesn't really like it, and I don't know why.
SECOND GRADE
1) We have moved away from those apartments and live in a totally different town. I am shocked when B. shows up as the new kid in my second grade class. One of the first things he does is draw an apple with a diamond in it, to indicate shininess. Me and some girls think it looks really cool. Boys make fun of it. I think they should not make fun of B. But B. doesn't particularly seem to remember me.
THIRD GRADE
1) B. and I are in the same class. We have to work on a project. We argue over something, and I stab his forehead with a pencil, "on accident." He doesn't like me for doing that. The teacher also disapproves. I think B. is being a little bit of a whiner about it, and don't feel that sorry for doing it, although I feel a little scared to hear talk of lead poisoning. But I'm sure B. will be fine, and he recovers.
2) I am attending my last roller skating party at my school before I move across the country. Sometimes boys and girls in the class are starting to roller skate holding hands. It might be that one or two boys have asked me to do this. B. asks me to roller skate. He is the last one I roller skate with, holding hands. The music ends, perhaps too soon, and it's both with reluctance and relief that we part. The last memory of B.

Funny from a friend

http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/865/

So good to listen to again!

Not that it ever stopped!
Flying Dutchman.

Jim Thorpe

Documentary I just saw.

Ah, so

Hooray for hilarity. I have funny friends. I practically died laughing at this silly poem my friend wrote with lines rhyming and ending in dumb, thumb, rum. Ah, HUMOR! I need thee.

(un) happy election

This. Is. So. F-ed. Up!