Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

From God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins was clearly a dirt-scratching Heathen, just like me, despite his, well, tendency to go to church.  And, as a dirt-scratching Heathen, I’ve had plenty of nature to think about lately, what with the flooding.  But before the flooding, there was just a hot Virginia summer, and we immersed ourselves in it.

Morven Park International Equestrian Center, where we hold the Potomac Celtic Festival, was recently purchased from the foundation that owned it.  Morven is right off the historic route 15 corridor, which has some of the most important historical sites in Virginia.  Many people from several communities are crossing our fingers, hoping that this gem will be preserved.  Much of rural Northern Virginia has already disappeared under bulldozer tracks and mini-mansions.  I’d like to send a big call out to, well, whoever, to keep what’s left safe.  That land is already fully occupied, you know.

Our neighbors at the Potomac Celtic Festival, the soon-to-be-turkeys.  They apparently started hatching soon after the festival grounds were cleared.  Their Mom wasn’t entirely pleased with how close the amphitheater stage was to her clutch, but we made sure these eggs were safe, and she came back at night when things quieted down.

A former opossum.  At least, that’s what the teeth say.  Bill found him while we were measuring out the spots for the crafters’ tents.

Moragh and Cellagh in the gloaming, apparently glad that things cooled down enough at night to actually let a person within one’s personal space.

After the festival ended, the rain started.  And it hasn’t quit yet.  There’s flooding all over the East Coast now.  We’ve been lucky, though the Mean-Skutah manse does now have its own new lake.

I hope that crab-apple is ok with having wet feet.

With all the rain, most of us have been stuck indoors.  Scott and Kayo have taken some soaking walks and brought back tales of flooded streets and storm-drains spitting out hundreds of gallons of water, and the cats and I have just taken them at their word.  Yarrow has taken to playing, near constantly, in the wine-box fort Karen and Lee left for him.

Like most youngsters, he’s unwilling to share it with his older brother Speedwell.

And I have been log-cabining through my cabin fever, trying not to notice my strawberries rotting on the stem or count the inches distance left between the growing lake in the front yard and our threshold.  The log-cabin is pretty entertaining.

For a few of us.  This is the kitten’s Big Bad Wolf impression:

Speedwell has one too, but he’s camera shy.

Stay dry, and protect your local rural idylls.  They soak up floods, you know.

Watch Crazy Lanea knit socks, and then tell her what she is doing is wrong.

I need your help.  And I need it enough that I was willing to hold itchy yarn in my décolletage to make that little film.  And grow a third arm. 

Ok, fine, Scott took the movie, but please humor me anyway.

Knitting recently re-introduced me to a type of injury I haven’t experienced in a long time.  I grew up embroidering, and I am used to developing a callous on a finger of my left hand, only to later crack it, puncture it, and, well, realize what it feels like to stick steel right onto a nerve.  In short: I don’t recommend poking any of your nerves, especially those very sensitive ones in your fingertips, with steel needles.   Not pleasant, that. 

I rediscovered this particular displeasure because I was knitting always and only socks between March and the week of the festival.  I was starting to get really bored with the plain old socks, but the Festival work, soul-sucking beast endlessly rewarding avocation it can be, prevented me from anything wacky like "reading a pattern" or "knitting lace" or "forming sentences with more than five words that contain no profanity."  And socks are easy to knit on the Metro.  Right before the festival, perhaps because I was a little tense, I drove a US size 1 needle right into my finger.  I should have taken a picture.  Be glad I don’t have a picture.  I tried to knit some during the festival, but that hurt like hell.  And it still hurt like hell in the week after the festival, despite all of the good first aid and medicinal adult beverages applied.

So, dear readers, I am beseeching your assistance.  Reform me.  I knit English style–wait, no, I’m calling it Insular style from here on out.  I’ve toyed with Continental, but I have a chronic injury in my left shoulder, and Continental knitting seems to irritate it.   When knitting, I form a stitch, and then push the right needle back towards my right hand with my left index finger.  Obviously, that’s not the best thing to do  when working with the tiny needles used for socks.  But I can’t picture what I could change to stop myself.  Can you?  Please?  I can only think of so many things to do on size 9 needles.  Thimbles have been recommended, but I’m sure I would never follow through.  I’d rather retrain my hands than rely on an extra implement.

So, I think every Heaney discussion should start with this poem.  I’m probably the only one who does, but since I’m at the helm for the moment, I’ll continue on apace.  Once upon a time, I gave a paper about his bog poems at an Irish Studies conference.  I used slides of the bog bodies.  They included a "don’t come to this talk if you’re squeamish" warning.  It was a proud day for me, lemme tell you.  I should find that paper and see if it was any good.  And, er, sorry that these poems are gross.  I think they’re gorgeous because, ultimately, they’re about pacifism and ancient European tribal culture, two of my favorite things.  I’m the type of person who stares right at death and physiology and rot and finds all of the above fascinating and necessary.

Right, so.  The poem:

The Tollund Man

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus

To see his peat-brown head,

The mild pods of his eye-lids,

His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by

Where they dug him out,

His last gruel of winter seeds

Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for

The cap, noose and girdle,

I will stand a long time.

Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him

And opened her fen,

Those dark juices working

Him to a saint’s kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters’

Honeycombed workings.

Now his stained face

Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy,

Consecrate the cauldron bog

Our holy ground and pray

Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed

Flesh of labourers,

Stockinged corpses

Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth

Flecking the sleepers

Of four young brothers, trailed

For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom

As he rode the tumbril

Should come to me, driving,

Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands

Of country people,

Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland

In the old man-killing parishes

I will feel lost,

Unhappy and at home.

Heaney wrote this poem when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were really getting out of hand.  P.V. Glob’s masterpiece had just been translated into English, and it was making a big impression on academics throughout Europe.   Reading it, Heaney gave a lot of thought to sacrifice, violence, martyrdom, religion, exile, and all of the things that a brilliant Catholic writer who grew up in Northern Ireland was likely thinking about as his state exploded around him and many of his colleagues and compatriots were radicalized. 

Bog bodies are one of those wonderful gifts to archeology that people like me geek about.  For whatever reason, Northern European tribes in the ancient world buried a lot of people in bogs.  And the wonders of cold temperatures, the tannins common in bog water, and the auspicious choice to inter these bodies at just the right time of year conspired together to preserve many bodies and thus teach us more about ancient religious practices and material culture, than, well, just about any other burial practice.  A chemist couldn’t arrange a better scenario to make human remains last.  Unlike Egyptian Mummies, most bog bodies retain their facial expressions.  They retain skin and hair.  Leather and cloth often last.  Again, sorry if this is gross.  People in Northern Europe have been finding preserved bodies in bogs for hundreds of years as they cut turf.  Only in the last 120 or so years have we had any sense of how long some of these people people have been interred.  Tollund Man, who was found by peat-cutters in Denmark, was one of the first to be properly dis-interred, studied, and preserved for the future.  He’s the Danish King Tut.  He’s  a Rosetta Stone of sorts.  He is cooler than Elvis. 

Anyway, most of the bog bodies got there via human sacrifice, and many of the sacrificial victims suffered triple deaths.  Tollund Man, for instance, was garroted, drowned, and bludgeoned.  And he was clearly prepared for his death.  He was given special food.  He was wearing ritual clothing.  He was pampered for a long time before his death.  He probably knew what was coming, and he may even have volunteered for such a death.  And that’s where Heaney sets his hook.  Tollund Man is thought to have volunteered for martyrdom.  His face truly looks peaceful.  Heaney, of course, rejects the concept of voluntary martyrdom in the modern world.  He refuses to glorify murder by naming it sacrifice.

The structure is important here.  Heaney plays with religious beliefs and actions as the poem progresses.  The first section is Heaney’s take on early quasi-peaceful polytheistic beliefs.  Death is natural and arguably peaceful, even in violence.  The victim is mild, and he is given to a lover who keeps him.  The Earth is female, and sexual, and is a bride to a dead man.  Catholicism peeks in with "saint’s kept body", but Heaney tries his hand at heathenism and finds a niche.  The second section turns to violent  imagery, blending Catholic concepts of prayer and martyrdom with witchcraft.  Heaney questions whether he should pray to the Tollund Man as some sort of vengeance God, but ultimately refuses to do so.  In the final section, Heaney abandons ritual and observes the tragedy of all of it, while imagining himself on a sort of parade of death, similar to Tollund Man’s last hours, driving towards the museum in Aarhus.   Ultimately, Heaney rejects the concept of sacrifice, as have the vast majority of humans in the modern world.  We know that killing a goat or a person won’t improve our crops or convince the Gods to smite our enemies.  We know that dying to forward a political cause is useless. 

Heaney wants no volunteer martyrs.  He wants no hand in that twisted sense of suicidal violence overtaking both warring communities during the Troubles.  He knows that, as a poet, he has the opportunity to recast the victims of violence in Northern Ireland as martyrs, and he refuses to do it.  Unlike Tollund Man, who theoretically believed that his death would do some good for his people, Heaney refuses to argue that the death of those "four young brothers" served any purpose. 

I first came across these poems before the first Gulf War, and they struck home because of their pacifist bent.  Re-reading them now as the US truly learns what it feels like to both experience and commit acts of terrorism, I love them all the more. 

Finally, Ireland and Denmark are linked, of course.  It is generally accepted that the culture of Megalith builders who dotted Ireland and Britain with mounds and dolmens were the same people who raised brother monuments in continental Europe.  As Indo-European cultures rose, Celtic tribes settled all over Europe and into Asia, settling in Denmark and Ireland.  Tollund Man likely spoke either Proto-Celtic or one of its sister languages, which have grown into German and Danish and Swedish.  As time passed and Celtic tribes faded on the continent, their influence held on in Scandinavia and in Britain and Ireland.  The Danish and Norwegian Vikings who raided their cousins’ homes along the coasts of Britain and Ireland and founded towns like Dublin ended up bringing Christianity to Heaney’s land, and thus bringing the seeds of the Troubles. 

It’s what we humans do.  We give our grandchildren the means with which to destroy each other mixed in with the glories of humanity.  We remain animals determined to kill or be killed.  Heaney wants to break free of that curse, and so do I.

How is that for some light summer reading?

It’s about time we did some more work around here.  The Potomac Celtic Festival has come and gone (sheeeew), and it’s too hot to garden, and my Mom-in-law and her beau are flying back to Utah this afternoon, despite the pleading of our pets.  So I’m stepping up to the plate to crow about Seamus Heaney.

Who is one of the best writers in the English language, and one of the best translators of poetry alive today.

And who gets all of the translation contracts I wish I could have.  Not that I’m bitter or anything.  Because I’m not.  Because he is better than I am.  Which is ok.  I’m sure he can’t knit, and there’s no way he makes his own shoes, let alone excellent canoli.

Firstly, Heaney is a Nobel Laureate.  Ok, a little jealous here.  And they have a great bio of him on the Nobel site. 

Also, he has been involved with the Field Day theater and publications since way back in the way back.  Acceptance is very important to me.

And he’s married to Marie Heaney, who is no slouch, lemme tell you, with the mythology.  Read Over Nine Waves if you don’t believe me.  Or if you do.

And he’s a very talented lecturer.  And scholar.  And a wonderful performer reader speaker whatever we’re calling poets who are good at being actual poets, who perform their verse for audiences, as poets have done all through the ages.  Which requires diction and carriage and projection.  There are hundreds of his readings available on the web.  Please listen to him. 

He’s an ollam.   To me, this man embodies the highest rank of bard.  He’s one of the bardiest, way up there with Robin Williamson.

The poems of Heaney’s that most interest me are the bog poems.  That should go without saying.  From them, I turn to his translations most of the time.  Scandalous as it is to say it, I think he’s best at restating the words of other poets.  As one who does the same, that is high praise from me.

Enough blather–I’m going to go listen to my pal Seamus–I can call him that, because we drank pints together at a surreal state function in Dublin back in ’99, which he has probably forgotten, but still.  I’m going to listen to my pal Seamus, and I hope you’ll do the same.  If you have a pint while you do, good on you.  If you go pick up a copy of P.V. Glob’s The Bog People and flip through it a mite obsessively between Heaney readings, you may develop my particular form of insanity.  And that’s fine–there’s room for more.

I’m posting all quick-like because my wonderful Mom-in-law Karen is in town with her beau Lee, and Scott, the pets, and I are soaking up all of the goodness we can.  Kayo, Yarrow, and Speedwell are all likely to hitch-hike to Utah when Karen and Lee leave.

Very briefly–the festival went well, though it was hot as hell.

There was a turkey nest in our living history encampment.  The chicks apparently started hatching on Monday, so if there’s a family of gobblers in the Leesburg area that seems to think they’re crows, er, go ahead and blame us.

My pals Jayme, Lissa, Carol, and Jinann gave a kick-ass spinning workshop on Saturday, and the masses are crying for more.  Several new spinners have sprouted from a horse-pasture in Leesburg, and many people are calling for at least two repeat-performances next year.  Woot!  Woot, I say!

If anyone has money or time they want to donate to a really wonderful struggling cultural festival, gimme a shout.  Please.  For the love of plaid and pipes and kilts and fiddles and bridies and the Tuatha De Danann,  give us your wallets.  We can help make great art and learning happen with your money, and you can get a tax break.

Our Bardic performances went very well, and we had a full crowd on Saturday.   Sadly, Anubh and I were Etaine-less.  Sigh.  Lots of folks in each of our audiences were clearly engaged and well-read and really interested in Bardic poetry and Celtic history and mythology, all of which had me chuffed.  And again, people asked to buy CDs and books, neither of which either of us have produced.  And yet no book or recording contracts.

Le Vent du Nord is amazing live.  Freaking amazing.

I didn’t get to buy a darn thing, which was very sad.  I did get to spend a fair amount of time with my girls at Dancing Pig and Tuatha, and I did get to meet the newest Crafty Celt, and those are beautiful things.

My peeps kept me out of the sun as much as they possibly could, and occassionally chased people away from me so they get me under the green, leafy part of the sky and keep me well.  I managed to escape a long weekend of near constant sun-exposure with no real burn and only a mild sun-sensitivity reaction.

Most importantly. I received an amazing amount of help, love, encouragement, and congratulations from my wonderful friends and family, on-line and in person.  It was amazing.  My people are amazing.  I hope I manage to earn a tenth of the love you all give me, but I don’t know how I ever could.

I alluded to this poem by Paul Durcan, and I figured it would be cruel to brag on a poet’s talent without actually sharing the goods.  Particularly when I’m mentioning an Irish poet right before the Potomac Celtic Festival, which honors Ireland this year.  Paul Durcan is one of my favorite poets from Ireland.  He’s funny.  He’s lyrical.  He’s irreverent. His poems beg to be read aloud, and by someone who knows how to do it.  I should make him a cake, for this poem alone: 

Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.

When I was a boy, myself and my girl
Used bicycle up to the Phoenix Park;
Outside the gates we used lie in the grass
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.

Often I wondered what de Valera would have thought
Inside in his ivory tower
If he knew we were in his green, green grass
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.

Because the odd thing was–oh how odd it was–
We both revered Irish patriots
And we dreamed our dreams of a green, green flag
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.

But even had our names been Diarmaid and Gráinne
We doubted de Valera’s approval
For a poet’s son and a judge’s daughter
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin.

I see him now in the heat-haze of the day
Blindly stalking us down;
And, levelling an ancient rifle, he says "Stop
Making love outside Áras an Uachtaráin."

I think Durcan is not that widely known outside of Ireland because many of his poems require a certain knowledge of Irish history or culture that many folks just don’t have.  It’s easy for me to forget that, because my head is stuffed with the country.  For this poem to make the best of sense, lemme ‘splain some things. 

The easy stuff:
Phoenix (a bastardization of fionn uisce, or Clear water) Park is a huge  (over 1,700 acres) gorgeous walled garden in Dublin that houses the American Ambassador’s house, one of the oldest zoos in the world, the HQ of an Garda Síochána (the Irish police force), hurley pitches and, of course,  "Áras an Uachtaráin" , which is the official residence of the president of Ireland. 

Durcan is using one of my favorite linguistic tics Irish people have developed while speaking English–saying "used" instead of "used to."  It’s a back form–the "to" isn’t necessary in Irish, so why use it in English?  It also does a lovely thing to the rhythm of these lines.

Diarmaid and Gráinne are star-crossed lovers from Irish myth.  Gráinne is promised to Fionn mac Cumhaill, a great leader of warriors–the Fianna.  Diarmait (read Dermot) is Fionn’s friend and retainer.  He falls for Gráinne.  Chaos ensues. 

And finally, the big stuff:  Ireland has a modified parliamentary system, and the president (aka Uachtarán) is essentially the head of state, but has no legislative powers.  De Valera was president for many years and a huge influence on the foundation of the Irish state, having been the only male participant in the Easter Rising (beginning of the Irish war for Independence) to escape execution.   He was spared because he was born in the US, and thus not a subject of the British crown.  And de Valera was a devout Catholic, a lover of the Irish language, and apparently quite a prude.  He used piles and piles of Catholic imagery, much of it extolling the martyrdom of his compatriots from Easter Monday 1916, to bully Ireland into shape.  His shape. 

But, of course, Ireland wasn’t a repressive, Catholic place way back in the way back, as we know from the mythology–it’s chock full of sex.  Naughty, hot, inappropriate, promiscuous, cheating sex.  And the leaders of the revolution alluded to mythology all of the time to rouse their people to action.  They tried to use just the proud, nationalistic bits of the myth to their end, but they couldn’t keep the hot sex in the bag.  And it drove many of the Catholic Nationalists wild (and not in a sexy way). 

So there you go.  Questions?

Cramming Irish down your throats now.  Because, for some odd reason, it relaxes me.

I’ll give a lovely present to anyone who can explain the allusion in the title of this post.  It’s a hard one.  But it’s worth it, because a very good poet is involved.

The Irish word for president is Uachtarán, which comes from uachtar, the word for cream.  Because the cream rises to the top.  (I wish that were always–or possibly ever–true in politics as it is in dairy processing).  That phrase above, Áras an Uachtarán–that means “the president’s house” and is almost exclusively used to refer to the residence of the Irish president.  Whatever.  In this president’s house, there is a hell of a lot of chaos and some fretting.  And too much damn kittening.  Loud kittening at 4:00 a.m.

So, very busy preparing for the festival and for my wonderful Mother-in-law Karen to visit.  Ten days left.  Please come.   Or, you know, stop by and vacuum something in our house if you’re so inclined.  Or pet the dog: Kayo insists he is being neglected.  He may, possibly, be reacting either to my stress or to the amount of cussing Scott and I take to when we’re watching Deadwood dvds.

I’ve accidentally started onto a local author kick.  I picked up The Maltese Falcon from the to-read shelf because I couldn’t believe I’d never read it, and Scott had kindly gone and bought a copy (14 years ago).  And it reminded me that Hammett was from beautiful St. Mary’s County, Maryland.  When I finished Falcon, I picked up the Book of Fred, because it has a fish on the cover, and I like fish.  And the author is also a local.  And then I grabbed Dogs of Babel because, er, it has a dog on the cover, and I like dogs.  My reading choices are a bit less reasoned in the run up to the fest.  Another local author.  I’m wondering if the streak will continue.  I’m running through Babel pretty quickly–we’ll see if chance will make it four in a row.

Ooh–maybe I should develop some ridiculous superstition about this and make myself truly nuts.  Like, say, if I can randomly grab another local off the shelf, then it won’t rain at the festival.

No.  Too risky.  I have too much work to do.

Now figure out that little riddle and I’ll give you a prize.

Not much time for words these days, but here are some images from the annual groovywomen’s trip to the rivershore.

Friday’s arrival scene.  Gray and blustery.  That’s Virginia in the distance, and the Chesapeake bay is down the river to the left.

Some pictures of me and my spinning, courtesy of Andrea, who knows my camera better than I do:

That’s some Lorna’s Laces top.  The fiber is a joy to spin, but I don’t think I need to own the yarn.

Some socks I’d made found homes:

On Morgan, who is fetching in the fire colors, and Claudia,

Who was taken by how well these Trekking stripes matched up.  I tried to get pictures of Claudia jumping up and down after I gave her these, but no dice.  I should have called on Andrea to take charge of the camera again.

A bag Claudia crocheted for Dami, who may in fact have a small attachment to purple.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Several women brought yarns they didn’t need to own anymore, and it was great to see the crocheters gin up these net bags.  Each bag was as unique as each person.  Of course, I only managed to get the one decent picture.   There is a small chance that adult beverages affected my ability to take pictures.  But I guarantee you that several people learned how to crochet, and a few others expanded their knitting abilities, and Etaine and I had a great time spinning.

Our Sunday ritual: crabs at Evanses.  You must pronounce it “Evanzez,” or the locals will punish you.  One of us apparently mis-spoke and called it “Evans'”, because they had no blue crabs for us.  Somehow, Claudia, Dami, and I survived.  We survived on crass conversation and butter, if I remember correctly.

There should be more pictures, but I was too busy doing whatever I was doing to remember to pick up my camera.  Imagine one final shot here.  On the way out of town, Claudia and Dami stopped.  They stopped to buy me flowers, only I didn’t know the plan.  And then they chased me around the beltway to deliver a bouquet of roses.  Sniff sniff.  Thanks, girls.  It’s the only time I’ve ever enjoyed being pulled over.

We have reached that time of year again . . . that time of year when the festival looms so large that I completely fail to accomplish the simplest of tasks.   This year, what with those thugs rolling me in the alley and making me la presidente, it’s worse than usual.  This year, I’m so blotto I can barely muster an opinion.  And I’m made of opinions.   I fear for my soul, I tell you.

Normally, I can write well and clearly about my opinions.   Well, clearly things aren’t normal at the moment.  Huge festival, right there, with my name attached to it in big, scary letters.  Big truck repair bill.  Back injury (all better now, thank goodness) messing with my long weekend.   Confirmed proof that Yarrow, my beloved but evil kitten, eats wool.  Mother-in-law coming for a visit during and after big scary festival.  The weather is suddenly very hot.  Not enough vodka in this house, I say, and certainly something must be done about the fact that I have no bitter lemon into which to pour vodka.  Blasted minions.   Let’s put that at the top of the list:

1. Must replace all minions with much better, more motivated minions.    Requires finding any operating minions.
2. Must cleanse kitten’s evil soul.  Mr. Kittenpants is truly causing trouble, what with the wool eating.  We think he knows just enough about Aes and has hearing just good enough that, well, he has started saying "Muharhar" in his sleep.  Aes, what have you been teaching Yarrow with your mind-bullets?  Didn’t the hat buy some modicum of wool safety?
3. Must buy bitter lemon, and lots of it.  The cleaning will be more fun that way.
4. Must weed garden really a lot, so as to dispel neighborhood view that we’ve gone over to the dark, meth-producing side. 
5. Must make the only decent closet in the house into an actual closet, with a rod and everything.
6. Must resist urge to fill new lovely functioning closet with my own clothes until after wonderful Mother-in-Law visits, so as to be a good host.
7. Watch Deadwood DVDs, for procrastination’s sake.  (This is that easy thing I add to a list, so I feel like I’m getting something done).
8. Must knit more confounded wool socks, despite ridiculous heat wave.

In the meantime, here are some near-opinions:

Knitting Rules: The Yarn Harlot’s Bag of Knitting Tricks by Stephanie Pearl McPhee.  Love it.  Love word after giggling word of it.  And, because I read it on the metro, I love it even more because women who guffaw when no one is speaking to them while also wielding pointy metal sticks and reading generally get the whole set to ourselves.  Wheeeee–no one is sitting on my leg!  Double whopping warrior points, my friends.

The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman.   This is one of the classics of Appalachian lit.  And it’s out of print.  So I feel cruel telling you how good it is.  I waited several years for a copy to come to me.  It was worth the wait.  The novel follows our heroine, whose name I have honestly forgotten (forgive me, I have a huge heavy festival on my skull), from before the civil war, through marriage and motherhood, and on for a good while there.  Great language in the book, and the women in it are always knitting or spinning or sewing, so it gets extra points from me.  I’ll read it again when my brain is working at full speed.

Elizabethtown.   Cameron Crowe loves to kick my ass.  Seriously.  Loves it.  Why Cameron?  Why?  This film is about a young man named Drew, played by Orlando Bloom (not a fan of him, normally) whose life falls apart, and then his Dad dies, and then he gets sent to fix everything, and he’s surrounded by his father’s family whom he really doesn’t know.  It made me cry a lot, in a good way.  And it’s a love story, in which Drew falls in love with, er, Claire, played by Kirsten Dunst (who I’m not a fan of either), a gabby flight attendant.  Good music.  Deliciously manipulative subject matter for those of us with estranged families.   Solid performances from actors I’m not wild about, including Alec Baldwin who I normally really really dislike, but who is brilliant here.  And Paul Schneider, who I’ve never seen before–great job, kiddo.  Give him work, people.  Serious southern hippie charisma, there.  Matthew McConaughey has has his turn, already. 

American Massacre, by Sally Denton.  This is a pop-history book about a really terrible event in American history, which most of us never learned about in high school.  In 1857, a wagon train was ambushed in Southern Utah as it was heading towards California.  Most of the people in the caravan were murdered, a few of the children were kidnapped, all of the valuables were stolen or destroyed.  According to many historians and the author, the attack was ordered by none other than Brigham Young, leader of the Mormons.  Denton has gotten a fair amount of flack for some holes in her research and a pretty clear bias.  Nonetheless, I think this book is a great jumping-off point for those who want to learn about the settlement of Utah.  To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the issue is the relationship between the Paiutes, Mormon settlers, and the US government.  No matter what else you think about the event, it’s pretty clear that the Paiutes have gotten the short end of the stick for as long as Europeans have been settling that section of North America. 

I know I’m months behind the frappr curve, but I needed a happy, free distraction from my car troubles.  So I started this little project:

http://www.frappr.com/yarnshops

Ideally, the proverbial "we" could use it to find great yarn shops all over the place when we go on road-trips or know we need to find a shop that deals in Ms. Spiffy wheels or high-holy fleece, or whatever we’re searching for.  Feel free to add yourself or shops, no matter where in the world you are–this map is global, even though it opens up on the US and part of Canada.  If you add a shop,  please make sure to add it as a place so Frappr will display the full address.  It makes the map much more useful for those of us wanting to shop. 

And please play nice.  If you hate a shop, I’d rather you not add it than add it so you can describe your distaste for X’s evil yarn shop. 

Actually, woah, I take that back.  I really want to go to X’s evil yarn shop.  I know they’d have bone needles.  Maybe with skulls as finials.  Creepy deliciousness.

If the interface is giving you fits, you can also ask me to add places.  It may take me some time, but I’ll do it.