Can’t talk: watching curling!

I am writing during commercial breaks.  Running up and down the steps over and over again so you, Gentle Reader, don’t think I’ve fallen off the planet.  Really, I’ve fallen into a long-awaited winter.  An Olympic Winter, no less.  I’m absolutely chuffed. 

It snowed!  It finally snowed!

Kayo needs snow.  And sticks.

And the fetching thereof:

Followed by the peaceful contemplation:

And finally, the willful destruction of the beloved object:

Adopting a snow dog forced me to expand my concept of snowy splendor.  I liked the snow when it was pristine.  I loved it when it was churned by hundreds of Kayo prints.  It’s mostly melted now.  I hope it snows twice as hard this week.  Fingers crossed. 

In addition to the snowing, we have Olympic knitting in process.  I swatched last week:

Notice the squared-off end?  I swatched and then frogged and started over, just like the good little participant I am.  Unfortunately, that stupid job of mine kept me from starting until 5:00 pm on Friday, dag nabbit.  But I love Kiri, and the yarn I’m using:

The shawl is 22 inches from point to center now.  I hope I can finish on time.

The biggest obstacle is my other feat.  Like some rare Olympians, I am a multi-sport maniac.  In addition to knitting, I am also  switching office space with my husband.  Who is the best man in the world, you know.  He offered and offered to trade spaces, and I asked over and over again to see if he was sure, and I finally cracked.  I now have a studio more than twice the size of the one I had on Thursday.  But she is disheveled:

Ok, stop looking.  It’s embarrassing.

And it’s driving me mad.  Knitting Olympics plus new studio equals Crazier-than-Usual-Lanea.  Don’t mind the barking.  Things are a bit better than this now, but my progress was slowed when I had the audacity to plug in a vacuum on Sunday and blew out half of the power in the house.  Suffice it to say, we really did buy this place from idiots.  A very nice electrician from Pittsburgh (Yay Steelers) made everything (electrical) right again Monday afternoon, and explained how much we’d need to replace to make sure everything stayed operative.  Anyway, I lack the necessary storage to make the office right, so there is another Ikea death-march in my future.  Until then, sate yourself with this yarn porn:

Nice, eh?  You wanna see up close, don’t you?  You naughty knitter–I know what you like.

A whole cubic foot of beautiful wool, some of it hand-painted, some of it discontinued, all of it right there.  So much yarn that it can be turned over my head without risk of any of it escaping the basket, like a well-whipped mess of egg whites.  Ok, that would not be a hot analogy to most people, would it?  Anyway, you want more?  I’ve got more:

A bouquet of hand-painted and hand-spun beauties.  Classy but surprisingly attainable, right there at my finger-tips.  And handmade bobbins, all sitting on a  hand-woven bit of heaven.  I know you want them.  They know you want them.  Get in line, sister.   Cuz those girls are all mine. 

Oh, I know.  You want to see what’s in the other basket, don’t you.  The shy one.  The tease.  Fine, but that’s it.  From here on out, sweetie, you’ve gotta pay.


More hand-paints, and some alpaca blends, and all sorts of other delicious goodies.  Mmmmmmm mmmmmmm MMMMMMM.  I need me some more of that kinda love.   

Back to Kiri.  And curling.  And another Ikea death march.

So, a group of us spent last weekend at John the Farrier’s near Charlottesville.  Yet again: a hoot.  We had exceedingly warm weather for February, and a bit more rain than we needed on Saturday.  More importantly, we also had one person after another learning to forge.  It was beautiful, seriously amazing, heartwarming stuff to see so many of our friends learning smith-craft.  We study the iron age, see, and occasionally we as a community make some huge leap forward in our personal and  communal hands-on, bone-deep knowledge of THEM and how they lived.  It’s nice to learn from books.  It’s vital to learn from real physical experience.  In the past, we’ve made similar huge personal and communal discoveries about bronze-casting and horticulture and thatching and the transmission of myth and dye-works and such.  But this was big.  Forging was the technology that kept cultures alive, allowed tribes to trade for commodities rather than producing them all locally, which allowed them to focus on art and music and myth. 

Up until now, only a few of our friends have had hands-on experience with iron and steel forging, because it requires much more space, specialized tools, fuel, and experience than bronze-casting.  And then we befriended a man who really knows his way around iron and is incredibly generous with his time and knowledge and his home.  I managed, again, to take no pictures.  But, believe me when I say that it is wonderful to watch one person after another heft a hammer and strike home on glowing red steel.  Some of the older kids were forging.  Most of the women and men were forging.  Bevin and I had a moment of "crap, why do we have to be broken and thus not forging," but we got over it.  Kelby and John have taught Jeremy and Dominic, both 13, and both of whom really GET it.  They may have just found their callings.  They’ve certainly entered a hallowed community.  Smith-craft is one of the great magics of the ancient world, and it is in their hands.  Great googley moogley, it was beautiful to watch Ed learn how to clear just the right path through the coal for the blower to work effectively while AnnaMarie pulled a glowing-hot rod out of the fire and set it onto an anvil. 

Oh, and Geetha, the mostly-deaf rottweiler, wants to live in the forge.  She was in doggie heaven–she was out of the rain but could see everyone at once and it was warm and she had her new sparkly (dare I say sparkly-warkly?) pink collar and was adept at staying out of the way but making sure everyone was safe.  Dog smiles for days.

When we weren’t at the forge, we were wandering around the farm tending sheep and horses; burning copious amounts of (evil spark-ridden) pine; singing and playing tunes; napping, cackling about the mummified bat on the workshop wall; etc. etc. 

Oh!  And AnnaMarie is the proud owner of Rose!  I knew it was hers–the color is just right for a blonde and the proportions are just so on her.  And Simone is the proud owner of the first peace fleece socks.

So I came home with less stuff, which is grand, but with inspiration to make so much more stuff, which is even better.  Simone and I have a bit of a song percolating, and there are some felted wool rugs in my future, and the swatching for the knitting olympics is underway. 

I’ve got some sweeping up to do.  Normally I appreciate the lack of coding I have to do with a typepad blog.  Right now, it’s making my blood boil.  I can’t get my banner centered, I can’t find anything in the help files to address the problem, and I need to get swatching on Kiri and maybe do some laundry.  And eat something.  And probably wine would help.  La.

Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald.  There’s a good chance I picked the wrong time to read this book.  Reading about the holocaust and its affects while experiencing any sort of trauma is dicey.  Reading a book almost entirely without paragraph breaks that is also about the holocaust is downright ill-advised.  Nevertheless, I loved the book, but I read it slowly and then thought about it for a good while before reviewing it. 

As usual, I kept wondering how much better this book was in the original German.  I get the sense that the translator did well in communicating the clipped dryness of an aging man trying to hide his anguish as he recounts his familial tragedy.  It’s a story about a man who was once a boy whose parents and home were snatched from him by genocidal bureaucrats.  That’s really all that needs be said.

This is one of my favorite poems.  It rattles about in my skull always, speaking to my love of the mountain chain that runs through Appalachia, Britain, and Ireland. 

Heritage (1935)
by James Still

I shall not leave these prisoning hills
Though they topple their barren heads to level earth
And the forests slide uprooted out of the sky.
Though the waters of Troublesome, of Trace Fork,
Of Sand Lick rise in a single body to glean the valleys,
To drown lush pennyroyal, to unravel rail fences;
Though the sun-ball breaks the ridges into dust
And burns its strength into the blistered rock
I cannot leave. I cannot go away.

Being of these hills, being one with the fox
Stealing into the shadows, one with the new-born foal,
The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,
One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,
And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.
Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond.

James Still is one of the unsung greats of American poetry.  He died  a couple of years ago after a lifetime of teaching and writing in the hills of Kentucky. 

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to know that so many other people are thinking of Brigid and Imbolc now.  It’s my Mom’s birthday, and it’s time to head down to John the Ferrier’s for a weekend of work and creativity and fellowship. 

So far, Berryman is all about rhythm for me.  And what’s weird is that the rhythm I find in the poems isn’t matching the rhythm Berryman uses in his readings.  So I’m going to ignore the poet’s literal voice for now, until I get more comfortable.  I’ve run across a number of poets whose readings rattle me because their physical voice seems so detached from what i hear in my head as I read.  Berryman is doing that to me. 

As one who reads for pleasure, I get to indulge all sorts of loves and opinions my professors tried to train out of me.  Hawwhawwhaww–you can’t stop me from liking things just because I do, so there.  And I’ve got to say, Berryman picked the right way to open if he wants to win me over.  Because it’s all about ME.  Ok, of course it’s not about me, but the first dream-song is very pleasing to me.  Both the woolen lover simile and the sycamore pleased me, tree-hugging wool-head that I am.  And I’m loving the switch from post-modern jazz-inspired boom-chicking along the lines to this gorgeous bit of lyric:
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.
This is a man with tools and technique.  I expected the jazz.  I didn’t expect the ballad.

Dreamsong 4 got me good.  I love men who really love womanliness.  It’s that simple.  And here we have a lusty man admitting that his desires go too far.  The closing beats make it:
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry
–Mr Bones: there is.
Nuff said.

And then to #13.  The lyricism and rhythm are again lovely, of course, but I also appreciate the vulnerability.  This breaking down of bravado. 
God bless Henry.  He lived like a rat,
with a thatch of hair on his head
in the beginning.
Henry was not a coward.  Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.

So may be Henry was a human being.
Maybe he was.  A cornered rat, hated by God.  Berryman released this knowing that his audience would assume he was Henry.  He was Henry.  I guess I find that kind of nakedness before an audience of any kind brave, and risky. 

Juno asked if I like brown.  You know what kind of brown I like, Juno?
I like Boyne river-reed brown

And mini-horde of amber brown

And oak griffin brown

And ladder-back chair brown

And elk, doe, and buck-skin brown

And birdseye maple brown

And birchbark brown

And rust brown

But I love Kayo brown above all else.

So imagine my joy at finding Shetland cashmere/silk laceweight in Kayo-brown on my doorstep.  Thank you so much.  Kayo thanks you too. 

This will become Kiri, if all goes as planned.  I may not be able to pull off a medal in the Knitting Olympics, but I sure am going to try. 

I will join Team Wales.  Because I know more about Wales than is ultimately safe to know.  I feel it is my duty to serve. And I may need to get on the liquid-refreshment teams too.  Yes yes.  Must swatch. 

I just found out that our friend Captain Jim died.  It wasn’t exactly out of the blue–Jim had a heart-defect that he’d known about all his life, and he wasn’t supposed to make it past 20.  He made it to 55.  He made Celtic summer camp a true hoot this year–his first.  I rarely meet people who entertain me so well so soon after I meet them.  He dove right into every bit of our community.  Several of our friends in Michigan had the chance to know Jim for far longer than I did, and I both envy and grieve for them now. 

Keep sailing those great lakes, Jim.  And we’ll keep singing you back to shore. 

I started sweeping up around here, and noticed I petered out pretty early in the 100 things process, so here’s some more.
First 17

18-35 . . .

36. As do most forms of discrimination.
37. I studied debate techniques when I was in school, and grew into an award-winning speaker.
38. On more than one occasion, I made an opponent cry at a podium.
39. I never did it on purpose.
40. I did make a boyfriend or two cry on purpose, back when I was waiting on a block of ice for my husband.
41. My husband’s pals, most of whom I’ve known since I was in high school, call me Meangirl, and I think it’s charming and funny when they do, especially when they say it en masse in this manic cartoon-y voice they use.
42. On the few occasions my Mom called me Meangirl, I was both chastened and startled by how funny it was.
43. When a particular person I know calls me Meangirl, it is an act of violence against me, and I want to punch her in the sanctimonious mush.  I guess that makes me mean, but not as mean as I would be if I actually did it.
44. Another group of friends often refers to me as nice-lady, as a foil to the Meangirl thing.  The truth is somewhere in between.
45. I study pacifism, and have since I was about 11, when I decided to never hit my big brother or anyone else in anger again.
46. I may have made that decision because I was never ever going to win a fight against a male a foot taller than I am.
47. I think it was a brilliant decision.
48. When I was in college, I started playing a violent contact sport.  I was never particularly good at it, and quit playing a few years ago when an unrelated shoulder injury made it too painful.
49. I waver between missing stick fighting and wondering why I ever did it.  I think the answer to both is “uppity.”
50. I placate myself by loaning out any gear I’m not using anymore, making stuff for my friends who still stick-fight so they look fiiiiiine, tending their wounds when necessary, and taking pictures and film.
51. Oh, and making bridies.  Bridies are like soma, but with meat.  And brown sauce.
52. My bridie recipe has won me a few marriage proposals.  My husband, however, proposed for more traditional reasons.
53. I almost went to cooking school, but a pro-baker friend sat me down and asked how I would feel about giving up all of my weekends for a decade.
54. I stuck with writing and editing.
55. If I ever strike it rich, I’ll go to cooking school in Italy.
56. My great-grandmother Antonia was an amazing cook and owned a restaurant.
57. When the girls threw me a bridal shower, my Mom and my sister-friend Heather made bets on how quickly I would cry if they gave me Great-Grandmother Antonia’s cookbook.
58. I got weepy just picking up the bag it was in because I recognized the spine of the book, so no one won the bet.  Or they both won.
59. I’m a sap.
60. I’ve been toying with writing a family history for years, but I worry that the crazy(er) side of my family would burn me at the stake.
61. I have a rare last name, and I didn’t change it when I got married.
62. A co-worker and fellow fan of Edward Gorey suggests I use the pen name Mary Pinto when I finish and publish the book.
63. My Mom considered changing her name and ours when she divorced my father, but his family insisted she do it, so she refused.
64. Uppity runs in the family.
65. I still have that last name because my father’s family tried to take it from me.
66. If I ever publish a book I’m really ashamed of, I may change my name.
67. I have many legitimate family names to choose from.  I think my Grandpap’s is currently in the lead.
68. Everyone misspells my husband’s last name, and his father abandoned their family, so I’m not drawn to it.
69. My big brother and my husband are not like their fathers, and that makes me incredibly proud and thankful.
70. Sometimes I fear that I have too much in common with my father.  Just writing that made me teary.
71. Thankfully, I know I am much more like my mother.
72. Fear and pride both make me well up: see number 59.
73. If I were someone else’s child and I met my Mom, I think I would really want to befriend her.
74. My mother accidentally draws floods.
75. She will try to deny this, and then she will visit you and your water-heater will burst.
76. When we bought our house, we picked one without a basement.
77. My folks just bought a new house, and they bought a lot of flood insurance.

I was just poking around to see if I could find any audio of Berryman reading his poems, and I hit quite the little jackpot. Scroll down to John Berryman’s name and you get almost* an entire poetry reading by John Berryman–an introduction, some chit chat by Berryman, and him reading Dream Songs #1, 4, 14, 16, 17, 76, 77 & 382 as well as poems from Love & Fame. Obviously, this one requires a time commitment. The total streaming time ended up being 45 minutes. It’s an odd website, and doesn’t really give any information on when or where this reading took place. From the comments about Tax Day made by the man who does the introduction and by Berryman himself, we know it’s April 15th. We also know it’s past the publication of His Toy, His Dream, His Rest and before the publication of Love & Fame, which dates it somewhere between 1968 and 1970.

If that’s too much time commitment, there’s a clip of him reading Dream Song #1 here.

This is the first time I ever heard him read his work, and I must say, if I didn’t already think he was an odd duck, I would now. Of course, he’s probably drunk on both occasions…

*After about 45 minutes, you can hear the (quite loud) tape recorder reels come to a halt and it simply cuts off there. Ah, technology.  EDIT: oh holy crap–they change the tape and five minutes later, they come back in with the reading! Imagine how far I jumped when my computer suddenly started talking to me again! It seems to go on for about an hour and 15 minutes, but you can catch just the Dream Songs in about 40 minutes.