In an article published on Wednesday, The Times reported on Michelle Obama’s ancestry, tracing her maternal line back to her great-great-great-grandparents, a slave girl and a white man, and their son, Dolphus T. Shields, who was born in the 1850s.
A map illustrating where your state falls on the healthcare scorecard. Indiana is in the lowest chunk of data, Iowa ranks third. More reason to move back to Iowa.
The first definition is the most familiar: one who reads, or one who is fond of reading. A young girl tucked under a tree with a book in hand; an old man waiting for the bus, nose pressed into the spine; three little boys sitting on the curb sharing a newspaper, ink smudged on their knees.
Trigger Warning required – not for the feint of heart, this is the transcripts of the grand jury testimony in the Roman Polanski rape case. This should change the mind of anyone supporting him.
Cool patterns and knitting from Daniel Yuhas – animal and critter designs among them. Lots of fun. He's a published pattern designer, so his knitting patterns appear in various books and magazines.
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
I’m sure you’ve had an opportunity to read all the media circus surrounding the arrest of movie director Roman Polanski. Over on Shakesville, Melissa McEwan notes and discusses several of the high-profile people defending him, including Harvey Weinstein, Debra Winger and Whoopi Goldberg. And on another blog post, she lists others.
I’m deeply disappointed by celebrities coming to his defense.
I know for certain 5 people who were molested as children or as teens – I probably know more than that, but those are the folks with whom I’ve actually held conversations about their experiences. Of those 5, all of them have been deeply affected by what happened to them, all of them have difficulty with romantic relationships, all of them have contemplated or attempted suicide. Some of them struggle with other demons – alcoholism and dissociative identity disorder among them.
If i could magically make their lives whole again by pushing a button and deleting every Roman Polanski movie ever made – picture me right now pushing that button, over and over again.
A nice social network for people who like to knit and crochet – you can add patterns, show off your stash of yarn and show pictures of your finished work. Nice to be able to locate people nearby who are interested in projects you are, and nice to share resources with people.
Checking out EW’s cheat sheet of when the fall TV shows premiere, — either they left shows off here (Lost is the only one I noticed missing) or I just don’t watch that much TV anymore. My selections this year:
Wednesday, September 9:
Glee, 9 p.m. (Fox)
Thursday, September 17:
Bones, 8 p.m. (Fox)
The Office, 9 p.m. (NBC)
Parks and Recreation, 8:30 p.m. (NBC)
Monday, September 21:
Castle, 10 p.m. (ABC)
How I Met Your Mother, 8 p.m. (CBS)
Thursday, September 24:
The Mentalist, 10 p.m. (CBS)
Sunday, September 27:
Desperate Housewives, 9 p.m. (ABC)
Thursday, October 15:
30 Rock, 9:30 p.m. (NBC)
7 hours of TV a week (8 with Lost)? That’s tame compared to years previous. Ah, I notice Ugly Betty is missing, too. How ever will I get all my knitting done? I guess I’ll have to go read books.
I’ve been in quite a blue funk lately. A large chunk of that is due to hitting 41, which seems to have affected me more than 40 did by a large margin. The “thinking about mortality” issues that advance with each turn of the year tend to thrust themselves into my conscious mind with alarming regularity. It does not help at all that I’ve had friends die in recent years, and parents of friends are having serious health issues. It occurs to me that this is one of the purposes of babies – watching them grow and discover the world and all the promise of youth is definitely a positive distraction from looking in the other direction.
The other source of the blues is work-related, which is mainly why I haven’t written much about the blue meanies going on in my life right now. I’ve had a long-standing policy of not blogging about work, in order to avoid creating problems with my source of income. I’m somewhat violating that here, but I think it’s fair to say that my morale about our product development is quite low, and that has affected practically everything else in my life; my weekends are filled with pouring over problems and frustrations, and I find it hard to let go and just enjoy the times when I’m not at work.
Photography and knitting have been lifesavers recently — normally I’d take out my frustrations on some fun online project, but web design is the last thing I want to think about when I leave work these days, so other creative outlets have filled in the gaps. I love photography and have learned a lot; I think I’m a bit suspended figuring out where I want to go with it next. I’ll land in the right spot on that soon.
Knitting. Knitting is awesome. I’ve found I’m quite good at what I’ve learned so far, and as a zen “take your mind off things” activity, it’s stellar. Have I even mentioned it here? Holy moley, I haven’t have I? Other than a photo I put up back in May, I haven’t.
Stephanie has been a crocheter for 17 years or so, and has made afghans, scarves, blankets, etc. for people in that time. She’s been wanting to learn to knit, but my mom hasn’t had a chance to teach her because she’s been so busy. One of Stephanie’s skating friends taught her some really simple knitting on a trip to a competition, but she needed more info, so we went to Mass Avenue Knit Shop to find out about classes. I was charmed by the atmosphere of the shop and the wild varieties of yarns they had available, and asked if she minded if I took the class too. So we signed up together. The class teaches how to create a beginner sweater, which covers pretty much everything you need to learn to knit well.
Evoking a bit of that Gryffindor magic, doncha know.
The other scarf is my own variation of a Dr. Who Scarf, which is far enough different in concept to be actually not a Dr. Who Scarf at all, except that it will be super-long and striped. I find I have to disclaimer that because Dr. Who Scarf fans (they are legion) are very religious about their patterns and making their scarves match the props used in different seasons of the show exactly. I find that the preciseness of people who fit into the cross-section of Dr. Who fans with knitting fans to be charming, if not a bit on the unnerving side.
Part of my motivation for this scarf is that it will replace one that I lost – I had a great multi-color striped scarf from the Gap that disappeared from work last winter, and I haven’t been able to find a winter scarf that I liked as well as that one. So I’m making my own!
Tom Baker Doctor Who ScarfDoctor Who Scarf
Mine will be alternating stripes of color with black. I’ve restarted it several times; I started with it being too wide and with lots of dropped stitches and holes, so I’ve taken it out and started over repeatedly. I finally have it going the way I want, but I imagine it’s going to take a while to do, because I’m knitting in the round to create a tube so that the “finished” or knit side is the only one that shows (that’s another variation of mine from Canon; real Dr. Who Scarves are garter stitch, not stockinette.) The yarn I’m using is all the left-over bits of stuff that Stephanie used on various crochet projects over the years, so I have the bonus of using up lots of scraps and having a really varied color combination.
Photos of both of my scarves in progress will be coming forthwith. Eventually. Really Soon.
2022-03-12-Update: I made exact replicas of the Doctor Who Scarf and of the Gryffindor Scarf. It took a long time, but it was great. I’m really good at this knitting thing now, former me. Here are the photos, as long ago promised.
My Doctor Who Scarf
won’t you come away with me
and begin something we can’t understand
i’m as lonely as the Irish Sea
i’m as willing as the sand
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
won’t you come unbury me
could you light me up like a lemon grove
i’ll save you from this dreamy life
to the hardest love you could ever know
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
but don’t cry baby,
please don’t cry baby
i’ll be tender til the day i die
this love i have for you is terrible and true
how this sheltered loveless life
fades into the weakest shade of blue
its ruinous and true
how this sheltered loveless life
fades into the weakest shade of blue
weakest shade of blue
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
but don’t cry baby,
please don’t cry baby
i’ll be tender til the day i die
this love i have for you is terrible and true
how this sheltered loveless life
fades into the weakest shade of blue
weakest shade of blue…