Thursday, October 15, 2009

I Love Stories About The Large Hadron Collider

From a NYTimes article about the latest escapades at CERN (other than terrorist physicists):

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Really, what commentary do I need to add to that? Read it all here.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Get One Last Trip To The Farmers' Market In

They're winding down for the season, as is the garden. I'll make it a two-poem week and post this one about the harvest. (Now I'm going to think "human brains covered in red oilcloth" when I cut up the last tomatoes to freeze.)

Harvest

by Louise Gluck

It's autumn in the market—
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth—

Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy—
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.

Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.

Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.

At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.

The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?

And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.

I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Tuesday Project Roundup: Patterns

Today I mean patterns as in the designs formed from repeating groups of stitches, not the schematic for making an object.

There's a popcorn pattern on the
beige cardigan:

And there's a horseshoe cable pattern on one finished Twilight mitten:


The cables got a little off on this one because I had to keep stopping and starting on the plane, and I had to fudge the top to make it longer to accommodate my fingers, but I'm actually kind of liking it. Maybe it will gaze at me in science class and make me flustered.

Monday, October 12, 2009

In Need Of Re-Posting

I know I put up this poem last year, in the heat of the election and seasonal change and economic apocalypse, but let's put it up again this year, for another time of transition:

"How to Like It," by Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

Friday, October 09, 2009

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Have you heard this? First Conde Nast shuttered Domino magazine (which I miss so much, as next year I start advance furniture buying for The House To Come), and now Gourmet will fold after November--the same Gourmet that's been around since the 40s and been home to writers such as MFK Fisher (not to mention the online cocktail gallery). Damn.

2. It's John Lennon's birthday. He would have been 69.

3. I just learned that ravens can live up to 40 years in the wild; the average raven lifespan is between 15 to 25 years, depending on your source. (Collective noun for ravens: An unkindness.)

Thursday, October 08, 2009

"A Love Of One's Fate"

Yesterday, the poem featured on The Writer's Almanac was called "Amor Fati," a phrase I didn't know. Wikipedia gave me some good stuff:
[The phrase] is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good. That is, one feels that everything that happens is destiny's way of reaching its ultimate purpose, and so should be considered good.

Nietzsche used the concept and phrase a lot; Wikipedia also gave me a good quote from him:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. To not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it...but to love it.

I like this concept of amor fati. There has been a lot to deal with in my life lately and I think this is a good approach to it.

In other words...SERENITY NOW!


Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Serves Me Right To Complain About Private Jets

Remember my last business trip? Yeah, I'll wear all the booties you want if you don't make me fly to Orlando and back and arrive both places after midnight. Oh, the humanity.
But I'm home now. And business trips=salary. So I really shouldn't complain about this one, either.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Tuesday Project Roundup: Plane Knitting

The beige cardigan is coming along, but I decided it was too big to take with me on the plane. So I started some mittens with some leftover yarn I had and am working on those on the flights. However, they are mittens inspired by the movie Twilight.

Yes, I saw the movie. The can't-look-away-train-wreck part of me even had to go and read the book after that. I am thoroughly embarassed to be boarding the Twilight Mittens Train. But these will be plum! And will look good with my coat! And I left the first page of the pattern that shouts "Bella's Mittens" at home, so maybe no one will know.


(Top photo from the movie; bottom photo from the pattern.)

Or maybe when I'm finished, my mittens will sparkle and declare their undead love for me. We'll see.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Two Pieces Of Information With a Blues Brothers Tie-In

The first: Saturday night Mr. Isbell and I saw Inglourious Basterds at Brewvies, and a lot of the time I couldn't help but think, "Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis."



The second: While I never had to be a juror last week, that trip to Florida I was worried about is happening tonight and tomorrow. So I'm hitting the road and Toby is currently sitting next to my overnight bag, looking worried.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Happy birthday, Wallace Stevens (1879). I'll try to remember this quote when I'm feeling overwhelmed: "Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore."

2. Go visit myvintagevogue.com before Conde Nast makes them take down the site for copyright infringement. Some of the dresses are so timeless:

3. I agree with this: "What we need is a word to describe 'nostalgia for things we haven’t even experienced.' Things like transistor radios, soda counters, and rabbit-eared televisions. Wes Anderson is a connoisseur of this sensation. No doubt the French have ten different words for it." (From here, a blog about the production of Where the Wild Things Are.)

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Happy Tocktober!


How did it get to be Tocktober already? Before you know it, it will be Nosevember.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wednesday Project Roundup: Cue The Richard Strauss

Done...

done...

done....

done, DONE!


Done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done.....

Why yes, the quilt is finished after nine months. It kept us warm last night. Toby approves of it. But what project will stay at the back of mind mind now? Something like this? (I'm serious; I think I like quilting.) Although maybe I'll take a few months and enjoy this one being done.

(If you're like me, now you have to go listen to the real Richard Strauss piece. Here's a video link for you.)

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Let Me Distract You With Pictures Of Oktoberfest While We Wait For Quilt Pictures

The quilt didn't get a photo shoot last night but it's ready for its close up (!!!)*. So for today, check out The Big Picture's photos of Oktoberfest in Munich.

These Lowenbrau horses' harness puts the Budweiser Clydesdales' to shame:

German knights! With beer!

And did somebody say beer? That is a lot of beer.
I know we wanted to try to go to Snowbird's Oktoberfest this weekend, but the weather may not cooperate with us. I'd rather not trudge through the snow to get my beer.

*Stay tuned for a Very Special Wednesday Project Roundup tomorrow: The Quilt Reveal.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Toby's Great Escape

As you might guess from the title of this, Sunday was a pretty bad day. But everything ended happily so really, it was a great day.

Saturday night I went to bed with Toby sleeping on the in-progress quilt, so when I woke up once in the night and he wasn't on the bed I thought, "Oh, he's on the quilt." I woke up again at 4:30 and he still wasn't on the bed and I thought, "Where the hell is he? I'd better so check." So I get up and he's not on the quilt and he's not anywhere and I'm already getting a sinking feeling and yes: He pushed out a corner of the screen in the front window and was gone.

Well, about four hours of panic ensued--panic and lots of walking and hollering. We made a two-block radius around the apartment, I went down into Memory Grove, I made fliers and started posting them, I put up an ad on Craigslist and ksl.com, and did I mention the panic part?

I called my mom again after the flier posting and she said, "Put out some food and be sure to check really carefully in all the corners of the yard." So I started investigating the potting shed in the back parking lot here and wedged between the back of the shed and a tree trunk was a very, very scared Toby. (Isn't the wisdom of moms fantastic? How do they learn these things?) He was too scared to even meow at me, which is why we missed him in the frantic search (and it was dark), but I scooped him up and carried him back inside.

Then, of course, all he wanted to do was pace the windows (now shut) and go out again. Um, kitty? You didn't seem to be enjoying yourself. There's no food out there. Let's stay inside, OK?

Anyway. That was Sunday, but all is well now. I'd like a weekend to recover from the weekend, please.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Friday Unrelated Information

1. We had a server and internet crash at work yesterday, so I took an early lunch and went to the Gateway--where I saw the CIRCUS PARADE. I was all, "Elephants!!" but then immediately after, "Oh god, that's sad." There were also clowns riding mini bikes.

2. Don't forget to go visit the alpaca ranch this weekend for Open Barn Day (they have yarn to buy).

3. The Smithsonian has a whole bunch of old seed catalogs you can peruse online. My favorites are below.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

A Poem For Thursday

In The Night Orchard

by R. T. Smith

I know, because Paul has told me
a hundred times, that the deer
gliding tonight through tangleweed
and trashwood, then bounding across
Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears.

And who could blame them?
On the threshold of autumn, the Asian
imports, more amazing than any Seckle
or indigenous apple, start to ripen.
Then a passing crow will peck one open.

That's when the whitetails who bed
and gather beyond Matson's pasture
will catch the scent and begin to stir.
It's a dry time, and they go slowly mad
for sweetness. No fence can stop them.

The farmers like Paul will admit
it starts in hunger, but how suddenly
need goes to frenzy and sheer plunder.
When the blush-gold windfalls are gone
and the low boughs are stripped

of anything resembling bounty, bucks
will rise on their hind legs and clamber
up the trunks. Last week Cecil Emore
found one strangled in a fork,
his twisted antlers tangled as if

some hunter had hung him there
to cure. We all remember what it's like,
this driven season, this delirium
for something not yet given a name,
but the world turns us practical, tames

us to yearn for milder pleasures.
For Augustine, it was actual pears
that brought him out of the shadows
and over a wall, for Eve, the secret
inside what we now say was an apple.

Others have given up safety for less,
and I wonder, catching an eight-point
buck outlined on the ridge amid spruce,
if it's this moonstruck nature that renders
the ruminants beautiful, or if we stalk

them out of envy, not for the grace
of their gliding, but for the unadorned
instinct that draws them after dark
into trespass and the need to ruin
the sweetest thing they've ever known.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Jury Duty Looms

So work is slow this week, but next week a site needs to be written and there's the potential for a trip to Florida for a new client, plus all of the other things the only writer at an agency handles. And that's all going to be a problem because I've been called for jury duty.

I'm hoping that the court will find enough jurors before my number comes up. And failing that, I'm hoping the deadline on that site is flexible. In theory, a break from the routine with lots of downtime for knitting sounds OK, but I'd be happier if I had some freelance lined up. I guess that's today's project.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tuesday Project Roundup: Project Schedule

I don't have anything finished this week, but it's not for lack of trying. I'm adhering to a very productive crafty schedule:

On the nights when Mr. Isbell has school, I sew the quilt binding and watch my Masterpiece Theater miniseries. (He doesn't share my love for British period dramas.) I'm halfway through the binding!

On the nights when we're both home, I usually knit. I'm almost to the point where I start the fancy stitch pattern on the beige vest.

And on the weekends, when we're not going to car races or open barn days, I've been working on a fall dress with that black gingham.
So statistically, I should really have something to show soon.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Happy Fall

190 years and three days ago, John Keats wrote his "Ode to Autumn," and, while the astronomical equinox isn't until tomorrow, it's a nice way to start the week. Here's the first stanza; you can read the rest of it here.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Big events this weekend: My brother's birthday AND a race at Miller Motorsports Park. I got him tickets, too, so we can all watch the Rolex Grand Am series and think about him being 33. I think owning three lawn tractors by 33 was a goal of his, and he has accomplished it. Happy birthday!

2. Remember when I learned about Alan Turing last year? The UK has finally apologized for prosecuting him for homosexuality, forcing estrogen implants on him, and essentially driving him to suicide. Nice apology; shame he's dead and can't accept it.

3. Here is a gallery of some vintage Porsche posters to peruse. I like this one: