Rare, for me

It is rare, for me

I am white
I am middle class
I am a citizen
I am fluent in English
I am educated
I am able-bodied
I am able-minded
I am employed

My privileges usually guard me

It is rare--
Rare for me to sit on the receiving end of a flood
of animosity
of fear
of anger

Today I spoke with a person who poured
her animosity, fear, and anger
over the phone lines
into my ears
into my heart

“You shouldn’t be helping illegals,” she says
“I’m reporting you,” she says
“We’re investigating you,” she says

My heart skips, hands clench, breath catches
Just a glimmer of the everyday reality for many

Swimming in Earthsea

I'm still escaping my life through fantasy books. On Saturday, I finished The Amber Spyglass and still didn't want to talk to anyone. Nothing on my bookshelves called to me. Instead, I went to Powell's on Hawthorne.

I love bookstores where you don't have to talk to anyone and you can stand/sit there and just read. The fourth book of the His Dark Materials series, Lyra's Oxford, is really a short story. I read it at the store rather than buying it.

Then I bought the first four books in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series.



I haven't fully submerged into them yet. I'm about halfway through A Wizard of Earthsea, but I spent some of the weekend re-watching old movies. The novel is full of odd, made-up names typical of Le Guin's sci-fi novels. Some of them are so strange, I choose to shorten them to the first letter. One of the characters, a mage at the wizarding school, is simply "K" to me. I couldn't tell you what his actual name is. It makes me glad that the main character has such a short name, Ged. I have no idea how it is "supposed to be" pronounced. For me, it rhymes with Ked (like the shoes--keds) and has a hard /g/.

I'm very bad with guessing pronunciations for words or names I don't know. I'm not alone in this. My family has a collection of words that one or the other of us kids learned by reading and then tried out in conversation. My two best known words of this type were vehement and epitome. I still have to think about vehement. My instincts tell me it should be vee-HEM-ent.

Epitome comes easy to me now, although my mother got a big kick out of EP-i-tome ("tome" like a book and rhymes with Rome) when I was about 10 or 11. It was used in the blurb on the back of my book, and I knew its meaning as I had seen it before. Standing in the front hallway in the light from the open front door, I read the blurb to my mother who was in the kitchen. It must have been a Saturday in springtime by the color of the light from outside. I was a wee bit embarrassed by my mispronunciation and by the hoots of laughter erupting from my mother. Looking back on it, though, I feel a warmth from the shared moment with my mother--she was delighted by me. This was just before the darker years ahead, a last moment of joy, and it was just the two of us.

Gratuitous Photos of Sam

My Daemon

I adored Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I only own the first book, The Golden Compass, but I lent it to a friend. The second and third books I borrowed from the library. Now, despite my bank account balances which indicate that I should spend no more "extra" money, I'm seriously considering buying the trilogy to re-read them right now.

I'm in a re-reading kind of mood these days. I re-read all six Harry Potter books before reading the seventh. I just re-read The Left Hand of Darkness (so fabulous!).

It also appears that I'm into magical worlds--somewhere I can escape to. I want somewhere different enough from the here and now as a retreat, a refuge. I want to hibernate inside stories of other worlds, other beings, other times.

Afternoon Conversation

I met S. this year. She's starting her senior year of high school next month. Her graceful face, framed by her long red hair, is usually tilted slightly to one side. She is thoughtful and kind. She trusts me.

We’re having a conversation about religion—or rather about her family’s hop-scotch religious affiliations (all Christian). It feels daring—this talking about religion so openly, so personally with a teenager. I haven’t quite lost the paranoia I once felt as a public school teacher in a one-religion state.

But S. and I are doing well in our conversation. When a teenager trusts you with their heart truths, it takes your breath away.

S. tells me about her family’s current church practice. They host a “house church” for themselves and 3-4 other families. They worship and study at home. S. finds that this kind of church allows deeper conversations about her faith. She dislikes the emphasis on superficial things that she sometimes experienced in more formal congregations. She is serious about her faith.

If I didn't know better, I would assume S.’s religious seriousness indicated a closed, dogmatic person. In reality, she is refreshing and open.

She tells me about her struggles to define her own morals, especially related to gay issues and abortion. She’s still not sure about it all, but she’s sure that separation of church and state is essential. So she’s sure that abortion and gay marriage/unions should be legal, she’s worried about what it all means in the big picture.

The whole time she is talking, I’m sensitive to how fragile this moment is. This intimate glimpse into S., a person I quite like, is such a lovely gift. I don’t want to say or do anything that might cause her to regret trusting me. At the same time, I want her to start articulating the assumptions she’s making and imagining alternatives.

Mostly, I listen. And it is good.

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte

For $25 at Home Depot, I created my own blocking "wire" kit and blocking boards out of random rods and foam board.





This is my first, and likely last, Charlotte's Web Shawl.

5 skeins Koigu: 2 purples, 1 pink/orange/purple, 1 blue, 1 green/teal/blue
Started July 2007
Finished August 2007

I enjoyed knitting her even though I don't think the lace pattern itself is beautiful. I'm annoyed with myself for not "fixing" some of the instructions. They were written for beginners and thus use a few shortcuts that I don't like.

I wish I had started the shawl with the same beginning as something like the Flower Basket Shawl in Interweave Knits. Instead, I followed the instructions and I really don't like how it looks. I did change the shoulder edge to a 2-stitch garter edge vs. the st st edge that is in the pattern. I dislike fringe in general, so I just left the crocheted edge as is.

I chose to use the same color for the beginning and the end. I was very glad I did so because I would have run out of the last color otherwise.