Ephemera Ephemerae

The Brigid Poetry Blogathon

2009-02-02T09:27:00.002-05:00

Officially, the poetry for Brigid (Irish goddess of smithcraft, midwifery, and poetry) is today -- my entry, for reasons explained in the entry, was posted last night, close to the time border. So either scroll down (if you're on the main page) or go here (if you came to this post specifically), and then you can read my offering to Brigid. Which this year is not written by me, but by Somebody Else.

A Poem for Brigid

2009-02-01T22:45:00.002-05:00

Oak calls again for the yearly poetry blogathon in honor of Brigid, started a while back by Reya.

And I am delighted and amused, as a priestess of Brigid, that today is also the day I signed the book over at the Sunnyhill Unitarian Universalist church. (Brigid of course is also delighted and amused.)

So my poem offering for Brigid today -- with many thanks for the interesting paths she leads me on -- is by the Unitarian poet e.e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;
this is the birthday of life and love and wings:
and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Hmmm. How do I feel about this....Hmmm.....

2009-01-15T09:35:00.002-05:00

Well, I don't know whether I'm saddened or amused by the news that Morris dancing is facing extinction.

Brought into England to the royal court in the late 15th century, it became a national fad, inspiring such hilarious artistic endeavors as William Kempe's "Nine Days Wonder," wherein he danced the Morris from London to Norwich in 1600. Many people danced part of the way with him. He wrote a pamphlet about it. Then he went back to being a famous actor in Shakespeare's troupe.

Even though it was originally a court dance, its faddishness in rural areas caused it to become a target of satire and jest (I like that phrase, "satire and jest"; nice to have a chance to use it), such as in Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle (first performed 1607), with its apprentice-playing-a-knight, who gives a stirring speech to his fellow Londoners whilst wearing both armor and morris dancewear.

And then it was rediscovered, and declared to be one of the ancient pagan dances of our ancient pagan peoples, in honor of the wheel of the year, or the fecundity of the crops, or whatever, and so it had a new heyday. And this lasted for a while, so you couldn't go visit any tourist sites in England without running into morris dances.

But now, alas, it's going the way of all flesh again.

Not to worry, though -- I expect it'll be resurrected in a few decades, under yet a new guise, so all those ribbons and bells won't go to waste. Keep them in the attic for your grandchildren.

Bitter Cold. Let us have Gratitude for the New Furnace.

2009-01-14T08:36:00.002-05:00

It's cold today, so cold that the dogs didn't want to stay outside. And it'll get colder over the next couple of days. Very nice to be able to come in from the dog walk and stay inside.

Luckily for us, over the past few weeks Nutwood has been visited by the heating and air conditioning guy, who has already put in a new furnace downstairs, and added duct work to two of the bedrooms on the second floor.

Because of the decades of changing uses of the house, the duct work (and the plumbing, and the electricity) is insane -- ducts going all over the place, often nowhere, heat sent to nowhere, where it stays. So this major renovation, though it doesn't make the house LOOK any better, is crucial to the health of it and its inhabitants.

Later this week, the heating guy and the contractor guy are going to start fixing up the third floor attic, with insulation and heat and even a bathroom, so that guests have a place to stay. And be warm.

On the 27th of January -- in completely unrelated news -- bloggers are exhorted to celebrate the birthday of Lewis Carroll by blogging about a reality that isn't there, on Rabbit Hole Day.

So we must all get ready to be someplace else in cyberspace.

Not going to S-C-H-O-O-L

2009-01-03T14:01:00.002-05:00

An elementary school in Sheffield has named itself "Watercliffe Meadow" -- a "place for learning," and insists that it not be called a school because the word "school" has negative connotations.

Indeed.

Naturally, The Campaign For Plain English is annoyed, since, except for the facts that everybody will be wearing soft shoes and there will be no school bells, the place will be in actuality what the rest of us might call a "school."

My issue with "a place for learning" is that it's not specific enough, since pretty much all that exists is a place for learning, but The Campaign For Plain is on the alert A Lot:

Among examples of confusing terminology the campaign has fought against in recent years was the widespread rebranding of lollipop ladies as "school crossing patrol officers", teachers being known as "knowledge navigators" and the emergence of the "education centre nourishment production assistant" - otherwise known as dinner ladies.
It follows efforts to rebrand libraries as "idea stores", dustmen's trucks being referred to as "provider vehicles" and a recent high-level attempt to ban the use of the word "inmates" for prisoners in case it offends them.

This week, over at the place for learning I'm working at, I'll be your knowledge navigator, if you signed up for the Pearl Poet Seminar or the Political Drama class.

(Link from Arbroath)

Best News of the Year So Far

2009-01-02T21:57:00.003-05:00

Over in Edinburgh, a man who tried to burgle a house on New Year's Eve was scared away by the appearance of the owner of the house, since the owner was dressed as Thor.

Well, you wouldn't want to burgle a house whilst Thor was occupying it, for sure.

But I'm especially happy to learn, from the picture, that Thor dresses up in tin foil.

Who knew.

In which we say happy new year and contemplate a scary new resolution:

2009-01-01T21:30:00.003-05:00

Surfing through the blogs, I find that Cynthia, who'd gotten tired of making lots of little resolutions that she can't keep (cause if she did, since they involve daily activities, she'd never get anything done but the resolutions, which in themselves would take up more than the waking hours she's got), has decided to do one big ol' honking resolution, and Blog 365 Days Straight.

Hmmm........

Grades are in; semester's over.

2008-12-18T15:12:00.002-05:00

After the daily blogging last month, we've had a little hiatus. But it's December, after all, a Busy Month for the academics. Not just the holidays, but all those papers! All those finals! All those excuses, both excellent and not!

Let the games begin.

Oxford English Dictionary, Changing With the Times

2008-12-08T09:55:00.002-05:00

This just in:

Words taken out of the Oxford Junior Dictionary include: Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe, dwarf, elf, goblin, abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar, coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren. Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow.

This is, apparently, cause they represent a Britain which no longer exists. England is moving on. They have new words, though, such as blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue, celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph.

I'm still annoyed that the language no longer sustains words like swyve and swink, though, so there's no point in me getting all riled about this. And one of those words wouldn't have been appropriate for a children's dictionary, anyway. But I don't know HOW I'm going to explain all this to the corgi.

Rhys Graduates Bad Dog Class Magna cum Laude

2008-12-06T16:27:00.002-05:00

We're back from the last "Bad Dog Class" (marketed as "Adult Basic," but we knew better), and not only did Rhys graduate, he took a prize for the longest "sit-stay." We could have gone on longer, but everybody was so congratulatory, we got distracted.

So I have a dog who can "sit-down-sit-stand-down-sit" pretty quickly (though not as precisely as the dog who took THAT prize), can "sit-stay," can "heel," and even refrain from pulling whilst in class, and is just bright as a button, and then goes home and barks till we all want to pull our hair out -- or at least get in a mass and pretend we're sheep and do whatever he wants -- and nips at our heels until we all want to pull our hair out -- or at least get in a mass and pretend we're sheep and do whatever he wants -- and considers himself the boss of the house, and can't be trusted not to pull when we're walking down the street. Cause he has an agenda. Unless we're in class, where his agenda, being to do whatever he has to do to get the CHEESE, is MY agenda, cause I have opposable thumbs.

But he's got a prize from obedience class.

It was stuffed toy. Within five minutes he had the squeaker and most of the stuffing out.

Life's good, for corgis.

And lord knows they're entertaining.

Finally, Some Good News

2008-12-04T08:30:00.003-05:00

The subject of my post yesterday depressed the hell out of me, so I'm glad to say this morning that the news is that, even though the world has currently gone over a very high cliff in its quest to get to hell in a handbasket, nevertheless the fall fashions are going to cheer us all up: affordable, flattering, and appropriate.

I am so looking forward to teaching "Political Drama" whilst wearing this.

(From the VECONA Fashion Show in Brugge, courtesy of Boing Boing.)

That's Enough.

2008-12-03T11:26:00.002-05:00

France is set to propose a United Nations resolution, on behalf of the 27-member European Union, calling on govenments worldwide to de-criminalize homosexuality.

This concerns the imprisonment and execution of men and women around the world, because homosexuality is punishible by imprisonment in 65 countries in the world -- and death in several of them.

The Vatican opposes this resolution because it could lead to "reverse discrimination against heterosexual marriage."

Better that the United Nations refuse to take a stand on the imprisonment and executution of gays, than that they be allowed, anywhere, to marry?

In what way is this Christian?

Your Tuesday Collection

2008-12-02T10:11:00.002-05:00

Abbie the Cat is back today -- he's been gone for a while (not like the time he was LOST, which was AWFUL, but more like he just hasn't been posting), but is back to tell us all about his tuna fish prize for something or other -- being a sassy cat, I gather, which he nearly got twice but the humans got in the way.

Also, consider yourself warned: do NOT go to the snake temple and fall into a trance. Cause it's a pain in the butt for everybody else. You want to know WHICH snake temple, you say? Sorry, can't help you there. I'd just avoid tackiness at all of them; that way you'll be safe.

Also, if you're in England, looking for holiday cheer and activities, you're too late, alas, to go to the "Lapland New Forest Theme Park," with its promised "real log cabins, a nativity scene, husky dogs and other animals, as well as a 'bustling' Christmas market." It opened on Friday, hundreds of people complained to the BBC, the website was down by Monday, and, well, you're too late. Too bad -- it had lots of Christmasy English mud, and some depressed reindeer. It cost 150 pounds! (This translates to $225 today!) And then you had to pay more to use the broken ice rink and see the chained up barking husky dogs!

There are currently four Facebook groups concerning the dreadfulness of Lapland New Forest.

The manager says that the park's not a ripoff; it's just that there were a few rainy days there, alas. Also he says the ice rink has been fixed.

No word on whether the reindeer are still depressed.

December: All About Thanks

2008-12-01T15:51:00.002-05:00

The NaBloPoMo theme for December is thanks.

The word "thank" goes back into Old English, pretty much unchanged -- that's how important it is -- BUT it originally meant "thought" -- that is, as in "think."

Ha ha, NaBloPoMo! Ha ha! So, really, anything we think is a thanks. So all our thoughts count, for December. Even the little ones, like this.

For which we can be thankful.

Novenber 30: Posts Every Day for the Whole Damn Month

2008-11-30T11:54:00.002-05:00

As soon as I hit the "post" button, I will have fulfilled the NaBloPoMo challenge of blogging every day for the month of November.

Eden wants to know if we managed to be thought-provoking every day, or if we feel like we clogged up the Internet.

Hell, no, I didn't clog up the Internet! No way!

Especially now that I get the Arbroath RSS feed, so that I can tell you that you can buy a 2009 calendar with naked zookeepers at the Dudley Zoo, so as to contribute funds to the Madagascar campaign to keep lemurs in the wild, or that the United States is only 6th on the list of the most promiscuous countries (Britain rules).

Wasting your time! I think not.

Next on the NaBloPoMo plan is "thanks" all through December, which sounds like fun. I'm in.

Home Soon

2008-11-29T10:18:00.002-05:00

The 6:00 AM flight out of Albuquerque was full, which was odd, even on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It's usually empty. And there were lines at the airport, also not usual.

We made the flight, and since we bought the tickets before June, we didn't have to pay for the bags. Bear is being safely hand-carried, after his exciting flight down the steps at Acoma.

Lots of passengers had less than 30 minutes to catch flights, some of which were pretty far away. We got in on time; that wasn't the issue. The issue was that United had scheduled a lot of flights with very little turn-around.

So we hope that everybody got their flights; we hope that everybody's luggage got transferred; we're hanging out waiting for our flight so we can go pick up the dogs from the dog hotel and go home to Nutwood.

And next time I get a chance to buy a car, I'm getting a Prius. I drove one all around Albuquerque and I loved it.

We Rest from Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T08:41:00.003-05:00

We had a lovely day yesterday, hanging out with the family whilst Jim, the courageous and excellent brother who was cooking Thanksgiving dinner, prepared yet another lovely feast.

It was not without its excitements, though. Some of you may remember the exciting turkey problems from last year. This year, we had not only a new turkey recipe, but my wheat and dairy issues.

Jim wanted to make a recipe that called for roasting the turkey above the stuffing, and letting the turkey drippings fall into the stuffing. Excellent idea.

He was making cornbread stuffing with no wheat and no buttermilk, though, and for some reason I forget, he had to make two recipes. So there was a lot of stuffing. This meant that there wasn't much room in between the stuffing and the turkey. And so it took a looooong time to roast.

Indeed, it never did get roasted fully.

The gravy also had problems; soy milk and cornstarch SHOULD have worked, but never did, we don't know why.

Eventually Jim went out and bought roasted chickens.

They were great, actually, and there was indeed cranberry sauce, and the cornbread stuffing, which turned out well, and calabacitas, and black eyed peas.

All was well.

Today we're going off to buy pinon nuts, cause there weren't any last year and I ran out, and we have final goodbyes, and then we'll come home.

And next year perhaps we'll have yet more turkey excitement.

Or, maybe we'll just go out.

Here's What's Under the Wallpaper at Nutwood

2008-11-27T10:22:00.004-05:00

The current project over at the house formerly known as Nutwood concerns the master bedroom, which is getting painted. There was wallpaper in there when we started; it looked like it had been put in in maybe the 70's -- large grey and blue flowers, striped background. When we next get pictures, I expect we'll be able to see the lavender walls with white trim, but this morning we received this excellent picture of the walls with the wallpaper off, and the patching put in. You can see that the trim is being stripped -- the current paint job is peeling off, because it was painted over varnish. You can see that there's a LOT of patching needed.

And up at the top, you can see the black border, that went all around the wall up at the ceiling. I'm wondering how many rooms had that.

I don't know whether it's original; the surface you see there isn't the original plaster, but the paper put up on the original plaster, that's left when you take the wallpaper down.

If you know anything about Victorian black borders, and wallpapering and plastering techniques, and can say more about the black border, let me know in the comments!

When we get photos of the newly painted room, I'll share those, too.

Bear Takes a Fall. Or Flies. But All Manner of Things Are Well.

2008-11-26T08:41:00.005-05:00

Yesterday we went out to Acoma, a place I visit almost every time I come back to New Mexico, a place I love dearly. Sky City is now partnered with the National Trust (here's an excellent article on the history of the museum); almost everybody in the Acoma nation lives down off the mesa, but a few elders and tribal government officials live year round up in Sky City still. Visitors can go up on a guided tour. And along the route of the tour, potters sell their wares.

We fell in love with an excellent pottery bear. Beautifully crafted. Full of presence. The potter wrapped him up in bubble wrap and put him in a box full of packing peanuts and taped the whole thing up, so that we could get him home safely.

It's a wonderful tour. You can look out at the Enchanted Mesa, where the Acoma people lived before they came to Sky City. There is evidence of habitation there, and our tour guide this time told us that it'd been carbon-dated to 650 AD. In Sky City, the oldest buildings are dated at 1150 AD.

So we saw that, and we saw the church, and we heard stories, and then at the end, instead of taking the bus back, we elected to climb down the old trail.

It's a doable trail, and there are stone steps and ancient hand holds cared in the rock, but it takes some effort. And Bear didn't fit in the backpack, so he was getting carried.

On a particularly difficult piece I said, "Why don't you let me carry Bear, so that you can get down safely?"

And I got handed Bear, whose box was in a plastic grocery bag. As I carried him out over the steps, the handle pulled off. And we watched the beloved (and not inexpensive) Bear tumble down the stone steps.

That was not good.

But he's ok -- when we got back to the restaurant we opened up the box, and felt his little legs, and then later got him back to my mom's house, where we unwrapped him entirely and admired his beauty and excellent workmanship.

And sturdiness.

So we say Bear flew down the mesa.

Good Morning!

2008-11-25T09:06:00.002-05:00

The bed-and-breakfast will soon be feeding us (the cook is all excited about making gluten-free dairy free blueberry muffins, bless her), and then we'll be off to visit Acoma Pueblo.

For now, though, useful links for your morning enjoyment:

A sobering/hilarious compilation of clips of pundits in 2006-2007 making fun of Peter Schiff's prediction that a long hard recession was coming;

Got Medieval is selling magnets of its medieval personal ads ;

An Essex woman is disturbed about her parrot's lust for her feathered hat;

And some prehistoric monoliths are finding their second or third home on a suburban lawn in Dorset.

I'd see how much a set would cost for Nutwood, but I'm much more interested in a turf labyrinth.

The World According to Me

2008-11-24T07:12:00.002-05:00

It's about 7 AM and we're in the Pittsburgh airport, getting ready to fly to Denver, on our way to Albuquerque. It's early. It's dark.

Last night my friend Scott sent me this page, a beautiful map of England, called "An Etymologist's View of the World." I've never seen, ever, a map of the world as I understand it. But indeed, this is what it looks like to me. London? Hillfort. Dublin? Black Pool. I translate the names of the world constantly.

Though as we know from Brian Friel, sometimes "it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of ... fact."

Rhys and the "Recall" Trick

2008-11-23T11:03:00.003-05:00

Yesterday at Bad Dog Class we worked on "recall," which is when you say things like "Rhys, come!" and then Rhys, instead of assuming that what you mean is "stop by when you feel like it, if you get a chance," actually comes.

So we had a little practice in class, and he did ok but not great, and then we were told that we should NEVER, EVER command the dogs to come to us if we couldn't actually make them do it, until they learned that really it meant now, get over here now, not at dinner time, because otherwise they would understand what was obviously true, which would be that we didn't mean it and they could instead run around and play.

So it was suggested that we get long lengths of clothes line and clip it to their collars when they went out, and then when we call "come" and they run off, we can jump on the clothesline and bring then up short, thereby teaching them that really there's no point in attempting to run over into the neighbors' yards and bark at their cats and steal their bunny slippers, cause really they're going inside instead. Cause we said so.

Oh, how elated we were to hear this excellent trick!

So we went right to the Home Depot on the way home, and bought supplies, and went home and created long leashes, and clipped them to the dogs' collars, and let them outside. Betty got herself all tangled up and had to be rescued.

Rhys went dashing off, discovered that the long line was bothersome, turned around and bit through it in 30 seconds, ran around for a while, and then sat down in the snow, wearing the long leash draped all over his head as decoration.

We were, admittedly, able to get him immediately, cause what was left of the leash was long enough to catch him.

But really. So much for the clothesline.

Getting Ready for the Vacation

2008-11-22T10:49:00.002-05:00

In a couple of days we'll be leaving for Albuquerque, where I hope to God my brother, may he be blessed forever and may all his actions bring him peace and harmony, isn't trying to figure out how to make wheat-free stuffing. Cause I'm the only one who NEEDS things that are wheat-free, everybody likes REAL stuffing, and I'm pretty sure that stuffing made with Fake Bread will taste nasty.

As help for all of us going off to see the relatives -- or having them over -- for American Thanksgiving, The Nest brings us Topics to Avoid at Thanksgiving Dinner.

Luckily, they also give you a list of Safe Things to Talk About:

Recent vacations
Funny characters at work
The delicious food
Winter/holiday plans
Sports (unless someone at the table is a diehard fan with a hot temper)
The weather
Apolitical movies/TV shows (prepare by catching up on Mad Men and Lost)
And when all else fails: puppies!

Look for lots of discussions of Rhys: How He's Doing at Bad Dog School, at your dinner table in Albuquerque.

British Education: This Just In.

2008-11-21T11:49:00.002-05:00

Well. Much to my surprise, the Brits turn out to not know much more about Britain than Americans do about America. Three quarters of the British polled during Geography Awareness week could not name the three countries that make up Great Britain.

"Explorer" was the top preferred career, though.

I was confused by this, since I thought there weren't so very many places to explore these days.

But then I saw that most of the people in the same poll didn't know where Leeds was, so I figure that "explorer" could mean "the sort of person who can manage to get out of London on the train, and end up somewhere there's a Sainsbury's."

As I say, though, Americans also have trouble with their own geography. Half of us can't find the state of New York on a map; two thirds of us can't find Louisiana.

We can't find Great Britain, either, which means we'll be no help at all trying to find Leeds.

But, damn, I thought the English could find it.