I have just bought a yarn share from the marvelous shepherds at Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. OMG, I can't tell you how happy this makes me. (But this picture might give an inkling.) In the fall, I will have more wonderful yarn than I know what to do with... Here are some pics of my future sweaters. (This link will also take you to photographs of goat bums and a sad story about the loss of one kid to the feeding trough or some such. Oh well, that's agriculture. You have been warned.)

If this post is a bit of a
cheese sandwich, all I can say is: hey, at least it's chevre.

Labels: miscellaneous

...I learned from the Hobans' Frances books.



"How much allowance does Gloria [the new baby] get?"

"She is too little to have an allowance. Only big girls like you get an allowance. Isn't it nice to be a big sister?"

"May I have a penny to go along with my nickel, now that I am a big sister?"

"Yes," said Father. "Now your allowance will be six cents a week because you are a big sister."

"Thank you," said Frances. "I know a girl who gets seventeen cents a week. She gets three nickels and two pennies."

"Well," said Father, "it's time for bed now."

-- From A Baby Sister for Frances (1976)

(Mother is in the other room, giggling.)

Labels: jane

Marysue Rucci, executive editor and vice president of Simon & Schuster, says that "the next step beyond chick lit and mommy lit may very well be boomer lit." More here.

Labels: ejtop, writing

Some years ago, Hillary Clinton had an audience with "the Ice Maiden of Mount Amparo," a mummy found in the Andes.



The image is iconic on so many levels. Archaeologists say she -- the mummy, the girl found on the mountain -- was sacrificed at the age of twelve or fourteen, to appease the gods of the mountain. (Which has tended to erupt.) I feel like there is something slightly wrong with Hillary's response, her excited awe and fascination. She is not sufficiently moved by the corpse.

Here's a link to the audio of the event.

Labels: miscellaneous

I note, with nervous amusement, that the language spoken by the characters in the Swiss claymation Pingu series is not babble -- that's merely what it sounds like -- but reflects a calculated decision on the part of Pingu's creators to make the show as distibution-friendly as possible. Pingu does not need to be translated.

Thus ... Pingu's Penguinese is a market-driven dream of a universal language. But when Jane listens to Pingu, she learns something else. If Pingu can speak his own language, which sounds like no other language on earth, then Jane is entitled to her own language, which she makes up as she goes along. (That's not so strange. How would YOU make up a language?) Unfortunately, I am required to converse with her in this new "Jane language," and alas, my linguistic talents are not up for it. She is happy to correct my mistakes, though.

Part of growing up is figuring out all the ways you might fit into a world that you didn't create and over which you have only limited control. Pingu is definitely not teaching any lessons in this regard. On the contrary! Pingu's creator, Silvio Mazzola, reflects on twenty years (!) of Pingu's development: "His adventures are still the same everyday stories and he has not learnt so much that he has had to change his character or his behaviour." In other words, Pingu is Pingu-Pan -- he never grows up. For that reason, he is infinitely merchandisable. Mazzola brags that "MIGROS, the largest retailer in Switzerland, has fallen in love with PINGU and is offering an incredible range of food and non-food products. Soon PINGU will be as famous as Swiss watches and Swiss cheese."

Well, there are some growing pains: "PINGU has reached a size that requires a lot of administration. The trademark has to be registered and protected, the partners have to be monitored, the proposed items have to be checked in a short space of time, the finance of the administration and the protection of the rights require high capacities." Hmm.

Later. Mazzola muses, "Perhaps PINGU will start to speak." By this, I think he means, perhaps Pingu will start to speak in a language someone else might understand. But frankly, I'm not optimistic. He reminds me of the wild boy of Aveyron. I hope Pingu is saving his money. He's going to need a lot of expensive psychotherapy.

Labels: jane

In line at the sandwich shop, Jane asks: "So, um, Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Who's Dr. Pepper?"

Labels: jane

Early this morning, Jane stirs beside me. She is crying.

"What is it?"

"I had a bad dream!"

"Oh, dear... What happened?"

"I was dreaming of cats..."

That's funny, because I was dreaming of them, too.

"Me, too," I say. "They were doing funny things."

Which they were. In my dreams, cats always do funny things.

"My thoughts are pictures," Jane says.

"Yes," I tell her. "Mine are, too."

She turns over. Laughs. "That was a funny one!"

"One what?"

"Picture. The cat stuck her tongue out at me," she says, drifting back to sleep.

Labels: jane

"Speaking of Accidents"
Peter Everwine

Given the general murkiness of fate
you might, in my mother's words, "Thank
your lucky stars," a phrase she'd drop
into the lull between calamities
like a rubbed stone, then nod wisely
while it sank home, pure poetry,
meaning she loved the sound of it
more than its truth.
But precisely here one needs discrimination.
Our town drunk, steering by streetlamp home one night,
as was his custom, got fooled
beyond recognition when a fast freight at the crossing
fixed him to its glare. "Some men
are like moths," we said, and that
was the poetry in it,
meaning his sudden somersault into light.
Truth is, the world fell in on him
as it commonly does when you stray
from the garden path and run head on
into the pain that, until then,
was as lost as you.
The trick is to risk collision,
then step back at the last moment:
that ringing in your ears
might be construed as the rush of stars.
We all want stars, those constellations
with the lovely names we've given them blossoming
in the icy windblown fields of the dark.
Desire is always fuming into radiance,
though even a drunk can't hope to ignore
some fixity underfoot, some vivid point
closer to home where all the lines converge --
scars, I mean,
not stars.

Labels: commonplace book, miscellaneous