Good Things Balanced by a Passing

I fell asleep last night before I could blog anything. That’s fine, because yesterday I mostly recuperated from the camping trip. The highlight of that day was discovering that the trim on my birding station was completed! I was so relieved to see all the naked wood painted red AND the pile of leftover wood gone! I think they are going to paint the hardie plank too, but it looks fine as it is.

I also got a gift from Connie. I guess Darryl got her into reproductive mode. It’s weird to me that all the lady birds decided to resume laying around the solstice. They are supposed to start around the equinox. Perhaps the extra warm weather has fooled them. (ETA: I said this yesterday, too. I guess it excited me.)

This morning, before I took my walk, I helped Lee replenish the horses’ hay. The horses didn’t make it any easier. Drew was running around trying to bite everyone until Dusty finally kicked him with both rear hooves. Way to go, old man! And Spice politely stayed out of the way right until she really needed to move, so Lee ended up bonking her with the hay ring. She lived.

So that’s life around here. I did want to note the passing of a woman who had a huge influence on my development as a human, a feminist, and a fiber artist: Barbara G. Walker. During my most confused period of life, my twenties, I discovered her collections of knitting stitches and poured myself into designing garments as an escape. She was an incredibly meticulous researcher (she also wrote about crystals and other topics).

Then one day I went to the bookstore in the University of Illinois campus to get another volume of her knitting. While there, I wandered over to the spirituality section, because I’d been wondering what a feminist religion would look like. I found The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the result of her research into goddesses and other female-centered concepts. However, I didn’t realize she was the author until I got back to the student break room in the linguistics department and looked at the covers. I ran to find Georgia, my advisor and fellow knitting feminist to show her. I was so happy.

I read that entire book (probably when I should have been reading about pragmatics) every night before falling asleep, slowly but surely healing some of the wounds I felt from patriarchal religion. Walker sent me on my way to discovering Starhawk and other authors and helping me learn I wasn’t alone.

I’ll always be grateful to Barbara G. Walker. I still treasure her books, especially The Skeptical Feminist, which is out of print. Read more about it in this blog from a few years ago.

I’ve been reading tributes to her. I wasn’t the only one who had an epiphany when they realized she wrote both feminism and knitting. She lives on in our memories.