Worrying isn’t going to change anything. It never does. So I work at not worrying.
I thought my volunteer flower collection would be cheerful.
The problem for me is that I don’t know what we can do to prevent a bleak future with very few powerful people and many, many people who must fend for themselves.
I don’t remember ever wanting to know what it was like to be one of the educated people in the Dark Ages who weren’t in power.
The present is still here, and we can make our little corners of the world full of respect and kindness as we wait to see what those in power, elected by people wanting to back to the past, decide to do with us.
Bleak. I’m feeling bleak today. It was a bad news day for the poor, the sick, and the elderly. I have a right to feel pessimistic. At least for now I can say so in public.
On the other hand, on a local level, it’s a good day for Texas Horned Lizards, because I found a nice new harvester ant bed. Horny toads eat them!
This large ant bed is near the horse pens Ants are busy.
To cheer me up, I’ll share that I had a visit from a beautiful female Summer Tanager this evening around sunset. She bopped around the salvia plants for quite some time, though I was too entranced to get a photo. What a treat!
I’ve written about teachers I admire many times in this blog over the years, and you can go to the search bar and find them (a good teacher encourages students to do the work themselves, ha ha). I’ve even been called a good teacher, which is undoubtedly an advantage for my career as a teacher. Great? Some might say so; others might not. That’s fine.
Great teachers are passionate about helping people learn. I’ll teach you that this is a passion flower Passiflora incarnata. Passion.
One person’s great teacher can be a poor fit for someone else. That’s why I think one factor that makes a good teacher is the ability to change their style depending on the student. That’s why I prefer to teach one on one. It’s hard to meet all the students’ needs in large group settings. It’s very frustrating and makes me cranky.
Whoever taught my son how to lay floor tile was at least a very good teacher. All that’s left are baseboards.
Great teachers need more than a mastery of the subject matter and a sense of humor. The best ones I’ve had all were able to make whatever they were teaching relevant to their students and got them thinking about the topic for themselves. Sometimes the diversions that come about when engaged students start asking questions make the subject matter unforgettable. I can still remember what that feels like.
It makes me gloriously happy – and here are morning glories.
One reason I was a student so long was that many great teachers engaged me, made me think about things in new ways, and shaped me into who I am. I loved learning and still do. I could probably attend pragmatics and semantics seminars the rest of my life and never get bored, but hey, I have Master Naturalist trainings now, and some of those presenters fit my criteria for great teachers!
I’ve come a long way from academia.
I also love teaching, whether students find me “great” or not. Helping someone learn a new skill or see things in new ways feels almost magical. It’s darn hard work figuring out the best way to present new content to perhaps a disinterested audience but nonetheless it’s rewarding. No wonder I had a difficult time staying retired! I enjoy the challenge.
Speaking of challenges, the baby swallows challenge me to leave them alone.
Maybe next time I retire I can stick to teaching nature apps instead of project portfolio management. As they say, no one dreams of being the best project manager ever as a child. You just suddenly are one. Then you watch a lot of training videos if people like me can keep you awake.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
I have to admit that I haven’t made as many strides towards a sustainable lifestyle as many people I know and admire. But at the same time I’ve done more than many folks I know. I’m in the middle somewhere.
I took exactly one picture today. There’s a dragonfly in this image.
One thing I’ve done is to stop buying clothing and “shop” my own closet. I know the reason I like having clothing is that I didn’t have much growing up. Then there’s my love of colors and accessories. Still, I want to buy less and recycle more, so I’m giving things I don’t need to my son’s partner, who does reselling in some way young people do. It seems smart.
I’m also happy that we’re getting set up to harvest rainwater. Step 1 was pouring the pad to put the large tanks on.
The slab
I wish I were a better/more patient gardener and could grow more of our own food, but I’m not. My only success in growing food is thanks to the hens and Connie (the turkey). Of course, I give them organic chicken feed, etc., so the eggs probably cost more than at the store, but at least my chickens have a life with fresh air, snacks, comfy housing, and me, their human friend.
They have fun.
I do like to forage for native plants to eat, but as with gardening, I don’t do it consistently. I’m more engrossed by birds and horses.
And cute donkeys.
Hmm. I eat a lot of whole foods and organic products, especially the things Kathleen doesn’t like from her nutritionist. I eat anything, so I waste little food.
I don’t spray herbicides from the air, either, unlike the crop duster.
That’s not a spectacular list. Maybe writing this down will inspire me to make more of a sustainability effort. I hope you’re doing better than I am, but one thing’s certain, we can all do better.
I’d like to start out by asserting that one person’s idea of wasting time is an other’s idea of fun, education, or necessary downtime. I’m not here to judge anyone for what they do with their limited lifespan.
As I’m someone who counts dragonflies, I have my own weird time fillers.
Most of my life, I’ve spent most of my time doing things I felt were important or useful. Note that I find meditating, reading, and engaging with friends on social media to be useful. Connections with the earth, learning, and creating community are vital!
And baby birds! Mockingbirds.
Lately, during my brief but restorative retirement, I’ve done a few things that might be “wasting” time, which I define as time spent not contributing to my health or wellbeing. One is watching television shows and not also doing something productive, like knitting. I’ve actually sat down and watched multiple episodes of shows that are just entertainment. Right now I’ve been watching “The Gilded Age,” just to enjoy the sets and writing. Perhaps I’m learning a bit about fashion, culture, and history of New York City when they were still building Central Park.
I went there once. Photo from Pexels.
And “Star Trek: Discovery” takes my mind off the news and reminds me how I got to be so darned woke. That’s one woke show in an already woke franchise. We are about done with that one.
I own no Discovery action figures.
So, there is some use to that one. However, I keep letting myself be drawn into Facebook Reels. These are usually embarrassing and stupid. For every occasional cute dog thing, I get caught up in dozens of clickbait, nasty, or plain silly videos that waste my time. I am going to have to get stronger to stop my random clicking. It’s embarrassing.
The latest selection.
A final thing I regret spending time on is worrying about the consequences of wars and how I can survive in authoritarian world. These are things I cannot control.
Name that movie.
Otherwise, I enjoy what I do, especially when I can rest or relax. Starting tomorrow there will be less of that! I’m interested to see what my new job turns out to entail!
I’m only answering this question because I didn’t have any great topics today. So I’ll tell you about my dreamy seventh-grade crush. There are no photos of him to share since I lost my yearbook. Here’s an approximation.
Also a teen crush of mine, though it turns out David Cassidy was nicer.
Kevin Murray was a year ahead of me in school but we were in Spanish class together. I thought he was both hilarious and incredibly cool, because he owned rock and roll albums. I didn’t have a record player that would play them yet.
He picked on me a lot, but it didn’t bother me because I was a new person in junior high and was one of the popular kids in the academic track. We all picked on each other and had nicknames for each other. Man, seventh grade was GREAT. We had young, hip teachers and spent a lot of time writing plays based on Star Trek and publishing the school newsletter on mimeo paper. Mmm, that smell.
Back to Kevin. I thought that long (for 1971) red hair, those green eyes, and the freckles made him look like a sexy leprechaun. Or something. Anyway, he showed me he liked me by randomly showing up on my street and pretending to steal my new, very cool, red-white-and-blue Murray Eliminator bike (same name as him, so obviously it was his).
This is the general idea, but wrong color.
I showed I liked him by riding my bike around his house in case he might come outside, and drooling over his parents’ incredible blue Citröen car.
I mean, that’s as cool as my bike, right?
We had a fun summer of innocent pre-teen flirtation. My dad found us very funny, pretending to be annoyed by each other. He kept telling me “that boy likes you.”
Then I was moved to South Florida despite my protests, and that was it. No email, no texting, no Facebook, so no contact. If letters were exchanged, I don’t recall. No, I do not need to find him. I’ll just treasure my dim memories.
I pined for Kevin until the summer after ninth grade when I met the boy I’d really swoon for. That’s another story.
Weird postscript: by the time my younger son, an actual Irish boy, was a toddler, I realized who he looked like. Eww.
My son as a toddler. Red hair, green eyes, freckles.
On the other hand, I now have an idea of what adult Kevin would have looked like, though I don’t think he grew to be 6’3”.
You can blame this post on my friend Jennifer, who complained (in a funny way) today about how some kinds of clothing just don’t work for her. She mentioned how high-waisted pants don’t fit well on her body shape, and that she finds shirts with longer hems in back to be unflattering as well. She pointed out that mid-rise jeans actually hit her midriff, since she is short-waisted. (See below for her original)
AI made me these high-waisted example pants.
You can also blame my thinking about other people’s clothing hang-ups and preferences to watching the new show “Wear Whatever the F You Want” with Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, who now help people find a wardrobe that THEY like, not what the stylists want them to wear. I have found a few of the choices not to my taste, but then, I wasn’t the one wearing them!
I may not like it, but I don’t have to wear it. Photo by Genaro Servu00edn on Pexels.com
Our clothing reflects a lot about how we want the world to perceive us as well as about how we perceive ourselves. No wonder I hear so many proclamations among my friends about what they’d NEVER wear. My stepmother told me repeatedly how she didn’t like “shark hems” on tops (which I wore a lot of back when she was at her peak). My sister was adamantly against short sleeves that came to above the elbows on women “of a certain age” (for me they interfere with my ability to enjoy my flappy area in its wingiest).
Flappy fun time.
I have friends who never wear pants, others who never wear dresses, those who love leggings and those who hate them, and then there’s all the pants “rules” like letting your undies show above your pants, wearing skinny or wide legs, jeans or no jeans, rips or no rips, etc.
Love them or leave them! Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com
Of course, the sane voice inside our heads will tell us that people can wear whatever the f they want, and our issues with their choices are just that, our issues. That’s absolutely true! I was wondering, though, where did my own clothing prejudices come from? One answer is my mother. She was not fond of tattoos, liked long painted fingernails, and enjoyed wearing clothing that “matched.” The other main answer is the times I grew up in. I wanted to be a hippie when I grew up, so my love of tie dye, jeans, and long braids is pretty predictable. My dislike of polyester double-knit pant suits and (for the male-type folks) leisure suits derives from the same thing: I still wanted to be a hippie, and adults were trying to dress me like an old Florida retiree.
In a t-shirt and jeans, like most days.
I’m truly enjoying learning about other people’s fashion likes and dislikes because they tell so much about each of us. I loved reading Jennifer’s fashion rant, and would equally love to hear yours. What do you just love and what drives you to distraction when you see it or are forced to wear it? As an incentive, I’ll share some of my irrational fashion opinions, as long as you remember that I am very fond of many, many people who make choices different from mine. I enjoy the variety. So here you go:
I love to wear t-shirts and jeans, with comfy sneakers on my feet.
I like tie-dye a lot.
I am uncomfortable wearing dresses, but okay with tunics and leggings.
I am not fond of leggings with short tops.
Dress pants, especially polyester ones, make me feel like I’m pretending to be fancy.
Tucking your shirt into your pants, especially just the front, is ick for me. I know I have to do it for horse shows, with a belt that beautifully accentuates the belly I have hated since childhood, which is totally my own self-image issue and I acknowledge that.
I like loud prints and bright colors. Pastels make me look kind of ill.
I love turquoise jewelery.
The fact that one navy blue item of clothing never quite matches the color of other navy blue items annoys me.
I love hats, a lot.
I don’t like body conscious attire that shows every feature of one’s body. I’m glad other people are comfortable wearing it; I’m just not up for it. I like things that skim the body and are loose for ease of movement.
I don’t like crocs. I do like Birkenstocks. That makes me inconsistent.
The only piercings I’m comfortable with are pierced ears, which is better than my parents, who didn’t like that and made me wait until I was 18 to get my ears pierced. I sort of like a nose piercing in a nostril, but the ones in the septum bother me more than they should, and I have no idea why.
I don’t have tattoos and don’t like lots of the ones I see, especially random poorly drawn images. Some I find incredibly beautiful, just not for me.
I cannot stand thong underwear or underwire bras.
I don’t like clothing with hate speech or hateful insignia on them. I like peace signs, mandalas, and Sanskrit om characters, though. Hippie thing.
Apparel emblazoned with luxury brand logos isn’t my style. I do seem to be wearing a Carhart t-shirt, however.
There is a mosquito in my office, so I’m going to stop typing. I’d love to hear some of your clothing opinions.
So apparently “high-waisted” pants are the latest trend in womens’ clothing. That’s the last thing short women like me need. Ha. I’ve been wearing high-waisted pants since before they were popular — for like 5 decades. At not-quite-5′ tall anymore, I’ve always been what they call “short-waisted”. Meaning if I put on regular womens pants, the waist comes up to just under my bust. I used to roll down the waist band of pants a few times so the crotch wouldn’t hang down at my knees. Give me some “high-waisted” pants and they’d probably come up to my neck. For me, “mid-rise” pants, which supposedly come up to just below the belly button on non-short women, come up to just above my belly button. Just about right. And another thing. I hate those shirts with what they call a shirt-tail hem. Those things are about 2″ lower in the back and on someone short like me, those come down below my butt and look ridiculous. Ugh. I hate them. Rants over. For now.
I didn’t have too much to write about today, other than that horses are cute and I have a new favorite light fixture. So, let’s find out what my favorite thing about me might be.
But first, look at the fun Apache and Rylie (probably not spelled right) had today during warmups.
Okay, so, answer the question, Suna. And don’t say you like something except for this that or the other. No self put-downs allowed.
Oh, second, hey look at this light fixture. It looks like planets made of rock crystals.
I used to always say my favorite thing about myself were my feet. They were not too big or small, medium width, and had nice toes. Now they are more mature feet with mature person issues. So, nope, it’s not my feet.
Sorry, feet, you also always have fire ant bites.
All right. I’ll refrain from pointing out the obvious negatives for this, as instructed, and declare my favorite thing about myself is how I can empathize with others, care deeply about people who don’t care back, and always see our commonalities as humans. That boils down to one concept but I don’t have the right word for it.
Take a seat while I add unnecessary explanations, as I tend to do.
Note that I can now set boundaries, so my character feature is one I can now embrace without fear of hurting myself. I’m not going to run out and embrace the toxic people in my life, but I can try to understand them and care, from a distance.
They can’t hurt me, even though I may appear vulnerable, just like today’s maize calligrapher fly can’t sting me, even though it looks like a wasp.
Super Sensitive Suna, as I labeled myself on Facebook today, can take the occasional sadness and hurt that comes from all that caring, but it’s worth it. I just have to expect to have the occasional down periods. It’s a small price to pay to keep cherishing my favorite thing about myself.
I have a bad feeling about tomorrow. I care about people on all sides of the national and international strife right now, and my love for them trumps any cause.
For anyone under armed attack, I wish you safety.
For anyone protesting, I wish you safety and peace.
For those instructed to control others, I wish you safety and good judgment.
For the powerless and afraid, I wish you safety and protection.
May we find a path to a world of reason, communication, compassion, and peace.
It’s a good thing there’s a prompt to answer today, because action around here was fairly limited. So, I’ll dwell on my favorite season and you can think about yours, and maybe even share it in the comments! Why not? I’ll share some pretty nature sights from today, in the unofficial season of late spring humidity.
They took the forms off our concrete slabs. Whee.
When I lived in Illinois, I could never choose between spring and autumn as my favorite seasons. Crabapple trees, spring bulbs, peonies, and lilacs made the world so beautiful up there. But in autumn there were the orange, red, and yellow deciduous trees that contrasted so beautifully with the dark tree trunks (or light, with birch trees). It was beautiful in Champaign-Urbana, all year round. That’s right. I liked winter as long as it was above 0°F and there wasn’t an ice storm.
Simple sunflower and resident crab spider.
Here in Texas, I only have one season I don’t enjoy, and that’s summer. At least my new job will force me to stay indoors during the worst of the heat. I always feel sad for the animals, especially the chickens, and the dying grass on ground with huge cracks in it from drought always looks apocalyptic. I don’t need more reminders of apocalypses. Plus there are the fewest birds here in summer.
Gaillardia and frog fruit.
It’s hard not to like spring in this area, with all the wildflowers, birds, and butterflies. I hope we still have them in the future. This year was pretty bad for all of them, thanks to an unusually dry winter. And sadly, spring always reminds me that summer will be here soon. Not to mention how many allergies spring brings (but I appreciate the plants’ need to reproduce).
Black swallowtail
At this point in my life, autumn is my favorite time of year, even though it often arrives late. I can take long walks, once it cools off, and more birds show up as they migrate south. I love the smell of fallen leaves, which also make it easier to see wildlife. The only problem with that time of year is that it’s so busy! There are conference and events and trips…
Clouded skipper.
Winter here is surprisingly great, though. It’s not that cold except for a few days each year, and there are so many entertaining birds to enjoy. Campgrounds are more empty, too. And I never sweat. I hate all that sweating in the other seasons. (I rarely sweated until menopause finally happened and I’m still not used to all that dripping.)
Mockingbird nest in the little tree we planted in the front yard. What a quality nest!
I’m not confident that I’ve answered the question. Let’s hope I’m much more with it tomorrow.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
I have chosen three books (I actually discuss five, but one is a runner-up and two are related) that shaped me in that magical period when I was transitioning into an adult and my capacity for intellectual growth was at its peak. Each book was written when I was testing limits, making poor decisions I search of good decisions, and preparing to emerge a more rational and stable human. I’m grateful to have learned from these authors.
Metaphors We Live By
This book is by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, two important scholars in pragmatics, the field I studied in graduate school. The thesis of the book is this:
The book suggests metaphor is a tool that enables people to use what they know about their direct physical and social experiences to understand more abstract things like work, time, mental activity and feelings. Wikipedia
My thinking about how society works, how media persuades audiences to, and how politicians manipulate the public have all been deeply affected by the ideas in this book.
My favorite example is the pervasiveness of the war metaphor. It’s one reason I can’t stand the phrase, “shoot me an email.” Business communication is just crawling with war terminology. Business is war. Politics is war. Love is a battlefield. This book was the impetus for me being me.
I recommend George Lakoff’s other works, as well. Once you start to see metaphors embedded in the language around you, you can’t forget it.
The Color Purple
I’m guessing most of you have been exposed to this work, originally a 1982 book by Alice Walker, in one form or another. I read it when it first came out, having read no reviews and knowing nothing about the author. This means my experience of The Color Purple wasn’t influenced by any preconceptions.
I was 24 when I read it. I’d never read an epistolary novel before, so I was charmed by the letter-writing format and how clearly the writer’s voice came through in each letter. I was also still fairly naive about how horrible humans can be to each other. The resilience and bravery the characters in the book affected me deeply.
The Color Purple told me that I, too, could survive and thrive in a world that threw many challenges at me. The characters have never left me and I’m not sure why.
I did love the film with Oprah Winfree in it. I just experienced it differently and got additional insights into the strength it takes to be your authentic self. I haven’t seen any other version and I’m okay with that. This is my favorite novel.
Runner Up: The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1985). I can’t bring myself to watch the television series. This book was too prescient.
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and The Skeptical Feminist
These are two books by Barbara G. Walker, also a prominent knitting writer of this time period. Both came out in the mid-1980s. These books introduced me to the idea of the maiden, mother, and crone archetypes.
The encyclopedia was my first introduction to feminist theology, and though it suffered from the same issues as many early neopagan writing (interpreting historical references and artifacts to support a mythical matriarchal past world, etc.), it still taught me enough to get me started on a lifetime of spiritual exploration. I can still remember sitting in my bedroom in Urbana, Illinois devouring this book when I should have been dissertating.
Bad image, sorry
The Skeptical Feminist may not be in print anymore, but it reassured me that my weird philosophical leanings since childhood weren’t signs of insanity—I just didn’t have the words and concepts to explain my vague yearnings to be one with nature. It also reassured me that I don’t have to “believe in” some deity to apply archetypes and metaphors (them again) as I forge my own beliefs. Whew.
I use this information today as I draw from the wisdom of Jesus without identifying as Christian and take comfort in Buddhist ideas without adhering strictly to any form. It’s so helpful in these times.
The Hermits' Rest 