Charity Navigator Rating - American Cancer Society

Charity Navigator Rating - American Cancer Society

Read it and weep.  So sad.  45 point what?

Now you know why they are relentlessly calling you for donations.   Sad, isn't it?

Judge Rules that a teen aged white girl will be tried as an African American Male

Yes,'tis The Onion, Second to Fox, it's been voted the best source of screwed up news on the planet!

Gadget's gone wild report:  For those men in your life who have an obsession with tools inside of knives, there is this beauty.

I forgot to say, be sure to read the product reviews.


It's time for bed, and I have a very small report on Spiral Road  which is proving a trial to read.  I decided that, if I could forgive Ayn Rand her pages of brutal ignorance, I could forgive Jan de Hartog his. Otherwise the book is so incredibly well written, you won't meet anything like it in a thousand years for brilliant story telling.  Even when you don't understand why they act the way they do, you are entertained by every character in the book.  The descriptive narrative,though terse, is spell binding.  He puts his reader right into that jungle with his characters. 

Well good day.  Have a happy Saturday.  I'll probably go pull up some winter weeds.  Or just knit.  My knee needs the rest.

I have to tell you about the Holy Hopjes because it came up earlier in an answer to a comment - one about the moon, and some discoveries recently made about the same.  A Hopje is a candy from Denmark, a coffee flavored candy and very good.

Well, one year the family took an excursion to Salvang, that little Danish Village in the Santa Inez Mountains in the midlands of California.  There we came across this candy.  Later on, in a fit of pique over some ridiculous restrictions at some upstart Christian church we had attended for a couple of weeks, after succumbing to the gentle and kindly pamphlet toting school Marms on our porch, and being thoroughly wetted in their baptism ceremony, one evening in the Bay,  we found that women were not allowed to speak in said Church when there was a discussion of the Holy Writ!  After giving good arguments about the words spoken in favor of women asking questions in holy gatherings by Christ himself, and adding that we'd never heard of such a Medieval Ritual in a modern church, my sister and I gave up and gathered our skirts and exited, shaking the dust of their carpets off our sandals, so to speak.

We had the Hopjes; we had suffered the insult.  We started our own church.  Saturday was our Holy Day, and we two sat in a circle with the little daughters and the DH, and passed the blessed candies.  These small sweet things were to remind us that life was precious and sweet, and the candies were each Blessed by whomever had gotten them out of the box we kept them in.  We called ourselves the Church the Holy Hopjes, Religion of Joy.   This lasted until I found a Quaker Meeting House close enough for us to start there.   I think it was sort of a preparation for being fully Quaker.

Well Good night, and sweet dreams!  Travel well, my friends.

What I've been up to....

It's the last day of February, and it's windy and sunny and warmer. Spring may have arrived!  I've been trying for two days to use a utility embedded now in Google through their buyout (sometime ago) of Picasa, and it's not working. Maybe I'll finally just toss Picasa for good.

We started tearing down the "Wall of Boxes" that separated the great room into living room side and studio side, and look what DH found out I had in one of the boxes.  I was as shocked  perplexed as he was.

I still want to order other sweater yarn that matches his, except for color, but I can get at least two sweaters for us out of this load.  Yippie!  See, Rho, the humbug is almost gone.  Whew!  Happy surprises and a dust allergy have stopped me for the moment!

 R, this is your sweater.  Obviously Mama didn't figure out that Noro has a mind of it's own.  That's the back you knit, and the one that I should have tried to match.  I will be doing my d*mnedest to match the two fronts!  But it's going to be very pretty.  I don't have a big love for Noro, expensive and spun like beginner's yarn- heck I could do that!- but it is very soft.

This yarn reminds me of the contest for weavers some years ago, where they were to make their best fabric and an interesting one - "unusual" being the key word here.  They all lost out to the one gal who swept up her studio floor, spun all the sweepings and wove the winning entry.  

Onward....

While DH and I were poking around in various faux walls and forgotten drawers, we found my mother's little garden saw.  This is one of the things I saved from oblivion, and something I think I actually remember her using on the fruit trees; when mother died, we went through her things.  I also have her buck saw.  I remember her using that, sawing away at bigger roots and with a Pall Mall hanging from her lips.  She was a smoker but that's not what killed her.  She died mostly of a broken heart, and if it were in my power, I would do a switcheroo; I'd bring her back and send Psycho dad into eternal oblivion.

Next up is news on "The Sock"... I've been gritting my teeth and attempting to force myself to cast on the mate, fearing a really bad case of Second Sock Syndrome was occurring.  Happily, there was an intervention.  The ONE thing in sad sock's favor is that DH defended it, saying that it looked like a Christmas stocking to him.  God Bless that man!  Now, when I cast on, I will think of elves wearing them in a workshop at the North Pole.  

Have fun with your knitting, and with your rabble rousing!  I'm with you all out there fighting the two faced mutant dragons that all just hatched. 

Ted Talk. This is beautiful...

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Second Mesa Story

Or, In search of my ancestors,

One year, after traveling out with our rock hounding club friends to an American Federation show in Utah, DH and I ventured south to see the Grand Canyon lands and other parts of the southwestern Indian reservations. I particularly wanted to try to find out just what tribe it was that my grandmother was part of.

We traveled down through the Navajo Nation and entered the Hopi Reservation after staying over night in two or three places and seeing a wonderful and spiritual people and all that they have preserved of their own heritage. We knew what a struggle the Navajos have had, too, so it was a very poignant part of the trip.

I was also looking for an authentic Navajo spindle. I was never able to find one because they were being sold out wholesale or directly now to the west and east coast shops, I was told. I didn’t find out til later that there was an Tribal Fair at the Fair grounds a couple of days later where I could have probably bought one. Opportunity missed!

My grandmother’s people came from New Mexico, and we think they were Pueblo Indians so off we went to the Hopi Reservation after exploring Canyon de Chelly and other gorgeous places among the Navajo.

We arrived up on top of what we later found out was Second Mesa at near dusk and caused a huge stir of interest, since a vehicle as big as a school bus up on the mesas at dusk was pretty interesting. Everyone waved at us, even from inside their houses and trailers. We finally got completely lost and the sun was going down very fast so we stopped at a homemade sign that said this family had things to sell. They had been waving to us each time we passed their house. Around and around we would go and there they would be, waving back. Finally we stopped.

These Indians were a lot different looking than my grandmother so I knew right away that she was probably from another Pueblo tribe but I asked about her name and no, they had never had names like that. I also asked if anyone in the village still spun yarn from their wools and cotton, as in the times gone past, the Hopi spinners and weavers where the first in class and quality of all weavers and spinners. The family told us that their Father/Grandfather was an elder and his group of elders did all the spinning and weaving for their ceremonial clothing. So, I then showed them my spindle from a toy wheel, with some of the yarn I’d spun. This yarn, being dyed with Jello, was instantly interesting. They were intrigued and so I gave them the spindle full and some of the roving I’d dyed and not spun up yet to pass along to their Grandfather the next day. They asked if we couldn’t stay to meet him, but our time was too terribly tight. I still mourn that lost opportunity to meet some more of Grandmother’s ancestors, as the Pueblos are really all one people.

Most of those talking to us were the elder’s 20-30 year old grandchildren. And their mother was there as well, and she showed me a tiny pinchpot made of red clay that she had made and I bought that. I have so many sweet memories of that night. They wanted to see the inside of the Bounder, so up the stairs we went and I showed them all the fittings and fixtures. It was fun to see them all inside of the rig, these sweet, gentle and small people inspecting all the small things inside the Bounder. They fit in with it’s smallness and I could imagine them traveling all over the countryside in one of their own.

After talking about all the villages on the tops of all the mesas, and many other of the type of things that people talk about when getting acquainted, especially our tiny poodle who was being his very sweet self in wanting to have all the littlest great grandchildren pet or hold him, we asked our new found friends if there was someplace we could park the rig for over night. They told us that yes, there was a place, and if we could give a ride to work to one of them she would show us exactly where to park at the Hopi Cultural Center and Restaurant and Motel. To this day I am amazed at that trust, and feel honored to have had it.

We arrived at the cultural center after a drive of several miles. All the while we were watching the twilight fade and listening to the young Hopi’s gentle voice talking about the future for the Hopi now that their lands were to be returned to them. I’d studied Pueblo history off and on for decades since I was really researching my own ancestry so I had plenty of questions. She invited us again to stay, please, one more day, and come to the dances to be held that Saturday night. But you know how it is when a job awaits and you’ve had a precious three weeks off already. We had two more days travel just to get home.

That night we ate delicious Hopi taco take-out food from the Hopi restaurant in our rig and settled in for the night. The next morning, we woke up to the fact that the highway we needed to get home on was about 300 yards from our front step. Amazing.

I like getting lost. So many sweet adventures and great memories start out that way.

Hope you enjoyed my tale. And, I still haven't gotten my Navajo Spindle. Someday.....