Rolling On One

Arlene and I went to Somerville to take Charley and his girl friend Patsy out to supper. We went to a Mexican restaurant, Tu Y Yo, in Powderhouse Square. We’ve been hearing about Patsy and seeing pictures on Charley’s blog for several weeks, if not a couple of months, by now. This, for the record, is when Arlene and I met her. Initial impressions are favorable.

We built a fire in our firepit last Saturday night. It took several sheets of newspaper, lots of twigs, and several small branches to get it going.

It was a good chilly late November evening. You could get good and cold between the fire and the back door, but the fire was plenty warm once it had caught and several good fireplace logs were burning.

I’ve got rid of a little stash yarn in the last couple of weeks —

This cap was the Queensland Collection Kathmandu merino-silk-cashmere DK yarn I got at Fabric Place the first time we stopped there after they announced that they were going out of business. It was 132 sts on size 7 circs, all K2P2 until the decreases, and came out a little loose but very light and comfortable.

This scarf is 35 stitches, mistake rib pattern, on homemade 3/16″ wooden needles, in alpaca yarn that I got from the farmer at the Denmark sheepfest this past spring. I started it for airplane knitting on the way to Salt Lake ten days before Thanksgiving. It may turn into a UFO, or maybe I’ll keep going on it. It feels good, anyway. Yes, that’s a photo of the alpacas themselves on the ball band.

This is the start of another watch cap which is finished by now (as of Dec. 2, to be exact.) The color is a little washed out by the flash; it’s really a much richer range of greens and browns. The yarn came from the Maine Fiber Frolic, but I don’t know who the vendor was. I had exactly this project, a camouflage-color watch cap, in mind when I got the yarn. It’s 112 sts on the same size 7 circ needle (which, incidently, originally belonged to my late mother-in-law) as the cap in the first picture above. The yarn is heavier than that yarn, so the cap is firmer and warmer than the other as well as fitting tighter. But I was afraid of running out of yarn and started to decrease about four rounds sooner than I wish I had. There’s enough more yarn that I could rip it back and add a few rounds — maybe, but maybe I’ll settle for it like this.

We’re going to be at the Celebrate Newton crafts show this weekend, with rubber stamps and monotypes.

We were sort of mentioned in the Boston Globe just before Thanksgiving; at least, they had a paragraph about Celebrate Newton in an article about holiday shopping on a budget and said that one of the things you would find there were “funky rubber stamps.” That would be us.

I was a busy do-bee this evening, indexing stamp mounts so we have a good selection for the show; getting a batch of oatmeal bread started (it will rise overnight and I’ll bake it first thing in the morning); and inputting a klezmer tune to Finale so I’ll have a trumpet part and not have to transpose all those accidentals.

OK, after all that it’s bedtime, see you later —

First time in the pool this year — did 16 lengths, felt good.

I walked around the pond (third time this work week, that means every day so far this week) and saw a golden-crowned kinglet and a great blue heron, as well as the four swans that have been there all three times.

Well, a tune we’re playing in klezmer band, but it’s an Israeli dance tune, not a klezmer tune, Od Lo Ahavti Dai, music and lyrics by Naomi Shemer. I was working on it in Finale this evening and looked it up on google. I found several stanzas that aren’t on the music I was working from, and a better translation that I had had (but not enough of one to understand the words I don’t know in the first stanza, to say nothing of the other stanzas). Here’s a link to the words. If you want the music you can try clicking on the audio link there, or just google the name. I like that line in the refrain, “I haven’t loved the wind and sun on my face enough.” Holy smokes! There are two translations into English, one closer to the meaning, one that rhymes and scans so you can sing it, and translations to Italian and Spanish. Regardless of the translation, if you don’t know Hebrew, you won’t know that the last phrase of the refrain is from a 1900-year-old religious text.

The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, visited the company I work for yesterday. An email went out to everyone a few days ago (I’m not sure when, because I was on vacation last week) and a reminder went out Monday. He got a tour of the company early and then spoke to everyone (or everyone who chose to come to the cafeteria — but it was as full as for most quarterly company meetings, so, everyone) around 10. Actually, he only spoke for a few minutes and then took questions. I was pretty impressed. He gave real, substantive answers to the questions, like “My kid got one of the Abagail Adams scholarships to UMass for next year, but it’s only going to cover a very small fraction of the cost of college. What’s with that?” “Yes, one of the problems there is that the mandatory fees are greater than the tuition, and the scholarship can only be applied to tuition. The individual campuses can keep the fees, but they have to send the tuition to the state, so they like having the fees higher. One thing I want to do is let the campuses keep the tuition and remove that motivation. We want to put more funding into the scholarships, too. I also want to expand the junior college system, so we’ll have free public education K-14.” [that’s my summary, of course, not a transcription.] But the guy seemed to be on top of things.

Other points: Investing in infrastructure includes the state’s cultural institutions. After all, they’re something businesses consider when deciding where to relocate. Improving schools includes reducing domestic abuse, because kids who have problems at home bring that to their schools. So I give him a lot of credit for being able to see the big picture, not just focus on a few specifics.

(follow-up: the company emailed around a link to an article in the local paper)

Remember the clarinet I bought a couple of weeks ago? I got it out this evening and practiced for a while. It sure sounded like someone just starting to learn an instrument — all those tunes you can play with the first four notes you learned: “Go tell Aunt Rhody”, “Mary had a Little Lamb”, “Lightly Row” (aka “Fox, you stole the goose”). It’s going to take more practice before I can get all the notes consistently. Part of my problem is just feeling where the tone hole is under my thumb so I can get the thumb in the right place. Of course, a bigger part is getting my embouchure right so there’s any sound at all.

I don’t know how I forgot in the first list

• Return the US to the group of nations which support human rights

• Close the prison at Guantanamo
• Quit torturing, that goes for intelligence agencies as well as military
• Geneva Convention, hello?
• Everyone in Guantanamo to be either arraigned, if there are legitimate charges, or freed by April 20 (give the Justice Dep’t 90 days)
• Everyone in there to have the right to counsel, etc. (normal due process)
• None of this extraordinary rendition stuff
• You know what I mean

People who there’s no real case against should get some compensation for their mistreatment, too. A personal apology from someone high up in government would be a fine idea.

More serious items –

• End war in Iraq
• Serious regulation of financial markets
• Graduated income tax on corporations, enough to make it unprofitable to be “too big to be allowed to fail”
• Much more steeply graduated income tax on individuals, more like it was before the Reagan era
• Normalization of relations with Cuba, allow free travel and trade
• Reconciliation of relations with Venezuela, Chavez doesn’t have to like us but we could quit calling him names

Less serious but I still wish:

• Invite Pete Seeger to perform at the inauguration. I would love to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie lead the entire nation in singing “This Land is Your Land.”