Greying out the blog

Yeah, it's the SOPA and PIPA legislation.  On one hand, piracy--both domestic and international--is preventing writers, musicians, and other artists from making a living wage.

On the other hand, the federal government taking down your web site because someone else illegally uploads stuff to your site even though you have policies against it is not only messing with due process, but it can potentially have a freezing effect on First Amendment rights.

So this post is officially greying out (not blacking out) the blog today.   I have come to hate it when people steal my stuff and make money off me without my permission or sharing the profits with me.  I have come to hate that if I had to live on what I make from my writing, I'd be lucky to be living in a tent under a bridge (and that's after writing for major NYC publishers).  I have come to hate that people are willing to pay $5.00 for the experience of having a barista make a three-minute fancy cup of coffee that normally would cost 50 cents if they did it themselves, but want to experience for free the stories that have taken me almost a year each to write.

And that's saying a lot, because I love my lattes and am willing to shell out $5.00 plus tip for a nice fancy venti latte at Starbucks.  Especially because I know those baristas are often students who are trying to make it through to graduation.  Been there, done that.

But I also do not like that the federal government is incredibly clumsy about securing the rights I have over my property, so clumsy that they write legislation that can damage new and innovative ways of getting my stuff out there so that I and others can make a living wage.

There is a middle way. There is a way for online businesses like YouTube and Google and everyone else to make profits for themselves and still pay the content providers (writers, musicians, artists).

Here's an idea:  Every time someone uploads a copyrighted video to YouTube, if YouTube finds it, they charge the uploading subscriber 50 cents.  Then YouTube turns around and splits that amount with the copyright holder.  Anyone can upload whatever they want.  But they will be charged for uploading something with a copyright that belongs to someone else.

That's fair, isn't it?  50 cents isn't a lot for one person.  It's the price of a latte if you were to make it yourself.   If you think something you like is worth posting on YouTube, you can think about whether it's worth 50 cents to do it.  If it is, then you can rest easy in the idea that all those people who worked hard to make that video--writers, musicians, artists, cinematographers, the guy who sweeps the studio floor--all get paid to feed their families.  But if a video is good enough that millions of people think it's worth 50 cents each to upload it, then that will add up to enough money to help keep writers, musicians, artists, cinematographers, and the guy who sweeps the studio floor in a job.

We're in a bad economy. A heck of a lot of people don't have jobs.  Economists say that one big reason why we don't have jobs and are in such a big economic hole is that we don't create and produce enough products in our own country.  Not enough to export to other countries.

One of the very few things left that we in the United States do produce and export is music, writing, and art.  Ironically, very few of us in the U.S. want to pay for it or support it.  We don't want to buy the very thing that helps our economy get better. We want it for free.

That ebook you see on Amazon, written by an American?  That rightly and proudly should have a stamp on it that says "Made in the U.S.A."  You see that book in your local bookstore or that song written by a local musician on iTunes?  That book's been translated into different languages as an export, and that song's on a CD that's being exported to another country.  Someone not only wrote that book and performed that music, but a lot of other people printed that book and created the cover art, and produced that song and made it into a CD.  All done in the U.S.A.

It brings other countries' money into our country.  It pays our people.  Art, music, and books that Americans create keeps jobs in our country.  It's one of the very few things that still do.

Support free speech, but make sure to pay people for the work they do--and that includes paying people who create and help create art.  It means you, in the end, will have a better chance at keeping your own job as well.

Baking Pies

The Bake Sale Table - yum!

Today, I'm being bad...but good.  I'm skipping church, but I'm making up for it by doing two things:  Sleep in late (hey, it's supposed to be a day of rest!), and baking pies for the Holiday Fair that's coming up on November 5th.   It's a marvelous Holiday Fair, and I absolutely love it.  Everything's all decorated and people are cheerful and friendly, the children are excited, because it all says Christmas is coming in not too long from now.  I love it because of the happy vibes, and because the proceeds go to help the community in the form of donations to homeless shelters, orphanages, and so on.  In the past, we've donated to the Domestic Abuse Women's Network,  to Hope for the Children of Africa, and many more.  This year, it's to benefit two charities, Fusion and Ramps.

Quilts!  Christmas Decorations!  Paddle Thingies!

The pies?  They'll be apple pies.  I mean the genuine Federal Way United Methodist Women's apple pie recipe, with the lovely flakey light-brown crust and the luscious abundant apple filling inside.  I did not know how to make good pie crust before I went to this church.  However, I volunteered at their pie-bake session and learned The Secret, which I will not reveal here, because, hey, it's a secret!

Well, not really a secret, because it's in their church cookbook, which I believe is also on sale.  So if you want to know what the secret to good pie crust is, you have to buy the cookbook.  I promise to post pictures here once I get the pies done. You will then see the lusciousness that is the Traditional Federal Way United Methodist Women's apple pie.

I may also make some peach pies, and berry pies.  I'll have to see what I've stored in the freezer.  In the coming days, I'll probably make some cookies as well.  Yep, I'll be a baking fool!

Scrubbie!

What else is at the Holiday Fair?  Oh, lovely, lovely hand-crafted items.  Jewelry, knitted and crocheted things, including the homely, yet famous Scrubbies!  Yes, those round crocheted things made of net, that are the perfect things to scrub non-stick pans with!  Or anything else, for that matter.  You can stick them on the upper rack of your dishwasher on one of the prongs and wash--and sanitize--them that way.  Or, you can toss in the washing machine and dryer.

Come visit!  I'll be there.  You can find the church here:


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Yes, yes, I'm going against my policy of verboten mention of Christmas before Thanksgiving (before it's even Halloween, for heaven's sake, and I won't go into a rant about how stores do this), but this is the Holiday Fair and it is one of my favorite events of the year.  :-)

Joy

There seems to be a belief that it takes a huge effort to bring about a great joy, and it's only from those periods of sustained happiness that people can possibly get any kind of benefit.  But it's really from the little joys, whether received or given, strung out along the line of our lives like pearls, that we learn. It helps, I think, if we take time to look at each one carefully and enjoy it as it comes into our hands and out again, tucking each one into our memories for safe-keeping.

After All That's Going On in My Life Right Now...

... and John's stolen bike is the least of it, I'm going to focus on this:

The Paradoxical Commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. 

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

Speaking a Different Language in the Same Land

John Donne once wrote the following:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

What he didn't mention, but what I know, is that each one of us is a different country on that continent, and speak a different language.  We may think we're saying the same thing, and using words that mean the same thing, but amount of misunderstanding there is between people much proves to me that we don't.  Everything we say--our language and expectations--is informed by our personal and cultural history, our families, our environment, and the particular geography of our homes.  


I think the biggest misunderstandings come out of the idea that just because you grew up with someone that you know that person.  Fact is, you don't, especially if you've parted from that person for a few years.  


One thing I told the Alien Child when he returned from college is this:  I don't know you now.  You are a different person.  I didn't say it in a mean way, to try to guilt him into anything, or in a way calculated to alienate him from me, because God knows I'd shrivel up inside if my son thought I ceased to love or want to understand him.  But the fact is, I knew him very well up to the point of his senior year of high school just after his father and I dropped him off at college.  After that, he gathered experiences and knowledge of the world and of himself that had nothing to do with me, and of which I have no knowledge, nor can I even guess.  He grew up, became an adult, no longer my little boy, no longer even my teenaged boy.  He has experiences and knowledge that shaped him into what he is now, and because I don't know what he knows, or experienced what he experienced, to that extent, I don't know him.  


To me, his personality froze at the moment he left home.  Over time, it will unfreeze depending on what I discover about him from time to time, forming another, different, adult picture of him.  But it will never be as accurate or as close as what I had known at that point of his departure for college, a picture that I cherish and love, perfection and warts and all.


As a result, I warned him that until he is old and to the day I'm on my deathbed, there will be times I will treat him as the teenaged boy I knew, and not the man he has become.  I've lived with being his mom for so long, and I do not know the experiences that have made him the man he is.  (Unless he tells me, of course, which I don't expect, either.  I mean, really, does anyone tell their parents everything they've ever done or said or happened to them from childhood on up?  Right.  Exactly.)  :-)


Anyway, no matter if you've grown up or lived with someone--be they mother, father, brother, sister, child, husband, wife--they will always speak a different language from you, a different experiential language, because there will always be a part of their lives you do not know, do not understand, and have never experienced.  


They are, absolutely, a piece of your continent, a part of your main.   You will definitely be less if they fall away from you, if they die or become estranged from you.  But they are a different country, with a different language.  And to assume anything else is to harbor misunderstandings and even alienation, because it means you will not ask them questions with a listening heart, nor will you ever attempt to understand them.  Your cup is full of your assumed knowledge of them, good or bad, because you think you already know them, and thus you cannot take in anything new or real about them, no matter how hard they try to tell you in their different, personal language.  The real person that is there behind the facade you've created for them....does not exist for you. 


It can be as minor, and a bit of a delight, for example, to find that your spouse of many decades loves the same genre of music you do, but you didn't know this.  I experienced this just yesterday.  :-)  The dear hubby called me down last night to listen to some Celtic music by Jamie Laval, a musician who apparently grew up in our area, whom we had both enjoyed in the past.  So I sat down and listened, and after a while he said, "I love Celtic music better than most any other kind."  I stared at him and said, "How did I not know this about you?"  Because I adore Celtic music myself, and I have a big store of it in my computer, and if I had known this, I would have shared a lot more than I had.  So here is this thing we have in common, had in common for decades, and I didn't know this even though we'd been married for decades!  Well, the DH is a passionate lover of all kinds of music, so not to know that he loves Celtic music especially would be fairly easy to miss. 


So a part of me was glad that we have this new thing to explore with and about each other, but another part was a bit sad that I had to discover this at mid-life, instead of when we were younger so that we had more time to enjoy it together.

Often, however, discoveries are not a delight, but a deep hurt.  Often, your relative, your lover, your friend has been shouting outside the door of your perceptions of him or her, and you thought it was the wind, shutting the door even tighter and closing the windows more firmly in the thought that you can't let all that cold air in, when, actually, it was the warm breeze of love and friendship calling to you.  It didn't sound like love to you, it sounded like a storm.  And because it didn't sound just exactly right to you, not in the right timber or tone, and it rattled your very safe doors and windows, you shut it out, so that you could be all nice and cozy safe in your perceptions.



So I've been talking to a relative I care about deeply, and it shocked me a little that this person does not have the same kind of forgiveness as a goal that I have.  And then it hit home to me that this person doesn't share my particular spiritual convictions.  But then I realized, no, I shouldn't have expected it.  I knew he doesn't practice the same spiritual practices, he doesn't devote himself to a set of behaviors that I devote myself to.  I knew that.  Didn't matter to me in our relationship.  However, it nevertheless sat ill on me that he didn't have the same concept of forgiveness that I do.   How could a devoted, caring person like that not have the same concept of forgiveness?


The bottom line is, even though we knew each other from childhood, we don't share the same spiritual beliefs.  We don't have the same life experiences.  We are (slightly) different ages.  Our gender is different. As a result, when I say "forgiveness" it means something entirely different to me than what it means to him.


It's not a judgment on him, at all.  His feelings are entirely natural and understandable.  And to expect anything else would be foolishness on my part.  Do I feel disappointed?  Of course.  There is a part of me that thought he'd be "better" than that.  But I have to remember, "better" comes from my own constructs of right and wrong based on my spiritual beliefs, and because he doesn't share those beliefs, he's going to act on his own as he sees fit.

And I have to remember, my disappointment arose from my own assumptions that were false, and in so far I had falsely assumed, I did not truly love.  To truly love, you have to know; and to know, you have to ask questions and understand as much as you can, and revise that picture you have in your head to as close to reality as you can.  And recommit yourself once again to love.


Otherwise, you will be a stranger in a strange land of your loved one's country, a part of your continent, a part of your main, but never understood because you didn't care enough to learn the language.

Cat Wrasslin'

So I was in the urgent care clinic today because I sprained my wrist.  After waiting there for a while,  the triage nurse calls me in and got my history:  "So, what happened?  Did you fall?"  Her hands are poised over the computer keyboard, ready to enter the information.

"No," I say, and paused trying to figure out how to describe what happened.  "See, my cat was making this upchuck noise, and I thought I could get him off the rug onto the vinyl floor so that he would barf there instead, because you know how hard it is to get vomit off rugs, right? Except he's really heavy, about 17 lbs--kind of a cross between a Maine Coon cat and a Norwegian Forest cat.  So I picked him up, but he struggles away and decides to puke on the stairs instead, which are also rug-covered, and I thought, no, that's even worse.  So I picked him up again to move him away, and my foot slipped and he wriggles again, twisting my hand, and he barfed half on the stairs and half on the vinyl landing."

The nurse looks at me for a moment and began typing.  "You were wrestling with your cat," she  says as she types.

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way, " I say.  "I was just trying to pick him up--"

A medical assistant pokes her head into the room.  "Dr. Pal is ready."

The nurse waves me away, and I follow the assistant to the exam room.  Dr. Pal comes in soon after, a tidy and professional-looking man whose name tag reads "Dinesh Pal, MD."  From India, I imagine, educated in the U.S.  He carefully shakes my left hand (as my right is not up to any kind of shaking), and goes to the computer.  His brows raise.  "You are here because you were wrestling with your cat?"

"No, no," I say.  "See, he was about to vomit on the rug, and I wanted him not to do that, and so I tried to move him as quickly as I could, except he's a really big cat..."  I trail off, watching his grin grow wider.

"I see," he says, but I'm not entirely sure he does.  "Let me look at your hand."  He pokes and prods it, eliciting more than a few "Ows!" from me.  "It's probably sprained, but let's take an x-ray of it."  Dr. Pal calls for the nurse again, who guides me to a very harried x-ray technician, who it seems will be working for 12 long hours because all the rest of the techs are either out sick or on other jobs.

I arrive back to see Dr. Pal again afterwards, and he nods his head over the x-rays.  "Yes, it's only a sprain, no break. Ice it, keep it elevated, take the anti-inflammatories, and the nurse will fit you with a brace.  And no more wrestling with your cat!" he says, chuckling and shaking his finger at me.

I sigh.  "Right, thanks, doctor," I say, and leave the exam room to the sound of his continued chuckling.

I enter the waiting room and collect my mom, who is waiting for me.  "I am probably the only person in the world who has a medical record that says she wrestles cats," I say to her.

"So you should not do it again," she says, no sympathy in her voice.

"Mom, I didn't wrestle my cat!  I just didn't want him to puke--"  I let out another sigh.  "Never mind.  Let's go shopping."

She nods.  "Much better than wrestling cats."

Argh.  So now I'm learning to type with my left hand.  Wish me luck.

Trusting Abundance

One of the most steadfast people I know is my Army mechanic brother Allen.  If he gives you his word, he will stubbornly keep it, even if it means he'd have to travel the world to do it.  He may not do it right away, but he will do his utmost to do it as soon as it is humanly possible. He is also eccentric and has a very quirky sense of humor, but that's rather typical of my side of the family. 

Taunting Texans about bicycles :-D

I was reading about a brou-ha-ha down in Texas about people in Arlington protesting putting in bike paths as somehow unAmerican, because it was forcing people out of their cars.  That's silliness.  You put in a bike path, and guess what?  People can still drive their cars.  In fact, if there are enough people on bicycles riding around their local areas, it actually frees up highways and relieves congestion, so that you can go REALLY REALLY fast.  Such as on the German autobahn, where most people try to keep it under 100 miles per hour, but some do go faster than that.  I've even done it.  It's a serious rush for this American who is now constrained by 70 mph at most.

Unless, of course, people in Arlington, Texas are scared of the potential opportunity of driving fast.  I wouldn't have thought it, Texans having the reputation of being tough people, but hey, maybe they are wimpier than Germans on the road.  Oh, sure, they can take some risks, and sure, they have their race car drivers, but so do the Germans (hey, Formula I!) and the ordinary German citizens themselves go on the autobahn, which has no speed limit and see how fast they can go.

Yeah, that's a thrown gauntlet, people of Arlington, Texas.  It's less expensive to put in bicycle paths than another highway, so you end up spending less tax money for more transportation access, and it frees up highways for less congestion at the same time.  Once the highways are freed up from people just wanting to drive a mile or so, it helps ambulances and firefighters rush to emergencies when minutes spell the difference between life and death.

And there's even the possibility of increasing the speed limit on the highway after a while.... Unless you're scared of the idea of less congestion and driving faster.  Uh huh.  Yeah.  Prove to me, Texans, that you are not scared of riding bicycles and of the possibility of driving faster on your highways.  Oh, yeah, sure you have specialists who can ride fast bicycles (Lance Armstrong), and Indy car drivers who can drive fast, but your ordinary Texan?  Yeah, right.  Oooh, it might not be safe with bicycles on bike paths!  I bet you have bicycle helmet laws, too.   (Okay, we have helmet laws here in Seattle, too, but at least we have more bicycle paths.  And we have kamikazi bicycle messengers in Seattle who fear nothing.  I bet Arlington, Texas has no bicycle messengers because they're scared they might get hurt.)  Oh, and Germany and the Netherlands?  No bicycle helmet laws for adults.  And even 80-year-old grandmothers ride around on bicycle paths and on streets.  Those old ladies are fearless and would put some sport bicyclists to shame.

So the bicycle path was voted in by a narrow margin.  However, if Arlingtonians want to show they're not wimps, they should claim those bicycle paths!  Dominate them!  Ride those bicycles with their hair flying free in the wind!  Are you going to let 80-year-old German grandmothers look braver and tougher than you?  I hope not!

Too Busy to Rapture

So, according to Harold Camping, the Rapture should occur tomorrow, with the end of the world happening later in October of this year.

I'm not particularly concerned, not because I think I'm going to be Raptured (and if what he says is true, I guess I'm a candidate, being a church-goer and all), but because practically speaking, whether it happens or not, I'll probably be too busy to be bothered about it, unless it causes something akin to the TV show Flash Forward where planes crash, traffic accidents happen, and patients in surgery die because key people suddenly disappear.

In which case, it behooves all of us not to get on planes, trains, or automobiles that have Christians operating them.  Or, for that matter, have surgery or dental work done by a Christian.  I'm looking at you Dr. Rich!  I'm not getting my teeth drilled tomorrow, despite all your good works in poverty-stricken areas of Africa.

Oh wait.  It probably wouldn't matter for me anyway, since I might be Raptured as well.  Also, the Rapture is supposed to be tomorrow, on a Saturday, and his office is closed that day.

But everyone else--beware!  I'm not sure how this Rapture stuff works, and how an individual might be Raptured.  Is there a blast of light that accompanies a person's Rapture?  If so, radiation could be involved.  And if there is radiation, what is the radioactive half-life of the remains of a Raptured Christian, if there are remains at all?  How many feet do you have to stand away from such remains (or the Christian in the process of Rapturing) so as not to be irradiated?  Or, would you want to be irradiated, if the radiation happened to be of a benevolent kind?  Would you end up with nothing more than a nice tan, or could it zoom in and kill cancers?

These maybe important things to think about for the potentially un-Raptured.

However, the potential Rapturing of my very kind-hearted dentist makes me think of charities, particularly Christian ones.  If all the good Christians are going to be Raptured tomorrow, I guess that spells the end of such relief aid agencies as World Vision, United Methodist Committee on Relief, Catholic Relief Services, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, Baptist World Aid, Episcopal Relief and Development, IMA World Health, the UCC's Church World Service, etc., not to mention the various local Christian-supported homeless shelters and food banks in every community.  Hopefully, everyone else can make up the difference of billions of dollars a year in relief aid and volunteers.  If not, then places like Haiti and the Congo are going to be in even worse straits than they are now.

Rapture or not, I'm planning to stick around. Got books to write, fiber to spin, yarn to knit, and a garden to work.  That's a St. Francis of Assisi reference.  It's said that someone walked by one day and saw him working in his garden and asked him what he would do if he found out that the end of the world would happen that day.  He looked up and said, "I'll just keep working in my garden," and went back to his work.

Makes sense to me.

Spring Cleaning Part Deux: New Uses for Old Things

I have been steadily cleaning out this disaster-area of an office, and finding things that are...well, fairly useless.  Such as 5-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks that have information I've already either archived or have on my current computer.  There are books for which I have copies in ebook form (Jane Austen books, many of which you can download free), and paperback books that are falling apart because they are literally over 30 years old and I have read them over and over again (and I hope, hope, hope that I can find them again in print or in ebook form).  Then there are papers that are decades old that surely can be thrown out, and so on and so on.  Or, there are old Windows 95 and other software manuals that are way, way out of date.


However, today I came upon this particular item.  It's made of Gore-Tex-like material, about 9 inches by 5 1/2 inches when folded.  The interior pockets are made of some kind of vinyl and are about 3 1/2 by 4 inches.  I've had it for...probably almost 15 years.

I pulled it out of a pile of stuff that I had put on one of my bookshelves to look at "later," which obviously was about at least 10 years later.  Yes, that's how long it's been sitting around.  I opened it and when John popped his head around the corner of my office to see what I was doing, and I held it up.  "Recognize this?"

He gazed at it for a second or so, puzzled.  I said, "It's a holder for the 3 1/2 floppy disks for the old PC we used to have.  I guess I should have thrown it out by now, right?" I said, laughing a little at how silly I'd been for holding onto it for so long...but stopped laughing as an idea slowly formed in my brain.  "On the other hand...I think I won't because I might be able to use it.  I could use it to--"

"Store knitting needles!" John said.

"Yes!" I said, much pleased at his perspicacity.  "Exactly--circular needles, in fact!"

The top pockets are too shallow to hold the needles without sticking out, but they're just the right size to hold a small pair of scissors, especially if you pass the velcro strap through one of the finger loops.  The clear plastic holder to the left, which normally would hold a business card, is perfect for holding a cable needle without too much worry that it'll fall out, since the opening is up against the fold of the holder.  It would easily slip into any purse or knitting bag without having the cables get tangled up, especially since the velcro strap holds them down.  Here's what it looks like with needles and accessories in it:

Just to test how secure the items were within it, I closed it and shook it (the horizontal velcro pieces on either side are "opposites" so that it stays shut when closed).  Then just to be absolutely sure, I opened it and shook it upside down.

Nothing budged!  How cool is that?

So now I have a handy-dandy circular knitting needle holder for whatever knitting project I might want to take with me when I'm on the go.  Now I'm thinking about looking for more floppy disk holders like this for more of my needles.  Each pocket can be easily labeled as to the size, and and another label on the outside saying what all sizes are within.  The holder is about the height and width of a trade paperback book, so I can put it in my bookshelf if I want to, and the spine--though thin--is wide enough to put yet another label on if I want to see what sizes are within if I do put it in a bookshelf.

Wow.  I absolutely must see if I can find more of these!  If I recall correctly, it wasn't very expensive when I bought it.  However, if I can't find any of these, I bet CD holders would work about as well, and at low cost, too.  I found one here in Amazon.  Less than $10!

However, I like the slim line of the 3.5 floppy disk holder, since it's very easy to tuck in a purse, unlike the bulkier CD holders.

I feel so frugal and resourceful!  :-)