Frogs and Ravens

Prime Number Shitting Bear

It's a bear, it's Finnish, it shits prime numbers, and it's oddly fascinating.

Looking Up At the Podium

Behold! I have been through the Knitting Olympics and emerged with a completed vest!

Completed one day late that is, some time after The Apprentice.

Yet I am done, and can now mail this vest to my mother for her birthday (which was in July). More pictures documenting the process below the fold. Be sure to note the piece of yarn in this picture. I will say something about it later.

Pseudonymous Rag

Inspired by these posts, and lingering effects of Friday poetry, I bring you a doggerel ditty:

Rana ain't my real name
Yet I'm as real as real can be
I don't blog for fortune or fame
I blog pseudonymously.

I started the blog to have me some fun
Way back two years or three
I've kept on going as I begun
Blogging pseudonymously.

Doing so twists up some knickers
Of bloggers in a-ca-de-mee
Perhaps I need warning stickers:
This 'un blogs pseudonymously!

Why do I do it? What can I say?
It gives me the space to be free
To share what I think, and with others play
Ain't it great, pseudonymity?

Without a name yer jest nuthin'
Is what some of these folks tell me
Yer an empty fiction, devoid of stuffin'
If you blog pseudonymously.

They try to lay out some bloggin' rules
That apply to all and sundry
Which as we know's the action of fools
Try stopping pseudonymity!

And those rules they set out
In voices of stern sincerity
I delight that I can flout
By blogging pseudonymously.

The world's full of all kinds of folks,
There's them, and there's us and there's me
And there's as many different strokes
So I choose pseudonymity.

So use your real name, or a nom de blog
Or some nicknames or three
I won't sit here like a sourbellied hog
I revel being pseudonymous me!

Poetry Friday - Birds Herald Spring

Stabbing their beaks in syncopation
Red breasts against greening grass
Robins on the lawn.

Beak pointed to skyward
Buff throat pulsating with song
A wren in the tree.

Cracking the seeds with their beaks
Brown stripes and pink heads
House finches at the feeder.

Pounding its beak into suet
Red head and black and white stripes
A downy on the porch.

Beaks open and singing, closed and pecking,
Feathers of brown and red and black
Birds at the end of winter.

Being an American Progressive Means...

...having racists lecture you about racism, sexists lecture you about sexism, and bigots in general lecture you about bigotry.

...seeing bumper stickers advocating killing you off.

...being accused of treason for caring about what happens to your country.

...being called a nutty treehugger by people who plan expensive vacations to remote wilderness areas while accepting funding from corporate polluters.

...having people who turn a blind eye to poverty, hunger, and disease accuse you of not being "pro-life."

Container Gardening

jo(e) has an interesting post today about the place she grew up, and one of the aspects of it that she notes is her parents' vegetable garden. In it, and in the comments thread, the idea of literally putting down roots emerges.

The metaphor of putting down roots is one that has intrigued -- or haunted -- me for much of my life. Although my adolescence was relatively stable in that we stayed in the same house for a little over a decade, my life seems more defined by the process of moving. I think it has done strange things to my psyche, turning me into a person both who loves travel for the way it exposes me to the new and the unfamiliar, and who -- at times desperately -- longs for the stability of a life-long home.

The reason the metaphor seems so apt is that much of my frustration comes from the literal activity of putting down roots -- of planting seeds and slim green seedlings in a gesture of hope in the future. For all of my adult life I have been unable to have a garden to call my own, despite a deep-felt desire for one. When you live in dormitories and small apartments, one is limited to what will grow on windowsills, small doorstep porches, and the dim interiors of rental housing. No corn or tall sunflowers, only a small tomato plant or two, and lots and lots of jade plants and pothos.

One must also be careful emotionally with these botanical roommates; they grow leggy and sick from lack of light and inexpert care, they become too big to fit easily in the back of a car crowded with worldly goods, they bloom and ripen on a schedule that runs counter to the summertime transistions of an academic life. They die, get left behind, are gifted to friends, are abandoned in the sunroom at one's parents' house, are stuffed in the car and burned by the hot summer sun, are left out on the porch and frozen to dead blackness.

Yet one tries. I have been continually putting down such roots, but not in local soil. My roots are in containers, ones that I can have the hope of taking with me when I (inevitably) leave. This is true of my metaphoric roots too; I have more friends far from me than close, these days.

It is a strange irony that, here in a place where my metaphoric roots are thin and spindly at best, I have my first chance to put down seeds and watch them grow to fruition, not once, but twice. It is a gift, and a blessing -- but I'm hedging my bets with a bunch of containers, too.

Too Many Chores

Well, not really. It's more that I've been thinking about chores than I've been thinking about anything notably blog-worthy. I've been preoccupied, but not in ways that lend themselves to much in the way of meditative thought or impassioned wranglings. I ordered laundry soap. I downloaded a tax program. I bought some groceries. Woooo!

I suppose I might talk about my gardening thoughts, but they are still terribly tentative at this point. I flip through the seed catalog (mostly this one) and there are tons of cool beans (hee) and grains and herbs and tomatoes and squashes and flowers and herbs and... you get the idea. I have the classic "eyes bigger than stomach" syndrome, and so I'm presently in the midst of counterbalancing those wild ambitions with the realities of limited budget, limited space, and the knowledge that there will be moments in the spring and summer when I will be out of town and the plants will need tending - and I don't know anyone around here who could be prevailed upon to take care of them during those times. (Add timed drip irrigators to the wish list...)

But, really, I got nuthin'.

Yet Another Personality Quiz

Your #1 Match: INFJ

The Protector You live your life with integrity, originality, vision, and creativity. Independent and stubborn, you rarely stray from your vision - no matter what it is. You are an excellent listener, with almost infinite patience. You have complex, deep feelings, and you take great care to express them. You would make a great photographer, alternative medicine guru, or teacher.

Your #2 Match: INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist.

What's Your Personality Type?

Seen at Pilgrim/Heretic's (who had the same results).

Poetry Friday - Weather Alerts

Last night, wind, rain, and streaming alert banners.

This morning, a branch on the porch.

Dog in the Manger

If you are a progressive these days, your options as a voter are rather limited. Guess what? If HR4694, aka the "Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Bill," passes, they will be more limited still.