March

As I'm out and about, I see evidence that maybe winter will end.  My crocuses are coming up.  The daffodils are getting there. My daphne is about to bloom, I see all sorts of little buds on things that look like they're not quite ready to get on with the business of spring.

You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
― Louise Glück

I guess what I'll say about anyone not liking Pi is... All the more for us.

I guess what else that means this year is that some people are celebrating Lent. Everyone got their Fat Tuesday on the last possible day of February, then we started off March with Ash Wednesday. I guess that's one way to start one of the longer months of the year!

As I'm out and about, I see evidence that maybe winter will end.  My crocuses are coming up.  The daffodils are getting there. My daphne is about to bloom, I see all sorts of little buds on things that look like they're not quite ready to get on with the business of spring.  

It's always this time of year that I come up with grand plans for the yard. We have a tendency to get yards that are somewhat unruly, and that's no different here.  We also have a tendency to get houses that have one "clever" "crafts" man. This house has a less than ideally created brick terracing in front.  It's interesting to have a bunch of larger and smaller plots in which to think about arranging things.  Unfortunately, about a foot, foot and a half down it's gravel for drainage, so some things we might like to put in, wouldn't do well at all.  Bit by bit though, we're figuring out what grows well where. 

Besides continuing to work on that space, there's so many other places to work on.  Last year I got half the backyard's blackberries pulled out.  This year I need to do the other half.  And go through and pull all the ivy that's invading from our neighbors' yards.  Again.  I really like ivy as a house plant.  I really hate ivy in my yard.  It's a terribly terrible invasive monster of a plant, even worse than the Himalayan blackberries, which at least provide a tasty fruit, though I don't let the ones in my yard get to that point because no.

And last year we didn't rake up the maple leaves in the back.  Or... the year before that.  There's no lawn to destroy, so that's not so much of a worry, but maple leaves, piled down with fir needles also don't make the best compost for anything else but weeds.  Still, bit by bit, we'll get it cleaned up and then we can figure out what to do with it, space by space.

Some of that will take remediation.  We are dug into a clay hill.  In our last house we had two rosemary bushes that I dug into gravel.  They thrived, ridiculously so.  Here, I've put them in actually relatively ok dirt, and they're... not thriving.  They're still alive, but not growing nearly as fast as I would have expected, so more compost or something for them.  I do love a good rosemary bush!

I look at the beautiful things on Pinterest and have so many ideas... and I want a beautiful yard now!  But chipping away at it, by bit will have to be how it goes.  
By the time the winter and early spring storms have passed, maybe I'll have settled on something specific to do in the yard this year.  Then again, we may just work randomly on things and see what comes of it all eventually.  

In the meantime, I enjoy things as they appear. :)

Looking forward to spring with curiosity,

--Susan

Change

It's the only constant.  Whatever is now, will evolve and change and become something new.  From the ashes of the phoenix rises a phoenix, the same and yet not the same.  

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, "I’ll try again tomorrow.”
– Mary Anne Radmacher

Sometimes the hardest part is waiting for the cycle to wheel around again.  In the I Ching, hexagram 24 is "Return."  The message of this is that the primary obstacle has been overcome, and now the seeds of change have been sown.  Like seeds though, there is a time where nothing seems to be happening.  You can't force seeds to grow any faster than they grow, you can only make sure that you are providing the right environment for them to do their thing.  The anticipation is hard -- you don't know until you know if anything will result of the work you put into creating the environment.  In a similar way - it is coldest not right before the sun rises again, but right after.  The temperature continues to drop for a bit because the earth is still cooling from the darkness and while it takes time to start warming up, the heat is still escaping out into the atmosphere.  But eventually it does, indeed, warm up for the new day.  

All stories are stories of change.  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end (that is sometimes a new beginning).  Some stories are more complex and have more changes, more evolutions, calls, challenges, rejections, acceptances, journeys, descents, ascents, resolutions.

When I was getting my Masters, I had the fortune to take a storytelling class taught by the wonderful Margaret Read MacDonald (I think I've mentioned this before, but it always bears repeating).  One of the stories I learned for this class was an Estonian folktale, of course, also told wonderfully by Margaret herself (I aspire some day to be such a good teller!).  
 

Mikku & the Trees

Once upon a time, the trees talked to us.  Once upon a time, there was also a boy.  He went into the woods to find some firewood.  

Aha, he said as he stood at the foot of one of the trees -- this tree will make fine firewood, and just as he raised his ax to cut it down, the tree said to him, wait!  What are you doing!?  Mikku said to the tree, I need firewood, so I am going to chop you down!  The tree said, oh no, that will never do!  I am an apple tree!  I provide sweet apples for you that last from fall until spring again, sweet fruit all winter long, surely you don't want to cut me down!  And Mikku said, oh, you are right, that would be no good at all.  The tree said, yes, Mikku -- you take care of us, and we will take care of you!

So Mikku continued walking through the forest until he came upon another tree that looked like it might make good firewood.  As he raised his ax and prepared to chop the tree down, the tree said wait, wait, Mikku, what are you doing!?  And Mikku said, I am looking for firewood and you look like a fine tree to make firewood out of!  The tree said to Mikku, but Mikku, I am a maple tree!  If you cut me down, no syrup for your pancakes!  Mikku said -- ohhh, that would be terrible!  I love syrup on my pancakes!  You are right, I will not cut you down!  The maple tree said, thank you Mikku -- remember, if you take care of us, we will take care of you!

So Mikku continued walking through the forest, and lo and behold, another tree appeared that looked like it would be wonderful firewood and Mikku went to chop it down, lifting his ax and the tree said, Mikku wait, what are you doing!  And Mikku, starting to get a sense of how this conversation was going to go, said, well, I was going to... I was thinking you looked like... well... maybe firewood but... and the tree said to Mikku, but Mikku -- I am a walnut tree!  You love to crack walnuts and eat them, especially roasted.  And Mikku agreed that was true and agreed that he should not chop down walnut tree.  Walnut reminded Mikku, if you take care of us, we'll take care of you!

So Mikku kept walking, but slower, and slower and finally he sat down because every tree had a use, and he didn't want to chop any of them down!  He needed a solution, whatever was he going to do?  
As he was sitting there, he saw pine cones and branches on the forest floor all over the place!  A solution!  So he stood up and started collecting the branches and pinecones, and suddenly a tiny elf appeared and said Mikku!  What are you doing!?  It was all Mikku could do not to stare -- a stranger little being you cannot imagine, wearing clothing of many layers, textures, and colors, almost shimmering in the light!

Mikku said, I am gathering branches and pinecones off the forest floor because all the trees have uses and I can't cut them down!  The elf said, very good Mikku -- if you take care of the trees, they will take care of you!  As a reward for recognizing this, here is a wand -- if you ever have need of anything, lift your wand and ask for it.  BUT -- you must never, ever ask for anything that goes against nature for that would be very very bad.

So Mikku lifted his wand and said, I would love some honey!  And the bees brought him honey.  Hmmm, that worked really nicely!  He tried again and lifted his wand and said, birds, I would love some berries!  And the birds brought him bushels of berries.

Mikku took his branches and pinecones, honey and berries home with him and never wanted a day in his life.  When he needed his fields plowed, he raised his wand and moles plowed his fields.  When he needed to sow his field, he said little bugs, please sow my fields, and they carried away the seeds and sowed his fields.  Because he took care of the trees, they and all the creatures that relied on them, took care of Mikku.

In this way, Mikku became rich and lazy.  One day in the middle of winter, it was cold and rainy, and Mikku wished for it to be warm and sunny.  In his laziness, he lifted his wand, and said Sun!  Make it hot, hot, hot!  Forgetting all about the elf's warning.  And the sun focused all it's heat and light onto Mikku and his wand and burnt them both to a crisp.  Since that day, the trees have never spoken to another human being, but to this day you can hear them whispering as the wind blows through their leaves, you take care of us... we take care of you...  you take care of us... we take care of you... you take care of us... we take care of you...

(Based on Mikku and the Trees as told by Margaret Read MacDonald and appearing in Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About. Linnet: North Haven, Conn., 1999, but with some storyteller liberties taken.)

Changes.  We learn, we grow, we sometimes become lazy and forget.  Sometimes we get opportunities to learn again, other times, not so much!  May we all have many learning times ahead of us, and not so many forgetting and lazy times!  Snip, snap, snout, this tale is told out!

With evolving love and curiosity (and a good tale now and again),
--Susan

Evidence of Spring

This week has been one where I'm starting to look at the yard and thinking 'I really ought to do something about that...'  As a result, the roses got pruned, the wisteria got chopped way back, the dead daisy stalks and some other plant material composted.  The first crocus is blooming in the yard, and the wild roses at the park (and the ones I pruned at home) are all showing buds getting ready for the upcoming spring.  

“If people did not love one another, I really don't see
what use there would be in having any spring.”
-- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

For the most part this time of year around here, things are still looking sort of dark season of the year, but if you look closely, the daffodils are emerging, as are irises and some of the other bulbed plants. It dawns on me that maybe there's a place for me to plant sweet peas -- now is the time for them to go in... but where?  

So that's what I did when it wasn't dumping buckets of rain outside.  Last night the rain was torrential.  It was so loud on the roof.  I love listening to the rain on our roof!  Last night was a pretty spectacular show.  

We got a little snow, now it's time to turn towards the changing of seasons.  And Tibetan New Years (Losar)!  

Some day I want to compile a calendar of New Years dates throughout the year.  There's the Gregorian calendar New Year.  There's the Chinese New Year (new moon between January 21st & February 20th), Losar (Tibetan New Year, dates vary but often the new moon after Chinese New Year), Taagaan Sar (Mongolian New Year, also a month after Chinese New Year), Hindu New Year (March 28th this year), Kha b' Nissan (Assyrian New Year, April 1).... Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year, September 20th, Hijri (Islamic New Year, September 22nd), Samhain (Celtic, pronounced sowen, October 31), etc. 

There's something refreshing about being able to wipe a year clean and welcome a new year.  It's not quite the same as a new month or a new week.  New months are great for starting new projects, but they don't tend to have quite the same celebratory feeling of the new year.  You know?

So, that was a tangent!  The seasons are clearly starting their slow change towards spring and with that it will be interesting to see what other changes come, change after all being the only consistent.

With anticipation of new green things & curiosity,
--Susan

A Brave Fahrenheit 1984

... I read a lot of books when I was younger...

So M2 is preparing for a Socratic seminar in her English class.  They're reading Fahrenheit 451. She came out and needed to talk through the book with someone and wanted to know if I'd ever read it.  Which yes, I have, but it was a long time ago.

We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

When I was in 7th & 8th grade I read one to two books a day.  Sometimes I'd pick out a book, have it read by lunch time, pick up a second book & bring it back in the morning.  Sometimes it was just picking up a book in the morning and then reading it all overnight.  So easily between 150 & 300 books in a year.  Fiction. Non-fiction. It didn't really matter.  Weirdly, now that I think of it, I think my middle school library had Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory classified as non-fiction early British history.  That was definitely the history section - lol!

Anyway. One of the results of reading so voraciously is that sometimes I conflate one title with another (can you tell where I'm going with this now?).  In the process of refreshing my memory about Fahrenheit 451, I had the rather sudden realization that for years I've been conflating the storyline not only with 1984, but also A Brave New World.  These three stories flow so well into each other that in retrospect, it sort of makes sense.  Though by that standard it seems weird that I didn't at all mix up Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, or Jules Verne & H.G. Wells... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most of the time my retention was actually pretty good.  Which was nice later in school when the class was discussing MacBeth in 10th grade and I was busy reading King Lear or The Brothers Karamozov or something & my teacher trying to catch me not paying attention to the matter at hand asked me a question which I answered correctly to his rather evident surprise.  So then he felt obligated to say, 'ok, so you got that right, but please pay attention now.'  Which I may or may not have actually done. I seem to recall successfully answering at least one other 'gotcha,' that period.

Which of course has nothing to do with conflated dystopic political science fictions.  Kiddo needed to prepare three questions about what was applicable from this book that was going on presently.  She didn't want to bring politics into it.  She said it was too upsetting.  So sweetie, about that... she came up with some good questions though. And periodically she'd ask a question and I'd just say, "about that" and she'd groan and keep going.  

It's been one of those weeks for her. Earlier this week she had to write an argumentative essay on gun control and she spent a fair amount of time spluttering about that as she found other countries' statistics.  

I didn't have a point in mind when I started out with this, this evening.  It was just such a surprising realization to find that I'd conflated these three titles that I thought I'd share with people who might, possibly, have also done something similar in the past. 

WIth love & curiosity,

--Susan

Groundhog's Day

Ever not quite know what to say?

That's where I'm at. Two weeks in and just, wow. Keep calling, emailing, faxing. It takes 3.5% (for America that's 11MM people) of a population to peacefully change a gov't. We got this... right?  I mean, 65,844,954 voted for Hillary, so... right?  I mean, even I'm calling and emailing (my reps have publicly stated that they count emails and voice mails both in their tallies, and especially if we have a couple sentence story about how something personally affects us, they prefer email).

'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' -- Nancy Rogers

Sometimes I include music to listen to - well Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of Hamilton) created a soundtrack for us all on Spotify which is what I'm listening to right now. 

So what have I been thinking about this week?  Besides the creeping orange horror, various things!  Have spent quite a bit of time this week chewing over the last paragraph from this article in Scientific American: How to convince someone when facts fail. 

From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews.

That's a lot of things to remember in the middle of what's likely to be a pretty opinionated conversation, but well worth at least trying to remember in the moment. I feel like the only one I have fairly well down is #2. I tend to shut down hard and fast in conflict conversations when I have to carry the weight of the conversation.  I am much better able to contribute productively and time to plan what I can usefully interject when I have a supporting role.  The more you know...

I've also been thinking about the final point in this article (Autocracy: Rules for Survival) is "Remember the future." As I think about all the different things to fight against, none of them less than the next, I get overwhelmed. Increasingly, my only hope is to fight for the future I want to live in, the future I want you to live in with me, the future I want my children to live in. Which of course will look a lot like fighting against a lot of things. It's important though to keep a clear vision in our minds off the future we are trying to move towards.  When we fight only against the thing we don't want, the only vision we hold clearly in our mind is the thing we don't want.  It's far more effective to hold the vision of, and try to move toward, the thing you want.

And then the other thing that I'm going to tell you about here is the National Parks Service.  What does they say on Tumblr?  Ah yes, here it is - 

First they came for the scientists…

And the National Parks Services said, “lol, no” and went rogue and we were all like “I was not expecting the park rangers to lead the resistance, none of the dystopian novels I read prepared me for this but cool.” - scarlettohairdye

And then other accounts followed.  Like Mr. Rogers always said,

"My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world."

There are a lot of really alarming things going on right now.  And honestly, there have been a lot of alarming things going on forever, but in the midst of it all, looking for the helpers, look for the people who are doing the right, compassionate, things... they are out there.  And we have the opportunity too, to be the helpers.  Look for those opportunities too.

Until next week - 

Your ASL sign of the day, your sign of the week, your sign until further notice: “resist.” pic.twitter.com/7K6c5P0YaB

— Mat Marquis (@wilto) January 27, 2017

With love, resistance, and curiosity,
--Susan

Self Care and the Resistance

You belong to each other. -- Melanie Dewberry

Yep.  That pretty much sums up what I've been thinking about since I last wrote a missive to y'all.  As it turns out, Friday I was feeling not great.  Of course, I figured *lots* of people in America were not feeling great and I was probably in good company just feeling really stressed and concerned about the state of the union.  Right? Fair enough?  By bedtime I was shake-y and a few hours later... I was really glad I'd brought a bowl into the bedroom with me.  

My attempt to participate in The March ended up being... lining up my ginger ale bottles, water, and a diet coke can.  Sick solidarity, yo.

Watching my facebook feed this week, I realized that I'm getting sucked into the outrage filter and 'what's coming next!?' panic. Granted, glued to the couch was about where it was at for me for around 48 hours, so not really any lost time there, but then when I started feeling better, I felt absorbing inclination to Keep Checking In and realized it could be a problem.  In the checking in, though, I've started noticing something else as well -- people asking how others are coping. 

For a while, before I realized that Mythic Librarian was what I was going to land with, I toyed with a couple of other ideas.  Phix's Curiosity was one of them, just as an outlet to explore all the things I encountered in a day that sparked my interest.  The other was Medusa's Garden which would have been all about self care.  As it stands, Phix and Medusa are sort of folded in here. One of the realizations that led me not to focus all my efforts on Medusa were that self care is wrapped up in gigantic systemic issues.  A great bath is no match for a series of systems set up to defeat realistic life management capabilities.  At best it's an extremely temporary balm, but it doesn't address the root of the issue at all, and only barely addresses any symptoms.  Self care, in a lot of ways, is actually something that can only happen in a supportive community.  Who hasn't had that boss that denied you a day off when you really needed it?  And who hasn't pushed through a cold because ugh, the mess will still be here when I get back, I may as well just keep going?   Not that I might not eventually develop Medusa's Garden bath salts or something, though ("For when you need the world to Stop Coming At You")!

The stories of self care that have been coming through have been similar and I think worth noting.  These are some of the helpful stories I'm hearing.

People are limiting their time on social media.  This makes a lot of sense, it reduces the input into an overwhelmed system.  There gets to be a point where one can reach analysis paralysis, the inability to prioritize because there are so many high priority actions that need to be taken, that one can no longer make a decision about which meaningful action to take.  It isn't about putting your head in the sand and ignoring everything happening, it's about taking time to be more intentional about what sources and how much time you are willing to give to the different streams of information options coming at you.  

After limiting incoming information, finding some way to take action (think calling senators and representatives, attending town halls, donating money or time to supported causes, or learning how to run for office/do political field work, etc). Finding a way to contribute constructively, even if it feels small, is helpful to taking care not only of yourself, but others too.  

Within that, focusing on what actions you can take.  We can't do it all.  The thing I just said about having so many priorities that you end up with decision paralysis is something that we all need to be aware of.  One of my favorite sayings right now is something like, 'you can't do it all alone, but if each of us does a little bit, we can do it all together.'   We can do what we need to do here, but that means we all need to pick a piece to work on. One of the things I see happening often is the 'circular firing squad' and the 'who's more oppressed' oneupsmanship.  We cannot each all do all the things, and trying to diffuses our power.  We can be supportive of things that we are not directly involved in.  I can be supportive of #nodapl and #blacklivesmatter while I focus the energy and time I have on information dissemination (libraries are critical for functioning democracies, especially ones in this condition), for example.  The important thing is to be doing something and not waiting for others. Waiting just leads to everyone thinking someone else has got it covered.

The final thing I think I'll touch on that I'm seeing is people recognizing that they just need to check out entirely for a couple days so they can come back to the fight again.  The lead up to inauguration was a haul. I am hoping that people learned in those three-ish months a bit about stepping out of the stream, and then stepping back into it.  It's going to be a much longer haul from here, and we're going to all need to step in and out, and support each other in taking care of ourselves and each other.  

It's up to us to take care of ourselves and each other.  It has always been up to us to take care of ourselves and each other - and now it is critical.

With love, rebellion, and curiosity,
--Susan

Sickness and Resistance

You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it. -- The Talmud

So writing this, on the eve of the 2017 inauguration (surely if you know me, you know I'm not getting up in the morning to write!), I've spent the day sitting with and taking care of a sick kiddo.  Puke, aches, the whole nine yards.  Which is a long way of introducing that I have been thinking about sickness and resistance today.  

When I was about her age, I came down with the same sort of miserable bug.  As I tended to, I spent the time I was awake reading, and then half dreaming processed those stories into my fevered memory.  One of these stories was Mischief in Fez by Eleanor Hoffman.  It's a story inspired by her travels and supporting herself by buying and selling Moroccan rugs in the early part of the 20th century.  Mousa is a young boy who, in the way of many tales, has lost his mother.  His father meets and weds a new wife and all sorts of troubles start befalling their household, for which Mousa is blamed.  He knows he's innocent, and so goes to the market to consult a wise man about how to figure out what's going on.  There are djinns involved, including one disguised as a tiny fennec fox who helps him.  I've finally found that this is available again and bought it a few years ago and read the entire thing in two hours - lost again in the story.

There was another story in the anthology in which I originally read Mischief in Fez  that I am still trying to find. It was the story of a young princess who ventures into a part of the castle she has been told not to go into and finds a beautiful old woman there.  Turns out it's her grandmother, there's something about a rose... water spray? scent of roses?  and in the end, the King and his mother, are joyfully reunited and the princess is allowed to visit her grandmother.  When I'm sick, I can almost smell the vivid roses from this story.

Stories are important -- they help us explore the range of human experience. They help us understand who we are.  They help us transmit wisdom and knowledge, literal and implied.  And in times like these, they remind us that resistance is important, that it's possible, and that with perseverance and creativity, you can get quite a long way.  In real life there isn't always a happily ever after, but there is always the journey.

Jospeh Campbell posited that there is a Hero's Journey behind all story arcs - there are seventeen stages in his 'monomyth'.  There are, of course, variations on this theme, such as Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey, among others.  This can be a useful framing as we move through our own stories as a reminder that we will not always be in 'the ordinary world', waiting for a call to adventure.  That we won't always be stuck in testing and trials (as much as it seems like this part lasts forever and comes up over and over again). Eventually even our stories come around and begin again. And along the way we learn what questions to ask, we learn our lessons or have to relearn them, we learn how to defend our values. And hopefully as we wrap up each phase of our stories to begin anew, we come away with new found strength, and at the very least, a good story to tell about the time when, once upon a time, a long time ago...

Now is the time to look to stories, of real people, and of wild and improbable fictions, to help us find ways to exist, to resist, to find ways big and small of doing the right thing in a time when the world seems turned upside down.  And also a time to remember as a few other voices out there are noting that this too is part of the human experience, history travels in waves and tides.  

As I look towards the next four, eight, ten years, depending on how any multiplicity of variables play out, things will be potentially very ugly, even uglier, or maybe just sort of uglier for some. While the realist in me acknowledges this, the optimist also has some hope that there are now, more than ever before, sane knowledgeable people (that's us), in bigger numbers than ever before who can stay engaged and actively participating in a civic life that is truly so broad that it can be overwhelming. That we can find our meaningful niches, and working together, that we can swing the pendulum away from where it seems to be headed now.  Finding inspiration in the tales we learned as children and in history, in our friends's lives, finding empathy and connection across what seems to be uncrossable chasms.

The world feels sick right now.  May the immune system of the civic body be up to the tasks and trials put to it in this stage of our journey.

With love and curiosity (and resistance and hope),
--Susan

Muckle Sangs and Other Thoughts (Weaving, Spinning, & Music)

I sold my flax, I sold my wheel, to buy my love a sword of steel
So it in battle he might wield, Johnny's gone for a soldier.
- Gone the Rainbow, Peter, Paul, & Mary

So much going on!

And now as always, I find when I'm overwhelmed I turn to spinning, knitting, and weaving, and so while I am trying to keep up with the bewilderment that accompanies these uncertain times, I find that I'm tearing through the roving on hand creating yarn, I actually have a project on the loom that I'm making progress on, and I've knit one pussy hat (pattern courtesy of the Pussy Project), am in the middle of another, with a third possible, though the third is more tentative.

As I started knitting, like I do, I looked up at M1 and said, this pattern is sort of whack, why didn't they just knit it in the round, then you don't have to worry about getting the ends  even or running out of yarn or... meh. I'm going to just do this in the round... She looked at me and started laughing and said, "This is exactly what you do when you're cooking too!  You can't follow recipes OR patterns without 'fixing' them, can you!?"  Nailed it.  She seems to have been watching me...  As a result I've come to accept that my cooking and my fiber-related projects are all more experiments and process focused rather than result and production focused. It makes it way easier to 'frog' (tear out) a whole knitting project when you aren't attached. Which reminds me, I have a failed felted sweater project that I should maybe create something clever out of.  Something to put on the back burner in my mind for tonight. 

As I've been in the midst of all this fiber work, I sometimes work in silence, using the the rhythm of the work to stabilize my breathing, give my hands something to do, and let my mind settle, and slow down enough to get into a mindfulness practice state.  It's very meditative for me.  I find a lot of similarities in the benefits of working with fiber in the way I do with what I try to accomplish with mindfulness practices -- I'm often more successful with fiber work because it does give my hands (and if I'm spinning with the wheel, my feet too!) something that doesn't require a lot of brain to do, but is calmingly repetitive.  I can easily lose an hour or two or three with fibers.  

Interesting to me is that Gandhi felt that returning to hand spinning and weaving were the way back to self-sufficiency and liberation for the Indian people, to the point that he proclaimed the charkha (a type of spinning wheel) and spinning the symbol of non-violence (A Bizarre Spin on The Spinning Wheel) as an act of deliberation rather than provocation. As such, the portable charkhas, often built into old cigar boxes for ease of portability became quite popular.  I have a cigar box I've been meaning to make a charkha out of and have not gotten there quite yet. All good things in time (unless I just eventually buy one because Reasons). 

Not quite the direction I was thinking this newsletter would veer off into but ties in well nonetheless!

When I'm not working in silence (or often spinning is done while I watch tv with the family), I listen to music.  Often, and lately, this music has been traditional Irish, British Isles, Appalachian/blue grass.  I have always found this type of music to be very resonant.  For Christmas this year, I got an album that had been on my wishlist for a number of years, of some of the Child Ballads by Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, introducing me to yet another version of the much beloved Tam Lin. The Child Ballads are an index of English and Scottish traditional songs (and American variants) indexed and studied by Francis James Child in the latter part of the 19th century.  This inevitably leads me off to the traditional Scottish Muckle Sangs (Great or Big Songs) - the long narrative songs, of which Tam Lin is also one.  I have a couple anthropological studies gathered albums done early in the 20th century, one of Irish music and one of some of the Scottish Muckle Sangs. I find the difference between the polish of current recording musicians and the beloved village singers of the earlier times fascinating. Once song belonged to the people and it is clear in the voices.  I love them all.  I should probably pick a different Muckle Sang but I love Tam Lin and the variations in the story as it comes through the ages is a point of fascinating illustration in and of itself to me, so here's Tam Lin sung by Betsy Johnston from Scottish Traditions 5: The Muckle Sangs for contrast.

I know, I know, what does this have to do with fiber and spinning and whatnot?  Well, in a sideways manner, some waulking songs came across my path again in the past week.  Waulking is fulling (or felting) woolen tweed.  Traditionally women beat the tweed after soaking it in urine saved and gathered from the village houses as the combination of urine and water helped neutralize the oils of melted livers of dog-fish that had been used to dress the wool.  All that on top of the smell of wet wool - even thinking about it makes my eyes water a bit at the smell!  

My first introduction to waulking songs was in library school.  I took a solitary "fun" class that was selfish and just for me rather than looking towards any direct career path I had at the time.  I took the storytelling class, taught by none other than Dr. Margaret Read MacDonald.  Combining my fascination with the stories carried by the traditional music of Britain and Ireland, as well as America (somewhere I've got an album of Revolutionary War era songs too), and being not far before rewarding myself for surviving a different adjunct's course on Content Management by buying a spinning wheel, I thought I'd look up songs associated with spinning, weaving, knitting... anything that came up?  O hai, waulking songs!  As graduate school goes, and then so life, I dug in, found some lovely songs and then the demands of the day-to-day get in the way.  So it was a lovely synchronicity as I've been listening to the Child Ballads and the Muckle Sangs again to see a post come through my Facebook feed incidentally on waulking songs! Including this lovely song by Karen Matheson - My Father Sent Me to the House of Sorrow. 

And just to wrap things up, the song, that sticks in my brain as the first song that I can recall tied to spinning - originating from Ireland as Siúil A Rún (in college I discovered the gorgeous Clannad version) but in America found as early as the Revolutionary War era sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary as a variant of 'Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier/Buttermilk Hill' called Gone the Rainbow and I have no memory of the first time I heard it - it's one of those songs that seems to have always been there in my memory.

This interweaving of music and people's work and life experiences is something that brings me back to folk music time and time again. Today was entwined with fiber work that I also enjoy, but perhaps future newsletters will cover some of the other areas that have also captured my interests and attention.  

With love and curiosity,
--Susan