Communication Stalls

With all the gamesplayers in the local suburbs home for the holidays, the only time I can get enough room on the telephone lines to sign on is the middle of the night!

The days are pleasant; terrifically cold, but brilliantly sunny. I traded with Dan, he's taken Civilizations home, and I've got his Bill Bryson, that Steve gave him last Christmas. Bryson takes another travel trip -- this time, though, a tour of the physical sciences. In between, I've enjoyed 1491, a journalist's game attempt to delineate the Americas in that year. His diagram of the Maya calendar is worth the price of the book. He does it gears within gears.

The pile of prayer shawls is a respectable heap. If I continue to have trouble picking up new Daily Sudokus online, that pile should increase. See you when I can!

His Name

The author's name is Felipe Fernandez-Armestos. That does mean I've closed the book for awhile. The last chapter is dense, and harder to plow through; probably that's where he means to really draw conclusions, and probably I'm resisting accepting them. With so many reservations, that means that I'm going to be ready to start in reading it all again pretty quickly. Still, it's a terrific relief to be enjoying the overall recap of history from the perspectives that F-A offers, and that I accept wholeheartedly. Terrific.

Of course, I went back to the burgundy boucle and plowed through that, too. If it dries today and I get the fringe on it, it'll be right next to the first one. I do love the softness and the colors--the yarn shades through several depths of color. Soft as the angel's touch that one hopes will help whoever uses this shawl. Can't believe that really heavy or really warm is what I want to offer, to someone who's not well.

I've decided that I really know who my good Samaritan is, who's keeping my driveway and sidewalks clear. Must be the neighbor next door. How does he do it, so early or so late that I never even hear the roar? A silent snowblower? Even the front stairs were cleared, the first time. Talk about angels, I think I've got one next door.

Looking at History

I've found a writer I thoroughly admire. He chases me to the dictionary pretty often, and I'm always pleased afterward because he's used precisely a correct word. His name isn't familiar to me yet, because I don't close the book and see it on the cover, it's a Spanish-shaped name, his family roots are the Spanish shores he describes about halfway through the book. Some of his footnotes refer to many other things he's published, but I may not be so pleased about all these former works, because he notes in the intro that this is a new venture, written in a big hurry to get down the outlines of the project while it was bursting in his mind.

In my life, I've complained about the history I've been taught, and sought for the bits I could find about what history really was, away from the Western-civilization-oriented way it was presented back in the day. Spent some time with Jared Diamond last year, to little avail. But this book was printed after 2000, it's named Civilizations, and its orientation is something I'm totally comfortable with.

I raved on to Dan last week about it, and he recommended a book by Tom Standage(?) called History in Six Glasses, or Six Drinks, and this is the writer who wrote The Victorian Internet which was great, and I kind of started to read it, but my hand just went back to the book Civilizations. I suspect that the drink-based book will be pretty good, but I've got to finish this one first, and it takes a while, with all the little trips to the dictionary. Well, one trip each fifty pages, at least. "topos" was the first trip. One of the others meant "living on the ocean".

Probably I'll have to read it two or three times, which I don't usually do. But I'm so happy with his orientation that I'm probably missing some large degree of whatever he really wants to present, just paddling along enjoying what I myself am finding in him. God bless the man. Fernandez something-something. He's a professor from Oxford who was at Brown University doing a project on colonial development, and that's when he wrote this; it was presented in a long series of lectures here in the States, as he developed it. He's got grasp; he's got background; he's able to present interestingly; and I'm so pleased. I'm gratified. This is the history I can pay attention to without constantly hedging and having reservations. He might not even be intending to write history!

Kindness of Neighbors

The long snowy day went on into evening still full of flying misty snow. There was no extra loud noise that I noticed, but I saw when I turned off lights and admired the depth of the fall that some wonderfully kind neighbor had snowblowed all my sidewalks and even my driveway. I'm so enormously grateful.

Even the walk around the house is done.

So Busy

The shawls are stacking up nicely. There are four hanging in the hall closet now, and their fringe is satisfactory. While producing a crocheted shawl can be in line with the prayerful approach recommended, getting one fringed presents another position. Maybe I've got the right methods going now. Maybe the Holy Ghost took over.

My absolute favorite is crocheted with these huge needles, therefore big lacy stitches, out of burgundy colored boucle, which is a really thin soft and fuzzy thread; the color varies within the huge skein, and the really dark sections are so hard to handle on my lap that I ended up crocheting on the wooden dining room table with the shawl moving across, flat, so that I could see what I was doing. It's so soft, and so pretty, I just love it. I've started one of the sort Norah told us about: change yarn at the end of each long knitted row, leaving twelve-inch ends -- which is the fringe. I'm repeating yarn now. A second rosy one, a second varicolored in blue one. Curiously, it's not so engrossing to work the second shawl in the same material as it was the first time.

I block them in the kitchen and roll them in huge white towels; lay it out upstairs in the south bedroom where a shower curtain is on top of the bedspread, because each shawl is about as long as the bed. That's such a nice warm room, the sunlight pours in. Even today, when we expect snow to fall a lot pretty soon, the day is bright with sunshine. I brought the orchid pot inside yesterday, the pot was so cold to the touch out on the back porch; but it's going back out again, maybe tomorrow? I should crochet a little shawl for it?