World into world.

There is something surreal happening over at David Byrne's blog. Well, OK, it is technically not surreal in and of itself, but for me, reading it is.

This is one of those rare moments when one central piece of my cultural world is commenting on other central pieces. The writer, of course is Byrne, whose pop lyrics and music and even his rummaging around in the musical traditions of other places came to me at a crucial time in my discovery of the world. I know, that sounds melodramatic. But when I tried to write "in my discovery of music," that just did not encompass what I meant. I guess this is because "at that age," such simple things as music--as song lyrics or hooks or tunes--can bring a world with them. And did.

And one thing he is writing about is the concept of the standard, which he is exploring through songs from classic Disney movies and showtunes written by Cole Porter and George Gershwin. He explicitly talks about the Stay Awake compilation from 1988, the title of which I have been trying to think of since I re-encountered Tom Waits' version of "Heigh Ho" on Orphans. And although he does not specifically mention it, I cannot read his discussion without thinking of Red Hot + Blue, where, of course, Byrne contributed his own brilliant version of "Don't Fence Me In."

So, OK, strange enough.

But now he is planning to perform with Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Which led him to contemplate what it is about Paul Simon's music that makes it so compelling. And Paul Simon was another one of maybe four or five performers whose music dominated my teenage psyche. In the course of that discussion he talks about You're the One, a more recent album, of course, but one that immediate struck me because its lyrics seem to get what it means to grow up, to grow older. But here is what David Byrne said:

Like many others, I grew up listening to and learning the Simon & Garfunkel repertoire. However, it was one of his more recent records — You’re the One — that really knocked me out, even more than Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, which one might expect me to identify with, since I was also collaborating with musicians from Africa and Brazil around the same time. The record didn’t sell that well, but to my ears, he had finally internalized all he’d learned from his earlier collaborations. He had made something that didn’t sound like any of his sources or inspirations, yet couldn’t have been made without them. We crossed paths somewhere and I told him how much I liked that record and maybe that helped break the ice.

Some months ago, we started meeting occasionally and we’d fall into talking about how we write and what the process is and where we get stuck and when it’s easy. I would sit, rapt, as I felt like I was hearing the words of a master songwriter, a kind of magician who was going to reveal to me, over lunch, some of his best tricks. Here was a more contemporary Gershwin or Cole Porter who was going to tell me a little of how it was done. Listen up.

Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that. Specific harmonic devices don’t always work for everyone in the same way, for example. At times, Paul and I might actually use very similar ways of writing words, but in the end, what we gravitate to — the lyrics we choose to be best and most suitable — is unique to each of us. So his tricks are essentially useless to me. I could, however, extrapolate, and find common ground in the decision-making process along the way. Our discussions yielded more about what might drive an artist to continue creating than they did songwriting advice. What does one do when confronted with a problem? And how can an artist remain passionate and interested in writing little songs?

Clinton releases NCAA picks.

CHARLOTTE, NC (AP)--Sporting a Jordan Brand t-shirt reading “There are no Cinderellas,” Hillary Clinton today released her NCAA tournament bracket in a press conference held on the Davidson College campus in Charlotte, NC. Her bracket reveals some predictions that even her strongest supporters had not expected.



“Senator Obama claims to be a big basketball fan,” she said, referring to the release of Obama’s NCAA picks just as the tournament began. “But even he,” she said amidst cheers from her supporters, “could not see that Davidson would beat Wisconsin!”

Some commentators have suggested that Sen. Clinton’s prediction that West Virginia would beat Duke in the second round might cost her supporters in North Carolina, whose Democratic primary is May 6. “An endorsement of Duke is not an endorsement of the great state of North Carolina,” she said. New Jersey’s primary was held on February 5.

Sen. Clinton’s bracket beats out Barack Obama’s in the early rounds, too, where she predicted the first-round upsets in Tampa. “I champion the underdog,” she said. “I know how hard it is to make a living in these economic times.”

Asked about her mistaken prediction that St. Joseph’s would upset higher ranked Oklahoma, Sen. Clinton said, “I was given false information about the point guard by the [St. Joe’s] administration.”

Sen. Obama has received some criticism for his picks, with sports talk radio hosts claiming that his choice of Pitt to beat Stanford to go to the Final Four was politically motivated. Asked whether her own decision to take Pitt all the way to the championship game was similarly driven by politics, Mrs. Clinton responded, “I understand the drive and determination of the people of Pennsylvania.”

In her speech, Sen. Clinton also argued for a new moniker for regional semi-finals. “The Elite Eight is not a viable name in these political times,” she said. “Republicans love to joke about the liberal elite,” she said. “When I am president, that round will be renamed The Superdeleg Eight.”

Errors from the touch of God.

If you do not read the comments section here at "The Secrets of Isis," then you have missed one of the most exciting discussions ever, on the topic of error.



In short, Mateen noticed that I had left a verb out of a sentence. I inserted the verb, making the correction visible to all. Then Scott asked how I decide whether to flag an error or not. I tried to determine some kind of principled position from a somewhat unthought-through decision.


Meanwhile, Mateen noticed that he, too, had made an error, this time of spelling. He wished it had been deliberate, but could not so claim it. Scott, based on Mateen's error, had devised his own reading of Mateen's message, only to have Mateen's correction make him realize that he too had been making a long-standing error of spelling, and the whole brilliant image he had constructed based on this small misspelling came crashing down in a torrent of disillusion. Then Mateen, a poet as well as an important Spartan, mentioned a poem by Aaron Fogel, about which more shortly.

Do you see how exciting this is?

Of course, we are hardly the first to have something to say on the topic of Error. To wit, in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Redcrosse Knight encounters Errour herself, in her very den:

This is the wandring wood, this Errours den,
A monster vile, whom God and man does hate:
Therefore I read beware. Fly fly (quoth then
The fearefull Dwarfe:) this is no place for liuing men.

But full of fire and greedy hardiment,
The youthfull knight could not for ought be staide,
But forth vnto the darksome hole he went,
And looked in: his glistring armor made
A litle glooming light, much like a shade,
By which he saw the vgly monster plaine,
Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide,
But th'other halfe did womans shape retaine,
Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.

And as she lay vpon the durtie ground,
Her huge long taile her den all ouerspred,
Yet was in knots and many boughtes vpwound,
Pointed with mortall sting. Of her there bred
A thousand yong ones, which she dayly fed,
Sucking vpon her poisonous dugs, each one
Of sundry shapes, yet all ill fauored:
Soone as that vncouth light vpon them shone,
Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone.

(By the by, do you notice how reptilian Errour is? How snake like? Could this--"Snakes in The Faerie Queene"--have been a predecessor to--oh never mind.)

The point is, Error occupies an unfavored place in so many minds. In Latin, the word suggests a wandering or a straying, a deviation from the truth--and Spenser seems to share this feeling. Errors are mistakes, misunderstandings, and no one wants to be the last man to die for a mistake. A person who makes an error is at fault. Computer errors lead to the blue screen of death.


Errors count against players in baseball. Grammatical errors lead to points off on a paper. Newspapers do what they can to correct errors quickly. Errors in judgment, mistakes, accidents--they all can have their cost.

But what messages from elsewhere do we shut down in our urge to correct? The book I have just published (woo-hoo!) is a scholarly edition of a crazy book--one riddled with errors. As editors, we were faced with the questions: Can we make the reading of this book easier without losing the wackiness of the real thing? At what point do our corrections change the text irremediably? If the decision were mine to make alone--if our edition were not part of a series with established principles--I would have said, let's keep it as it is. It is, after all, a book where errors of spelling, numbering, italicization, attribution, etc. are part of the experience. Why lose that? But, the world being the world, I compromised: we made many small emendations (all noted in my extensive table at the back, of course!) and left some errors extant.

Frank Steinman would tell me I am a horrible meddler. He is the speaker of Aaron Fogel's poem "The Printer's Error." Experienced printer that he is, Steinman lays out several kinds of error, ranging from errors of chance, to moments of rebellion on the part of type-setters, to

. . . errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.

In all cases, Steinman warns editors, especially us academic types, to BACK OFF, because all errors "are in practice the / same and indistinguishable." He concludes:

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.

Amen, Frank.

And go Heels.

Madness.

It is not every year that the college basketball season aligns so perfectly with my spring break, but wow: when it does, it does. So while last weekend was all about the ACC tournament, this weekend has been the national tournaments. And I have brackets in play for both the men's and women's tournaments, along with another pool, which I will describe in a minute.

My women's bracket is doing OK, and so far none of my mis-picks (Hartford? Florida State? Georgia? Nebraska? Iowa State?) were supposed to win their next game, so there is great hope.

My men's bracket is a mess. I had Georgetown going to the Final Four, Clemson to the Elite Eight, and U Conn to the Sweet Sixteen, among other things. I am most sad about Clemson, of course, but I suppose they used up all they had beating Duke in the ACC tourney, and that was a worthy sacrifice. (Go West Virginia.) I see that Barack Obama and I are in similar boats, at least in terms of our Final Fours, since he has Pitt going that far. I am sure there was nothing political about that choice, just as my faith that Clemson would beat Kansas was reasonable.... Neither of us imagined the magic that West Virginia would do.

Most exciting, though, is the pool I am in with friends where we had to draft teams and then see who gets the most wins (there are also lesser prizes for the person with the second most wins and the person with the winning team). In that pool, I was tied for least wins at the end of round 1, and as of right now, all my teams (UConn, Vandy, Miami, UNLV, Baylor, Oral Roberts [I know], Mt. St. Mary's) [edited to add: are out] except one. And given the team I have left, I do not even care that I have lost all my others. Want to guess who it is? Hint: I got the first pick in the draft.

As the child of a dear friend would say, Happy Zut Alors!

Vacation time.

It has been years since I let go of my thought that I needed to comment on every political development of interest. And since I am on vacation, my attention has not been focused on politics, but rather on trying to identify the strange bulbous creatures that washed up on the beach after Saturday night's crazy storms. (I have not really succeeded, but they might be cannonball jellies.) Beach walks after storms are instructive. I usually tend to think of the fragility of ocean creatures in terms of broken shells, but seeing soft transparent body after soft transparent body broadens my definitions.

But after reading any number of commentaries about Obama's Philadelphia speech about race, I finally sat down this morning and read the whole thing.

Wow.

I do not have a lot to add about how he seized the moment with aplomb, or about his frank assessment of race in America. But I do have a couple of thoughts about the way this moment has unfolded.

First, he received a bit of criticism for not responding immediately. Instead, he took what was almost starting to look like too long, but time enough to prepare this immensely thoughtful and nuanced response. I suspect that in the long run, the "long time" that he took will be forgotten, and what will be remembered are his words.

Second, I am impressed, yes, by the way he acknowledged the role of Wright in his religious life, but more by the fact that he will hold up some words of the man but not all. Some people have suggested that he should have left Wright's church, and that maybe he only did not because it did not occur to him to rock the boat.

But why are we as a culture so quick to separate ourselves from things with which we do not agree? Why don't we spend more time listening to the ideas of people who come from different perspectives, or who hold different convictions, or who base their thinking on different fundamental beliefs? I am not saying that in so doing we much always change our beliefs based on what we hear. But I do feel like I learn more from reading the columns of thoughtful conservatives than of mouthing-off liberals, whether I finally agree with their conclusions or not. And on a more personal level, I have a number of friends with whom I could not disagree more on issues about which I have strong convictions, but I still tend to think such people intelligent, or moral, or true to themselves.

It is a relief, and frankly it gives me quite a charge, to hear a political leader acknowledge complexity in this way.

Now excuse me: I have some marine biology to study.

Confession.

I know, I know. I should be writing to you about the beach--and I will--but for now I have to show you some things:

Isn't that pretty? I am going to make a springy sweater with that. It will be my first time knitting with a linen blend.

I am less certain about exactly what I will make with this delicious item from Interlacements:

But for now I don't even care: it is just so pretty to admire!

I went to Knit yesterday and blew about one year's pay. I feel slightly guilty, but fundamentally thrilled at all these colors, such as these from Great Adirondack:

And I could not resist a little Noro:

That is tagged for a hat for me, even though I know I will not get to wear it much or at all until next winter. But hey: mostly I cannot wait to knit with it.

Citations I.

This is not quite knowing what the earth requires:
earthiness, earthliness, or things ethereal;
whether spiritus mundi notices bad faith
or if it cares; defraudings at the source,
the bare usury of the species. In the end
one is as broken as the vows and tatters,
petitions with blood on them, the charred prayers
spiralling godwards on intense thermals.

No decent modicum, agreed. I'd claim
the actual is once cruder and finer,
without fuss carrying its own weight. Still
I think of poetry as it was said
of Alanbrooke's war diary: a work done
to gain, or regain, possession of himself,
as a means of survival and, in that sense,
a mode of moral life.

--Geoffrey Hill, from A Treatise of Civil Power (2007)

1962.

Any of you out there who teach know that there are times when your students knock your socks off, and until today, that has been my favorite thing about teaching at Clemson.

But today? Well.

Pretty amazing to watch those Tigers actually making free throws--and to knock Duke out of the tourney? Priceless.

Clemson is going to the ACC championship final for the first time since 1962. My mother claims that that game will be win-win for me, but she's wrong. Once a Heel, always a Heel.

But can we have another moment to think back on Oliver Purnell telling Mike K. that his team played a good game anyway? Heh.

Swim.

On Wednesday, I saw my surgeon again, and I got the go-ahead to return to swimming, not just kicking. My physical therapist and I devised a schedule for coming back--starting back at about 500 yards of swimming, with a maximum of three practices per week, and then increasing 10% each week. If I have problems--such as pain--I back away from that increase until the pain goes away. If there are areas in my stroke where I have trouble with mobility, he will give me more exercises. I will continue doing my regular exercises daily for a month, and then gradually back off some of the exercises and I get more of my strengthening from swimming.

I am thrilled to be at this point. I can remember any number of times when I thought this day would not come.

But I also have mixed feelings, in that I have not decided yet how seriously I want to return to the swimming. Of course I am excited to have other options for exercise and fitness (which I have seriously lost over the last six months or so, not to mention the months before that), but I am still wrestling with how I want to pursue this. Starting in the fall of 2004 and culminating in the spring of 2006, I had achieved a very high level of swimming fitness: during that period I achieved several USMS national cuts, trained at a high level (swimming with masters and my team's kids' squad), competed in a lot of meets (including numerous USA Swimming meets where I raced with little kids--humbling), and medaled in the spring USMS SCY national championship. To return to my fitness level of spring 2006 would require a tremendous amount of work, and I would basically be starting from scratch. I do not yet know that I want to make that commitment.

But for now, I am just swimming. On Wednesday, after my appointment with my surgeon, I went to the pool and did a session of 2000 meters, of which 450 meters were swimming. Much of that swimming (300 meters) I did while wearing long fins, and I never swam more than a 50 at a time (for most of the swimming, I alternated 25 swim with 25 kick). I was both not surprised and a little surprise by how hard it was to swim, as I realized how weak my arms are (especially the left, but really both of them). On Thursday and also this morning, I was very stiff in my left arm, but PT exercises and stretching helps loosen that up.

And now for the next week or so, I am at the beach, doing the spring break thing. Note: for me, the "spring break thing" does not include big parties with lots of undergraduates gone wild. Instead, it will be a pretty quiet week, where my biggest decisions are which knitting project to work on, whether to go for a bike ride or watch the ACC tourney, whether to eat here in the condo or go to a restaurant, whether to sit around in my jammies or venture out for a newspaper, and how far to walk on the beach. I'll need to do some work in there too, but still. My condo looks out on the tennis courts, so this morning I am listening to the pock, pock, pock of someone's first game of the day.

I am going to see if by the end of this week, I can get myself back to a point where I can return to swim practice next week. I think that having feedback from my coach now, when I am trying to rebuild my stroke and trying to be very careful about pacing my recovery, could be a very important thing. But first I need to get to a mental place where I feel good about being at practice.

But for now, should I ride my bike on the beach or go pick up a New York Times?

p.s. Go Heels.

Ms. T.

This has been a hard year of losing teachers, first a high-school English teacher who was my yearbook advisor, and now the woman who embodied the Talented and Gifted Program for fourth- and fifth-graders in my city. That program gave me faith--that I have even now--that even if the place I found myself was dreary, somewhere only a shortbus ride away was a place where people did not laugh at me for being smart.

I learned from Tim today that the woman who first embodied that faith for me died a month ago. I suppose that these days the children of Newport News have a different teacher for that program, and who they will come to associate with their own faith. For me, though, there could be no other.

It is funny: I have, in my twenty-two years of formal education, had a lot of teachers, many of them immensely inspiring (let's not talk about the others today). But you never do forget the first teacher who really expected you to stretch, and gave you some idea of how to start, and made the whole thing seem like the most fun a person could ever have. Ms. T., each time I walk into my own classroom, I do it with the hope of bringing you back to life and introducing you to another group of kids hungry for what you gave us all.

Who knew I looked so much like Felipe Gonzalez?

Have you see the thing where they tell you what celebrities you look like?



I have to say, I don't really see the Faith Hill thing.

You?

Why I spend most of my disposable income on music.

Twice recently, I have, through music, found myself facing a confrontation between a younger me and the present me.

The first happened at a recent performance here by the National Symphony Orchestra, who were just completing a residency in South Carolina, which included concerts here and in several other cities in the Upstate. Among other pieces on their program was Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Had you been there for my childhood, you would know that this was a piece I loved, listening to it over and over again, studying descriptions of the paintings on which it was based, learning to place many parts of the original piano score, incorporating parts of it into the "soundtrack" for a slideshow, about Lucien Stryk's poem "Crow," that I made as a school project in middle school. My favorites were always the big bossy parts and the minor-key spooky parts--the little gnome, the big peasant cart, the section about Baba Yaga. My family had an LP recording of the orchestral version and at some point I bought an LP of the piano version.

(Apparently I was less interested in Mussorgsky by the time I was buying CDs, because I realized after the concert that I had neither version.)

As far as I can recall, this was the first time I have ever watched a performance of this piece, and I have little training in orchestral music. The result was that I knew what the piece was supposed to sound like, but I had not ever considered what instruments were making those sounds, which left me wholly unprepared for the giant bell during the Great Gates at Kiev--which the percussionist had to climb a stepladder to even reach.

More than anything, though, I was unprepared for the emotional encounter I would have with the piece, because there, sitting next to me in the balcony, or perhaps in my lap, was a much younger me, whose enthusiasm for this over the top intensity had not been tempered by years of sarcasm and irony. Instead, this person still delighted in the music--still remembering the progressions of the piece just before they happened, reveling in the wobbly rhythms of the ballet of the little unhatched chicks, feeling chills in her scalp when the percussion section went to work in final section.

When I was in high school, I fell in love with Shostakovich's 5th Sympony, and especially its enormous final movement. Or maybe just as much, with the anticipation in the third movement of what is to come in that final movement. So much of music is about time passing and time to come, and for music that you know well, the pleasure of anticipation is as powerful as the pleasure of the sounds themselves. In a symphonic performance, this anticipation can be even greater, as you watch the middle strings ready their bows, or the tuba player place the world's biggest mute in the bell of his horn, or you watch a percussionist raise the big clapper.

But I digress from my digression: One time during my first year of college I was riding with a classmate to an off-campus gathering. His car was convertible, it was a beautiful day, and he was blasting Shostakovich from his super-duper stereo. "I absolutely love this piece!" I said, thinking to myself how different college was from high school and how here there were people who thought like me. "I know," he said, "It is such magnificent kitsch!"

I was crest-fallen. I knew what kitsch was from reading the novels of Milan Kundera, who associated kitsch with everything that was aesthetically, intellectually, and ethically wrong with Soviet Russia. How could something that I loved so much, that I took so seriously, be kitsch?

The person who sat in my lap during the NSO concert had never heard of kitsch, and if this piece was on the program because it was so well known as to be unoffensive, well, that had never occurred to her either. And what an unadulterated thrill it was to hear that music through her ears!

The second such confrontation happened last night, when I went to see U2 3D. Had you lived in my house when I was in high school, you would remember that numerous large photographs of the members of this band adorned my walls, that I had all their albums (well, technically, their tapes...), and that, well, maybe I will not today confess to my fierce crush on Bono. That was about 20 years ago (oy), but did you know that even after 20 years' time, those feelings do not go away either?

Rock music is unbelievable that way, because there I was in the Hollywood 20 last night, wearing my 3D-glasses, reduced to the powerful feelings of a teenager. But not exactly: because I was still partly my present self, but also that earlier self, as I imagined myself in what seemed to be the world's largest soccer arena, watching this band that can still kick some serious ass with all the power that they did back in the day. Granted, Bono wasn't talking about the Troubles directly (and I wonder if most of the folks in the crowd in Buenos Aires, like my students, have no memory of that), or about Apartheid, but the songs were still there, now applicable to other horrors, and he still performs an unabashed disgust at these recent incarnations. The Edge and Adam Clayton and the only drummer I can think of who uses the appelation ", Jr." as a part of his name were still unbelievably excellent to watch. It took me back to the Hampton Coliseum and the Joshua Tree tour, when I was having my eardrums blasted away and straining to get as close to a band as a person could from the upper ring of seating. It reminded me of playing Rattle and Hum over and over and over, listening to a tape of it in the car with a friend who could never get the lyrics to "Desire" right. And of listening to "Hallelujah, Here She Comes" on my walkman as I walked to the music building in college.

So today I went out and bought a new CD recording of Pictures at an Exhibition, and the remastered Joshua Tree, and Zooropa, all of which I used to have, in some non-digital format. I am thrilled to hear them again, even though I know that in playing them again and again now, I am inadvertently exorcising the spirits that inhabit them.

One sock down.

I finished my first sock on Sunday:


Seriously, despite everything you may have heard, kitchener stitch--the way you graft the toe together seamlessly--is not that hard, and it is amazingly cool.

And I feel amazingly cool for having finished one sock.


Sadly, my other foot feels amazingly chilly with no sock to wear.

So I started on the second one before we headed off for our Superbowl party. I knit about 4 inches of it during the game (and got many looks from people wondering why in the world a person would knit socks), but then the work week came, and now I am stalled again. But it will come.

In the words of many a sock-knitter, faced with an impending Dook game, GO HEELS.

On Having Been X-ing for a Long Time.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to have been doing something for a long time? Of course, this questions presumes that perhaps there is something that you have started recently--whether it be a new hobby, a new job, a new sport, a new baby, etc. Perhaps as you read this, you can insert your own new thing in lieu of my obsession with knitting.

I read blogs or books by (in my case) knitters who have been knitting for a long time with a combined sense of wonder and desire. Perhaps the person makes reference to a book published in the '70s that now has a tattered cover, many dog-eared pages, and is full of scribbles. Or perhaps the person talks about the many many sweaters that they have made, the many techniques learned, the many pairs of socks worn through. In all these cases, I wonder, what would it feel like to have that knowledge, that memory? Then, soon afterwards, I want very much to have that knowledge, that memory--partly to understand what it would feel like, and partly because I have come to love knitting so much.

For me, this experience is radically different from, say, reading something written about swimming. Many of those posts I read with the thought, "well, yeah, I know what that is like," or "man, he had it worse than I did," or "I wonder what it was like to be that serious about your sport." Sure, even with swimming, I can think ahead of what it might be like to be a masters swimmer in her 60s, to have had that much more experience with the thing, but still: I have put in my yardage, and I know something about what swimming is.

When I read writings of long-time knitters, though, I cannot really imagine what it might feel like to be so experienced. What is it like to have designed many things (and had them come out well)? What is it like to have made sweaters back in the 1980s when we as a culture were making very poor choices about colors and fibers? What is it like to look back on a book that you have consulted so many times that it has become a part of your soul?

Perhaps it is something about these cycles of wonder and desire that lead us to try new things, to spend time with them.

Dual citizenship.

Over at "The Seated View," Lene Andersen, responded today to a description of a book as containing stories about people dealing with chronic illnesses. She quoted from that description and responded to it:

And I quote from the Book Descriptions: "In 2003 Cohen published Blindsided, a bestselling memoir of illness. The outpouring of support revealed to him that not only does the public want to hear from people who overcome the challenges of illness, but that in the isolated world of illness, there are people who want their voices to be heard. Strong at the Broken Places was born of the desire of many to share their stories in the hope that the sick and those who love them will see that they are not alone each” (emphasis mine). And I got a little stroppy.

She goes on to explain "the stroppy":

Which brings me to the reason for the stroppy: that line about the overcoming (which isn’t written by the author, so I’m not dissing him). I looked it up and to overcome: to defeat, to prevail over, to surmount, to conquer. And that's the tricky bit, because traditionally, yes, the public only wants to hear from people who "overcome" the challenges of illness. They don't want to hear about the daily struggle unless it culminates in an achievement, unless you're the plucky kind, preferably pretty enough to qualify for poster child status, the one who can smile through the hardship, remind the great unwashed of how lucky they are to be healthy. And you know what? There is no overcoming of disability.

(Even though I have quoted a lot from her piece, you should read the whole thing.)

I am ready to confess that I have not (yet?) experienced living with a chronic condition like MS, or ALS, or arthritis, or Crohn's. But I am going to try to learn what I can from over a year of pain and a couple of spikes.

One thing I have noticed so much recently--and that Lene's piece made me think about--is how ready people are for me to be finished with my recovery. I have received any number of e-mails from friends saying, "I trust by now that your shoulder is back to normal..." or well-wishing comments from colleagues, making it clear that what they are ready for is good news. These comments are hard to hear, because, frankly, I am ready for it, too: who isn't, really. But after I smile at them and tell them how much better everything is, I feel like a big fibber, because I am also extremely aware of how far I have to go, of what is still wrong, and also of my fear (understanding?) that this recovery process will probably continue until something else goes downhill.

In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry writes about the inability of a person in physical pain and a person not in pain to communicate about it:

For the person whose pain it is, it is 'effortlessly' grasped (that is, even with the most heroic effort it cannot not be grasped); while for the person outside the sufferer's body, what is 'effortless' is not grasping it (it is easy to remain wholly unaware of its existence; even with effort, one may remain in doubt about its existence or may retain the astonishing freedom of denying its existence; and finally, if with the best effort of sustained attention one successfully apprehends it, the aversiveness of the 'it' one apprehends will only be a shadowy fraction of the actual 'it'). So, for the person in pain, so incontestably and unnegotiably present is it that 'having pain' may come to be thought of as the most vibrant example of what it is to 'have certainty,' while for the other person it is so elusive that 'hearing about pain' may exist as the primary model of what it is 'to have doubt.'

When the pain from my infection was coming on (I did not then know what the problem was), I called my then-orthopaedist's office for help. The nurse told me to take some Advil. I told her the pain was very severe. She said she would talk to the doctor and call back later. "Later" means two different things when you have a schedule to uphold and when (it turns out) you have a colony of organisms outgrowing and devouring your joint. Yet, I see upon reflection, this nurse probably gets many complaints of pain: it is easier and more natural (and probably even necessary) to doubt.

Looking back now on my account of that weekend of pain, I am reminded that I do not succeed in communicating the feeling of the pain. In fact, my memory of the weekend makes it hard for me to imagine that that account describes the same experience that I remember. As Virginia Woolf says, "English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear has no words for the shiver or the headache...." I do describe the various parts around the pain, and, I am ashamed to note, I do it all in the rhetoric of see-how-much-better-I-am-now. Well.

Susan Sontag writes:

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Sometimes now I do feel like I was living abroad for a time, and even now I take occasional trans-oceanic flights, getting back just in time for some meeting or to teach a class. These days, my trips are less frequent than they once were, my stays abroad shorter. In fact, I can even think as the night-side kingdom as "abroad."

In my file of important documents in my desk I still have my c. 1997 readers' cards from the British Library and the National Library of Ireland, for whenever I need to go back. I expect that even if for a time I stash my night-side passport in that folder, it will never expire.

Back to the well.

I had been holding off on vertical kicking for a while, waiting for my knees to adapt to kicking again. It seems they are adapting, so I did some verticals last night--and remembered quickly that it is its own physical skill and much harder than horizontal kicking. All to say, I am still out of shape.

I did three rounds of a set where you kick hard for 10 seconds, rest for 30, kick hard for 20 seconds, rest for 30, kick hard for 30 seconds, rest for 30. Based on the sets I used to do, where it was always 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, or else 20/30/40 on, I thought this would be a breeze. Wrong. The 30-second-on segments kicked my butt (so to speak).

But this is all part of the process. (She said, hoping this time she would believe it.)

MONDAY, 4 FEBRUARY
1000 warm-up (400 kick with fins; 300 kick w/o fins; 300 alt. 25 one-arm, 25 kick)
500 kick, descend sets (no fins)
.....3x50 FR kick descend
.....4x50 BR kick descend
.....3x50 BA kick descend
100 easy kick
300 flutter kick with board: 6x50s alt. 25 flat board and 25 "tombstone"
100 easy
8 minutes vertical kick (=~400 yards)
200 cooldown
TOTAL: ~2600 yards

Good for your soul (if not your arteries).

When I was in college, my mother and a family friend conspired to convince me that brownies from scratch are not that much more work than brownies from a box, and they taste quite a bit better. They were right, of course, and that opinion shows that their little plan worked. Now, when I think of making brownies, brownie mix never crosses my mind. (Well, apparently it does, as I have just mentioned it, but perhaps you get the idea.)

This made for an especially good result one time last fall, when the PP and I went to dinner at a neighbor's house, and we brought brownies. One of the other guests said she could never eat brownies because she was allergic to cottonseed oil, and pretty much all the mixes include it. AHA! I said, but these are not from a mix, and I listed off the ingredients. So she had one. And she loved it.

Tonight we are headed to her house for a Superbowl party, so I am making the brownies again. Besides, I have recently found myself in possession of what experts agree is a shitload of good chocolate, thanks to a friend who was looking out for me back at the time of my surgery. So brownies are the perfect thing, especially when they can involve excellent super-dark chocolate.

Furthermore, the Superbowl party in question has a bit of a Mardi Gras theme to it. Longtime readers of this blog will know that there is exactly one thing that I associate with that holiday, and that I spend pretty much every Mardi Gras mourning their lack. This is not the spirit of Mardi Gras, I know, so this year I am trying to think metaphorically. If the idea of the paczki is to make something that uses up such goodies as eggs and butter (or really, lard), then my brownies get into the Mardi Gras spirit!

The basis of my brownies comes from a recipe from Laurie Colwin, who claims that she got it from a friend who claims to have gotten it from a magazine article claiming it was Katharine Hepburn's family recipe. As Laurie says, "If there were no other reason to admire Katharine Hepburn, this pan of brownies would be enough to make you worship her."

FAT TUESDAY (and also my fat ass) BROWNIES
2 sticks butter*
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate*
2 cups sugar*
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 bag Ghiradelli white chocolate chips
as much additional chocolate as you can stand, chopped**

[*I substituted quite dark (70% cacao) chocolate for the unsweetened. That means I also reduced the butter by 1 1/3 teaspoon and the sugar by 4 tablespoons.]
[**By "chopped," I really mean beaten into smaller bits using the back of an ice cream scoop.]

Preheat oven to 325 and butter and flour a 13x9 pan. Melt butter and chocolate in a sizable saucepan on your stove (this saucepan will become your mixing bowl). Remove from heat and add sugar. Then add vanilla and eggs (make sure the mixture is a bit cooled first, so you don't cook the eggs). Then add flour and salt. Then add white chocolate chips and all the dark chocolate bits you think you can get away with without your guests complaining. Pour the chocolatey goodness into buttered and floured 13x9 pan and bake at 325 for 40 minutes. Don't even hope that a tester will come out clean, since there is so much additional chocolate in there.

Feels like swimming.

Last night at practice I tried again to do some one-arm drills (with the "good" arm, of course): this time, they felt just fine, so I did a set of 50s, with the first 25 being one-arm drill (cycling through free, fly, and back) and the second 25 being kick, thinking I should be careful not to overdo it. Since it kept feeling OK, I made it a set of 18 x 50s, or 6 times through the cycle of strokes. I did the whole set with the big fins, so there would not be too much pressure on the extremely out-of-shape upper body. Felt great all the way through: even the rotation for free and back did not cause any pain in my "spot," where the labrum was stapled back together. And best of all? It felt like swimming.

WEDNESDAY, 30 JANUARY
1000 kick warm-up (500 with fins, 500 without fins)
900 one-arm drill + kick (18 x 50, alternating FR/FL/BA)
100 easy
300 BR/FR kick (no fins, of course)
TOTAL: 2300 meters

Go Heels.

Behold:


As of yesterday, while watching the Winter X Games, I had knitted a heel flap, but I did not know how to turn a heel. Today I do. Watch me go!

Obama in SC.

It is strangely quiet here today: by this time yesterday I had already received a recorded message from the Edwards campaign and a live call from Obama headquarters, reminding us where and when to vote. There were, I think, a total of 5 or 6 phone calls yesterday, plus a live visit from an Obama campaign worker, and the day before that we had even more phone calls, including a couple from the Clinton campaign. Every day this week, when I have gotten home from work, there has been a glossy printed sheet about a candidate slipped into our screen door.

I will be honest with you: I love voting. I suppose my high school civics teacher would be pleased, since whatever she did worked. But as a rather liberal (the PP would say "fiercely leftist") voter, I usually feel like my polling falls into some vast abyss that is South Carolina conservative politics. Back in 2004, I was pretty involved in Democratic party work in Oconee County, where I then lived, which was exciting in that I felt a part of the process, and--remember 2004?--I actually thought change might be possible. Right.

But the fact is that Obama pulled 55% of the vote here. Sure, he was predicted to win the state, but no one expected that margin. And have you heard? Something like 86,000 more people showed up for the SC Democratic primary than last week's Republican primary? And we are supposed to be a red state, through and through.

(South Carolina Democrats heading to the polls.)

So last night I felt like Senator Obama was talking to me, when he said that change is not easy, but that we cannot afford to be cynical, to accept politics and Washington as usual. That we have to believe that change is possible, and be willing to work for change. I go back and forth between absolute disillusionment and Being Fox Mulder.

The dismay (read: return to normal) will come if Obama does not get the Democratic nomination, and all this voter mobilization fizzles away (which it likely would) and all the anti-Clinton Republican mobilization gets in gear. Then all the 124 state House seats, the 46 state Senate seats, 6 U.S. House and 1 Senate seat will, well, you know.

All the furniture is in the garage.

It is one of those days, I am afraid, brought on by the wealth of work to be done, the distinct lack of time, and the January blahs.

And that means, Meme Time.

This time? The Album Cover Meme, courtesy of (most recently) Niobe.

Directions:

1. Click on this link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first title on the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. Finally, click on this link: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. You then take the pic and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your picture.

(NOTE: Do not blame my band for not shelling out for good graphics. The designers have other work to do today.)

I am pretty sure, given the name of my band, that we play gypsy punk:

Yours?

Bringing the body back to life.

I have been very conscious of my body recently, and rather than pretend it ain't so, I will document it, in case doing so might contribute to the recovery process.

These things happen, of course, when you are used to living in one body and suddenly (or even not so suddenly) find yourself in another. At those moments, it is easy to idealize the old body. For instance, my old body was extremely strong, fit, and significantly slimmer than my new one. My old body made me feel like a champ. My old body did not take up so much space in my pants. My old body enabled me to look at people and say, "Yeah, I could take them." My old body did not make me feel guilty all the time, like I should be trying to subsist on a diet of water and air. My old body got less tired in the course of a day, and it still felt like going for a swim or a ride after a long day, rather than wanting to collapse early in bed. My old body liked to wear tank tops.

In my new body, I look at the USMS Nationals qualifying times I used to make with ease and wonder how many seconds or tens of seconds I need to drop. I laughingly tell myself that cotton pants get tight in the dryer then feel like shit the rest of the day. I wonder if maybe this is the time that it is not possible to come back to fitness. I feel ashamed that I was not able to keep the weight off during the last year.

But if I am being optimistic, which I sometimes am, I remember that the actual differences between the old and the new are not as dramatic as they feel. The tank tops never looked that great. I notice that after a good swim, I start to feel tough again. It's just that it seems like I have so far to go.

Join the fun!

It turns out my parents were inspired by the photo of the snowman-adorned statue, as you can tell from this photo of my father taken by my mother:


p.s. Isn't that a nice scarf his daughter knit him?

p.p.s. I'm only sorry there is no snowman on his head!

Question.

If the proposed "tax relief" rebate comes through, would it be unAmerican of me to spend the money overseas? My justification would be that the stinking US economy is making my necessary foreign travel more economically painful, and therefore I need and deserve this relief.

What do you think?

Ineffective.

You may have heard about Common Sense Issues' push-polling in support of Mike Huckabee.

I got one of those calls Wednesday, and it was hilarious.

Admittedly, at first I felt very important because I thought that I might actually be being polled, and that I would therefore be involved in the patriotic process of mispredicting election results. But it quickly became apparent that the questions were not standard poll questions.

Even though I had answered "No" to the questions of whether I planned to vote in Saturday's Republican Primary and whether I was male, and "Yes" to whether I consider myself a Democrat (which I sort of do and sort of don't, but for primary purposes I do), the mechanized voice asked me whether (a) gun rights, (b) tax relief, or (c) illegal immigration were driving issues for me. When I said no, the voice mechanically paused, and then asked whether I believed that the economy was an important issue, and when I answered yes, it tried to convince me that because Mitt Romney and John McCain both come from money or anyways have piles of it, Mike Huckabee was my man. I tried to explain to the voice that I was not sure I agreed that Huckabee was the best choice if, say, a person believes that there are "two Americas" or "Washington is broken," but it did not listen and instead asked me more questions.

I can understand why this kind of "polling" might at least initially dupe some people, and certainly the statements made about non-Huckabeeans were sort of negative. But come on: the mechanized voice got so very puffed up as it explained the flaws in McCain's and Romney's background, and then even more so (if you can imagine that) when it touted Huckabee's strengths, that how could you really believe this to be John Zogby calling?

For Estaminet:

Timothy was right: snow is infrequent in these parts--enough so that the mere prediction can cause school closings. And no one knows how to drive in it: the sheer number of SUVs in ditches when there is a dusting on the ground is amazing. And I am not even going to dignify with a comment the assumption that a four-wheel-drive vehicle is impervious to ice.

I think we got about four inches, but that is based on my eye-balling rather than any official data.

The Blizzard of 2008.

Last night, even before we went to bed (and you know how dorkily early that is), there was about a half an inch of snow on the ground. Overnight, I had snow dreams. It was worse than anticipating Santa: I woke up again and again, and got up to look outside. I could hear heavy sleet at some points, at some points it was nearly silent.

On our morning walk, the Patient Partner and I started noticing something interesting: our city's many bronze statues all had snowmen on their heads. The first ones we saw were on the heads of the pair of students commemorating Sterling High School, the first African American public high school in the county, and we hoped that these snowmen were in the spirit of fun and nothing more. But then we came to Vardry McBee, seated peacefully on his bronze bench, sporting his own fine snowman hat (though his snowman seemed to have lost its arms). Not to be left out, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson also wore a snowman hat (though we had hoped that perhaps someone would have affixed a snowball to his bat). My favorite was Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero and holder of a long-nosed miniature snowman along with his spyglass. The snowman adorning Joel Roberts Poinsett, namesake of the poinsettia, must have gone the way of so many, may they melt in peace. Best of all, Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes had one on his head, one on each shoulder, and one in the fold of his hands. Now that's a city father for you!

Thursday! Thursday! Thursday!

Look what I get to do tomorrow.

Jealous?

Forgive me, folks.

I have been reading the letters to the editor again. Admittedly, I do agree with the person trying to convince people not to water their lawns in ice season--I do. But the one that has me riled up this morning is "Suspending liberties is not a new concept," particularly because the writer goes on to suggest that therefore we should not get worked up about it.

It is as though he said, "Cheating on your exams is not a new concept," or "Burning witches is not a new concept," or "Beating up queers is not a new concept," or "Slavery is not a new concept."

Really, people.

Meanwhile, will you please chant with me? SNOW DAY, SNOW DAY, SNOW DAY.

Back to Life.

This has been a week of remembering pleasures that I had tried to forget until I could come back to them. These include:

* sleeping on my side (ahhhhhhhh);
* leaving my house without the sling, and therefore not having to negotiate the sling in the putting on and taking off of coats;
* carrying something, even something light, in my left hand;
* driving my very own stick-shift car;
* looking at my sling lying in a heap on the floor and just leaving it there.

OK, so that last one was not so much something I had experienced before, but it is sure sweet.

The difficulty of being rid of the sling is that there is a bit more soreness and tenderness around the place where the surgery was done. (It feels a bit sore and then if I touch it there is no question of the exact spot.) I believe this is part of the process: not wearing the sling puts the wound under a bit more pressure, as I relearn to use the muscles around it to support it. But so far my body has not rejected any of its bionic parts.

But most of all, I have been to swim practice twice. Those of you who swim regularly probably do not remember what it is like to come back to practice for the first time after a long time of being kept away, but being in the water? Moving your body in some strange way that, because you have done it for so long, actually makes you move pretty efficiently through the water? Realizing that you remember every little automatic thing that you do to keep from getting water up your nose? Discovering that it is absolutely possible to do a (somewhat half-speed) flip turn with one arm's worth of propulsion? These are amazing things.

Saturday I was allowed to add a couple of hundred meters to my practice, so it was a total of 1500 meters. Less one-arm drill, because that felt a little bad in my shoulder where the surgical work was done, and the goal here is to do no harm. I am guessing, given that oblique ab work in the gym did something similar, that the body rotation puts some strain on that spot, strain I had no idea about. So I will back away from those drills completely, and then see if they can come in gradually sometime later. For now, then, kickery, and seeing how long it will take before I can do an entire practice. (But this is not a race.)

I know myself well enough to know that after a month or so, I will start to get frustrated that I cannot push further. I might tend to focus again on what I cannot do instead of what I can do. I might get stressed out by my job and lose all my senses. So I am writing this now to try to remember that even being here is terrific.

Resolve.

I have been trying hard to decide whether or not to bother with resolutions this year. Last year's swimming goals were pretty quickly dashed by my stupid shoulder, and I am not sure I want to tempt the Kindly Ones into giving me some new injury. But why resist the draw of the calendar? Admittedly, Dear Reader, this post is about navel-gazing and record-keeping, so it may be one to skip.

So first, assessment of last year's goals.

General resolutions:
1. Swim 150 yards or more of butterfly in every swim practice. Well, this went down the tubes when the shoulder did. I see that I was doing a decent job about it until then.
2. Find non-computer-related break activities and use them to replace aimless internet searching, doing several days worth of Washington Post sudoku at a time, etc. See? This is one of those embarrassing resolutions, because I was just thinking recently about how I needed to work on this, not even remembering
3. Turn off internet and e-mail while working. I have been much better about this, if only because I have finally come to believe that e-mail mostly brings annoying requests from bosses and colleagues and students. I now also have a sticky on my monitor that reads "NO RAVELRY DURING WORKTIME." So far, yes. We'll see how it lasts.
4. Eat one salad, one large piece of fruit, and one other vegetable per day. Um, hi. I totally forgot this resolution existed. I think, though, that I have usually succeeded on two out of three.
5. Exercise 4-5 days per week instead of 3-5. Did well with this until about October, when I got so damn depressed about the shoulder that I could no longer face the pool or anything else.
6. Do shoulder exercises every other day and also stretch on those days. Shoulder exercises: yes, for the good it did. Stretching? Well, again: this is one I was going to put down for this year.
7. Ice sore shoulder after swim practice. Check.

Then I had a bunch of swimming goals:
1. Swim 200 back in competition.
2. Swim 200 fly in competition.
3. Swim 1000 SCY free in competition.
4. Swim 400 IM strong in competition.
5. Beat previous best time in 100 SCY back (1:23.67) and SCM (1:33.45) in competition.
6. Beat previous best time in 100 SCY fly (1:16.73) in competition.
7. In one week during the summer, swim every practice that my masters team offers.

I doubt I need to say much about these, since I swam in exactly one meet (SCY), where I did not beat my best 100 BA time, and scratched the 1000 FR and 200 BA because I was having shoulder problems.

One thing that is worthwhile (read: a little painful) about this assessment process is the reminder of my great optimism c. January 2007. It reminds me of how I was thinking about swimming before my hubris got nipped. And while my Older and Wiser part is inclined to laugh derisively at that year-ago me, I do not think that is the right answer: instead, it gives me something to shoot for, a place to get back to, though the getting there will take time. And patience--a commodity in short suppy in these parts.

So, 2008, the year in which I set some easy goals and some harder ones.

1. Begin getting back in shape. This means making exercise a serious part of my life again. It means that rather than focusing on how much I am not presently an athlete, I remember that I want to be one again, and that that takes work, and then doing the work. For now, in a concrete way, this means coming back to the pool a couple of days a week (and working to keep my perspective while I am there), getting back in the gym for some other kinds of cardio work (presently, the recumbent bike, because it does not strain the shoulder), and remembering that junk in = junk out. Later (after, say, my March 12 doctor's appointment), this will mean beginning to swim again, and then gradually, beginning to train again, and perhaps eventually, beginning to compete again. But for this year, I probably have to phrase these things as beginning. Really, beginning again.

2. Keep working at nipping the solitaire addiction. Really, I mean this in terms of my general tendency to spend too much time on the internets. I am not really sure how I am going to approach this (and please refrain from commenting about how this post may not be helping. Thanks.)

3. Stretch. Oh yeah, and try not to forget about this one.

4. Learn to knit complicated cables. Then make something with such a pattern. Start simple: make a cap. If all goes well, I'll achieve this one this month, since I am already started on such a project.

5. Learn to turn the heel of a sock. There is even a sock on the needles, eagerly awaiting its new heel.

6. Remember how far I have come. My new Life Coach mentioned this in the context of returning to sports, but I could stand to learn it more generally, rather than constantly focusing on how I do not measure up. Yee haw.

Last night's practice.

My regular reader knows that I rarely post the details of my swim practices, but last night was a somewhat momentous occasion: the first time I've been in the pool since October 13!

The practice itself was not much to write home about:
400 free kick on sides with long fins
300 fly kick on front with short fins
200 free kick on front with little cup fins
100 BR kick on front with no fins
300 alternating 50 BR kick on back / 50 right-arm free
(1300 total meters)

But here I am, writing home about it anyway, if only because it happened. And it wiped me out! And that in itself felt good. As did the feeling of being in the water, remembering what it is like to dolphin off a wall (even if I can only streamline with one arm), and pull with one arm, and kick kick kick. What did not feel good was (1) wearing a swimsuit after too much sedentariness (or, in my case, sedimentariness), and (2) how quickly I got winded. But that is fine. I have to start somewhere, and this time, here is where I am starting.

Personal Coaching.

So a former student of mine has become a Life Coach, something I did not know existed before she told me about it. Basically, she will coach someone on whatever aspect of their life they want. Her coaching, she told me, largely takes the form of helping people to formulate their own goals and strategies and solutions, rather than telling them what to do. My guess was that she would be a great coach, because in addition to being a thoughtful person she was a collegiate rower, and so she has had her fair share of coaching in her own life, not to mention her own share of motivation and determination.

Because she needs some volunteer hours in order to be certified, I agreed to be one of her "coachees." So starting today, she is helping me with:
1. Keeping my motivation up to get back in shape and get ready to get back to swimming;
2. Work on keeping my work and my life in better balance; and
3. Nipping my Solitaire addiction.

We started out today with #1, which I knew would be a sort of softball for her, given her own background and experience, but which I knew I really needed if I am going to stay optimistic once I get back in the pool but cannot really swim yet. We determined that motivation to get to the gym was something I lacked, and so my strategies on that front are setting goals for the number of days/week that I will go to the gym and the pool and then also writing down every workout. These are things I have done before, but what really struck me when she said it was that writing workouts down will keep my focus on what I have accomplished. Obvious, in a way, but given how distracted I have been by how far back I am from where I was a year or two ago, and by how much I still have to do to be able to swim, I really needed to hear it.

Now let's see if I can remember it.

There is no drinking in the Blue Zone.

You may have heard that the southeast has been short on rainfall. Today I received in the mail an announcement of Greenville's voluntary water restrictions, called "Blue Alert." The restrictions are what you would expect--reducing water use, curtailing aesthetic water use [not a term I was familiar with...], restricting of irrigation. And then there are further tips: water lawn before 8 a.m., turn off water while you shampoo, don't flush trash, turn off water while brushing teeth, fix leaking faucets.

It is a shame that they do not point out that watering your lawn is not really the best use of water, and especially not during the winter, when it can cause black ice on adjacent roadways.

And while I am all about reducing my own personal water use (though I have always tried to be careful), I wonder how I am supposed to tell whether I am using more or less of my allotted 65 gallons per day?

O Happy Day!

Went to see my surgeon today, and he told me to take the sling off and get back in the pool for some kicking and one-arm drills.

So tonight I'll go to practice and come home exhausted.

How cool is that?

An Open Letter to Designers and Publishers of Knitting Patterns.

Dear Designers and Publishers,

Is a serious system of peer review too much to ask for?

Now granted, I write to you as someone most familiar with academic publishing, where peer review is a crucial part of the process. So perhaps I am spoiled. But seriously: peer review has something to offer.

Recently I started on a sweater, following a pattern published by a very well respected yarn company. It seemed like a very straight-forward pattern, and I was excited at the prospect of an easy and fairly quick stockinette-o-rama that I could work on while watching TV. And I was excited at the prospect of something new and fun to wear before horribly long.

Trouble is, there was an error in the pattern, and it took me a bit of knitting to realize that the math was not working out. Once I had confirmed that there was no way that the pattern could work mathematically, I went online and found that, sure enough, there was a pattern correction on the company's website.

Now here is the thing: there is no way to know this unless you check online before starting every single published pattern.

And pattern corrections seem to be just par for the course, such that pretty much any knitting book has several corrections posted at its publisher's website.

Peer review would solve this problem--or at least seriously reduce it. If every pattern were knitted by two blind reviewers before it was published, then these mistakes would be found before the darned thing was published, instead of after, thereby saving everyone a lot of headaches.

So seriously: consider it.

Yours sincerely,
Isis, knitter

This:that::Whatever:whatever-else.

So today at physical therapy I was doing what I have come to call The Ironing Exercise. Basically, you lay a pillowcase down on a therapy table. Then, with an elastic strap, you attach this roughly hand-shaped disc to the palm of your gimpy arm. You use your good arm to lean over the table, and you slide the hand-shaped disc up and down the pillow case, as if you were ironing it. First you do this up and down. Then you do it side to side. After three sets of twelve in both directions, my pillow case still had wrinkles, but I guess that is because there was no heat.

ANYWAY.

As I was doing this exercise, I was thinking about how much I was enjoying it, if only because it is new, and these days each time I go to PT I get new exercises to do, and that, Friends, feels like progress.

So then I got to thinking about how much I was enjoying this exercise, and it occurred to me that these exercises are to swimming what swatching is to knitting.* It is easy to get irritated that you have to knit (and frequently reknit. And reknit again again.) a gauge swatch when you really want to get going on the project. Yet, if you launch into the project without the swatch, well, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

Therapy exercises are like that, too. If I were in an impatient place today, I might have been irked that I have to do these exercises instead of diving into the pool and doing a real set. But just as you can remind yourself that knitting a swatch is still knitting, PT exercises are still exercise.
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* Note for non-knitters: a swatch is a little piece of knitting that you make before starting a project to see how different your knitting is from that of the pattern designer. Ideally, you want to reach a point where your knitting and the designer's knitting coexist in perfect same-number-of-stitches-per-inch harmony. In the real world, this frequently takes several swatches, or sections of swatches, and even then there are no guarantees.

Live & learn.

One of my students wrote on their evaluation last semester: “I wish she would tell us the meaning of the book and then let us discuss it.”

Even though I doubt that that student is a regular reader of this here blog, here you go:

MORAL: Knitters don’t let knitters on drugs make commitments about projects for other people.

Here is what happened.

On the day after Thanksgiving, a dear friend took me and some others to the LYS (that is “local yarn store” for you non-knitters out there). While we were there, my friend came across a piece of what the shop owners call “bait”: a knitted example of a thing for which they sell both the pattern and the yarn. In this case, the “bait” was a darling baby hat knit from yarn that comes pre-strung with beads:


Isn’t that adorable? And look at how peacefully the baby is sleeping! It is even drooling!

Now here are two things you need to know about my friend in order for this story to compute. First, she is not herself a knitter, and she really has no interest in becoming one. Second, she is one of the most kind and generous and wise people you will ever meet. She is the kind of person who is so immensely nice to you that you want to do just about anything for her. But she does not manipulate you into feeling this way, and really she has no expectations of anyone repaying her for anything. She just does good things for people pretty much all the time because she is that kind of person.

OK, back to the story.

So there we are in the yarn store, and she asks the owner if she can buy the little baby hat, and the owner says no, that none of the “bait” is for sale. So I look at the little hat, and I remember that I have made many hats in my day, and that my friend has been so incredibly nice to me (especially during my shoulder saga) and I say, “I will make it for you.” She asks me if I am sure, and of course I am sure. No really. So she buys me the yarn and the pattern and off we go.

Do you already have an idea of where this story is going? Did the moral give too much away?

So first of all I realize that I do not own the needles for the project, and that is OK because I would have felt bad asking her to buy the needles for me since I’ll use them again and again, but this does mean another trip to the LYS, and do not forget: I am majorly drugged up and only have one working arm. So the PP kindly takes me to the LYS for the needles.

The other problem, of course, is that although the hat is mostly worked on a circular needle—no sweat—in order to finish the top you must switch to dpns. When I read this, my heart sank, because of course I did not have the foggiest sense of how to work those things. OK, I thought, this is the time for me to learn to use dpns. Then, of course, those adorable little loopy things on the top of the cap are made with I-cord. Have I ever made I-cord? No! And here are the directions: “On double point needles [problem 1], Knit 3 sts. Do not turn work. *Slide sts to the beg of needle and knit 3 sts*.” Huh?

Now here is something I have frequently found about knitting patterns. The directions make no sense at all until you have the needle and yarn in your hand and you are doing exactly what they say. Then, they generally work. (Stay tuned for my upcoming post about the serious insufficiency of peer review in the world of knitting patterns.) Anyway, I read these directions about I-cord, and I thought, Oh Great. I can’t really do that either.

Now, as you know from earlier posts, I have since learned to use dpns, and having done that, I have also learned how to make I-cord. In short, I finished the cap. But do you notice a difference between my adorable cap and the one in the picture from tilli tomas? (Go back and look at it again, if you are not yet seeing the difference.)


You’re right! Where their cap has all the beads on the outside, mine has more than half of the beads on the inside:

In short, if a little baby were wearing my cap, it would be screaming its fool head off, as little pellets of glass dug into its tiny head.

What the final line of the pattern should read is, “spend longer than you would like sliding all the little beads so they are on the outside part of the cap.”

It is a shame that knitting patterns do not follow recipes’ tendency to tell you how much prep time and how much cook time to expect. If they did, this one would say:

Knitting time: 3 hours
Sliding-beads-to-the-outside: 1 hour

But then, do you think suckers like us would buy it?

Giving up on our tree, boy.

Despite my hopeful attitude from back in August, our ancient, beautiful (well, it once was: recently it has looked a little haggard) giant tree is coming down today.

In this neighborhood, there are many of these old trees, some in better shape than others. According to the historic preservation guidelines for our neighborhood and several others in the city, they are part of the "urban canopy." The one in our yard must be about two and a half to three feet in diameter. Sadly, and I do not use that word lightly, it is very diseased, and from the look of some of the scarring where earlier limbs were removed, it does not seem that it was very carefully maintained in the past.

But as I write this there is a man sawing away at some of its long limbs, and other men are collecting the branches as they fall and running them through a chipper. They started about a half-hour ago and I expect this job will take hours, as they move closer and closer to the tree's heart. I cannot keep watching this.

We will miss you, Tree.

Gone For Good: Music of 2007 in Review.

Just about everyone has his or her or its "Best of" list for music of 2007, and I cannot resist a bandwagon. But to put a personal twist on things, my list is not exclusively music released on 2007, but rather music I discovered in 2007. That means that there are some older things on there--many of which you probably already knew before this year. But so be it: sometimes I am behind the times.

ISIS'S'S'S TOP 12 NEW [to her] SONGS OF 2007
(listed in an order in which she could imagining listening to them)

1. David Byrne, "The Sound of Business," from Music for the Knee Plays (Nonesuch CD release, 2007).
Originally released in 1985, this stuff is finally on CD--and I did not have to resort to high-tech maneuvering to make it so! I remember a lot of the tracks from the cassette that I may still own but that probably no longer plays. The CD comes with a great insert explaining (for those of you who, like I, have long wondered) what a "knee play" is ("the 'joints' that hold together the larger scenes--even Shakespeare used them." Well, shame on my English-PhD ass) and giving schematics of the various acts. But with or without apparatus, "The Sound of Business" is a great track, in its mid-1980s minimalist horn-playing way.

They were driving south on the highway.
Their business was in another town,
Bigger than the town they were driving from.
Business took place during office hours in both towns.
This drive was considered business.
The feeling of passing other cars was also considered business:
The feeling of business being done.
The feeling of drifting slowly through a field of moving vehicles.
This was the real speed.
The speed of business, not the numbers on the spedometer.

I love it that his examples of oldies, "gone for good," includes one of his own songs.

2. Black Devil Disco Club, "The Devil in Us," from 28 After (Lo, 2006).
Your guess is as good as mine--and numerous other people's--as to whether this is the same band as Black Devil from 1978, whether these are new songs on this album, or whether they are some thirty-odd years old. The important thing is that there is something timelessly compelling about the beats, the synth, the groove.

3. LCD Soundsystem, "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," from LCD Soundsystem (2005).
Who would not love the idea of your favorite band playing in your very own house? All the kids wanting to crowd in? Every kid for miles in your house? And the neighbors can't call the police?

4. The Dresden Dolls, "My Alcoholic Friends, from Yes, Virginia. . . (Roadrunner, 2006).
This album has made a significant contribution to getting me through the fear and anger of my Year of the Shoulder. Wow, I can almost remember back to a time when I thought there was no way I could possibly bear to have surgery. Ha! Two surgeries later, the saga continues. I'll be on my best behavior, taking shots for mother nature. . . .

5. Andrew Bird, "Imitosis," from Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum, 2007).
In some ways, this is yet another loneliness song, but what a cool twist--a reminder that a desire for closeness comes from nothing but micro-organisms. Add that to very layered music, featuring what seem to be strings, xylophone, and well, coolness: not too bad. How can gametes be so mean?

6. The Real Tuesday Weld, "The Day Before You Came," from Backspin: A Six Degrees 10 Year Anniversary Project (Six Degrees, 2007).
From a compilation where Six Degrees recording artists cover songs that influenced them, this is easily the most ass-kicking ABBA cover that you could ever imagine. Especially if your imagination leans towards songs of travellers and cabaret's darker underbelly.

7. Taraf de Haïdouks, "Asturias," from Maškaradă (Crammed, 2007).
What a cool concept for the latest album from the mack daddies of Romani gypsy music: performances of music written by such early twentieth-century composers as Béla Bartók, Aram Khachaturian, and Albert Ketèlbey--all of whom borrowed heavily from Roma music. Now the music is "re-gypsified" (isn't that a Police song, "Regypsify Yourself"?). My favorite track is "Asturias," written by Isaac Albéniz. Trust me: however much you liked this piece before (have you heard Christopher Parkening's recording of it?), it rocks so much harder now.

8. Mahala Raï Banda, "L'Homme Qui Boit (The Man Who Drinks)," from their self-titled album (Crammed, 2004).
It turns out that the reason I was rejected as artistic director for the Clemson U. marching band is that I wanted their entire half-time show to be built around the music of the horn section of this band: these guys are all army brass band veterans. Elsewhere on the CD you find some excellent Romanian violins and accordions, but this one is all about the brass. Huppah!

9. Luminescent Orchestrii, "Knockin'," from Too Hot To Sleep (2005).
Probably the most accessible track from this band, who can lay down hot folk fiddle and random electronic play equally comfortably. According to their intro when they performed here back in February, the song is about their neighborhood in Brooklyn: "I was watching your lips while we were walking, you were talking / I wasn't listening but watching your lips. / Down to the corner store and right back up the stairs."

10. Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, "The River In Reverse" from The River in Reverse (Verve, 2006).
By now I'm sure everyone knows about the collaboration between Elvis Costello and New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint. Many tracks from Toussaint's catalogue, but I think this one is written by EC. Wake me up with a slap or a kiss indeed.

11. Nick Lowe, "I Trained Her To Love Me," from At My Age (Yep Roc, 2007).
This is one of those strange pop songs, written by someone good at writing pop songs, that seems to take the pop genre apart at the same time it builds it up. It reminds me of Paul Simon's "You're the One" and and Billy Bragg's "Jane Allen," and Bob Dylan's "Summer Days": they are more about age than youth, and their look at love is a little more complicated that pop music usually allows. "Do you see the way she lights up when I walk in the room--that's good. / And a skip in her step when we're both out walking in the neighborhood. / This one's almost done, now to watch her fall apart. / I trained her to love me so I can go ahead and break her heart." Sure, revenge is not a particularly complicated notion, but I love the way the song starts out making you think it is sweet, and then it most certainly is not.

12. Tom Waits, "Young At Heart" from Orphans (Anti, 2006).
What could be better than a sleepy slide steel remake of this standard than a voice so distinctively not young at all? Nothing, that's what.

Because nothing says "Happy New Year" . . .

. . . like new panties!

(Go over to eternally cool if you want to know why.)

Meanwhile, though I wish I were in Rome, I'm not, so from here in the Upstate (where I have some gnocchi alla romana to make for tonight's dinner) I am wishing you and yours a happy and healthy 2008.

Me? I'm hoping for a year of healing and getting stronger.

See y'all on the other side!

Family Recipes

On the day that my parents left here to return home, we found a few recipes in the kitchen, forgotten by my mother. I set them aside on my desk, planning to mail them to her once I finished The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, which I had already promised her, having sent her home with The Golden Compass.

When my parents got home (after 8 hours of driving), I received their usual phone call, letting us know they had gotten home safely. But my mother also said, "You have the only copy of the Almond Butter Sticks recipe."

This filled me with fear for two reasons.

First, these are my favorite Christmas cookies.

Second, the recipe looks like this:



The textual scholar in me immediately recognized what a tremendous responsibility I now had, with both a unique manuscript containing the only existing remnant of occult knowledge AND an item that was fading fast!

So, for the sake of posterity, because I believe in free access to knowledge, and for all of you out in TV land who may not have had these amazing treats before, here is a fair transcription:

ALMOND BUTTER STICKS
1 c. butter, softened
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 1/4 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/8 t. salt
1 1/2 c. sugar
4 1/2 t. almond extract

In large mixing bowl combine all ingredients except sugar & almond extract. Blend with mixer until dough forms. Knead on floured surface until smooth.

ADDENDUM: The dough should be refrigerated for 45 minutes at least, before attempting the rolling process.

Roll out dough, half at a time, to 14x8 rectangle. Combine sugar & extract. Sprinkle each rectangle with 3-4 T. of sugar mixture.

For each rectangle fold one end of dough over center. Fold other end over to make 3 layers. Turning dough 1/4 of way around, repeat rolling & folding 2 more times, sprinkling with sugar each time. Roll out again to 14x8. Cut into 3 x 1 1/2" strips. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 mins. Remove from cookie sheet immediately. Cool.