♥ my pinky finger ♥

2018-06-12T11:12:00.001-05:00

20 Questions I would ask my grandparents if only I could talk to them now.

1. Tell me your favorite memories from growing up? The best things that happened to you. Your first job, your first car, your first kiss.....

2. Tell me about going to school. How far away was it? How did you get there? What were your favorite subjects? Teachers? Who were your friends and what games did you play?

3. Tell me about the house(s) you lived in. Where? For how long? How big were they? Did you share rooms? With which siblings? How did that work out? What was your favorite thing about the house?

4. What chores did you do? Daily, weekly? What were your favorite and least favorites and why?

5. What were your big concerns growing up? What did you think about, worry about? What did you enjoy doing? Did you keep a journal?

6. Did you go away to school? For what grades? What was that like?

7. Tell me what you can remember about your parents. Were they in love? What did they do for a living? Were they strict? Funny? Kind? Serious? How did they run the household? Which one were you closer to? How long did they live? Where are they buried now?

8. Who were your best friends growing up? Tell me all you can remember about them. What was a fun Friday night when you were a teenager? What about your closest friends as adults?

9. Who did you date? What was a normal date night like? What were the rules of dating in your world?

10. How did you meet your spouse? What is your first memory of them? How did you get engaged? Tell me about your wedding: who was in it? When and where did it happen? How did you feel that day? How did you keep your marriage going for so long?

11. Tell me all the places you traveled. How old were you, and how long did you stay? What did you learn from the travels? Where did you want to go but never got to? Did you like to travel?

12. How did you feel about each child when they arrived? Did you lose any babies to miscarriage? Briefly tell me about the personality of each of your children and how they got along. Which children caused you the most worry and why? Which ones looked like each other, like you, like your spouse?

13. What were the great sorrows of your life? The great joys? The finest lessons you learned? The biggest mistakes you made?

14. What did you dream of doing, but never got to do?

15. What music did you like? What art? What books? Poetry? Pastimes? Games? Did you ride horses? Bikes? Like the beach? Go hunting?

16. What were you known for being good at? (Your talents and traits)

17. How would you describe yourself? How would you LIKE to be described?

18. Can you share any stories of YOUR parents, grandparents, cousins, or other relatives? Especially stories about my parent?

20. What were your spiritual beliefs, if any? What else would you like your descendants to know? What advice would you give us?

Thanks for stopping by,

Robin

On Silence

2017-09-27T12:52:00.000-05:00

The silence.

I sit here on our new sofa, in our newly finished (try completely broken, then gutted and repaired) home, entirely alone, at noon, in utter and complete silence. I can hear no music. No traffic. No voices. Not even any weather sounds. The silence is total, is almost a sound unto itself.

This is a drastic change from the norm of my whole life, as a wife and mother of many, and as a teacher. My life has been filled with human voices, often on top of each other; with car sounds, lots of music (much of it too loud), and the general chaos of life in a big city. The TV was on, or the radio, or the kids were playing music, or someone was practicing an instrument, or they were out in the yard shooting hoops and screaming at each other in good natured competition. Daily life is loud, and consistently so.

But now, a shift has come. My children grew up, as they all relentlessly do. My recent retirement allows me to be home during most days. Most of my neighbors are at work during the day so I am sort of the lone person on the street. In addition, recent home repairs (which is a whole other story) meant new windows for every room of the house, and the new windows are double-paned, and they stifle outside noises almost entirely. I rarely turn on the TV during the day, and right now, I have no music playing.

Total silence.

This silence is my new normal.

My daily life is largely silent. As a retired person, I am home, most days, and alone, most of the daylight hours. Husband is up and gone after breakfast, and adult daughter is often gone before I even get up. Housework can be done in under an hour most days, leaving me free for...... anything. I do work outside the home one day a week. I do some volunteer work, and run a small art business from home. I read, and I have lunch with friends, or visit people in the hospital, and so on. But what I choose most often is to stay home, and wallow in the silence.

After 5 decades of constant noise, I enter my mid-fifties in overwhelming silence.

I have become addicted to it.

I no longer play the radio in my car when driving: I leave it silent.

When the AC turns on, I almost resent the sound it makes.

As a musician, I rarely play music when I am home alone anymore:

I want the silence, in fact I think I NEED the silence.

With silence, I find I can hear my inside thoughts, and can listen for the deep eddies of ideas that normally were hidden beneath deadlines, grocery lists, and trips to the soccer fields. I tell myself stories, I hear poetry, and I am starting to write more. I'm thinking deeply about things, and thinking about more things than ever before, allowing my mind to wander widely in fields of science, politics, music, religion, philosophy.
Contemplation is my companion.

It's become my craving.

As a child, I used to love to go underwater and hold my breath for as long as I could. I loved the way the world was silenced, instantly, by the water in my ears. Everything was muffled and blurry. And I was floating, lifted by the water, lighter. That's how this feels. I am lighter.

With silence comes stillness of soul, and a stillness that penetrates me and changes me, in subtle ways. It makes it possible for me to hold my tongue in angry conversations I might once have participated in. The stillness makes me able to hear and see things that once might have upset me, and instead of getting emotionally riled up, I am able to just ponder them and then take quiet action on my own, often in ways I never acted before. I am detached, in a healthy way I think, from the restless agitation that once permeated my being.

In silence I can hear the voice of God. You may not believe in a God, and that's OK, but I do. Call that voice whatever you want: the universe, the center of being, the Nexus, whatever. To me it is God, and when I am silent and still, He speaks to me without words. I can feel that I am loved and valued, and that I have an important obligation to love and value others. I can feel the dignity of every human person, including me. It's a sweet solace. I can commune with my Higher Power and come away nourished and enriched.

As St. John of the Cross wrote, "My beloved is the mountains, the solitary wooded valleys, the strange islands, the roaring torrents; the whisper of the amorous gales, the tranquil night at the approach of the dawn; the silent music, the murmuring solitude, the supper which revives and enkindles love."

Everything else in life falls away.

I recognize that most of what I tend to fret about is merely chaff. Who cares about the driveway having broken concrete or the fact that the flooring dos not match the curtains? Who cares if I fail a test --or a class --or even fail out of college? Who cares that I am driving an older beat-up car, or am not married yet by age 35, or unable to lose the weight? In the end, none of that will really matter. In silence, in stillness, I can see clearly. I see what is important: love and relationship.

I am able to begin to understand my own addictions and weird behavior patterns, and to begin to do something about them. I find strength and peace in untold measure in silence.

I am revived. I am enkindled.

So today I write in gratitude for this new lifestyle I have been granted, whether it lasts only a month or well into my nineties. I write to remind myself to continue to seek out physical solitude and silence, that I might learn from it and be enriched by it. And I write in praise of silence.

Thanks for stopping by.

Robin

Perspectives on The Women's March

2017-01-23T11:45:00.000-06:00

Or, What Cannot Be Seen From Here

I'm seeing lot of posts on Facebook and other places about this past weekend's Women's March. They usually are either 100% in support of it, or 100% offended and annoyed by it. I'm writing this post to help me arrange my own thoughts on the matter.

First, a story. It's relevant, I promise.

Years ago, in high school I think, or maybe it was middle school, I had an amazing art teacher. She taught us great appreciation and many wonderful techniques -- but she also taught us about life. (Good teachers are like that.)

One day we walked into her classroom to find it set up in this way: In the middle of the long narrow room was a small table, like a pedestal end table. On it were a stack of things: various boxes, some big books, a glass bottle, a candlestick, a small living plant, a jar of pens, etc. They made a tall sort of pyramid. One side had an apple: the other a banana. At the very top was a blue cup.

The teacher (I'm going to call her Mrs. M because, sadly, I cannot currently remember her actual name) scattered the students all around the room. Some she put on the floor, where they could barely see over the lip of the table at all. One was put UNDER the table, laying on his back. Some she put in chairs facing directly at the table, or slightly away from the table, or right near the table but facing perpendicular to it. Two or three, she instructed to climb up on ladders scattered in the classroom, going as high as possible. One young man, she put on the top of the tallest file cabinet in the room, where he had to lay flat to even fit. Then she gave us all paper and colored pencils, and said, "Draw what you see."

After a good 30 minutes of work, she called us to gather in the center of the room, and she hung each picture along one wall in two rows. Everyone's picture had the blue cup, except the two students who had been lying on the floor looking up from close to the table. Some pictures had no jar of pens; others had no banana, or no apple, depending again on the perspective.

"Why are these not all the same?," she asked us. "You were in the same room, at the same time, looking at the same thing."

The students mumbled and murmured.

"Because we are different people?" ventured one student.

"Hmmmmm," she replied.

Then she turned on one student. "Renee," she said, "Your picture is just wrong. There is no apple in your picture but clearly there IS an apple on the table. Why did you leave it out?"

"Because from where I was positioned, I could not see it." she replied.

"AHA!" Mrs. M exclaimed, spinning around and pointing at her. Then she went on to teach us far more things than just art.

"Sometimes, class, people can be looking at the EXACT same thing, and seeing a different perspective on it. What was true for you on this side of the room was, there is NO apple on the table that you could see, and so your pictures have no apples, but you do have a banana in your drawing. But those of you on the OTHER side of the room ALL drew an apple in your pictures, but most have no banana. So....who was right? Who drew what was true? "

Long silence.

"All of you were "right" because all of you truthfully drew what you saw with YOUR perspective. And NONE of you drew what was "true", because NONE of you -- not one of you-- drew everything on the table."

"To get to the truth, you have to see the WHOLE picture. And to do that, you have to be willing to move from where you are, and sit beside someone who is in a different place, and see things from THEIR perspective."

Applying this to the Women's March; are we willing to move from our side of the "room", and at least TRY to see things as others do?

If you are a conservative, are you willing to recognize your own bubble in which you live (we all have them), and see that not everyone out there has the same opportunities you do? Poor people are not all poor just because THEY made bad choices, for instance. See that sexual assault is scary and wrong and should be punished by something more than a 6 months sentence (see Brock Turner). And that for most of the world, climate change deniers make truly scary cabinet appointees, and so forth and so on? Recognize that maybe, these women who marched have an experience that is different than yours, but is just as valid? That they truly worry about their future, sincerely, and the future of this nation? That they needed to gather together for courage, for comfort, for solidarity?

If you are a liberal, are YOU willing to listen to what the conservative has to say? Can YOU step out of your bubble too, and see that the conservatives may have genuine, legitimate concerns about things like uncontrolled immigration, abortion, and the costs and vast paperwork of Obamacare? About land developers and federal ownership of lands? About balancing the budget? Ask yourself why women with pro-life beliefs were openly asked not to march this past weekend at all, and see where that might be a problem for YOUR side's claims of tolerance and openness to all ideas? Can you recognize that the conservative's experience is different from yours, and yet still valid?

Are we willing to move across the room? If we can meet in the middle, and discuss the issues and the possible solutions, rather than dismissing the other side as "other" and assuming that "their" motivations are EVIL, we could do SO MUCH GOOD! The other side is not some evil horrific demon-ridden nightmare: they are people, who are different than you or me, surely with different perspectives, but are still human and thus deserving of respect and being treated with dignity.

This amazing cartoon by the very talented Tom Gauld is an excellent illustration of the problem.

We have to stop screaming AT one another, and start talking TO each other, with a sincere desire and intent to LISTEN and understand.

SO: I'm asking everyone who reads this post to this point (thank you) to go out of your way tomorrow to talk to someone who lives in a very different place than you do. Spend ten minutes tomorrow outside of your comfort zone, interacting with someone who is vastly NOT of your normal circle or bubble. Not just a different neighborhood, although that is a start: but how about a different religion than you, a different socio-economic status than you, maybe a homeless person or the lady who runs the taco stand outside your office or whatever. Ask them about their concerns, their lives, their thoughts on the march, or on any political topic. LISTEN. Make it a point to try to see things as they do. Then do that again the next day and the next.

Maybe together we can find the whole truth.

Thanks for stopping by,

Robin

My 25 Most Influential Books

2016-10-19T12:19:00.004-05:00

Recently one of my favorite former students asked me for a recommended reading list, saying, “What books influenced you the most?” In pondering this, I realize the list could go on and on. But here is my first attempt at tacking together a list of the “most influential ON ME” books I have read.

Most of these books are not appropriate for anyone under age 16 or so. Most I read when I was considerably younger than I now am.

No doubt I am leaving something important off. But here is what I came up with today.

Other books lists by me can be found at these link locations:
List for Boys ages 6-9
books-for-girls-ages-6-9
books-for-girls-ages-9-12
books-for-boys-ages-9-12.html
Holocaust literature for youth of all ages
Top Science Fiction books for young teens

1. The Holy Bible. It almost feels cheesy to put this here. It’s so much more than a book, and so standard on lists, but hey, it has influenced me.

2. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. This book may have been the one that had the greatest influence on me in my late teens and continues to affect my thinking today, as I aim towards 55 years of age. In this "brave new world", humanity is controlled not by force or oppression, but by being entertained and pleasured into a state of stupor. The people, from their birth in the factories, to their death by resignation, never have to suffer or struggle at all, and isn't that wonderful? Or is it? It spoke to me of a life NOT worth living, and the costs of refusing to accept mediocrity. It made me see learning, self-discipline, and artistic expression as heroic choices. And suffering as something that helps me to grow and deepen my personal soul. No soma for me, thank you. I credit this novel with preventing me from trying drugs, too.

3. 1984, by George Orwell. Ideally, this should be read before or right after Brave New World. Here, humanity IS controlled by force, brute force, applied by an intrusively oppressive government who rewrites history on a daily basis, and knows every single thing every single person ever says or does. "Big Brother is watching". This taught me the real value of language and ideas, and gave me a loathing of too-large a government.
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4. Animal Farm, again by George Orwell. Best explanation of Communism and why, despite the wonderful way it sounds on paper, in the real world it just does not work. Bonus: it is a short and funny read as well. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

5. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. I am NOT a Dickens fan, in general, but this is a great story, filled with action and intrigue and weird characters (including a nefarious and slightly insane knitting woman), and a beautiful, poignant, truly redemptive act of sacrifice. It changed who I am, seriously. It’s also got a slightly simplified explanation of the French Revolution.

6. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Seriously, this is one of the best stories ever told, and certainly the best revenge story ever written. Read the unabridged version. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of d'If. There he learns from a fellow prisoner (one of my heroes of literature, this teacher) many lessons, from swordplay and speaking French to business and literature, as well as the handy fact that there is substantial treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo. He becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure, -- spoiler alert, which he does-- and then he uses it to relentlessly and carefully plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. The movie is good, but does not do the book justice.

7. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Rand presents a world where those with intellectual, economic, athletic, and artistic gifts basically refuse to care for those without any gifts, or with lesser gifts and motivations, and instead withdraw entirely from the world to form one of their own. Originally I latched onto Rand’s rather brutal philosophy of Objectivism, or as some have called it, Utilitarianism, all too wholeheartedly (in my defense, I was only 17.) My eventual maturing to adulthood and subsequent conversion to Catholicism did away with that. But I still found the book profoundly influential, and a VERY important read. You must read it to the final page, though. Don’t give up!

8. The Time Quartet: A Wind In The Door, A Wrinkle In Time, Many Waters, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L’Engle. These stories, which I read in 3rd and 4th grade, had a great influence on the shaping of my imagination. They introduced me, without fanfare, to the idea that math and science are cool and that both boys and girls can and do pursue them. I consider them my introduction into science fiction as well. Furthermore, they are also the first novels that allowed me to recognize the interplay between parts of history, how one event today can affect something that will happen a century or more from now. L'Engle weaves her Christian faith subtly into each story, and as a kid this definitely helped me understand that you didn't have to exclude God/faith from Fantasy/Sci-Fi.

9. Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. Difficult to categorize, this is basically a German Lutheran’s attempt to understand Eastern religions and thoughts, especially Buddhism. It’s about choices in life, and understanding other points of view. This novel expanded my viewpoint, though I did not always agree with it.

10. Franny and Zooey, by J D Salinger. Everyone else in the world loves his book, Catcher In The Rye. I don't. But I found this novel by the same author far more influential on me. This is a novel about identity, about forging who we are with intentionality. We are reminded that, all too often, we impose our ego, our desires, and our perspectives on others. In addition, we become a caricature of ourselves, hoping that by creating a fake-self, our true self will eventually become the image that we’ve forged for the world to see. This book made me cry. It also made me honest.

11. Enders Game, Orson Scott Card. Ender’s Game is this author's most famous novel and asks some tough questions about warfare and accepting those who are “other” than us. Ender is a child being trained as a warrior, advancing through the ranks, in a race to beat an invading alien species called The Buggers. But Ender is not being told the whole truth. I’ve actually read everything this man has written, I believe, and been influenced by most of it. Some of his books are a bit creepy and not for younger readers (Lost Boys, Wyrms) but most are just thought provoking (and very interesting and fun to read.)

12. Empire, Orson Scott Card, again. The novel is about a second civil war in the USA, but not one based on geography. Instead, a battle, a literal battle with bombs and guns, between democrats and republicans for control of the country. Worth reading especially is the essay at the end of the book. This novel shows what happens when civil discourse dies and is replaced by fear mongering and media bias. Can you say, “Yikes, this could really happen here?” (There is a sequel now)

13. Naughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman. Powerful and thought provoking book about racial prejudice. I found it disconcerting -- in the best possible way. "Crosses" rule the country and are the only ones holding jobs in government and other higher-up careers, both economically and status-wise. A few "Naughts" have gotten educated, but at great personal cost and with little to show for it. For the first third or so of the book, it is unclear to the reader what exactly separates the naughts from the crosses.....and when you discover it, you will be startled and hopefully uncomfortable. This book is not appropriate for anyone under 16 as it contains a rape, multiple violent scenes, and some difficult topics.

4. Gifts, Voices, Powers (3 separate books) The Annals of The Western Shore series by Ursula Le Guin.

Book one: Gifts: What if you have the power to kill with your mind? Kill trees, kill animals, kill people? But what if others also had powers, such as powers to curse someone you love with a slow death, powers to call or send away animals, powers to make your crops thrive, or die, or the power to make or unmake fire? How would people live together, bearing such "gifts"? And what if you had no gifts at all, but lived with these people?
Book two: Voices. This is a beautiful tale of a half-breed semi-orphaned girl, Memer, born into a captive city state, called Ansul, held rather fiercely by illiterate warriors from the east who worship a fire god. To the invaders, books are evil, demonic even, and thus forbidden in this once-cultured and educated place. To Memer, however, books are escape, travel, freedom, hope. Then two unusual visitors come to town, and suddenly the balance of power in Ansul is shifting.... dangerously.

Book three: Powers. Book one in the series wrestled with questions of personal power and "might makes right." Book two wrestled with illiteracy and war, and the power of the written word. Book three wrestles rather brutally with slavery and freedom, and the different KINDS of slavery. Gav is an outright slave at the beginning, but in many ways he is no less a slave once he escapes into the Denedan forest. Of course I am grossly simplifying this: all three books wrestle with many more things.....but this is what I love about Ursula le Guin's work: the wrestling with BIG QUESTIONS. PS: I recommend literally all of her books. But again, not all of them are appropriate for all children. I'd say 6th grade and up for this series.

15. The Chronicles of Prydian, by Lloyd Alexander. Five FABULOUS stories. What is the difference between being a flashy show off, and being a true man of integrity? How can we remain faithful to our purpose in life when difficulties arrive? Of what value are ones trusted comrades on the path of life? These are big questions, and dealt with here in humor and joy. These are 5 children’s books, on about a 5^th grade reading level, filled with funny people and situations, and why they are not as famous as the Narnia series, I cannot explain. I think EVERYONE should read them. One, The Black Cauldron, has been made into a very bad movie.

16. In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. Gentle but deeply moving story of a middle aged woman’s entrance into a Roman Catholic convent following a tragedy in her personal life. This book started me on the road to Catholicism, and has helped me understand that God loves us even in the messy imperfections of life. Everyone I have ever shared it with has thanked me.

17. Lord of The Flies, by William Golding. You think anarchy might be a nice change? Welcome to the terrifying world of “might makes right”. This novel is required reading in most American high schools -- for a very very good reason.

18. Dune, by Frank Hebert (whole series: I recommend the first three at least). Dune is often called the Lord of The Rings of the Science Fiction genre. One of the hardest-to-put-down books I have ever read. Filled with action, intrigue, and realistic characters, both good and evil, plus of course, the dreaded sandworms. A brilliant examination of human politics and also human potential, as well as an exploration of the dichotomy of destiny and free will, the realities of life in a mining world, the exploitation of the naive by systematic manipulation of religion and witchcraft, and the horrors of drug addiction and those who feed it. Plus some of the finest world building in literature.

19. The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury. Classic short stories from a master of the human experience. This made me fall in love with the short story form, and kept me up at night wondering about a LOT of possible “what if” scenarios. Excellent introduction to sci-fi, easy to read and hard to forget. My favorites are the first and last stories of the novel.

20. Farenheit 451, again by Ray Bradbury. If books were illegal, what would society look like? Prostitutes would not be for sex: they would be people who read, and can discuss books with you. What sort of government forbids its citizens to learn? And why? Another novel about the amazing power of language and ideas, and the need we humans have to share them. And the concerns that arise with a too-powerful, too- strong government as well.

21. The Outsiders, by SE Hinton. Beautiful story about what family really is, and what life is like when you are not living in the golden bubble of white, middle-class American privilege, but instead are an outsider, either by virtue of your skin color or your lower economic status. Also an exciting read, and popular amongst teens. I've found this book very helpful in teaching the beauty of poetry as well.

22. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood. In an oppressive not-too-distant future, what if your fertility was no longer under your control? Women who CAN bear a child are forced to do so, "for the good of society", in a brutally depersonalizing system where they are stripped of everything including their own names. Those who cannot get pregnant are tossed at wealthy men as their personal playthings, sent off to serve as slave labor, or simply killed outright. Like most dystopias, this novel forces us to look at an aspect of our current society and ask, can we accept this behavior? Where might it lead, if unchecked?

23. Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keannally. True story of a reluctant hero in WW2, a businessman who "sort of fell into a habit" of saving Jews. Never ever believe that one person cannot make a difference. Even one terribly flawed, imperfect person who thinks they have no courage and no skills, like Otto Schindler. Each one of us can make the world better. Made into a particularly powerful movie starring Liam Neeson in the title role.

24. This Present Darkness, by Frank Peretti Written as a "Christian science fiction" or a Christian fantasy, this involved a behind-the-scenes war between angels and demons, taking place invisibly, while related Earthly struggles are taking place contiguously. Scary as hell, quite literally, though easy to read because the action is so fast paced, these two books (I am including the sequel here) present a new and powerful picture of what spiritual warfare might look like, and what prayer does, and how it is efficacious. (The sequel, not as good but still interesting, is called Piercing the Darkness).

25. Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. This unusual novel is a fun and often funny romp, which brings to life all of the myths and epics and fantasy adventures that have been written before, all the literature that preceded it, throughout most cultures of the earth going as far back in time as possible. The main character is shipwrecked in a land he does not recognize at all, and with help from a fellow survivor, must navigate a world peopled with classic heroes and villains like Beowulf, Robin Hood, Circe, Brian of The Danes, Scheherezade, and more. But he is clueless as to who they are, for he has never read a book. I buy this novel every time I find it (it goes in and out of print, sadly) and I pass it out to people who love books as a gift. It’s fabulous.

Jigsaw Puzzles: A Great Waste of Time

2016-09-08T15:33:00.001-05:00

What Jigsaw Puzzles Have Taught Me

I have been putting together jigsaw puzzles since before … well, since before I can remember NOT ever putting together puzzles. It seems there was always one going on the giant, round, low coffee table in the basement, or sometimes on the end of the dining room table, when I was growing up. Grandma even had a table in her “music parlor” just for puzzles.

Recently a friend, seeing that I was working on a big 5000 piece puzzle (my favorite size is 1000), asked me, “Don’t you feel that this was all ‘time wasted’? After all, once the puzzle is done, you put it away, and what have you accomplished? Nothing!”

Au contraire! The more I thought about it, the less true her statement became. And so I decided to write today about what puzzles have taught me about life.

1. You need some down time, where your mind can wander freely. I recall making up scenes and stories in my head as a youth, while doing puzzles in the basement family room. I would work out difficulties with friends by imagining the conversations that needed to happen, and it allowed me time and space to tweak and polish my ideal responses to what they might say. Today I am told I have a diplomatic gift, a “way with words”: I blame puzzles.

Some people call this wandering mind event "the flow state". It's widely recognized as being tremendously important for your metal health and enjoyment of life. I call it a blessing, and something to which I am happily addicted. And puzzles are where I first found this state.

2. Patience really makes a difference, and patience only gets easier when you practice it. Sometimes, especially in this day and age of Snapchat, fast food, and Twitter, we want instant gratification-- we even expect it as the norm -- but the fact is that we cannot often get it. Puzzles taught me to not expect instant gratification. There’s literally no way to do a puzzle in a few seconds, unless it’s a kiddie puzzle with 12 pieces, and frankly they don’t count. I learned from doing puzzles that you have to wait, and work on things for days or weeks before you finish. But in the end, when it is finished, after steadily working on it…. AHHhhhhh what a feeling.

3. Make a big project less overwhelming by working on it every day for a few moments. Sometimes a goal or a project takes longer than one sitting, or one day, to complete. But if I spend a few moments every day on something, eventually I will get it done. This clearly applies well to schoolwork, and frankly saved my rear end a time or two in college, but is true of any project. Plotting out a new garden plan? Spend 15 minutes a day on it. Need to decide where to go on vacation, or which charity you want to volunteer in? Again, 15 minutes a day till it is done. If there’s a deadline (i.e., I gotta finish the puzzle before we leave the lake house at the end of the family vacation, or, more realistically, I gotta finish this project: the boss wants this by the 15^th) then just back up from the deadline and do a set amount each day.

4. The more connections you make, the stronger things are. In puzzles --as in life-- once the pieces get connected to each other, the whole thing stabilizes. Once the frame (or the “straight edge”) pieces are together, you know your boundaries and can start to fill in the edges. The puzzle is more solid, less likely to break apart, with every piece that is added in place. In life this is so true: the more connections you have to people, the more stable your life is. It also gets easier to make FURTHER connections as well. The connections we make have connections of their own. In the job market, this is of paramount importance. In human communities, this is vital. We have to connect to be strong.

5. In addition, the more connections you make, the clearer the big picture becomes. I recall doing some “challenge puzzles” with friends: we bought each other a puzzle, but then poured the pieces in a giant Ziploc and gave them to each other WITHOUT the box or picture. We had to put it together that way: no guide, just…. a bag of pieces. Of course at first there was no pattern: just colors and shapes. But as we worked, it became clearer: mine was a sailboat in a stormy sea, hers was a cute kitten in a boot, and so on. The same is true of life. To be a well-rounded person, you need to make lots of connections to lots of different kinds of people, in order to get the big picture of human society. We all know people who only hang around people that are just like themselves. They seem unable to grasp the larger picture of humanity. The picture gets clearer the more connections you make.

6. If you are having a problem understanding something, it helps to seek out patterns. This is obviously true of puzzles: look for colors, shapes, strong lines. This is true in life as well. When my kids were little, I was having a terrible time with them in the afternoons. When I looked closer, I noticed a pattern of bad behavior in the first few minutes after they got home from school each day, behavior which continued to degrade as we got closer to dinner. Then things seemed to perk up. So I changed the afternoon routine to include having a healthy snack already laid out BEFORE I left to pick them up from school each day. We could walk right in from carpool, sit down to eat and drink, and chat together for just a few minutes. This changed everything. But if I had not been trained (by puzzles) to look for patterns when a problem arose, they might have gone on being irritated and grumpy with everyone after school for two decades.

This way of seeing things also works with coworkers, traffic, personal issues, etc. Is my coworker Jenny always cranky right before lunch? Has my friend Ellen been consistently bailing out on me at the last minute? Does Joe ALWAYS seem to get mad when I mention politics? Is this street as crowded at lunch time if I go later, say 12:45? Looking more closely yields some great answers.

7. If one solution does not work, try another. When I got stuck on a puzzle, I would change the way I was looking at it. I would try looking just for the color pattern, or just for the shape, or just for pieces with a specific item like weird diagonal lines. Sometimes I would turn the table around, and do the puzzle “upside down” for a while, so I could see it in a new way. This problem-solving skill came with the additional bonus that, since I always ended up finishing the puzzle, I also developed the expectation that I can solve whatever problems arise, even if I have to try several ways of approaching it first.

8. Letting even a little piece slip through your fingers and get lost ruins the outcome. It may be the smallest and least attractive puzzle piece in the box, but if you let it get away, the whole puzzle is ruined. Even the weirdly shaped small pieces with no flowers, no colorful sail, just a brown or grey smear: they matter. The puzzle just is not finished until the last piece snaps in place. In life, the same is true: everyone matters. You need everyone. This is true on the job as well: In a project at work, each piece is vital. Having a fabulous report to turn in but no title page or presentation slides or whatever is a real issue. Finish every piece of the job you have to do. Notice every person in the world you inhabit. And do not drop those puzzle pieces under the sofa!

9. Kids will talk a lot more freely if they don’t have to look right at you while they do it. Doing a puzzle together was a no-stress way for kids to get some needed “alone” time with their Dad or me without asking for it. They knew they were always welcome to work on the puzzle, with or without me: and I knew that, if I joined them there, they might start talking about that problem they were having in PE class, or their anxiety about the zits they were getting, or whether Suzy was a good friend to hang out with. They might also open up and ask hard questions about faith, racism, death, war, suffering, and their future. I cannot tell you how many great conversations we had over puzzles. Conversations we would certainly have NOT had, were electronic media in play. This aspect is true also of many other hobbies: but I learned it from puzzles.

10. When something is bugging you, let go of it for a while: your subconscious will keep working on it. This one goes back again to the first benefit I mentioned: letting your mind wander freely while your hands and eyes are engaged. This can often lead to some interesting ideas and thought developments. Science has proven that wrestling over and over with a problem is not nearly as effective as letting go of it for a time, taking a break, and coming back to it later. An added benefit: you learn HOW to let go of a problem, and just set it aside for a while. This life skill has proven invaluable.

I could go on and on, but I will stop there. I think my friend was reflecting in her comment to me the desires of our society, which wants measurable, objective, provable results --even for things that resist measurement, like compassion and artistic talent. Yet a musician who practices day after day cannot provide those results right away, not until a lot of days – months, or years usually-- have passed. We can all recognize the great value of a maestro musician: but how many of us also recognize the value of a 7^th grader’s 20 minutes of band practice every day? Is he or she "wasting time"? Or are they learning IMMEASURABLY more than just the notes of a song?

The same is true of the kinds of skills I gained from puzzles. Slowly, subtly, puzzles altered my way of seeing and dealing with the world around me. I learned valuable paradigms, without realizing that I was learning anything at all, paradigms that have given me confidence, insight, and social skills. What I learned at the Jigsaw Puzzle table has spilled over into every area of my life, and I am glad.

So was all the time spent doing puzzles wasted time? I think not.

PS: One other things puzzles taught me: if you have a cat, it WILL lie down on the puzzle.

Thanks for stopping by

Robin

What I made today

2016-05-05T14:39:00.003-05:00

I am on a stirrup earring kick. The shape allows for dynamic movement and showcases larger beads that may be difficult to use in more traditional earring settings. Each pair is slightly different.

I had these awesomely gorgeous sea-blue glass beads with giant holes in them. Hard to use in a normal-style of earring or even in a strung piece of jewelry, but awesome for the stirrup earrings.

I got out my trusty metal scrap box. Nice big chunk of copper!

I got a piece of 22 gauge copper, and marked off a strip using a ruler and that awesome burnisher/ scribe tool you can see there, off to the right hand side, gifted to me recently by a friend who is an art teacher. (Hi Anna N!) I used my lovely French metal shears to cut the strip, but you can also use plain old tin snips or a jeweler's saw.

Notice how the metal curls as I cut? Yeah, that curl is the downside to using the shears. The upside is the smooth cut and the ease of slicing through metal, so for me it is worth it. No metal splinters is a pretty big upside.

Once I finished cutting it, I have a spiral like this above. Ugh.... BUT! Easy-peasy to fix, just hammer it flat again on the steel block. (Note that my steel block is sitting on a leather sandbag. It reduces the noise level when I pound on metal.)

I hammer gently, very gently, and flip the piece over back and forth so I am hammering both sides. Takes maybe 30 seconds to flatten that baby right out. You can see, below, the scribe line I made originally, just to the right of where I actually cut.

I wanted the copper to be textured, so I flip over my little hammer and start smacking on the copper with the round or "ball peen" side. Not really pounding, but not lightly either.

Here's what it looks like after ten strikes with the ball peen hammer. (Below)

And here it is after about two hundred strikes.

PURTY! OK now I need to cut it into smaller strips to make earrings. This will be one pair of earrings, so I need two strips. I eyeball it and slice with the French shears where I think the middle is. I misjudge and one piece is slightly larger. Oh the HORROR! (not really)

No problem, I just snip a bit off and keep right on going. Mistakes are part of the learning process. Next time I might take the time to measure. Then again, I might not, as the look of these earrings is pretty organic and primitive. Some designs call for precision and careful measurements: this one, not so much.

Time to file the corners round, and straighten up the edges with the file as well. This is a fine metal rasp I got at a garage or estate sale for about $2. I also use fine grit sandpaper and a foam sanding block. You do not want ANY pointy corners or splintery edges.

Then its time for punching holes. I have power punch pliers that I like to use, but they are a specialty tool, so today I used the simple screw punch tool. This handy little device is available at almost any crafting store for about $12.

I have used and abused this one for well over 6 years now and it still punches clean for me. I mark my three holes on each piece with a Sharpie marker and then CAREFULLY adjust the metal until the dot lines up exactly with the punch piece. Then, just screw!!

Ta da! These are photographed on my leather sandbag.

Now: Before I bend these into shape, I need to soften the metal. Being hammered makes metal harder and more brittle: being heated makes it softer. Anytime you are going to "move" the metal (bend, fold, etc) you want to heat it first.

So, I get out my firebrick and my little bitty butane torch from Harbor Freight, and flame the metal strips. They also acquire a nice rosy flame glow from this process. (There are no pictures of me with the torch on because I am home alone and, not being stupid, prefer to give all my attention to the 1600 degree flame I am holding in one hand.)

The strip on top has not yet been flamed. The bottom one has: see the color change? Once heated and then quenched in cool water, the strip is ready to be shaped.

I have one bit of advice for this step. SLOW DOWN. Multiple gentle taps or the application of lots of slow, gentle pressure is greatly to be preferred to one massive hard PRESS on the metal. If you want a nice rounded shape, get something that is round (I use a mandrel but you can use a dowel, the handle of a hammer, etc) and go slowly. Gently press in wee increments along the strip, easing it around the form. The metal will want to fold at that center hole, because that is now the weak spot. DONT LET IT.

It may be wonky at first, like this below. Keep forming. Use your hands, use a rawhide mallet, use nylon jaw pliers, but DO NOT use brute force.

Eventually you will have a nice stirrup shape. Now it is time to add the findings. I used copper hex beads, copper headpins, and copper spacer beads.

Here below, you see one completed unit, using two hex beads, and one that is wired up with a single hex bead below and a single spacer bead above, but has not yet been completed.

Here are two pair, ready for beads and ear wires to be added.

OK time to add the beads. I cut a nice length of copper wire, roughly an inch longer than the span of a single stirrup. Then I hammered it a bit. This makes it stronger and also flattens it. See my little bead in the background? I kept checking the fatter flatter wire to make sure it would still fit through the bead. On this particular bead that was not a problem, but on many beads it can be. Check often! If the wire gets too fat from hammering, file it down.

Then I curled one end into a tight little coil using my smallest needlenose pliers.

Now string the bead into the stirrup shape with the flattened wire. Trim the long end, leaving a stub that's about 1/4 to 1/3 inch long sticking out of the side of the stirrup. Then flatten the stub with the hammer, and coil it tightly as well. Repeat on earring #2. tada!

Ohh I really like that cool sea green shade against the copper. OK now we need ear wires. I could use commercially manufactured ones: like these.

But somehow these don't work for me on this pair. Too nice maybe? I decide to make my own ear wires. Copper wire to the rescue. I use my Now That's A Jig wire peg system and quickly wrap some ear wires into shape. Sorry I did not take a picture of that.

Hammer the ear wires slightly, again to harden them and because it looks nice. Then be sure to file the ends (the ones that going into the ear) nice and smooth. I use a burr cup to do that. You can use any file, progressing from rough grit to finer and finer grit as you go.

Now string everything together! Here below are two pair I made today, using this exact process. The second pair features a sandy colored glass disc bead surrounded by small garnets on both sides. In addition, there is no coil on the side of that pair: instead, I simply folded down the wire, firmly pressing it against the stirrup.

Note that I added small glass beads to the ear wires for the green earrings. Those are held in place by small crimper beads.

Then I remember that I had these weirdly shaped but beautifully colored rose and gold beads long skinny beads that I have struggled with, trying to find a style in which to use them. The stirrup shape might work! So I made some much thinner and slightly shorter copper strips, as shown, for them. Note there is no center hole: on a really thin strip like this, it would be next to impossible to round them without a crease forming.

Therefore, I used a jump ring to connect the stirrup to the ear wire. I really like these and won't be selling them. But I do have three more pairs of these beautiful long shaped beads, in other colors.......

Pondering how well this style of earring works to showcase largish beads, I remembered these unusual speckled glass cube beads I have. I quickly pulled them out and ran up a fourth pair featuring them, adding a small wire-wrapped accent bead above the stirrup in matching green glass.

Note that here is a third way of holding the bead in place: this time, I did not hammer the end of the wire. I just made a small coil, and then folded that sideways, against the side of the stirrup.

I was on a roll! But then, I only had 10 minutes left before I had to leave for errands. I wanted to make more, but these stirrups are fairly labor intensive. So, instead, I quickly made these. Simple earring strung on a head pin with glass beads: what makes them outstanding is the gorgeous old etched plated silver beads.

Thanks for stopping by!

Robin

"30 x 3 for 31" challenge

2016-04-29T12:20:00.001-05:00

Today I am setting myself a challenge for the month of May. I invite you to join me!

I challenge myself to spend 30 minutes EVERY SINGLE DAY in May on each of 3 activities:
1. Exercising
2. Reading a book
3. Making art.

My purpose here is to make May a month when I transition to more purposeful and intentional living, one small step at a time. I won't beat myself up if I miss an activity now and then, but I will thoughtfully reflect on WHY I did not feel I could do these three simple things that day.

My plan to alter my lifestyle is simple. Just intentionally insert those three activities into my day.
Get up, have coffee, enjoy some prayer time. Exercise, then shower.

Go about the day, making sure to fit in a session at the metalsmithing bench or at the sewing machine. This may be right after the morning shower, at lunchtime, or at 9 PM, but I COMMIT to making it happen.

Read when I can during the day, but if I have not done it by 10 PM, I promise to read before bedtime at 11. A novel or a non fiction book, something worthy.

In order to help myself, I have added the challenge of making at least 10 projects from one of the new jewelry smithing books I bought. It looks like a good one.

That's one project every three days. In between, I will sew, draw, and make other jewelry items. I am also hoping to build some shelving. Anything CREATIVE is the rule: for you that might be painting, embroidery, knitting, or even teaching an art class.

I hope you feel moved to join me, understanding that MERCY is the rule: the challenge is to better myself, not beat myself up for being imperfect or missing a step one day now and then.

Thanks for stopping by,

Robin

Unspooling

2016-04-28T12:31:00.002-05:00

Does anyone ELSE have this problem? Today I have a day off, and I am bouncing rather aimlessly between all of the following projects.

1. clean the house (it needs it)
2. do the laundry (also needed)
3. digitize the photos that I started going through last night thanks to a request from a former student
4. finish that online video class on torch fired enameling that I started 3 months ago
5. read that great book my sister sent me on mortality and dying
6. work in the Jewelry studio (ah..... the flow state, how I miss thee)
7. Unpack from last weekend's Craft fair booth (currently clogging up my dining room)
8. read through and sign 45 documents for the home remodeling loan (yes 45 is the actual #)
9. Go for a long healthy walk
10. Sew that cute trim to that plain blouse I have had just laying on top of the sewing machine for 4 weeks now
11. go buy new panties and bras (badly needed)
12. Make a real dinner for the family
13. Go visit my father-in-law in the hospital again (would be 5th day in a row)
14. Pray and meditate
15. Continue to sort through stuff to get rid of prior to massive home repairs
16. Nap (truly, I need one)
17. Work on that piano piece I am trying to memorize, which feeds my soul
18. Finish building the shelves to go over hubby's desk area
19. Run errands (bank, gas, pharmacy, groceries)
20. File papers

I do a little of one, then a little of another. I know time experts tell you to do ONE thing to completion, then do the NEXT thing to completion, and I am sure I will get to that point by late afternoon. But for now, I am letting myself cycle randomly, tackling whatever moves me the most this moment. I do a load of laundry, start to clean the living area, end up filing papers found on the credenza, find one that needs scanning and then filing..... you know how it goes.

I think of this as unspooling.

Wire-working craftspersons and jewelers know that wire comes wound very tightly on spools in most cases, and when you first open it up, it unspools with fierce energy to loosen itself. Once loosened, it rests that way.

That's what I am doing today. And it is OK that it is not efficient. It's OK. For me, right now, it IS effective. And the tension gets released.

Sometimes, all the experts in life management need to be silenced, and you need to listen to your OWN soul, and meet your OWN needs.

Thanks for stopping by,
Robin

stirrup earrings you can make

2016-04-25T22:54:00.004-05:00

I saw some stirrup style earrings and wanted to make my own. Here is the journey.
Start with sterling wire, dead soft. Cut two identical lengths, roughly 2-3 inches.

Use a hammer. Mine is old and broken but I still use it. Do I have better hammers? Yes I do. Do I keep using this one? Yes I do.

Whack some sterling silver wire cut into short lengths. Make the ends bigger. Try to keep them roughly the same length. Remember that metal moves when ya whack on it.

Measure for the center and put a Sharpie dot there.

Now keep the dot centered while you gently push and round the shaped wire on a fat dowel.

you'll get this shape.

Pull out your hand-held Power Punch Pliers that are SO COOL you can hardly stand it. These are a specialty tool, bought online, but for less than you might think, around $35. if you are going to be doing lots of hole punching, they are a life saver.

.....see? They punch perfect holes in sheet metal. Interchangable dies for different sized holes. I used the smallest. So easy to use, if a bit scary to look at.

Or if you don't have those, use a simple hole punch for sheet metal. These can be gotten at most any crafts store and are not too costly, around $12.

see the little punch? So simple, it just screws down into the hole, punching your sheet metal along the way. Then screw it back the other way to release. Be gentle! And make SURE your metal is centered directly under the punch.

Put in the stirrups and punch a hole in each fat end. Come to think of it, I shouldda done this BEFORE I bent the suckers. Oh well. You be sure and punch holes first, THEN bend.

File the hammered edges smooth, then punch holes in the center of the rounded ends.

This hole is slightly off-center, but I can live with it.

Tada! Two punched and shaped stirrups, ready to be made into a stunning pair of earrings.

Use good wire to add nice fat druzy cut disc beads -- or other beads of your choice. These are a deep dark purple faceted crystal, that could pass for black in some lighting situations.

I added small clear glass beads to fill in the spaces. Mine were then hung from sterling earwires.

Then I made a second pair out of copper, slightly shorted lengths, and wider, that I hammered and textured. I purposely used mismatched beads because I am not a matchey matchey person.

On these copper ones, you can see that I punched a third hole in the center of each hammered wire at the bend, and strung a headpin through there with a small brass bead on it. The sterling silver ones, I simply used a jump ring to connect to the ear wire.

Totally love them. Totally doing this again.

Totally wondering why I am saying totally so many times in a row.

Thanks for stopping by.

Robin

crafts show update

2016-04-24T20:40:00.001-05:00

Saturday's crafts fair was pretty good. The tent was a lifesaver as the sun was HOT, but in the shade we were breezy and comfy. We would have been baked had we not had our own shade, and I felt so bad for those vendors with no tents. THANK YOU to my friend Shannyn for the loaner. BTW the name of the tent, E-Z--Up, is true.

Carol shared a booth with me. We set up the tables in a T shape, with us at the back and our items on either side of the T. This worked very well. Here are some booth pictures. I painted my found dresser drawers cream on the inside and a shiny metallic silver on the outside and edges. Then I added eye hooks along the top edge. This turns out to be not such a great way to display necklaces at all, sadly.

I loaned the two deeper drawers to Carol for holding her baby blankets and that worked well.

The painted drawers were OK but if I do another show, I am leaving them at home. They blocked my view of my customers and took up lots of space for only 5 necklaces. And it's hard for the customer to imagine the necklace around a neck when it is hanging this way. Lesson learned.

My earrings I either put in trays, (also spray painted silver with a velvet insert) or simply hung them on the slatted frame you see here. I also put my bezel necklaces in frames the same way, though one or two, I hung on necklace displays. You can see one such black bust-shaped display here.

Here's another shot below. Prices were either in clear acrylic frames near the items or on giant clothespins with small chalkboards glued on. See the big black bust shaped necklace thing? I need 20 of those things.

Behind my items you can see the cute headbands my friend Carol and her daughter Ruth were selling.

I learned a lot. I'll do things differently at my next show. Probably the BEST thing I learned was that at festivals, people are not necessarily there to buy. They are there for the food, the music, the sun, and to look. Lots of traffic, but remarkably few buyers.

Then again, my tastes are weird and I don't really follow current styles, so, I guess I am not really surprised. However, when I have sold and shows that were exclusively craft shows, I have done MUCH better financially, because people come there specifically to buy things.

Here's my friend Carol and her lovely daughter Ruth, above, who shared the booth with me. Their baby items are darling and Carol was knitting the little hats while we sat and chatted.

Here's my friends Kathy and David, above, visiting the booth.

And to my delight, here are two of my former students and their sweet Mom, who came to visit me and bought some goodies too.

That's me in the purple, enjoying visiting with my friends and former students.

I made enough money to make it worth my while, and I greatly enjoyed the day with my friend Carol and seeing my neighbors in Irving.

Thanks for stopping by,
Robin

Craft Show

2016-04-11T00:39:00.000-05:00

In two weeks, I do my first craft show in 15 years. SO PUMPED!!! (see update HERE)

It's called The Irving Deep Market Festival. It's a little one, local, only $20 a vendor. An outdoor farmer's market and crafts fair, with fresh produce, live music, and home cooking. Local artists only, no national brands (like Scentsy Candles, or Premier Jewelry).

You have to bring your own tables and tents. I'm borrowing a pop-up canopy display tent from a friend, and sharing the booth with another friend. I make jewelry, she makes baby things, so we should do well together. I have been reading up on craft show tips and tricks, and making my Must-Have lists (aspirin, cash change, and water seem pretty important).

Today I went shopping for display items to hand my jewelry on. I scored BIG.

I bought a large, narrow, tall wood frame in silver. I will toss the print and the broken glass (one corner is missing), and use the frame to tack some pretty lace onto, and then hang my earrings on the lace. The framed print was $2. When I am done it should look something like this, though I am keeping the great silver tone and not painting it beige.

I also bought a pie rack. A what, you say? A PIE RACK.

I got this sturdy and beautiful dark green metal pie rack for $3.25. I will put plates on it, second hand china I get from another thrifting run, and lay out my earrings or necklaces.

Note the little metal braces on the side: those square hole thingies. I think those can be useful for attaching signage. I'll put thin metal rods in them and go up and over the thing with a handmade sign.

I also got this awesome diamond shaped rack:

I got this old CD rack for 95 cents. It'll make a great earring rack. I might bolt or glue it down to a nice chunk of wood to stabilize it, but it is already quite stable because of its odd diamond shape, which does not tip over easily, unlike the more squared-off ones.

I also got this little bathroom handtowel holder for 95 cents too. Frankly, I need it for the bathroom, so when the fair is over, it's going in there! This will be my display for my custom metal bezel pendants.

I also got a sturdy wire basket, which I think my friend could use to stack her baby blankets in.

THEN, on the way home, I did something I swore I would never do: I pulled things out of someone's trash pile out by the curb in front of their house, and brought it home. They had a pile of construction debris and a broken dresser: but four of the drawers were just fine, so.....I got four solid wood drawers, in great shape! They even have handles. I will paint them all solid black with silver trim and pretty papers inside this week, and possibly bolt or screw together in a formation for display.

I also dug out and brought home this weird looking solid wood thing -- anyone know what the heck this thing is designed for??? I am baffled-- Many thanks to my daughter for the great jazz hands in the photo, ha ha! I think it will be perfect for holding up a mirror on top (so peeps can hold the earrings up to see how they look) and maybe some necklaces below. Those arms could easily hold up a nice dowel or two.

In addition, I am borrowing a pop up canopy tent, which I get Thursday. I'll be working on display and inventory non-stop for the next two weeks. More to come! Wish me luck

Thanks for stopping by

Robin

Plus-sized clothing: a rant, and some ideas

2016-03-15T16:12:00.001-05:00

I'm a big girl. (I have the panties to prove it!)

As in, I am fat. I am OK with saying that because it is a simple fact. While I would prefer that other people not call me that, because it is usually intended as an insult, it is true: I am fat. Objectively speaking, I'm over my ideal weight. Now I'm also very happy, a married mom who is well loved and in generally excellent health. But yes, I am fat.

I am one of the 35% - 50% or more (depending on which expert you are reading) of American women who are larger than a size 12. I don't know who decided that a 12 is normal and a 14 is plus sized. Don't get me started on the semantics of "plus-sized" versus "normal" or "regular" sized: we will be here all day! We will save that conversation for another day. Here is my rant.

Now, statistically, we larger gals have more money to spend because we are generally older than 18 and have steady jobs. You would think the clothing industry would be falling over themselves to offer us (we DO make up nearly half the country remember) some nice clothing goodies to buy.

You would be WRONG.

The selection of plus size clothing available to day falls generally into one of two categories: granny style "muumuu" dresses..........

......and skin-tight "I'm available for immediate sex" clothing.

Neither of these categories really fits my lifestyle or my life choices.

Besides, most plus-sized clothing, even if I buy the "right" size, really just don't fit me. The reason for this is fairly simple. Plus-sized clothing is almost always made by simply taking regular-sized industry clothing patterns and enlarging EVERYTHING. The problem with that is, women like me are NOT bigger in EVERY dimension than "regular" sized women. My arms are bigger around, but NOT longer than "normal" arms, for instance. But plus-sized long sleeves inevitably dangle six inches past my wrist or more. GRRRRRRRR.

Our waistlines may be bigger, but our shoulders and neck areas are mostly bony and remain the same size, or are only SLIGHTLY larger than normal sizes, while our bustline is considerably larger. But the industry just enlarges EVERYTHING: So the clothing rarely fits us well.

In addition, there are many varieties of shapes in women's bodies, regardless of size, and what fits a short "apple" shape will not fit a tall "pear" shape.

I am short, for instance, and a pear shape, which means I have small shoulders and a relatively small waistline compared to my ample dimensions elsewhere. So clothing that fits my abdomen will HANG off my shoulders, but clothing that fits my shoulders won't go down over my abdomen OR my bustline. The larger necklines are a problem for me too: I find that most clothing in "my" size reveals FAR too much bustline. I end up having to layer a smaller shirt beneath to cover my boobies!

So what do I do? One of 3 things: Choice #1: I wear baggy clothing. Comfy but not particularly flattering.

Choice #2 and #3: because I am a decent seamstress, I either go with choice #2: buy clothing too large and adjust it, or choice #3, I make my own clothing from scratch.

(What do women who do not sew do? I guess they just.....wear baggy clothing?)

What I'd like to do here is offer a few more details on taking up plus sized clothing to actually fit your figure.

Skirts are easy: I will usually buy three sizes too big for my waist, but just right for my hips, and take in three to five inches from the waistline, tapering down to the hips. This kind of adjustment is called a "dart": a long thin triangle of fabric that is sewn under, making the waist smaller but leaving the hips large.

Usually two or four darts in the waistband will do the trick. I like to balance them: multiples of two, evenly spaced on each side. You don't want darts to be too large. Better to use two small ones than one honking big one.

This pic below shows a skirt, turned inside out, being given small darts to sew in, to make it fit along the person's body better.

Pants are trickier. I've had my best luck sticking to stretchy jeans, and taking them in slightly along the back of the waistband. SOME pants manufacturers are BEGINNING to catch on to the fact that not all girls have flat butts like boys often do. Darts can still be added, but depth in the crotch makes sewing pants the better option over altering them.

Arm holes can be enlarged if you know how to add an underarm gusset, though this requires matching the fabric on hand. Sometimes I cut off the extra sleeve length and use that in the underarm area.

Sometimes I have to extend the gusset all the way down to the elbow.

Below is a stunningly lovely example of how arm gussets were once commonplace in everyday clothing, shown here on a peasant-style blouse with heavy blackwork embroidery, and lace insets.

Another thing I do is hide my belly (I had a LOT of children , including twins, and my belly sags a bit) by lengthening my shirts. I prefer to have a layer over my belly especially when I wear pants. The easiest way to add length to a shirt you like is to add a line of lace or chiffon along the bottom.

A tutorial can be found HERE. There's also this helpful little diagram:

You can also add a contrasting fabric panel either in the middle of the shirt:

Or at the bottom. I also have been known to do this along the sides as well: just pick the front apart from the back, and slap in a contrasting (or matching) fabric panel all the way from the hemline to the sleeve hem. Then add a panel at the bottom too.

I often combine two shirts this next way. It will LOOK like you are wearing two T's (very hip these days) but really you just cut the bottom 8 inches off one and sewed that into the other shirt's hemline. Sometime I will also take the neckline of the cut shirt and sew it inside the neckline of the other as well.

Mostly though I have started to sew my own tops. Most pattern companies have begun to print really good plus-size patterns, ones that take into account our various shapes.

Simplicity has the Kaliah Ali line of patterns, many of which I own and have used with great success, as well as a series called Amazing Fit. I just bought this one last week and plan to use it over the nxt month:

Other pattern companies have begun to offer larger pattern sizes too: even Vogue now has sizes up to a 24 in some of their patterns, though not all yet. If patterns in your area are exorbitantly priced at $15 or more, either shop Ebay for used patterns or wait for those great dollar day sales at JoAnn's and go get 5 patterns for $5. (I went every single day of this sale last month, and ended up with 25 patterns for $25!)

In addition, I can alter the pattern as I go, using for example a size 14 neckline, a size 20 bodice, and a size 24 hipline, all at the same time, to fit ME. My friend "S" might use the exact same pattern but a size 16 neckline, size 18 bodice, and size 14 waist to fit HER.

In addition there are some FABULOUS online tutorials about fitting your patterns BEFORE you cut your fabric. My favorite is THIS ONE, from the every glorious Threads Magazine.

I continue to hold out hope for decently priced and decently DESIGNED plus sized clothing. Whiel I like some of the stuff at Lane Bryant, Catherines, and Dress Barn, I cannot afford $55 for a T shirt --- and frankly I don't like buying my clothes from a place with "barn" in the title.

Thanks for stopping by and letting me rant a little about clothing and being a big girl!

Robin J

Easter Egg Update: VIDEOS

2016-03-15T10:12:00.002-05:00

I already have two posts about oodles of fun ways to decorate Easter eggs: HERE for post one and also HERE for post two. This year I am adding some fun VIDEO links as well.

Remember those classic hollow sugar eggs that were commonplace a mere 50 years ago? if you peeked inside there would be a scene, usually featuring small animals, grass made from icing, and flowers.

As small children in the 60's, we got one of these every year. I never ate mine: it was too pretty! (Good thing, too: Turns out they are really NOT edible.) This second version is made with sugar that was dyed first with food coloring.

Turns out there's a video now to teach you how to make these beauties at home. Click below to see it!

This page has some considerably more detailed written instructions: How to make panoramic sugar Easter eggs

How about a video demonstrating the steps in those gorgeous silk-dyed Easter eggs? You can use old ties or any silk clothing from a thrift store to make gorgeous patterns! Here's a video demonstrating how to do this!

The video above has other Easter crafts you can check out at the end.

How about those AMAZING Pysanky Easter eggs, also known as Ukranian eggs?

Most of the videos I found on this historical art form were pretty long, some over an hour. But here is one that shows via a series of still photos the progression from drawing to simple wax lines and some dye and finally to "written" egg.

Since there are NO instructions in that video, here's a longer one with more detailed information: The man in this video is using a "kistka", a small tool with a wee funnel on it that holds the wax. He melts it in a candle and then draws with it.

Pysanky eggs are written (not drawn or painted) in reverse: meaning you first cover up the area you want to remain white, then dye in the palest color. Then cover the area you want to remain that color, and dye in the next palest color, etc etc, all the way to black, which is last. Takes a lot of planning!

Marbling the eggs was how my family decorated Easter eggs. Because we used oil based paints, they were often a bit... sticky. There's other ways to marble however, which do not leave you with sticky eggs.

Here's one method for getting marbled look eggs using regular egg dye tablet plus a secret ingredient from your kitchen: plain vegetable oil!

Here's a video for great marbled eggs using nail polish:

Finally, a fun video on how to use alcohol inks and homemade daubing tools to make these pretty color-saturated eggs.

In this image below, eggs dyed with alcohol inks were then colored on using a Sharpie permanent ink marker, in mostly black but sometimes metallic and other colors too. Pretty!

Happy Easter egg decorating!

Thanks for stopping by,

Robin J

It's a BAD arthritis day: what does that mean?

2016-01-20T09:57:00.000-06:00

Today is a bad flare day: my arthritis is kicking my rear end. A friend has asked me to explain what I mean when I say I am having a "bad" arthritis day.

So, here we go: I divide my arthritis into categories: normal days, sore days, and bad days.

Normal means a moderate level of tolerable, even ignorable, pain.

Sore days are more achey. I notice my arthritis more, and have to do more to manage it.

Bad arthritis days are when my arthritis decides to take the lead role in my day. I never know when they are coming, but usually I wake up in pretty debilitating pain and then I spend the whole day just trying not to hurt so much.

It wakes me up from a sound sleep, from the pain of just rolling over. Sometimes repeatedly.

It means I cannot take even one step on either leg without experiencing pain. All day, every single step I take, it hurts.

My hands feel as though I have trapped them in a big metal vise which is pressing them almost to the point of breaking the knuckle joints. Since I am a jewelry maker by trade, this means I cannot work today. At all. Often my hands are also swollen and puffy. This is the hardest part for me personally, because I use my hands so very much. Others with arthritis have trouble with their legs more, or their spine, or their feet.

Simple tasks become agony: things you normally do without even thinking about become tasks you have to manage or even just let go of for the day. Simple things like opening a jar, carrying a pitcher full of liquid, pulling the sheets up to make the bed, turning a doorknob, lifting a plate out of the cabinet, bending over to pick up something small that has fallen to the ground.

In fact, lifting anything weighing more than an ounce or two is impossible, because my hands simply do not work. Doing laundry is impossible. Carrying a plate of food to the table? Can't do it. Bending over is agony, and terrifying as well, because what if I fall?

I use only handled drinking glasses on these days, for fear of dropping the 8 oz glass of water otherwise, because it is too heavy for me to hold. Not that it will hurt: I can handle hurting. But the finger grip simply is not there on bad days. I actually CANNOT hold it. I cannot press my fingers together firmly enough to put sufficient pressure on a cup to lift it.

In fact, I lose the ability to grip or squeeze things with my hands all together. Try pulling up your underwear without gripping or squeezing the fabric. (Now on a really really personal note, try wiping yourself after using the restroom, without gripping or squeezing anything..... yeah. So there's that little problem......)

I do not drive on bad arthritis days. I am not safe to do so. I cannot stomp on the brakes nor grip the steering wheel firmly enough to be a safe driver. So today, I stay home. Luckily I am retired but I have friends who have to call in sick on these days or get a ride in and then suffer through a day's work like this. I did used to teach on flare days but I always warned my students that I was in bad shape. They were remarkably kind and helpful to me then. (It helped that I taught 8th graders.)

Weird places in the body hurt on a flare day: The joints where my collar bones connect to my sternum ache all day. Those two little bumps at the base of the neck: those ache. Weird. As do my thumbs, all the little joints in my hands, my hips, my knees, my shoulders, my wrists, my feet, and parts of my spine. Thus far my elbows have been spared. Woo hoo! Focus on the positive!!

My feet seem ridiculously far away, almost as though they are someone else's feet. They hurt and are cold, but I cannot get down to them to cover or soothe them. Slip-on shoes and slippers are lifesavers on bad arthritis days. (I doubt seriously that I COULD tie shoelaces today even if I could get down there to try.)

My emotional stability is ferociously challenged on bad flare days, because I do feel so broken and useless, so it is all too easy to spiral into a depressed state. This is the number one battle of a bad arthritis day for me: the fight against feeling ugly, unproductive, unlovable, and burdensome.
It helps to be prepared ahead of time for these bad days and to have reminders like this one at hand:

So how do I cope?

First, I tell my family, using the actual words, "Today is a bad arthritis day". They know this means I cannot do anything "useful" to the family today and will not be cooking, cleaning, driving, or making jewelry. Because they are all wonderful people, they also know this means I need more affirmations and reassurances of my value to the family today. Hubby will also rub my hands and feet and help me get dressed. And tell me he loves me and that I am beautiful and so on.

I take a hot shower or bath and slather lotions on. Next I try to do simple stretching and low impact cardio exercises. I actually try that three or four times on a bad day, because I am determined not to lose my mobility. Although it does hurt to move, it also helps. I work out very slowly and gently, but repeatedly. This makes a difference in my pain level and my mobility level.

I use my Willow Curve and other heating pads to ease the pain in my joints after I exercise. I eat my favorite healthy foods (avoiding food that contribute to inflammation) and just leave the dishes on the counter, trying hard to NOT feel guilty. I put my hands in the hot wax bath we bought at Target, which is a real lifesaver. I highly recommend it to ANYONE, arthritis or not.

Finally, and most importantly, I just accept that today is a day of restful activities, and I quit fighting against that. Instead I read, I peruse my extensive collection of crafting magazines, and I watch some movies and some video classes online. I will also practice my Spanish language classes and Sign language lessons (did you know that doing sign language is therapeutic for those with osteoarthritis and that you can sometimes get a prescription to take the classes? )

I also pray a lot, and because I am a Catholic, I offer up today's pain for someone else who is suffering. Today I am offering up my pain for Josie V., the 16-month-old daughter of a friend of mine. Josie had a stroke earlier this week. Please join me in offering a little prayer for her and her family.

For those of you familiar with the glorious "spoon" analogy, (if not PLEASE go and read that HERE) on bad arthritis days I have fewer than half the spoons I normally would, so I spend them very carefully, and I try to recall and recognize that tomorrow-- or the day after that-- the spoon drawer will fill up again.

This is temporary. I can get through it. Again and again, if need be. And I am grateful for every single day, even the bad ones.

Thanks for stopping by.
Robin

How I became a Maker, with gratitude

2015-12-04T14:28:00.005-06:00

I like to think I was born a maker, but truly I think I was made into one. The attitude that makes me a maker is one my parents gifted me with, and one I think both of my sisters have as well: "I can figure this out. It's doable and I bet if I try, I'll get really good at it!" In addition, they enriched us in many ways: we read together every day, played outside all the time, learned to waterski and pilot boats, all got music lessons, ballet lessons, swimming and lifeguarding lessons, and more. TV was rare in our childhood.

(I'm the littlest one.)

Our parents also encouraged us to do artsy things. Dad was an architect, so we learned about good pencils and "bad" ones, straight lines and curvy ones, and the joy of those funky stencil thingies with holes and swooping lines on them. Also, rather than coloring books, we learned to color on discarded blueprints, often taped down to the piano bench so we could color while standing. Our coloring "books" looked like this:

Mom often said that coloring books were " unimaginative" and encouraged us to just paint a picture from our imagination. Her blatant disdain for the more pedantic tradition of "coloring within the lines" was formative for me. To this day I dislike traditional coloring books and had a hard time giving them to my children, preferring them to color on blank paper. I also drew, my whole life, but in middle school began to form a style that was all mine. By high school I was famous for my "doodles" and often gave signed ones away to people who asked for them. To this day, I love to draw in plain black ink on smooth white paper. Oddly enough, I am considering making a coloring book! Here's one:

Our neighbor Ruth Pino taught me to crochet. Ruth was a scrawny, sun-leathered, chain-smoking Italian immigrant with a heart of gold and a mouth like a drunk sailor. She sat patiently beside me on her plastic-covered sofa in Florida, correcting my 7-year old hands with infinite honest patience and the occasional curse word, until I could crochet as fast as she did. To this day, thanks to her extensive explanations and tutoring, thread crafts seem obvious and super easy to me. I knot -- I mean knit--- ha ha ha-- poorly, but have an in-depth understanding of how knitted yarn looks, how it is woven together, how that is different from crochet, and why one is better for certain projects and the other is better for other projects.

My Dad taught me to build things, and to be confident that I could repair broken things and figure out how things worked. We made oversized dollhouse furniture to fit my Barbie collection, using mostly papier mache and some Balsa wood. Once we built a solar water heater together that actually worked. If something broke in the house, like a can opener or the electric pencil sharpener, we'd go out into his shop with it, take it apart, figure out what went wrong, and rebuild it. This was the norm.

From him I also learned the value of both having good tools, and of taking excellent care of them. And of "canoodling": hanging out with your tools and supplies, and just fooling around with them, making stuff, just to be making. His workshop had limitless supplies of scrap woods and nails for exploratory building. During my middle school years, he custom built his daughters some furniture, and again as I went off to college. I still have the shelves he designed and built for me, in use in my home to this day.

My parents tackled projects with confidence and calm. I inherited a beautiful and expensive Steinway and Sons grand piano from my grandmother, which had great tone and action but an ugly case. So, Mom decided to refinish it. How many people do you know who think, "Hey, let's refinish that $40,000 grand piano on our own, in our driveway?" But that's what we did. Here is a photo of Mom and I, working on the piano lid, circa 1977 or so. You can see the beautiful reddish rosewood coming through under that black alligator-skin finish it had. Afterwards, it was GORGEOUS, and it still is 40 years later.

My maternal Grandmother, whom we called Rusty, helped to teach me to sew. Rusty was a strong and smart woman, well before her time, a powerful city executive in an era when women rarely ever worked outside the home at all, and certainly did not manage entire offices of people and have their own secretaries (she had four). She was athletic enough that she once trained NBA refs to do their job, and taught all of her grandchildren to swim before we could walk, and to ski before age 4. She also married for love, and managed, through shrewd investments in real estate, to retire in her early fifties to a beautiful secluded lake home in Florida, utterly debt free.

Isn't she lovely? She's in her 80s here. I adored her. I adored all four of my grandparents, actually.

Her skill in sewing was equally amazing. She could look at a designer dress in a window for a few moments, go home, hand-draw the pattern for it, in her size, then cut and sew it that night. Her version was often an improvement over theirs. I have fond memories of watching her pin things onto her dress form, fast and competent as hell.

She also had an entire room dedicated just to her sewing and crafting hobbies: a studio! This gave me a very early understanding of the idea that making things is important enough that it deserves it own room. And today, I have a whole room that serves as my studio!!

My paternal grandmother Anne was always special to me because we shared the same birthday! I was born on her day, and named in her honor, Robin Ann. Anne was a gifted cook and one of those people who never once in her life met a stranger or a person who was not precious in the eyes of the Lord God. On my tenth birthday she gifted me with the Steinway grand piano you saw above, a piano we named Madame, perhaps the single greatest tangible gift I have ever been given in my lifetime. That piano became a dear friend through high school and college, and is now worth more than any home we will ever own. Though one day she will live in my home, I am in no hurry, because for now Madame lives with my father, a talented pianist and musician. Anne and her son, my Dad, taught me to make music every day of my life.

Here's a photo of her as I best remember her, at the beach, with my cousin Erik.

My mother, also named Ann, was also a talented seamstress, and for endless hours (in her dank and dungeon-like cinder block basement sewing room) she let me practice threading her classic brown-body Singer sewing machine, and then sewing for myself, from simple blocky-tunic patterns to far more complex clothing. She smocked as well. There are oodles of picture of her three daughters, my sisters and I, in delicately hand-smocked dresses and bonnets. Here's just one: she made the dresses and decorated the little hats too.Dad lined us up outside our Florida home for yet another profile shot.

I'm still the littlest one, oddly enough.

(She also did fantastically weird embroidery work, often on a grand scale. Hanging in the family dining room is a tropical abstract sort of plant-like piece she made in the late 1960s, for which we have been offered considerable money. It's 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall. and weighs about as much as a LazyBoy reclining chair. I've never seen anything like it, anywhere.)

Being able to sew has been a lifelong skill that I am eternally grateful to have. I'm astonished how many people cannot hem something.

Here's a terrible photo of my wearing a very... wow..... a very 1978 prom dress.... that I designed and sewed myself. Paisley was way HOT back then. Yeah. Right. Wonder where my date (Jimmy Prine was his name) is now?

Somewhere in my early teens I took up embroidery. I think I was given one of those pre-packaged Bucilla kits: the kind with a hoop, a picture, and a black and white "key", plus not quite enough of every color you need to complete the picture. I proceeded to embroider everything I owned, from blue jeans and tennis shoes to my bedspread and curtains. I was painting with thread. It was the 70's, and cool embroidery was on everything everywhere. Hand-made was hippie cool, and very very hip.

Next came cross stitch, in many ways the most simple craft there ever was. (Here, make an X. Now make another one. Now make 34,000 more.) The only thing you really had to be able to do was read the thread color key. I did many small pieces and several quite large and extensive works in cross stitch, before leaving it behind somewhere in my thirties. I still admire a well done cross stitched piece, but now greatly prefer a mixed stitching work.

When I started having children, I got interested in what is known as heirloom sewing: using finely woven cotton and handspun cotton laces, smocking, unusual turn-of-the-century techniques like shark's teeth, antique-styled patterns, laces, and pintucks: lots of teeny weeny little pintucks. I made beautiful Christening gowns for them and for all my friend's babies too, and suddenly smocking became part of my repertoire, much to my mother's delight. I went wild with that for a few years, investing in an expensive sewing machine and a large smock-pleating machine.

My kids wore LOTS of hand-sewn clothing, even matching pieces for special occasions. They all had hand sewn bedspreads and curtains, and I often wore simple skirts that I had sewn or "recycled" from sheets and curtains at the thrift store. Here's my eldest daughter at age 5 in a dress and hat I made for her. ALL her siblings had outfits that matched this one for Easter that year. (1994)

Somewhere around the late 1990's, as I approached forty, I discovered beading. It started with an embroidery piece that called for some very wee (size 15) seed beads to be added. I love the look of that and was suddenly learning to do bead weaving on an old fashioned Native American beading loom.

That fed into French seed bead weaving, then simple bead stringing, then complex seed bead structures. I made bouquets of wire and seed bead flowers, using an out of print old book from the library. (Remember, we still really did not have the kind of Internet that we do today: mostly just email and chat boards. My early version of Pinterest was my extensive stash of old crafting magazines, which I had begun to gather up in the early 1980s. Maybe I still have those and maybe I don't. It's not like I am a hoarder or anything.......)

The fascination with beads remains, and from it I added another skill: polymer clay. When you cannot find the exact bead you need to finish a project just right, what do you do? You make the bead yourself. Polymer clay became a passion for me in the early 2000s and remained so for about 7 years. It's an infinitely variable medium and still surprises me with what it can do. Here's my recent-ish blog post about how PC can look like virtually anything you want. CLICK HERE

That passion led into wireworking, wire weaving, and chainmaille. And in turn, that led me into simple metal smithing, or what is known as desktop blacksmithing. I can work metal with hammers and a small hot butane torch, I can solder and fold form, rivet and cold connect, and more. Alongside that, I am now skilled in resin work as well. Here's two metal-formed and resin-filled pendants I made this year. The first one has real dandelion seeds embedded inside.

See more in my Etsy Shop HERE

So here I am today, thanks to amazing parents and involved grandparents, and a long and multi-faceted river of connected learning experiences, a "maker." I failed to mention my forays into hand made laces, papier mache, gardening, and home repair. But you get the idea. I am SO GRATEFUL for every single teacher who taught me anything, from math to marble shooting, for every skill learned, and for each and every moment spent showing me how. I want to pass it on.

I am 50 something years old, able to do every "activity of making" that has ever come across my path, and in many cases do them quite well. I can draw, paint, sew, smock, crochet, knit, embroider, do rough bobbin laces, create hairpin lace and Battenberg lace from scratch, and even teneriffe, do cross stitch and open work and black work and stump work, string beads, fix broken jewelry, keep an art journal, do collage work, make encaustic layered mixed media art, craft a doll and draw her, make a dollhouse and build miniature furniture to go inside, do papier mache, repair broken statues, do polymer clay and wirework, move metal with flame and force, build wooden furniture, make music on several kinds of instruments, patch sheetrock, lay a laminate floor, pour concrete, carve wood, and more.

I have no idea what to call myself. (I still think Mommy is the finest title I ever earned. But they are all grown up now!)

What shall I learn next? Check out my Pinterest account Robin Maker on Pinterest for about 50,000 more ideas.

Off to make something, thanks for stopping by!

Robin "Maker"

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a book review

2015-11-28T09:36:00.006-06:00

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

I'll start by saying that I am a new fan of Gaiman. I came into Gaiman-land via "The Graveyard Book", a book for youth which I loved. Then I swallowed "Coraline" (written for children but with rich themes for everyone) in an afternoon and had trouble sleeping for days. (Buttons now freak me out.) In both of these novels, which were written for children, love conquers, but it may not look like love, or at least not the way we think love should be. So I picked up American Gods hoping for more of that twisted but righteous way of seeing things. I'm still not sure whether or not I found it there.

On the surface, this is a tale of the conflict between older gods-- from the Nordic pantheon to Egyptian goddesses like Bast, and several others I humbly admit to not recognizing-- and the newer American gods of media, commerce, and consumption. On another level it is a story of a single person, the man we know only as Shadow, a recent prison parolee with a basically decent heart despite his criminal tendencies, as he struggles to make sense of his rather unhappy life.

Shadow is hard to like because he is so enormously passive (those who have read the book will get my pun there), and never questions the exceedingly bizarre things that happen. But he is hard to dislike too, because he has been so abused and yet he does not abuse others. I never really felt an emotional connection with him, yet I did feel a need to know what happens to him.

But underneath these two stories, there is a set of vaguely-formed philosophical questions: about what makes up the truth of reality, and what beliefs are, and whether or not they matter, and if so, how. Are there gods? Did humanity invent them? Do they affect our daily lives? Can they die? If there are gods, is that a good thing, or a bad one? Can we even control our own lives? So many metaphors abound, and the "backstage" part of the book really had me wondering. But in true Gaiman fashion, he never answers the reader's questions about "backstage". You have to decide for yourself what really happens there.

Gaiman has marvelous vision: he sees the world ( and other worlds) through a twisted lens which I find fascinating. he's also a skilled writer, with a generous gift of using words well. I enjoy reading his descriptions, which are never quite what one would expect, but always leave you feeling like you saw more than he told. Perhaps my favorite part of this book were the short little vignettes when he traverses back in time, to when the "old gods" were carried here to America, by various immigrants, from a modern New York Taxi cab driver all the way back to a prehistoric tribe walking across the Bering Strait.

I also enjoyed how he threads throughout the novel the ravenous need that the various gods and goddesses have for us, their worshipers, in order to survive. I've never really considered that kind of reciprocal relationship between divine beings and their followers. I was however quite disappointed that he did not include the Big Three Religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those gods never appear in the book. I'm wondering why he chose to leave them all out.

Here's what he says about religion in the book: "Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you--even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition."

Reading Gaiman, I think, requires a careful and patient attention to small details, and a willingness to wait for understanding, and to accept things that seem completely unrelated to the main plot line, but later are revealed as vital. Not unlike watching a movie, where you start with four or five unrelated scenes and then they move towards a union. Don't expect big battles and massive action scenes in here: you'll be disappointed. Expect a quiet, almost brutally methodical pace that, if you take the time, reveals many treasures of thought, and some truly beautiful phrasing.

Some of the surprises at the end I saw coming. Some I certainly did not. Most --but not all --of the loose ends are tied up: I especially liked the way Laura was wrapped up at the finale. On the whole I am glad I read it, and I will most likely read more Gaiman. It was dark: lots of murders and some rather nasty behaviors, creepy dreams, dead people roaming about as they slowly rot, and so forth. But I like a book that asks the reader to ask questions. So I am giving this one a thumbs up, for adults only, NOT for children nor even for most teens.

Plus, how can you not like a book in which a character says this: "What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."

Book review: The Naming, First Book of Pellinor, by Alison Croggon

2015-11-17T17:46:00.004-06:00

Book review: The Naming, First Book of Pellinor, by Alison Croggon

How did I not notice this novel until now? Shame on me! Go buy it, all of you! Go now and get the whole set! I'm in process of getting the rest of them into my hot little hands.

The book opens with a marvelous "Note on the text", explaining that these folk tales from the Annaren society have not ever been translated into English before. The legends of the Edil-Amarandh people are therefore being here presented for the first time by the author. This intro lends a bit of historicity to the book. It is of course utterly fictional, but still, a delightful device.

Maerad (pronounced MY-red), our heroine, is a lowly slave in her mid-teens, living in a pretty depressing mountain stronghold at the beginning of the book. She's considered a bit of a witch, and has only a few memories of her mother to console her in her lonely life. An accidental encounter in a barn changes everything: or was it accidental at all? Escaping her life of sorrow and drudgery with a strange man named Cadvan puts her on a road filled with danger and surprises, but also many delights.

They must first escape the evil that holds her in her mountainous prison. Along the way, Cadvan begins to suspect there is far more to Maerad than even she knows. He is a Bard, a musician and teacher. All Bards in the land of Annar are teachers of some kind, or makers, of everything from music and writing to swordplay and carpentry. The Barding schools, scattered across the country, have traditionally been places of learning, hope, and service.... but a darkness is spreading through the land, and Cadvan is out to find out where it comes from. As he begins to know more about Maered, he begins to suspect that she is of an ancient and important line, and may in fact be the Foretold, who will save the world from being engulfed in evil. The two must travel across the land (well, not all of it yet, but I suspect that will come in the other books) to get assistance in getting Maerad instated as a Bard and to find out what is causing the growing Darkness.

SO much to like here. The author is a gifted writer who bothers to craft marvelous sentences and meaningful dialogue. The battle of Light against Darkness, obviously, The stunning poetry of the lyrics. Vast and sweeping in scale like Tolkien (it even has an awesome hand drawn map at the front, so cool!,) I found it easier to read overall than LoTR was. There's considerable back story added at the end, an explanation of the "Ages" of Annar. The charmingly imperfect female lead character of Maerad is easy to love, and she visibly grows in her maturity, self-knowledge, and confidence as the book progresses, while her slightly mysterious but likable male guide, Cadvan, has a back story that is only just getting revealed as the first novel ends. The good guys are complex, not flat, and just like in real life, often disagree about things, and even aggravate one another-- but they are connected and they know it, simply because they all love "the good." The bad guys are not written as flat characters either. In some cases, they even appear to be good: "demons appearing as angels of light", if you are Scriptural. But the evil they do is centered on selfishness, and the darkness that grows from that is threatening the entire land.

I was utterly charmed by the beautiful lyrics to the songs in this book, and am dying to hear them sung aloud. (I had the same feeling about the songs from Anne McCaffrey's glorious Pern series, and finally managed to get my hands on a CD called MasterHarper of Pern.) If anyone knows whether or not the songs from this series have been scored and/or recorded, I would be eternally grateful.

I loved this. LOVED it. Read it in two days flat. Have already ordered the rest of the series. Ms. Croggon avoids cliches and heavy-handed foreshadowing, and (rare for me) I did not often know ahead of time what was going to happen. The bit with Hem was a great twist to the story and I hope we get to find out what develops with him as the series progresses. The characterizations are so wonderful, I feel like I know some of the people in this book as real persons.

Regarding this book for children: I highly recommend it. The book contains no sex and the only romance present is shown between married couples, with the exception of one poignant kiss for Maerad. Scary monsters/ evil creatures like weyrs and wights, do appear, and attack, and there are several instances which refer to bad guys doing terrible things to innocent people, especially towards the end as Maerad's memories return. But I would say, nothing a 6th grader (say age 11?) cannot handle, especially if they have already read anything by Tolkien, or already read The Hunger Games.

Put this book in every school library and push it at your children. Make them listen to the audio CD in the car. This is a great book for young adults ... and for us regular ones, too.

Book Review, Winter of Fire

2015-11-17T16:20:00.002-06:00

Timeless and fast paced story of an oppressed young woman, Elsha, living in a slave-based society who rises, reluctantly, to the top. Students in my 8th grade classroom have worn out two copies of this novel checking it out of my classroom library. It's that good.
Elsha is a young teen girl, one of the Quelled, a class of people condemned to labor under dangerous conditions underground, mining firestone to keep the Chosen people alive. The planet is engulfed in ice, and only firestone can being enough heat to keep people alive and crops and livestock reproducing for food. Despite years of daily oppression, abuse and horrific treatment, she has a good heart and yearns for more out of life than just slavery.

Condemned to die for a minor bit of misbehavior, she is rescued, in a sense, by being chosen as a servant to a traveling Firelord. The Firelord is a mythical, priest-like character, revered by all, and considered to be one of the highest authorities in the land. Visiting her village, he sees in her a spark of humanity and intelligence. But he is difficult to get to know, and she is rightly terrified of serving him, for he is powerful indeed. As she begins to travel with him, her life and her assumptions are changed, and challenged. A new future begins to appear before her, one that is filled with danger, but also hope. Will Elsha have the power to take hold of what the Firelord is showing her, even after he is no longer there to protect her?
This fabulously well-written novel brings us themes that are crucial to young people: repression, injustice, women's rights, environmental concerns, kindness in the face of abuse, power, slavery..... so many good things here. It is absolutely criminal that the book is out of print. I buy quite literally every copy I can find and pass it out liberally to everyone.
I would allow someone as young as ten to read this, and have given it to adults on many occasions. Every person I have ever given it to, from 5th graders to grandparents, has thanked me for it,

Why THIS story has not been made into a best selling movie yet, I cannot say. It far surpasses Hunger Games in thematic and empowering ideas.

My New Studio: take a tour!

2015-11-04T16:13:00.004-06:00

Our kids are leaving home. So I get a new studio! I have converted what used to be our two younger sons' bedroom into my workspace. It's a decent sized room, about 10 by 12, with a closet and two HUGE windows for lots of natural light. So here's an early tour. I am NOT finished setting things up yet, so, be patient!

As you walk north in the main hallway, you see my studio. I have purposely arranged this black bookcase to more or less fill this line of sight, and behind it I have hidden my messy messy bead station.

Note all the light pouring in! That window faces north. The floor in this room is raw concrete. Our middle son had terrible asthma as a child, so we removed all the carpets and curtains, and just painted it to look like castle rocks, using garage floor paint. Considering that the paint on that floor is nearly 16 years old, I'd say it held up well. See the big cracks in the floor? Yeah..... foundation issues. Repairs are planned for the first of the year. Along with that will come a nice new wood floor.

This is my awesome crafting bookcase, where I store about half (yes, HALF) of my crafting books. It's an extensive collection that started when I was 11. Some of my favorite books are quite old and out of print. I am a sucker for crafting books and will buy them if they have even one idea in them that I love. I also have a pretty impressive stash of magazine back issues. But I am not a hoarder. Much.

Note the small shrine in the middle of the case.

When I became Catholic back in 1983, my sweet Grandmother Anne gave me this statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Since NO ONE in my family is Catholic and NO ONE was particularly happy about my conversion, that meant a lot to me. She was supportive and remained so throughout her life. Beneath the statue is a hanky, from my OTHER grandmother (Rusty), and behind the statue is a house-shaped ceramic thing that I bought at a thrift store specifically for this purpose.

Some of the books on my shelves. Feel free to drool.

Once you clear the black bookcase as you enter the room, you can see my beading station. I use an old solid wood desk as my base, with shallow shelving above that I built with my Dad's extensive help way back in college, and cut down to fit on this desk in the late 1990s. VERY simple painted wood with a paneling backing.

My favorite thing about this space, aside from the VERY comfy chair my son left behind for me(Thanks Isaac!) is all that natural light. I am actually considering moving the desk one quarter turn, to the north wall (it currently is on the west wall) beneath the window, so the light comes at me directly rather than over my shoulder: but not until we are done with the foundation work and the floor replacement. As you can imagine, finding dropped beads on this weird painted floor is a matter of stepping on them, not seeing them.

The window light is supplemented by an OTT light, turned on for this photo, to the right. I'm still not completely moved in: Under the desk is a box filled with yet-to-be-unpacked metalsmithing tools I was blessed to inherit. I'll do another blog post on that in the future. The beading desk hides perfectly behind that bookcase and allows me to leave a mess out and not feel guilty or worried.

People sometimes ask me how I arrange my beads for storage. I have two overlapping systems. One is color based: I keep a selection of smaller beads in these ubiquitous cylindrical towers. Separated by color, and transparent, these allow me to quickly find just the bead I might need for a project. But it's unwieldy: first of all, the towers do topple over, and I have learned that the individual sections do not always fit the next set of sections you buy. Which is frustrating.

The second system is tackle boxes with beads stored more by material and size than by color.

NOTE: These are cheaper if you buy them in the fishing section of a Big Box Mart than if you buy the exact same box at the craft store or even at the Big Box Mart still, but in the crafting section. You can also find tackle boxes at thrift stores and estate sales for very little money. I prefer the kind with removable section dividers, but I have both.

Larger beads fit well in these tackle-style boxes, and I usually store more expensive or valuable beads in the boxes too. I have handwritten labels on the ends so I can easily find what I need. In the tackle boxes, I sort more by material of the bead. Pearls, bone and antler, ceramic, shell, etc. I have three tackle boxes JUST for seed beads. The tackle boxes are currently just stored in short stacks on the shelves. One day I will improve on that system so I can pull the bottom box out without having to remove all the ones on top: but for now, it works.

Most of my findings are in towers, sorted by metal type. Sterling is kept in a wooden box with a piece of tarnish cloth inside. This system is functional for now, but not perfect, and I need more room for my findings, so this is something I may change.

To the right of my bead area, under the window, is one of two matching cabinets I scored years ago for a ridiculous price of only $20 each. Yay estate sales! They are not even dented. These metal drawers are great for holding small to medium items. I keep almost all my polymer clay items in here, from bricks of raw clay to texture tools, as well as a lot of paper crafting things. As you can see, I also use the handles to temporarily store necklaces. Pardon the mess on the floor: As I said before, I am still not finished moving in. It's cluttered.

On the other side of the room (in the northeast corner) is my "hot" desk. This is where I will do torch work. With a torch space, safety comes first, so the fire proof floor is great, and fumes must be vented out. I can easily open the window on the east wall for ventilation, and I also use a fan. One day I will invest in a professional fume fan and hood. In the meantime, I use the fan and wear a filter mask. I get great natural light pouring again from this giant east-facing window. (The file cabinet is my daughter's and simply won't fit anywhere else in the house, so it lives in my studio.)

This second desk is HUGE and very heavy, made of solid wood. I bought it from my school when I retired, and put it on casters so I can move it easily if needed. Inside it I store my metal working tools and accessories, as well as some rubber stamping goods. This desk is sadly covered with paper crafting right now, because I just moved all that out of the living room of our home and have not yet found a home for it. But eventually, the paper crafting will move to the south side of the room.

Did you see my globe? That's just one of many: I collect them. I love maps and globes.

My "hot" desk, seen facing north. Right now the desk has my photo albums on it, some fiction (Neil Gaiman!!), my camera, and some jewelry waiting to be photographed for my Etsy store. The stuff on the floor underneath is all metal working items in boxes, waiting to be unpacked. Unfortunately, EVERYTHING on the shelves above the desk is in the wrong place (it's all paper crafting) and will be moved. I do lots of black and white ink drawing and am learning to art journal.

YUCK. This is the pile of junk still to be sorted and dealt with on the south side of the room. You can see a second metal set of drawers (mostly empty), a bookcase jammed with fiction books and globes and lots of assorted junk that needs to go live elsewhere in the house, some stacked-up blue Rubbermaid buckets (filled mostly with fabric trims and fancy laces), and an electronic keyboard leaning against the case there by the ladder. Also my daughter's folding chairs. The closet is also, sadly, solidly packed with books, boxes, and gear, all of which needs to be sorted through and either put in place or passed along. I just closed down my classroom and retired after 17 years, so I have a lot to sort through and get rid of. There's a big destash in my future.

And that's my studio, in it's not-quite-ready-for-prime-time condition!

Thanks for stopping by

Robin

Pondering my empty nest

2015-11-04T09:43:00.001-06:00

They grew up.

All of my beautiful children, who once occupied 110% of my time and energy........ grew up. All of them. They grew up and moved out and started lives that frankly don't intersect mine very often, in some cases not for weeks at a time.

I have been pondering a lot lately about this phenomenon, this major change in priorities, and have found that it is a subject which no one warned me about. There are plenty of blogs and articles about "Dealing with young children" or "How to maintain your sanity in the chaos of family life" or "Coping with your teens"... but no one seems to be talking about what happens to Mommies when their kids are grown and.... just gone. The phrase "empty nest" gets bantered about a lot: but what the hell does it MEAN?

We got an early start on the whole parenting gig. In our circle of friends, my husband and I married first, earliest, and then had our first child 10 months and 2 days later. It was nearly two years before any other friends of ours got married, and another three or so before they started having children. By then, we had five. It helped that we had a set of twins at the end. When the twins were born, our other kiddos were 5, 3, and 1.

The early years are a blur of sleeplessness, diapers, hanging laundry on the line, and endlessly rereading Sandra Boynton board books. Most of our time, money, and energy was spent on the kids. We were parents. It's who we were. The middle years brought a shift of activities but still took 110% of our lives. The kids could do their own shoelaces and lunches, but still needed us so much. We were still full time parents.

Then, they were all teenagers together. People used to roll their eyes when they found we had five teenagers at once in the home, but we actually really enjoyed those years. We often got to have really fascinating conversations with them as they became critical thinkers and questioned the status-quo of their world. They made choices.... not always good ones. But we still defined ourselves primarily as parents.

Then the leaving began. Since we had them so close together, we lost them quite close together as well. Off they went to college, in most cases hours if not several states away. The house began to empty.

The end of parenting came abruptly, for us, at the tender young age of 48, when our twins left for college at the same time.

Since then, each of our three sons have all lived with us for brief stints, from a few weeks to a few months at a time. But the eldest has married, and the middle one is renting a house across town, and the youngest is across the country in graduate school now.

Our two daughters have both moved out and lived on their own for a long time, then moved home again, in one case so she could to finish college with less debt (don't get me starting on student loans), and they are a delight to have around. But they are actually not around that much. We can go days not seeing them face to face. And frankly, they don't need parenting anymore.

Most of our friends still have kids at home, in some cases kids still in elementary school. Kids in LOWER elementary school. In fact, one still has an infant. They are a decade or more from being empty nesters, and when they get there, they will be in their 60s. We are both just 52 and frankly, we are years into the empty nest already. But we are the only ones in our circle of friends who are here.

In addition, I recently retired after teaching for 17 years. And I am the only retired person I know of in our circle of friends. Everyone else is still holding down a job or has been a stay at home parent all along. So we are at a bit of a loss here.

Who are we now, Hubbyman and I, if we are essentially done with the parenting gig? And we are: we are done. We will always be their Mom and Dad, of course, and hopefully they will want us to continue being a part of their lives. We LOVE having adult children and have really enjoyed watching them fly the coop and start their own lives as individuals. We enjoy whenever we can get together with them and talk .

But still: Given our genetic inheritance (Most of our relatives tend to live into their 90s) and our generally excellent physical health, we are likely to live another 30-40 years. Don't get me wrong: I am NOT complaining. This is a wonderful dilemma and filled with lots of potential directions for us as human persons. But we still have to face this question:

We spent the last 30 years parenting. What shall we do for the NEXT 30 years?

As hubby says, we will do whatever we are called to do, and whatever we want to do.

Now we just gotta figure that out.

Thanks for stopping by,
Robin

Book review: Relic Master, The Dark City (Book One in a series) , by Catherine Fisher

2015-11-02T22:59:00.001-06:00

Book review: Relic Master, The Dark City (The Relic Master series, Book One) , by Catherine Fisher

Kudos to Catherine Fisher for this fast paced, intriguing novel. Better by far than most future world dystopias for young people, with interesting characters and a layered plot, set in a fascinating and believable world. (I also love her Oracle series for the same reasons, and highly recommend it.)

An ancient religion called The Order is being systematically persecuted by a creepy para-military group called The Watch on a planet called Anara. The members of The Order (who are fully trained and mature) are called Keepers, and our hero, the young and likeably flawed Raffi, is on his way to that goal, becoming a Keeper. But a Keeper of what, exactly? Relics. Ancient machines and gadgets, leftovers from The Makers, the gods who created this planet. His teacher is Galen, the crankiest wise man you may ever meet.

When Carys, a Watch recruit, decides to make Galen Harn her target, the story begins to gallop along. We encounter The Sekoi, a member of the original race, whose observant silences and unusual set of priorities are both unnerving and intriguing. Alberic, the Watchlord who does and does not believe, and his band of merry murderers is also in pursuit. Galen, who is the mentor, and Raffi, the student, must run, and The Sekoi runs with them. Along the way they encounter some friends, some ghosts, some magic, and some new relics. We get a broader picture of the creation and partial destruction of Anara. We learn a bit more about the makers. And we discover what the Interrex really is.

I am eager to read the next books in this series. This first one goes in my classroom today: the book is perfect for young adult reads, with no sex at all, not even romance, and violence that is not graphic and pervasive, but plenty of action and some great role models. The story features adventure, friendship, mentor relationships (more than one), and personal growth through sacrifice.

Please keep writing, Catherine Fisher.

The Oracle Betrayed, a book review

2015-10-12T22:10:00.004-05:00

The Oracle Betrayed, by Catherine Fisher, a book review

I picked this novel up because of the author, Catherine Fisher. This series preceded her popular Incarceron/ Sapphique series by a couple of years, but I had never heard of it at all. IMHO it is FAR superior material. I was delighted with the intensity of the plot, with its many threads, the development and growth of the characters, the ordinariness of our motley crew of heroes, and the writing itself. (I swear her descriptions of the drought made me thirsty.)

Mirany is a shy and somewhat awkward girl from a distant place called Myros, who's been lucky enough to be selected as one of The Nine, priestesses for the house of the god. She's rightly terrified of her new position; it basically involves carrying gigantic heavy brass bowls around during religious rituals, bowls which hold venomous snakes and scuttling scorpions. Most girls last under 6 months at this work.

The land is suffering from a terrible drought, and so the current incarnation of their god, The Archon, sacrifices himself, with Mirany attending, to bring rain to the people. But before he dies, he leaves her with a terrible warning. And in obeying his directives, everything changes for Mirany. Her great and terrible secret is that she actually does not believe in the god. At least, she doesn't.... until he actually speaks to her, a voice in her head. She saw the man die: but now the Archon is talking to her. Driven by this new understanding -- that in fact the god is real, and waiting to be reborn into a new soul-- and that tragedy has been set into motion, she must find within herself the courage to take some dangerous steps that will right the wrongs.
Along the way she meets Seth, a scribe and would-be tomb robber willing to put himself in a desperate situation if it means clean, fresh water for his father and little sister, who has been ill. We see some of the events of the book through his eyes, and cannot help but sympathize with him. We also meet Obleck, an old, rough musician whose recklessness and otherworldly attachment to The Archon makes him a bit of a loose cannon. Then there's Alexos, a scrawny child hand-picked by the god himself to be the next incarnation of The Archon. If, that is, they can get his village to let him go without getting slaughtered on the way. Which seems unlikely.
The setting is never completely explained but is richly redolent of ancient Egypt, complete with labyrinthine tombs, a death fixation, and slightly creepy rituals, including days-long embalmings, sacred black cats....and scorpions galore. As a History teacher I especially appreciated the depth of detail in the various settings, from the opium den to the scribes room to the palace itself. The opening of each chapter is a little diary entry, poetic and mystical... at first you do not understand who is speaking, or why, but it becomes increasingly clear. Mirany is a highly sympathetic character, and it was easy to get attached to her.
Excellent read for middle and high school grades, from ages 11 to, well, over 50. No sexual content, no "evil paraded as good", far less violence than in many YA novels. If a child is studying ancient Egypt this would make an excellent novel to read at the same time, but even if you know nothing about that time and place, you will be caught up in the drama and intrigue of this richly layered story.

This book is so far superior to Incarceron in both plotting and character development that I can hardly believe they came from the same author. I am eager to read the rest of the series.

Speak, by Laurie Halse Andserson, a book review

2015-10-12T16:06:00.003-05:00

Speak, by Laurie Halse Andserson, a book review

A difficult topic, handled as gently and discreetly as something this horrific can BE handled. Kudos to the author for tackling this, as she tackles many difficult subjects.

SPOILER ALERT: The heroine in this novel is raped, and must come to terms with what occurred, and decide what to do about it. The rape is not described, just implied, but the aftermath, especially the emotional aftermath, is described in depth. She's in early high school, on the young side, and the rape occurred when she was at a place (a wild party) she probably should not have been, so she feels it may have been partly her fault. SO COMMON for rape victims to feel this way. For a long time, she tells NO ONE. Again, very real. But that begins to eat her up inside. She has to decide to speak about what has happened to her: hence the title.

It was gut wrenching for me to watch the heroine struggle to come to terms with who she is now that this has happened to her. That's a HUGE issue for rape victims.

She also has to both identify and eventually learn to accept the feelings she has about the event, herself, and her friends and family who know nothing about what happened.

She struggles with the ugliness that is now a part of her. I found the description of her artwork with the turkey and the Barbie doll so very insightful and apropos.

It's significant that her healing begins only when she finally lets the secret out of the bag and says something. Then she discovers that she is not alone. We are only as sick as our secrets.

Recommended to anyone who has been sexually assaulted, or knows a woman or a young person who has been assaulted, and to everyone -- and I do mean EVERYONE-- who works with young women from about 6th grade up.

Note well: NOT a book I would give to younger students (under about tenth grade or so) without their parents' full knowledge and permission.

Shoulding on Myself

2015-08-31T17:51:00.002-05:00

I should all over myself.

If I see a beautiful garden, or drive past a really lovely well-kept home, or see an idea on Pinterest for a nice backyard path or seating area, I think to myself, "I should do that, I could totally do that." But my backyard (and my front one too) is currently the saddest, most neglected yard on the planet. I really SHOULD get out there and clean things up a bit.

If I hear about a new bestselling book someone is reading and loving, I think to myself, "I should read that, I love to read, I am a good reader." But there are literally stacks of books in my home which I have not touched yet. And that one just gets added to the pile. I do read a lot: but in my mind, I do not read enough, and I SHOULD.

If I see a cute outfit or unusual piece of clothing, I examine it closely -- and sometimes even take detailed notes on its construction-- telling myself, "I SHOULD sew this myself and save the money, I am good at sewing." But my sewing area generally only sees me fixing hems, sewing in patches, and replacing buttons. Nothing creative.

When I see someone running or walking outside, I always cheer them on mentally and then tell myself, "I should exercise every day! I can do that! I should lose these 80 extra pounds I am toting around ." But.... I don't. I am trying.... but I've been saying that I am trying for four years now.

When I see an image of a beautiful piece of art, whether it is a sculpture, a painting, an art journaling page, or a piece of beautiful handmade jewelry, my reaction is always the same: "I should try to make that. I bet I can figure out how to replicate the technique and make it my own. That is so cool, I should be the kind of person who created that." But despite owning what may be several thousands of dollars in art-making materials, I do not generally replicate anything, and produce mostly standard work in all areas.

When I read Facebook posts or online news articles about current events, politics, or world affairs, I think to myself, "I should learn more about that. I should probably do something to address that problem. Why don't I have deep and vast knowledge of this issue? I should be more involved." But I am not.

When I hear about people getting Masters and PhD degrees, I think to myself, "I should have an advanced degree. I should go back to college and get one." But in what? While I am acceptably smart, and relatively good at "school", there is no one subject matter that stirs my soul right now. Why do I think I should do this?

I should on myself a lot.

WHY?

Why has my driving force for many years been to do what I think I "should" do? When I look back, I see many many things I have done that were good things to do, but which I did , NOT because I wanted to do them, but rather from some sense of being compelled to do them-- because of who I thought I was, or who I thought I "should " be, or even "who I should want to be".

I do not regret the things I have done, to clarify: but I am questioning why I did them.

An example: Why did I get the degree I have? Because other people told me I would be good at it. But when I graduated, I hated the field and I left. I married, I parented, I taught: none of which was in my degree field.

Another example: Why did I teach for 17 years when teaching was NEVER my dream? When, in fact I swore I would never ever teach, because I saw from early childhood the time and energy drain it was for my Mom, a master teacher. Did I enjoy it,? Well yeah, heck yes, but why did I start? What compelled me? The fact is, I started because I was fixing a problem (they just needed one person to teach one class three days a week, just the one class.....) for someone whose opinion mattered to me. I was meeting SOMEONE ELSE'S NEED. And then I was kind of good at it, and people expected me to stay so.... I did. First part time. Then..... Full time. Full time for 17 years.

And why did I leave teaching? Because my husband asked me to do so. Again, what did I WANT? Aside from more time and less stress, I have no idea.

And what is it that I really DO? Now that I have free time, what do I do? I do read some, yes. I make art some, too, but not more than I did when I was a working gal. I also have started working out a bit, and I play computer games, watch stupid TV, and sit in silence a lot. I pray a lot.

I don't fix my backyard, I don't enroll in a Master's degree program, I have not yet sewn creative clothing, cooked exotic dishes, or in any other way lived up to all my SHOULDS.

And that's OK.

The hardest part is recognizing that it is perfectly alright to just BE and not always DO.

I am starting the process of transformation. It's messy and indirect and not at all linear, and it has no discernible time table that I can follow.

But, it SHOULD be fun.

Grateful for the opportunity I have been given to examine my life more closely, and with greater leisure, and try to find a way to really live and not just exist.

Thanks for stopping by,
Robin

nothing lasts

2015-08-31T17:17:00.000-05:00

I've been pondering rather a lot lately on the phrase: "All things pass away." Another way to say that is the simpler, "Nothing lasts." And it is true. No thing does.

Consider relationships. Some last for a lifetime, though that is rare, Could be a good strong marriage or a close and reliable friendship, and fierce ties between a parent and a child. But eventually, one of you will die. The end. You may have memories of that person, but then you too will die, taking those memories with you. Gone. Perhaps you told others about those memories, told your children, or wrote them down somewhere. That will extend the idea a bit longer, maybe a generation or two.

But paper rots. Books and diaries get set aside, waterlogged in basements, burned down in house fires, sold in boot sales. And within, say, four generations, all thought of you and this precious relationship you once had, are erased. I know, for example, the name of my great-great-grandmother. But I have no photo of her, and no idea what sort of person she was, who she loved, how she thought about things. It won't surprise me if even her name becomes lost one day. After all, she no doubt knew her grandmother's name: but I do not. She lived a whole life, had multiple children, and surely experienced things that would amaze me. But there is no record. And she is just one of billions of people who had lived, loved, and left.

Think how many strong and beautiful relationships have surely existed throughout the millennia, relationships lost forever, despite oral story telling and the written word. Women who supported their best friends, men who cherished their partners, children who adored their parents. But they are gone, and all trace of that relationship is now gone too. And so, too, one day, will I be gone, and eventually all evidence of my relationships, and in fact all evidence of my entire life, will be gone. Even though I spend hours of this one short, precious life working on our family genealogy, and making charts, and preserving memories for my children, and theirs beyond them, --- even so, one day it will be lost. Proof of my life will be gone forever. No thought or work of mine can survive.

Consider for another example the beautiful ancient sites in Iraq and Iran, recently bulldozed and smashed to smithereens, on purpose, by ISIS. Those sites lasted thousands of years: but then, they were destroyed in a matter of hours. Who knows how many such sites before them were also ancient, and then just gone within hours or days? And consider: how many times has that scenario been repeated throughout history? How many civilizations do we know absolutely NOTHING about today, because every single thing they ever built or made was destroyed, either intentionally or by the relentless ravages of time?

Consider the things in your home. You have no doubt carefully chosen, within the limits of your budget (I hope), each item that makes up your household. A lamp, a desk, a sofa, a beautiful painting. But one day, you will grow old, or perhaps die before you can get too old, and your children, if you have any, will decide whether or not to keep that lamp, that desk, that painting. (And if you have no children, to whom will all your things go? a sibling? a friend?)

They might keep it, perhaps even hand it reverently down to the grand children or great grandchildren with the legacy tale that "This vintage lamp once belonged to your great-grandparent, John." Or they might just donate it to the Goodwill thrift store, and it is out of your family, and gone. All this history and meaning of it, erased. So now it is just a secondhand old lamp. And of course, eventually it will wear out, get broken or whatever, and be consigned to the trash heap, to rot back into soil.

Every single thing you own will rot or decay. Even your home.

I think this is part of what draws me to metal work. In some corner of my twisted mind resides the belief that metal will last longer. I know that it, too, decays, giving way before the rust and water and pressure and heat. But it lasts longer than paper, longer than wood, longer than the written word. And yet, even metal things will fade away. How many gorgeous pieces of jewelry, made in ancient cities across the world, are gone forever? The few that we find are now museum pieces, carefully preserved behind temperature-controlled glass. For every one item we have, a thousand or more were lost. And even the one will eventually, too, be gone. The museum will close, or be destroyed.

I distinctly remember an experiment done while I was a small child. My Dad is a bright man, an engineer, and he loved to teach us about science. I had asked about rust, and the explanation he had given baffled me, so, my Dad helped me to reverently bury a medium sized nail in a small wooden box, full of moist soil. For weeks, we watered the box just a wee bit, on a schedule. And then we emptied the soil out and pressed it through a screen to find the nail......but it was utterly gone. It had rusted away completely, and there was quite literally no trace of it left for me to touch. A powerful lesson for a little girl, and one I remember every time I pass a cemetery or attend a funeral.

Photo credit to ClytieGarretson, 2011

No trace left, eventually.

Nothing lasts.

And so I come to St. Teresa of Avila and her almost painfully wise words from her "bookmark":

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,

All things are passing;

God only is changeless.

Patience gains all things.

Who has God wants nothing.

God alone suffices.

And I am led back into my Faith, longing for something that lasts, some One that lasts.

Thanks for stopping by,

Robin J