labour
Love this picture. The labour of my mother outside Tommy’s (RIP) bringin silage up to her cattle, while the shiny vehi-cul sliding behind her, pulling the box with ease.
I have just stitched (using my first woollen needle) the three pieces of my shawl together. It took me more than a year and a half to knit it. One part of the shawl is the very first piece of serious knitting my son did. It wonderfully records the stretched holes and dropped stitches, forever preserved as a beginning. Another part of the shawl has an anarchic pale blue stripe where my son was determined to rail against my instruction that I wanted the shawl to be black. Again it captures a moment of defiant and rightful overthrow and the effect of the pale blue stripe along the trim is “grip-like” and I love it.
The back part, the big blanket square, is indecisive but a testament to the moods that created it. Chunks of pearl followed by let this be finished, switch to bigger needles to make it be over quicker, and back to neater stitches and let this be done stitches and on and on.
Then the poor shawl had a terrible two months of not being stitched properly and falling apart because I had stitched it poorly with cheap thread that would never hold the wool together and eventually parted. Tonight with a knitting sewing needle I looped the parts up and it fits together like a jigsaw. Perhaps because all the misshapen bits have had a bit of time to be acquainted!
It’s physically cosy in a way that no other blanket is. Maybe the labour of small fingers is what delivers that cosyness. Or maybe the gesture that I am wrapped up inside something we laboured on together. I hope I’ll be an old woman inside this shawl.
At last some critical discourse on weather forecasting terminology ….. I frame the weather forecast in 3 categories Environ Can = Conservative Accuweather = hysterical The truth = someplace in the middle and start examining the radar yourself.
The snowmenclature smackdown among meteorologists started with “snowmageddon” and “snowpocalypse.” When the latest snow event – laden with flakes and whipped by heavy winds – headed for the storm-weary U.S. Northeast this week, the folks at AccuWeather Inc. warned of a coming “snowicane.”
My ma used to say cleanliness is next to Godliness. I think weather forecasting should be elevated to that spot.
I was just thinking how uncouth it is to rob the post office. Most especially a rural post office, which can be the lifeblood of a community. Many years ago I met a man who was running the Conserve Our Rural Post Office campaign (CORPO). He had greyhounds. Every dog was named for the campaign Corpo 1, Corpo 2 etc. They were attached to a washing line pole that they could run around in the garden. Every victory at the races, a concurrent victory for the post office.
I don’t know what the current state of play is with the closure of rural post offices. I must look it up. You could always pay your bills at the P/O I found that very handy.
Education cuts: act now
This is what’s going down with education cuts in BC:
With just one week until the 2010-11 BC Budget is presented on March 2, parents and education advocates around the province are busy writing, calling, rallying, petitioning and emailing local MLAs and the BC Premier to stand up for our K-12 students! The message is simple: Last year, while campaigning for re-election at the height of the 2009 global recession, Premier Campbell promised to protect public education despite the tough economic times. British Columbians expect him to honour that promise in his upcoming budget, by covering some $300 million in unfunded new costs and demands that Victoria has imposed on local school boards for 2010-11
Visit BC Education Coalition, write to your MLA before next week’s budget.
When are we going to have an intelligent conversation on this topic? I am confident that by age 94 she knows what she wants.
A 94-year-old Victoria woman is making no secret of her wish to commit suicide, but she can’t find anyone to give her the lethal medication she needs to end her life.
“I do not wish to live anymore,” said Bernice Packford.
Since Ireland has now reached expiration point exporting and trading “ceol agus craic” I am wondering if the next marketing construct will involve the deep psycho-sexual problems in the country, or the best tribunals, or better still how to blow a boom and scupper the most vulnerable.
Craic has expired. Bang, bust and scuppering has begun. Infinitely more percussive.