* Feeling some better this morning. Part of it is that I slept better last night - for some reason I was better able to get the house cooled to a "comfortable" temperature (maybe because it was overcast? One of these days I'm going to cash in a little of the stock I own and have the house totally re-sided, and have them use whatever the state-of-the-art heat barrier insulation is underneath it. And have a re-roof job done while I'm at it, and maybe have formal vents put in rather than the little old round attic vents that currently exist.
* Also, I watched a lot of coverage of the so-called "Cajun Navy" - large numbers of people in the South Texas area with flat-bottomed boats (either those aluminum fishing boats, or things like air boats, or I guess even things like Ski-Doos) who came out and fanned out over the flooded areas and just started rescuing people (and, in some cases, their pets).
And you know what? In a country where there's been so much bad news in recent weeks about how "awful" people are, I needed to see that - these are guys (mostly, at least all the "boat captains" I saw on the news were men) who are doing it because they know it needs to be done, who probably take a quiet pride in having been able to help. And it does make me feel better about humanity.
Someone commented on Twitter that some of the guys rescuing people (of any race or creed) from flooded out houses were also guys that probably fly the Confederate flag from time to time, and "people are complicated" and yes, that's true. I think the problem is often news reduces people to one-dimensional cartoons of humanity, and that may be why I say "I love the individual people I know but I can't stand humanity" because of that "simplifying" effect of seeing only one side of people's behavior when you don't see the whole person - everyone has good and bad in them; the hope is that an individual person has at least 51% good traits....I think maybe one of the flattening and simplifying things in the social-media era is the whole idea of "problematicness" and also the existence of things like purity tests - that you cannot possibly be a "good" person if you laughed at certain jokes, or if you like certain music, or that you should avoid movies starring certain actors because of things they have said. And while there are different shades of "bad," I guess (I had to give away my Bill Cosby humor-routine CDs; I found I could not listen to them any more after all the charges came out), it does seem kind of exhausting to comb through someone's life looking for the One Bad Thing that disqualifies them from being worth liking....
All humans have bad in them. I joked on Twitter that 2017 will probably turn me Calvinist, and there's some truth to that, but then - seeing the bearded dudes in little aluminum boats lifting little old men out of their flooded homes? I feel better about humanity. (I've never been able to track it down on line, but someone I knew once told me there was a Jewish/Yiddish (I think it was originally in Yiddish?) saying that "When God sees one person doing a good deed, He says, 'because of this, I do not destroy the world'" and I kind of like that thought)
* I also think it's an interesting comparison with the people throwing stuff in Berkeley. I've gone on record before that I'm fine with peaceful protest, whether that takes the form of standing with a sign, or walking a set route and chanting, or getting down on your knees somewhere in public and praying. (I'm not so down with the idea of blocking major thoroughfares to make a point, given that you don't know that some random car you prevent the passage of may be carrying someone on the way to the hospital, or a parent trying to pick up a kid from day care, or the like).
I do not like violent protest. Hurting people and even badly scaring people is a terrible way to get a political point across. The guy across the cordon from you, even if you may hate what he stands for, he's still human, and you do not have the right to injure him (except, perhaps, in self-defense, if he is clearly going to harm you)
But yeah. When there's a problem happening and I can do something to *help* rather than merely drawing attention to "hey, there's a problem,".....well, if I lived in South Texas and owned a fishing dinghy, I'd probably be out patrolling the flooded streets looking for people who need to get down off their roofs.
* Still working away on the back of Augusta. I am getting close to the point (!) of being able to start shaping the armholes. (worsted-weight knits up faster). I'm also getting closer to being able to do the hem on the bottom of Grasse Matinee and start the sleeves.
This coming weekend is Labor Day - I get Monday off. If I am not scrambling to finish my editing job (I hope to finish that this week during office hours) I am considering
a. Going antiquing (Finally!) on Saturday (provided we're not being inundated impossibly much by the remnants of Harvey) and also doing "big grocery shopping" and
b. Maybe starting the Great Horn-Rimmed on Monday. (or Sunday after church). I have a separate needle (I bought another midrange size-3 circular) for it, so it won't interfere with doing the sleeves on Grasse Matinee (also done on 3s).
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