Better day today

 I probably needed to both get out of the "one inch picture frame" I got into with laboring over those slide decks, and also, I think that near-accident (and the guy's rude reaction) upset me more than I realized. But today was better:

- My colleague (the other botanist) was in and we managed to coordinate schedules so she can go out with me the end of this week so I can get the second sample of soil from one of the sites. Which is also the site where I wanted to show her the sites the student and I had sampled (we have a vague plan to resample them later this summer, to see if anything's changed) AND it will give me a chance to get photos for the talk I am giving next month over the previous project I did there. I had been worried, not just about getting the soil (I need a little help with that) but getting the photos - two of the places I'd want to photograph are close to the road and would PROBABLY be safe for me to walk out to, but for the third one I really feel like I need another person, because it's far, and if I started hurting and wasn't sure I could walk back, it would help to have another person to just watch over me. (It's never really a great idea to do fieldwork alone. I have at times because of lack of people available, but it's a lot safer, especially for me now with my knee sometimes being a bit dodgy). 

And I'm going to reciprocate later this summer and help her with some work. 

- I had the meeting with the tech person and one problem I thought would be a big accessibility issue will not be, there's just a different way I have to do it (I took notes, because my memory isn't always great these days). She also showed me how to clear up something that had been annoying me. The one remaining problem (using the smartboard for the stats class, and how to save what I write in a way that would work for someone who needed a machine reader, or would need to enlarge it very big) is something she's going to look into, there may be a solution that doesn't require hours of my time for each class meeting (I warned her I was teaching four classes and assisting students with research, so I haven't a lot of time)

- After that was done, it was 2:30. I contemplated going back to my office but I got a lot done on my talk this morning (I just need to add a few more things, and the photos I take on Thursday, and it's ready) and I thought "well, you could run a few errands" (including getting the isopropyl I use for a preservative in the soil extractions). And then I thought - you could run home and grab the two watches of yours whose batteries died, and get new batteries so you can wear them again. (I have several watches, all cartoon characters. These were the Kermit the Frog one, and one with Stitch on it). So I ran those to the local jewelry store that does that, told the woman there I could just drop them off and could come back and get them later (their "guy" also does jewelry repair so sometimes he's got a lot of projects stacked up). Went to the gourmet shop next door (I'd been wanting to go for a few days but never got the time). Bought a jar of apple-bacon jam* and a bread mix

I was getting back in the car when my cell phone rang - the jeweler, they had my watches ready if I was "still in town." Well, in fact, I was standing by my car right outside them, so I did pick them up, saving myself a trip.

(*On Sunday the little group of us who goes out for lunch after church went to a new-ish restaurant that's kind of a bistro. I got something called an Orchard Melt, which was a grilled cheese sandwich with sliced fresh pear and bacon fig jam on it, and it was VERY good, and when I saw the apple-bacon jam I thought maybe it would be good on savory things, if nothing else, it might be good on chicken)

And then out to a chain drugstore for more sunblock (mine  had expired) and the bags I need to collect the soil and the isopropyl. And I saw this, and it was a total impulse buy, but I liked it, and I can put it together and set it up over in my office. I like how they portrayed the dandelion seed head using the clear "dot" Lego pieces:

So, probably: in the summer I need to build more time in to run around a little and not stay in my office all day long grinding away at the same thing, and I need to try to arrange to have more small "good" interactions (all the ones I had today were pleasant - with my colleague, with the tech person, the lady at the jewelry store was nice, the person at the gourmet shop was nice....) and sort of get outside my head

I still want to go to Dino Days, I'll have to see how my field schedule will work out because that takes precedence but I might be able to go either Friday or Saturday.

(ETA: it runs through late August, so even if I can't get down this week I can still see it. I was remembering as ending in early July....)
 

A new week

 Yeah, I missed posting Friday. I didn't get out to do anything; right after I got up it started pouring (remnants of the tropical storm from the Gulf? I don't know) and I do not like driving on the interstate in heavy rain, especially given how much worse our drivers have gotten in the past few years (*story later in the post)

So I mostly stayed home, did a little cleaning, did get out to Aldi and to the regular grocery. Saturday was Zoom knitting and it was still overcast, Sunday I had duties at church. 

 But darnit this Friday if the weather is even REMOTELY friendly I think I AM going to the museum for Dino Days. Even if it's mostly the same fossils as last year. It will be Out, which will be something. (It's also just possible my redone framed picture will be ready at Michael's - they sent the wrong frame, the right frame is more expensive, so I pay for the right frame but they're going to comp me the labor on reframing, whatever, it was kind of upsetting and if there hadn't been an error I'd have it already)

I did, however, put up the plaque I bought the previous weekend at the antique mall

 I really like the colors in it. It was sold as vintage, I have no idea how old. My gut suggests it's probably as recent as the 1980s or 90s but who knows, it could be older. It's an Emerson quotation that's not familiar to me but I'm not going to look it up lest I learn to my disappointment he never wrote it. 

At any rate, it's nice. I replaced a plaque of a daffodil I had been given as a gift years ago when I spoke to the garden club; I was getting a little tired of that one (I still have it, I don't know whether to donate it to a thrift shop here - I need to weed through my clothes and some other things again)

I also worked on the vest a bunch more this weekend; the top back is almost half done now (the armholes are supposed to be 11 1/2 inches long and I think I'm at about 6".)

 * and the story about yet another reckless or distracted driver here. At the end of the day today, driving home, I saw a guy ready to come out of the parking lot of a small branch office of a bank that's on the east side of the street (I was southbound, so it would have been closest to my driver's side). Almost before it registered as a thought in my brain, I sensed "he doesn't see me, he is going to pull out" and by golly he did. I slammed on my brakes (fortunately I knew no one was behind me) and, I admit, laid on the horn (I was badly scared and often when I'm scared like that I feel a short burst of anger). The front of his car was six inches from my front panel; if I had kept going he would likely have hit me, at the very least damaging my car.

He turned (Older white guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth) and made a rude gesture at me and then pulled ahead of me. Tentatively, I started back up but immediately doubted myself - did he think I was going fast enough and he'd have missed me if I hadn't stopped? Had I been in the wrong actually? But I think a point in my favor: he put on his lefthand directional but then at the upcoming intersection turned right (in front of another driver) onto that street.

But I was badly shaken, and upset and I admit after I got home I had a short cry about it and felt bad much of the rest of the afternoon. I think part of it was that was literally my only interaction with another person for the day - no one else was really in (my colleague who is teaching was, but it was his lab day, so he was busy all day) and I just spent the entire day wrestling slide-decks into "accessibility" which is a frustrating and often iterative exercise (make all the fixes you know to make, load it up, get told it's not good enough, go back and make the fixes for the stuff it pings on, sometimes you have to do that a couple times). I got, I think, four sets of slides done, which isn't a lot, but it is several weeks of the semester (remember: I have four classes to do this for). And again - it feels to me like the work is both invisible (in that: no one will really know what I had to do) and also it can be frustrating because some of the slides are uglier now, even if they are technically supposed to be more accessible for people with low vision. And I also know we won't even be thanked for this even though most of us are spending hours and hours on it. And it's just....unrewarding. So I was already primed to be in a bad mood and that guy's reaction (being angry and rude instead of apologetic like some drivers are when they realize they messed up) just made it worse. 

At least tomorrow I meet with one of the tech people to get some guidance on the accessibility guidelines for the class where I DON'T use slide decks and with a few other things. I mean, we should have been like given a booklet or something listing all we need to do, but we're usually left on our own to figure stuff out and it takes longer. But that's just life, I guess. 

 

I really don't like summer; most of the things I find most rewarding (teaching classes) aren't happening, and I'm alone a lot, and it's just HOT out, and it really does feel isolated here in town. 

week is over

 I DID finish sorting all the samples from the April sampling; probably next week I have to go out and get the next set (sigh). 

All the microscope work - I have to have fairly bright light to see the things - gives me eyestrain headaches, and I remember now when I was a kid, my dad was doing some work with mineralogical thin-sections and he developed migraines and blamed it on the bright light. (And was able to get his doctor to write a "prescription" for a window mount air conditioner, so it could be purchased with the "flex medical account" dollars - I guess those existed even back in the 70s). I also remember that on the relatively few really hot nights in the summer (in NE Ohio, in the 1970s), our parents would let my brother and me camp out on the floor in their bedroom (we had camping mattresses) so we could sleep in AC.

(This will be the seventh Father's Day without him, and even though I'm mostly - well, not OVER it, you never really get OVER losing  a loved one - still, occasionally seeing the ads for Father's Day stuff hits a little hard).

I'm not sure whether to go do something tomorrow, or whether to go in and work on the talk for early July, or more slide-deck revisions (though I burn out on those fairly fast).

I do know tomorrow is Juneteenth so some things may not be open, and I'm pretty sure both Sherman and Denison will have parades (My town, given our, uh, history.....we don't. We're still pretty insular in the not-good way). But I am also kind of tired. Then again - being extremely alone, as I am a lot in the summer, is not great for my mood, I recognize that.

So doing something like sitting down and trying to get a bunch done on the yellow "British School Slipover" (which I pulled back out and did a little on tonight) all day might not be the best of ideas.

There's also a chance it rains - we need the rain but that would make going somewhere outdoors less appealing.  

Something I realized

well, I had this ALMOST written and hit the wrong key and deleted it, and the "change" got saved before I could undo, so this probably won't be as good. Dangit.

 

Anyway, I found a thread on Bluesky yesterday by Marissa Lingen, about Puddleglum from the Narnia books, specifically "The Silver Chair"

And an admission: I used to tell people my favorite character in the books was Reepicheep -brave and dashing and gallant. But really, Puddleglum was my favorite. But when I was younger, having a depressive frogman as your favorite seemed....weird. 

And when I was a kid, I thought Puddleglum was my favorite merely because he was "sad," kind of like how Eeyore was my favorite. I had read somewhere that children supposedly liked "sad" characters because either we felt they gave us license to be sad when we were (it does children a disservice to do the "good vibes only" thing with them, or tell them they have nothing to be sad about) or that maybe we thought we could cheer them up, and yes, I can see that with Eeyore.

But Puddleglum - now after reading Lingen's thread, I wonder if I related to a deeper part of his personality because it was already within me and I saw myself in it, or maybe reading about him and what he did and believed, it allowed me to develop it, now, when I particularly need it.

Puddleglum is not a preposessing character. He has webbed hands and feet, he is tall and thin. The description of him sounds a bit like the stereotypical West Country farmer (I imagined him wearing one of those smocks with his funny hat and narrow trousers, and I imagined him as SPEAKING with that accent (imagine the stereotypical pirate from an old movie and you're close). His hair is described as being like reeds, and he has tanned skin...So he is an odd, humanoid character. 

And Lingen describes him a bit more: 

Puddleglum is a depressive muddy mess who drinks too much. And when push comes to shove he can't say he believes in better things. But he DOESN'T say that. He says he prefers to live like the world is better than a tiny dank cave with no hope to ever breathe free air EVEN IF IT ISN'T.

He is the hero of that part of the book - if you've read it, you know. The "queen" (actually a witch) has hypnotized the two children with some kind of drug in the fire that makes a very heavy smoke, and they are starting to yield, to deny that "aboveground" existed (they are in a cave) and denying that Aslan exists. And Puddleglum apparently feels HIMSELF starting to lose himself, and he goes over to the fire and stamps on it with his big, flat (bare) feet. He burns himself severely (self sacrifice) but putting out the fire (and as Lewis comments "the smell of burnt Marsh-Wiggle") snaps the children out of their stupor, and is the beginning of the end of their entrapment.

But before the denoument, he gets his speech, right after putting out the fire:

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

(I got the quotation from this blog post, and the author also links in Sam Gamgee, who yes, famously comments there is still good worth fighting for in the world)

 And yes, one of the problems I have with the world today, is that it seems the people who do wrong, who don't operate by a moral code, who are cruel and selfish - they are the ones who prosper, and there is literally no reward for being "good"

I know I've said before I read too many of the old-style fairy tales as a child; and on some level I do expect that kindness and honesty and all that will be rewarded, and cheating and cruelty will wind up punished (or at the very least: the victims of it will see some recompense for what they suffered). 

And it's very hard to look at the world now and see people who do seem to have no moral compass at all, who shift with the winds and what they think will get them money or applause, are the ones that prosper, and a lot of us work in obscurity and never really see much of a benefit. 

(My frustration currently: I am working on upgrading all my teaching materials to try to be 100% compliant with the new "online accessibility" (mostly: helping people with low vision access them) standards, and it is TREMENDOUSLY frustrating, because I fix everything in the program where I composed it, and then when I upload it to Canvas (our LMS), it catches more things that are either harder to fix, or, worse, that it claims I did not fix when I actually did, and I was on the point today of just taking all my slide decks and making them plain white background, plain solid black text, boring and dull, and take most of the graphics out....because I couldn't GET to 100% compliance. I could get above 90% which we were told at one point was good enough, but (a) I don't believe it will still be seen as good enough later, I know how these things work, and (b) "it has to be perfect to make up for it being ME")

And it is very frustrating to deal with the "you could grind up the entire universe and not find one molecule of justice or mercy" (Terry Pratchett, and he put those words in Death's mouth). And yes, yes, I know: I am a person of faith but I also have my questions and my doubts and my, in a mirror of something Mary is said to have said, "but how can this BE?"

And I admit a lot of the time, trusting that I am doing what is right for whatever quixotic reason that matters to me is an awfully thin broth if both no one else really cares and if I won't see any thanks (and may even somehow be punished, I see how the world works) for trying to do right. 

And yet, I can't be otherwise. Even as I look at how the world operates on the debased version of the golden rule (either: "he who has the gold makes the rules" or "do unto the other guy before he can do unto you") and I say "well the RATIONAL thing would be to become as bad as those guys, because trying to be good means you lose," I can't do otherwise than try to be good.

As I said over there: 

Every day I get up and do what I "ought" and I go in to work and I work on my little research and I help the research students if they're around and I'm pleasant to my colleagues and I do things like strive to meet all the accessibility benchmarks with my class materials even though it takes a lot of my time and arguably it applies less to fully in-person classes than it does to online ones. So I behave as if there's some reason to be good, as if I were going to somehow be rewarded, but deep in a shadowy part of my heart, I suspect none of it actually matters But I do it anyway. And I don't KNOW. I don't even KNOW. On the bad days I ask myself "why" and yet I can't stop myself from doing things the way I do them. (I guess early training sticks with you). But yes: There may be no "aboveground," there may be no Aslan, there may be no point to kindness, everything may be rigged so only rich & powerful succeed, but dammit, I'm going to act as if it DID matter that I was kind to people & that the things I do actually help. Because I'd go mad otherwise.

But now I look at Puddleglum - sad and cynical and probably believing that the world WON'T be better, even though he can imagine how it COULD - and I see a side of my personality there. The disappointed idealist, I think, though I always thought disappointed idealists curdled into cynics. I don't think I am TOTALLY cynical yet; I still have a great capacity to be disappointed and distressed by what people do and say and that the world isn't better. 

But it is frustrating and maddening and yes, kind of depressing, that you can IMAGINE the world and people being better, and it isn't, it never seems to be able to be, and to not know what to do beyond keep on keepin' on yourself, and that can be a very lonely place to be. 

(I don't drink, though maybe now I kind of see why Puddleglum did....)

But I never thought of that before, the idea of the basically hopeful character who is nevertheless disappointed at how BAD everything can be, but...well, Puddleglum can STILL be heroic and is fundamentally kind to the children that somehow wind up his responsibility. He's not happy about it, of course, but he does the thing, because that's who he is. 

 

some Tuesday things

 * Home a little earlier than I might be; the lawn clearing guy is supposed to come around 4 to see the extent of the work and give an estimate. I've all but decided to just tell him to go ahead (unless it's really, truly outrageous) because it needs to be done and I can't do it.

I maybe COULD, except my city no longer picks up lawn waste (something about there not being space in the landfill) and you either have to (a) pay an outside company to haul it off,  (b) pay the city (and it's a pretty steep amount) for the city  to take it away or (c) wait for one of two "free" days in the year when they set up dumpsters at two places in town and you can carry your own yard waste there. I do not have a pickup truck or trailer, and the one free day for this spring/summer already happened, so.

Everything seems harder now. 

 (ETA, yes, it will be expensive, more than I'd hoped, but I do have the money, it needs to be done, and the guy said if they come back in the fall it will be MUCH less (because this IS 2-3 years of me mostly neglecting it) and I guess I have to realize between my bad knee/asthma and the logistic issues of having to get rid of the brush, I need to budget for "guys" to do this. He did say they could also get the pecan catkins off my flat sewing-room roof as well, which I can't do any more, can't climb ladders with any feeling of it being safe any more. They also have the capacity to remove dead limbs from tall trees and I will need that this fall with my pecan)

Anyway, this person came highly recommended by several people whose opinions I value. 

* It's been a slightly low-level upsetting day. Coming home for lunch, I saw a guy on a bicycle - no helmet, not even shoes - coming up the MIDDLE of the lane I was in. I mean, biking AGAINST the flow of traffic. I would have hit him if I had kept going. I stopped, without really thinking "what if someone's behind me" but I guess if someone had, and they couldn't stop, I'd just accept being rear-ended and hope my insurance would pay for the repairs on the grounds of "I didn't want to kill the bicyclist"

Fortunately there was no one behind me. The guy sort of looped around me and then - I saw in the rearview - got back into the middle of the lane, still going the wrong way. (There WAS a "right way" lane right next to us, it was a smaller two-lane road, but I guess he didn't want that lane? I was taught as a kid you absolutely biked with the flow of traffic). It's very unsettling to see someone heading straight at you (It happened to me once on the interstate when a guy was going southbound in the northbound lane. Most people pulled into the other northbound lane; I pulled onto the shoulder and called 911 and the dispatcher said "Yes, we know, someone is on the way to intercept him" in a tone that suggested this guy was a known quantity.

Then I was almost home and a guy pulled out of a side street - which I know had a stop sign and I did not - and I had to hit the brakes again.

You see that a lot now. I think people care less and figure they will do what they want without considering that physics will be very against them in some cases. 

And then finally, going back to campus, I decided to fill the tank up as gas prices seem to be in a "local minimum" (probably due to misplaced exuberance over the Iran deal) and I figure whenever it dips below $3.75, it makes sense to fill up even if it's not strictly time to. But the guy ahead of me had filled a diesel vehicle and added that DEF stuff, and he had spilled a bunch. I didn't realize it was that at first but then I smelled it and almost slipped in it.  So now my shoes STINK (that stuff smells really bad) and over at school I went into my lab and washed the soles off with soap. But they still smell, I got them a little wet, and I spent the afternoon working in my office in my stocking feet, which technically isn't a great idea (in case of emergency) but I did have the shoes nearby.

In retrospect, I probably should have gone in and warned the folks in the gas station - it was slick. But really I feel like that should have been the responsibility of the guy who spilled the stuff AND there were a lot of cars driving around the lot, making it hard to safely get to the office.

 (I also think about this weekend and how someone walking their dog let it use the "devil strip" between my yard and the street as a bathroom, and they didn't scoop. There are a number of dogwalkers in my neighborhood, this is the first time in a while the person didn't scoop. That  annoys me, though, again, even though I don't have a dog I was taught "you pick up after the animal if you walk them in an area where people are." My first reaction was "this is NOT my job, I should NOT have to deal with it, I will just mow around it" but then I went back and scooped it up with my shovel and tossed it in the rollcart (you're probably technically not supposed to, but again: what are we SUPPOSED to do?)

 

*and that comment I made about the guy pulling out from the side street and my having to stop reminds me of a comment my friend Dana made, along the lines of "Men expect the world to bend to conform to them; women are more likely to yield and bend to conform to how things are" and while I don't love the gendered aspect of it (though there may be some truth to it), yes, I do find myself yielding a lot about stuff and it gets me DOWN. I hate how when I drive I feel like I have to be even more vigilant now than I was before because people are selfish and will do things like run stop streets. 

But yes, I often to find myself yielding - doing the thing (like picking up the dog droppings) that I would rather not and feel that I should not have to, or keeping my mouth shut when I figure my speaking up for myself wouldn't do any good, or going along with what other people want rather than fighting for what I want. 

 

*Anyway, looking for comfort tonight. Not sure which project I'll knit on, but I will. In a couple minutes I might run out to the farm store - they're supposed to be open 'til 6 today and they said they had green beans in stock.

 

Little sock progress

 Saturday was mostly devoted to what I NEEDED to do (mowing the lawn, running the weed whacker, and then going over to school and working a bit). Sunday I kind of sat around and (I probably should not have) watched some of the news and getting mad at how tawdry and cheap and corrupt and nasty and ugly everything seems to be, and I admit I carried that in to today and didn't get as much done as I might have wanted (BUT: I did get the bones of a research presentation for next month put together, and I got the supplies for a new version of the mark-and-recapture lab I thought of, and I called a well-recommended lawn clearing company to start the process of getting the brush cut and removed. I would do it myself, but it has kind of gotten away from me AND the city will no longer pick it up, you have to either pay ($50 a load) or haul it somewhere yourself and honestly, I have money saved up, so maybe I just hire someone to take care of it, and maybe hire them again in the fall for another cleanup). 

Sunday late afternoon I switched to reruns of "Criminal Minds." I like the puzzle solving aspect and the "work family" aspect, but a lot of the episodes are a little rough for me. And yet, oddly, it seems less horrific than some of what's going on in the real world. So I started work on the socks I had done the ribbing for earlier.

I messed something up in one of the pattern rows, and wound up having to un-knit several rows, which I admit made me rage a little (it was inattention on my part, and I hate having my time wasted). But I fixed the problem and got back to where I had been, and added a little on also this evening:

 It's got "paired" decreases and yarn overs (in the same row) and that makes it "fan" a little bit, and the other pattern row is just purl stitches. It's sort of like the old Feather and Fan that's a very common knitted lace pattern (there are many variants of it, like there are of most "folk" patterns that have been handed around for generations). I like it; it will probably break up any pooling, and when you're counting rows it seems easier to keep going than with just plain socks where it's "knit however many inches" with nothing that changes. Maybe I shift to do more of these types of things...

Here's more of a close up

You can see the garter rib (the raised part, which is made by purl stitches, since this is knit in the round, the "smooth" parts are just regular knitting) and the yarn overs there. 

Tomorrow I need to motivate myself to finish most of the rest of the samples (I think I have seven left but that's too many for one day; I'm noticing I get eyestrain headaches if I do too many) and I could work more on my talk. 

And at some point I have 240 metal washers to spray paint. I might do a few first to make sure it doesn't gunk them up so much that the magnet wand won't get them any more - I have so many I figured I better get one of those big-magnets-on-a-stick like roofers use to pick up nails after doing a job, so I didn't lose many every semester. (The department had supply money leftover, so they bought everything). 

I'd like to figure out a couple "new" labs (or "replacement" labs for concepts I already cover differently) to keep things fresh but I'm not that creative sometimes and I'm a little surprised I thought of this lab. It's probably not ORIGINAL but I've not seen it published elsewhere.

I dunno but maybe my "Weekly trip for enjoyment" this week might either be the Native American Art museum here on campus, or maybe a trip down to do Dino Days again even if it's mostly the same specimens as last year...
 

a day off

 I guess I'll have to pay it back tomorrow (go in and do at least a couple samples, but if the weather is amenable first thing in the morning I should mow the lawn)

But today started off rainy and I wasn't sure about going (there were predicting multiple inches of rain, which we did not get, but driving on the interstate is pretty miserable in heavy rain.

So I did a few things first.

I had put my Rapunzel doll up on the little wall bracket for a while but decided to change it out, and I realized that my "Star Spangled Dolls" ("Americana" dolls, made about the time of the bicentennial) would work, so I put them up:

 "Smiling Eyes," and Alison, and Sarah Jane (I don't remember the two Anglo girls' last names). These were made on the mold, more or less, of the Sunshine Family. I had the old OG Sunshine family (with the original clothes, and just a baby as their child - later incarnations had a little girl as well as a baby). I played with them a lot when I was like 4 and 5. I had largely lost interest in dolls by the time the Star Spangled Dolls came out, I bought these three back in the 1990s at a doll show I went to (I collected dolls pretty actively for a few years in the 1990s). Last year (Or maybe the year before?) I found these at my mom's house and brought them back with me.

I know some people describe them as "creepy" (the inset "crystal" eyes). I don't, but then again some people find all dolls "creepy."

At any rate - I may not do much for the hemiquincentennial because I have no stomach for the politicized and aggrandizing stuff, but maybe I do a couple quiet things, just for myself. 

Today was primaries in my state but there was also a "nonpartisan" state question I particularly wanted to vote for (modernizing our minimum-wage structure) so I did that

 For once, the sticker wasn't just the plain-vanilla "I VOTED" plus flag. I actually peeled it off and have it stuck on my laptop lid with other stickers now. 

I also did the workout I decided I didn't want to do when I first got up, which was probably wise - when I got home I really didn't want to.

I grabbed a quick lunch on the way and went to Michael's (I had a $20 voucher, and those expire, and I got a Peter Rabbit crochet kit that I had looked at before and not bought) and then I decided I wanted to go to the BooksAMillion. Wound up buying one of those romantasies ("Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous") and a really nice hardbound reissue of "Far from the Madding Crowd" (YES darnit I am going to take back up reading more complicated books)

And then I saw this

I don't know what it is with me and mothmans (Mothmen? Mothsman?) but this guy was very cute and I made the mistake of picking him up (often if I pick up a stuffie and it is SOFT I wind up wanting it, and this guy is very soft)

His name, according to his tag, is "Motthew." Heh.

I also went to one of the antique shops (in Denison, and it was hard to get to because while the streets now are all open, the sidewalks aren't, and I had to walk out of my way to get there). I bought a postcard and a greeting card, each for a friend, and then I found a nice (and apparently vintage) oval wall tile with an Emerson quotation. It was pretty and will match in my dining room, so I bought it (It's still wrapped up, so no photo).

There was also a lot of the sort of weird detritus that antique/vintage shops have, they had "Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow" which I remember seeing adverts for when I was a kid (I think you fed the cow a little chalk tablet and then water, and that's how the "milk" was produced). 

There was also a (newly made, and it was expensive or I'd probably have bought it) tea towel with a lady on it saying "What essential oil can I use to stop people from talking to me?"

And I saw a child's biography (Little Golden Book, or as a Bluesky friend joked, "Little Purple Book?") of Prince which.....well, given the content of some of his songs, is just interesting. (The cover was not a particularly great likeness of him:)

 I didn't look more closely at it; it was labeled "mint" which sometimes means "you touch it, I expect you to buy it" for paper goods. 

And then groceries, and then home, and now I'm working on the endless blue garter section of the shawl... 

some stash diving

 Even though I have several projects going, I thought about starting another pair or two of socks; in particular I remembered a yarn I bought several years ago from Modern Daily Knitting. (Long enough ago it seems to be being closed out of their website; there's only one color left). The color I have - I think they had a series of modern-artist inspired colors? But it's called Basquiat, after Jean-Michel Basquiat. I think the colors in it are inspired by several of his paintings. (I don't know much about him, other that he died tragically young - he seemed to have been troubled).

I hunted through my collected patterns on Ravelry and found a lace one called Lake Front Socks. It's a fairly simple lace, and the variegation in it is low-volume enough that I suspect it will work well with the stitch pattern.

Some really bright yarns - and I do tend to like those, even some that border on what some people call "clown barf" - for things like socks and hats. So this subdued of a yarn is a little unusual for me:

 It's Studio Sock, from Neighborhood Fiber Company, and like I said, the color is called Basquiat. The red and brownish purple in it are more visible in person.

I got the ribbing done tonight, but that was it.

But yeah, I do have a LOT of yarn and maybe I do just start a few projects when I want to, and swap out what I have going. (I have lots and lots of sets of the size-1 sock needles). I particularly wanted to use the Basquiat yarn and did have to dig for it a little, it was not in the first two places I looked (Yes, I do have multiple places where I have yarn stashed). 

 

I also had a more-recently-purchased skein I got to thinking about as well. This is from a dyer on Etsy who calls their shop "Cashmere and Coconuts" and who has some interesting color names (some 1980s inspired, and I am kind of a kid of the '80s. At least, I was a tween/teen then....)

And yeah, while the '80s were not a good time in many ways, for me they were a simpler time, and there are some things I do miss - Saturday morning cartoons on the networks, and malls, and how the Weather Channel used to be (that may have been more of a '90s thing, though, I remember how sometimes in - I think it was grad school - when I couldn't sleep I'd get up and go downstairs and just watch it, the sort-of-rolling graphics of the local conditions and forecast, and the quiet "vaporwave" jazz they played under it, and in a way it was a televised equivalent of those malls, where nothing much ever happened (certainly nothing BAD) and it was climate-controlled, and at least on weekdays it was fairly quiet)

And one of the colors the dyer I mentioned had was called "vaporwave"

And so, out of nostalgia - though I don't think we used the term vaporwave back then - I bought a skein:

 It's the one on the right - mostly a cream color but with flashes of various intensity of hot pink, and yellow, and a little orange, and some black. Very '80s/'90s looking. This one will just be plain socks, I don't think I want a stitch pattern on these.

I also have a skein of hers with darker, stronger colors (including purple and an almost-poison green, but the other colors similar to this) called "Mixed Tape" (which is another largely vanished thing from those days)

Anyway.....I can ALMOST imagine "It's 1992, you're at your parents' house, you don't currently have to work on your thesis research, it's summer and it's warm out but they have air conditioning in their new house, and you can just relax..."

 Or, alternatively: "It's 1995, you're at a conference in an unfamiliar city. You've already done your research talk and it went well, it's evening, you were able to get room service for dinner, and you have this on for background noise while you eat and relax"

another field day

 this time we did the nested plots where we estimated cover; we now have five of these plus several done last fall (I presume we will do more this fall)

Only two photos today, this day was more busy

First up: Asclepias viridis or green milkweed (sometimes called green antelope-horns, but then it gets confused with A. asperula, which is antelope-horns, but I think that's more in the western part of the state). This is the most common milkweed around here

 they're not extremely pretty but they are good for butterflies.

We also saw one plant in a stand of Coreopsis tinctoria that had a genetic variation - the ray flowers were almost entirely red; more commonly the ray flowers are mostly yellow with some red towards the disk. This would make a pretty garden flower. I don't know how common the red variant is but I think it's the first time I've seen it

the "tinctoria" specific epithet makes me wonder if it was used as a dye plant, often times dye plants were named "tinctoria" (Indigo, the plant originally used to dye blue denim, is Indigofera tinctoria). 

***'

I have been knitting; working a bit on the shawl (I'm still at least 24 rows from shifting to the lace, if I have enough of the blue). I also got more done this past weekend on the new socks, here you can see the arrow lace pattern columns starting:

 

Tuesday evening things

 *It's funny how the days seem very long. I had a flash of thinking, driving home, that today was Thursday. I say "it's funny" because I don't seem to do much in  a day - I've just been working through samples and I guess it's a little bit like what they call "fugue state" because I sit there and work and three hours go by without my really noticing.

* also, it's kind of lonely. There are almost no students around (and I don't have any "direct" students - there are a few people working with a colleague and once in a while they'll poke their head in to ask for verification on a plant identification or something, but that's it. Most of my colleagues aren't even around, and it does seem awfully quiet.

* I think that is one thing I really realized after 2020; how important the small daily interactions are to me, and how empty everything things when they're absent. I think maybe I'm glad I was never offered (and been tempted to take) one of those remote research posts where you're basically alone in something like a cabin or a fire-watch station for a season - and a lot of those, they don't even have reliable cell service, so calling people isn't much of a reality, and for me, the phone is less good than either video calls or face to face because I need to see people's faces. 

*Tomorrow is another fieldwork day, I think it's going to be doing plots rather than just trying to generate a species list. I agreed to help with the caveat that if it was very humid and I started feeling bad I might need to leave. I do not do well in high humidity, especially since I've been on the beta blocker. (Last night at CWF, when I came in after having rushed around in the heat - it was a heat index of like 109 - someone commented that I looked flushed, and yeah, I could tell I wasn't feeling great. I got better once I had a chance to cool down).

* I am debating doing something either Friday or Saturday, like going to a museum or something. Part of me says no, I've got enough research work to do, and also, the price of gas (up to a bit over $3.50 here last I looked). Then again - gas can only get more expensive the way things are going, and I fear if they go badly enough we may see some kind of actual or de facto gas rationing (de facto if there are shortages). And ANOTHER thing I still carry with me from the pandemic is "If you have the chance at something that makes you happy, take it now, because you might lose the chance in the future"

The Sherman museum is doing "dinosaur days" again, and if i KNEW the exhibits were different to last year I'd go, but if they're going to be the same ones, I'm not sure I'd want to see the same things over again. But I'm not sure what else to do; it's a little hot for going out and walking around at like Hagerman or something. I'll have to think more about it, I guess. There is the Frank Buck zoo in Gainesville, but that's a lot farther away even though I've never been.

*Everything here does seem smaller, or farther away, than it once did.  

more finished socks

 this was the second pair of socks I finished on break. I wouldn't have gotten them done except for the "surprise" day when I had to remake my ticket because the Friday train was going to be so late. 

This is a dyer who is no longer dyeing - Night Owl Yarns. And it's too bad, I don't know what base she used but it was a really nice yarn - good twist, didn't split, uniform texture. I have one more skein of hers in different colors.

This one was called "Puffins of Fair Isle"

 Dark brown, cream, pale seafoam green, darker lichen green, gold, warn tan....an interesting combination. 

I'm glad I had enough yarn to make the second sock match in the sequence of stripes (Starting at the same point - if you have your starting loop at the transition between two colors, it's relatively easy to get them to match perfectly). I weighed the yarn I had left (and the finished first sock) after I finished the first sock to be sure I had enough (I had more than enough). Being able to make socks where the stripe pattern matches pleases me.

I'm really happy with these; they are one of the better looking pairs of socks I've made recently. I do still have to rinse them (it's a good idea to get any sizing or residual dye/mordant out before you wear them). But it'll be a few months before I can wear these; it's been in the 90s and very humid.

 

 

Friday evening things

 * I did go out today; I needed a couple things from Ulta and was loath to mail order (given that once my order somehow got shipped BACK to them, apparently UPS sometimes messes up). 

* But I also did go to the yarn shop, because why not? I'm down that way already. I just like the Katy depot anyway, they always have lovely plantings (this time: some huge red hibiscus in the garden)

 Also, the interior of the building is nice; the main hall, which I presume was the old waiting room, has remarkable chandeliers in it. I am sure they are recent, but they do make the space very elegant. This hall is often used for galas and wedding receptions

 I did buy a couple skeins - a deeply discounted "one of a kind" dyed colorway (I presume: it was a one off combination, maybe using up leftover dye) from Dream in Color, which has changed hands and the owner of Quixotic Fibers has chosen to no longer carry in favor of some smaller companies (and a semi-local dyer called Chicken Coop). It's various browns and golds and I am not sure what I'll make with it, but it was a good price and I just liked it.

I also bought a misty green skein (with some small flashes of brown in it) that was dyed by the original owner of the shop (who is now retired and dyes yarn full time). I want to do some elaborate cabled socks with this one.

And it's just nice to look at what is on offer, and talk a bit with the new owner, who knows me. 

*Something I realized - and I said to her, and she commiserated - was that really, since the pandemic, I have not knit nearly as much complex stuff as I once did. I once knit a whole Song of Hiawatha shawl! I've made cabled sweaters! But recently.....I don't know if I've gotten dumber, or if I'm just worn out, or getting old, or what, but it's harder to force myself to do more than stockinette. 

(I did pull out the "Egyptian Stucco" shawl, with the thought of trying to get to the lace section soon)

But I don't know. I don't read as much or as complex things any more either. It may be tied up with the feeling of "foreshortened life," like, "you might not be around to use this complex, time consuming thing, or finish this 600 page book" which first came up in the pandemic, then again in 2022 when Ukraine was invaded and there was speculation it could lead to nuclear war, and now, with....well, with everything (pandemics and the threat of food insecurity and war in the middle east and the rise of AI and random stochastic violence...). I also find it harder to plan research projects for similar reasons and frankly I'd be content to just be a fieldhand/plant identifier/help with data entry and analysis, but you can't really do that...

I mean yes, it has always been thus; life has always been precarious for almost everyone, and I guess you just have to stuff that down and keep moving... 

* My main goal (other than getting more of the "pore primer" I use) was to take a print I had bought from an Etsy artist and get it framed. It's an opossum, curled up in a nest of leaves, and the legend it "The world is cruel; therefore I won't be" (here) 

It was a little odd-sized (9 7/8" square when the framer measured; I got roughly 25 cm at home) so I figured it would be hard to find a ready made frame, and I felt like I wanted to spend the money (even though the framing is several times what the print originally cost). I had some cash on hand; my mom had made a small gift to my brother and sister in law to help with some car repairs, so she gave me a comparable amount "to be fair" (even though, strictly speaking, I don't NEED it) so I thought spending $100 on framing was an okay investment.

I found a really nice gray-green frame that picks up the green in the print and I"m sure the framers are instructed to agree with people's choices, but she was enthusiastic enough about my choice that I think it was a good one. 

I'm not sure where I will hang it up, but I'll find a spot. 

One thing I notice about getting "real" art framed - it makes me feel like a real grown-up. I remember once or twice going to galleries with my parents when they purchased something, and my mom still has things they got professionally framed (like a print commemorating an exhibition of art from old herbals) up on the wall.  

I also like the print. I like the sentiment ("The world is cruel, therefore I won't be") and it's long been one of my operating principles for life, but I admit sometimes these days I need reminding of it more firmly, and I need especially to be reminded that there's some value in choosing NOT to be cruel in a world that often is, that I'm not just a chump for trying to be kind. 

I did also see that the Michael's near me has got in a few fabrics, and they have a very small number of printed patterns (So I guess the death of ALL the pattern companies didn't happen). Most of them were kids' clothes and accessories but still it was nice to see them. The fabric was all quilting fabric, which is fine; I'd rather not see the yarn section go away in favor of just fabric (I admit I'd rather see the "party" or "scrapbooking" stuff be reduced in coverage, but I suspect because party stuff is ephemeral and scrapbooking is paper and lots of people do it, they are probably subsidizing some of the other crafts). 

I did find one fabric that I liked.

 I admit that I went "EEEEEEEE" (like Bingo or Bluey when they are excited) inwardly when I saw it. And yes, I bought a big chunk - I need some new "fun" pillowcases. (I hope my sewing machine still works; it's been a year since I used it because the sewing room is now overtaken  by the bits of the half-finished Moominhouse. I suppose I can find a place to set those bits so I can cut, but that's also something I need to get back to working on)

But not tonight; I have to prewash the fabric to get any sizing out and in case it shrinks a little. 

A field day

 Today was the quarterly trip to a new-ish park (former golf course) in town to try to find and categorize what's flowering, and get voucher specimens. My fairly new colleague is heading this up and I'm happy to let her run the show (I presume I will get some credit for assisting, and I may write part of the eventual paper). We had four of her botany majors as well to help carry stuff and to do the pressing of the plants at the end.

It was pretty tiring. My knee has a limit for walking on uneven ground and I was hurting a lot by the end of the three hours, but maybe ultimately it will be good for me to do it? Anyway, I'm pretty good at spotting stuff and good at remembering the names of things.

The warm season grasses aren't flowering yet (hopefully we get good rain so they will flower and we can check them out in July or August).

But there was a fair amount of stuff flowering. The last two photos will be a little blurry given that I was getting tired and it was very bright out and I couldn't see well to focus.

But anyway. One of the first things was Coreopsis, probably tinctoria. It's a pretty thing, it's not always got so much of the darker central part of the ray flowers but I think the ones that have that are particularly attractive:

 

 

there was also a lot of wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) out there, it's another attractive one and as I remember, this is one that also grows well in naturalized gardens:

 One of the St. John's worts (Hypericum). I don't know the local species of these as well. Someone suggested H. crux-andrae but when I looked it up, there are only four visible petals on it (makes sense: like St. Andrew's cross). It might be punctatum, I know it's not got enough stamens for prolificum

We also saw a member of the mint family, germander (Teucrium) near one of the wetter areas. 

 

 

 There was Diodia there as well, which I don't see often, but at that point I was tired and it was hard to get a good photo. It's in the Rubiaceae, which is the madder family and also the coffee family. 

The two I had a harder time getting a good focus on were Linum (Flax) 

 

And also Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) You might guess from the name "Deptford," it's not native here, it's native to Europe and particularly known from the UK. It's not particularly invasive and it is kind of a pretty little thing:

 And there was a lot of meadow-pink (Sabatia campestris)

 After we got done, I rushed home (ticks are out here, and while I was doused in enough DEET to give myself  a headache later today, I worry about getting bites; alpha-gal syndrome is a thing here and I know someone who has it, and there's also rocky mountain fever carried by ticks). Showered, threw my clothes in the wash, and grabbed a slice from the local pizza purveyor who is a few blocks from me (I felt like a quick lunch was called for)

 Hawaiian pizza, and it seemed unusually good (Though Geo's is a good pizza place). Maybe I was just hungry...

 I did run over later and get one more chapter done for the "accessibility" standards. 

I'm taking tomorrow off; I have errands I need to run and it's going to pour on Saturday. 

first finished thing

 This was a long term project, not because it was difficult, but because I stalled out on it. I'm still not sure I love them. I don't HATE them, but they're a little bright, even for me. 

And the yarn - an older Opal - was so splitty, especially in contrast with the other pair I was knitting on. I'm not sure if it was that particular run of Opal, or if I'm misremembering Opal as being better than it was, or if the addition of the tinsel strand affected it.

But at any rate, I got them done

 I didn't try to match them; it was a very long repeat and I also noticed a few breaks in the yarn (about 10 years ago, I had a small outbreak of carpet beetles and I'm still finding yarn they got to). So I had to splice those and keep going (and then weave in the ends at the end; and it displeases me aesthetically to not be able to make a simple sock out of one continuous length of yarn). But with socks like this I am not sure matching would matter.

 I guess they're OK.

 

Started something new

 I didn't finish a lot of things over break; I did finish the two socks I had on the needles; pictures will come later

This is one of the things I took THINKING I would start it but I didn't get to it. So I started it tonight. String Theory Colorworks' colorway "Diode" (there are other stripes in a deep purple and a green and teal further on the skein. 

This is just the start of the sock - the ribbing for the cuff. I'm using the instructions in a recipe (it's more a recipe than a defined pattern) called "Columns" by Nancy Wheeler - it's the instructions on how to insert a couple narrow bands of a fancy stitch running down the sides of an otherwise plain sock. So it's good for striping or patterning yarns. You have to be careful with fancy stitches on those because either the stitches get lost in the patterning or else it kind of fights with the pattern. 

These are going to have a small panel of an eyelet lace on either side. 

I also mowed today; the lawn wasn't TOO overgrown but it needed it. And then I went in and decided I couldn't quite face going through the vials from the April sampling yet, so I started making my Powerpoint things "compliant" with the new accessibility standards and frankly if I had been totally boring and done black type on white background when I made these, I'd have saved myself a lot of work. (But back in the 2010s, they were telling us NOT to be boring! Sometimes I wonder how much of these shifting goals are just to keep us busy). 

I got the first three chapters for the intro class done, and the first one for ecology. I'll have to think about what to do for the stats class that is mostly text - I had been writing things on a smartboard and just saving it and posting it, but I'm SURE my handwriting is not accessible, I guess that's a question for the tech folks when I also ask about what to do with sharing .pdf files of papers I want students in another class to read (those, even the ones from published journals, are apparently Not Accessible and therefore Not To Be Used.) I THINK a lot of this is for fully online classes and mine are fully in person.

I'm also holding off on going through the stuff for environmental policy; I'm going to have to steel myself to read about ALL the changes (there's no more Forest Service? what?) that have happened in the past year in addition to having to up the accessibility. 

(But yes, tell me again, about how "lazy college professors" get "the whole summer off" - we are technically not paid for the summer so this work is all "for free," and I think of Sam'l Johnson's description of someone who wrote for some reason other than money....) 

And finally home

 Yeah, this trip was successful.

 The train was on time getting in, although it did lose two hours overnight because of freight traffic. But it was fine; the car attendant (Carsey) was good, there weren't many people in the sleeper (though they did announce for coach as we went down the line that it was a full train so people needed to move their stuff if they had it on the seat next to them)

I had a pretty good view; got to see the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield

 And of course, the Gateway to the West

 The visit itself was good, I did a few things for my mom (took a couple days and cut back a lot of the brush that had come in between the old osage-orange hedgerow and the edge of what used to be a retaining wall (but that has broken down; the old railroad ties didn't last)

I had come up for her 90th birthday, and that was good; she liked the gifts I got her and I fixed dinner that night. A couple days later some of the women in the neighborhood had a little get together with cake and iced tea and they all brought small gifts. So my goal - that she have a nice birthday- was pretty well met.

I also drove her car out for her to have the mirror replaced; now I can post the photo of the damaged mirror (I don't know why I can't post photos to blogger from my phone any more)

 That was, I think, Friday before her birthday that we got that replaced (I drove, it was all the way on the other side of town and she said she'd not been out that way in a couple years and was less comfortable driving it. I looked up the route ahead of time and it wasn't so bad so I figured it out and got the car out there. Then, when we got back home, I helped her arrange for a driving test appointment online (Nothing is as simple as it once was). The first I could get was a couple days after her birthday (which may have been the "official" expiration date, but that was the first they had). She did pass (Illinois makes everyone over a certain age take an annual road test, which is a good idea, but is kind of an annoyance). 

So having a couple extra days was kind of nice after I knew she would have a license for at least one more year (she does not drive much other than to church and the nearby grocery store and maybe the hardware store;  she knows the limits of her comfort driving so I think she'll be pretty safe). 

But when I got back, I almost had a car oopsie of a different kind. I had run to a small restaurant in Mineola (it was about noon by the time I got in) and angle-parked on the street.

 This is what I came back to:

 One of those extra-large farm trucks, and while the spots are wider than some, they're not wide enough for those trucks (there was almost no more space on the other side). That's about six inches there, no way I can get the door open and squeeze in, though my first worry was "how to back out without either hitting the truck or getting hit by someone coming up the road"

There is more "generous sized" parking down the street, I think, so I was slightly annoyed at how they basically blocked two cars (the passenger side of the other one, which probably isn't as bad).

I finally crawled in from the passenger side of my car, which was uncomfortable (I still get pain in my knee if I have to do any kind of extreme contortion) and was definitely undignified but I did manage to get in, and just had to wait until the street behind me was clear and then slowly ease out.

At any rate, I am glad to be home. 

A surprise day…

 I guess you could call it that.

I was supposed to go back tonight. Got all packed, hung around the afternoon (working on a sock, and I did get to see all of “Spencer’s Mountain” on TCM, which I had never seen before)

Got down to the station, had hugged my mom goodbye as the train started to pull in. The station person told me I’d get on when it stopped first (sleeping car) and then everyone else would get on. But. It pulled in, past me. I started to hustle towards the front of the train (where the sleeping cars are) and an employee stopped me: “ there’s a mechanical problem, they’re not letting anyone on”

So we waited.

It’s been unusually hot for late May here and I was fatigued, my mom was fatigued (she had taken, and passed, her “over 85 annual driving road test” early that morning.

No one was telling us ANYTHING. We waited a half hour, the rumor come down something was wrong with the engine power and they might have to get another one in.

So I asked her: “okay for me to be here a couple more days if I can change my ticket?”

Yes

I have flexibility; there’s nowhere I need to be in the next week, so.

So frantically, through the phone app, I ordered a one way ticket for Sunday. They still had a roomette and I remembered I had a LOT of loyalty points, so I paid for it with those, and then cancelled the ticket for tonight and got a refund.

As much as I complain sometimes about being (as a t shirt I once saw said) a “self-rescuing princess,” I AM pretty good at getting myself out of messes on my own.

And last I checked, the train hadn’t moved, and apparently an engine is having to be brought from Chicago, so I expect it’s going to be hours and hours late and I have no idea if the AC would be working if the engine is out. So in addition to the misery of “when will we get moving?” there would be the misery of discomfort 

Summer book memories

 I've written before about the summer reading club at the library when I was a kid.

 Some places still do these but I think they've been jazzed up a lot, with "digital rewards" and you can log your progress online. When I was a kid you wrote out the titles of the books you'd read, and then usually there was a folder with "stickers" (actually: cut out bits of paper you colored in and then used a glue stick to put on the scene printed on the folder)

I think about the books, though. When I was small, I remember a few authors: Richard Scarry (The pictures generally carried more weight than the type there), and Beatrix Potter (in the little dark-green library bindings that were used back in the 70s for those, and that may have been my foundation of liking British literature, she used more complex words), and also Bill Peet,, who seems to be less remembered today. 

Peet had worked for Disney and (IIRC) quit around the time of the strike, and started writing childrens' books. Some of them had a fantasy tone; most of them were about animals. My two favorites as a kid were "Farewell to Shady Glade" (About animals having to literally hop a train - riding on the roof of a caboose - to find a new place to live when they found out their home was going to be developed) and "How Doofus the Dragon Lost His Head" which was about a (friendly) dragon. There was also "The Pinkish Purplish Bluish Egg" which was an egg that yielded a griffin.

 I really kind of wanted a griffin as a pet as a kid, even though I was pretty sure they didn't actually exist. 

He also had Capyboppy, which was probably the first introduction any of us had to capybaras (who are now a "hot" animal). I recently (in the last three years) bought the Squishimal plushie of a capybara and named him Capyboppy in memory of that book.

There were a number of others but those were my three favorites. 

As I got older, I moved to "Chapter Books." Most of these were about people, who were less interesting to me (in general) than animals. Oh, I liked the Narnia books that had talking animals, and there was a series about mice who were kind of in a gang but weren't so very evil (It may have been the Marvin books by Jean van Leeuwen).

And there was Michael Bond! I loved Paddington, of course, but he also wrote a book called Olga da Polga about a guinea pig. I liked series books because it was nice to return to familiar characters; I read a lot of series books.

There was also a series about a girl named Katie John, who lived in sort of a rural area. I thought of her as living 'a long time ago' but her era might have been as recent as the late 1950s? They were mostly about her growing up (I think she was 10 in the first book, which was my favorite). 

And All-of-a-Kind family, about a bunch of sisters growing up in a Jewish family in New York 

And a favorite from earlier childhood, maybe one of the first longer books I read, was Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain" and I admit I wanted to run off and live in the woods every time I read that. (I still think about it). 

There were other one-off books; a lot of them were shelved in "the Young Adult" section. I remember Summer of my German Soldier, which was pretty sad. Johnny Tremaine had its sad moments, too. (I think there was another Revolutionary-war era novel, about a boy going off to fight?). There were a number of so-called "problem novels" where I went "oh this book is about divorce" or "oh this is about a girl going 'too far' too young (I don't think any EXPLICITLY discussed abortion but I seem to remember one where it was implied) and I admit I mostly bounced off of those, they felt too didactic.

There was also some fantasy and sci-fi. I'm frankly surprised no one introduced me to the The Dark Is Rising sequence; I'm sure I would have liked it as a kid (and at least the first couple books would have been published by the time I was 10). And the same with Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series. 

I did read the one with the Tripods - The White Mountains was the first in the series. It was fundamentally about how in early teenagerhood, kids were "capped" by the Tripods, apparently some invading alien force, and the "capping" basically was mind control. A few kids (the protagonist of The White Mountains and a few people he picked up along the way) resisted, if I remember correctly they had fake "caps" that didn't have the neural connections so they were still free, but LOOKED "capped." 

That was my main introduction to dystopian novels; I admit I don't care for them. 

 

MOST of those books were from the (old, back when it was downtown) Hudson Public Library, for most of my growing up the children's librarian was Marjorie Origlio (nee Grissom) and I LOVED her,  she was a great librarian and if she had a hand in picking books, she did a good job, there were so many from that library I remember fondly. My family would go weekly - sometimes twice a week, if the weather was bad and my brother and I read through the books we had - every summer, and often weekly during the school year. 

Sorry for huge…

I’m not sure how well this will work but I figured out a photo workaround using copy and paste.

Anyway, this is the busted mirror on my mom’s car.

It’s gone now; the replacement came in and I drove out there with her (she wasn’t sure about driving the traffic on the interstate to get to the body shop). At least it’s fixed.

And yeah, I hope the person who hit her car in the grocery store parking lot and didn’t leave a note steps in dog poo.

Sigh, photo didn’t paste…