Ready for sleeves!

Well, I made one little goal that I had before leaving for break.



I finished the fronts of Thermal and did the three-needle bindoff to close the shoulder seams. What remains now are to knit the sleeves, sew them in, and then do the placket and neck ribbing. I'm pretty happy about that. (Yes, it's coming with me; I hope to get at least one sleeve done). I think I overbought on yarn; I have five full balls and most of a sixth ball left - and just those few things to do. (Then again: having overbought is good, as this is a discontinued color). I think leftovers may become fingerless mitts. It's a nice soft yarn and can be worn against the skin. (Though given the low neckline on Thermal, I will probably at least have a t-shirt under it).

I'll be glad to get this one done. It will be a nice sweater to wear, and I will be glad to be through with knitting at 7 sts to the inch or whatever. (Worsted weight is 4 sts to the inch, so it goes a lot faster).

This is the last thing to be packed; everything else is ready to go.

***

I also finished up a book last night. This was Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," a history of the Dust Bowl era. I didn't know a whole lot about the Dust Bowl (other than that it happened, that a lot of Oklahoma/West Texas people left for California, and that it was the result of overzealous plowing coupled with the bad fortune of an extended drought).

The book is told mainly through the viewpoints of several people who survived that time - in some cases, Egan was able to speak to the people (most of them passed before the book went to press; one person, Ike Osteen, was in his 90s and still active when the book was first published). Or through their children. Or through diaries.

Egan also writes of the political and cultural events of the time - first, the roaring twenties, then the Depression. (And he points out that the only grassroots New Deal program that still exists - so, arguably, the one with the most long-term success- were the Soil Conservation Districts. I know we still have them; every time I cross the Red River Bridge I see the sign telling me I'm entering the Bryan County Soil Conservation District). In a lot of cases, early on in the Dust Bowl, it seemed that Washington wasn't really aware of what was happening, or perhaps didn't care.

The one main hero of the piece is "Big" Hugh Bennett, the first director of the Soil Conservation Service. He was a soil scientist but also apparently had the "human touch," and could talk to ranchers and farmers who might be suspicious of a "Washington type" or an "Ivory Tower" person. And he had some very practical ideas about land restoration, very similar to what people in restoration ecology do today. (It's interesting to me to think of how a lot of the "conservation ethic" he talked about was seen as so very new then, but is kind of taken as "common sense" in the conservation profession today. And how a lot of the long-time dwellers on the land - some of the cowboys, some of the people with Native heritage - had been saying similar things before the Dust Bowl.)

I had no idea, really, just how bad it was. The "dusters" were as bad as any blizzard out on the northern prairies - people had to tie clotheslines to their front doors so they could find their way back if they went out to the barn to do chores. And they had to shovel out their houses and barns - a building could get buried over time.

The worst day was "Black Sunday," April 14, 1935.

Somewhere online there's a video conversion of film of a duster - it's grainy and hard to see, but it does kind of capture a sense of what happened.

It must have been eerie. The sun was blotted out, the traveling dust generated static electricity (something I had not known). The static overwhelmed radio reception and sometimes shorted out the starters on cars, and let to people getting bad static shocks off of things.

A lot of people nearly starved. At one point, some people were boiling up Russian thistle (Salsola kali) a/k/a tumbleweeds, just to have something to eat or to feed any remaining livestock. Lots of people left the area (I have to say, I probably would have, had I anywhere to go), but lots of others remained stubbornly on their land, hoping for things to improve.

And lots of people died. Not just from getting lost out in the dust, or from starvation, but many people contracted "dust pneumonia" and wound up dying from the damage it did to their lungs. (Lots of children, in particular, died). And even people who survived it, their lungs were weak for the rest of their lives.

It did seem to come about because a lot of people plowed up the western Oklahoma/West Texas grasslands - prior to the late 1800s, this had been ranch country, where cattle were grazed. The periodic droughts mattered less because the grass roots were resilient and held the soil in place. (In fact, many of the old XIT Ranch cowboys spoke out against the plowing of the plains; they realized that breaking the sod on that land could have dire consequences).

But, as often is the case in modern society, people in pursuit of a quick buck did things that had long term detrimental consequences - there were several years of wheat boom (particularly during WWI, when parts of Europe were starving for wheat). But then the droughts came. And having replaced a sod-forming perennial with a "weak annual" (wheat), the land dried up. And then the windstorms came.

There are photographs here showing the "dusters" or "black blizzards" as they were called. I think they capture some of the horror. A lot of people living in the area thought the world was coming to an end.

The land has not fully recovered in some places. Even with Bennett's plan to re-establish sod-forming grasses (many of them native, and I admit I cringed a bit reading about how "grasses from Africa" were being brought in - today in restoration ecology we would be very cautious about introducing non-native species). Even with Roosevelt's "Shelterbelt" plan (probably less well-advised than the grass-revegetation, but "sexier" in the sense that it was a big show of planting shade trees - and it got the CCC men involved. The shelterbelts are mostly gone now; either they died out or were torn up by farmers in more prosperous times)

The author notes that while there have been periods of drought and wind erosion since (once in the 50s, and once again in 2002-2003), it's never been as bad, thanks in part to soil conservation measures. Hopefully as we learn more about how the world works, in the future such disasters can be prevented...

I found the book pretty interesting, and it reminded me again of something: pretty much EVERYTHING is complex and interesting if you spend enough time looking at it. I knew only the barest bones of information about the Dust Bowl; now I know a lot more. That's why I like books like this - or like Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa" (another book I recommend to students; we briefly mention the Krakatau eruption in the context of ecological succession, but the book gives the whole historical setting and also discusses the human side). Or like Eric Lax's "The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat" (another HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book about the development of penicillin as a viable medication to be produced in large quantities) Or like "The Victorian Internet" (about the telegraph) - there are all these things out there that I've learned little glancing bits of information about, but there's so much more about them to know, and so much about them that is interesting.

That's why I'm never bored! There's so much to learn about so many things.