And it's Monday

 * I really appreciated it being light at 7 am when I drove to work today. No worrying about "what if there's a kid out in the street I can't see?" or "what if someone's bicycling without proper light or reflectors?" (both of which I experienced, and gave me scares, the past couple weeks)

*That said, the early dark tonight hit hard. I was already in a slightly melancholy mood - through a train of clicking, I wound up reading an article about the covid response in the US vs other countries (and I don't agree with the author; she describes "hard lockdowns" here and at least where I lived, other than things like gift shops and non-drive-through restaurants being closed for a few short weeks, there was not really a lockdown. There WAS some of us choosing to lock down hard (I probably did too hard) because we were worried). But that drove me to go back and scan some of my 2020 blog entries, to remind myself, and I wound up on the one from July 27, which was when I went up to Chickasaw to commemorate the one-year anniversary of my dad's passing, and rereading some of those memories of family trips and other things, and it hit harder than I thought it would.

My friend Wanda, who is a retired minister, once commented that when we mourn, part of it is not just mourning the person, it is mourning the past good times that will never come again, and that feels very true and very wise. I will never again be a mostly-happy-go-lucky 11 year old excited to go see Cape Cod, or a high school student doing my first ever research project. And I admit I also wonder if there will be good things in the future, or if all the good things are past. (It's not been a good couple of years, not really since late in 2019.)

* a link dump, for when I have time - someone on Bluesky made a joke based on the (supposed) reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European word for bear (which sounds something but far from entirely like "arctos," the Greek word for bear). Famously, this is one of the words they think there may have been ancient taboos about, that you don't say the REAL name of the creature, whatever it was, lest you "call forth the devil by speaking his name." 

The original word is reconstructed as something like *h₂ŕ̥tḱoes (I had to copy and paste it). And yes, it's merely a reconstruction, we don't know FOR SURE that was it, and there are supposed pronunciations out there (it is like "arctos" but with something like a "hssssh" sound at the beginning (again; IN RECONSTRUCTION, we will never know for sure). Apparently the name means something like "destroyer"?

Anyway, in my hunting to see what that reconstruction (used in the joke on Bluesky) meant - I vaguely remembered it was one of the Fearsome Creatures), I ran across this older philology blogpost about it. (Apparently the blog is still going; there was a post as recently as September.) I haven't read any of the other posts but might check them out.

I read most of "The Bear: the history of a fallen king" (a translation of a French book about early European bear and wolf superstitions). I admit I kind of lost interest when it moved into more like a Renaissance era (I should finish the book, though); it's the early, early stuff that interests me - for a while I've had a low-level interest in both PIE ("Proto-Indo-European) but also relatedly, the pre-European-Contact American cultures. The whole idea of how people lived thousands of years ago, when times were very different and the ways of thinking were very different. (I drove almost four hours, each way, a dozen years ago, to go see Spiro Mounds on my fall break, just because I wanted to. I also want to go see Toltec Mounds at some point).

* Might try out a new fiber hobby. The most recent Piecework had a pattern for a Tunisian crochet facecloth in it, and it intrigued me - it has a nubbly texture that would be exfoliating. I've never done Tunisian crochet and never wanted to try before but now I've ordered a cheap set of the hooks off of Big River (and I know, I know: buying the most dead-cheap tools may lead to you not liking the craft, but I also don't know if I would want to continue it, and also $65 or whatever the really good set on Webs cost is more than I can comfortably afford).

And interestingly, I already had a book - when my colleague who retired in 2022 was clearing his stuff out, he gave me a box of books on fiber crafts. As I remember, his wife works at a library, and they were mostly library discards and a few things that had been donated for a Friends Of sale. I never really sorted through them, I grabbed the one I really wanted (a book on knots, like sailor's knots) and there was some kind of DK homesteading book aimed at tweens that I sent to my niece. I never discarded the others though, and they sat in their box in a corner of my office for over a year. I looked at them again today while putting some stuff away and found the Tunisian crochet book - and took it home (along with one of knitting stitches). It has a few patterns in it as well as the basic instructions.

I am not sure about the others. There are a couple of older (think 1970s) McCall's craft magazines, mostly crochet, as I remember, and some 1980s crocheted sweater pattern books, and a very 70s fabulous book of sewing patterns for teen girls, and a couple of books on fitting paper patterns including the well-known Nancy Zieman book. I am not sure I want them but something in me resists just throwing them out. (Most of them are ex-library and I am not sure they're good enough condition to sell to the used book store in town). Maybe I look at them again in a week.