The Gratitude Community

Over at Holy Experience: The Thousand Gifts, posted back in late 2006, Anne Voskamp tells of deciding to write down not the gifts she wanted, but the gifts she had, aiming for a list a thousand gifts long, and she invited others to start doing the same. She was two years into her project then, and already past a thousand gifts. (Note: Holy Experience is one of those blogs that features music that starts on its own. There is a control panel partway down the righthand sidebar.)

Hat tip: A Circle of Quiet, who just joined The Gratitude Community this fall, and is posting her list online as she compiles it.

Sewing chat

Gentlemen, if you would excuse us, I'd like to ask the ladies something.

Ladies, if you sew, do you suffer some sort of strange distortion of your judgment-related faculties when you walk into a fabric store? (Feel free to answer anonymously. I know this can be embarrassing.) The subject comes up because yesterday I got it into my head that I'd like a new skirt, and there is nothing left in the stash of cloth I originally bought to make quilts with, so for the first time in years I went into a fabric store. I almost, just very nearly, got right in and right out. After a quick swoop through the store, a nice print on a black background caught my eye and I picked it up and pondered and thought it would do and even started toward the checkout. But then I wobbled. And then I went around and around the store, half-deciding on this and half-deciding on that, only to choose something else, and then unchoose it. I was having a very good time at this, you understand. I considered color after color, print after print. My imagination had a heyday.

But, finally, I decided I'd spent altogether too much time on this, especially since I'm not all that particular about what I wear (ask anybody who knows me - I don't want to be an eyesore, but fashion-concerned I'm not).

To put it another way, the time and mental effort invested in picking out the raw material for what is to be an everyday, workaday skirt had reached well-nigh ridiculous levels.

So, I decided it was time to choose.

So, I had narrowed it to two fabrics.

So (ahem), finding myself suddenly unable to choose between those two, I (cough) grabbed a bolt of cloth that hadn't even been under consideration, and took it to the checkout and bought two yards of that.

Is to laugh. Is to sigh.

Not that it hurt anything. But...

I am painfully aware that this is not the first time I have spent an insane amount of time in a fabric store, only to buy something not in the top five as chosen during that insane amount of time.

In this case, I got it home and held it in front of me while I looked in the mirror, and wondered why I hadn't noticed what an odd green the background is. And how 1970s-ish it seems. And, in general, I wondered why I bought this instead of something else.

It's not bad, you understand. It'll do. My husband seems to like it, perhaps more than I do, which is just as well because he'll see it more than anybody else, once I get it made, assuming I can manage to get it made. (I'm trying to make this, more or less, but with in-seam pockets, and midi-length. It's about as complicated as I dare tackle when attempting to sew. A talented seamstress I'm not.)

But, honestly, fabric stores seem to do something to my brain. Tell me I'm not alone in this...

Notice to local seamstresses: I found out during checkout that the fabric store is closing in a week or two. There aren't any signs or notices, but the owners are moving across the state to be closer to their kids and they're taking the store's inventory with them. I don't know anywhere else within an hour's drive to buy fabric. Do you? There are lots of online options, of course, but if you delight in browsing and feeling the fabric before you buy, your days are limited around here. Fair warning.

If I might add another sewing story...

Recently I was about to get rid of an old flannel sheet, and it suddenly struck me that there was no reason I couldn't make a winter-weight slip from it. So I folded it double, plunked a full slip on top of it, cut a rough approximation of the slip's shape, making allowance for seams, and making the straps wide and the neckline a bit higher and the slip inches and inches longer, since this is for warmth, and then sewed the two pieces together. Worked like a charm. There's enough fabric left over to make a second one. Such a deal. With a bit more attention to the top, and appropriate fabric, I think I could make a sheath dress this way. The rub there is designing the neckline and straps (or sleeves), but I've got some old regular sheets I can use for trial and error and then for a pattern, if I ever decide to get ambitious in that direction. Anyway, I couldn't find winter-weight slips, and this solved that problem nicely.

Discontent

Nancy Ann at Femina looks at the difference between contentment and discontent.

Somewhere along the way I came to pretty much the same conclusions. Thank goodness. I see people who haven't figured it out, and they're not as happy as they might be.

hat tip: PalmTree Pundit

Rich men

There are different types of riches.

You probably knew that already, but I think most of us sometimes need a reminder.

The Simple Woman's Daybook

This looks like a fun weekly meme, of the slow down and smell the roses variety.

Hat tip: By Sun and Candlelight, via the sidebar at Semicolon.

Back to the drawing board...

A trucker was showing off his new truck to a friend of mine the other day. It's a brand new vehicle from a well-known, well-respected company. It's made for long hauls and comes with a sleeper compartment. The guy really liked his new rig (according to my friend), but...

The trucker said that when he got it, there was only a half-length curtain inside. It gave him privacy when he was in bed, I understand, but left him exposed from the waist down when he went to change clothes.

"I ask you," the trucker is reported to have said, "when it comes to naked, which half of you matters?"

He is far too large a man to wriggle into and out of clothes while laying on the bed. He went out and got full-length curtains.

I am half tempted to write the company and ask them where they expect truckers to change clothes in the cab of this model. All in all, it seems a curious way to set things up.

Riding/walking to school

I'm getting this second hand, but a friend of mine was talking to a teacher the other day, who said that she was so concerned about kids not getting enough exercise that she set up a program that lets kids get off the school bus at a park nearly a mile from school and walk the rest of the way in the morning, and which sets in-town kids down at central locations and lets them walk home from there instead of receiving door to door service.

I had an inkling about the releasing kids at a central location part of the plan, since several busloads of kids get set loose about two blocks from here every school day afternoon. Silly me, I thought it was a sign that the schools got smart about taxpayer money and were cutting down on wear and tear on the buses, fuel costs, and driver hours. And here the program was started to encourage kids to get some walking in every day... Or that's what I hear...

If your schools (or your family, or whatever) have come up with ways to encourage kids to get more fresh air and/or exercise, feel free to let us know about it in the comments section. Thanks.

Making your world flat

If you get too much input from a computer monitor or TV screen, and too little from taste and smell and heft and texture, what does it do to your brain? A neurobiologist says it's not good.

Without feeling

We heard from an old friend this week, one we hadn't heard from in a while. The big news in her family was that her son-in-law had a stroke last year which left him without feeling on, or use of, one side of his body, head to toe. Massive was hardly the word for it.

The doctors issued their usual dire predictions. (Do you suppose they have doom and gloom classes at modern med schools?) He would never walk. He would never this. He would never that.

Three months later, he still had not the least bit of feeling on that side. But he could use it. He can walk. He can, she says, even use a wrench if he watches what he's doing. If he doesn't watch, he can't tell if he's got a grip.

He's enjoying himself, at last report. I guess he goes out fishing more than he used to. (When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade, I guess is the operating principle here.)

We can identify with that sort of thing at our house. When we got married, my husband had no feeling in his legs below the knees. He'd been that way for quite a while before I met him, but had long since figured out how to walk without the feedback the rest of us get. He used a cane for balance, and to help catch himself if he miscalculated, but he booked right along. I have no idea how, all the more so since nerve damage has left his leg muscles atrophied. He doesn't look like he has enough calf muscles to walk. (Think of the legs of someone stuck in a wheelchair. They look like that.)

He couldn't tell when something dropped on his foot unless he saw it. He couldn't tell if he'd stepped on thorns. Etc. So the upside (such as it was) was that he didn't suffer from stubbed toes like the rest of us.

A few years after we got married, he got feeling back in his legs and feet. But it came back on some sort of strange delayed broadcast signal. He could, in other words, feel what he'd walked on a few seconds previously. Or, he could stub his toe or drop something on his foot and have time to anticipate how bad it was going to hurt. This was, as you might guess, even harder than not having any feeling at all, especially the bit about feeling what he'd walked on shortly before. He'd go from a gravel driveway into a house, and his body would want to be adjusting for gravel when it was on carpet. He'd walk through the house, and would be getting carpet signals several steps after he'd moved on to linoleum. Very odd, this was. Very tricky, too. You might not think about it, but you do tend to make minor, probably automatic, adjustments to compensate for slickness, softness, and security underfoot.

The rest of his body was relaying sensations in real time, I might stress. It was only below his knees that the dubbing was off, so to speak. This took some getting used to.

Stairs were especially interesting at first. He'd have a foot relaying that it was firmly on a step and it was time to put weight down, but it was no longer on that step. It took a bit of doing to get used to that sort of thing, and learn to outfox it.

For the longest time, he'd successfully get himself to the top of the stairs only to crash a few steps later. The signals were that he was still climbing, and his body would be trying to put weight on a foot that was a few inches above the floor. We learned to pause at the top of stairs, letting his brain work its way through the recording. Eventually he learned to transition from stairs to flat without mishap, despite the tangle of messed up signals.

Just about the time he was getting really good at navigating using erroneous foot signals - just about the time it got habitual, in fact - his feet and legs switched to real time signals, like the rest of him. And the learning process started over...

You never know the loads you can carry until you get saddled with them, I guess.

Pan-fried waffles

The toaster broke a few weeks ago. When I stopped to think about it, almost all we used it for anymore was heating frozen waffles.

So, rather than running out and buying a new toaster, I tried cooking a waffle in a dry (ungreased), nonstick frypan. I was afraid it might dry out, since I could only brown one side at a time, so I used a glass lid. I browned the waffle lightly on one side, flipped it, browned it on the other. I wish I'd tried this sooner. The browning was more even than with a toaster, and there weren't dry spots and moist spots, either. I've tried it again since then, again with good results.

The downside is that you can't cook several waffles at once, but I don't generally need several waffles at once.

Now I don't have a toaster taking up counter space, and having to be cleaned and cleaned around. But I can still have my waffles. Such a deal. I've been trying to declutter the house. Decluttering by attrition is still decluttering, right?

What you see isn't always right, with teens

Several years ago, we had a problem with teen boys gathering near our combination bookstore and gas station after the neighboring grocery store closed for the day. They'd park their pick-ups and cars in a huddle, and stand in front of them, trying to look tough as the rest of the community went by. For all intents and purposes, they'd taken over the grocery store parking lot (which adjoins ours). They were making people unhappy. They were making me unhappy, too. But I gritted my teeth and decided to wait them out, figuring they'd get bored with the game someday, figuring it would be asking for trouble to confront them.

One day, someone muttered angrily to my husband that 'somebody ought to do something' about those kids. My husband looked across at the kids, studying them, then said he thought the person was right. He grabbed his cane and walked alone over to the pack of teens. I watched with my heart in my throat. The next thing I knew, the kids were crowding around him, looking very happy, and shaking his hand.

My husband came back and I asked him what in the world had just happened. "I deputized them," he said. "You did what?!" I said, before I caught myself. He smiled. "The main thing wrong with those kids is that no one has given them any responsibility. I told them we'd been having a little trouble over here and I'd appreciate it if they kept an eye out for us while they were here." I was dubious, but he assured me it would work.

And it did. He was right. I was wrong. The kids weren't looking for trouble, really. They mostly wanted to be grown-ups, and weren't getting enough opportunity to practice, or enough encouragement in the right direction. So they were building facades.

I think that's true of a lot of teens. And it's one thing I tend to forget.

Amanda Witt has another angle on the subject.

Update: My husband offers a mild correction. What he was giving those kids was responsibility and authority. I consider that an important point. Some of the worst experiences of my life grew out of situations where I had responsibility without authority.

There are bikes, and then there are bikes

When I was a kid, I grew my way through a few bikes, but they were all of them practical. They had fenders to keep off the mud splatters, and they had baskets. I did not consider myself properly set up unless I had saddle baskets as well as a handlebar basket. The saddle baskets were rigid wire like the regular basket, but deeper, and straddling the back wheel as they did, they had a lower center of gravity. I could carry an astonishing amount on a bicycle. My violin posed a problem. On my way to lessons, I had to carry it on the handlebars instead of in a basket, but otherwise, those baskets could handle pretty much whatever I wanted to carry.

In Japan, I likewise had a practical bicycle. I was visiting a friend over there, and she happened upon a couple of bikes that had been thrown away, that she thought could be fixed up easily. So she brought them home, and with a bit of elbow grease and ingenuity, we were set. We horrified our Japanese acquaintances, by the way. "But those bikes are gomi," they said. Trash. Garbage. Rubbish. Something someone has thrown away. "So?," we crazy Americans cheerfully said, "just call us The Gomi Sisters." At that point I think several of our friends decided that they would never understand Americans.

But anyway, my recycled Japanese bike was sturdy and had a basket, and it made my life easier. Where we were was well set up for using a bicycle for going to the grocery store, and it was customary to shop daily. Considering the kitchen in my friend's apartment, and its lack of storage space, it was also along toward necessary to shop nearly every day, by the way.

So, the last few years, I have been looking, without success, for a similar bike, with which to do my grocery shopping these days. Does anyone around here carry a sensible bike? No. I can buy a bike and a trailer to go with it, by which fancy and somewhat expensive set-up I can use the bike for shopping, but, so far at least, I have not been able to find a basic, one-speed, workhorse of a bike, with fenders, and with baskets. There seems to be a horror of baskets these days. And of fenders, for that matter. Sigh.

You would think, with the cost of driving a car being what it is these days, and the push to use less fuel, that stores would be crawling with practical bicycles, ones that you can use on shopping trips. But, no. At least not around here.

While on the subject of bikes, this is interesting. And fun, albeit in a slightly wacky way. But I can't see how useful it would be, if you had groceries to pack home, etc. The Hyperbike (aka Body Rite) official website is here. What they tell you at the official site, but might not be clear from the television interview, is that the bikes shown in the videos are prototypes.

January sure has been long this year...

It is snowing. Again. Winter put in a stirring performance this year around here, and it seems intent on making curtain calls. In a man-made and man-run theater, we'd have audience members bailing out the exits by now, and stagehands hauling out the hooks to drag the spotlight-drunk star off the stage. But since we don't run the show, and since I can't afford a trip to, say, Hawaii, I'm settling in to enjoy the snow. I might as well, I guess. Two to four inches is predicted during this encore. I might have to dig the snow shovel back out from the shed. A few weeks ago I naively thought we were done with this sort of thing for the year, and happily packed the shovel away.

We have, by the way, a baseball tournament in progress down the street. Baseball, if you haven't noticed, is not an indoor sport. Teams have come from all around the state just to play a summer game, and are, off and on at least, playing it in swirling snowflakes. Such a deal. It will make for good stories when they're middle-aged, if nothing else, I guess. "When I was your age, son, I played baseball in the snow. And we won. So stop your bellyaching... What's the younger generation coming to, anyway?"

It was just our luck that a cold winter coincided with a spike in heating oil prices. Is spike the right word? It doesn't seem strong enough, somehow... Anyway...

I grew up in a social niche where 72 degrees was room temperature. I think somebody in government recommended it as a good temperature, and somehow it came to be the most common temperature, and from there it became the expected temperature, and from there it became the temperature at which all self-respecting people (at least all the self-respecting people we knew) kept their houses year-round. I remember, as a kid, that amongst our friends were people who would lower their thermostats during the winter, but didn't want anyone to know about it. There were also people who closed off part of their house during the winter to save on heating costs, but likewise didn't want anyone to know. Common sense, apparently, was out of fashion.

I don't know what we were thinking. I can't remember the last time I had the thermostat at 72, nor the last time I didn't close off rooms I wasn't using. It's no hardship, and it saves enough money to make a difference. You wear a few more clothes in the winter? So what? You have to get acclimated to a lower temperature every fall? So what? As for the closing off of rooms, it makes it all the sweeter when spring comes around, and you can stretch out again.

Of course, I'm blessed with a cheerful temperament, and I enjoy outsmarting circumstances, and frugality is one of my favorite sports. Some people, I notice, are happier pretending to be put upon. I don't get it, but there it is.

A few months back, an acquaintance at church was telling me about where she lived, in a tumble down part of town. She was saying that the house she rented was really pretty comfortable, despite what people thought about houses along that street. She was also gushing with nice things to say about her landlord. I've had that landlord as a landlord in days past, and he really is a nice man, and johnny-on-spot when it comes to reported problems. If you'll work with him, he'll work with you, and he goes out of his way to keep rents down.

So, the other day, I had occasion to look up the acquaintance, and found that she was days away from moving to an apartment elsewhere in town. Now that she'd decided to move, she had not one good thing to say about the place she was leaving, but chief among her complaints was that she'd had to spend $900 on heating oil so far this winter. She was pointing out the cracks along the doors, and bemoaning the lack of insulation. She also tried to light into listing little things she thought the landlord should have done for her, but didn't. That wasn't flying well since we both know the man, so she shifted back to being really upset about the heating bill. "This place just sucks oil," she said.

Well, I've lived in places like that. I currently live in a place built back before much (if any) insulation in the walls or ceiling was considered necessary, and before windows were insulated, and there are cracks around our windows and doors, too. We put tape here, and foam there, and plastic sheets up, and it helps, but it's still a bit tricky to keep it heated, especially if you're trying to stretch your dollars. So I started in with pleasant commiseration (what are friends for?), and was starting to tell her about how we just bundle up a bit and turn the thermostat down, etc., and how it helped us a lot. I'm not sure what I expected, but I got a startled stare from her.

And then it sunk through my thick skull that while I was warmly dressed in a sweater, she was in a short sleeve shirt. Her oil stove was in the same room as us. Set at 72. I guess she never got the updated memo...

I didn't know quite what to say. From what I could pick up, she'd spent the winter being frantic about her heating bills, and yet she hadn't done the most basic adapting to reduce the bill.

She's on welfare. We're not. I wonder if that makes a difference, or if she's simply a few decades behind me, and thinks it's shameful to not have a room temperature of 72. Or what?

Oh, well. She considers me a self-respecting and respectable person. I can only hope that I helped her feel OK with the idea of turning down the heat.

Before you laugh too hard, or tut tut too much, I'm nearly willing to bet you've got some counterproductive social standard hanging around in your life, messing up your goal to be a sensible person. After I read this post a week or so ago (specifically, the last part of it), my husband and I have been cheerfully recounting all sorts of things we used to hold as important, or necessary, that we don't consider "imperatives" anymore.

For instance, my mother's rule was that when you took clothes off in the evening, they went into the clothes hamper. It makes no sense to me to wash clothes every time you wear them, if they aren't dirty. It's more work, it uses more water, it uses more electricity, it uses more detergent, and it's harder on the clothes. But, I kid you not, it was a struggle to overcome the idea that I was doing something wrong by quite sensibly wearing a dress or shirt or slacks or skirt more than once without laundering.

And what was that nonsense we had back in the day that if two girls showed up to the same event wearing the same dress or outfit, that we were expected to run crying from the room? Or that we had to have a new dress for every "event"? I can't make sense of either "imperative," but I recall feeling something akin to horror if someone's clothes were too much like mine, or if I couldn't get a new dress for a dance or other special occasion. If I remember correctly, it was generally considered less humiliating to stay home than show up in a dress you'd worn before.

Excuse me? Where in the world did that come from? And why didn't the grown-ups sit us down and chew us out for behaving deplorably?

Oh, wait. We learned it, for the most part, from our mothers...

So where did they learn it from? And why? I've long since tossed those attitudes overboard as rules not worth keeping, by the way. (A lot of the rules we learned in the '60s and '70s, are, to my mind, not worth keeping, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I'll bet you've suffered a few such glitches in common sense at one time or another in your life just because 'everyone else is doing it'. Yes? C'mon. What are some silly rules you used to follow that you've opted to not 'honor' anymore?

Winter loosened its grip...

... a bit around here this week. It's been a harder than average winter, with more snow than we've seen in a long time, and some nasty cold snaps, so the respite has been pretty nice.

At the bank, my teller mentioned that it was nice to have sunshine and warmer weather, and I agreed. I volunteered that it had set off a round of spring cleaning at our place. She brightened, and said, "Me, too!" A woman after my own heart. We agreed that we both disliked carpets, too. It's too hard to keep them really clean. I assure you that mine are cleaner than a week ago. I own a carpet cleaning machine, so I can work on my floors a little at a time instead of all at once, like I'd have to do if I rented a machine. This week, though, I did a bit more than a little. (The exercise is good for me, right?)

I think I would have been cleaning extra this week even without the taste of spring to spur me on. This time of year the house tends to feel stale and grungy, the air old and used. If a person doesn't go on the attack, the staleness can get discouraging.

And, besides which, a person who shall remain nameless tripped while carrying split pea soup into the dining room. Split pea soup, I found, defies the laws of physics when it flies out of a bowl. Not only does it cover more surface area than should be possible, it finds its way into places it shouldn't be able to reach. Do you have that problem in your dining room and kitchen? That they somehow have the ability to amplify messes? (I'm joking. But just barely. Oh, well. The walls in there hadn't been scrubbed in a while. They're nice and fresh now.)

And, besides which, I've been having computer problems, or, rather, connecting to the internet problems. You have heard the saying: "A clean house is the sign of a broken computer."? It's not strictly true around here, since I do possess a little discipline, thank you. But still, it is rather surprising how much more I can get done in a day when surfing isn't an option. I am forever trying to find a happy medium on time spent online. (Aren't you?)

So, all in all, I've had a good week. I just haven't been on the internet. It was kind of a nice break, actually.

I know it's rather poor form to take a blog break and not announce it, but at first I couldn't seem to get on to announce it. And then I got busy with spring cleaning and with reading like mad through my to-read stack, and with quilting, and with editing some nonblog writing, and... and the next thing I knew the days had flown. My apologies to anyone who had a twinge of worry on my account. I know better than to take off without notice. I'll try to not do it too often.

A small technical problem with licenses

From an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, January 11, 2008 press release:

SALEM, Ore.–When you buy your new 2008 fishing or hunting license, don’t put it in a plastic license holder warn Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staff. Although new license paper is tear resistant and reasonably waterproof, interaction with plastic causes the ink to fade.

“We are asking people to do something different with their new licenses. Please, don’t put them in plastic license holders or laminate them,” said DeAnna Erickson, ODFW License Services manager. She suggests carrying the license holder in your wallet as you would a receipt or using a paper or Tyvek license holder.

Tyvek license holders will be available at ODFW offices beginning in mid-February.

hat tip: Blue Mountain Eagle, Jan. 16, 2008 dead tree edition

Beyond recipes

Do you buy ingredients to match recipes, or do you cook more like this: Treasures Up My Sleeve -- Potatoes?

hat tip: The Common Room

The Rebelution's Keep Moving Forward series/ Book note: Do Hard Things

The Rebelution challenges teens to not give in to low expectations. Check out, for instance, Keep Moving Forward: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four. Even if you aren't a teen.

From Part One:

Most of us, however, are not so passionate, tending to get comfortable just living life and getting by — neither giving our current activities the energy they deserve nor dreaming of anything better than what we already have. We stop exerting ourselves and get comfortable halfway up the ladder. Or, to use a different analogy, it is as if we are sitting on a stepping-stone in the middle of a stream. We’re comfortable, yes, but we were never intended to get cozy on a stepping-stone. Our ultimate goal is to cross over to the other side.

From Part Four:

...our hope is that you would learn to throw yourselves 100% into the small things God has in front of you, but to not get so comfortable there that you miss the next thing, the bigger, better opportunities He brings your way when you keep your eyes open for them. We want you to be like someone who has been faithfully exercising, but is constantly looking for opportunities to use the strength that he or she has developed to serve others in a productive, real world situation.

One of our mother’s favorite sayings is the line, “Hustle while you wait.” She might tell us that after dinner when we are all sitting around waiting for dessert but the table hadn’t been cleared. She would get the dessert all served out but often wouldn’t bring it to the table until everything was completely cleared. ‘Hustle while you wait’ meant that something good we wanted depended on our quick and cheerful execution of a task immediately in front of us.

Not familiar with The Rebelution? From the official book description of Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, due out April 15, 2008:

The next generation stands on the brink of a "rebelution."

With over 14 million hits to their website TheRebelution.com, Alex and Brett Harris are leading the charge in a growing movement of Christian young people who are rebelling against the low expectations of their culture by choosing to "do hard things" for the glory of God.

Written when they were 18 years old, Do Hard Things is the Harris twins' revolutionary message in its purest and most compelling form, giving readers a tangible glimpse of what is possible for teens who actively resist cultural lies that limit their potential.

Combating the idea of adolescence as a vacation from responsibility, the authors weave together biblical insights, history, and modern examples to redefine the teen years as the launching pad of life and map a clear trajectory for long-term fulfillment and eternal impact.

Written by teens for teens, Do Hard Things is packed with humorous personal anecdotes, practical examples, and stories of real-life rebelutionaries in action. This rallying cry from the heart of revolution already in progress challenges the next generation to lay claim to a brighter future, starting today.

Go ahead. Do a dance step or two, or stand up and cheer. I understand. Really, I do. (And nothing would make me happier than to see this book become a New York Times bestseller. Heh.)

Browsing through the links

I'm spending some time this week going through my links list, visiting sites I haven't been to in a long time. I've found a few places that have changed a name and/or a site, or gone out of business (I've removed those). And can Nathaniel be turning two already? Where does the time go? Wasn't it just a few months ago he was fighting for his newborn life?

At Cheat-Seeking Missiles, I found a couple of interesting posts right at the top. Fade-Out On The Campaign TV Spot looks at changes in how national political campaigns are run, now that television ads are so expensive, and now that there are more (and better) alternatives. Creationism Bragging Rights takes a mostly-humorous look at recent claims about machine-made life. He says what the scientists are really claiming (when you cut through the hype and spin) isn't that they're on the verge of creating life. As he puts it, they're talking about hijacking it. There's a difference.

When you get through laughing at Laer's punchline, though, please go read the article that prompted his post: Giant step toward artificial life, by Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical writer, San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 2008. Except for the rather unfortunate "there is the matter of bragging rights of mythological proportions. Mere mortals have yet to lay claim to creating life" segment, it's really an interesting, informative, and rather well-balanced article, I thought. And it does give space to concerns about what's going on.

Update: Sallie is leading a discussion on Jane Austen movies. She also has a long and thoughtful, very good post in which she revisits a post from May of 2005 on deciding what's important, and acting on it. I'm in a simplify-and-cut-back phase right now, and appreciated the inspiration.

Update: Patrick Deneen takes a look at "the breakdown of a covenant of respect and honor," and "the growing evidence of shamelessness among our middling debtor class."

Simplify

Phil at Brandywine Books shares some advice borrowed from Paul Borthwick's book Simplify: 106 Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life.

Call me a true klutz, I guess...

... because I've done this. More than once. (But I help run a bookstore. It's an occupational hazard.)

I like her follow-up post, too. Funny stuff. :)