Not Quoting Sixth Sense, Not Quoting Sixth Sense

Dead Ronald Reagan appears to wife, Nancy:

She told Vanity Fair magazine: "At night time, if I wake up, I think Ronnie is there, and I start to talk to him... And I see him."

(..)

And she mentioned that the present First Lady, Michelle Obama, called for advice on running the White House.

Mrs Reagan's suggestion was to hold more state dinners - the Reagans held more than 50, compared to just six while George W Bush was in office.

"Just have a good time and do a little business. And that is the way Washington works," she told the new first lady.

Pioneers

Robert Cornelius. This photo was taken in 1839 making it one of the earliest known self-portraits in the history of photography. I have looked at it often. He feels so alive, so human. It is a far cry from the stilted portraits which were to follow in the decades to come.

I was reminded of this when I came across First Sounds, a website set up "to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time."

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded phonautograms around 1860 and although the sound is distorted, it makes for facinating listening material. Scott's recordings predates Thomas Edison's far more famous recordings by some seventeen years, although there is arguably a significant difference in sound quality.

Last year the re-discovery of a young girl singing Au Clair de la Lune - a recording made by Scott in 1860 - made the headlines. Thanks to Mefi I just realised that experts are now thinking that Au Clair de la Lune was being played at twice the speed and the actual singer is Scott himself. While somewhat less romantic than a young girl's voice being heard after 150 years, it made me think of how inventors and pioneers are often left on their own as they try to make their ideas reality.

Remembrance of Things Past

When You Get Ticked - a blog entry by Lolly - made me stop in my tracks this morning. It made me think back to October 14, 1996 when I woke up, went to brush my teeth and stared with horror at my reflection in the mirror. A partially paralysed face is not something you expect to stare back at you when you look in the mirror. The paralysis was the culmination of several months' fatigue, cognitive confusion and persistent neck/ear pain. My best friend took me to see my doctor. Within two hours of waking up, I was in a hospital bed with brain scans and extensive blood work lined up.

Lyme Disease is a real bitch, boys and girls. It has been almost thirteen years and, although treated at the time, LD is still with me in tiny, unexpected ways. When I move my mouth, the weakened muscles around my left eye twitch.  My body is slightly more susceptible to stress than most people. And I wear a lot of hats because an ear infection can affect the nerves controlling the facial muscles (ask me how I know).

So check your body for tiny black dots if you have been walking in the woods or through tall grass. Some get the famous bullseye rash after a few weeks of being bitten (I didn't). If you start getting flu-like symptoms, a persistent neck/ear pain and what can best be described as "a cognitive fog", then go see your doctor.

Thank you, Lolly, for reminding me about all this because some things need to be remembered, some things need to be shared.

A Matter of Life and Death

Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas doctor, was shot today in his local church. Apart from being a family doctor, Dr. Tiller also ran an abortion clinic. He had previously been shot and wounded by a pro-life* activist. His clinic had also been the target of a bomb. (*pro-life? I'm pro-choice which doesn't make me anti-life. I love life and detest imprecise language. Besides, if you shoot someone, can you still be pro-life?)

This little comment comes courtesy of Metafilter user XQUZYPHYR. I may not agree with all of his points, but his comment makes for thought-provoking reading.

Tiller was one of maybe three clinics that performed late-term abortions. There will likely now be only two, and several years' worth of medical students are now pressured into considering not even entering the field.

The government, no matter which party is in control, does virtually nothing- nothing- to monitor and prevent terrorist attacks on women's clinics. For godssakes, nine times out of ten they won't even refer to it as terrorism. Animal rights groups get labeled as terrorists more frequently than anti-abortion militants. Federal funding for clinics is minuscule and every act of damage and violence committed against one is a drain on their already limited resources. And if you think President Hopey McChangethroughhugs, who can't even lift a pen to stop gay people from being blocked from volunteering to defend our country, is going to do anything about this beyond signing a strongly-worded letter, I'd also like a pony.

Operation Rescue- monsters, all of them- delivered their pithy, enraging statement saying they of course were outraged at the murder but added a nice little line about how they wanted Tiller "brought to justice through the proper channels." Let's emphasize that- the leading anti-abortion group in America responded to the cold-blooded murder of a doctor who performed legal medical procedures by saying they merely wish he was punished differently. Tomorrow morning, they will be be considered a legitimate and respectable organization.

Alpaca Punch

There she is, that Ishbel. The shawl blocked out beautifully and post-blocking I only had it in the house for about an hour before sending it across the Atlantic to a friend who needs a big hug.

So, yes, I was very pleased with the finished object - it looks lovely, works out larger than you think and has an interesting Faroese-like shape - but I did not enjoy knitting it. Overall, I must have knitted this shawl twice over with all my tinkering and re-knitting - and, honestly, I would rather have spent that knitting time on something else because the project just wasn't interesting enough to warrant that amount of effort.

But Ishbel does make for a warm, knitted hug which is the really important bit.

Now I'm working on a different shawl and it is really interesting to note the differences between the two projects (and the two patterns).

I have been admiring Laminaria ever since I got bitten by the lace bug. It is an insanely beautiful shawl made out of complicated Estonian stitches I had never seen anywhere before. Instead of "knit", "yarn over" or "purl", the pattern tells you to knit "2-into-9" and "3-into-3". Furthermore, the pattern notes tells you it is a modular shawl, so you can shift the blocking blocks around. The designer has even posted a huge yardage chart, so you can track how much yarn you need for the sections (which is important if you decide to mix things up).

Thing is, I'm finding Laminaria an absolute joy to knit. So far it has even been a really straightforward knit: charts are crystal clear, the stitch definitions easy to understand and it works up very quickly. I cast on Monday night and I'm through the first three charts without with nary a hitch. Even the fabled Transition chart which has its own thread of heartbreak on Ravelry .. I got through it first time with no mistakes. What gives?

If Laminaria continues to be this much fun, I foresee a lot of 'em in my future.

However, one thing does have me worried. The yarn. I'm using a 1-ply kidmohair/merino which I bought in Denmark. Stunning shade of red. Plenty of yardage (I think). And in the middle of knitting the second chart, the yarn literally fell apart in my hands. I am not a tight knitter and I'm knitting the shawl at a loose gauge - and the ply just came apart as I was knitting. It has me worried about how it'll hold up to blocking, I tell you, and I'm also terrified about putting too much stress on it as I'm knitting (which those 3-into-9 stitches will invariably do).

Finally: Alpaca Punch? Alpaca Punch? Well, Other Half and I were talking about the perfect name for a Glaswegian yarn shop and there you have it. Wool, violence and a bad pun all rolled into one. That's very Glaswegian. I'm going to use the name for a pattern I'm going to write up (I've had a request, what can I say?) and hopefully that pun will stick to me like a big sticky stick.

Yes, Words Matter

BBC has a Poetry Season which means I am watching far more TV than I usually do. So far Gryff Rhys Jones has explored why poetry matters, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown has had his own programme, and last night I got a full hour of Simon Schama and Fiona Shaw reading John Donne to each other (phoawr!). Armando Iannucci is looking at John Milton later on and, get this, there is an entire programme devoted to my favourite poet, TS Eliot. Thank you, Auntie Beeb. It is such a pleasure to listen to and experience precise language when the world is so full of imprecise language. Poetry matters because language matters.

Which is excatly why I find it so troubling that the Danish government calls their crackdown on Christiania (as well as the earlier eviction of Ungdomshuset) "a process of normalization".