Post vacation

I had a wonderful vacation in Northern California, but already there is so much to do upon my return south. Yet there is more to mull and remember and be thankful for. Like beautiful weather and the time to sit outside and just enjoy a chance to sit and soak in the lovely day. Most of my reflections will be offline, but I have some fun pictures to show here and, hopefully, a more substantive post or two.

Animals were a theme of the week. The chickens next door were regular visitors.



On Saturday, we visited the California farm of the Farm Sanctuary organization. Here are a couple of the rescued goats.


There were many more animals and much to ponder.

Biking

Having been rather dismayed and disturbed at much of what I've been reading and seeing recently regarding the hurricanes and their effects, I wanted to do something in response, even if primarily symbolic.

I've been trying to drive less, although my plans to take the bus to work haven't happened yet. Saturday I determined not to drive my car. But I had a coupon that expired Saturday for half-off one item at Michael's, and I wanted to purchase a knitting book I'd seen there, The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques.

So I donned my Path to Freedom t-shirt (it seemed appropriate!) and pulled my bicycle out of the garage, where it has been stored for a couple years. (I don't think I rode it once last summer.) Both tires were flat, so I walked it over to the gas station after giving up using my little foot pump.

Then I rode down to the bike shop where I'd purchased the bicycle a number of years ago to see what sort of panniers they had. They are ordering in a few more samples, so I'll check back when they come in. I'm trying to decide between the wire basket kind and the nylon kind.

Then to Michael's and then back home, stopping at garage sales along the way. Today I went for another ride as it was so beautiful out. I'm trying to find the best streets to ride on that are fairly direct routes but don't have a lot of traffic.

Late night browsing

Attempt two after deleting original post. So this post has excerpts only and little commentary. From the CS Monitor, a series on Before the Oil Runs Out, nothing new to those who have been following Peak Oil, but a simple, clear presentation of the issues.

[I]s the world really running out of oil? The short answer is no. Earth is swimming in the stuff. What's changed is that the era of cheap oil - a period that has lasted 150 years - is showing its age. Only a dramatic breakthrough - either in technology or consumption patterns - can forestall its conclusion in a decade or two.

When major economic trends are apparent within two years, that is something to which to pay attention.

Some experts who follow these issues closely are getting worried. One big change, particularly in the past two years, has been increasing international competition for oil supplies.

And yet

[t]oday's suburban American lifestyle - built around long commutes to work and large, energy-hungry houses - assumes that low-cost fuel will be available indefinitely.

In a different article, the Monitor links to this helpful guide (.pdf) to eating during an emergency: The Healthy Hurricane/Disaster Cookbook.

Emergency preparedness or...

just nostalgia. Some time ago, I found an old Coleman lantern at the Salvation Army store. It seemed to be in working condition from what I could tell, although I didn't really know what to look for. So I bought it because it reminded me of one camping trip in particular, next to the Kabampo River in Zambia. I have a memory of pressure lamps hanging on a tree hissing and providing light.

I stopped by Berg Hardware to buy replacement mantles and asked someone at my church if he would look at the lantern and see if it was usable. I showed it to him in the church kitchen, where someone else saw it and gave me an animated lecture about how and why the lantern works. After learning what kind of fuel to get and finding it at a sporting goods store (fishing and hunting gear), I brought the lantern to the church member's garage, where we (that would be mostly he) took it apart and cleaned it a bit. (I still need to clean it more, but I just wanted to see how it worked first.)

My gamble was right that it was in good working order. We fired it up, and, WOW, I had forgotten how brightly those lanterns burn! The cap was leaking a bit of air, so I stopped by the tackle store again and bought a new cap. The proprietor, who also repairs lanterns, was enthusiastic about the condition mine was in, even though, cosmetically, it's not in the best shape.

From what I can tell by looking online and the ballpark age the proprietor guessed it was, I think the model is a 228 from the early 1960s perhaps. I can't figure out what the letter of the model is, maybe C, E, or F.

Knitting projects Web site

I've run out of room to upload pictures to this site, so I am copying some of my knitting entries and moving the accompanying pictures over to another site: JBB's Knitting Projects. (Yes, I know, very original title....) Eventually, I hope to revamp the Musings site (thanks to a kind offer of help), but for now I'm gradually moving a few pictures to the new, topical site.

The joy of knitting

From Sandra Tsing Loh's review in The Atlantic (subscription required for full article) of a book about the ghostwriter/author and publisher of the Nancy Drew mystery stories:

The real allure of Nancy Drew is that, almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow—is allowed to follow—a train of thought. [...] For clever girls of all ages [...] it's a rare treat to read stories in which our heroine's emotions come alive not with the love of a good man but with the pursuit of a bad one. Who doesn't thrill to the adrenaline-charged arrival of a "hunch"—triggering Nancy's trademark excitement, her thoughts swirling, eyes sparkling, fingers deliciously drumming with impatience to get into the library and pore over long-forgotten River Heights records that might reveal a clue about some suspicious handyman with a name like Nathaniel Mordechai Crumbley? [...]

Because forget sex and romance; the solving of puzzles, mental trial and error, the deeply pleasurable act of raveling and unraveling—therein lies a secret part of the female psyche. (Knitting, anyone? There ought to be a movie celebrating this complex craft, which, if you ever get hooked, can give you—as it did me and a surprising number of women I know—no less than an emotional foundation. I see it as a Henry Jaglom, Sundance Channel movie, all monologues straight to camera: Women Knitting.)

(Now I have to watch a Henry Jaglom film.)

My library books this week are...

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges. I requested the book be transferred to my library branch after reading Byron Borger's short review of it in his introduction to a longer review of Hedges' new book on the Ten Commandments.

Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry, because I still have not read any of Berry's novels.

How to Organize Just About Everything, by Peter Walsh, because it was there on the new books' shelf close to the mid-700s section where there were no new knitting books.