Ye Are the Salt of the Earth, and Sainted July 22, 2011
Posted by J. in Domesticity, Other People's Genius.2 comments
Did you ever see the episode of the Vicar of Dibley where a TV show comes to Dibley to film Geraldine’s Sunday service and the verger Alice butchers the reading? She practices her reading diligently, but when Sunday comes around and she’s reading from the gigantic King James Bible with the old printing where all the s’s look like f’s, she gets confused. Here, see for yourself. It’s at about 11:45 in…
Alice: “The lesson is taken from the sixth chapter of the Song of Solomon, beginning at the second verse. [reading] Ye are the fault of the earth and fainted… sainted. God shall feel… seal your endeavours until ye fit on his right hand. Therefore fight the good fight, for his… fake, and he shall be thy fu…
Geraldine: “SUCCOR! He shall be thy succour.”
Alice Tinker: “…thy succour.”
Cracks me up every time. And when we’re being gripped by a heat wave of Biblical proportions, not much makes me chortle.
I have, however, been having a great deal of fun taking screen caps of the weather from Channel 9's website and making them more accurate in both content and sentiment.
So, because it’s been so bloody hot here the past few days, we decided last night to screw the whole thing and go out to supper. It put us a tad over budget for the week but you know what? I ate a meal without wanting to puke.
Mostly.
It was cold as a meat locker in Chili’s which was fantastic. They brought us endless cold drinks, all the chips and salsa we could gag down, and even the kids seemed quite content to sit and enjoy the cool air.
The honey-chipotle chicken crispers were good. Very spicy and very sweet at the same time–too much for the kiddos to stand, but that was about the only thing on the plate I wanted to eat. I love salty food, but really Chili’s? I ate two fries before I couldn’t take the saltiness anymore, and I didn’t even try the corn because I could actually see the salt sparkling on it.
Lest you think I’m singling out Chili’s, this happened at the 99 the last time we ate there. I had steak tips which really didn’t need to be salty at all, and fries that were caked with salt.
It was off-putting.
What’s the deal with that? What happened to preparing a meal and letting the customer decide how much salt it needs? I’m really just sick of chain restaurants. I think all the food tastes the same, and I’ve pinpointed it to what must be a gigantic container of seasoned salt in the kitchen.
At least I know now to tell the server that I don’t want any extra salt or other seasoning applied to my food when I order. You watch: next time we go out it will the blandest meal ever.
Eh, I suppose it’s no big deal. God knows my feet appreciate the lack of salt these days. Man, when it’s hot and humid my feet swell up like two…swollen things. They never used to that, then I had Dave and WHAM. I’m Captain Edema.
Somewhere in the world there’s an 80-year-old woman walking around with my ankles. Probably eating salt with no repercussions, too. Fucker.
But, in the category of Salt of the Earth, there are great kindnesses abounding. Did I mention how fucktastically hot it’s been here for the past couple of days? When I got up this morning it was 91 degrees in my living room. I shit you not. You can have all the fans a’turnin’ you want, but when it’s 90 degrees by mid-morning, it’s like living in a convection oven. So, I broke down and hauled the AC unit out of the shed, even though I’d been advised against excessive exertion in this kind of weather.
I wonder if the weather department at WMUR would find these funny or not. I bet Mike Haddad would laugh.
I have a love/hate relationship with the air conditioner. Air conditioning gives me a headache. I don’t know why. And luckily I live in a place where the heat comes in during the day but then is chased away at night most of the time. You can leave the house open with fans going all night, get the house nice and cool, and when it starts warming up outside during the afternoon, close the house up tight and be good to go until it cools off again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But not this week. And on days like this I like having the AC on full blast and making it cold enough to keep milk fresh on the kitchen counter. And if I have to pop Advil like I’m eating M&M’s, so be it. Which is also adding to my giant feet issues, in case you were wondering.
So I hauled the AC out, washed it up and out and got it all shined up nice and wrestled it into the window. I cranked it on and collapsed, dripping with sweat and basting in my own stank, into my chair. A few minutes later the phone rings.
“Hey.” It’s Fr. Albert. He’s in Lochmere and wants to know if we have any use for a “whomp-ass” air conditioner. If so, he’ll be backing into my driveway in about ten minutes.
Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Not only did he haul in the gigantic AC unit, he put it together, installed it, and even cut a couple of pieces of wood to make sure it wouldn’t budge an inch in the window frame. It seems one of our summer parishoners decided to stop dicking around with a window unit and had central air installed in her cottage and gave the old one to Father. And from there it came to us.
And he wasn’t kidding about whomp-ass, either. It went from 91 degrees to 71 in less than two hours. It hasn’t gone over 70 in the living room all day even when it got to 110 on the porch this afternoon.
Did I bitch about it being five below zero six months ago? Yeah, probably. Shut up.
And now the smaller unit is in our bedroom so until the nighttime temps drop back down later this weekend, we’ll be cooler upstairs too. And if you listen real carefully, you can hear the sound of the meter jumping off the side of the house. I’m trying not to think about what my PSNH bill is going to be next month.
This must be what it’s like to be Paris Hilton.
Saturday Showcase: Everybody Poops May 28, 2011
Posted by J. in Genius, Other People's Genius, Sticks and String.1 comment so far
You know what sucks? When you give the toddler a chocolate chip cookie and he eats it happily, then you start to smell poop and see said toddler with brown smears all over his face and hands. Then worse, you see a large, brown, splotch on the back of his shirt and shorts, and you realize that you don’t know where the chocolate ends and the poop starts.
This shit isn’t in the parenting manuals. If I ever write my book, it’s going to be called “Your Life Is About to Become All About Bowel Movements” by Poops Lacey. I’m starting to think I should add a category of posts just titled “Shit Stories”.
Did I mention I had to give him a bath after lunch on Thursday because he had spaghetti from eyeball to asshole and while soaking he dropped a deuce in the tub? When you’re a parent, odds are good you will have to scoop some floaters (or sinkers) out of the bathtub at some point. Good times, good times.
So in an homage to the great Memorial Day Weekend Cookie/Crap Debacle of 2011, I have curated a little collection I call “Poops’ Festival of Feces.”
Did I mention that clicking the pictures takes you to the actual listing on Etsy where you can buy the item if you like, or poke around in the seller’s shop to see the other interesting things contained therein? ‘Cause you totally can.
Don't Scare Me I Poop Easily Funny Wood Sign by CountryWorkshop
I'd Love to Be a Bird by beanforest
Chocolate Pearls with Rabbit Clasp and Earrings by ErikaMayDesigns
Pattern: Pooping Dog Amigurumi by sandsteeldesigns
Bigfoot Breaks Into Some Dude's Cabin and Totally Takes a Fat Dump in His Toilet 8 x 10 Art Print by Legendary Tiger Hero
Real Moose Poop Doo-Doo Nugget Necklace by sharkman123
Chocolate Walnut Fudge: Binky's Yummy Seashore Fudge by SexyStitches
I Eat Rainbows and Poop Butterflies Wallet by SassyFace
Daddy Scoops My Poop Flare Dog Tag by HugAPugStudios
8 oz. Hershey Squirts All Natural Soy Candle by katherinesnaturals
The Deuce Ring by metalsugar
Pattern: I'm So Goth I Poop Bats by DefiantDamsel
E Coli Vintage French Medical Microscope Image Pendant/Tie Tack by spiffycool
WTF Friday: Imma Snort Some Eggnog Now May 20, 2011
Posted by J. in FYI, Genius, Other People's Genius.1 comment so far
Or maybe some Calgon. Hard to say.
I had heard–vaguely–something about kids these days snorting bath salts to get high. I didn’t quite know if you could get high off of bath salts or not, but then I’ve always liked to make myself dizzy with a nice, fat permanent marker, so there you go.
Don't snort this shit. It's fucking bad for you. Seriously.
Don't snort this shit either. It goes in the tub, dumbass. "Abbot's Habit Medicinal Bath Salts" by OldMonastery on Etsy
Anyway, the Bath Salts in question turn out to be a drug of some sort that you can actually buy in a “smoke shop” and it’s legal. For now. And it’s not actually something you’d put in the tub, it’s just what they call the drug. Like how if you take a Black Beauty you don’t have to swallow a whole horse. Google it. You’ll find out all you need to know.
Here’s where it get’s funny. Not “ha-ha” funny but “if I don’t laugh at this I’m going to kill someone” funny.
Some dumbass kids have managed, as kids so often do, to take dumbass to new heights. Because taking drugs isn’t stupid enough to begin with, they’ve mistaken the actual drug called “Bath Salts” for plain, old bath salts. Like what you get at Walgreens or under your grandma’s bathroom sink.
Needless to say, they’re getting fucked up alright. But more in a “lifetime of visits to the ENT” kind of way. You want to know what snorting regular bath salts does to the inside of your nasal cavity? If you decide to find out, don’t do an image search. You’ve been warned.
And with pictures that will put me off rare hamburgers for a few weeks at least, I thought that was the end of the Teh Stoopid, but I was so wrong.
Just don't think getting high off it is a good idea. Fuckwit. And keep your hands off my damn cinnamon, too.
It seems that you, and by you I mean your dumbass kid, can get high from nutmeg.
You can snort it, or eat it. But to feel any hallucinogenic effects, you have to ingest a shitload of it. Which, as I’m sure you can imagine, makes you pretty sick. It’s true. Google away.
I don’t think I’ve ever used nutmeg in a recipe that called for more than a teaspoon of the stuff because it’s such a strong spice to begin with. Go open the jar of nutmeg you have in the kitchen and take a deep whiff. The smell alone would make snorting it a challenge. And what would you put it in to cut the taste?
The mind boggles.
What the fuck is wrong with people? I’m going to go huff a marker.
Saturday Showcase May 14, 2011
Posted by J. in Other People's Genius, Sticks and String.1 comment so far
Yesterday I was sitting here ruminating at the computer and a lady cardinal landed in the tree just outside. The sky was brilliant blue with big, white, cotton candy clouds and a gigantic bumblebee kept banging into the window screen. The leaves are almost fully “leafed” and the apple trees are in full bloom and the lilacs are just starting to open.
I’m not one to wax poetic about the rebirth of the earth, blah blah blah, but damn, that was a long-ass winter and I’m happy to feel the grass between my toes again, and even though the pollen is so thick right now it looks like it’s snowing, I’m so happy to be able to open the windows I could shit mahself. I might even go crazy and make myself some barefoot sandals.
In honor of it feeling deliciously spring-y out there, even though rain is predicted for the forecast all week and the calla lilies aren’t quite in bloom again, here are some really pretty things that make me feel glad that warmer weather is here.
Cabbage Necklace by shayaaron
Adorable Duck Family Plush Toys by tinyfeltedbird
4 oz. Pink Lemonade Whipped Soap Vegan by ForJason
Lobster Beach Full Pocket Apron by ElsiesFlat
Tall Porcelain Jug by penelopespiderwork
Phlox by jlejelly
WTF Friday: The Toe-Kini May 13, 2011
Posted by J. in Genius, Other People's Genius, Sticks and String.5 comments
Here’s a new one for me to file away in my What’s the Point? Files. I don’t work alphabetically, so these will go in the Clothing? section with Crotchless Panties and Skants.
Barefoot Sandals, blue beaded with stars, by BusyLizzyBoutique
It’s not a sandal. The very word “sandal” implies that it’s footwear, in that it protects the foot from the ground. These do not do that. I argue that one cannot be barefoot and wearing a sandal at the same time. You can tell the manager at Wendy’s that you’re wearing shoes, man…they’re barefoot sandals! But he’s still going to make you leave. No shirt, no shoes, no Spicy Chicken Sandwich.
On the other hand (or foot, as it were), I kind of like these. There are some cute ones out there and there are some dreadfully ugly things, but these are okay in a hippie kind of way. I guess when I think of them as jewelry to adorn your otherwise bare feet at a time when bare feet are appropriate, I kind of like them. I’m thinking they’d be lovely if you were getting married on a beach. Or if you were spending your days on a tropical island in a fashionable matching sarong and a bikini and you liked to accessorize.
Would I wear them into a public restroom? No, probably not.
One thing I do know is that I have some great natural summer fibers in my stash that might have to become barefoot sandals.
Fuck it. If you can’t beat ‘em, take their money, I always say.
WTF Friday: Who Are You Freaks? May 6, 2011
Posted by J. in Genius, Other People's Genius.1 comment so far
Time for another round of “What Search Brought You Here?”
If you’re here because you are one of the two people that searched for guy doing a girl in the vag and this is where the Internets deposited your perverted ass, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But here’s something I found that might be nice for a guy looking to put purls in a bag:
It was a toss-up between this one and "I learned to knit in prison."
If you came here looking for some hardcore porn from Google, you deserve a picture of a knitting bag. Can I just ask, who actually Googles that? Who Googles their porn preference for straight sex? Seriously, get another fucking hobby. Knitting is nice.
Then again, I may have mentioned that I once Googled “dick cheese fetish” and trust me, there are things you can’t unsee. I’m not even going to link to it because I can’t bring myself to look at it again. *shudders*
Someone else found this site by searching for emo college vagina. Might have been faster searching for Girls of Brown University. *pauses for laughter* But seriously, folks, I did mention once wanting to kick an emo girl in the vagina, so that search is understandable, at least in as much as knowing how it got them here. Not why you’d want to see an emo college vagina in the first place, though. Just for shits and grins, I Googled it too.
I didn’t see any vaginas that looked particularly emo to me. Maybe I’m just not hip enough to get it.
If you must go and look for yourself, don’t type in elmo vagina by mistake. Ask me how I know. Suffice it to say that there is some seriously disturbing copyright infringement going on out there.
Not as disturbing as pterodactyl tattoo on my pussy, however. Although I do believe I’ve just added “I’d rather get a pterodactyl tattoo on my pussy than…” to my lexicon.
I also love whoever found me from i’m god you’re a cunt.
*sniggers*
Speaking of God, and my final entry for the night, is the enigmatic search term jesus hell slack wtf.
I know. I have no idea what it means either, and entering it into any search engine wasn’t much help. I wonder what someone was actually looking for?
Jesus?
Hell?
If you laughed at this too, I'll save you a seat in the handcart.
Slacks?
WTF?
I can't imagine continuing to do anything past the point where I've shit myself. But maybe that's just me.
I think that’s enough shit for one week. As you were.
WTF Tuesday: Really, Etsy? REALLY? May 3, 2011
Posted by J. in FYI, Other People's Genius.3 comments
Oh, my sweet, aching God. This just couldn’t wait until Friday.
Remember just this past weekend when I shared my favorite Regretsy reseller callout? Good old “DorisHandmade” selling her…well, handmade by someone“one of a kind” journals?
Click the photo to get the story from the beginning. I'll wait...
Did you read it? Pretty ballsy, right? And a good catch by RuneLeather, too.
Well, there’s an update, and it’s appalling.
You see, there’s some pretty cupcake-y rules in the Etsy forums. One of them is that you can’t “call out” another seller. (Mind you, you can bitch for days about buyers–yes, you can badmouth your customers in the forums until the cows come home.) You aren’t allowed to say, “Hey, DorisHandmade is selling mass-produced imports and claiming they’re one of a kind handmade!”
Now, it’s one thing when you find a reseller while you’re browsing around, and trust me, you don’t have to be Sherlock Bleeding Holmes to find one, and intentionally go over to the forums and “call them out” as resellers. Calling resellers to the attention of potential buyers who would probably prefer not to pay a 3000% markup is bad for Etsy business. After all, those buyers might not buy a fuckton of them and Etsy wouldn’t get their 3.5%. And you can’t call it to the attention of the handmade sellers who are getting more and more pissed at finding their own work buried under imported, mass-produced crap because they might take their listings to Artfire or Zibbit and Etsy would lose their fees.
But Rune, who makes journals herself, took a quick helpful peek at Doris’ shop to offer some advice (even though Doris violated the Etsy Terms of Use by using the main forums to promote her shop by asking people to look at it and “help” her) and realized that she’d seen those journals before. Somewhere. They seemed…familiar.
One Google search later and we find that those journals Doris has listed for all kinds of crazy money will run you about two bucks from a wholesaler.
So Rune said as much.
Did she call out DorisHandmade? Some of us feel that perhaps Doris called herself out by attracting attention to her shop in the first place. She went on a public forum and asked “What do you think of the stuff I MAKE?” and all we’re supposed to do is to quietly flag the shop and say nothing. Meanwhile other sellers who don’t know any better continue to look at her shop (boosting her page views and increasing her traffic), offer helpful suggestions on improving her sales, and possibly even buy some of her journals.
So, here’s the rest of the story, and I’ll let you read it right from the Regretsy mouth, because really April’s outrage is expressed as eloquently as I could possibly muster at the moment. Just click on the photo of Etsy CEO Rob Kalin below to read the unbelievable update…
Your Etsy Content Team at Work: The Are You Fucking Kidding Me Edition
RuneLeather has been banned from posting in the forums because she called out another seller.
She broke the rules so she got punished. DorisHandmade? Her shop is in vacation mode, but she’s not been banned from Etsy for breaking the rules. Nor have any of the other resellers called out recently. Some are on vacation, and some are continuing to do business despite being flagged by myself and others.
April says in her post, “Usually, I take a lot of pleasure in laughing at Etsy’s bullshit. But this just makes me sad. Here’s a genuine artisan playing by the rules, doing everything right, working to uphold the dream that Etsy sold her, and she’s the one getting punished.”
Sometimes there’s just no justice. This is a clear case, to me, of shooting the goddamn messenger. Good job, Etsy. She does your job for you and you respond with telling her to shut up and sit down in that corner over there.
Nobody puts Rune in a corner.
I happen to know that RuneLeather is smart as shit and a talented little minx and deserves way better than this. She is an artist and a craftperson and people like her, and me, are the heartbeat of Etsy.
Etsy is built on and runs on our backs and our reputations as artists and craftsmen. As StitchesbyKriss put it, “We are their veneer of respectability. We are the ones we trot out for magazine articles and other interviews. But we don’t make the real money for them, and so they marginalise our voices by constraining the forums and muting those who ‘call out’.”
An example of RuneLeather's work. I heart this journal pretty hard, and you know how I feel about journaling. Click the photo to visit her journal shop, show her some love, and let her know that you hate cheats and liars.
People who sell mass-produced stuff on Etsy are ruining the integrity of the site, and that makes me angry, and a little bit sad. I’ve been a seller on Etsy for five years, almost since Etsy began, and the ethical backsliding is taking the bloom off the rose for me.
This is something I wrote in a forum thread about why the whole resellers/no calling out of resellers issue bothers me. It’s about respect, plain and simple.
It’s disrespectful to allow the resellers to continue to violate not only the written policies of the site but of its core values as well. And it adds insult to injury to be told to pipe down or we’ll take away your voice, or your shop if we have to.
I’ll say it again: Etsy is US. WE are Etsy. We are the faces and the heart and the hands that built this site, and to be told “We’ve got it all under control, now please stop talking about it…or else,” makes me feel like none of us really matters to them anymore. If we’re now just numbers on a spreadsheet, that’s sad, because that’s not the Etsy I joined.
Maybe Etsy will go on forever being bigger and stronger and make more money than ever. But if it loses its integrity, if it loses its self-respect, it loses everything. I would hate to see it become just another corporate blight on the landscape. It can be so much more, if those at the helm stay true to the vision.
All I can do as a single person, a single seller with a small inventory, and a blogger with a small following is speak my piece and do what I can to spread the word. I want everyone within earshot of my voice to know that there are good people with lots of talent making truly amazing stuff on Etsy. They create art with passion and craft with love and I’m going to do my best to steer you towards the best of the best from time to time. Buying handmade, boosting local economy and supporting people who work with their hands is a good thing, I think. It’s an important thing.
Talk shit. Do good. Stand up for what is right.
Weekend Wonderfulness? April 30, 2011
Posted by J. in Genius, Other People's Genius.3 comments
Weekend Whimsy? Weekend Weedings? Weekend Wows?
I’m on the fence about a name, but the idea is sound. I am going to start featuring Etsy items that I think are fan-freaking-tastic in hopes that showcasing it here will drive some business to their shops. I’ve been wading (Weekend Wading?) through Etsy in search of some truly lovely, unique, fun, fabulous, freaky and just generally blog-worthy items to share with you.
And I’ll tell you why.
Etsy is grating on my last goddamn nerve. When I first joined Etsy, the site itself was less than a year old and its whole selling point–the entire reason for joining–was that it loudly and proudly proclaimed itself to be a handmade marketplace. Handmade. As in “things that someone made with their own two hands.”
Now, when you open a site to artists and craftspeople and offer it as a place where they can make money with stuff that they like to craft while watching TV, you’re going to get varying degrees of “good”. Good quality, good materials, even good idea in the first place are fairly subjective. There is some truly weird, wretched stuff on there.
Enter Regretsy.com. I’ve mentioned how much I love this site. If you can write something on the Internet that makes me laugh so hard that I choke and my husband has to come in from the other room and ask me if I’m okay and all I can do is point to the monitor and wipe my eyes, and you can do it day after day after day–dude, I’m a FAN.
April Winchell is the genius behind Regretsy. She combs through Etsy looking for the gems to feature on her site, and while I can only imagine what tags she enters to find some of that stuff, at one point she realized that she was seeing a lot of multiples of things, as in hundreds of necklaces featuring the same brass octopus from Hobby Lobby. Still, lack of originality, skill, and taste aside, she also noticed lots and lots of items claiming to be one-of-a-kind that were obviously not handmade, never mind OOAK.
One of my favorite reseller callouts ever. Click the picture to see the whole sordid affair.
So she started featuring them on Regretsy in the “Not Remotely Handmade” category. Turns out that a bulk of the folks who read Regretsy are Etsy sellers too, and the venom in the comments section of those features was palpable. I don’t know how or when it happened, but the fact that Etsy is chock full of resellers who are crowding out legitimate artists and craftspersons became intolerable. So April opened the Regretsy forums as part of the Regretsy site, and it didn’t take much work at all for those of us who are Etsy members, handcrafters and lovers of one-of-a-kind pieces, and fans of general snarkiness to form an Etsy team. We’re called “April’s Army” and while Etsy’s terms of service does not allow us to “call out” other Etsy members for reselling, the Regretsy forum encourages it. So when we find resellers and copyright infringers, we can tell our AA posse and flag the shop so many times that it can’t be ignored.
But Regretsy isn’t just about snarkiness. April has always been generous. In addition to buying things to support shops that are doing good, she also keeps a small fund available to help out people who need it for whatever reason. In fact, our team motto is a quote by April:
Cross stitch design by AA member "Prynsess"
The April’s Army Team on Etsy is supportive, which is what teams were designed for. We help each other to get better as artists and crafters (lest we get featured on Regretsy!) and to build our Etsy businesses. Which is all good. Plus, the last week of every month we have an April’s Army shop on Etsy where members of the team donate an item or items to be sold through that shop with the proceeds going towards the Regretsy charitable fund.
Only 8 items left from the April sale!
Our first AA Shop opened on Monday 4/25 with over 100 listings. As of Friday, there was only a dozen or so items left standing in the shop. We got to give input on who we thought should benefit from the shop sales, and the Etsy seller For Jason was chosen. Not only did our shop do well, but linking it back to her shop helped her sell out lots of her inventory as well.
Robin’s shop has been doing very well, and she still has lots of nice things in it. Other AA members said her lip balms were out of this world, and because I hate pancreatic cancer with the fire that fuels a thousand suns and would love to see Jason kick it’s sorry ass, I have a couple on the way here. I’ll let you know how they are!
So, while I do love to talk shit from time to time, I have always believed in doing good. To that end, I bring you the first edition of Weekend Wonderfuls. (Yes? No? Ugh.) Here are a half-dozen handmade goodies from a few of my favorite Etsy sellers. I invite you to click the links here and visit these shops, but also to take a cruise around Etsy and mark some shops of your own. Mother’s Day is coming up…why not buy her something handmade?
Fun Laundry Glasses by MotherSeal
Chocolate Whoopie Pie Necklace by roscata
Purse in Carpet Bag Style Stripes by crookedsmilecreation
Cute Little Monster Felt Zippered Pouch by YouAreMySin
Saint Rectangle Magnet by mincingmockingbird
Mother is the Sweetest Word Bowl by antb
A Dream Deferred April 11, 2011
Posted by J. in FYI, Genius, Other People's Genius.add a comment
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
(Langston Hughes, 1951)
I am not a poet. I’ve never really even been all that crazy about poetry to begin with and have NO interest in writing any in the least. It’s because poets have a way of putting things that are non-visual into visual terms that I sometimes like, but mostly don’t. In fact, most of the time I hate it. There are only a few poems I really like and a bazillion and a half that I loathe.
This is pretty close to what a good week looks like in my head. Not quite as pastel, but close. Eerily close, in fact. Okay, I'm actually a little creeped out right now...
I see things that are not generally understood in a visual sense, as I said a couple of months back when I talked a bit about how I view the days of the week as it relates to my daily blog posts and reader traffic. I conducted a terribly informal and unscientific poll and learned that most people in my circle of friends, if asked to close their eyes and visualize “a week”, get the image of a calendar page in their head. Sunday on one side, Saturday on the other, all the same size squares, probably black printing on a white background.
Do poets think of non-tangible things like “dreams deferred” and “a week” in visual ways? Did Langston Hughes close his eyes and write about what he saw in his head? Or did he sit down and think of what a dream deferred might be like and that’s what he came up with? I suspect a lot of poets do the latter. They think of descriptive ways to describe things, but I wonder if what they write doesn’t ring true to me because I don’t buy the imagery. Or perhaps it’s because I can close my eyes and see images of things that don’t have a physical manifestation of their own, and the poets I don’t like picked images that jar with my own.
Hell, I don’t know. I know I like that poem in particular. It’s on my short list. I’m sure Langston Hughes is relieved. Or would be, if he hadn’t died in 1967.
I think we all have things that evoke physical, emotional, or intellectual responses in us. Some people can close their eyes and “see” the music they listen to. It has color and shape to them. I can see emotions. Sadness has a distinct shape, as does anger. And not in the way you might logically think. “Anger is red and pointy! Sadness is a gray oval…” Not like that. I realize that I’ll understand how I’m feeling better in terms of what the feeling looks like in my head than by the actual descriptor.
For instance, today I’m feeling content. It’s my birthday, and we’re having a bit of a wee thunderstorm right now. I like thunderstorms and always have. They’re fun to watch. Dave is busy eating some cereal and watching Dora and thus letting me type in peace and drink my coffee. I have nothing pressing to do today, I’m having a Chinese food for dinner tonight, and I’ll finish up with choir practice which is always a good time.
So if you were to ask me how I’m feeling, I’d say I feel pretty darn good today. I’m content. Satisfied. I’m generally pleased with how the day is unfolding and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
But while I’m describing how I feel, I’m seeing the form of my emotions in my head. If I described what it looked like physically, it wouldn’t make any sense at all, even to me. But I look at the form of how I’m feeling and instead of using solid terms to describe it like color or shape or movement, I see the shape of it and understand it’s physical form as an emotion. What shape is it? Well, it’s contented. I know “contented” isn’t a shape. But it IS, and that’s the thing.
I don’t think the way I visualize non-visual things is normal, to be honest with you. And I’m okay with that.
This is what happens in my brain when you say "Poops, what's 13 x 7?"
I think it’s funny how my brain works. For instance, I suck at math. I can’t do math in my head to save my life. Numbers come in and pop right back out. I can’t remember math facts. I’m lucky I remember my times tables, to be honest with you, and it’s why math was such a horrible subject for me. Formulas, equations, rules…can’t remember them. I try, but they don’t want to stay. My brain doesn’t want to play with them. I wouldn’t even describe it as a mental block, like when you just hate something so much that you go blind with rage and can’t even think straight. It’s more like the math center of my noggin can’t get out of its own way. It starts spewing out all the math I’ve ever learned and I can’t sort it all out. It’s frustrating to know what I need to do to the numbers but to have them all get in my way so I’m tripping on them. Fucking math.
This is what happens in my brain when you say, "Poops, can you knit a vagina?"
But let’s say I feel like making a pair of mittens. (It happens.) I can close my eyes and picture a pair of knitting needles and a ball of yarn. I can picture the whole knitting process from cuff to fingertips and remember what I did in my head. I can sketch out or describe in detail what stitches or patterns I used and how I made them fit with the thumb gusset or the top decreases. I can picture color patterns and later translate them to graph paper. I can open my eyes and write that pattern out from memory without ever actually touching yarn or needles. I might have to tweak a few numbers here and there, but for the most part it came out of my head already figured out.
And yet I need to use pencil and paper to figure out 13 x 7 because for the life of me I can’t do it in my head.
Plus, 13 and 7 are both prime numbers and I don’t like them at all. That’s an unholy union right there. *shudders violently*
Seriously, I almost had to change the numbers to ones less skeevy, but I’ll leave them as a show of strength.
If I think of anything else weird about my brains, I’ll keep you posted. Until then, I’m going to go let the contented feelings have their way with me.
How Big is a Mustard Seed? March 21, 2011
Posted by J. in Genius, Other People's Genius.3 comments
I am a woman of faith. But because it’s been my experience that the people who love to debate issues of faith are usually the ones least equipped for the job, for the most part I try to stay away from the sacred on the blog. By and large, I prefer to remain profane.
I have a story that keeps getting caught in my brain on a playback loop a lot lately, though. It gets to scratching about in there any time the very nature of faith is called into question and God becomes suspect. I remember it to myself whenever I see hateful words thrown around in God’s name by people who wouldn’t know God if he kicked them in the ass.
I mean, I suppose any time there’s a natural disaster (or three), it’s natural to wonder where God is. Maybe you are a person of some faith who finds himself confused as to why God seems content to let bad things happen to good people. Maybe you’re someone who sees signs of God’s wrath in the shaking of the earth and is already preparing to be raptured, or perhaps you just reject the notion of God entirely and prefer to lean on intellect alone to get you through the night.
Whatever tickles your peach, man.
I honestly try to stay out of the fray. Arguing about “who’s right” is a fool’s debate, and just I try to remember what is important to me and let the rest of it be the background noise that it is. I don’t like it when others try to ram their beliefs or lack thereof down my throat, so I try not to do it either. I’m not an evangelist, or an apologist.
So if you’re still with me at this point and you continue to read on, and I hope you will because I think this is a pretty good story, bear in mind that this isn’t my attempt to preach to you or proselytize or knock on your door with leaflets or anything. I don’t wish to challenge what you personally believe or don’t believe so much as I just feel like offering a bit of insight as to What Makes Poops Tick.
This story is a series of events that I think about whenever events in the world get to a point that make me wonder what God could be playing at. I reflect on it when my kids ask me in their innocence about how God works and I’m in a position to help build their faith. I use it as a talisman in my metaphorical pocket to touch when I start to lose my faith in humanity. Which is why you may find it curious that the story isn’t about me at all.
The story starts with some hard questions, which of course tend to come up when times are hard.
Why would a loving God allow dreadful things to happen to us if he loves us?
Why would he send earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis if it’s not a punishment?
If it is a punishment, who is he punishing, and what the holy hell did they do?
Why didn’t he save the innocents? What about his faithful?
I’m sure there were lots of people fasting and praying for an earthquake to not hit them. Why didn’t he answer those prayers?
WHERE IS GOD?
If you can hear me…if you are real…just give me a SIGN.
I mean, if all it would take is for a simple magic trick to make someone believe, why doesn’t God just do it already? Moses got a burning bush, and Jesus thrilled the crowds with walking on water and the whole raising Lazarus thing. Is it so much to ask in a troubled world that you make a mountain move? What about something easier like making a statue cry real tears or let Christ’s wounds appear on my body? If God is as real as we seem to think he is, you think he would give us a little something, right?
Here’s what he gave me. It’s a true story, too.
Years and years ago, a young man named Ray was living out West, and he found himself in the Rocky Mountains, looking at the scenery and having a bit of a crisis of faith.
“Lord,” he prayed, “I don’t know what to do. I pray, but I feel like you don’t hear me. I feel like you don’t answer me. I need a sign. Help me to believe.” In desperation he challenged God, “If you’re real, prove it. Make a mountain move.”
Ray was no doubt remembering the gospel story where Jesus tells his followers about faith, about putting your trust in God, and how when you do that, anything is possible. Jesus told them that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed, they could say to a mountain, “Move!” and it would move. Ray sighed because he knew deep in his heart that the gigantic mountain in front of him wasn’t going anywhere. Certainly not with his faith, which he felt was even smaller than a tiny mustard seed.
Ray eventually got sick of waiting for God to do his thing, so he got up and dusted himself off and went back down the mountain. As he tells it, he soon found himself a lovely lady named Lauretta to marry, and they moved here to New Hampshire and started their family.
One day, some many years later, one of the groups at their church was presenting a documentary about Mother Teresa of Calcutta called Something Beautiful for God. Lauretta recalls that the presentation was poorly attended with only a few people turning up, but the show (as the show must) went on anyway.
Later that night, Lauretta woke from a nightmare. She told Ray she couldn’t get the images of those poor people out of her head. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d see them. Ray comforted her as best he could, but the images haunted him too. Night after night, Ray and Lauretta dreamed about those people. Poor people. Hungry people. Sick people. Dying people. So many people in need of basic care, and so few people reaching out a hand to help them.
They talked about it every day to the point of obsession. They sent donations to India, but the dreams persisted. Finally, when most of us might have sought the help of a psychologist, Ray suggested, “Perhaps we should travel to India and see what we can do to help.”
Once Ray said it out loud, they knew it was what they had both been thinking but they were to afraid to voice. Travel halfway around the world? Go to the poorest and most destitute of places? Leave the comfort and safety of their little home to walk into God knows what?
It was a terrifying thought.
They wrote a letter to Mother Teresa and asked if they might go to her in India and help her in some way. And then they waited.
Mother wrote them back. She asked them to think long and hard about making such a long journey. She told them to pray about it and to make very sure that this was the path that God wanted them to take. Mother Teresa, you see, knew a little something about following a call.
So Ray and Lauretta prayed, and the dreams and the nagging feeling that they should “do something” just continued. They wrote to Mother again and said that while they weren’t sure what path they should follow exactly, they were quite sure that God sent them to her for a reason.
Mother Teresa again answered their letter and offered a suggestion. She told them that her order had established a hospital and orphanage in Port-au-Prince, and would they consider traveling to Haiti instead and helping out there. She assured them that there was much they could do to help and that they would be welcomed by her Sisters.
So Ray and Lauretta and their two young daughters took their first trip to Haiti. They got off the plane and were so overwhelmed by the poverty around them that they wanted to turn around and go right back home. In fact, they tried to leave almost immediately but there were technical problems and as fate would have it, they were forced to stay.
The conditions were, as Mother Teresa had warned them, bleak.
Ray and Lauretta called up all the strength they had, rolled up their sleeves and set to the work they had gone to Haiti to do. They worked very hard with very little, feeding the endless lines of people that came to their door with the little stores they had, helping provide medical assistance with no training and few supplies, and holding the hands and praying with people who were dying, offering them comfort and care and helping them to die with dignity and surrounded by love. By the next day, they had given no more thought to leaving early.
In fact, they visited Haiti again and again, each time bringing more supplies with them, and when they got too much stuff to carry, they shipped it. Boxes and cartons turned into shipping containers, and one container turned into many, many containers.
For thirty years from their family home, Ray and Lauretta supplied the Sisters in Port-au-Prince with giant shipping containers of food, clothing, medical supplies, and even toys for the children. They visited and helped and lived with and prayed for the poorest of the poor in Haiti many times.
And they, like the people who had visited their own parish years earlier and screened a documentary about Mother Teresa, they put together a slide show and presentation about their beloved Haitian friends.
I’ve seen it three times so far. You can’t see it and not be moved. In fact, the older pictures are just Ray and Lauretta and their family in Haiti, but newer slides have more and more familiar faces as people who have seen their presentation have asked to join them on their trips.
The slide show lasts over two hours and the more Ray talks, the more you want to hear. I only wish it was possible to capture the essence of Ray and Lauretta in this or any other article about them. Love radiates from them. You can feel it the second you walk into the room, in the same way you can feel the heat from a fire when the rest of the room is cold. I don’t know of any other way to describe it. You’ll have to trust me and my common sense when I tell you that there is something different about them that is tangible, but indescribable.
Anyway, after one of their talks at our parish, when the slide show was over a few of us were left sitting in the chapel chatting casually with Ray and Lauretta and Ray told us about that time when he sat on the mountain and asked God for a sign, for some proof that he hears prayers and answers them, and how he in his youth had so brazenly challenged God to move a mountain.
Then told us of the day many years later when he was giving an interview to a local writer, and the writer asked if Ray knew off-hand how much stuff they had collected and sent to Haiti over the years. Ray had to admit that he really didn’t know. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to total it up. So he and the reporter started going through the shipping paperwork and added up how many containers they had sent over the years.
After doing the math, the writer said to Ray, somewhat off-handedly, “You know, if you stacked all those boxes and shipping containers on top of each other, the pile would be taller than Belknap Mountain.”
If you are real, God, then prove it. Show me. Move a mountain.
And God did.
Do you want to know where I see God? Everywhere. He’s in the faces of the Haitian people. He lives in the dirt and the mud. He is alone, hungry and forgotten. He’s sick. He’s scared. He’s next door at the food pantry. He’s that woman trying to find a decent pair of gently-used winter boots for her kids. He’s in prison. He’s addicted. He’s deaf, dumb, and blind. He’s confined to bed or in a wheelchair. He’s being beaten up for his lunch money for the third time this week. He’s standing in the rubble in Japan, and he’s crying.
You know where else I can find him on any given day? He’s in the face of all the Sisters around the world who continue to do Mother Teresa’s work. He’s on the ground in Japan and Haiti in the hands of rescue and aid workers. He’s in the hearts of people like Ray and Lauretta who do what they can, and then do a little bit more. He’s in the big family with lots of mouths to feed that somehow every week still finds enough extra money to donate a bag of groceries or two to the food pantry. He’s spending his spare time at the nursing home building puzzles and playing cribbage with the residents. He’s leading a prayer group at the State Prison. She’s delivering Meals on Wheels. He’s sharing his lunch with a kid who had his lunch money stolen three times this week.
Miracles don’t fall from the sky like manna from heaven anymore. I rather think God gives us more credit than that. If we want to see God at work, if we want to see him move mountains, we have to stop staring at the sky and look around. God answers prayers alright, but he doesn’t do magic tricks. We can go ahead and pray for a pony or a big, fat bag of cash or a cure for cancer, but we have to bear in mind that he’s not Santa Claus.
I think I know why God allows suffering to happen. It’s so that we are always reminded that we need each other. We are the answers to each other’s prayers.
I’m quite certain that God is trying to show us signs, but we’re too busy looking for weeping statues to see a child that is too hungry to cry. If you need to see Christ’s wounds so that you can believe, look no further than the person standing next to you; we all carry them around with us every day.
I know in my heart of hearts that God moves mountains. He just does it one bag of rice at a time.
Click the picture of Ray to read more about the Seabecks and their story of making miracles happen.
Ray and Lauretta Seabeck are still working to provide the poorest of the poor in Haiti with the basic necessities of life through donations, prayer, and by simply sharing their story. And even though advancing age keeps them from collecting and sending the containers of material they have all these years, and their health prevents them from sharing their story as often as they’d like, the people of Haiti are never far from their hearts or minds, especially as they continue to face the new challenges brought on by the most recent earthquake.
