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Some Holiday Lunacy! Equinox, Purim, Passover, and Easter

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Lunar Phase Calendar 2019Today (in the northern hemisphere) we welcome the Vernal Equinox — a time of balance — along with the full moon that heralds the arrival of Purim.*

Purim occurs at the mid-point of the Hebrew month of Adar, or in this case Adar Sheni (“second Adar”), the second instance of Adar in what is a leap year in the Jewish calendar. The leap years sprinkled along the 19-year cycle ensure that the lunar calendar keeps pace with the solar calendar, instead of traveling along the year like the Islamic calendar. Indeed, if we skipped the repeat of Adar this year, we’d be getting ready right now for Passover, which begins, also on the full moon, just a month later.

I’ve always been fascinated by the connections between the world we live in and the systems and words we use to describe and organize it. So I remember being completely stunned to learn in college that I could find the Jewish holidays by looking outside at night. I’d grown up learning and celebrating the holidays, and I’d always known that the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar, but I thought that was an ancient thing. I hadn’t understood that those connections between the names and counting and the real world would still be intact — after all, our months aren’t like that. But calendars are designed, whatever their focus, to keep going, as best they can. So unlike Gregorian months, which only approximate the moon cycles that inspire their name, Hebrew months begin, every time, with the first new sliver of moon**.

I also knew that Jewish holidays have specific dates (as do holidays in any calendar): Chanukah on 25th of Kislev, Tu b’Shevat (as named) on the 15th of Shevat. I hadn’t paid much attention to the others, and so now I had the pleasure of learning that most of the major holidays occur on the 15th of their month … and coincide with the full moon. Tu B’Shevat. Purim. Passover. Sukkot. Because full moon is a great time to celebrate.***
(Begin 5/4 time full moonlight dance here!)

So. And then, some years later, I found myself looking through a list of Easter dates**** and wondered what was up with the one Christian holiday that traveled around as much — in fact possibly more — than Jewish ones.

And I was most charmed to learn that it combined everything: Easter comes on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

So, okay, here comes the equinox, timed for 5:58 pm Eastern Daylight Time (9:58 pm UTC, 10:58 pm Central European Time); when exactly is the moon full? As it turns out, just about four hours later!

So why isn’t it Easter week right now?

Because, as I just learned in the last week, there is an Ecclesiastical rule that declares Equinox unequivocally to be March 21.*****

…Interestingly, those same ecclesiastical rules state that the vernal equinox is fixed on March 21 (for European longitudes), even though from the years 2008 through 2103 the equinox will occur no later than March 20. In fact, in the year 2020, for the first time since 1896, spring will arrive on the 19th across the entire United States, and in 2048, that will happen across the whole of Europe.

So, while in an astronomical sense, March 20 marks the first full moon of spring, so far as the Christian church is concerned, we must put the Paschal Term on hold for a month until the next full moon, on April 19. That also occurs on Good Friday, and at sundown that same day, Passover begins. Two days later will come a rather late Easter Sunday, on April 21.

An even more extreme situation will take place in 2038. In that year, the equinox will fall on March 20 with a full moon the very next day (a Sunday). So, astronomically, Easter should fall on March 28 of that year. In reality, however, as mandated by the rules of the church, Easter in 2038 will be observed as late as it can possibly come, on April 25!

So. Many things to ponder. And a month to wait, for both Passover and Easter. In the meanwhile, I wish you a time of great balance, patience, and equilibrium, on the day that everyone gets the same amount of daylight, no matter where they are, all over the world.

______

*Also the equinox-related Eostara, Holi, Norouz/Char-Shanbe-Soori, Higan, the Autumnal Equinox in the southern hemisphere, and more … including the many cultures that celebrate the vernal equinox as the first day of Spring.******

**What I learned then, from posters in the campus center, and from the meetings they echoed, was that this first day of each month is known as Rosh Chodesh, head of the month, as Rosh Hashanah is head of the year. And it turns out that Rosh Chodesh, which I had never heard of, is celebrated as a women’s holiday. Amazing that I didn’t learn this in Hebrew School. (Hmm.)

***Chanukah is a notable exception. It’s not a major holiday, except in that it coincides with so many (other) Solstice holidays. And a number of years ago, it was pointed out to me (thank you, Otter) that Chanukah, known as the Festival of Lights though its name means “Rededication,” doesn’t just occur during the darkest time of year; it also neatly covers the darkest time of month. Starting a few days before the end of the month of Kislev, and ending a few days after, the holiday takes us into the darkness and then back out again, while the lights of the Chanukah menorah grow ever-brighter.

****Possibly this was when I was confirming that my first cat’s birthday was even earlier than I’d thought. We were told she was born on Easter. And so we (okay, I) looked it up and thenceforward celebrated her birthday on March 25 … until discovering that I’d remembered wrong, and Easter that year had actually been March 23.

*****It’s not clear to me what time or time zone is relevant here, or whether the moon must follow the entire day or just its beginning.

******I don’t, though. I consider this to be mid-spring, in the midst of the winter-to-summer transition process that is spring. But that’s another post. Oh, wait; it actually is another post.

Vote: Because Others Can’t

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If you, or someone you know, is wondering “Why should I bother to vote today?” my current answer isn’t about the vast sweeping changes across the nation in the past two years and the fate of our democracy. My current answer is this:

Vote today to compensate for those across the country whose votes are being suppressed, some perhaps as “unintended consequences” of apparently well-meaning changes* and some as blatant disenfranchisement:
– For example, in North Dakota, where the Supreme Court** just upheld a Voter ID law that requires a street address in order to vote, and where it is completely standard for the government not to issue street addresses on Native American reservations whose streets often don’t have names or numbers.
– Or in North Carolina, where five years ago — in fact, the very day after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act*** (see p. 10 of the 2016 decision linked in this paragraph) — the state eliminated same-day voter registration and reduced both early voting and Sunday voting, explicitly because counties with strong Sunday voting tended to be “disproportionately” African-Americans who tended to vote Democratic. The law was overturned in 2016, but the justification went viral a few weeks ago.
– Or in Dodge City, Kansas, where the distribution of erroneous polling place information was only adding insult to injury. The notices said that voting would occur at the standard sole polling place in the center of town, but in fact they had already made the actual polling place get out of Dodge. The only place today for the primarily Latin@ city residents to vote is outside of town, 1 mile from the nearest bus stop.
– Or in Georgia, where, among other things, people’s addresses were purged from voter rolls based on when they last voted, and they were not notified. There are also problems with voting machines, absentee ballots, and processing registrations. Also, there are many fewer polling places across the state, something that has been growing since, hm…the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

Some other good reasons to vote:

1) Demographics. Politicians pay attention to who votes in elections, and if you’re part of a demographic that polls as low turnout, the representatives may decide that your issues aren’t the ones to focus on.

2) History. No matter who you are, many of your ancestors have been legally unable to vote in this country. For those who struggled, fought, died, were imprisoned and force-fed, or marched and endured, your use of your vote now can honor their courage.

3) Meanness vs. civility. The vast sweeping changes across the nation in the past two years and the state of our democracy. The fate of America and all the people in it.

4) In case anyone thinks one vote doesn’t make a big enough difference****, I will simply copy some lyrics here from an earlier post:

Step by Step

lyrics to "Step by Step"

sign for 2017 women’s march

Step by step, the longest march can be won, can be won.
Many stones to form an arch, singly none, singly none,
And by union what we will can be accomplished still;
Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

As far as I know, the words are from the preamble to the constitution of the United Mine Workers (UMWA), and it was set to music by Pete Seeger. I learned it from Sweet Honey, and I found performances of them both:
Video (Sweet Honey in the Rock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXwM3pJFqAc
Recording and lyrics (Pete Seeger): https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-step-by-step-lyrics

——–
*There’s a Reuters quote in the Snopes article (cited later in the post) that says,

“Republicans have said laws like the one in North Carolina are needed to prevent voter fraud. Democrats have said such laws are voter suppression measures intended to make it harder for groups that tend to back Democratic candidates, including black and Hispanic voters, to cast ballots.”

I think this is a problematically complex answer.
My answer would be:
Voter suppression IS voter fraud. Go ahead and prevent that.
And further:
Is fraud prevention worth it if one person is prevented from voting as a result? Ten? 100? How many of your own friends’ or family’s votes would you trade for the “prevention of voter fraud”?

**with Gorsuch, without Kavanaugh, despite my previous belief. The majority included Sonia Sotomayor, however, which surprises me.

***Apparently SCOTUS felt that the southern states in question had been behaving well enough that there was no longer a need to require federal oversight of new changes in voting law. Within a day, as I recall, there were six new changes in voting law among the previously constrained states.

****Also, there is somewhere a list of major historical decisions decided by very few votes. I’ll try to find it. I mean, besides the 2016 Presidential. Oh, here’s one.

On the Persistence of Memory

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Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory

What does it mean when someone is asked to prove themselves as credible by recalling a date?

It is not always obvious when people will remember dates. Sometimes — and for some people — a date is seared into memory by events. Or there’s a date that you choose to remember, in order to commemorate, or celebrate, or simply take note of, when it comes around again. One might think that having a crime committed against you would mean that you carefully note down all the particulars … but when the crime is one that you would rather forget, or when you’re not sure anyone considers it a crime … maybe you don’t write it down.

I keep being reminded of hearing Ronald Reagan on the radio, saying, in response to a question about having a particular conversation on a particular day, “No, I don’t remember. Who remembers what they were doing on August 9, 1985?!”*

And I remember being outraged, because (1) remembering the exact date didn’t seem nearly as important as whether the conversation had happened at all, so it seemed he was using a loophole to avoid answering, and (2) what kind of question was that — after all, I remembered what I had been doing on August 9, 1985.

I felt extremely self-righteous about this, because his implication was that no one would remember a date, when I found it a point of pride that I remembered All the Dates. I didn’t have a photographic memory; it was much more type-focused than that: names, lists, the position of a word on a page, dates. Not years — it would be a long time before I really got a good sense of history in my head — but dates from year to year. I kept a diary, and I referred to it, and I remembered … not actually all the dates, but many, many significant dates. I remembered when my concerts and plays had been, and when I saw Cats (December 29, 1984), and when I’d been hurt, and when I’d had awkward conversations, and when I’d had amazing conversations. I’d sometimes refer to certain events by the dates when they happened, when writing about them later. “That October 17, 1987, conversation.” Or “September 22nd skies,” which is still a description I use, because it happened two years in a row on the same day**.

I also knew many many many people’s birthdays.

Point One of this post is that I was surrounded by people who were not like this. Most people around me did not measure their lives in calendars and dates. They were amazed that I might remember the date of their party last year, or when we had some conversation, or that I knew their birthday.

Point Two is that, for the most part, even I no longer remember those dates. I remember when I saw Cats, but I no longer remember what conversation happened on October 17 in high school. I still know a lot of birthdays***, and I remember vividly some of the events and conversations from adolescence, including traumatic ones. But my memory — my lovely, unusual memory — of dates in the eighties is no longer something I can rely on.

So when people ask someone to produce exact dates from 30-40 years ago as a way to determine whether an event happened at all, my single data point says to me that most people can do this only tenuously at best, and that instead of a true connection what they are providing here is only an arbitrary test, and a ploy for the influence of public opinion.

——–
*I’m not actually sure when this was. My attempts to verify it online have led me to this 1992 deposition about the Iran-Contra scandal, in which
1) I don’t actually see this exchange about August 9, 1985 (or any other date), and from my own memory-context I suspect it was different, earlier testimony that I heard (maybe 1986 or 1990) — or perhaps my memory is faulty;
2) I’m stunned at how many questions they kept asking while he told them he didn’t remember — this deposition was two years before he told the public that he had Alzheimer’s disease;
3) And finally, that in this deposition it’s very, very clear that the dates don’t matter; he simply doesn’t remember the conversations at all. Which throws a rather different light on my reactions to his out-of-context defensiveness.

**It’s a patchy, cloudy sky at night: a surprisingly vivid weaving that covers the whole sky, with deep blue in all the patches. And maybe some moonlight beyond, or stars, going in and out.

***I get frustrated with Facebook, sometimes, for telling me birthdays I would otherwise surprise people by knowing. Other times, however, I realise I would have forgotten and I’m grateful for the reminders. Tricky balance.

Songs of the Day (June 25, 2018)

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Here are some songs that came to mind while I traveled to and from a family rally and potluck in my neighborhood Monday night, in support of all families, and families staying together, and in protest of the anti-immigration policies of the current administration.

We sat under the trees and shared food, and children of all different ages and skin tones and family origins ran around the wide, open field and played together.

children running in a wide field, under the moonMany people, big and small, took turns with the little megaphone.

We learned from civil rights activists and immigration lawyers.

We chanted:
The people united will never be divided* / El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
and
It is our duty to fight for freedom / It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other. / We have nothing to lose but our chains.**

The children were asked what they like to do together with their families.
(Travel, play, cooking together…)
Everyone was asked to call out completions for “Family is…”
(Love, comfort, togetherness…)

We sang and learned various songs, including “Open the Doors” by Emily Joy Goldberg (led by Chana Rothman) and “Step by Step,” below, which I co-led with my wife.

It was a powerful, heartfelt, and hopeful gathering. And I would like to surround it with more songs I would have wanted to share, had they been better suited for sharing in circles.

1) Refugee

Women in search of safety
Children in need of food
Struggling for our freedom
So I am a refugee
…
Powerful and resilient***
Seeing my people through
Sharing my truth and wisdom
So I am a refugee
…
I am a builder Hear my voice
I am a seeker Hear my voice
I am a dreamer Hear my voice
And I am a refugee…

Pat Humphries & Sandy Opatow, “Refugee,” from the album One x 1,000,000 = Change.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2nFM7APHS8
Recording and lyrics: https://emmasrevolution.com/track/1287069/refugee

2) Cold Cup of Water

…We come from places our children can’t grow, some of us south of the border.
Seeking safety and wages and work, dignity, food and water.
From harm may we be delivered.
Demand though we may be fired.
To meet and bargain together
For all workers, clean and safe shelter.
And a cold cup of water …

Pat Humphries, “Cold Cup of Water,” from the album Hands.
Recording and lyrics: https://emmasrevolution.com/track/1288715/cold-cup-of-water

This is a song for farm workers and collective bargaining. It seems especially relevant right now, as this article attests (see links within on both farm workers and restaurant workers).

3) Walls and Windows

"The wall that stands between us could be a window too"

sign for 2018 women’s march

…Oh, may we live to see the day when walls of words and fear,
No longer stand between the truth and dreams.
The walls and windows rise into the distance and we dare
To look into the mirror and see Peace.
…The wall that stands between us could be a window too.
When I look into the mirror I see you.

Judy Small & Pat Humphries, “Walls and Windows,” recorded on separate albums.
Video (Judy Small): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttqrC6NIjk4
Recording and lyrics (Pat Humphries): https://emmasrevolution.com/track/1288865/walls-and-windows

4) The New Underground Railroad

…Now the war rages on in El Salvador
You hear a midnight knock on a midnight door
And a church opens in the middle of the night
Half a family walks in, faces filled with fright
…On the new Underground Railroad
Will they be welcome up here?

Holly Near, “The New Underground Railroad,” from the album Singing with You.
Recording: http://www.jdavidmoore.net/works/new-underground-railroad
This recording is an arrangement commissioned (and performed) by MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir.
I was not able to find an online recording by Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert, except that Slacker Radio seems to have it, so if you have a Premium account there, you can select this song.

5) Step by Step

lyrics to "Step by Step"

sign for 2017 women’s march

Step by step, the longest march can be won, can be won.
Many stones to form an arch, singly none, singly none,
And by union what we will can be accomplished still;
Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

As far as I know, the words are from the preamble to the constitution of the United Mine Workers (UMWA), and it was set to music by Pete Seeger****. I learned it from Sweet Honey, and I found performances of them both:
Video (Sweet Honey in the Rock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXwM3pJFqAc
Recording and lyrics (Pete Seeger): https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-step-by-step-lyrics

6) Would You Harbor Me?

Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?

Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock, “Would You Harbor Me?”
Video (Sweet Honey in the Rock, set to photo montage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0XBXJjoXJ4

———–
*I originally learned the English ending as “defeated” rather than “divided,” even though it doesn’t rhyme, and indeed the translation (vencido, vanquished) and the long history of the chant bear that out. Here, however, “divided” is exactly the right sentiment.

**This turns out to be by Assata Shakur, Black Revolutionary, as the ending lines of a 1973 letter/manifesto from prison, “To My People”: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur.

***For a very long time I thought this line said “Powerful and Brazilian”…

****And possibly someone else. I had this information a few years ago, and I seem to remember that.

…Or All the Seas with Plastic

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My workplace right now has a huge focus on sustainability, which is awesome, and yet also a startling amount of conspicuous waste, including much plasticware. I have been thinking very intensely about this particular image lately, and I haven’t found any better way to express exactly these sentiments. The poster is no longer available to purchase, so I asked permission to post it here. Turns out it’s available under a Creative Commons license (see details in caption).*

Come on, people. Wash your spoons.**

 
 
——
(Title is a reference to the story “Or All the Seas with Oysters” by Avram Davidson.)

*Also, yay, I got a question added to an FAQ!
**With the understanding that some people don’t have enough spoons*** to wash spoons.
***(That is, spoons as physical and/or emotional resources.)

Squirrels Squirreling Things Away

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Pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I am passionate about gender parity in language and particularly about eliminating the false generic masculine (which is using masculine language to refer to beings of unknown or unspecified gender). If they know me well, they know that I often focus on gender attribution for nonhumans, in real life and in children’s books, and if they spend a lot of time with me outdoors, that this often comes up in reference to squirrels.

And so, this story:

grey squirrel in Norway maple treetree

A different squirrel, who has found something to eat.

Walking from the train, I beheld a squirrel which elegantly poked its head up from the grass and then dashed across my path and up a tree, carrying what looked like part of a cardboard ice cream carton. I turned to the random person walking near me, and we joked briefly about whether it had found something to read or something to eat.

“Or to use for making a nest*,” I added.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” she replied, “Nesting material.” And then she laughed and added, suddenly, “I bet he thought he’d won the … or she, thought she’d won the jackpot!”

A beautiful example of the unthinking sexist trope wherein nonhuman animals default to male** coming up against the sexist (but slightly more accurate***) trope wherein nonhuman parents default to female**** and colliding, inside someone’s head.

————-
*It turns out that squirrel nests in the branches of trees are actually called dreys (or drays). Drey nests are distinguished from cavity nests, or dens, which are inside something, such as a tree hollow.

**With certain specific exceptions that default to female with astonishing regularity, among them cats, hippos, kangaroos, elephants, cows***** (but not always chickens), and, of course, parents.

***In terms of parents apt to be encountered with their offspring.

****With the exception of seahorses. And maybe penguins. And people who persist in the first trope despite all evidence to the contrary, like the person a friend of mine saw at the zoo once who apparently exclaimed, “Look at the gorilla nursing his baby!”******

*****It was actually years before I understood that cows were only one part of a species. “What do you mean, they’re *all* female? That can’t be right…”

******My own example of this is the time I saw a gorilla at the zoo, lying on its back before the window, legs splayed, both feet up against the glass. And a man said to his child, “Hey, look at him!” And all I could think (but didn’t say) was, “If that gorilla were actually male, I think you might be trying to stop your child from looking…”

Found Story Prompt: An Intriguing Opportunity

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As part of my job, I am entrusted with the task of monitoring government grant opportunities. Last week, I encountered this offering:

Instructions cover by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

Instructions: “Everything you’ll need to know on your journey”.

DOI
Department of the Interior
National Park Service
Repair Castle Trail

And I thought, well. There’s a story here.

So I am asking: please tell me your stories. Write a brief grant application abstract. Or hand-carry your application and tell what happens along the trail. Or what happens when you are awarded the grant and you arrive to start your work.

Two important notes:
1) In reality, this DOI posting is marked “Intention to award, not a request for applications.” Just so no one gets their hopes up.
And
2) lest I erase the significance of the actual site in question, here behind the “Show Description” cut is the official DOI award description (plus a picture/link to the site’s Park Service website). So you can decide whether or not to read it first and let it inform your journey.

Show Description

Montezuma Castle National Monument

Montezuma Castle National Monument

“Montezuma Castle National Monument (MOCA) receives roughly 500,000 visitors annually. The 0.5 mile long trail system at MOCA is heavily used year round, and is the primary means of experiencing the Park’s cliff ruins. The trail system is experiencing an integrity failure which has a negative impact on visitors, and is causing detrimental effects to natural and cultural resources. The tread surface and trail shoulders require work that will mitigate safety concerns to users. These improvements are expected to improve the life cycle of the trail, improve visitor experience, protect valuable natural and cultural resources, and improve safety.”

The Petting of the Large Grey Cats, and Other Wisdom from Ursula K. Le Guin

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Shortly after Ursula K. Le Guin died — 5 or 6 weeks ago now — I read a new book by her.  And by “new” I mean she published it in 1976, and my wife has had it since the eighties, and I had never seen it before.  It’s also not science fiction/fantasy.  It’s a ’70s young adult novel.  And it contains some profundities.

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else:

(p. 17) The reason I have reported that conversation with Natalie Field on the bus so exactly is that it was an unimportant conversation that was extremely important to me. And that’s important, that something unimportant can be so important.

(p. 31) She was hard to answer. But not the way my parents were. They were hard to answer because you could never get to the real point with them, and she was hard to answer because she’d got there first.

(p. 41) We didn’t talk about problems, or parents, or automobiles, or ambitions. We talked about life. We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn’t an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.

I find that the last quote is one I’ve seen before; it resonates, deep within me.  I don’t know where I read it; I just know this is the first time I’ve seen it in context!

—–

I have another book of hers, a chapbook, that I haven’t looked at in a long time.  I went to find it today.  Safely contained in a publisher’s envelope placed between two sturdy pieces of cardboard in a zip-lock bag, with the original wrapping paper, in, further, a gift bag hanging up on a hook in a closet of linens and more wrapping paper,* is a doubly-signed copy of A Winter Solstice Ritual from the Pacific Northwest, by Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre (illustrated by Ursula K. Le Guin).  It was a double birthday present, about 10 years ago.**

For some reason, there are very few parts in this ritual that remind me in any way of solstice rituals I have actually attended.  But perhaps this is because I haven’t spent any time in the Pacific Northwest.  I’m sure it is a very different place and has many of its own quirks.

Such as these:

(p. 1) To Begin the Ceremony: First, take the remaining truffles from the pigs. Eat the truffles. After this, participants in the rites are expected to fast throughout the entire ceremony, though they may if they feel faint partake of oysters (halfshell or Rockefeller), salmon (dried, smoked, broiled, or wine-poached), champagne, chocolate truffles, vanilla ices, sherbets, root beer, and Metamucil.

(p. 4) Further Optional Rituals, to ensure that the days do start getting longer again:

Choral whining

Improvisational Limericks

Staying up later and later, or getting up earlier and earlier

Petting of the large grey cats, followed by interpretation of the cat drool (feliguttamancy)

(p. 7) Blessing the Ground: At dusk, a little brown VW Beetle full of little brown bats is driven slowly once around the temenos. As night falls, the little brown bats are released to eat little brown bugs. If the bats are hibernating and will not fly, they are to be hung in festoons from the eaves of the small house on the east side of the village.*** The most desirable drivers of the Sacred Beetle are Little, Brown authors, if available.

(Mmm, chocolate truffles.)

—–

And, finally, The Annals of the Western Shore.****

I went to a reading in early 2006, in which Ursula read a passage from a forthcoming YA fantasy novel; it was awesome to hear her read, and it was a vivid, intense scene.  There’s a kid, and she’s in the marketplace, and a horse is spooked by a “halflion” (or perhaps by the crowd spooked by the lion?) and she manages to grab and quiet the horse and thus meets the companions of the halflion, who then accompany her to her home.

So then I went home and tried to find the book online.  Nothing.  Well, it hadn’t come out yet.  Wait, try again.  Nothing.  Ursula K. Le Guin. YA. Halflion.  Nothing.  At least, nothing recognizable.

Annals of the Western Shore coversEventually, and not too much later, I did find (or realise I had found) the book.  It’s called Voices, and it’s second in the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, and it was published in September of 2006. And while the scene she read to us was vivid and powerful and pivotal in the arc of the story … it turned out that the halflion did not appear in any of the prepublication marketing.

Here are quotes from the Annals, which I have shared once before.  And, as it happens, the halflion doesn’t appear in any of my quotes, either.

(The following section is adapted from a 2008 post on the Big Blue Marble Bookstore blog.)

The three passages below are from Ursula Le Guin’s recent Annals of the Western Shore series. It’s not actually one quotation from each book; two are from Voices (book 2), which I have now declared my very favorite of her books that I’ve read. The third is from the third book, Powers. The whole series, starting with the first book, Gifts, touches on questions of power: what it means, how to recognize it, and how to use (or not use) it. The books all have different main characters, in different settings and times, but each of those characters becomes significant to the story arc of the following books (rather like the Earthsea Cycle), letting it feel more like continuity than a loss of it.

“I’m sorry, now, for that girl of fifteen who wasn’t as brave as the child of six, although she longed as much as ever for courage, strength, power against what she feared. Fear breeds silence, and then the silence breeds fear, and I let it rule me. Even there, in that room, the only place in the world where I knew who I was, I wouldn’t let myself guess what I might become.”

– Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

“I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn’t it what all the great wars and battles are fought for—so that at day’s end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted and gathered roots and cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn’t say what their wives and children were living on in their city left ruined and desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house and honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege and under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I’d like to know what the food was and how the women managed it.”

– Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

“The first true leader I knew was this boy of seventeen, Yaven Altanter Arca, and I have judged others by him. By that standard, leadership means personal magnetism, active intelligence, unquestioning acceptance of responsibility, and something harder to define: a tension between justice and compassion, which is never truly satisfied by one without the other, and so can seldom be wholly satisfied.”

– Powers (Annals of the Western Shore, book 3)

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*With a sign on the door saying “Beware of the leopard”.  (More Douglas Adams on the brain.)

**Thanks, Vix!

***Note: This book is from 1991. I’d like to hope that in these days of white nose syndrome people would think twice before festooning a house with hibernating bats. Also, are there bugs at the winter solstice in the Pacific Northwest?

****Okay, not quite finally.  I do want to mention Catwings, her beautifully illustrated series for very young readers.  I don’t have any specific quotes from it.  I just want to mention how compelling it is, and its charm and silliness and wisdom. And how books 2 and 3 incorporate trauma theory, which is not something you get in every book written for this age.  My kid loves them, now that I have located my copies for him — they were a much earlier birthday present.*****  This took a lot more searching and cogitating than finding the chapbook: I found myself completely at a loss looking for it (not under kids’ books, not with her other books in SF/F), until I finally remembered that I actually have a number of my books shelved together under Cats.

*****Thanks, sweetie!
On the topic of such presents: For my most recent birthday I requested and received another book by Le Guin, one which is actually new, published last year: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016.  I’m working my way through it now.  Learning a lot.

Literally Hysterical Signs from the Women’s March

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Here’s an important thing to know, if you are interested in language and gender: the word “hysterical” (along with “hysteria”) comes from a Greek root meaning “uterus,” as in the word “hysterectomy”.   I was in college when this was pointed out to me.  I learned then that for millennia, women were diagnosed as “hysterical” under the belief that one’s uterus could travel around the body and cause trouble with other organs, as evidenced by symptoms as varied as coughs, depression, nervousness, and general troublemaking.*  Recommended “treatments” varied from marriage and pregnancy to genital stimulation to complete bed rest.

A quick search produces many discussions of the Wandering Womb fallacy,** including this long and brilliant essay by author and teacher Terri Kapsalis, who pulls together Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,”*** ancient diagnoses and current politics, and so much history, and even a women’s march (last year’s) at the end.

I have slowly been removing “hysterical,” with its historical image of women out of control (or deemed out of control by others), from my repertoire of words that mean “funny,” a task that became much simpler once I realised “hilarious” filled exactly the same connotative slot for me.****

However, I found these signs from last Saturday to be, indeed, and appropriately, hysterical:

Sign "Don't Tread on Me" with uterus and fallopian tubes as snake  Sign "Public Cervix Announcement: I'm Not Ovary-acting"

Sign "Grow a Pair" with ovaries

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*It’s possible that my remembered image of a uterus supposedly traveling far enough to throttle one’s brain was satire, or exaggeration on my part, or possibly even just a misplaced Douglas Adams quote.  …But maybe not.

**Or, if you prefer, “phallacy”.

***With the vital takeaway that anyone who reads or assigns “The Yellow Wallpaper” is contextually obligated to read or assign the 1913 essay entitled “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”.

****Thanks to Adam Rex for this marketing comic, which kind of settled the word “hilarious” in my active repertoire, and for the eponymous book, The True Meaning of Smekday, an adventure both hilarious and thought-provoking, and one of my favorite middle-grade books.

Some Scissors Do Go Both Ways (But Not Any You’re Likely to Come Across)

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left-handed scissors, in Wescott package, with LEFTY in big letters on the packagingI recently requested, and acquired, a pair of left-handed scissors for my office. I was pleased to discover, with a quick search, that it was possible to order explicitly left-handed titanium-bonded scissors that exactly matched the scissors in the copy room cabinets. In fact, as I discovered when they arrived, they say “LEFTY” only on the package and not on the scissors, which say merely “Westcott titanium” and are therefore indistinguishable from the right-handed scissors except for the orientation of the blades. I held them up together to check. And then, alas, I had to check the other right-handed scissors in the cabinet to make sure I took my own set back to my office.

So here’s a thing about myself that I find frustrating: in spite (or possibly because) of the fact that I can read upside down and backwards,* I have a really hard time holding onto pattern changes in three dimensions. I turn something over, and, poof, everything I know about it vanishes. I’m not good with Rubik’s cube (I can get one side, but then I lose track), not good with folding washcloths so they face the same way when they’re done (actually, I can do this now, if I concentrate), and not good at remembering how the blades of scissors should be oriented to each other. I say things like, “okay, so the bottom blade is on the left,” and then I pick up a different pair of scissors and suddenly I’m not sure whether I’m holding them the same way, or which blade is now on the bottom, or whether I really was talking about the handle. I think it’s because I don’t have words for the transformation. Which means I can’t trust myself to look at scissors and know whether they’re for left- or right-handers. I have to trust other people, or the marketing.

right-handed scissors for kids, poorly marketed by Westcott as "left or right handed"And why shouldn’t I trust the marketing? I’m so glad you asked. I don’t trust the marketing because Things Have Changed in scissor handedness world. For example, I’ve asked whether there are left-handed scissors available for my kid in a craft situation, and I’ve been told that all the scissors should work for both hands. And when I dismiss this as ridiculous, and go off to find scissors (for kids or grownups) in an office supply store, I find packages that actually, explicitly say “left or right handed”.** I look at the scissors. They look like scissors. They are oriented only one way. There is no possibility that they can work the same way for right-handed and left-handed people. This is what we call creative marketing – or, possibly, lying.

And no one would have made these claims when I was a kid. Either they’d have the little scissors with the green covered handles and “LEFTY” carved into the blade, or they’d apologise and say I’d have to use the right-handed ones. None of this “don’t worry; they’re the same” nonsense.

Just to be clear, the reason it’s important to have left-handed scissors for left hands is that the angle of force is reversed when you switch hands. It’s possible – and often necessary – for a lefty to use right-handed scissors (or vice-versa; if you haven’t tried it, you might find it educational, particularly with older scissors), but instead of the natural movement of your thumb forcing the blades against each other, the natural movement forces the blades away from each other. So if there is any give in the joint at all, you have to work to counter that force – resulting in awkward cutting and generally a slight gouge in your thumb where you have to pull back against the metal. At the time, I believed this to be generally known … and yet, over time, this knowledge seems to have dissipated.

I have a hypothesis as to why this is, and it is twofold:
1) Right-handed scissors (and scissors in general) are now better made. Better joints, smoother motion, less awkward angling, fewer gouges. No problem. At least…no obvious problem. And this is certainly preferable to the earlier models. It’s just not accurate to claim, in one’s marketing, that these scissors are made for both hands.
2) The gouges were, of course, much clearer when scissors were made just with metal. And then there were plastic-coated handles, and then thicker plastic handles. At some point, there came a craze for scissors with big, swooping, molded plastic handles that were ergonomically designed and only faced one way. So then OF COURSE they could only be used for one hand. And I have several pairs of lovely left-handed scissors at home that I have loved and cherished and would never offer to my right-handed spouse except in times of dire need.

left-handed scissors with ergonomic handles

But then, according to my hypothesis, people shifted their understanding to fit the new reality and came to believe that the problem with right-handed scissors was that left-handed people couldn’t get their hands into them properly. Take away the ergonomically exclusive handles and, voila! They can be used with both hands.

(Facepalm here, with either hand, or, indeed, both.)

However, there is no way to make regular scissors symmetrical (without a special patent; see below), which means there is no way they can be used equally with both hands. If the companies want to go ahead and make them all left-handed and then claim that they are “for left or right hand,” then I might be on board with it. While I have not been able to tell by looking so far (for reasons mentioned above), I think it is a pretty fair guess that no, this is not what they’re doing. And for this reason, I wrote the following in my request for the scissors, along with the link I had found:

“IMPORTANT: Whatever brand it is, it actually has to have the blades reversed to be for lefties. Anything that says it works “for both hands” is basically saying “we’ve made these right-handed scissors that left-handed people can use if they don’t mind using right-handed scissors.” So, not that. (-:”

However, about the title of this post: In my most recent search for the “either hand” marked scissors, I discovered that there is in fact a patent from the 1970s for ambimanual scissors.*** These are scissors that can actually be used in a symmetrical way by either hand. Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):

sketch from US Patent US 3978584 A, depicting a type of scissors that has one blade with a large handle, drawn upright in the center, and one blade with a smaller thumb-hole, shown in two positions (one fainter than the other) to demonstrate that this blade can be rotated to either side and fixed in place.

sketch from US Patent US 3978584 A

“Scissors which may be used with equal ease and efficiency by either a left-handed or right-handed person. The scissors include two generally flat rigid, blade portions which are each sharpened on both edges to provide two sets of cutting edges. The blade portions are pivotally connected to one another and each includes a handle portion on one end. One of the handle portions is adapted to fit the thumb of the user while the other handle portion is larger to permit engagement of two or more fingers of the same hand in the normal fashion of scissors use. The thumb handle is pivotally mounted to its respective blade portion to permit pivotal movement from one selected position at one side of the finger handle as used during right-handed operation to a second selected position at the opposite side of the finger handle for use during left-handed operation. A detent or lock is provided to secure and hold the thumb handle in either of the selected positions.”

Clearly one has to be careful, what with the double edges. But I think it’s pretty cool.

By the way, I have also found that Wikipedia has a nice, brief description of the symmetry issue (including reference to the aforementioned patent).  I actually had forgotten the bit about the visibility of the cutting edge!
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* The reading upside-down and backwards thing has caused other problems, as in my early trips to England, where people drive on the other side of the road, and where (since, despite believing that we all have learned to “look both ways” before crossing a street, we actually tend to look only one way at a time) crossing the street can be treacherous. Many London streets kindly warn foreigners where the traffic will be by having very clear “look left” or “look right” signs, with arrows, painted into the road as you step off the curb (sorry, kerb). And this is lovely, and entirely useful. The problem for me comes when there’s a median in the road. For then they have a new sign, just after the median, telling you to look the other way. Which is also fine, except if you happen to read upside-down automatically and therefore don’t particularly distinguish between the sign after the median, which is for you, and the one right before it, which is for people coming the other way. Oops… Fortunately, I never actually got hurt (or picked up as a spy) due to this problem.

** I was pretty disappointed to look back in my notes from such a trip back in August and to learn that the offending scissors were *also* made by Westcott.

*** They are in fact called Ambidextrous scissors, but I prefer to use the alternative I was offered in adolescence by my friend Anna Licameli, summer program roommate, whom I credit with leading my second foray into identity politics. (The first, much earlier, was my beleaguered dad saying, “Why do you keep saying the tooth fairy is female?”) Within our first hour of meeting, she demanded to know why I was wearing my watch on my left arm if I was left-handed, and soon afterward pointed out to me that “ambidextrous” glossed as “right-handed on both sides” and should therefore be avoided.