volunteers

today i traded on my enormous popularity at camp and went and asked for a small detail of volunteers to CLEAN THE OUTHOUSE.

they were all like "ME! ME!!!"

so i took four of them and taught them how to use a broom properly. i taught them how to scrub a sink.

the actual toilet cleaning part had to be done by me because according to policy, only adults may clean toilets (because pathogens and imperfect handwashing in children?) and for some reason they wanted to watch me clean the toilets.

"what do you do to do that?" they asked.
"you can come see.  it's not a secret."

and so a small group of tourists followed me from stall to stall.

and then when we got back to main camp girls were coming up to me asking if i will let them be on outhouse detail tomorrow.

HIGH-larious.

the sensible explanation is that i have no actual supervisory duties. i don't have to line them up or get them from place to place. i just come and instruct all the fun things. and often i am taking a small group and teaching them something new, or just in general paying attention on a small scale to them.

my theory here is that no matter the chore, it is individual attention and personalized instruction and they like that.

plus they got to come to flag circle at the end of day and report that they cleaned the outhouse and they VOLUNTEERED, so they got to take pride in being good citizens.

tea paty

i don't have any pictures (because policy) but this is what i did yesterday:

i took six small parties of girls (a half dozen in each, maybe?) to the various habitats on the camp property and we gathered all manner of edible leaves and twigs and berries.

we looked at animal sign. we talked about foraging guidelines.we learned how to crush up plantain, mullein and jewleweed and use the juice to ease bug bite discomfort.

we sorted out our leaves and berries and with help from one girl who was quick to volunteer, i set up a camp stove to boil water.

i poured tea. the counselors helped the girls make little finger sandwiches with gathered leaves on brown bread with cream cheese. popular sandwich fixin': mustard greens.

after the tea was poured, i cut up and fried some milkweed pods, which blew some girls' minds.

and now i am tired.

i wish the campers knew

that i will learn that they do not like cucumber and that their mom does not know this way before i learn their names.

that when i ask them if they have ever done a skill, there's no shame in saying "no". it just tells me to start instruction at the beginning.

that in discussions about behavior, i have more respect for an admission of a behavior that may need changing than i do for wide eyed passivity.

this happened.

i came home from camping with the girl scouts from the resident camp and came home to unpack and unwind and then i had a meeting monday with a nice lady from the council and now suddenly it appears i am in charge of things over at the day camp, like instruction with cutting tools (mostly knife instruction) and flag ceremonies.

because teaching little children proper flag etiquette takes TIME and the actual counselors are busy with supervisory duties.

when you are working with very young children you are faced with having to seriously discuss that the color guard does not wear cat masks and may not carry that special stick and pinecone combination no matter how much they love the stick and pinecone.

yes, the color guard includes that little girl wearing a sparkly princess dress.

but by golly, she can fold a flag.

gear review: anker powerport solar lite

first up: i do not receive products from manufacturers nor any other compensation for my reviews.

ok, so last december my stepmother got me one of these things as a gift. i've seen a solar charger or two, but those mostly only worked as a trickle charger you had to charge up in an outlet anyway.

i am heavy on device use when camping: i like to keep abreast of the weather forecast (because even though i can read the weather pretty well, modern forecasting gives you much more detailed information that can really help you plan your day with regard to safety and shelter.)

and i love apps that help me identify plants and critters, and apps that help me report on biodiversity. i'm a big fan of citizen science and it turns out that biologists are making great use of apps like ebird and inaturalist to gather information about species range, which changes too fast these days for printed guides to keep up with.

you used to have to be a bona fide scientist to do this science, but now anybody who can use a field guide and has a phone can help do real science, which is cool.

and i am now off topic, which will not surprise you if you have ever read anything by me.

so anyway, i am a heavy device user. my phone seriously cuts down on the number of actual books i have to carry with me while camping. so i need to keep it charged.

i have some very fine battery packs, but they have their limitations and they do run out.

enter the powerport solar lite. i used mine for the first time this week, on days when there was strong sun for only part of the day. i was able to get full charges on two devices, which goes a long way.

i'm very pleased with it. it has a sturdy, durable feel, and you can leave it out or even tie it to your pack (tiedown loops provided).

and it just works.

2018 venture vermont: take a swimming lesson

i thought i wasn't going to get this one, because i know how to swim.

but recently (you know this unless you just walked in) i took lifeguard training, and i think that counts as a swim lesson.

i learned to swim to a distressed swimmer for rescue. i learned how to swim while towing another person. i learned how to escape a distressed swimmer who tries to grab onto you.

i think that all counts as a swimming lesson.

there are no pictures of it, but i can furnish my brand new shiny lifeguard card upon request.

tab time

my browser is clogged with things i saw and want to share with you.

the world is terrible:

bullied students told to stop being part of the problem, as if they do not already wish to be involved in this problem.

it sucks that we even need this.

and rape jokes, are still a thing, but for the time being you can watch cameron esposito's show of that name for free. you should totally do it. i promise you will not regret it.

but also the world is amazing:

there have always been awesome people. read about one woman here.

and there's this. (full disclosure: the wrier of that post is a friend of mine)

and besides libraries, there's architecture.



and candy.




and music.


isn't that lovely?

2018 Venture Vermont: visit a (state) park that is new to you

whoa.

i was thinking that i would have a look at the park finder and pick one i'd never been to, but i was up on thetford hill and apparently there's a state park there.

i did not even know that was a thing.

so i went.

thetford hill state park.

who knew?

ze frank

recently i watched this video:



maybe you're already a fan of ze frank; maybe not. i am. i have run across his games and videos and projects of different sorts from a lot of corners of the internets.

then last month i saw his 2010 TED talk, which i recommend you watch right to the end.

so

so then because he talked about it in his TED talk, i went back to his website and played with some of his toys. here are some of the ones i like especially:

animated kaleidoscope
string spin
memory game

and if you like, here's his whole catalog. go ahead, dive deep.

are you sure you're registered?

i'm generally a fan of the supremes, but sometimes their latest thing is a flop.

like that whole "states can go ahead and purge voter rolls of people they wish weren't registered" thing.

there's a piece of crap.

do yourself a favor. do me a favor. do the whole planet a solid: check if you are registered to vote. you cannot count on being registered even if you OUGHT to be. you can use this tool if you don't mind them sending you emails.

me, i LOVE being on political mailing lists, because it gives me great pleasure to ask democratic leaning organizations to take me off of their lists because as a progressive i'm not having any of their neo-liberal shit, but that's just me.

lifeguard

ok, so my scout troop decided in the spring that in early summer we should go on a two night campout. TWO NIGHTS! this is a big deal in the life of a scout troop.

the campground we chose has a pool. the girls were SO EXCITED ABOUT THAT.

but it is a swim at your own risk pool.

concurrently, i started going to trainings because even though i have a boatload of outdoor skills and knowledge, i lacked appropriate certifications to take girl scouts out to do things because someone at the council has to put a stamp of approval on you which i do not think is a bad thing.

when leaders just make up safety stuff, you get wide variations and conflicting procedures and that's just begging for trouble.

anyway, if you have a lot of skills, the training are more of a skill check and a making sure you're on the same procedural page.

but there is a little bit of a bottleneck since the MERGER (nope, not going into it here) and there are not enough opportunities for adult training in my area which is a problem because nobody ever starts taking a hatful of outdoor trainings to get certified to take scouts out on activities they haven't asked to do yet.

what is more likely to happen is the girls learn that a thing is possible, ask to do it, the adults check into the needed certifications, and then learn that not only do they not have the requisite training, but they can't get it right away.

and i was at one of these trainings shooting my mouth off about this training bottleneck, and there are two kinds of people who complain: people who complain about things, and people who complain and offer to be part of the solution.

so all of a sudden i'm piling on certs which can be expensive, but if you're an INSTRUCTOR at a week of training you can take any courses being offered for free in return for your work, which is how i could afford to become a lifeguard just because my troop wanted to go swimming.

it was mentally and physically taxing and i came away from the in pool training with the worst sunburn i have had since my youth on account of usually i swim in long sleeves and long pants and SHOES because i get sunburned through clothes but you can't afford to be wearing all that much stuff during your lifeguard training.

and then during our camping trip everybody could go in the pool except me, because why yes, that would have required a lifeguard and i was the only one.

ten year olds do not really have an appreciation for what you go through so they can have an awesome weekend.

totally worth it.

totally.

bourdain

i keep crying a little over anthony bourdain.

i'm not sure why. i am not usually this sad over celebrity deaths, even celebrity suicides.

i wasn't even that huge a fan; i don't watch much teevee anymore but i used to like to watch him sometimes.

you've probably seen a lot of travel shows and food shows and food travel shows, just like i have. there was a trend for a while of being kind of snarky, and bourdain certainly had snark. he sort of WAS snark.

but when he was offered hospitality, when people made him food or showed him their lives, he was grateful and respectful.

world class restaurants, holes in the wall, waffle house.

he loved what he loved.

the world is sadder and poorer without him.

current events

in  a couple of weeks i'm going to try to be lifeguard certified.

i've always been a strong swimmer, if not a stylish one.

so i thought tonight i would go down and swim in the river against the current for a little while. first off, that water is COLD. it might be uncomfortably warm out, but the river is still cold.

also, the water has been high even though may was a little drier than usual.

and tonight there were scattered heavy rains.

none fell on me, but in the hour i was in the river i felt definite fluctuations of current strength.

near the end i became frightened because it was too strong to maintain footing against, and then i got out and then when i could see up the road i could see a locally heavy downpour maybe a half mile upstream.

grackle crisis

today i was trying to sit on my porch to work on a carving, but there was a grackle crisis.

it seems there is a grackle nest in the tree in front of my house.

because a little one, not yet ready to fly, seems to have stepped out of the nest and was hiding in my bushes.

and crying piteously for food.

...which nobody would bring it because i was sitting there.

so the parents and assorted other grackles sat in trees making a racket and the little baby sat in my bushes wailing and the other fledglings in the nest heard their sibling and also set to wailing so i decided today was not my day to sit on the porch and apparently now the little one is being fed under my bushes and only occasionally cries to be fed.

that little guy is now MOTIVATED to learn to fly.

hope is that thing with feathers.

stuff to play with

i am done with my sewing project. these days i am also practicing guitar, which is a thing i have not done in a long time.

here's a thing i spent a while playing with this morning. i hope you will like it. headphones recommended, or at least good speakers.

then i wasted some more time taking some intelligence tests. i turns out i'm moderately smart.

and for no particular reason, this:

day twelve

today is day twelve of Sewing The Jacket. it's going to be nice, though, and i will probably not have to do a large scale jacket sewing for the rest of my life. i'm planning on making some adjustments here and there as i may acquire new patches that i like better or are more important, but for the most part, i am not looking to get a lot more patches.


these two are my most recent additons:

they're earned from adult training. i think older scouts can also earn these but the real importance is for adults because you have to be certified in these things to take your scouts camping.

well. that was a nice little break. i have to return to the sewing.

duct tape thimble

i don't own a thimble.

and today is day nine of the sewing project. and by "day nine",  i mean it is my primary activity. this is partly because the fabric is stiff and the patches are hard and partly because i'm fussy and need to do everything so it goes on straight and partly because i am sucky at sewing so it takes me a long time to do simple tasks.

these days i have also been doing laundry, picking up after myself, cooking meals, and doing dishes. also cleaning up after the monumental mess i left myself in the month of april.

and also working out a little.

in short, i am trying to get my stuff together.

and then i will go camping.

and here is my thimble.

closing tabs. again

i was going to write you a real post today, but i just have too many tabs open.

i will tell you that i am on day seven of a sewing project that i mean to tell you about later, but it's camping season, holy honk, so we'll see how that goes.

anyway, while i'm sitting here sewing, i am looking at a lot of interwebs.

and now i have tabs i want to close.

i'm a musician by training and trade, and more specifically a composer, so how we translate different ideas into music is always of interest to me. here's an interesting concept where a guy does this with maps.




i was sick for the month of april and at some point i just needed food i could unwrap and eat without getting out of my hammock. enter bars. there are a lot of bars on the market, but someone gave me an Rx bar and i was like WOW. this thing totally makes me feel like i have eaten food and yet it's not too much trouble to eat and i don't feel sick afterward.

but they're expensive. so i was interested to see a recipe for a facsimile thereof. i haven't tried them yet, but it's on my list, especially because camping food.

i think this here video of what goes on backstage at the met is cool.




here's a map that explains a lot of the hostility for education in red states.

and while we're at it, take a look at an interactive explainer/simulator on the challenges of getting a child an appropriate education in the chicago public schools.


you probably need to be cheered up now.




and if that didn't work, try this:

do. not. yield.

stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

my house looks like some untidy person has been living here but not picking up after themselves. if you look carefully the untidy person can't be bothered to load the dishwasher or pick up random food wrappers, but yet all the camping gear is neatly maintained and stowed.

my excuse of course is that even in my month of sickness i managed to prepare for scout meetings and go camping because dammit, one is a responsibility and the other, well, if all i'm going to do is lie in a hammock and read and cough, i may as well be in a nice quiet forest.

i volunteered to do some girl scout trainings because we need more opportunities for girl scout trainings but that means i have to get some certifications and stuff and all sudden i'm going to be in places where one wears a patch jacket.

this is a thing where as your badges and stuff go out of date on your uniform, you still have attachment to them so you put them on a jacket and wear them around only i am not ever going to fit into the jacket i was wearing in 1976 so i bought a new jacket and am transferring all my badges and patches. even though my badges are all 1963 style, i have decided to place them on my jacket in a way reminiscent of the 1927 uniform, which i think is a cool look.

basically i'm a walking museum of girl scout memorabilia of my era.

i have a patch from the camp i'll be at in june that is older than the camp director. by a significant amount.

it's a lot of sewing, and activity i am not historically good at.

meanwhile, i was catching up on my rss feed today, and i read this thing, which i think you also should read.

amen and amen.

cough

i have been very, very busy doing something and have not been writing to you.

what thing, you may ask? coughing.

now THAT was a cold. actually, it was two colds, i'm pretty sure because is was just at that point where you think it's maybe over and you go to that festival you were supposed to go to only now in your weakened state you're exposed to the exotic germs of ALL THOSE PEOPLE and within twelve hours of your return home, you're SICK.

so here's my month of april:

sick
one girls scout field trip
sick
a festival weekend
sick
one night camping

and that brings us to the first three days of may, still sick.

ok.

now i can tell you about the interesting things.

inside camping

people keep asking me why, if my hammock is SO COMFORTABLE, i do not sleep in it at home.

well, i was having trouble finding a place to hang it.

was.

because now i am sleeping in it at home.

it is lovely.

blow

it's windy here.

last night three things blew out of the protected area on my porch and went off to try to start new lives on their own: a recycling bin, an expedition sled, and a freaking chest cooler.

i put on boots and went off in pursuit.

they'd had some hours of head start, and there were a couple of inches of ice pellets on the ground, so no tracks to follow.

i figured to go in roughly the direction of the wind until i came to the border of the woods, where surely they would have gotten snagged and come to a stop.

only the wind is strong and variable.

and by strong, let's say that i found myself on top of a glazed pavement on a slight uphill and the wind blew me UP it like some weird uncomfortable people moving sidewalk.

eventually i came across some recyclables that looked like they might have come from my house and i looked off in that direction to where i eventually found my recycling bin on the side of a steep icy hill and beyond that, my sled.

i am not kidding you when i say i had to go on all fours, not because of the terrain, but because the wind was so extreme.

and that was before i had a sled and a recycling bin in my hands.

i was in view of my house and legit feared i was in danger.

it was slow going. four or five steps into the wind, stop, sit, rest. i thought i'd pass out.

eventually i got back to the house.

the whole trip (not more than a few hundred feet) took an hour.

i am ready for my nap.

it's here! it's here!

it's the most wonderful time of the year!

nownownownow NOW.

the VENTURE VERMONT OUTDOOR CHALLENGE BEGINS TODAY.

i have already downloaded and begun fondling my score sheet.

there's so much awesome stuff on it!

and because "go skateboarding" is on it, i am going to see if i can get a friend's children to  take me, fifty-year-old newbie, and teach me to skateboard.

rain hike? i'm all over it.


i love this so much.

well. that was a time.

ok, so i got involved in a really fun project and i know, usually i tell you about all my really fun projects, but it was a really fun project with strategic implications (#ingressresistance!) so i couldn't tell you anything.

suffice it to say that i kicked some serious ass and when it was over i had a little rest.

and then i had a super busy thing about a girl scout thing, and there's not a lot i can tell you about that either.

and then i was sick.

i lost a whole week.

last monday i went to see my doctor finally and she thought i had poor long inflation and thought it would be best for me to go to the ER so there was that and it turns out i don't have either flu or pneumonia, so that's good.

they put a bag of saline in me and gave me some treatments. there were two nebulizer treatments that didn't do squat but made me feel ALL HOPPED UP AND JUMPY but then they did a third with some other drug in it and i have no idea what that other thing was (probably some kind of inhaled steroid?) and within an hour i was breathing again in ways more recognizable as breathing.

i spent a lot of time in my hammock watching youtube videos.

today is day three of getting dressed and sitting up.

so yay.

partyhat.

easter at my mom's house

because of course we have to have an egg hunt even though nobody is younger than fifty, and my mom has been a vegetarian for decades and an atheist since 1963 but we all have to show up to eat an easter ham.

there were these cute little cake pops for dessert.

i never saw the attraction of cake pops.

...until i ate one.

oh my goodness gracious.

citizen flask

are you an american citizen?

have you heard that the president wants to put a question on the next census that requires people to state whether or not they are citizens?

they make it out to be that it's purely informative, but what it's going to do is get immigrants and whole immigrant communities to opt out of being counted, which will skew representation and services to the overwhelmingly white and privileged.

and you know the only thing that's going to stop that shit?

if the white and privileged step up and stop it.

so when the census comes, i am not telling whether or not i am a citizen.

come to think of it, i may decline to give my race, or just call myself "other".

i invite you, too, to gum up the works any way you can. not every action need be large.

washing

sheep are dirty, filthy creatures.

i wasn't really aware of it until i got some raw wool for spinnning.

and by "raw wool", i mean the shearer took it off the sheep and a guy i know put it in a bag.

so i washed some of it experimentally.

ewwwww.

foundations

some days ago i was part of a conversation that included talking about dressing for cold weather. the crowd was mostly men, so i thought it would be funny to suggest maybe not wearing a bra, which is actually a thing because air circulation around your core, and the possibility that a bra will trap moisture.

granted, sports bras are supposed to wick, but i haven't met a ONE of 'em that doesn't trap enough moisture to make me feel cold.

plus if i'm wearing winter layers or doing anything that requires a lifejacket, there's not so much need.

and this one guy in the conversation stopped to ask me if the thing about bras in cold weather is really a THING.

and i told him that if you are doing safety checks in a group that includes women, it is appropriate to ask if their bra still feels dry.

and he said he felt it was important for him to know, because he is raising a daughter who is going to be an adventure woman.

i may have gotten a tear in my eye.

getting stuff off my desk

goodness gracious, i need to close some tabs, so here's some stuff i saw that i liked enough to think i wanted to tell you about it.

are you a fan of besty deVos? i'm not.




and just as a reminder, boys and girls: if you have power over another person's career, don't be so sure that sex is fully consensual. i'm not saying it can't be, but you're better off if you don't presume.




there's nothing one can really say about this:





i imagine you probably want to rise your eyes out now.

star bright

yesterday a bunch of us from the blue team (#ingressresistance) went out into burlington to make a really big starburst.

oh my goodness, that was fun.

and it's pretty, yeah?

proverbs

march: comes in like a lion and goes out like a sack of enraged weasels trapped in your pants.

congratulations and congratulations

in the early hours this morning i got my black guardian badge (#ingress resistance!), which is kind of a big thing, because it means you've controlled a portal for 150 consecutive days.

it's hard to get, but it's not a badge i particularly love, because most of the badges are as a result of things you did, like capturing, or recharging or glyphing and this one is simply as a result of not having something taken away from you. it's not so much a badge you get as one that happens to you.

but as i got close to getting mine, i got kind of excited anyway.

now there are asshats in the game who will actually hunt down your guardian by means of illegal data scraping and they will kill it just for the sake of killing it. it isn't strategic. there's nothing you get from the badge besides a shiny thing. it confers no powers, but there are asshats who will hunt yours down and keep you from getting it because they're THAT kind of person.

"hi. there's no reason for me to do this to you other than it gives me pleasure to take something from you. i'm an asshat. have a nice day."

so i was sort of expecting a guardian hunter to come looking for mine, because they do that.

now unless you keep a database, it can be really difficult to identify your OWN guardian, let alone other people's.

which is why is was so weird (and yet not unexpected) that creepy stalker guy would send me a message on the last afternoon of my guardian's clock to "congratulate" me without saying what it was for.

i hadn't done anything. i hadn't gotten any badges or captured anything. the only possible thing was a reference to the guardian that wouldn't tick over for another twelve hours yet.

now, when most people say "congratulations", they mean "congratulations". when creepy stalker guy says "congratulations", he means "i am watching you, and i want you to know it."

so creepy stalker guy reached out to me from the other end of the country just to let me know he's watching me.

oh, gob. we all had a laugh over THAT.


ewwww. he what? hahahahahah!

well. that takes care of march.

i think i told you that my goal for the year is to go camping in every month.

november and december are pieces of cake because of thanksgiving camp, but january, february, and march are kind of more difficult.

there was a good weather forecast for this past weekend (meaning overnight temperatures over 20) so i went ahead and got a permit for camping at kettle pond.

in vermont, even though the state parks are closed in winter, you can camp in them legally if you have a permit. it's free, but you do have to pack in/pack out.

the packing out part becomes serious if you want to stay somewhere that uses plumbed toilets instead of composting toilets, because then you have to pack your shit out.

i can do that, but i'd totally prefer not to.

but then i was thinking about the remote sites in groton state forest, which i knew from accidentally coming across them while geocaching, and they have composting toilets!

so away we went.

barb came with me for her first real winter camp. she came out for a night at thanksgiving camp when it was colder, and we camped at somerset landing in the fall when it was 15 degrees and windy, but it's a little different when you have to pack all your stuff out in snow and prepare your shelter.

car camping at 15 degrees seems less cold. even packing in for one night at 19 degrees seems less cold, even with snow, if someone has gone ahead of you and set up camp and gotten a toasty fire going.

view from my hammock

our camp, with barb's compartment

us and our stuff

i look WAYYYY too happy.

hurty

sometimes i get a muscle spasm deep under my shoulderblade.

it's not clear why this happens, but it has happened to me occasionally since my teen years. getting one of these things has meant a week or three of pain and more pain, because although the muscle (nobody knows precisely which one) is small and hidden, when it gets grouchy, it gets inflamed and the inflammation spread to other muscles and impinges on nerves and then of course i don't sleep well so it's a nightmare death spiral.

some twenty years ago i discovered flexaril.

what a miracle.

take one and sleep a night. spasm gone. worst case, it takes three nights to be all better again.

i have since kept a bottle of the stuff around just in case.

last week sometime i got a spasm. not bad enough for the flexaril, but i have some, so no worry, right?

and then sunday it was TIME for the flexaril, only i couldn't find it. there was a lot of searching.

today was thursday.

i finally went to my doctor, who said roughly "whoa, this hasbeen going on a week? that's messed up. here's a script. also a referral to PT"

the PT said "if you can be here in twenty minutes, we can see you today"

then he said, "yeah, take that flexaril when you get home. take it easy and settle in with a heating pad"

i am feeling kinda stupid, but it is a fairly pleasant afternoon.

still uncomfortable, but i am looking at the end of it.

and snow.

i like snow.

pretty shiny

so i went to the saratoga mission day, which is an ingress thing.

basically it's just all the players crawling all over a city to do missions, which is a collection of portals that gives you a pretty shiny badge.

sometimes the badges can be arranged to make a nice picture. this is called a banner.

here are my pretty shiny digital badges from saratoga mission day:

the red ones are the 18 missions for the mission day. the layer above that is a set of batman villains that go together, and the top layer is the banner mission for the hall of springs.

completing six of the 18 missions earns you a shiny digital badge later, but it also earned us a fancy shiny PIN!

and get this- completing the batman set got us a fabulous challenge coin. it's based on the harvey dent coin (which means little to me since i've not seen any batman movies, but i get the concept and it's cool).

graham cracker houses

back in december at a scout meeting we made "gingerbread" houses out of candy, icing, and graham crackers.

it was fun to watch the girls' different approaches to construction.

some were about speed, some were about engineering, and some were about sticking as much candy as possible with as much icing as possible together with crackers because SUGAR.

there weren't any building requirements or prizes being given, so every approach was a valid one.

me, i was about engineering.

a day in saratoga

hey, hi. i've gone to saratoga for the day, so i've decided to link you back to an old post about a day in saratoga.

https://furthermoreflask.blogspot.com/2014/10/old-red-spring.html

because i'll be visiting the old red spring, but i won't be filling my water bottle this time.

oooh. i'l be visiting some of the other springs, so maybe i will bring a cup.

branching out

so. i have branched out from spoons to hiking sticks.

here's one i made for my brother in law.

spoons

do you not love to say the word "spoon"?

i do. i also like to say "soup".

i think i have mentioned to you that i like to make spoons. i haven't made a lot of them, because it's kind of an outdoor activity and it's a little time consuming, especially the way i do it.

because of course i can't just roll up to some hobby shop and buy carving blanks; i have to work with naturally fallen applewood which naturally contains weird twisty grain and often a lot of rot.

because apple trees.

and sometimes when you're working a piece you get pretty far in before you FIND the patch of rot, and there goes your work.

...which is what happened to me while i was working on a long handled cooking spoon for my mom.

and BOOM i had to start over and i was down to my last appropriate piece of apple and not too much time to go before christmas (or as we like to say, midwinter gift exchanging light festival of your choice) but i got it done, along with a little jam spoon and spreader for party tables or whatnot.

driving a standard

i drive a standard. i love me some shifting.

i don't really understand how it works, though.

i enjoyed this video about it.



i still don't understand it, really.

but i like how they got a woman driver to be in the video, complete with her gloves and all.

oh. and here's a thing i really enjoyed this week:

https://pudding.cool/2018/02/waveforms/

do you like waveforms?

i do.

busy day yesterday

i know, i blew you off again.

i had some early morning equipment drops (#ingressresistance) and an early appointment with my ophthalmologist, who monitors my eyes because while that antimalarial is super effective for lupus, it COULD destroy my eyes, but it's a slow destruction if if happens and monitoring by your ophthalmologist gets out ahead of that.

but then i had some ingress missions to do because i'm straightening up my banners before i go to my first mission day and i needed to pick up a jar of honey and oh by the way some raw wool and cards and a spinning wheel because of course.

mb has taken up crochet, so therefore i am taking up spinning.

it's not that far of a reach, since i have already been making cordage and milkweed is plentiful and it has occurred to me that i should learn to spin because milkweed would make a nice soft plant-based yarn if i knew how to process it, and a friend of mine just HAPPENS to know a guy who was shearing sheep recently, so yeah.

later on, i'm sure, there will be pictures.

luxury living

well, here's a thing i meant to tell you about back in november when it happened, but at least it still applies.

it gets cold at night when you winter camp.

i try to end my out of hammock day before my blubber layer gets too chilly, because while it does a great job keeping me warm, it takes a while to warm up in bed so there's that to consider.

but i like to retire after and early supper, hang out in my hammock and read. this is made much more lovely if i have a warm beverage.

and my morning is improved much if i wake up and have a warm beverage handy without having to get up and make it.

so i make two bottles of nice hot tea: one in a hydroflask that will keep my tea hot for a few hours,and a heavy duty thermos that will keep my tea hot overnight.

that gives me lovely hot tea into the evening, and lovely hot tea in the morning, which makes life pretty cushy.

ice lanterns

they're easy to make, if time consuming.

i think i stumbled across one of the many tutorials on the youtubes and thought that would be a perfect thing to bring a little magic to a girl scout troop's first winter camping.

because if you can create magic, you then have a group of girls who will love winter camping. that first time is important.

and because i am who i am, i took pictures of the process and now you have a nice little set of instructions on how to make ice lanterns.

you freeze the bucket so there's a shell of ice

see the edge between frozen and unfrozen?

either let it sit or run warm water on it until it loosens in the bucket.

flip it over and poke a hole in the thin end.

use a serrated blade to saw the hole to size and shape

drain the water and rinse out the ice bits.

keep making more. clean them up before storing them...

in your large freezer...

before you pack them to travel.

night trail

there's a perpetual dance of balance being done in girl scouting because there's a lot of emphasis on girl planning but at the same time children don't always know what cool things are out there because they simply didn't know they were a thing.

people can't plan for things they don't know exist.

f'rinstance, i was at least thirty years old before i even knew there was such a thing as reflective trail markers.

anyway.

there's a badge our girls have expressed and interest in that has a choice to complete a requirement by going for a night hike.

no ten year old who has not experienced a cool winter night hike would EVER decide to voluntarily leave a warm cabin in winter and march around outside, so i simply went ahead and made a night course.

the fact that there was going to be a night course was not a surprise to the other adults. everything else was surprises for even them.

when we announced the upcoming night hike there were some cries of resistance, but we told them that although it was optional, only people on the night hike would get to have the cool surprises. they girls asked what the surprises were going to be, but you already know the answer to THAT.

they wanted to know if there were going to be any jump scares.

no, i told them. there will be nothing scarier than just being outside in the dark. and i gave them the handout.

so they all decided to go.

it was a short course, but at night things look different and you maybe don't always know where you are. for the first part i took them out on a bushwhack out back of the cabin, away from the lights. i marked the way with stick signs.

about halfway through that portion they were all on board.

and then the stick trail came to an end and they were confused.

and i was all like "oh, look. there seem to be some instructions posted on that tree!"

the instructions said to turn off their headlamps and follow a lead line. i told them that being in the dark can be challenging, so i was going to keep my light on at the back and if anyone felt like they needed to turn theirs on, they could.

so off they went into the darkness.

after some turns and a couple hundred feet, at the end of the ropes they came upon another set of instructions and reflective blazes that indicated start of trail. it took them a minute or two to figure out how to look for the reflectors, but they did just fine.

the reflector trail came out at a trail end sign with a .30 caliber ammo can holding glow sticks and candy. and a picnic table with ice lanterns. the instructions said to turn off their lights and follow the lantern path home.

we stood silent for a couple of minutes to listen. we knew there was a barred owl nearby and one of the other leaders does a very good barred owl call.

i had chosen the widest and smoothest return path for the lantern way, marked all along with ice lanterns returning to the cabin, where there was already a leader with a campfire. the part about the campfire wasn't my idea, but it was magical.

the girls decided to bring the lit lanterns back with them, so we picked them up as we left the woods.

we could not have predicted this, and had we prompted it there might have been some eye rolling, but out front of the cabin with all the lanterns there was an impromptu recitation of the girl scout law.

i may have cried a little.

much fun was had

i am back from my trip with the scouts.

later there will be pictures.

right now there's just going to be a shower and sleep.

short on time.

i'm packing to take my scouts on their first WINTER CAMPING!!!

so i'm short on time.

here's a fun math toy you can play with.

and you should watch this. nina paley is brilliant.


Paroles Paroles from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

and if you have not seen this yet (or even if you have),  this:

they're not calling it terrorism.

a kid in a white supremacist militia shoots up a public school and for some reason they just call him mentally ill (which he is) but they don't call it terrorism.

it's too soon to talk about gun violence. or gun control. it's too soon to talk about somehow making it more difficult for a 17 year old white supremacist who has already raised a lot of red flags to get a semi-automatic weapon.

yanno, because it would have been illegal for him to have bought a handgun.

if he's been brown or muslim we would be calling it terrorism and calling for an immediate stop to immigration.

but he's a white supremacist who belongs to an actual honkin' MILITIA and we're not calling it terrorism. we're just going to "tackle" the difficult problem of mental health.

maybe by cutting services to the mentally ill? that's how we usually solve mental health problems.

and next week when more people are killed, we will all stand around and talk abotu how nothing could have been done.

https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data

i won't dance

yesterday morning i saw this article in which a school attempts to make everybody feel better by having a rule that if you are asked to dance, you MUST dance with the person.

and let's face it, because of where this school is, we are nearly certain that this is the fragility of boys being protected against the consent of girls. yeah, in some places everybody asks everybody else, but usually it's the boys doing the asking.

which sends the terrible message that anybody OWES anybody a dance, or a date, or any social interaction.

and fine. i get that we want kids not to be mean to each other.

a long time ago we used to teach contradance to our students. and we taught contradance manners, which include changing partners after each dance, and being polite in rejection if one does nto wish to dance with the asker.

we told the kids it takes courage sometimes to ask for a dance, because it opens you up to rejection. so we have some little rules of manners so that anybody can ask anybody and nobody's feelings have to be too hurt. there are polite ways to reject that save the asker's dignity and if we all follow these rules, you don't have to dance with people you don't want to dance with, and nobody is mean to you for asking.

so this is what we told them.

you can ask anybody to dance. if they say no, you simply leave them alone after that unless they have told you to ask them again later.

if you are asked to dance and you wish to dance with that person for that dance, good. you're all set.

if you are asked to dance and you don't want to dance with that person, you have some choices:

you can say you have already promised the dance to someone else, which you should only say if in fact you are already planning to dance with someone else. you can say you are going to sit this one out, but then you have to leave the dance floor for at least the beginning of this song. then you go outside, get some punch, sit by the wall, talk to your friends, whatever.

if you really were going to sit this one out but you do want to dance with the person who asked you later, you can ask them to join you at the punchbowl or on the porch or whatever. you can tell them to please ask you again later. or you can ask THEM to dance later.

and this is the important part: these little bits of script allow us graceful ways of asking, accepting or rejecting and also graceful ways of being rejected.

if you ask someone to dance and they say "i'm going to sit this one out", on its face you have not been rejected, and your dignity is intact. it's a little social fiction that helps us all get along.

thoughts while crocheting: a guest post

my friend rapunsell from the old game glitch wrote this little piece yesterday and i said i'd run it here for both of you to enjoy, since she doesn't have a blog or anything. i hope you enjoy it.

THOUGHTS WHILE CROCHETING

1. Okay, I’m gonna follow this slouch beanie hat pattern and just insert a row of mesh filet for every 3 rows of double crochet. Should be pretty easy.

2. God, I hate magic circles.

3. Dammit, the beginning of this row has a single crochet instead of a double crochet. Undo entire row.

4. (3 rows later, check pattern) Wait, how did I end up with 50 stitches?  Undo stitches.

5. (2 rows later, check pattern) I’m supposed to have 68 now? Cram in 4 stitches.

6. (5 rows later) Try on hat. Dammit, it’s too small. I should have used a bigger hook.

7. Frantically cram extra stitches into next two rows.

8. Okay, time for a mesh row. Oh, this is going fast!

9. [Expletive, expletive, particularly colorful expletive] I didn’t realize I’d have to stitch into chains from the mesh filet. This sucks so bad.

10. Try on hat. Argh! Now it’s huge! Frantically drop stitches in next two rows.

11. Try on hat. Whew! At least it fits. This is going to be a horrible hat and I’m going to waste all this gorgeous yarn.

12. Repeat steps 8-11 four times.

13. God, the shape of this is crazy. It’s going to be awful. Why on earth didn’t I just follow a damn pattern? I’m in way over my head.

14. Try on hat.  Wait, this is kinda cute. And the shape seems weirdly familiar…

15. Realize I’ve accidentally created a Tam O’Shanter.

brown water

i am, yes, still doing my annual cleanup of camping gear, which means even though it is halfway through february my living room is still full of gear.

usually when my gear is in the living room it's because it's camping season and i don't want to take it all the way to the basement and stow it properly for a couple of weeks.

i clean everything and look at it carefully and do maintenance if i need to.

a lot of bodies of water have distinctive residue they leave on boats and such. waterbury reservoir has kind of a brown scum that attaches to everything.

it comes off with a little mild soap and elbow grease, but here's one of my paddles before and after:

white water

yesterday stormythunder and i went up stowe pinnacle by way of stow pinnacle meadow, which is a lovely hike. we only went as far as the ingress portal, because, well, a lot of reasons.

i have no great love for the pinnacle trail above the portal (#ingressresistance!), or at least the portion immediately above the portal. it's steep and often crowded and the pinnacle itself is a lovely view and the upper trail is nice but most days it's not worth the whole trip to me and anyway we weren't really there for the walk.

we were there for the ride down.

because that is an AWESOME sled run.

pedestrian crossing

let's go back in time and i'm show you a thing i decided i wanted to tell you about some months ago but for some reason didn't.

because if i do this blog thing correctly, when i have nothing to say off the top of my head, i ought to be able to dig back to where i saved material to show you and use that.

right.

in theory.

anyway, back in the autumn i was out obsessively playing ingress (because of course i was) (#BLUETEAM #IngressResistance) in middlebury and they have this interesting approach to crosswalk safety.

some cities have these fancy flashing lights, and maybe middlebury was going for cost cutting, or maybe just personal responsibility, but they have these buckets with flags and instructions.

the way this works is when you get o the crossing, you take a flag from the bucket and watch the traffic and you step off into the crossing with your caution flag, which is supposed to get attention and make drivers stop for you.

then when you're done crossing you put your flag in the bucket on the other side.

i can't vouch for how well it works overall, but i did not get run over.

wool

apparently for some reason i'm talking with a guy about getting some raw wool to learn spinning.

it's totally logical, because i've been making cordage for a few years, and spinning is a nice next step.

and i know a guy who knows a guys and today is shearing day.

also mb has taken up crochet.

so obviously.

military parade

so the president wants a military parade.

he wants to spend money we don't have on a parade.

because he can, i guess.

he could be spending money on education, or on veteran's healthcare, or salary and benefits for the military, but instead he wants to spend money on a display of tanks. everybody already knows we have tanks and that we're good for marching.

it is not a secret that we have a big freaking military.

other than personal satisfaction, there's NO REASON to have a giant parade.

but he president is a giant toddler and he gets to wast money because he can.

two scoops of ice cream for that one.

speaking of shithole countries...

what do you call it when your citizens have workshops to help them learn how to participate in elections?

democracy?

think again.

minnesota republicans call it "infiltration"



what do you call it when you give huge tax cuts to oil companies but cut educations spending so far that your schools are going on four day weeks?

in oklahoma they call it business as usual.

somebody didn't think this one through: public health edition

my primary insurance is medicare, which means my primary insurer is a very large insurer who covers an awful lot of people.

day before yesterday i got my flu shot.

yes, i know it's late int he season, but better now that not, especially since this year's flu is virulent and deadly. it's not the 1918 flu, but it's more like that flu than we'd like it to be.

and we're about due for a deadly flu pandemic.

so you'd think that public health policy would be to do everything possible to get flu vaccine into people.

but no.

i went early in the season to get the vaccine from my pharmacy and it turns out my insurance doesn't cover it if i get it at the pharmacy. my insurance covers it if i make an appointment with my doctor, which means that i had a two month delay in getting vaccinated.

i wonder how many people simply decided not to bother?

i'm just going to bet that public health policy will shift very strongly toward getting everybody those vaccines free of charge when and only when the body count gets so high that they have to roll dead carts again.

my grandmother remembered living in guttenberg NJ during the 1918 flu and having the dead carts roll the streets every day calling for people to bring out their dead.

that was barely a hundred years ago. there was no vaccine then. part of what made THAT flu so deadly is that it created such a violent immune response in otherwise healthy people that their own immune systems attacked their lungs and killed them, trying to get at the virus. the more robust you were, the more likely it was that your flu would kill you.

and part of what made that flu so deadly was the chronic underreporting of the danger.

this time around we LOVE reporting all the cases but we're not doing so well in making it easy for everyone to get immunized. we're also not good at pressuring companies to make their sick workers stay home.

oh, sure, a lot of companies SAY sick workers should stay home, but i bet you can think of more than one grocery clerk you've seen working sick because they can't afford to stay home.

people who don't have access to healthcare and can't afford to take sick days put us all at risk.

yep.

i had some things in my head and i was all like "hey! that would be awesome about to write on my blog!"


only i can't remember anything about it.

the skiing was nice today, though.

and i went grocery shopping.

watching sports

yeah, so i know there was some kinda american football game on yesterday. i couldn't be arsed to watch it.

i also sort of don't want to reward that whole enterprise for a lot of reasons, so "watching it for the commercials" (which is stylish to say) really doesn't seem to me like an appropriate choice since the people running that gig only really care that you see the advertising in the first place, so congratulations, person who only watches for the commercials. you have now graduated to the stage where they could show you five hours of commercials and you're all set.

don't you have greater aspirations in life?

that said, this morning i had some time to kill before i went out and got this year's flu shot-

yes, i know it's late in the season, but it's not TOO late and yes, i know this year's vaccine is less effective than some years but HOLY SHIT this year's flu is bad news and any protection against it is better than no protection-

and anyway, i had some time to kill and i saw this set of photos from the atlantic about a sport that was totally INVENTED to flog advertising but it is really kind of fantastic to watch, both for the visual images of the venues and the sheer athleticism of the competitors and yeah, BAYbee, i sat right there and watched a whole hour of it.

fun and games

i was going to write to you, but i ended up spending my whole morning making up a card game designed to teach proper clothing for winter camping.

maybe i will tell you about it later.

then i was going to write to you, but i got caught up playing this thing:

https://loc-photo-roulette.glitch.me/

i'm still playing it.

you guys are on your own.