i am a butterfly…

Archive for the ‘That Shinin' Ball of Blue’ Category

Poet Sonya Reese, performing her poem “What Women Deserve.” Very powerful.

I haven’t done a meme in a while, and this one was right up my alley. Stolen from Knittin’ Honey.

BOLD those things you’ve done, ITALICIZE those you plan on tackling, and leave the rest.

Afghan
I-Cord
Garter Stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl (I’m counting Lady Eleanor as a shawl. Shawl, stole… same thing, mostly.)
Stockinette stitch
Socks top down
Socks toe up (my preferred method)
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens tip down
Hats top down
Hats Cuff-up
Knitting with silk (silk blends, though, not 100% silk)
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL (maybe)
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/second-hand yarn
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (I don’t even know what this is)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting (I don’t even know what this is)
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles (as often as I can)
Baby items (though it’s still waiting for buttons and probably won’t fit its recipient anymore!)
Knitting with your own hand-spun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (huh?)
Continental knitting
Combination knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Participate in an exchange
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting
Knitting to make money
Buttonholes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dyeing with plant colors
Dyeing spinning fibers
Knitted items for a wedding
Household items
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on one or two circulars
Knitting with someone else’s hand-spun yarn
Knitting with double point needles
Holiday-related knitting
Teaching a male to knit
Bobbles
Tassels
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dyeing yarn
Steeks (eventually I’ll get up the nerve to try a steeked project)
Knitting art
Knitting two socks on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener stitch
Knitted flowers
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegated yarn
Stuffed toys
Knitting with cashmere (cashmere blends, but I’d love to knit with 100% cashmere some day)
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular cast on
Free-form knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/arm-warmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an on-line knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets (I would love to knit a little sweater for a friend’s doxie)
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair (ew)
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

Today is a great day for these United States.

A peaceful transition of power just took place, which is one of the things that makes this nation great.

Two little girls with the blood of slaves in their veins watched their father sworn in to the highest office in the country.

It’s a great day.

I’m cautiously hopeful. If Obama can achieve half of what he wants, he’ll be a great president.

Late yesterday afternoon, Scott and I were walking up Third Ave. toward our favorite restaurant – Beyoglu, on Third and 81st; it’s awesome, you should try it if you ever find yourself on the UES looking for a good place to eat – when we passed a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk begging outside a grocery store. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m usually pretty immune to beggars. I can walk right past them most of the time and feel okay about myself, because I know I give to charity - some of which are set up to help NYC’s homeless and hungry, like City Harvest – and I know I can’t help everyone on the street, so I instead give to groups that can.

Sometimes, though, I can’t walk past someone for some reason. This guy yesterday was one of them. As we walked past, he was saying, “Just food. Just a loaf of bread. Please.” I don’t know. Maybe he sounded more desperate than most. Maybe it was the way he said please. All I know is that I found myself spinning on my heel and tugging a bewildered Scott along behind me into the grocery store.

“What are you doing?” he asked as we walked in.

“I’m going to get him a damn loaf of bread.”

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I just wanted to get the food, walk out and hand it to him, and walk away. I didn’t need or want the guy’s gratitude, just to get him a little food. So, in the store, I grabbed a bottle of water*, a package of Swiss cheese, and a loaf of oatmeal bread**. We paid for the groceries and were out in under 5 minutes.

And when we got outside, he was gone. One of the store employees must have driven him off while we were shopping. That was when I realized where I went wrong. When we walked past him to go into the store, I should have said something. I should have asked him to wait, told him I’d be right back. That way he’d have hung around nearby when he was run off. But in my desire to make it “no big deal,” I hadn’t said anything to him to let him know we were getting him food. And because of that, I have no idea if this guy ever got a meal last night.

So now we have this bottle of water, this loaf of bread, and this package of cheese. It’s all food I would eat myself, but I feel weird about it. It feels like it’s not my food. We looked all over for this guy last night, then we looked for another homeless person, but somehow we found the only part of NYC last night where there were no beggars. I guess we’ll eat it, because we certainly won’t want it to go to waste, but it just feels weird, and I feel bad that I wasn’t able to help someone that I really wanted to help.

*I think one of the worst things, among many, about being homeless would be not being able to get clean drinking water whenever you want it, so I usually try to give a bottle of water when these impulses overtake me.

**Another of the worst things about being hungry/homeless is that you don’t usually get healthy food, so I try to only give food I would eat myself. That means no Wonder Bread and nothing with high fructose corn syrup, that kind of thing.

It’s widely known by now that California’s Proposition 8, which took away a minority group’s right to marry and invalidated thousands of legal marriages, was backed and promoted by the Mormon church. If it bothers you that a church meddled in a state’s political process and pushed to have people’s civil rights revoked, do something about it.

A friend sent me this in email today. I have no idea if this will work, but at the very least it makes a statement.

A movement is building and I’ve already put mine in the mail.

If it upsets you that a church can meddle with another state’s political statutes, here’s something simple you can do:

To report the LDS church to the IRS, in attempt to strip the church of the tax-exempt status it enjoys by virtue of it being a religious — not political — organization, simply take 5 minutes to print these articles out and any others you can find:

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10839546
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10842051

Then print, sign and send the attached form (already completed) or download a blank and fill it out yourself at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f3949a.pdf

List the taxpayer as:

Thomas S. Monson, et al
50 East North Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah 84150
DOB: August 21, 1927

List his occupation as President and the business as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Check the boxes for False Exemption and Public/Political Corruption.

Then in the Comments section demand that the LDS Church be fined and their tax-exempt status revoked for repeated and blatant violations of the IRS’s separate of church and state rules, and for conspiring to interfere with a state’s political process.

Check Yes under “Are books/records available?” and write in “campaign finance records.”

As the instructions say, you don’t have to disclose any of your own personal info for this form to be accepted by the IRS.

Mail the form and the printed articles to:
Internal Revenue Service
Fresno, CA 93888

Send a message that churches interfering with civil rights won’t be tolerated.

Four years ago on the first Wednesday in November, I woke up in shock. Shocked that this country elected George Bush to a second term in office. How could that possibly have happened?

Today, I feel cautiously optimistic for a better future.

I haven’t talked much about politics here this election cycle, mainly because I’ve been ambivalent about Obama. I wanted to love him. I wanted to feel the same sense of reverence and hope that others felt for him. I really wanted to drink the Kool-Aid. I wanted him to make me believe. But I was too cynical, and while I waited for him to win me over, he voted for FISA, and convinced me that he was like all the rest of them.

So I researched 3rd parties, and up until the moment I walked into the voting booth, I didn’t know if I was going to vote for Gloria LaRiva – whose views I shared on just about everything except Israel – or Obama. In the end, I voted for the Working Families party candidate: Barack Obama.

And I’m glad he won. Now I hope he proves that my vote meant something and gets this country back on track. By 2012, I’d like to have a sip of that Kool-Aid.

I’m really proud of this country for keeping McCain and that nutjob Palin out of the white house. But there’s a lot that happened yesterday about which to be ashamed.

• Proposition 8 in California is on the verge of passing, as the final votes are tallied  passed
• Alaska re-elected convicted criminal Ted Stevens
• Florida constitutionally banned same-sex marriage
• Arizona constitutionally banned same-sex marriage
• In an effort to prevent gay people from becoming parents, Arkansas banned single people from adopting

I’m sure that there will be more to add to that list over the next few days.

On the flip side, Kay Hagan ousted Elizabeth Dole, despite Dole’s attempts to label her as “godless.” (Which included hiring a voice impersonator to literally put words into Hagan’s mouth.) The Republicans lost several Senate seats, as they did in the NY State Senate, as well.

So now it’s time to do something with this. I hope that the next 4 years bring us peace, prosperity, and greater equality.

Constitutional amendments - whether to state constitutions or to our national constitution – should never be designed to take rights away. Yet that’s exactly what Proposition 8 does: it’s designed to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry.

I have several friends and acquaintances who have been in long term, same-sex relationships. These people have made commitments to each other, to honor and love and protect each other. Just like Scott and I did. The difference is, all Scott and I had to do was sign one document and we suddenly had all these rights and privileges conferred upon us. My friends have to pay lawyers to write up all kinds of documents about medical care and inheritance in order to get the same rights Scott and I have simply my dint of being heterosexual. And some of the privileges we have, such as being able to file our taxes jointly, those friends can’t get with any amount of legal fees.

Right now, in California, same-sex couples have the same rights as hetero couples. Proposition 8 will take away those rights. If you live in California, I urge you to protect the rights of all couples and vote no on prop 8.

It seems especially fitting to celebrate Banned Books Week this year, a year that sees a vice-presidential candidate on a majoy party ticket who tried to fire a town librarian for refusing to cooperate with book-banning.

Visit the site linked above for a list of things you can do to support Banned Books Week, and also for a list of frequently challenged books. Seems like a good time to re-read Slaughterhouse Five.

* Free People Read Freely is a registered trademark of the American Library Association.

We all know what today is. I see all these assertions everywhere of “I will never forget.” Do you think anyone who was alive and conscious that day will ever forget? Is it really necessary to beat our collective chest every year and gnash our teeth and talk about where we were and what we were doing and how we’ll never forget?

Every year, we have this great tearing off of the scab. This wound to our national psyche is never going to heal, because we rip it open every year. When are we going to allow it to turn into a scar?

I’m not saying “forget it,” as if anyone could. But this morning, someone said to me that he was offended by Obama appearing on Letterman the night before the anniversary of September 11. (And that’s September 11, got it? If you’re going to be so woebegone over it every year, the least you can do is not reduce it to a fucking sound bite by saying “9/11.”) Are you getting that? Obama shouldn’t have appeared on a comedy show on September TENTH.

So are we next going to make September 12 a sacred day? Hell, why not just make a whole “9/11 Week”! And everyone can be off from work and we can wallow in our collective grief and crazy. And we can have banners and flags and say “go, Amercia!” so our neighbors know that we’re more patriotic than them.

Or maybe we can all stop picking at the scab and mark the day each year with a quiet moment of personal reflection.

I know which option I choose.