Month: February 2020

INTIMIDATING

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

12nov2012

It seems to be my month for bad dogs. Yesterday a large dog charged up and began barking in my face. I have seen this dog exhibit aggressive behavior toward others onshore. The owner of the (illegally unleashed) dog tried to call the dog (no effect) and to reassure me he was harmless. Yes, head and tail down, weighing close to a hundred pounds. Harmless. “He can be intimidating,” she said. She was laughing when she said that, and walked right on without apology or any attempt to correct the behavior. Well, yeah. The last time someone told me their dog was “friendly” I got hit in the face. Continue reading →

ROLLING PIN

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments
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My grandfather’s pair and mine on the right after cleaning. Also today’s seaglass.

My grandfather found three of them. I still have two of the ones he found. This morning I found a Japanese glass float of the kind called a “rolling pin.”

fullsizeoutput_118eIt was pure chance. It always is. We went out this morning intending a quick walk. We were halfway home and Gary was anxious for his breakfast but I was determined to gather plastic bottle caps and poly-styrene foam anyway. I had turned back for a blue plastic bottle cap when I saw it. I knew, just knew. It was covered with sea growth and I still knew it was glass. the narrow necks at each end would have accommodated ropes in nets that might have been strung for miles in the ocean.

We have many floats, a couple of them still in their rope nets and they used to hang outside the front door before we remodeled. Gary has found many floats, including really large round floats the size of volleyballs. I have found two small round floats the size of oranges and a large, cracked float. That last one is only two millimeters thick in the spot where it’s broken. Wikipedia says the Norwegians are the first to use glass floats in the early 1840s, but in our ocean, beginning in 1910, “recycled glass, especially old sake bottles in Japan, was typically used and air bubbles/imperfections in the glass are a result of the rapid recycling process.”

fullsizeoutput_1191It didn’t look like much on the beach but to us, a glass float is a huge find. It’s been years since either of us found one on the beach. These days the floats are plastic. We’re finding those too. Bell-shaped floats in white and orange. The round ones are usually black with loops on opposite sides or a pair on one side. I hauled home a huge lime green one the other day loaded down with gooseneck barnacles.

These too are from very far away and a long time ago.

 

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TREASURE, TRASH, & TROUBLE

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments
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This is a partially threaded warp, just strung through the reed, looking at the back of the reed. The new warp is red and soft violet-and-purples and ashy pinks. All hand-painted or dyed-in-the-wool fingering weight merino. I have begun threading the heddles since I took this photo and might begin weaving tomorrow. The weft will be half handspun and mostly red. Three shawls.

We picked up almost 40 pounds of trash yesterday. We meant to walk a mile north and not begin collecting until we turned for home. But there was too much to ignore and we were overloaded by the time we’d walked a mile.  On the way home we realized we could not even complete our stretch of the shore and left the beach to drag our load on the road. The beach was littered with tiny bits and pieces, but also major chunks of heavy stuff. Usually we find plastic bottle lids, but yesterday there were so many! Many blue and with embossed Japanese characters. Two short lengths of heavy braided rope, poly-styrene foam, and my favorite green plastic twine that I often find in four-inch sections, usually with a knot. There were plastic bottles and a huge hatch lid Gary found late and just in time to use as a sled to drag the junk home. Some trash was stashed and we hope to bring it home today. We will need an extra trash pick-up. Recycling will not take it. No one will take poly–styrene foam in any condition. It is an enduring menace to the environment.

Perhaps it’s understandable that halfway through our walk I held perfectly still when the dog ran up close to me barking. In the past I would have assumed that the wagging tail was counter to the bark. I will not be making assumptions anymore.

Continue reading →

OPINIONS VARY

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments
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Oil on the beach sand. (No, it does not belong there, and that is not merely my opinion.)

From swimsuits to snowflakes in one predawn session.

I read an article this morning by a woman who has decided against giving reviews of items she has purchased online. She finds the process impersonal and the expectation an imposition. She bought a swimsuit she likes and has purchased many times and her continued patronage ought to be enough. Why become part of a commercial?

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Dear Margaret and Helen,

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

ad astra: Margaret & Helen Are BackI am always so glad when I check my emails and your blog is there. It’s a breath of fresh air.

 

 

“… when an impeached President Trump waves his hands, points at people and even tries to take a seat during the Anthem while others stand at attention with their hands over their hearts… well we don’t hear much about that because evidently the Iowa Caucuses were rigged. Thanks media. Once again you have proven about as useful as a one-legged man at a butt kickin’ contest.”

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LIFE EXPECTANCY

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completed last night: The “Shelley” warp with “Storm” (mostly blues) “Water” (mostly greens), and “Wave” (mostly peacock) shawls. Each woven with dozens of Canadian hand-painted merino wool and handspun dyed-in-the-wool yarns, and about 25″ wide by 65″ to 75″ long plus fringes. This is the first warp of the year and two of them will be in the sale this coming December.

People often look at life expectancy statistics and assume that people died at the age of 46 in 1900 because medical care was poor and that people seldom lived past age 46. In fact, anyone reaching the age of 46 in 1900 was probably as likely to reach age 75 or 80 or even 95 as someone is today. Life expectancy is an average, and children more often died of diseases and then-untreatable infections and pneumonia. Families died from eating tainted food or because their water system was poisoning them. People also died at work more often, but that has changed in the last hundred years.

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HOW WE GOT HERE

/ janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

I have tried to avoid politics, but I fear for my country. The assumption is that Trump will be acquitted this week.

“You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible,” Trump said on 23 January 2016. [Click the link—he said this, but his statistics in that speech are, of course, untrue.]

Below is from today’s comments section in The Washington Post.

“How the Republican Party got to this point.
1. McCarthyism: The beginning of hatred toward liberals and Democrats and the purging of liberals from the Republican Party.
2. Nixon’s Southern Strategy: Diving the nation by race by taking advantage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by courting white segregationists into the Republican Party and purging out African Americans.
3. Reaganism: Building the Republican Party around white conservative Christians and purging all non Christians and non conservative Christians from the Republican Party.
4. Newt Gingrich: The beginning of gutter politics, hate mongering, and lying within the Republican Party.
5. Fox News went live in 1996 broadcasting with a blatant Republican Party and conservative bias. The propaganda component of the Republican Party was complete. At this point the Republican Party had primarily reached, racial (white), ideological (conservative) and religious (Christian) purity. There were no internal checks and balances remaining within the Republican Party, it had internally become a dictatorship.
6. Trumpism: Trump was never strongly affiliated with any political party, but he recognized the political apparatus that the Republican Party had built and the rage within the national conservative base over changing national demographics that threatened their newly found racial, ideological, and religious purity. With populism, nationalism, miss-branding of his opponents, and blatant lies, Trump took total control of the Republican Party. This included the House, the Senate, and the Republican National Committee. Trump then began purging anyone who opposed him within the Republican Party. Since all independence has been removed from the Republican Party, it no longer exists. It’s now the party of Trump with no internal checks and balance, much less any respect for the US constitution; the laws and freedoms it represents.

“Time to vote for our Constitution, vote blue, it’s the patriotic thing to do.”

Clinton was ultimately impeached for lying to the FBI about an extramarital affair. It was immoral but primarily a personal failure, not violation of our country. The current president is free to use congressional funds to extort personal political favors. There is no bottom.

This is not merely a party failure but failure of individual citizens.

I would add that I used to know moral conservative Republicans. I do not think I can say that any longer. And though I know decent people who still support this administration, these people have failed in the most essential way to respect the aspirational and on-the-ground goals of our nation. They have failed in their moral duty to support our Constitution. They have prioritized party over public decency. They have been pushed there by people with money. 

Money now has absolute power over morality. 

DOs & DON’Ts

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What I do and what I don’t do. Most of my behavior is habit and thoughtlessness. I do what I was taught, what I enjoy, and what I assume is “natural” and not what I have considered long and hard and found to be wrong—unkind or harmful. Some activities are basic: food, drink, and shelter. Today: consider FOOD.

In 1990 I gave up eating most animal flesh. It had taken me a few years to convert or replace recipes focused on chicken and pork, lamb and beef, but I worked at it and early in that year I became a pescatarian. I generally called myself “vegetarian” because people rarely understood the more accurate term, and if I explained I only ate seafood they tended to go through a list, But you eat chicken? Right? Continue reading →