Author: janpriddyoregon

STEP 2: cutting

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I particularly love this batik fabric, but I used a favorite speckled fabric for the bars, and a bit of yellow. There are not many yellows in my stash, but I mean for this to be a blue and yellow quilt.

An email this morning showed me a knitting pattern I liked. I never knit from patterns, but I often use patterns to push myself in a new direction. This one has a fancy design on both the body and sleeves. What I found interesting was the raglan sleeve shaping and that it is knit top-down. That is something I never do. I bought the pattern and discovered it has short rows, something else I have never done before. Two new skills!

I am up for that because I recently learned to do a twisted rib and I am eager to incorporate that into a sweater. I have the yarn and it’s green. But I also have yarn for a Koigu and kid mohair-and-silk sweater in smokey violets. The gauge for the purples is close enough to the gauge of the new pattern, so I watched a YouTube video about German Short Rows linked in the pattern. Very easy, very smooth, and the woman said, when it got a little counterintuitive, “Trust in the lord and keep knitting.” I am not religious, but the sentiment delights me.

Trust the process.

The quilt is coming along. I generally prefer to piece square blocks, but this time I am working in random-length rectangles. It may not sound like much of a challenge, but the shapes are pushing me outside my comfort zone. At least two blocks a day should see me done by the end of August, front and back too perhaps.

fullsizeoutput_feeHere are the first few blocks laid out in stripes. I have begun cutting and piecing, eight blocks so far. Laying out the pieced blocks on the floor tells me how far I have to go and how different combinations of hue and value work. These blocks are not sewn together and they will be moved around as I work. I mean to alternate wider and mostly solid dark stripes with narrower and mostly pieced stripes. Some fabrics are so charming in their pattern I will include them as whole blocks rather than piecing.

I should name the pattern I am piecing—in fact, it probably has a name, but I have never seen it before. It is an embellishment of Chinese Coin, a traditional quilting pattern of multi-colored horizontally-striped vertical bars alternating with solid vertical bars. But really it is a pieced version of a pattern I wove into the center of a weft-faced rug that was itself based on a Colonial American doubleweave coverlet pattern called Snowball and Pinetree. I enjoy reinterpreting traditional textile embellishment from other sources—weaver’s log cabin used in a quilt, knitting a quilting pattern of equilateral triangles, a common fabric piecing design. (I should have kept that sweater purely for the pattern. My family found it ridiculous, however, so off it went to a charity.)

The pieced blocks will have skinny vertical lines crossed on the horizontal such as the yellow on blue in the photo. There is also a wide blue-on-blue block between the two yellow ones in the photo. Some of the center bars in the pieced blocks have a spot of another color—the yellow tip of a speckled blue bar upper right (part of the block shown half-finished in the photo above) and a bit of yellow in the dark blue bar of the block just south of that one. I will use about fifty fabrics in this quilt, all from my stash. The backing too, I hope to piece from my stash. Even the thread I am using is leftovers. Black so far, and on my second bobbin.

 

WHAT WE WANT

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Amazon rainforest turned into farmland

Headlines in the United States concern politics, specifically disappointment that Mueller testified exactly as he said he would. It’s all in his report. The man in the Oval Office is a liar and cheat and does not care what happens to anyone so long as he’s at the top of the news. The news in the United Kingdom is about their new Prime Minister and the record-breaking heat. A few headlines down find concerns about logging in Brazil:

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.

—Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable ‘tipping point’, The Guardian

The photo above shows a vast area turned from forest to farmland. That forest feeds oxygen to the world, converts pollutants to pure cooler air. We need a stable climate, we need to preserve a livable world. The ocean of humanity needs the ocean’s temperature to stop rising. If humanity is to survive we need our appetites to cool. As Americans get fatter, farmland grows to feed our desires. This is not about need, it’s about what we want.

We know that plastic bags, meat production, air conditioning, driving, flying, use of fossil fuels in general contribute to global warming. Endangered tropical hardwood on the dining room floor. Some of these activities are more avoidable than others. Some of these activities are more damaging than others, but we don’t want to stop.

Assuming the plane is full, an individual’s share of a single one-way flight from coast to coast of the U.S. contributes greenhouse gases equivalent to driving a car for a year. We would still have to get home, so that’s another year. Airports and air travel have always been subsidized by our taxes. Like the tobacco industry, we aggressively protect the things we want, whether they are good for us or not.

Like our president, we want what we want and we do not want to hear the nay-sayers. We will contribute to the cause in some way that does not cost too much and make up for our use of endangered hardwoods or vacation to Europe or steak at dinner, the plastic bottles of fizzy water my husband is fond of. There are alternatives, there is sacrifice, but like most people, we don’t want to bother. We want what we want.

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I wanted this little shell—delighted to find a whole snail shell. It is occupied by a hermit crab so I put it back into the water. You can just barely see its legs to the left of the shell. The little hermit crab just wants to live.

SENTENCE

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1920.jpgThe current cover story of The Atlantic describes the crime most likely to escape prosecution. It’s rape. And not for any of the reasons we have assumed for so long. People are no more likely to lie about having been raped than any other crime, but police are far more likely to think a rape victim is lying. Think about it. If someone says their sister was murdered or robbed, is the initial reaction doubt that the death or loss of property occurred? If you saw someone you actually recognized running off with your television, would that mean the police would not bother to investigate the theft?

And if that same person stole someone else’s television, and another, and another . . . ? Except what is stolen during a rape is person and privacy and a sense of safety and well being. The crime is violation, and often by someone known to the victim, which results in police assuming it’s probably untrue or a one-off and not prosecutable. And the police would be wrong about all of that. Often the rapist knows his victim and the next ones too. Unless he is stopped, he does not stop.

Each year, 125,000 rapes are reported across the United States.

In 49 out of 50 cases, the assailant goes free.

These figures are a sobering reminder that, even in the era of DNA testing and #MeToo, rape is the easiest violent crime to get away with. In her cover story for The Atlantic’s August issue, Barbara Bradley Hagerty offers a sweeping, heartbreaking analysis of why so few rape cases are investigated by police, let alone brought to trial.

What she discovers—from her dozens of interviews with victims, police officers, prosecutors, and researchers—is law enforcement’s abiding skepticism of women who report sexual assault. And evidence shows that reported predators often go on to attack again. “How many rapes could have been prevented if police believed the first victim?” Hagerty writes. “How many women would have been spared a brutal assault?” Her piece is an unflinching assessment of the nation’s collective inaction and a guide to where we might go from here.

Jeffrey Goldberg
Editor in Chief, The Atlantic

Also in the news: a woman in Arizona is convicted of having sex with a thirteen year old child. I haven’t read the story, but she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. I would assume she will have to register as a sexual offender.

A woman Gary knew in Tillamook County was stabbed and killed in front of her two little children. Her ex-husband drove to town, bought beer, and drove then to his father’s house: “I killed Judy.” The man was sentenced to 5-7 years for murdering his former wife. He threatened to kill everyone associated with his case, but got out of prison early on good behavior and immediately sued for custody of his children.

It makes me wonder.

STEP 1: vision

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The first step is staring at colors. This might last for a few days or weeks or even years. I had the defining fabric for my “Rain” quilt waiting for at least twenty years before I figured it out.

The patterns of these collected blue fabrics are all over the place: sea shells, blueberries, stripes and sailing ships, speckles and dots and stars, flowers, leaves, swirls and zig-zags. The flying geese fabric might be thirty years old—batiks, as best I can recall, were still relatively new on the market. The fabric itself is somewhat heavier than what I find today. They are all batiks. The yellow birds on black are a color on black—a combination I rarely find these days—purchased for my youngest grandchild’s baby quilt several years ago. One bird for this quilt.

The process is slow, but much of my process is invisible. I have laid out fabrics for weeks at a time, once I figure out the pattern. I think about what to do until I can construct the quilt in my head, and then I build that vision relatively fast, usually in a few days. Years ago a non-artist friend complained that I had completed a gouache painting in a few hours—yes, but she did not count the staring and the thinking, or even the preliminary sketches. She didn’t see any of that.

I have to see the work entire before I begin the easy part, that making.

A compilation of squares and rectangles, each with an X in the middle? I’ve done that before. All squares with skinny bands? I’ve done that too. Alternate the bands horizontally and vertically? Grade from light to dark? Shift the size outside to inside or top to bottom? I never use patterns and I am not generally fond of blue, so this one is particularly tricky. I have reorganized these colors since I took this photo. There are a few turquoises and purples mixed in with the cobalts. There is also a stack of yellows and golds, by way of contrast. I would like to add hits of orange.

I’ve been messing with these colors for well over a year. Gathering them longer than that, without those fabrics admitting they want to be anything. The other day, while dozing half-awake before dawn, I envisioned a blue quilt based on the old “Chinese coin” pattern, narrow bands of stripes, skinny on fat and divide by bands of solid color. That idea makes me squirm, so it’s probably the one I should pursue. The temptation is always to choose the easier option, and I have to work hard to resist doing the fast and easy thing. I have considered making two blue quilts—the easy one in squares, the harder in stacks of coins.

I’ll let you know.

FAIR PLAY/FAIR PAY

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Photo 51, showing x-ray diffraction pattern of DNA. Photo 51 is the nickname given to an X-ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA taken under the supervision of chemist Dr. Rosalind Franklin. It was critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA. Dr. Franklin was not credited for this work by two men who later won the Nobel.—Wikipedia

“Our science can only benefit the whole of society if it’s done by the whole of society. And that’s not currently the case.

—Dr. Jessica Wade, a British physicist who has added 670 profiles of women and people of color in the sciences to Wikipedia since 2017

Women and people of color are underrepresented throughout Wikipedia, which is an issue Wade and others hope to repair. Dr. Franklin is there, but for many years her pioneering work, and especially her contributions to the discovery the the double-helix in DNA, was not properly acknowledged.

As a girl in the 50s and 60s, I was fortunate to be aware that women had made scientific contributions.

My father cited a UK researcher who had published as a young woman, then later under her husbands’ names, and how he wished she’d stuck with a professional name so that her work was not scattered all over his library.

 

I learned two lessons from that brief story: women are scientists and a public name need not indicate a private identity. I used to tell that story when students asked me why my last name was not the same as my husband. (On a good day, I could cite eight or nine reasons I kept my name.)

GETTING ON WITH IT

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From Wallowa Lake Lodge looking north as the sunrise does what it does, taking over the sky.

We meant to wait until Monday, though originally we thought we would have most of the furniture back into the kitchen and dining room yesterday. I had to put a second coat of varnish on the new piece of baseboard, the parts of the room that waited for proper cabinets. That’s been a twenty-year, thirty-five-year project. The cabinets finally in, but the base boards only finished last week. Then, after varnishing the rooms’s floors and baseboards, I came back for a second coat and got a little ambitious. Monday I put another coat on most of the floors. A week to cure and we thought, well, Monday is not too late for company coming Tuesday . . .

That’s confusing, huh? Yes, for us too. The floors were all dry enough today to walk on with bare feet or socks. The furniture around the edges of the room—huge pantry bookcase, pie safe, fridge, could come in without waiting because the floor they sat on is fully cured. The dining table has to wait till Monday.

The real problem was the fridge, which was in the hall facing out of the kitchen, blocking the doorway. Putting it back in place meant crossing over second-coated floor. Gary was suddenly in favor of buying a new fridge. Maybe next year, I kept saying. I think he just wanted the fridge back in the kitchen and buying a new one meant someone else would move it.

We moved it all ourselves. I made salal muffins after an hour beach walk (not so exhausting as the two and a half hours a day before). Gary figured out how to move the fridge without damaging the floor, moved the coffee maker back downstairs, and then began cleaning. I restocked the pantry and made soup and roasted strawberries we are too exhausted to eat. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I will put the first coat of varnish on the two-foot section of baseboard I could not get to because the fridge blocked access. And then we will drive north and I will play Scrabble with a friend. Two games, we cheat and do not keep score.

In the afternoon I will carry on. Maybe I will empty and clean kitchen drawers or begin cutting fabrics.

This morning I irritated someone I respect, and that has distressed me more than it should. I wish it were possible that after reaching a certain age and making a lifetime’s share of mistakes that we just didn’t need to care anymore. We fix it and then move on without self-flagellation.

A wonderful woman once told me that the great thing about turning 70 was “no one expects you to look young anymore.” I look forward to that.

We watched the end of Tales of the City and Olympia Dukakis plays ninety-year old Anna Madrigal. Dukakis is eighty-eight and looks great. We remember again that we are cleaning out our lives along with the house. There is a lot that is not going back where it was. Getting rid of things is never so easy as the magazines make it sound.

I have a new quilt forming in my head, sorted colors by value and hue on my cutting board, and the first “draft” spreading across the carpet. I stare and stare at colors till they form a pattern I can sew together in my head. That’s how I rest.

TRUTH TO POWER

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“Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. …The subject of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men. That is what we are talking about. In other words, the jurisdiction comes from the abuse or violation of some public trust. It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of this body, the legislature, against and upon the encroachment of the Executive. In establishing the division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges the same person.”

—Barbara Jordan, at the opening of the Watergate hearings

WINNING OMELAS

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In good company: brilliant Bette Husted, me, and magnificent Molly Gloss. [Cheesy, perhaps, but such excellent cheese.]

“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, From The Dispossessed

The review of a book about mental illness in the Brevity blog this morning reminds me about American obsession with competition and our “country concerned with triumph.”

I have been thinking a great deal about gaming and about competition, the basis for survival according to most these days. Winning is everything. I saw it in education, the work of my yearbooks staff that created groundbreaking design and content, but only received notice when I shared a “win.” Those certificates for cover design and deadlines never meant as much to me as the students who found work based directly on skills learned in class. We were not in competition, we only wanted a good book at the end of the year. By “good” we meant a distinctive, complete and compelling record of the year that we’d managed to pay for. No one had to lose in order for us to “win.”

That’s not how we look at things, is it? For there to be a winner there must be losers, the more losers, the bigger the win. It is the most essential understanding and assumption of how the world works.

People making a great deal of money believe they are winning and thus are superior to those of us who are not. We have accepted dollars as the mediator for morality. That and being white seem to be the only focus for our current nation’s executive branch.

I am thinking about this especially because of “The One Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. (First published in 1973, it won the Hugo for short fiction in 1974 and is collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters in 1975.) We spent the weekend participating in the final act of a yearlong tribute to Le Guin. Many people referenced her most famous story, the perfect joy of a utopian society “a shimmering city of unbelievable happiness and delight” held aloft by a single suffering child locked in a cellar. “The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.”

In the biographical film presented Saturday, students offered three solutions, one beyond what Le Guin herself seems to suggest. One would tolerate the injustice for the child for the sake of paradise, another would fight to free the suffering child, and the third would walk away. In Le Guin’s thought experiment no one chooses to free the child in Omelas, they accept the inevitability of the child’s suffering, and a few walk away as unwilling to participate in such a society. The story demands we consider the moral option, that we choose. “The place [those who leave] go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

I have taught the story many times. My students, like the students in the documentary, like every adult I know, see the three options. Most will claim that they will walk away. That is presented the most moral choice.

“The only winning move is not to play.”

—War Games

My own view of Le Guin’s story is somewhat different. The story begins with Le Guin offering the reader utopia, perfect joy and celebration, conceding trains and drooz “as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.”

Perfection.

And yet she questions the reader mid-story: “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.” And it is here she introduces payment for perfection.

The child suffering is necessary for the perfections of this city.

And then she asks: “Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible?”

She knows that we demand payment, that we assume there must be pain as some sort of balance to pleasure, that sorrow inevitably balances joy, that evil must balance good.

Once we are given the balance of pain for pleasure, we believe absolutely. Le Guin know this. Within the context of her thought experiment even Le Guin herself insists that someone must pay for our happiness, that there must be losers if we are to win.

No.

Despite my own superstitious belief in a balance, I have not found that this is true. Driving away from Fishtrap, I thought a great deal about the story of Job. For decades I detested that story of God proving to the evil angel that his “good servant Job” would be faithful despite hardship. Why did God need to prove anything?

It has only been later in life that I understood that the story of Job does not exist to prove anything to anyone within the story. It exists to demonstrate to me, the reader, that terrible error of assuming balance. Though God returns all of Job’s lost fortune seven-fold, restoring the previous life, it is not the point of the story. There is no win, no lose in life that represents moral justice. We cannot expect overt success to represent spiritual triumph.

There is no battle raging between good and evil with the winner proved righteous. Thousands of years ago, scripture impressed that truth upon us. Winning is not virtue. It is belief, not truth, not a factual representation of the world I live in. In fact, terrible things happen to good people, and evil people become president of the United States.

Those who live deplorable lives are not made to inevitably suffer in their lives. People who are good do not necessarily achieve a good life. People who are kind and generous and deserving of long life and happiness often do not achieve fraction of what goodness should balance the sorrow in their lives.

I have been supremely fortunate in my life, I know this despite some ordinary grief and disappointment, occasional despair and sorrow. My life, I might want to say, is “blessed.” But I am not in competition. No one lost to give me joy and my “win” is not deserved. As a thought experiment, “Omelas” is an extraordinary gift, but its message is more complicated than how I choose to respond to injustice.

No. And again, no. I know there is no perfection, but I do not believe my joy must be taken at the expense of anyone’s sorrow. I do not accept that a child must suffer in the basement.

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Molly was right: Gary photographed our feet first.

ICE

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from Apartment Therapy: “With nationwide raids targeting undocumented residents set to begin on Sunday, many are in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appearing at their homes and workplaces. Though the raids are set to target 2,000 people for deportation, there may also be “collateral arrests,” where agents arrest others on site who they suspect are without documents. If you are at risk of encountering an ICE raid—or would like to support your community members and neighbors if you encounter one, here is what to do . . .

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me

 

This morning I found advice from the ACLU on how to behave legally and safely in the event that ICE showed up at my door or in my community. It was published on Apartment Therapy, a fluff site and the overwhelming response of readers was: Thank you. The article is HERE.   The reader comments seriously made my day.

Thank you, AT, for providing this information. These days, just providing pretty pictures and decluttering advice and pretending all is right with the world just doesn’t cut it. We need those in positions of power and influence to demonstrate their values and put people over profit. I’m proud of you and thankful for this article. You might consider providing a version of it in Spanish and maybe another of the languages of the most-often deported people. My mother was an immigrant. Her color privileged her approval for entry at a time when people from non-northern-European countries were turned away or strictly limited because of the color of their skin. We do not and never have had a fair or impartial immigration system. My family, by the way, has not produced much of any merit, unlike the people who pick our crops and work hard day after day as law abiding residents, living in the shadows after escaping poverty, violence, and chaos that US policies have helped create (and not just in the current administration). My family, by the way, produced racists, homophobes, and drunkards, some of whom never did an honest day’s work in their lives. But they were white Englishmen so, of course, welcomed with open arms. Thanks for valuing humanity, AT. Everyone in the US, legally or illegally, has rights protected by the Constitution, and they need to know what those rights are.

It seems I am not the only person who has used this site to motivate me to clean and declutter.

Thank you. And please don’t be swayed by those that think that putting children in cages and depriving them of basic human necessities like clean underwear, showers & soap in order to punish their parents for attempting to exercise their legal right to seek asylum is something that decent people can be proud of. Using my real name, as always.

And I am not the only person who posts only using my real name.

Thank you a million times over for your courage in posting this, AT. I’m sure you’ll get plenty of flack for it, but your country is at a tipping point & it’s time real people started standing up to be heard. It’s just too important for anyone to have the luxury of not “getting involved”. People will complain that this is about “politics”. But it isn’t. This is about right versus wrong, about morality & common human decency. It’s about the kind of country you want your children to grow up in — one where people of all colours, nations & religions are respected & valued, or where just some people are, based on the colour of their skins. Heaven knows I get irritated at this site some days, but today I’m incredibly proud of you!

And in response to the inevitable backlash that AT is offering illegal and dangerous advice that interferes with ICE . . .

*Do not lie. Do not produce false documents. Do not physically resist. Do not physically interfere. *

These recommendations are specifically so people aren’t put at risk! It’s not advising people to break the law to say you don’t have to open your doors unless they have a valid warrant. It isn’t a political statement that you can ask for a translator and you shouldn’t sign something you don’t understand without a lawyer’s advice.

We are all human and we should be humane.

FINDING TIME

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Photo by Steve Larson

People ask me all the time, even now as I climb the stiff ascent to seventy: Where do you find the time? 

This morning, my husband and I were up and dressed and out the door by five to listen to the dawn chorus from the deck of the lodge. We are in Wallowa Lake for Fishtrap, a writers’ gathering. (The photo above is borrowed. The grass is greener and there is a tent for outdoor events. At right you can see the leaning tree. Yes, it is still there, Ann.)

8519949156_34edb2f18a_o.jpgSo far I have seen people I recognize, but no one I actually know. Yesterday we sat in the beautiful great room of Wallowa Lake Lodge (opened in 1923). We walked across the street for dinner. We walked through Canada goose poo to admire the river pouring into the lake. I watched clouds pass over head, the nearer moving east, those higher up shifting more slowly south. We have seen an unfamiliar species of ground squirrel and several deer since we arrived yesterday, and I had a pleasant talk with a local woman who was also knitting while her husband and daughter participate. Time passes slowly. I varnished the dining and kitchen floors before we left the house. Being here while “paint dries” is only an excuse. We plan to read and relax and hope to visit with friends.

Even in my twenties I was writing and publishing articles in magazines. In those early post-college years I judged field trials all over the west and learned to cook and had Afghan Hounds. 

In my early thirties, when I had two preschoolers at home, I canned peaches and read books and made quilts and worked part time. In my forties I went back to my work teaching, began taking writing classes, wrote stories and read and knit sweaters, and began running. 

In my fifties I began writing novels and attended workshops and read and made only jam in the summer. I spent a lot of time writing curriculum and grading papers and baking and cooking and making quilts and knitting and weaving and reading a few dozen books each year and writing thousands of words. Marilyn Chin once told me I was the most driven person she knows—this from a writer with six books in print. Molly Gloss sighs that she doesn’t understand why I have not had more success. But these women are sympathetic friends. There is accomplishment and accomplishment. 

Recently I went off Facebook. I do not text. I do not post on Instagram. I have a Pinterest account and it was useful to wean me off magazines, but I spend only minutes there each week. I subscribe to two major newspapers and read through them both plus at least one other international newspaper. I rarely watch the news. Did I mention that my cell phone is not smart? No time spent there. 

I get up early and tend to go to bed early, but like Daylight Saving Time, that only shifts my day around from most people. Early to bed and early to rise does not magically give me more hours in a day. It saves nothing. 

Now in my late sixties I no longer run and have retired from work, and my time is still filled with things to do—both pleasant and onerous tasks I have ignored for decades and now choose. We have always had and enjoyed watching television, but this month we are ending our broadcast and cable subscription. We read the news and go for walks each morning. Even so, I might well wonder how I found the time in my earlier years to get so much done. 

Perhaps it was not so hard. My husband took on his share of housework and childcare. Some things did not get done, usually cleaning and upkeep we neglected in favor of more urgent demands from children or our interests. I learned to be efficient about many things, especially the necessary tasks I do not enjoy, but also the interesting things I do. 

My habits are productive but not notable. I do not have books in print. I do not see family as much as I would like. Vacations were nonexistent for years, and even now are rare. We do not often feel the need to get away. (We live in paradise, after all.) I make many things without selling anything on Etsy. Perhaps, now that I am retired and accomplishing less, people will no longer ask me where I find the time. 

It is there, has been there all along. When I had children running about, I did tasks I could carry about with me, put down when I needed to chase a child, scrubbed the kitchen floor at least once a week, bathed and groomed dogs during the Sunday mornings my husband was always home. There were things I did not do—dressing up and going out to dinner, for example, because it did not matter and I spent my money elsewhere. I have always volunteered but we do not attend charity events. Even now, I think sometimes I should spend a few minutes a day meditating. If it genuinely mattered to me, I think I would find the time. 

What we should find time for is only what matters to us enough that we make the time happen. No magic, no great skill. If we would rather have time for a walk than read Facebook, we can choose to do that. If we would rather read or write a letter or have tea with a friend after work, that is a choice anyone might make. 

I choose how to spend my time, and if I do not, time spends itself.