From lupa at kos.net Sun Feb 1 01:01:06 2009 From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:01:06 -0500 Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing Message-ID: <20090201010110.38426117A5A@barracuda.rutabaga.org> Tailgater Light snow; not enough to make driving home a problem, but enough that I preferred old, quiet, gentle Route 2 to the four-lane bustle of the 401 (Ontario's superhighway). I'm a good winter driver, which means that I'm a cautious driver; I leave a little more space, turn a little more gently, drive a tad slower, use my stick shift instead of the brakes. I respect winter greatly. It's the only appropriate response, if you're driving. Which meant that I suffered more than my usual annoyance when the black SUV tried to crawl up my tail pipe. Dammit, if you're in a hurry, take the 401. Don't take Route 2; it's not a road for high-speed travel. It goes back more than a century and is lined with more-than-century-old lovely limestone houses and farms. It's also a serious road, so it behooves drivers not to dawdle. But it's not a road for speeding, either. Expect the speed limit, even if you'd rather drive a little faster. The SUV was weaving back and forth in frustration. I was doing slightly more than the speed limit, but not enough more for the driver's satisfaction. I was respecting the snow, after all. I remembered, and uttered, an expression from my early years in southern Vermont: Go fry ice. I have two legitimate responses to being tailgated. I tap the brakes for a microsecond, just to say "Back off, bud!" and if that doesn't work, I gently allow myself to slow to the speed limit, or maybe even a little below. If the tailgater is going to get his or her knickers twisted over the speed I'm going, the least I can do, in all courtesy, is to assist the knicker-twisting as best I can. So I did that. The SUV went nuts. I knew we were coming to a passing place, so I gently allowed myself to drop down to well under the speed limit, out of sheer bitchiness, and then the SUV roared past at high speed. All yours, bucky, I thought. It has been mooted that car driving isolates people and allows them to behave badly. But in fact, we do community on the highways, big time. (This is not a defence for car driving, which is, let's face it, totally environmentally disgusting.) The positions we hold with other drivers, how we allow yields and exhibit courtesy and all that, are issues of living in community. The 401 going through Toronto, all dozen lanes of it, is a dance of connectedness -- or of willful disconnectedness. We drive selfishly or selflessly, but we drive in relationship with each other. My tailgater's need for speed wasn't externally determined; otherwise, the driver could have taken the 401, which is really fast and easily accessible. I have no idea what propelled him or her. I only know that selfishness is dangerous stuff, not just for the victim, but for the perpetrator. It's the last day of January, and we are very tired of winter. Now to brace our shoulders for February and March.... ***************************************** A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain From lupa at kos.net Sun Feb 8 01:20:10 2009 From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:20:10 -0500 Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing Message-ID: <20090208012012.1804212ED74@barracuda.rutabaga.org> The Bird I can't call it stained glass, because the glass isn't coloured. I can't really call it art glass either, because that implies both creativity and artful technique, and I used someone else's pattern, and my technique is kindergarten level. So I'm not sure what to call it. Just call it the bird. It's a simple piece of four curved pieces of textured, clear, iridescent glass that I have succeeded in glueing together with solder (not too bad for a first-timer), forming a small fat bird. I would have loved a streamlined dove, but what I've got is a sort of chickadee with a big silvery solder eye. I've been thinking about this for a while. I've usually been found, in the past, with a stick and a bit of fibre, whether it's embroidery or spinning or weaving or knitting, but I had a sudden outburst of need for COLOUR. This may have to do with the fact that we, in Eastern Ontario, are now in the depths of Forevruary, that interminable period between Christmas and Easter when the landscape is bleached into white, grey, charcoal, and sepia. Bleagh. Glass has COLOUR. So it was worth checking out. Also, it's a new form of geekiness. I am a sucker for arcana, the language and craft and trade secrets of weird old stuff, like how to knit chain mail and what the name is for the bits of a loom that go up and down to make the pattern (answers: garter stitch and harnesses). Now I know that "came" is a noun, and an ancient one. And finally, every time I get hands-on with another way of creating, my admiration of those who create in this medium goes right through the roof. I will never be a water-colour painter, or a potter, or a real weaver, but I have now tried these things and am awe-struck by those who have mastered them. You can't appreciate what makes good hand-made pottery until you've tried to throw a pot (a disaster, in my case). I haven't actually tried blowing glass, but I've watched it enough to be seriously intimidated by the skill involved. Crafts are good for the humility, which in turn is good for the soul. Please feel free to email this to the fitness-freak high-achievement technofinancial guru of your choice. Now, I've tried something that goes back a couple of millennia, one of the ur-art forms: taking pieces of glass -- this weird frozen liquid of silica and pigments -- and making something out of it, joining it to create. It's a bit mind-blowing. What's even more mind-blowing is the art and beauty going back centuries upon centuries of people making glass, cutting glass, putting glass together, to make God-language. The bird is nothing special, by art-glass standards. I had to learn the very baby steps of cutting out pieces of glass and then putting them together. Since I am either-handed and not much coordinated, this was particularly tricky. I have learned that -- at least for now -- I cut glass left-handed and solder right-handed. I remember what master weavers say about weaving: "There isn't a mistake that you can make that I haven't made before you." Right. Grasping, however lightly, the functional end of a soldering iron is not a good idea. I have a blister to prove it. But I made the bird. Not a dove, but a fat sparrow. I made it out of clear glass for a reason. A little of the reason was nervousness; I'm not stepping out into the thin air of colour without giving it some thought. But most of the reason was spiritual. I wanted light to come through my bird with colour, but without being coloured. Hence iridescent glass. On the way home, I thought: Our job is to be glass through which God's love passes to the next person, and how we transmit that love is going to vary tremendously. Some glass is opalescent; it quietly diffuses light so that it comes across softly as a glow, and that may be important for the needy-of-love who can't bear any brilliance. Some glass is transparent, so that the light comes across full-force, but coloured by whatever colours the glass. I wanted the light to reach me unbroken by opalescence or colour, but given the dance of iridescence -- its playfulness, its delicacy and delight. It's what I've always wanted and rarely achieved. My bird is waiting to be put up on its home window by my computer. I'm hesitant about the next project. But I have signed up for a course.... ***************************************** A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain From lupa at kos.net Sun Feb 8 14:24:50 2009 From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf) Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:24:50 -0500 Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing Message-ID: <20090208142454.78FE513011B@barracuda.rutabaga.org> I thought I sent this out yesterday, but it seems to have disappeared without a trace. Forgive me if this is a duplicate. -- Molly ************************************* The Bird I can't call it stained glass, because the glass isn't coloured. I can't really call it art glass either, because that implies both creativity and artful technique, and I used someone else's pattern, and my technique is kindergarten level. So I'm not sure what to call it. Just call it the bird. It's a simple piece of four curved pieces of textured, clear, iridescent glass that I have succeeded in glueing together with solder (not too bad for a first-timer), forming a small fat bird. I would have loved a streamlined dove, but what I've got is a sort of chickadee with a big silvery solder eye. I've been thinking about this for a while. I've usually been found, in the past, with a stick and a bit of fibre, whether it's embroidery or spinning or weaving or knitting, but I had a sudden outburst of need for COLOUR. This may have to do with the fact that we, in Eastern Ontario, are now in the depths of Forevruary, that interminable period between Christmas and Easter when the landscape is bleached into white, grey, charcoal, and sepia. Bleagh. Glass has COLOUR. So it was worth checking out. Also, it's a new form of geekiness. I am a sucker for arcana, the language and craft and trade secrets of weird old stuff, like how to knit chain mail and what the name is for the bits of a loom that go up and down to make the pattern (answers: garter stitch and harnesses). Now I know that "came" is a noun, and an ancient one. And finally, every time I get hands-on with another way of creating, my admiration of those who create in this medium goes right through the roof. I will never be a water-colour painter, or a potter, or a real weaver, but I have now tried these things and am awe-struck by those who have mastered them. You can't appreciate what makes good hand-made pottery until you've tried to throw a pot (a disaster, in my case). I haven't actually tried blowing glass, but I've watched it enough to be seriously intimidated by the skill involved. Crafts are good for the humility, which in turn is good for the soul. Please feel free to email this to the fitness-freak high-achievement technofinancial guru of your choice. Now, I've tried something that goes back a couple of millennia, one of the ur-art forms: taking pieces of glass -- this weird frozen liquid of silica and pigments -- and making something out of it, joining it to create. It's a bit mind-blowing. What's even more mind-blowing is the art and beauty going back centuries upon centuries of people making glass, cutting glass, putting glass together, to make God-language. The bird is nothing special, by art-glass standards. I had to learn the very baby steps of cutting out pieces of glass and then putting them together. Since I am either-handed and not much coordinated, this was particularly tricky. I have learned that -- at least for now -- I cut glass left-handed and solder right-handed. I remember what master weavers say about weaving: "There isn't a mistake that you can make that I haven't made before you." Right. Grasping, however lightly, the functional end of a soldering iron is not a good idea. I have a blister to prove it. But I made the bird. Not a dove, but a fat sparrow. I made it out of clear glass for a reason. A little of the reason was nervousness; I'm not stepping out into the thin air of colour without giving it some thought. But most of the reason was spiritual. I wanted light to come through my bird with colour, but without being coloured. Hence iridescent glass. On the way home, I thought: Our job is to be glass through which God's love passes to the next person, and how we transmit that love is going to vary tremendously. Some glass is opalescent; it quietly diffuses light so that it comes across softly as a glow, and that may be important for the needy-of-love who can't bear any brilliance. Some glass is transparent, so that the light comes across full-force, but coloured by whatever colours the glass. I wanted the light to reach me unbroken by opalescence or colour, but given the dance of iridescence -- its playfulness, its delicacy and delight. It's what I've always wanted and rarely achieved. My bird is waiting to be put up on its home window by my computer. I'm hesitant about the next project. But I have signed up for a course.... ***************************************** A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain From lupa at kos.net Sun Feb 15 20:18:15 2009 From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf) Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:18:15 -0500 Subject: [SB] Sabbath Blessing Message-ID: <20090215201822.F39091537D1@barracuda.rutabaga.org> Trailing Edge We are into the trailing edge of High Winter. It is no longer a penitential act to grip a car's steering wheel with ungloved hands (well, most mornings, anyway). The sun is stronger and the days are longer and there's a general sense that winter's end is, if not in sight, over the horizon somewhere. That being said, this is southeastern Ontario, and we know perfectly well that we've got at least another month in which we could get clobbered. There was one memorable year (I've blotted out which one) in which we had five major snowstorms one right after the other, all the way into April. That's just the breaks some years. Nonetheless, we are raising our chins from our chests, taking deep unfrozen breaths, and starting to think about going for real walks again, just because of the light. And also, we know the pattern. We do this cycle year after year after year: Spring, Summer, Fall, Mud Season, Christmas Shopping, High Winter, Low Winter, Mud Season.... (In Winnipeg, allegedly they have only four seasons: Winter, Winter, Winter, and Construction.) But there is a much larger progression, one that isn't cyclical and that is so huge and so outside our own limitations that we have trouble grasping it in any real, practical sense. Oh, we can say the words we've been taught to believe: that Jesus the Christ died in order to break the power of sin and death. But what does that *mean*? Sin and death don't seem to have lost much of their grip on Creation, going by the daily news. I could itemize, but there's not much point to it. Given the three wild cards of biology, physics, and human free will, suffering continues to be real and deep. People don't just make misguided or unfortunate choices, although of course there are plenty of those. They often make actively cruel, destructive choices, usually out of anger or self-righteousness or, more frightening, because it gives them the narcotic rush of having POWER over another person. And then they try to hide from God's clear, loving gaze that mirrors their evil to themselves. But thinking about trailing edges gave me an image to meditate upon. Maybe I can see the Crucifixion not as the end of sin and suffering -- I have a degree in history after all -- but as a breaking moment, the consequences of which are still working their way out. The leading edge of a wing cuts into air, creating turbulence and sending air over and under the wing's surface. As the air comes off the trailing edge, it forms large trailing vortices. (I don't really know much about this, and I sit ready for correction.) We can't see this, of course, unless we colour the air with something -- smoke works well. Yet it still happens. Maybe we're still in that trailing vortex, waiting for the breaking moment to finish playing itself out. It's only been a couple of thousand years, the blink of an eye in cosmic time (not to mention eternity). But we have no experience of what lies ahead, unlike Canada in mid-February, because this progression isn't a circle of seasons in human time. I don't know. But as metaphors go, I think I like this one. It gives me faith that no matter how screwed-up this world looks, there are forces at work that lift us and carry us forward, regardless of the inevitability of drag. I'm highly conscious of the drag -- and I gather that the stronger the push, the stronger the push-back, which probably accounts for an awful lot in the lives of the saints. But we're heading where God wants us to go. I have more faith in that now. ***************************************** A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain From lupa at kos.net Sun Feb 15 23:29:15 2009 From: lupa at kos.net (Molly Wolf) Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:29:15 -0500 Subject: [SB] correction Message-ID: <20090215232922.6DA8315431F@barracuda.rutabaga.org> A native Winnipegger has informed me that the four seasons in that city are actually "Winter, winter, winter, and mosquitos." I sit corrected. Molly ***************************************** A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain