Thinking and Praying

The eighteenth school shooting this year, and politicians continue to send their thoughts and prayers. Seventeen people killed in a high school, and tweets with prayers and consolations are being sent. Hundreds of students filing out of a school with their hands on their heads while law enforcement is holding assault rifles, and calls are being made to governors and school superintendents. And everyone continues to pocket their money from the NRA and the wide variety of gun lobbyists hard at work in Washington and in governments all around our country.

I used to think that sensible gun control was a no-brainer. Of course the elected leaders of our country would want to keep their constituents safe. Of course they would want to make sure that assault rifles and high capacity magazines would not fall into the hands of people that have no business having them (which, by the way, is EVERYONE).

And then Sandy Hook happened. Twenty first graders killed, along wth six of their teachers. First graders are tiny. The visual of a shooter lowering an assault rifle to the height of such a small child is beyond my comprehension. What is also beyond my comprehension is that nothing happened, and nothing changed. Thoughts and prayers were sent, consolations were conveyed, and it was business as usual. Of course, not for the families of these children or their teachers, and not for the community which will never fully heal. I assumed that this would be the tipping point. But, I assumed wrong.

We have lockdown drills in our school several times a year. We take our children, and sit them in a corner in the dark with our doors locked. And we tell them there is nothing to worry about, and that we will keep them safe. And we know that we are lying. That our officials have put their own interests ahead of them. That they believe that the rights of people to have guns that were created to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible is more important than the hundreds of men, women, and children dying violently and long before their time. That the pipeline of money needs to continue to flow, unchecked.

My thoughts and prayers are with us all.

It would be good for hitching a ride...

A while back, I got inspired to make some mittens. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that winter was coming, coupled with the loss of a carefully hand-knitted pair from a couple of years ago.

I like to knit. I like to wear things I knit. I hate to lose things I knit.

Once you've spent many, many hours on something, both moving forward and ripping back mistakes, it takes on qualities much greater than the sum of its parts. It is no longer just an item of functional clothing, but the end result of what you hope isn't wasted time. Which it isn't. Unless you lose said knitted item.

The pattern is from Mostly Mittens by Charlene Schurch, a book chock full of lovely, intricate color work mittens. They fit beautifully, and are wonderfully warm.

Pretty, huh? However, those eagle-eyed among you may have picked up on something here. My thumb might be a little cold. As will my left hand. After cruising along happily on this for a quite a while, I somehow lost the knitting mojo. I think it has something to do with the thumb. I like knitting mittens, but the thumb is so tiresome. It's tiny, and fussy, and hurts my hands to knit. And I might be kind of a baby about it, but I can't be absolutely sure.

I tried to make a pair of gloves a while back (which is basically just like knitting a mitten, but with 5 thumbs, and let me tell you, the whining emanating from this knitter was truly embarrassing), and I could only bring myself to finish one. It's a really nice glove, though. I suppose I could slip it under the mitten and wear them as an ensemble. And put my other hand in my pocket. And be a little sad until spring.

Fountain of Life

Several months ago, on a long car ride, we were fortunate enough to hear a Radiolab podcast about Oliver Sacks. It was a beautiful program centered around recordings that he and his partner Billy had created in the final months before he died. They were often everyday conversations, and somehow the mundanity of the topics discussed made it more poignant than many of the interviews I had previously heard from him.

Oliver Sacks is one of those people that had so many interesting facets to his life that he makes me feel sad that I have not accomplished more in my life. The fact that I need to take someone else's remarkable life accomplishments and turn them around to create petty thoughts about myself speaks volumes, but it is what it is.

His writing was thoughtful and elegant. He took scientific subjects and not only made them accessible to those of us who aren't brilliant neurologists, but he made them engaging. No small feat.

In the podcast, there was mention about his use of fountain pens. Sacks wrote free hand, and in the tapes you can often hear the gentle scratching as he writes. I love to try different pens, and those that write well make me supremely happy. I'd never used a fountain pen, so the next day we found a stationer's store in Boston. In the back of the shop, there was a counter with a huge variety of fountain pens and a wonderfully knowledgeable salesperson. A few minutes later, I was the proud owner of a fountain pen. And then a friend of The Professor's mentioned his own favorite, and I somehow felt the need to pick that one up as well. Now these live with me:

So now that I have two, I think that makes me a collector. The salesperson who sold me the one on the left mentioned fountain pen conventions. I wonder what it says about me that I was immediately intrigued? Probably not very positive things.

I have enjoyed my collection, and expect to expand it soon (there may already be one or two in my Amazon cart, but I can't be sure). I'm also fully anticipating that my writing will be prolific, engaging, and deeply scientific very soon in the near future.

The Icing on the Cake...

New Year's (as well as Christmas) really crept up on me this year. I don't know if it's age, or just weariness (or most probably a combination of the two), but I used to be able to keep a lot more balls in the air. Some days they seem to be falling all around me, and keeping up with them seems to have become both more difficult and less interesting.

Miss Serious commented last night that we weren't doing anything interesting for New Year's this year, so I got up this morning and made these (cinnamon buns from the America's Test Kitchen Baking Book):

The picture in the cookbook had a gentle drizzle of icing on the top, but I decided that if I had all that nice icing, we should be eating all that nice icing - thus the less than pretty pile on the top. Delicious though!

May we all have a healthy, happy, productive, and fulfilling 2018. Happy New Year!