February 25, 2008 at 10:44 pm (daily mumbles)
“by the by, does anyone happen to know where i can find a largish tract of land within easy driving distance of morrisville, with no mowing, a four-bedroom house, low-maintenance wood siding, garage preferable, lots of trees, and a first-floor master bedroom? for under $200k?”
4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1970 sqft, wooded double lot with spring, detached garage, artist studio. Shazam.
February 21, 2008 at 10:36 pm (creative, daily mumbles)
Ok, you ladies who like to sew…want to put those needles and thread to work for some guys (and girls…and kids…) who could really use some cheering up?
http://www.sewmuchcomfort.org/ <– Featured on NPR tonight. It’s a sewing circle of national proportions, dedicated to making adaptive clothing for injured soldiers and Iraqi children. It was founded by a lady whose son’s childhood cancer left him wearing bulky leg braces. He couldn’t wear regular pants, so she taught herself to sew to make his clothes. After a visit to Walter Reed, he suggested that she should do the same for the soldiers they saw there.
In addition to clothing (adapted with velcro for easy on-off by people with limited range of motion), Sew Much Comfort also makes back supports, pillows, and other articles of…well…comfort.
Or rather, the regular people across the country who participate in this network make these things. Sew Much Comfort isn’t a corporation or even a real business. It’s a distribution center in Ohio that handles the shipping, and a bunch of people of all levels of expertise who choose this way of making lonely, hurting men and women happy.
There’s been some talk lately of various sewing projects, so when I heard about this organization, it seemed like something we might be interested in. In addition to the usual options of monetary or new clothing donations, SMC also offers the chance for hands-on involvement.
I think it sounds very rewarding. The fact that it’s a tradition dating back centuries appeals to me, but it’s more than that. “Support the troops” gets tossed around so much it’s lost much of its meaning (especially when it’s code for “Support the Bush”), but this is supporting the troops in a truly meaningful way.
What do you guys think? 🙂
February 16, 2008 at 3:24 pm (daily mumbles, thinking out loud)
“Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.”
~ Lucy Maude Montgomery, The Blue Castle
Sometimes I think my entire life — not just events, but everything people think of as me — is built around coping with fear.
~~~~
This draft has been sitting around since, oh, the last time I updated here, and since then, I feel less like that. With the Symposium, I’m between falling axes, things are going smoothly with my mom’s house, and in general I feel less like I’m balancing on an ice floe at the edge of the world.
Either that, or I’m just to busy to acknowledge fear. The other night, I was sitting at the stoplight to get on Wade Avenue, when on NPR they were talking to the residents of a little town in (Serbia? Bosnia? one of those). One of the points of the story was that no one wanted to talk to them.
“Don’t ask me any questions,” an elderly woman told the reporter through the translator. “I’m very tired, and too much has happened here.”
My eyes welled up with tears, and I sobbed all the way to the I-40 merge. I knew exactly what she meant.
But while I feel the truth of that quote up there, I also can’t help thinking that fear, while unpleasant and constricting, can also be a powerful motivator. Fear of failure makes me conscientious and detail-oriented; fear of abandonment keeps me from taking my loved ones for granted; and impatience with fear makes me determined to live my life in defiance of it. I refuse to be that person who huddles inside her fear, wrapping it around her like a holey blanket, and whimpering, “but…what if…?”
Go boldly forth, and fear be damned.
February 16, 2008 at 3:04 pm (daily mumbles)
Five things 25-year-old Ginny didn’t see coming
Five things I was doing 10 years ago
Five things on my to-do list today
Five things I will do when I am a millionaire
Five things I will never wear again
Five of my favorite toys
Five banes of my existence
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