Speaking of faith..

My “rules” for this post are simple: respect is mandatory; curiosity is fine, asking for clarification is fine; proselytizing, denigration and snark have no place here.

This post originally started as a reply to someone else on another forum earlier this week, before I realized it wasn’t *really* what the original poster was asking for. However, because it’s rare enough that I manage to be even this coherent about how I conceptualize faith, I didn’t want to just delete it. I originally posted it in a more protected space, but decided to clean it up (and expand on it in places) because I think part of what the person to whom I was originally replying is interested in involves the idea that people who think about what they believe (or don’t believe) tend to be private or introspective and therefore silent about it so we have a hard time finding each other. The ability to respect someone else’s belief (or non-belief) and engage in honest curiosity about our world, and about how we all navigate it, is, I hope, not as rare as all that so much as it’s something we’ve been taught by the various dominant organized religions is unacceptable. I don’t believe it is unacceptable, so decided to do my part to contribute to some real or imagined larger conversation.

This got pretty long, so to spare the feed readers of those of you not interested, more after the jump.

On my iPod: Audiobooks

I spend nearly two hours a day in my car; I don’t ever really think about it, until I say things like that. Part of what keeps me sane, though, are audiobooks. I’ve reached the point in my current book (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larrson, which is *fantastic* and highly recommended, but read (or listen to – the narrator for the English translations of these (Simon Vance) is wonderful!) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire first) where I’m desperate to know what happens next and at the same time terribly sad to know that by this time tomorrow there will be no more left to listen to. In this case, it’s even more pronounced than it tends to be because in addition to being the last book in the trilogy, Mr. Larrson died young so there really won’t be more to enjoy by him, involving these characters or others (he apparently finished about half of a fourth book – out of ten originally outlined – but there are apparently some Swedish legal matters that make it unlikely it will every be finished and published). While he pushes the bounds of suspension of disbelief quite a bit, the Millenium trilogy is a fully enrapturing romp and his characters are truly unforgettable, ranging from fully anti-social and eccentric to everyday hero to straight out villain with a few other deviants along that spectrum scattered about for good measure.

Recently, I’ve also listened to The Sunless Countries, the fourth book in Karl Schroeder’s Virga series. It was, again, not the direction I expected him to take, but still very, very good. I like that he seems to be doing character-based sequels, where a character from a previous book becomes either the main or a connecting character to a new cast. It’s been a rather believable way of doing the world exploration without stretching credibility *too* much that a single core group of characters is directly and integrally involved in everything fantastical that happens throughout the series. He also does a remarkable job of keeping his characters human without over-accentuating either their virtues or their flaws.

Prior to that.. hrm.. oh, yes, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande on a recommendation from a work colleague. Very engaging (and reasonably short), but I’m not entirely sure there’s anything particularly groundbreaking about anything in it, except perhaps the author’s attempts to introduce the concept to the healthcare industry and his subsequent results.

Anyway, I’m not sure what will be up next as I usually decide what I’m in the mood for when I get to that point, but I have waiting in my library How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom, The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (which you can get, too, and for free, even: “Limited Time #FreeBook ANYONE can get the First Book of Fey, The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch http://ht.ly/248Jd” (via @audible_com on Twitter)), A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende, and Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Pre and Post.

This year’s big project (or at least one of them) with the house was the siding and the front porch. I had been planning on doing the porch with dad, but the contractor (Brian Olson, out of La Crescent, for those who may be interested; I would recommend him!) gave me a quote for both the siding and the porch that was equal to all the other bids I got just for the siding, so I decided it was worth it to have his crew do the work.

This post is pretty picture heavy, because I wanted to do some before/after comparisons, so I’ll throw in a cut here for those who may not want to deal with the pictures on a feed reader.

Mmm.. welcome back.

*contented sigh*

I’m reading more or less regularly again. By which I mean I’m actually reading printed-on-paper books as well as listening to audiobooks in the car (which I’ve been in a lot lately between the commute and a more-than-usual amount of weekend travel). Like many things in my life, reading sometimes ebbs and flows, and lately I’ve not had the calmness of mind to slip into a story and just let it take me away. It’s a sign of some peace and predictability returning, as I settle into the new job a bit more as well as make some decisions that, while not exactly weighing on my mind have been bouncing around the back burner for quite awhile. All things considered, this is a Good Thing(tm) and somewhat of a relief – for some reason it always makes me worry when I lose the desire to read.

I plowed through Santa Olivia, Jacqueline Carey‘s newest non-Kushiel novel, in a couple days last week. It lacks a lot of the depth of the Kushiel series, but was still a well crafted story with enough counterculture to satisfy. Feeding off that momentum, I started Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson and though it started a little more slowly than I’d have preferred, it’s progressed into the combination of well-researched history and plausible near-future that I love about his work. About the same time, I downloaded Bright of the Sky by new-to-me author Kay Kenyon and have been thoroughly sucked into it to the point where I actually finding myself wanted a commute longer than the 50 minutes it already is!

I’m also beginning to plot for the garden this year.. so far all I know for sure is cukes and tomatoes and pr’bly onions and peppers again. I’d do herbs (oh, right, I’ll do dill again) but that always seems like a grand idea until I realize that I have no real idea how to cook with them. *shrug* I’ll pr’bly do peas and beans again, though in the back yard this time instead of one of the boxes so they’ll get more shade and possibly vine up over the pergola. Lettuce would be good, if I actually manage to tend the garden well enough to stagger the planting (and therefore the harvesting) well enough. Pr’bly no squash this year as I don’t seem to go through as much of it, but I might give in and do a summer squash anyway. I’m learning that I’m a sort of haphazard gardener, which I’m honestly okay with, but sometimes means my follow through suffers. *smile*

Yeah..

Sometimes, pretty much this. Not always, and not always about feminism in particular, but.. yeah.

Just because..

.. it’s been something like 5 months since I posted..

More new music tonight – prepping for a long drive, which seems to be the way of things lately:

• Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
• Dropkick Murphys – The Warrior’s Code
• Tally Hall – Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum
• Dave Potts – One Night in the South

Also picked up Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong by the Spin Doctors because a good friend quoted it at me a few weeks ago and I can’t get it out of my head. Same good friend forwarded me news about a set of God Street Wine reunion shows in New York in.. June, I think; I’ll be looking for plane tickets soon, since I already have tickets to the shows. *grin*

Next weekend I’m going to see Gaelic Storm, along with I think nearly a dozen friends. I’m pretty stoked to be seeing them again, even if I am a little disappointed that we’re in a real theatre with seats which might mean dancing will be a little annoying. Not that I’ll let it stop me, but it might piss off anyone behind me. Oh well. *shrug*

Yup, this is my life lately. No real fiber artistry to speak of, and even though it’s finally spring I haven’t done any serious planning for the gardens yet. I switched jobs in there somewhere and have a longer commute, but also more stuff rattling in my skull so I haven’t even been listening to many books – it’s all about music these days. So it goes.

Where have you been..?

I’m in an odd sort of mood. It happens, I know. Random wisps of nostalgia floating around in my head, spawned by a trip home to attend a once-fond childhood tradition, combined with the continuing emotional fall out of the last year and change really couldn’t result in anything else. In the interest of fair warning, I’m likely to wax a little poetic, or even melodramatic, in the following. Eh. My muse is fickle, and I’m loathe to defy her moods lest she abandon me altogether. *smile*

It’s always sort of surprised me how many of my friends from growing up fell in love with and married their high school sweethearts. Not in a bad way, really.. more in .. well, it’s sort of a little awe-inspiring. To know so young, and to love so strong. To openly embrace the growth and change in each other, and encourage it, even as it changes the material foundations of your world. That level of certainty.. of commitment to another soul.. there is magic in our midst.

Family, both biological and chosen, and the connectedness of people, the importance of those ties, even when we don’t renew them.. maybe especially when we don’t.. there’s something.. *there* that I’m not able to articulate. Nostalgia and remembrance.. *shrug*

I was reminded, in my mind’s meanderings as I wended my way south on Highway 52 this afternoon, of Ambrosia. The .. urgency of my quest for freedom, and for identity, has waxed and waned in the 10 or so years since I wrote it. Despite the apparent prophecy in the line “I want to form my life again and again from the raw clay of my soul”, I’ve lost and found myself – not the same myself, to be sure, but still, at the essence, me – more times in the last decade than I expected. More deeply, or completely.

And yet, the weaving continues, telling stories – my stories, our stories – in myriad colors and textures, flowing like water – sometimes placid and smooth and sometimes churned to a great tumult. Like fine silk, the threads of connection seem so terribly fragile, so easily snapped and severed. And yet, in truth, they are so very resilient. Our humanity, the simple coincidence of having known each other once, then, is enough, sometimes, to bring the color and vibrancy of a faded strand to light. I’ve let too much of the tapestry of my life fade, neglected and untended, and while doing so is alternatively so simple as breathing and so terrifying as leaping from a great height, it’s past time to begin the mending.

It is, however, a line from something else I wrote – or rather, something I spat at a friend (then and again) in (admittedly somewhat eloquent) anger and frustration – that still haunts me. I’ve turned it into a challenge of sorts, a hurdle over the black abyss of a moat surrounding my deepest self, a moat that despite my best attempts to bridge seems some days unfathomable. It’s a test, administered in jest, or at least seeming so. I don’t know what will happen when someone answers it in truth. I don’t really even know what that answer is, or will be, or whether there is one. It’s somewhat of a romantic, fairy tale notion, but one rooted in an all too real need. I know it should be unnecessary, that I should be more trusting, more self-reliant; that it’s a shield behind which I hide, a crutch upon which I lean instead of learning to strengthen myself to stand without it. But I also know that, as the soul of my soul once said, healing is a spiral and sometimes we have to move a little backwards before we’re able to move forward again.

Fluff.. or at least that was the intent when I started..

I have at least three nascent spiral posts started, and at least one of those actually finished, but keep losing the ability to be coherent about the topics in them before I get them to the point I would be comfortable posting them in what is, ultimately, a public (though hardly widely read) medium. I suspect that a lot of that feeling is getting to a point, inevitably, at some point in all of them when I realize that I’m just one voice, and not an especially expert or authoritative one at that, and that the inner workings of my head, how I navigate the world in which I live, how I rationalize and justify the myriad decisions and inconsistencies and hypocrisies, is ultimately meaningless. Useful to me as introspection, at least to a point, but likely of little interest or benefit to anyone else. My spirals are rarely about activism or consciousness-raising in the way many would define those ideas, so perhaps rather than struggle to expose my own navel-gazing, I should either hush up or go back to posting about the minutiae of life.. the things I create or grow, which are are arguably more interesting to whatever “audience” I may have in this forum. *shrug*

That said, likely because I do, I think, spend a fair amount of time (or have in the last year or so) in self-reflection, it nonetheless surprises me when other people .. don’t. I’m willing to believe that I live within the confines of my head more than I should – it’s comfortable and warm and there’s no one there to ridicule or judge or misunderstand – but it still baffles me to some extent to realize just how many people simply go through their days, their lives without ever turning the focus of their curiosity inward. The unexamined life and all that.. which leads further into the knowledge that the freedom to examine my own life, to wander the halls of my mind more or less at will, is a privilege afforded me by virtue of the fact that I’m fairly secure, socially and financially. The ennui born of living a comfortable, safe life.

None of which was what I thought I would end up writing about when I opened this post this morning. I expected instead to prattle on about recent acquisitions to my music collection (this morning’s being Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and Prince’s The Hits/The B-sides 3.. *shrug*) or fretting about the tomato plant that overbalanced its cage and my neglect in righting it sooner or about the old school sci fi kick I seem to have been on lately (Orson Scott Card and Heinlein have been living in my head – and on my iPod – a lot this month*). Ah well. C’est la vie.

* Because that actually may be of some interest, I listened to Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow in rapid succession, and am currently listening to The Speaker for the Dead. I’ve never read anything by Orson Scott Card before and have enjoyed both his writing style and the worlds he creates, though they are very definitely of a style I tend to identify as “classic sci fi” as opposed to some of the newer sci fi I’ve read (or more accurately, listened to). It’s a style I like – a reasonable balance of grit and social commentary that is both easy to relate to and at the same time removed enough not to be in your face should you choose not to give it attention. I queued up Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which I apparently originally purchased some three years ago.. fortunately, Audible remembered that so I just had to download it to my current computer instead of purchasing it again) and Starship Troopers after a conversation I had earlier this week brought them up. I’ve read both of them before, but not for some time. Moon is, as should be no real surprise, one of my favorites of his, though in general Heinlein’s endings tend to annoy me – not because they’re necessarily bad stylistically, but because I tend to feel they’re less true endings than they are simply points at which he decided to stop writing. I’m also increasingly thinking I need to re-read or at least purchase and listen to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy again as it’s come up in conversations with friends at least three times in recent weeks. Not sure I’d want to listen to those, though, and it seems that I’ve had little patience for actually reading lately, which is odd and somewhat troublesome, but not enough for me to angst about overmuch.

Links, because I’m not sure I can be coherent on this right now.

From Shakesville last week, “Lessons from the rape culture” (emphasis is mine):

It’s only a kiss. Don’t make drama over it; he’s not hurting you. Besides, you like kissing, right? And it’s not like you’ve got a boyfriend, so you can kiss whomever you want. What’s the big deal? “See? Good kisses.” He says it as if he’s showed me something. As if telling me to like it will make it so. I don’t remember his name. We only met that night. I extracted myself from his presence as quickly as was polite and never spoke to him again.

From LiveJournal, cereta posts “On rape and men (Oh yes, I’m going there)” (via) (emphasis in original):

Because men raping women is systemic, and cultural, and yes it is the patriarchy and it is misogyny and it is men thinking they are entitled to women’s bodies. “Well, what did she expect, getting drunk like that?” isn’t salt in the wound, it is the foundation of the problem. The idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she’s an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him, IS THE PROBLEM.

From Sociological Images, “Do You Love Animals? Do You Have Lady Bits? Take Off Your Clothes!“

I know, PETA is low hanging fruit, but the pictures so nicely illustrate the difference between the roles that men and women are supposed to play and what about a woman is supposedly important.

From the Rochester Post-Bulletin, “Man given jail, probation for sexual assault“.

A Rochester man has been ordered to serve 90 days in jail and be on probation for 30 years for sexually assaulting a teenage girl

Edited to add one more.. from the Houston County News, “Hokah man charged in sexual assault” (emphasis mine):

A 21-year-old Hokah man is accused of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman while she slept.

[The accused] entered the woman’s Onalaska, Wis., bedroom early June 30 after a stream of harassing telephone calls, according to the complaint filed July 15 in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

…

[The accused] was charged with second-degree sexual assault and returns to court July 29 for a preliminary hearing.

He is free on a $5,000 signature bond.

Validation is always good..

From Flowing Data:

“The lesson here isn’t about global warming. It’s that you shouldn’t take data lightly. When you’re dealing with data, you have to look past the numbers.”

I feel like this has been my mantra since I started my current job (November 2004), which it seems surprises more people than it should. From my blog, written in September 2005 (emphasis added):

“As I sit and ponder this confluence of things fibery, specifically knitting, though I imagine the same would hold for weaving as well, and number crunching, there’s a certain .. something that connects the two. I’ll try to explain, at least how it works in my head, but it might get tangled. Essentially, when I look at data, I’m trying to draw out the pattern, or the story, the data tells. Another way of thinking of this is trying to create the picture of what’s happening by finding the strands and threads that weave the whole together. A single data item, like a single strand of fiber, may be beautiful, but is rarely complex. Only by combining it with others and teasing out the patterns does the larger picture, in all its glory, become clear. Sometimes, like when working a delicate lace motif in a fuzzy mohair, the pattern stays diffuse and difficult to perceive until you set it off against some contrasting background. Sometimes, like when working cables in 100% cotton, you have to exert a fair amount of effort and a not-insignificant amount of force to bring the pattern out, but once it’s there, you can’t miss it. And sometimes, like when working with hand-dyed variegated yarn, you start out expecting a certain pattern only to find a completely different one emerging as you go. Of course, there are also the times, like when working with a luscious and soft wool in stockinette, when the pattern comes out exactly as you expected without an undue amount of effort. So, when I think about it that way, it makes a certain sense that data geeks are also commonly fiber geeks. It is, after all, sometimes easier to just follow the pattern than it is to find it.”

It’s nice to have some external validation of this approach, especially lately. My life has been consumed by work this summer.. sorry for the radio silence, but sometimes that’s just how things go. Major data systems conversions will do that to you (but I can now add the development and delivery of a two day training workshop on PeopleSoft Query to my resume). *shrug*

My garden is growing; I ate my first peas yesterday (yes, they’re very late) and have several squash and cukes and tomatoes and even a  pepper, and more onions than I’ll know what to do with (not really) happily ripening. I think the watermelon vine has bit the proverbial dust, however, and the birds are eating all the strawberries and not leaving any for me, but for now I can deal with that.

I’m also knitting some, but you’ll have to wait until I replace my camera to get updated pictures, which will have to wait until someone more knowledgeable about cameras can accompany me to a store to check some out. I finished the back of Celtic Icon, though, and the right front. So that just means the right front, the two sides, the two sleeves, and the hood and seaming.. *sigh* Baby steps for now. (Though I’d love to have this one done by fall.)

I’ve also been reading and listening to books (always am really). I’m about an hour and a half from finishing listening to the third book in Karl Schroeder‘s Virga series, which has been amazing, though I have to admit I’d expected him to follow different characters for the second and third books than he did.