Book of the Year

The book I finished yesterday was SO GOOD! This is a history book, told in stories and digressions and investigations and research, very much non-linear. Not at all my usual style. In fact, it took me a while to get into it - I kept it on my kindle for longer than the three week library checkout period, and read and listened to some other books between starting and finishing it. But it gripped me, even from the beginning. I just found it hard to sit down and read straight through - it lent itself to more piecemeal reading, partly because it is not a linear narrative. 

An object, passed down through a series of black women, inspires an exploration of what life was like for these women. But beyond a gripping and at times heartbreaking close look at black families' lives down the centuries, the book provides incredible context, from the origins of the South Carolina colonies to how pecan trees are propagated, in a few number of pages. The writing is luminous, not a word wasted. 

And that's not all! The author writes of the power of objects and story-telling, in a powerful demonstration of why these things matter.

So many levels! So much research! So much love and heartbreak! All in a non-fiction academic history book, jammed with footnotes, which was partially funded by a federal government grant to the arts. Way to go, my federal government!

Runner up, non-fiction:

This book I heartily recommend as an audiobook. True confessions, this book was written by, and the audiobook is performed by, my neighbor, friend, and storyteller teacher, Noa Baum. This is both her personal story, and the story of the heartbreak that is Israel, the land eponymously twice-promised. She does voices and accents in her performance of the audiobook. Again, I could not make it through this book quickly, but visited it periodically over several months. But it is fabulous, and heartbreaking, as there are no answers.

Runner up, fiction:

This book is listed under "children". It took me about three to four hours to read, and it has no actual sex, so I guess it is not YA. It tells the story of a girl left behind as everyone leaves her town, in contemporary America. Self-sufficiency, courage, resourcefulness, sorrow, it's all there. It pays explicit homage to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, one of my favorite books of all time. I loved this book, and couldn't put it down once I started it. Well worth the quick trip.

I read/ listened to more than 180 books this year, guys, but these three stand head and shoulders above the crowd. I think I'll probably browse back through the list again, and maybe offer some other recommendations.

Still Masked

These were surprisingly fiddly
and difficult to make

I ran across this, my favorite ornament, (handmade by me) from last year. Note how it says "2020"? How naive of me! What optimism we had, with vaccines on the horizon and a new, competent, president peacefully taking office after only a few days of uncertainty.

Yesterday, I read many articles about what is happening with Omicron, maybe more than is healthy. I came away with the horrible feeling that we will all get the virus. It's inevitable, we can't protect enough to avoid it. There is a very good chance we (vaxed and boosted) will end up fine after some unpleasantness, but the unpleasantness is coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

I also came away with useful tips on masking, to do my best to postpone the unpleasantness. Tip #1: use an N95, or a KN95. If the latter, make sure to verify the mask labelled "KN95" is truly that. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a good way to verify the certification of masks. The best I can do is look for reviews or on the company website. I've bought both KN95 and surgical-style (pleated) masks from Maskc, because I really want to have my mask coordinated and stylish. They are sold as "single use" but definitely I re-use them.

Just some I've gotten from Maskc

 

If not using an N95 or KN95, double-masking is the way to go. The recommended method is to put a paper, disposable, surgical-style mask on the bottom layer (with the corners tucked together) and then a cloth mask over it. The bottom layer absorbs your moisture, and the top layer generally makes a better seal than the surgical-style. 

I was away last week, and during the week news got progressively worse, so I double-masked on the way home. It was fine, though I prefer the layer touching my face to be of cloth. The masks I made that I still wear have either silk or very soft cotton on the bottom layer. But for anything other than casual exposure, I'll either wear the KN95 or double mask.

So now, the question is, how do I make N95-style ornaments? Got to think on it.

Satisfied

I'll never be satisfied!

I've been embarked on an odyssey of mindful eating attempts. One of the main goals of this is to reach a point where I know not only "what" but "how much" I want to eat, I eat just that, and then I stop. Having just one exquisite but tiny little hand-crafted chocolate, for example, carefully selected from a free display, and then walking on, satisfied. Or, more prosaically, dishing out a small portion of one of my favorite dinners at home and then not even finishing that, because I'm satisfied. I truly do not want more.

As if.

As an experienced dieter, I have encountered various descriptions of this holy grail over the years. All of them are about how to think and act around food, and only go lightly on what to actually eat. No food lists or meal plans. Just paying attention to how much and what you eat.

I think there is a lot to this notion of listening to your body and acting on it. I picked up a book years ago, The Beck Diet Solution, with a Cognitive Based Therapy approach to eating, marketed as "learn to think like a thin person"! (This book was very influential in my starting this blog back in 2010, as one of the tenets was to have a diet buddy. There is still a link to the site over on the right.) There were a lot of useful exercises - self-experiments - to do involving learning how to recognize what we actually feel in our bodies, versus all the layers of thoughts and emotions we overlay on food. For example, she instructs you to skip a meal and check in on hunger at regular intervals, to remind yourself what hunger really feels like, while also discovering that hunger is not an emergency, you won't die, people live for weeks without eating anything. Also, to eat very slowly, setting down the fork between bites, and writing down how you feel before, during, and after. Make a daily plan in advance of all meals, and assess afterwards how you did. I found all of these exercises useful. Ultimately, though, the CBT approach relies on logical self-talk ("I would rather weigh less than eat this cupcake") in a way that requires self-discipline and self-control. After a while, it just gets tiring. It's a never-ending grind. Sigh.

Several years later, I discovered the Summer Tomato, a much more joyful approach to how to eat. Created by The Foodist, the basic approach was to only eat Real Food that tastes awesome (thus fresh tomatoes only in the summer), which requires cooking for yourself. Further, eat mindfully, exercise, and listen to your body. All good stuff, and reading her book several times, reading her blog, and listening to her podcast really did start to change my relationship to food. It wasn't a fight, because if it was a fight, you couldn't win. For me, it was still a struggle to lose or maintain my weight, but I definitely upgraded my food choices and learned to appreciate my food much more. She offered a week-long video course on mindful eating that I subscribed to. The main things I got out of that were to slow way down - fork down between bites - and to chew thoroughly before swallowing. And eliminate distractions while eating - tune in fully to the physical experience of eating and how it makes you feel. She promised the magic state of knowing exactly what and how much to eat I described up top as the result of fully embracing this approach. I never reached nirvana, but I started to make peace with where I was.

Somewhere along the way I started meditating, and I subscribed to the Ten Percent Happier app, where I am still a happy customer. They have a course on Mindful Eating, with Judson Brewer, who is an addiction specialist. I took that course, which goes deeper into the mindfulness approach than the Summer Tomato course. From there, I subscribed to Brewer's own pricey app, Eat Right Now. That had an intense month-long course on mindful eating. Some approaches I've learned from Brewer (that also work for things like anxiety and pain) are breaking the habit loop, RAIN, and disenchantment. Habit loops are something I knew about, but participating in the course helped me specifically note habits and try to modify them. RAIN (recognize, acknowledge, investigate, note) is a meditation technique where you turn in towards an unpleasant sensation (cravings, in the case of mindful eating), and explore what you are feeling with kind curiosity. This is called "surfing the urge", knowing that it won't last. Disenchantment comes from exploring your body after eating whatever, and really feeling in your body whether it feels good. I had some success with these things. I recognize a habit much more readily now, and much more of my eating is a conscious choice, though not always a wise decision. I was sometimes successful at surfing my urges, but often my urge seems to be driven from deep within me and doesn't dissipate after ten minutes or so, as the technique is geared towards. Instead, I might drive to the supermarket to buy ice cream, because I have an idée fixe that just won't go away. That's where disenchantment comes in - after eating, I can explore how my body really feels. As I started to use this technique, imagine my surprise that I can eat an awful lot of ice cream before my body starts to feel bad. But, there is a point where it does actually not feel very good. Hmm...

Then I stumbled on Corinne Crabtree, and her pricey on-line No BS weightloss course. She has taken bits and pieces of all of the approaches above and put it together in a way that really speaks to me. She is profane and down-to-earth. The basic approach is eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied (which is usually less than "full). We are fat because we overeat (eat when we are not hungry or have reached satisfied), and there are three reasons we overeat:

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

It's all about self-discovery, no shame, only data to explore. I've been through her video course, and some of her supplemental courses (eg, "Binge Better").  I listen to some of her podcasts, participate in her Facebook group, and almost daily use her planning and assessment worksheets which take about 10 minutes to do. There is definitely a cult of personality around Corinne, and I love that she reaches a population that is unlikely to follow my path of CBT and meditation and other approaches on the edge of woo-woo. She teaches habit loops, body awareness, and even how to feel your feelings, to a really wide audience that might not otherwise hear about these things. And I'm not being superior here: the way she talks about them are very useful for me as well.

For the past month, ever since I covered up the numbers on the scale for my daily weigh-in, I've been really tuning in to try to find "satisfied". I've jettisoned any goals around pounds, instead focusing on what and how much I'm eating - but in a loving and investigative way, not in a restrictive way. I've got "hungry" down pretty well, and I feel like I'm making progress towards finding satisfied. Late nights continue to be an issue for me, but it feels like progress towards being what I want to be, someone who eats what she wants, in the amounts she wants, and is at a healthy and attractive weight. 

My meditation app, Ten Percent Happier, is having a weeklong new challenge course that starts tomorrow, on intuitive eating. Short videos and a meditation for seven days. It's all part of the same approach and it's likely to help me be focused. I really liked something that came up in a teaser podcast for this course: "It's not about self-control, it's about self-care".  Yeah, baby! I've learned a lot this year about self love and self care, and I think I may be reaching a real tipping point here in my relationship to eating. I'll let you know how it goes.

Books

My sixth birthday
Yay, a book! Cowboys!

I've been a reader since I can remember. One of my earliest memories is sitting with my brother with him teaching me to read. I was skipped a grade because in kindergarten I was reading at second grade level. Now, I'm probably not tops in comprehension, but I am quick. Books I read along the way have had a profound influence on my life. Even the light entertainments I consume have had a positive influence on my vocabulary.

Despite having been employed at a library for four years, and having family members and many friends who became professional librarians, I was not a good library user. I loved going and checking out books. I would read them, and then let them sit around the house for weeks on end. I decided it would be cheaper to hang out at bookstores than to pay fines. The decade I spent in Ann Arbor at college coincided with the founding there of Border's Books - I've met Tom Border many times. During my first years post-grad school, going to the bookstore was one of the biggest pleasures of many weekends. It remained a constant pleasure for decades.

Around about the turn of the century, I realized I needed to either stop buying books or else get more bookshelves. My small house was bursting at the seams. I opted to line my entire basement with Billy bookcases from Ikea. When I found an author I liked, I went all in, usually buying an entire series of mystery or science fiction and often re-reading them. I loved looking at a series all lined up together on the shelf.

Then came e-readers and the possibility of not only not having so many books lying around but instant gratification when I wanted a new book. I was not a first-wave adopter, but I got a kindle in the second or third generation. I made a decision to never buy a mystery or science fiction any other way. For me, it's seamless to read on the device - it doesn't get in my way at all. But I have learned that actual physical reference books, and coffee table books, and cookbooks, have big advantages over something accessed on a small black-and-white kindle or an only slightly bigger (though colorful) tablet. Three or four years ago a friend showed me how to get library e-books onto the kindle, saving me literally thousands of dollars on novels since then.

When I'm into something, I can be really into it. I like to learn about them. Often that means buying books on the topic. My remaining shelf of "how-to" books can serve as a little chronology of hobbies I've had over the years. Backgammon, sewing and specifically quilting, knitting, cross-country skiing, kayaking, motorcycling, all make an appearance here. I still have these books because I'm not necessarily done with these activities.

All the basement books left after culling

When it came time to renovate the basement, all the stuff down there was an obstacle to getting started. It took me about three years to get through all the crap (with some left at the end to be disposed of only when I was moving back in). I got rid of an incredible number of books. Our county library has a very active "Friends" group that run two retail used-book stores. One of them was located just a mile from my house for several years (it's since moved much farther away). After my first ambitious culling into boxes, and subsequent struggle to get them out of the basement and into the car, I realized I couldn't carry a full box of books, and so brown paper grocery bags became my favored method of disposal. Each weekend I would drop off 3-4 bags, not wanting to carry more than that at one time and also trying not to overwhelm the volunteers at the library.

I had to hide my books behind a fence
to keep Rocky from indulging his literary taste

I worked in a library for quite a while. I have to organize my books. Currently I have them roughly sorted by topic into different physical locations, but not actually alphabetized. I still have bookcases in the two upstairs bedrooms, my office, and in the room formerly known as The Dog's Room, just renovated. I took advantage of the reno to get rid of ten brown bags of books from the Dog's Room (and a shelf of DVDs), most to the library bookstore. The books remaining in the room now are travel books and garden books. This includes travel writing, even fiction set in destination locales, and nature writing and field identification guides. All of these books have value to me in hard copy with the ability to look at pictures and flip back and forth between pages.

Travel books

Taking the time to dust, clean, and sort the books as I moved back into the Dog's Room this week has sparked a real interest in looking at them again. I kept old travel books for places I still hope to go to, though I'll probably buy an ipad version of a new travel guide for any place I go.  I haven't really looked at some of the garden books for a few years, because I had to keep them locked away from Rocky and it just wasn't convenient to get them out. So I have some of my winter reading set! 

In my bedroom, I have an entire six-shelf bookcase of books on aviation. Not how-to books, I got rid of those to some eager takers in the neighborhood in the basement culling. These are mostly memoirs and biographies of early women fliers, and some fiction also starring mostly women. When I got bit by the flying bug, it was an extreme situation. For a couple of years, I read little else. I was traveling a lot for work and I would drop into bookshops in whatever country I was in, searching for books about women fliers. So it's really a good collection. I think I could part with it, but I want to part with it as a collection to a home that will appreciate it. Any ideas?

Garden books

Room Reveal

I decided to act on updating my room variously known as Rocky's Room, Abbey's Room, The Dog's Room, the TV Room, the Sun Room, and The Porch. In a big stroke of luck, I contacted my contractor just as he had a room-sized hole in his schedule. As a result, from deciding to act to having it done was less than a month total. This almost never happens! Here is a link to the post from a month ago when I was poised to move forward. When I spoke to the contractor who did my basement, we worked out a reasonable scope of work for a reasonable price, and I just went ahead without getting any other bids. I had to leap into action going through my piled up stuff and especially books. I took ten brown grocery bags of books to the library bookstore, yay! And now I'm sitting in this updated room, all cozy with new heat and clean walls and books I can actually access and my plants, and I'm thrilled!

This shows the cluttered corner
with books wedged into the shelves

As often happens, I don't have good "before" pictures. I was pretty good about taking the "during" photos. As soon as I was well moved back in I quickly took the "after" pix, before I start messing and cluttering up the place.

   

 

 

 

 

 

Just started - air conditioner out of the wall,
electric baseboard heaters next

Drywall going up. See the hole where the a/c used to be.
Drywall going on top of the paneling. 

Ready for paint!

Painted! I'm shampooing the rug before moving back in.

EEEK! A hole in my wall!

The outdoor component of the mini-split

This was funny - when they pulled the baseboard and heating unit off this wall, what seemed to be an entire bag of dog food fell out! There have often been mice in this room, but it seems a little excessive to think they stored all of this. Maybe it just came from Rocky throwing it around accidentally - I did used to feed him in this room.

Done! I mostly sit in the chair here, so this is my view,
and Bixby mostly stays on patrol looking out the front window.

Done! The furniture will be adjusted some more,
but all the components are in place.

Done! This is the view no-one gets from this corner.
I used the phone's wide-angle lens, and you can see the
mini-split near the ceiling.

Weighty Numbers

I've been tracking my weight more or less daily since 1998. I used to weigh myself every day on an analog scale (where you leaned left or right to make the apparent reading change) and write the number down on a calendar nearby. Every now and then I would transcribe the numbers into an excel spreadsheet. I still use that very same spreadsheet today, but now I have a wifi scale that transmits the number automatically to the cloud, where I can access it from two different websites connected to the scale.

My routine is to weigh first thing in the morning without clothes, as I'm getting dressed. Some times "first thing" is postponed, especially these days where the motivation to bother to get dressed can be delayed until after several cups of coffee. Never-the-less, it's always before I eat anything. If I haven't weighed before I eat, I skip weighing that day entirely.

One of the things I learned from daily tracking of my weight is that the number the scale renders is quite volatile. It can vary by as much as four pounds in 24 hours. It's very common for it to vary by two pounds in a day. This variation actually creates a greater motivation to track daily versus weekly or monthly, as some weight-loss folks recommend. Since my weight doesn't seem to have a predictable fluctuation - not driven by weekly or monthly schedules, but instead by some complex equation based on what I've taken in (food, salt, liquids), what I've eliminated, and how much I've exercised and slept - I instead use an average or trend to decide if I'm gaining or losing weight. My excel spreadsheet relies on a simple weekly average, while one of my websites uses an engineering equation which looks at a greater period of history, but weights the most recent numbers more heavily than older ones.

Another thing I've learned is that my memory of what I used to weigh is extremely unreliable, from week to week or month to month. Having the record keeps my memory true, prevents me from either rationalizing ("oh well, I guess I'm stuck" when I'm really gaining) or despairing ("I can't ever lose weight"). 

With all of that, I don't want to lose my daily extensive record. But it's right now part of my daily routine to look at the website every single day. I think it's time to take a break from that, because I'm trying to manage what and I how much I eat mindfully. It's an experiment, and I want to focus on planning and executing that without regard to what I see on the scale. The point is to plan my food daily, try to execute mindfully, really tuning in to whether I'm hungry or not, and sensing when I've eaten enough. I want to be more in touch with my body, regardless of what the scale says.

But of course, I want to lose weight - I'm almost as heavy as I was when I started this blog back in 2010! Memory check with data: I've recently hit a single peak day that is eight pounds below where I was when I started the blog, and 18 pounds below my highest recorded weight. And that recent peak is about 20 pounds above where I settled for several years after starting the blog, which is where I'd like to get back to now. See why I like having the data!  

I'm trying a simple fix to try to meet these two points: maintain the data, but don't look at it. I put a little post-it over the numbers which is all it takes. Thanks to my wifi scale, I can step on it every day, have the number sync to the cloud without seeing it, and access it later. We'll see how it goes, how long I can stand to not look at it often!

Social Media

I'm posting less and less on Facebook, in a trend that started quite a while ago, though I check it usually twice a day. The bulk of my posts are re-posts of someone else's stuff. Some friends are on Facebook often, some more distant friends are there often enough for me to want to scan and see what's up. I belong to many interest groups and I am entertained and informed by what I see there. For example, I've got some Aerogarden hydroponic systems for growing lettuce and herbs, and I've found helpful tips and always someone to answer questions in a dedicated group there.

Whatever happened to Tumblr? I know my girl still has a couple of blogs she occasionally will post on, but with no where near the tempo she used to. I set up several Tumblr blogs, because they were so easy to post from the phone. The usual format was always at least one picture, and not very many words. I had done one for Rocky, the Very Hungry Labrador. After he was gone this summer, I sent the whole blog into an actual book. It's an amazing account recorded as it happened of all he ate during the eight years I had him, and I'm glad to have it. Because I had a blog dedicated to him, it was very easy to get into book format. I was thinking I wanted something similar for Bixby, but decided to go with a dedicated Instagram account.

I love this moody photo! I think this is why
I decided Bixby needed his own account.

I actually post much more often on Instagram and fewer of them are cross-posted to Facebook. What I post on the 'gram are photos I have taken with a very short caption - re-posting someone else's stuff is actually difficult, not like Facebook. I follow mostly different people on Instagram than Facebook - including celebrities, which I don't follow or like on Facebook. I like fashion and lifestyle posts. The company recently have made it easier to set up multiple accounts. It used to be you needed a separate email for each Instagram account, but now it can be on one email, and switching between them is just a couple of taps on the phone. Commentary says Instagram has also redefined itself subtly as an app for content consumption rather than creation. The multiple accounts feature is pushed in app as a way to separate and organize who you follow, not how you post. For example, have one to follow your closest friends and another for celebrities. 

The way I have the 'gram set up right now is one account for me, and one for Bixby (@bixby.sato). I switched my account to "private" (I have to approve anyone who wants to follow) and blocked anyone I didn't actually know who had opted to follow me. Bixby's account is "public". I switched the many dogs I follow to Bixby's account, which has cleared my feed up a little. Most posts from Bixby get tagged with something like "rescuedogsofinstagram" so others may see those posts. I'm allowing anyone to follow - we're up to seven followers!  One of my main motivations for Bixby's separate account is because it will be possible to pull from a single Instagram account into the layout software to do an actual book someday. But I was amused, about a week after I set up Bixby's account and was really into the dog-related hashtags, to get a message telling me I could set up a deal to be an influencer. (Or for Bixby to be an influencer!) Not my cup of tea, not why I'm doing this, but amusing none-the-less.

Still not a daily twitter user. I go there when something is happening, and when I've exhausted other social media and for some reason need to keep scrolling. I follow different people there, and it's sometimes fun to see their take on things.

Streaks

Needs coffee
Pic just for cuteness factor

Hey, did you notice I blogged every day in the month of October? Either here or in the garden blog. It was one of my October goals, the main one I actually achieved. (I also kept this goal private, I think, so as not to set expectations for my fans.) It turns out I like daily blogging, and I may continue at an increased pace for a while, coasting on the momentum. But I'm no longer mentally fixed on "every day". I've found the psychology of a streak works for me for a little while, giving me increased motivation for what it is. But after a while, if I break the streak, then I get into the "why bother at all?" mindset and stop completely whatever it was. So "more often" is how I'm going to think about it, not "every day".

 

 

 

 

 

 A couple of things I noticed about daily blogging:

• I like posts with pictures, even if the picture is barely relevant. 
• Posts with mostly pictures are not cheating, especially if its a garden blog post. The visual record is an important part of the blog.
• As I went about my days, there was some increased mindfulness around, "I could write about this for the blog". It made me more self-conscious during the day, in what I think was a good way.
• I wanted a topic for each post, (versus just a general checkin) but it didn't have to be heavy or long. 
• It was ok to post about things that weren't entirely current, if the post had something worth saying (again, not profound, but at least mildly interesting or amusing).
  
• It's much easier to post using the laptop than the ipad (and almost impossible using the phone). And my current laptop boots up much more quickly than the ancient one I replaced this spring. That reduced a barrier to posting.
• With Blogger, posts can be written and then posted at a later scheduled time. A few times, when I was inspired, or I knew I would have a hard time finding the time in the next day or two, I stacked up posts in advance. I did this especially with garden blog posts.
• Sometimes I broke long posts up into multi-day posts, sometimes written together and then staged to go up once a day. That was based on my wanting to hit the "every day", and also not impose on my readers' attention spans.
  
• The self-consciousness, and maybe the writing, actually stimulated more private journalling rather than replacing it. This surprised me.
• I like writing. I've just finished another story-telling class, and it led me to think a bit more about the crafting of a story. This mostly hasn't bled over into the blogs, which are more stream-of-consciousness, but I'm thinking about it a lot. 
  
• For some time, I've organized my pictures I use in the blog into google albums, one for each blog and year. I chose google some time back as the cloud storage for all my photos, so iphone photos go there automatically and off-loaded camera pictures go there manually. But I take so many photos that it's helpful to have the blog pics in an album dedicated to this year's blog so I can find them again.
  

Not a Fan

From left: Captain Hook, Tinkerbelle, Peter Pan,
The Crocodile, and Wendy

I am not a fan of Halloween. I'm not opposed to it, of course. I liked seeing my kids and their friends dressed up when they were little. I've been known to hold a plastic hook and brandish a cutlass when pirates are needed. Pumpkin decorating can be fun. I'm glad the current state of pandemic caution says trick-or-treating is likely safe and so the kids who have missed so much can enjoy it. 

But I'm not a fan of horror books or movies or zombies or what looks like dead people all over people's lawns. Pumpkins left outside get smashed or eaten by deer or squirrels. Most of the candy is poor quality, but I've been known to eat it anyway. Bah humbug!

Now, I'm holed up in my basement bunker with all of the outside and upstairs lights turned off. It's very quiet; I'm just reading. I have a dog that goes berserk - like Rumpelstiltskin about to explode with fury - when someone comes to the door. I figured it was better to hide both of us than to leave him furious and scared all night. I did leave a bowl of M&M packets on the front porch, if anyone ventures up in the dark. It'll be interesting to see if any of it is there in the morning.

EEEK! Imagine how I jumped (and the dog too) when the door to the next room here in the basement started moving with something knocking against it just now! Turns out the robot vacuum cleaner is on its appointed rounds. Hopefully we can settle back in to the book for a while.

Dead Man's Run

The 5K race scheduled for last night switched to an all virtual race because of the storm. But they opened the course for folks to do it on their own, so my girl and I headed down past Capitol Hill to Historic Congressional Cemetary, and ran it on our own. The day was absolutely gorgeous, a perfect 60 degrees for running.

This was my first 5K since the Before Times, and my girl's first ever! Her time was equal to my personal best time, but she is 22 and I was 60 when I made that time, so ok. We both are doing run/walk intervals timed by a watch. My run intervals are slower than some people's walks, but the mechanics of running are different than walking. It's always clear to me when I'm doing which. The advantage of doing these short running intervals is you can go further from the very first time out. Today, at two miles, my thought was that because my intervals are so short and I was going so slow, I'd be able to keep up the run intervals to the end. But by 2.75 miles, the rest of the course was all uphill, there was no cheering crowd, and I was done. I walked the rest of the way.

We had fun, and are signed up for an in-person Turkey Trot next month. 

I hope to train more before then. My knees are part of the limiting factor, but also my lack of cardio fitness. I'm doing physical therapy for the knees, but I've got to get out there for the cardio. Better fitness should spill over to everything else in my life, so the theory (and some of my previous experience) suggests.

In prep for this, I dug down in my drawers and closets and found some running clothes I hadn't been wearing. Some I gave to my girl and some I kept. Yay for shopping my closet!

The Worst Flooding Since Isabel

About 5-6” covering the pier

We’re having a fairly normal fall storm, but the angle of the winds have combined with the tides to create the worst flooding in the Chesapeake area we’ve seen since hurricane Isabel, in 2003. Earlier this week there was a nor’easter north of us, and the drainage from up north down into the Chesapeake is aggravating the situation.

There was a general email sent out by a substitute caretaker at the marina (the owner is on a foreign vacation) suggesting everyone needed to look to their boats. I was scheduled to run a 5K with my girl this evening, but it was cancelled as the Anacostia River trail is under water. As a result, I had the time and decided to go up - more to look at it than because I was worried.

The drive up was miserable. Normally under an hour, we poked along on the interstate at about 40 mph. In unlikely timing, I got to the marina during a relatively dry interval between two rain bands. It was an hour or two after high tide, but it was pretty high! It was over the dock, by several inches. I had brought my boots, and was able to get down to the end of the pier where my boat is.

The floating dock is higher than the fixed pier.
The metal ramp connects the two.
Mutima is on the right.

This spring, the marina installed new floating docks at end of the fixed pier, and I was lucky enough to get one of the few slots. As a result, I tie my floating boat to something that also floats, and so my boat and the dock move together. This is why I wasn’t too worried about how Mutima would come through. But, I wanted to see it.

For previous storms, I’ve had to tie my floating boat to fixed pilings, and so it’s hard to get a line that has enough slack to hold the boat as it floats up, but not too much slack to make it too loose in lower water, and thus likely to bang into the sides of the slip. 

The winds kicked up while I was there, and they made me stagger a couple of times and make sure I had very firm footing. After about 20 minutes, the skies opened back up and I headed home. Waze took me on a tour of alternative roads, apparently any road being better than I95 tonight. I was through the worst of it before dark.

The highest water is likely to be around 2 am, high tide and the tail end of the storm. I may make another trip back up in the next couple of days to make sure all is still well.

Homemade Dog Toy

 I heard about this from someone in our (zoom) dog training class. I dropped treats down through the tubes (with Bixby watching) and set it down. It took seconds for him to get the idea. We did it repeatedly. 

Watch Bixby:

Link if can’t see:

https://youtu.be/giLDWYbsclw

Imagine Rocky with this! He had the drive, but no finesse. He would have just eaten the whole thing, box and tubes and all! Only one go-round before having to replace it all!

Glenstone

Nature and architecture housing art

Back in August, I visited the Glenstone Museum with my friend K. The Glenstone Museum is a private entity, funded almost exclusively through a single family's fortune. This place is a result of a single compelling vision, clearly not the result of a committee. They have space-limited tickets (even before Covid); tickets are free but are hard to get, going fast like Hamilton tickets when a new bunch are released. I had set an alarm for the first of August at 10 am, and actually went on-line within minutes of the reminder. I was expecting the newest batch of October spaces, but to my surprise they had some near-term August tickets also available. I snagged two for later that same week, because why not?

Glenstone is clear on having a three-point vision: Art, Architecture, and Nature. Their art is post-WW2, their architecture is modern and green, and their nature is meant to enhance the previous two and reflect the land's regional ecosystems. It's on former farmland west of DC (all land near DC is former farmland, unless it's current farmland). Every aspect of the site is tightly controlled, down to the uniforms the on-site workers wear. They are grey, meant to be distinctive but blend with the modern architecture and not detract from the art. (The grey uniforms frankly looked like socialist worker costumes to me.) I understand most of the folks working there are hired for their interest in, and further trained in, the art.

Engaging directly with outdoor art

The art includes a permanent collection and visiting exhibitions. There are two indoor spaces, a conventional gallery and an amazing mostly underground space with surface pavilions and light wells for natural light. There are also giant outdoor pieces, which is part of the compelling vision. There is a new building under construction, to display a single piece of art. Imagine that, what it takes to do that! Money and ego, in huge amounts, I would think. There are trails, winding along meadows and down to a stream with wooded edges. There is a sound-art installation, which we heard from a distance but missed the full experience due to time limitations - reason alone to go back. 

Partly what had sparked me to visit was an article about a visiting exhibition, a retrospective on the African American artist Faith Ringgold. Amazing and breathtaking, to follow the decades of her evolution to the current day. The below-ground exhibits were part of the permanent collection, interesting and intriguing modern art displayed in a very conscious way to make connections and contrasts. No photography indoors is allowed, which then drove me in the direction intended: engaging with the art directly. I was entranced with an installation that was an entire room, with running water from multiple sinks, along walls evoking a forest, and stacks of newspapers making piles everywhere. What was it about? No clue in any notes, we were left on our own to experience it for ourselves

The trails only cover a mile or two, not a serious hiking experience. But to the delight of many visitors, including me, a large wild turkey family crossed the path in front of us, from one part of the tall meadow to another.

I was taken aback to find, down by the shady stream, a vast expanse of a very very nasty invasive weed, Japanese stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum.  It's expecially egregious to have it growing on the banks of a stream, where the seeds are going to wash downstream and spread further than by air alone. Once seen in this beautiful place, it couldn't be unseen. To me it was like an artwork that had been defaced by vandals, detracting significantly from the experience. (I provided this feedback to the museum, hoping they had a plan to manage this. I am aware the only way to manage it is very labor-intensive, but it really has to be done.)

Kind of a Shrek vibe, no?

One of the most famous pieces at Glenstone is Jeff Koons' Split Rocker, a huge sculpture with interior plumbing that feeds an annual display of colorful living plants. I had seen photos, and it was part of my impetus to visit. Because it's living, it is different every year. One of the guides told us that due to this year's weather, it was the best it had been in years. It was magnificent, and I lingered to both take pictures and study how it was put together, what plants were used, what glimpses of the plumbing and works I could get.

Imagine my delight when, going through the old travel photos of my mother, I came on this! While info in my mother's scrapbook is sketchy, from what I can tell the photo is from the year 2000. An internet search suggests the sculpture was in Avignon, France that year., the year it was created. How cool is it to have this!

Norway in the 20th and 21st Centuries

TL;DR - there are some Norwegian TV shows that will be even more fun if you have a little background in Norwegian history.

I've been watching Norwegian TV shows, and that sent me down an internet rabbit hole to understand some of the larger context and to go a little deeper on some points. (Aside: I am struck by how lucky I am to be able to sit on my couch with my tablet - a device with no moving parts - and have the entire history of the world - with moving pictures - at my fingertips!) Most of my information comes from Wikipedia, a source I figure to be fairly reliable (and one I give an annual donation to, because they are so very useful). Already, sitting down to write this piece has led me to several additional clicks and digressions, so this may take a long time to get finished!

I have always had a special interest in Norway, due to my family heritage. My maternal grandfather was born in Norway; my maternal grandmother was born in the U.S. but had elder siblings born in Norway. So I've had a sketchy knowledge of the history, have visited the country a few times, and even met the Norwegian relatives in one of those early visits. (Sadly the families all lost touch with the death of the older generations.)  This has no doubt given me a predilection to be more likely than the average viewer to watch Norwegian TV.

I watched a Masterpiece series called Atlantic Crossing. This is the 8-episode story of Norwegian Crown Prince Olav and, especially, Crown Princess Martha, during World War 2, from the invasion of Norway by Germany in 1940 to the surrender of German troops in 1945. Martha spent most of the war years in America, where she famously and possibly scandalously was great friends with FDR. From there, I encountered a movie called The King's Choice, which focuses on the first few days of the German invasion of Norway and the government and the King's response to it.

So here's a recap of some of the history of Norway in the first half of the twentieth century, including the events in these shows:

Current borders

In 1905 Norway finally threw off the oppressive yoke of its foreign ruler, i.e. the Norwegian and Swedish parliaments agreed Norway should be its own country with self-determination, for the first time since the middle ages. The Norwegians decided their own form of government should be as a constitutional monarchy, and so they elected a younger son of the King of Denmark to be their new king. (Aside: Norway had full women suffrage by then, far before England and the U.S., so it was not only half of the country deciding this, but all the adult citizens.)  Viewers of The Crown will be familiar with the duties of the British constitutional monarch: a lot of ceremonial and symbolic things, and specific recognition of the legitimacy of the Prime Minister and "the government"; Norway is similar, except the king routinely sat in cabinet meetings with the top ministers. Norway's new king enthusiastically embraced the Norwegian-ness of his new role and ensured his only son was raised thoroughly Norwegian.

So it was this elected King and his adult son and daughter-in-law, and their three young children, that were the royal family during the second world war. 

Norway, along with Sweden and Denmark, stayed steadfastly neutral during the first world war. They all three planned to do the same as the second world war broke out in continental Europe, and none of them had a large standing military. But this was a different time and new norms emerged. Norway's strategic importance came from its long, mostly ice free Atlantic coastline which gave year round open ports, unlike Sweden and Finland who became ice bound in the Baltic Sea. Germany did not have sufficient iron ore to support its war effort, and decided the Swedish iron mines in that country's far north would be their reliable source. The only way to get the ore to Germany in sufficient volume was via rail to Norway's northern coast and then via sea down to Hamburg and other ports. 

Finland was attacked and invaded by Russia (which was initially allied with Germany), partly to get access from the other direction to the Swedish ore. So Britain decided to invade Norway to secure the coastline, ports, and rail heads. Initially they asked for free passage from both Norway and Sweden to do this, and both countries declined. And so, in early 1940, Britain made a plan with France to invade anyway, hoping the Norwegians would bow peacefully to a fait accompli. But the allies squabbled over details and pushed their plans back by just a few days. During that delay, in April 1940, Germany invaded both Denmark and Norway, using the imminent British invasion as their reason. In just a few hours, little Denmark surrendered - including their king (the Norwegian king's older brother). (Aside: Denmark retained some internal independence for the first couple of years, but then became completely subordinate to Germany. But Denmark was the only country in Europe that effectively protected the entire Jewish population, evacuating essentially everyone to Sweden overnight, and it was done with the King's support).

The tiny Norwegian military, without any instructions from the dithering government, resisted the German invasion in Oslo long enough for the cabinet ministers and the royal family to escape to the northern countryside. This gave the Norwegian government time to decide on their response to the invasion: surrender or declare war on Germany, ally with Britain and France, and fight?

Remember little Norway had only been independent for 35 years at this point. Surrendering would put them under Germany's thumb, though with a puppet Norwegian government headed by a Nazi-associated member of parliament, Quisling, who had proclaimed himself head of government and seemed to have Hitler's backing. (Does the name ring a bell?) The only possibility of fighting was if the allies came with troops and ships, and they were busy fighting and losing in France at that time - the Dunkirk evacuation yielding the continent to Germany was still a couple of months away. But if Norway went to war, there would be likely massive loss of Norwegian life and destruction of their country.

As the cabinet wrestled with the ramifications of their possible choices, the King and the Crown Prince independently reached a decision. The Crown Princess and her children had fled to Sweden, seeking refuge from her uncle, the King of Sweden, and eliminating a possible pressure point. If the cabinet decided to surrender and recognize the unelected Quisling as head of government, the King and his entire house would abdicate rather than legitimize this puppet regime. Who knows how influential that was in the cabinet's decision? At any rate, tiny Norway declared war on Germany.

Britain executed part of their original invasion plan by occupying the Faroe Islands and Iceland, both at that time considered part of Denmark. Allied troops did land in northern Norway, and actually defeated German troops there and held them off for months. But eventually, the allies decided the position was untenable, they wanted the troops for continental Europe, and they evacuated, leaving the Norwegians to years of occupation and resistance. 

The cabinet and King and Crown Prince fled to Britain, where for a while the King and Crown Prince lived in Buckingham Palace with their cousins the British royals. The Crown Princess and the royal grandchildren proved an embarrassment to Sweden after they rejected a German plan to bring three-year-old Harald to Norway to be the new King of a puppet regime. (Tiny Sweden was trying hard to persuade Germany of the value of maintaining nominal Swedish sovereignty and neutrality in a very friendly regime, rather than simply annexing them.) So the young royals made their way to Finland and then to America on a still-neutral American ship that was fetching home Norwegian-Americans and others who had ties that gave them visas to get there. For a while, the Crown Princess and her children lived in the White House with a smitten FDR, making it official that the Norwegian royals had the nicest reception of any refugees anywhere any time. 

Norway, like France, maintained a government-in-exile in Britain, sponsoring many effective resistance efforts. One notable one included thwarting Germany's atomic bomb efforts through destroying a plant making "heavy water" needed for these weapons. Norway suffered greatly during the occupation, with the Nazis seizing and sending food to Germany, leaving the Norwegians to grow cabbages in every square foot of arable land. In 1944, after D-Day, the Soviets combined with the Norwegians to open a northern front, recapturing the mineral rich north. The hapless Finns had much of their northern territory permanently ceded to the Russians with the allies' blessing at the end of the war. Little Norway escaped that same fate due to support from Britain and the U.S., and now shares a far-northern border with Russia. The Royal Family returned to Norway after Germany's surrender to much acclaim and remains very popular there. The current King Harald V is the little boy who evacuated during the German occupation.

Fast forward to the latter part of the twentieth century and early days of the twenty-first. Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, with enormous reserves of oil under the North Sea yielding huge revenues, much of which goes to the government and is used for the benefit of the people, not private oil companies. They try to balance their green values with being a major world oil producer. They have a social welfare model and multi-cultural values, like the rest of Europe having accepted many more refugees than the United States. They also have a significant racist faction and have experienced white terrorism with significant loss of life. 

So with this backdrop, we (finally!) come to the two near-future 21st century Norwegian series I've been watching. The first, Beforeigners, has so-far a single season, and a second under way. I wrote in May 2020: "my absolute current favorite is Beforeigners from Norway via HBO. The premise is amusing: people from ancient times start to appear in present-day Norway in sufficient numbers over sufficient years to present an immigration issue that challenges the culture. It's neo-nordic-noir; our heroes are a present day troubled and cynical detective and his rookie Viking shieldmaiden partner. There are also some naked men."

And one I've just barely started: Occupied. It's premise is just on the edge of plausible:  A very green Norwegian prime minister chooses to shut down all oil and gas production in order to go renewable and prevent more global warming. Europe needs the Norwegian supply and is in crisis as a result. Russia sees an opportunity and with Europe and America's passive acceptance steps in "just to re-start critical energy supplies". When I first started this 3-season series last year, I was taken with it. But in last year's considerable constant real-life political angst, this tale of consciences struggling with compromise and collaboration versus resistance was too hard for me to concentrate on, and I only watched a couple of episodes.

Now, with my more in-depth background understanding the Norwegian experience and occupation in WW2 and the subsequent Russian invasion in the far North, there are additional overtones to the story I will look for. It's available on Netflix, and it'll pop up in my rotation fairly soon.

Hey, It’s October!

 I finally woke up to the fact that if I’m going to use my pumpkin tablecloth at all, I’d better hop to it. I love this little vignette!

The Dog's Room

I have a small room off the main house, like a place that was conceived of as a screen porch, but was converted to a year-round room sometime in the distant past. It has huge windows on three sides, and even a glass door and a leftover window on the interior wall to the main house. It has knotty pine paneling, a symptom of the times in which it was built. It also has fake beams in the ceiling, and an incredibly ugly and in-your-face linoleum now hidden beneath carpet tiles. It has its own electric baseboard heating system, and I installed a through-the-wall air conditioner. 

It used to be the dog's room, since my Abbey adopted it as her own maybe twenty years ago, because she had been an outside dog and she wanted the visibility. When I got Rocky, he needed to be confined initially because he was undergoing heartworm treatments, and I used this room, which had room for his big crate. Later, he had to be confined in order to manage his voracious destruction. The TV has always been in there. Bixby is not generally left in there, so perhaps it’s becoming the TV room. Or, maybe it’s becoming the green room, as I concentrate plants in there.

The last time I substantially upgraded the room was in 2013, between Abbey and Rocky. Between dogs is often a good time for a really deep cleaning. I took all the books off the shelves and dusted and vacuumed all the dog hair, and shampooed the carpet. I acquired my first flat screen tv, and worked the wiring to set up a sound bar.

Now, I’m contemplating a major upgrade. It could use a more efficient and quieter heating and cooling system, so I want a mini-split to hang on the wall. But that requires rerouting an electric line from the opposite wall. Once that is in place, the through the wall air conditioner should be removed, so the outer and inner walls will need to be patched. Patching the knotty pine wall might be a problem, so why not just drywall the whole thing? If I’m doing that, should the fake ceiling beams come out as well?

And so the dominoes begin to fall.

I typically think about these things for a long time before acting. I have researched mini-splits (but don’t understand the name or it’s origin). It’s time to discuss with a contractor. 

Clearing Out

Once upon a time, photography was one of my main hobbies. As is my wont, when I’m into something I can be all in. I always had a camera with me, and I learned to see the world with an eye to lighting and framing. I took classes, I read books, I subscribed to magazines, and of course I acquired equipment! My mind is going right now to a longer essay about how photography has influenced my life, but that’s not the post I had in mind when I started this, so I’m going to push ahead on my original intent. While I did learn how to develop and print in a darkroom, I never got into that aspect of photography, and so didn’t gadget up for that.

I plunged into the world of high-end SLR photography in the early 1990s, the dark ages of miniaturization of electronics, and firmly still in the world of film. I went with the Nikon brand for my camera backs and changeable lenses and was fortunate that they have had a commitment to compatibility - lenses I bought back in the beginning still work on the latest cameras. But, as things got “smarter”, not all functionality transfers. The quality of lenses depends largely on the quality of the glass, however, not on its electronics. And I bought some very high quality lenses.

I also wanted to always have a camera with me. Sometimes things happened, or light became extraordinary, and a pocket camera would be just the ticket. I did NOT have a camera with me on 9/11, and that prompted me to buy my first ever digital camera, a pocketable Nikon. 

The last time I used my film cameras was around 2006, when I went on a big vacation with my first digital SLR, also a Nikon. That was also about when phones started having cameras, but not very good ones. Pocket digital cameras, however, started becoming very very good. So I kept buying equipment, but what I got shifted. But I never got rid of anything! 

One ooky day this past week I decided to tackle the issue of camera equipment. The huge pile of cameras, lenses, accessories, and especially cords and wires took up half of a closet. And since I never trusted cameras to the formerly damp basement, it was prime closet space off the dining room. I could think of better uses for the space. 

I laid everything out on the dining room table, sorting, and figuring out what went together and what still worked and what was just trash. Then became the hard part - I had to decide what I might want to keep and what could go away. And related, what might have some value to someone else, and how could I keep it out of the landfill?

Pocket film and digital cameras were easy for me to part with. I have one nice pocket digital camera that I definitely use, but the rest (some from my mother) could go. Hooray, posting on the neighborhood listserve found homes for all I was willing to part with. Oddly, young people want to experiment with film. Parents want digital cameras for their kids trying to stave off phones for them.  I also had a vintage 1950s film camera, and a broken digital one with retro good looks, and someone else in the neighborhood took them for display purposes. Win win win!

I will definitely part with my Nikon film camera back. I will not got back to film. But all the other SLR equipment I can’t decide about. The digital camera back I have is from 2011, but it was high end and is still good. I do not know if I’m going to use it again, but I can’t quite part with it. And as long as I might use it, I am also hanging on to at least some of the ten lenses and the many many accessories I have to go with it. At least for now. I put all the stuff I have left into a big box, and its in my spare room until I’m ready to take the next step to sort and dispose. I imagine taking out the camera back, and doing some photography around here with some of the nicer lenses, and trying to decide if I should keep any of this at all. Will I ever use it? I’m not likely to ever schlep it on a trip that involves airplanes. Too heavy and bulky.

So what I have that I definitely use are a very nice pocket digital camera (bought in 2011), and a high end Sony self-contained large and heavy digital camera I bought for my cancelled 2020 trip to Iceland. I don’t know how to use all the features of the Sony camera, and perhaps I should focus on that instead of idle dreams about the SLR. The joy is that I don’t have to decide this now, it can wait a while.

I believe I will be able to find someone to take all of the Nikon equipment that I’m willing to part with in a batch. When I’m ready to part with it, I’ll start by putting out feelers among young people I know that are in the local art scene. I know some of this equipment has monetary value, but not enough money that I’m willing to go through the extra trouble of actually selling it myself. I won’t mind if someone takes it all and sells it because I just want it to be used.

Delicious and Indulgent Foods that are not Sweet

 

I am trying to cut back (but not eliminate) sweets from my life. Sweets play an important role in my life - few things feel as luxurious or indulgent as do sweets. Sometimes I want soothing, a feeling of taking care of myself, and baths or hot tea don't do it for me at all. I'm not a huge fan of wine, and I've cut way down on all alcohol, wary of migraines. In my quest to find alternative satisfying luxuries, I ended up at the Georgetown Olive Oil Company.  

They are a tiny little storefront on M Street in (duh) Georgetown. When I went there, the door was locked and I had to ring for admission, and the sign on the door said they were only allowing three customers in at a time. I was, at first, the only customer. 

They stock several olive oil varieties, and many flavored olive oils as well. They also have dark and light balsamic vinegars, other vinegars made from different wine varieties, and flavored vinegars. They had to serve the tastings to me - in tiny paper disposable cups, just to wet your mouth and get a sense. Drinking even a swallow of olive oil or vinegar was a new sensation for me. On a subsequent trip, I may bring in my water bottle for clearing my mouth. Other customers came into the shop, and so I didn't get a chance to sample everything (which I would have enjoyed!)  I came home with several small dark bottles, Moroccan picholine varietal oil, lemon-flavored oil, premium white balsamic, and peach-flavored white balsamic. (They re-use the bottles, and there is a discount for bringing them back.)

Reading about how to do an olive oil tasting, the pure taste without food is recommended,as is done in the shop, but I decided to set it up with some extras: a baguette, some leaves of butter lettuce, some (homegrown) cherry tomatoes, a farmer's market peach. I pulled from my cabinet the standard bottle of olive oil and the balsamic vinegar, for a comparison. My girl came over, and we happily went to town. 

The Moroccan picholine olive variety had a real bite, a taste that came back in the back of the mouth. I liked it fine on the baguette, but it was overwhelming on the plain lettuce - it would need something to tame it - or compete with it - like a lot of good pepper. The lemon-flavor was good, but my girl and I were disagreed on whether it overwhelmed the underlying flavor of the oil. The white balsamic was heavenly, sweet and sour at once. I loved the peach flavored balsamic, but my girl couldn't stand it.

I'm indulging myself on the oils, keeping in mind that olive oil degrades rapidly - no point in hoarding it. Vinegar will last for years, literally. I have used the peach vinegar to cook with once - finishing some pork chops. But where I found I really liked it was as drink. The peach vinegar mixed 1:1 with rum over ice makes a lovely little tipple. I looked up "shrubs" and they are pretty much this. (Oddly, I tried some seltzer in the drink, and it made it much worse.)

Georgetown Olive Oil does mail order, but I enjoyed the experience in the shop, and I want to return the bottles, so I imagine I'll be back down there before much longer.