Real Men Knit

I love the way the narrator felt he had to explain what he meant when he said "grab your sticks". ;)

Potter seems none the worse for wear - thank goodness. I don't know if it's psychosomatic but I feel dizzy every time she enters the room. Haven't brought myself to pet her yet, but make loving noises whenever she's near.

NYC Day 3 & Potter

Well, we just got Potter from the animal hospital - where she apparently didn't eat much in the 3 days she was there. We've got to keep her more of less off our laps & handle the kitty litter gingerly for the next 2 weeks - and then bring her back for a check up a month after that and then another check up some time after that - so she'll really have had her fill of the carrier by the time this is all over. She seems less traumatized on her return this time than the first time she had to overnight @ Angell, so I guess that's good. Photos today from 6.Jan.2011. Several Klee's & an interesting bldg. & sculpture.

NYC Day 2 & Potter

Shots from around the Met Museum & Guggenheim on 5.Jan.2011.

We dropped Potter off @ the hospital today - she won't be back until Sunday @ the earliest & we won't be able to pet/hold her for more than 20 minutes/day for weeks after that. But they say there's a 95% cure rate for hyperthyroidism using this radioactive iodine. Andy insisted on looking @ the cats up for adoption as we left - I always feel so sad walking away from those animals - while well cared for @ Angell - esp. the gray & white one named Bob who was Potter's exact counterpart - though male.

Didn't feel much like practicing when we go home - to our catless house (at least for awhile) - but the piccolo arrived from _its_ stint @ the repair place so practice a bit I did, just to see if everything was copacetic. It seems to be playing much better - the repair person basically took it apart & treated it as if it were a brand new instrument. So I'm hopeful that _at last_ the thing will stay in adjustment for more than a few months. Fortunately she said it was still warranty work so I had to pay for neither the 3-hour repair nor the shipping.

Back in the deep freeze today, but they promise mid-50s by Friday - entirely _too_ warm for Feb. ask moi.

En route & NYC day 1

Pix today from 1/3 & 4 of my New York trip. The first shot is Boston's Chinatown as seen from the bus. The indoor forest was the NY Times new bldg. The patio shots are from Magi & Michael's wonderful apt. in Harlem. The park shots are Central Park - on a walk from M&M's place to the Met Museum - a longer, colder jaunt than I'd anticipated. I have no idea what the latin says, but liked the bldg. decoration. Then come some shots from inside the Met. The Wright sprite, or a version thereof, graces our garden in the summer & living room in winter. I like the indian story teller I shot (with the camera) after lunch. I wonder if the stained glass picture with the waterfall was the inspiration for one of the stained glass windows in the Menominee Presby church.

I'd be a fool

Pix today from 12/28 (the side yard) & 30 (a wonderful snow wave)/2010. Poem from yesterday's Writer's Almanac. Heading out soon for Alexander lesson - am SO glad I didn't venture out last night to teach - it had started refreezing by mid-afternoon & would have been a total mess travel-wise by 4PM.

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom

by Dorothy Parker

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend—
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength,
I'll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I'm bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall—
I'm a fool to rise at all!

Two-hour delay? I think not

Pix from the storm we got Dec. 27, 2010.

I was doing my best to have an attitude of gratitude while shoveling more than an hour in the rain. Blech. The Governor told all non-essential personnel to stay home. Harvard closed. Northeastern? Two-hour delay. So rain/sleet all day & then refreezing tonight - I think I'm going to cancel lessons today anyway, NEU admin be damned. Yesterday morning nineish during the snow storm I _tried_ to take Potter to the vet for her hyperthyroid treatment - got 1/2 way there & realized it was hopeless - even if I got there by the time I'd dealt with the intake I don't think I could have gotten home - at least for hours - as it turned out things eased up noonish. But heading out in the rain on top of snow and then snow again this PM? I think not. :) Tootling & stitching on order for today.

Repudiate violence

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Here is the transcript:

By Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown'
msnbc.com msnbc.com
updated 1/8/2011 10:13:25 PM ET 2011-01-09T03:13:25

SPECIAL COMMENT

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently.

Left, right, middle - politicians and citizens - sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept "targeting" of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

This morning in Arizona, this time of the ever-escalating, borderline-ecstatic invocation of violence in fact or in fantasy in our political discourse, closed. It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters - or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.

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If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics - she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

If Jesse Kelly, whose campaign against Congresswoman Giffords included an event in which he encouraged his supporters to join him firing machine guns, does not repudiate this, and does not admit that even if it was solely indirectly, or solely coincidentally, it contributed to the black cloud of violence that has envellopped our politics, he must be repudiated by Arizona's Republican Party.

If Congressman Allen West, who during his successful campaign told his supporters that they should make his opponent afraid to come out of his home, does not repudiate those remarks and all other suggestions of violence and forced fear, he should be repudiated by his constituents and the Republican Congressional Caucus.

If Sharron Angle, who spoke of "Second Amendment solutions," does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

And if those of us considered to be "on the left" do not re-dedicate ourselves to our vigilance to eliminate all our own suggestions of violence - how ever inadvertent they might have been then we too deserve the repudiation of the more sober and peaceful of our politicians and our viewers and our networks.
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Here, once, in a clumsy metaphor, I made such an unintended statement about the candidacy of then-Senator Clinton. It sounded as if it was a call to physical violence. It was wrong, then. It is even more wrong tonight. I apologize for it again, and I urge politicians and commentators and citizens of every political conviction to use my comment as a means to recognize the insidiousness of violent imagery, that if it can go so easily slip into the comments of one as opposed to violence as me, how easily, how pervasively, how disastrously can it slip into the already-violent or deranged mind?

For tonight we stand at one of the clichéd crossroads of American history. Even if the alleged terrorist Jared Lee Loughner was merely shooting into a political crowd because he wanted to shoot into a political crowd, even if he somehow was unaware who was in the crowd, we have nevertheless for years been building up to a moment like this.

Assume the details are coincidence. The violence is not. The rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.

We will not return to the 1850s, when a pro-slavery Congressman nearly beat to death an anti-slavery Senator; when an anti-slavery madman cut to death with broadswords pro-slavery advocates.

We will not return to the 1960s, when with rationalizations of an insane desire for fame, or of hatred, or of political opposition, a President was assassinated and an ultra-Conservative would-be president was paralyzed, and a leader of peace was murdered on a balcony.
We will not.

Because tonight, what Mrs. Palin, and what Mr. Kelly, and what Congressman West, and what Ms. Angle, and what Mr. Beck, and what Mr. O'Reilly, and what you and I must understand, was that the man who fired today did not fire at a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters.

He was not just a mad-man incited by a thousand daily temptations by slightly less-mad-men to do things they would not rationally condone.

He fired today into our liberty and our rights to live and to agree or disagree in safety and in freedom from fear that our support or opposition will cost us our lives or our health or our sense of safety. The bullseye might just as well have been on Mrs. Palin, or Mr. Kelly, or you, or me. The wrong, the horror, would have been - could still be just as real and just as unacceptable.

At a time of such urgency and impact, we as Americans - conservative or liberal - should pour our hearts and souls into politics. We should not - none of us, not Gabby Giffords and not any Conservative - ever have to pour our blood. And every politician and commentator who hints otherwise, or worse still stays silent now, should have no place in our political system, and should be denied that place, not by violence, but by being shunned and ignored.

It is a simple pledge, it is to the point, and it is essential that every American politician and commentator and activist and partisan take it and take it now, I say it first, and freely:

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.