Randomday with Raccoon

Forget everything you've ever learned from Ricky, Pocahontas, or any of the children's literature offerings that glorify the cute little raccoon.  This is public enemy number one.

 Need a closer look?  There you go.  Okay, so I can understand how he might be called cute.  In a "not in my backyard" kind of way.

Steve chased him up the birch tree this morning as he was sauntering casually down the driveway.  Steve was really hoping he'd run into the street and get hit, I think.

He got nervous from all the camera activity and climbed higher.  If I had had a pellet gun I would have tried it on him.  Anybody who lives near us and wants to try for a coonskin cap, be our guest.

 Establishing shot with his approximate location outlined in red.  I guesstimate about 35 feet high.  The Japanese Cedar where he hangs out most of the time is about twice as tall as this birch.

He's not stupid.  He apparently knew my threats to chop down the tree with him in it were not sincere.  I sawed off a large dead branch from a rhododendron this week and that pretty much exhausted my woodcutting muscles for the next month.  He settled down to wait until things got quiet, and he wasn't there when I checked later on in the morning.  We've been vigilant about taking in the cat food after feeding Smudge so I don't think he'll get fat from that source, but he still has the compost pile to dig through.

 Muffball was oblivious.  The warmer weather is making her frisky and she's starting her shedding season.  This morning she ran off with a ball of yarn.

 I've been addressing the organization of scraps this week.  Here are some of the strip bins, and in front is the bin of larger small scraps.

I just finished organizing all the scraps Grandma gave us over the last several weeks.  Some of them get put in the crumbs bin for use in a future crumbs quilt.

 Most of them I have been cutting into squares...

... or bricks, to be used in future "planned scrappy" quilts.  My arm and wrists are sore from all the cutting (plus the rhododendron cutting), but it's kind of fun to have it completed this far.  I'll dig from the two messy bins pictured above to create more squares and bricks until I just can't stand it anymore, and then put away the bins for awhile to work on other projects.  But I'm enjoying the organization aspect of it.  It's time for spring cleaning!

I have plans to share some of the bounty of my scrap bins as a giveaway next week.  Check back Monday!

Gumbo Afternoon

Silva Rhetoricae made the live auction!  This means it will probably sell for more than the actual material + labor I put into it, which is nice for me and for the school.

I spent most of the afternoon chopping veggies for Gumbo Zeb.  Yesterday our first basket came from Grace's Garden, so it seemed a good time to make a big batch of the Gumbo Base for the freezer.  I follow the recipe in Crescent Dragonwagon's Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread cookbook, which may just be my favorite cookbook of all time.  But, like my quilts, gumbo turns out to be a little improvisational.  Making gumbo is an all-afternoon job, and I'm tired and looking forward to eating it for dinner, and taking it to the fellowship meal Sunday.

 You have to do a roux.  That's the brown mixture on the left: flour and oil cooked together and stirred frequently over a medium heat until the flour browns.  It will thicken the gumbo and add a nutty, brown flavor.  On the right is a sauté of 2 1/2 bell peppers, 2 1/2 onions, and a whole bunch of celery in a whole stick of butter, with a whole bunch of chopped chives added at the end.

The cool thing about Gumbo Zeb is it uses all those greens that you are supposed to eat more of but most people don't.  I put in about 2 large bunches of mustard greens from our yard, beet tops, radish tops, Swiss chard, bok choy, spinach, and parsley from the veggie basket.  And I decided to branch out and put a small bunch of lemon balm in it, because it's a green leafy vegetable/herb, and it grows in abundance in our yard.  I did check my herb book to see if lemon balm could be toxic in larger quantities and it looks like it has been used happily for at least three thousand years with no reports of negative effects whatsoever.  So in it went.  When it was all done simmering I added the roux and the vegetable sauté and the seasoning blend -- 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce, 1 T of Tabasco sauce, and 8 cloves of garlic were some of the key ingredients, with spices and herbs galore and plenty of tomato sauce and tomato paste.  It fills my stockpot almost to the brim.

So for dinner I cooked a pot of rice, mixed about 4 cups of the gumbo base with equal amount of chicken stock, browned some Andouille sausage and we're good to go.  The rest of the base will cool and then be packaged up for future gumbo feasts.

Yum!

The Unbearable Lightness of Eighth Grade

Abeunt studia in mores  -- Ovid

 

I've been teaching the Middle School years of 6th - 8th grade for about 13 years now.  There may have been a few years with only 3rd-5th, but it's been mostly Middle School.  So I'm entitled to a few general observations.  Avert your eyes if you are the parent of one of the kids I am currently teaching and you have a queasy stomach.  These years are called "that awkward age" for good reason.  I promise I will not say anything negative about your darling child that would damage his or her self-esteem.  Although, I wonder how often people worry about the self-esteem of middle-school teachers.

 

6th graders have issues with maturity, with organization, and with unwanted kinesthetic and verbal activity during class.  They are the most likely group in my experience to jump up and down with undisguised glee as we chant Latin verb endings to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."  They think "Semper ubi sub ubi" is the most hilarious joke in the world.  They gasp with horrified amazement as I reveal one of the scandalous deeds of the emperor Nero.  Somewhere in the fog between 6th and 7th grade, they lose that enthusiasm.  You might never notice, because they are busy growing physically during that same time span. I'm always a little sad when they stop imitating jumping beans, but it does mean that I'll be able to follow a more extended chain of reasoning with them than previously possible.

 

7th graders are the most likely group to have academic issues for me.  Part of this is because we introduce the subjunctive mood in 7th grade, which means that for several of them there just isn't enough empty brain space to keep the indicative mood straight, AND learn new vocabulary, AND review for the quiz on Friday.  All of this, and they're exhausted from the sheer physical energy required to make it through puberty.  But despite the real difficulties of 7th grade, a lot of emotional maturity comes along during that year.  I see a decline in some of the pointless childhood meanness, a dawning realization that others have a life of their own, and a fractional bit more of what Chaucer called gentilesse,  On those points, 7th grade is a good year, but with a lot of hiccups.

 

8th graders are the ones with existential issues.  And I have to say, I never quite understood existentialism.  By this time they are nearly full-grown physically, newly aware that the opposite sex is interesting, but still years from figuring out what they are supposed to do with their lives that isn't self-serving.  It's not their fault; the whole world has been set up to serve them up to this point, and the smarter ones are starting to realize it won't always be this way, and that's scary.  I try to give them a lot of dense Latin grammar to take their minds off the angst; sometimes this has the unintended consequence of creating a completely different sort of angst.

 

Reaction to angst produces goofiness.  It's everywhere in 8th grade. There was a seemingly serious attempt to convince me this week that Julius Caesar wrote a lot of run-on sentences.  "He obviously never had Mrs. Brabec as a teacher," they said, as if that was a Q.E.D.   I'll give you the fact that those sentences were compound-complex with multiple ablative absolutes and accusative with infinitive, but they were not run-on.  And today's sentence, featuring the gerundive of a dative verb: "Hostibus omni ratione nocendum est."  It is necessary to harm the enemy in every way.  So how did we get from there to injuries caused by butter?  I really lost that thread somewhere.  Perhaps we need to channel our energies into a gerundive hunt and finding Disney Princess references in mythology stories. 

High School had a social recently.  The theme was neon bright colors.  Secundus is in the left front, adjusting his pink tie.  Former 8th graders, every one of them.  In their day, they gave me Petentibus the Gaul, the Boii and Tulingi and Latobrigi as different kinds of bugs, "Defuit Epicum - Epic Fail", and countless morbid jokes.  If they survived Middle School, so can you!

Status Updates - WIPs and UFOs

Well, April has now come and gone.  My UFO list for April was as follows:

1. Random goal (held over from March): the bowling-style knitting bag.  still not done
2. Finish the argyles, and start a pair of socks for Steve. Done
3. Finish collecting signatures on the Crumbs auction quilt, quilt it and bind it, and turn it over to the auction. Done!
4. Finish the clean-up of the sewing area.  And then we can think about the next quilt.  This is one of those jobs that will probably never be done.

Finished in April: The argyle socks, the felted blanket, the Crumbs auction quilt.  I'm pretty pleased with those.  The felted blanket was an unplanned project, and already Secundus in particular has shown great appreciation for it in late-night TV watching sessions.
And now, I need to come up with some sorta-kinda goals for May. 

1. I randomly chose #5 on  my yearlong list, - make a felted wool blanket.  Okay, I did that last month, but there's material for two more.  So it's a maybe for this month.
2. I'm keeping that knitting bag sewing project on the list because I'm stubborn.  Maybe I really need to take it off the list and give up on it, and that will spur me to actually work on it.  I dunno.
3. Quilt and bind the Orca Bay quilt.
4. Finish the current socks for Steve. (I'm only about halfway up the foot).  Maybe start a new pair of socks -- but I'm starting to experience sock fatigue.  This is the equivalent of Second Sock Syndrome, but is experienced by people who knit two socks at the same time.  It's closely related to the feeling of being marooned on Sleeve Island.
5. Finish cleaning the sewing area AT LEAST ENOUGH to be able to cut out a new project.  That means that I have to quit puttering around with organizing my scraps and put them away for a bit.  I have been cutting up a lot of scraps into squares and bricks.  Fun, but there need to be a few limits:

What with gardening season upon us and teacher burnout at its annual high, that should be enough.

Here's a little owl that Quarta made this week, with additional owls waiting to be assembled.  Aunt Carol found the instructions here.  Then she sent the kits for Quarta to assemble on the new Bernina.

Knitting is going very slowly.  This is a repeat picture, but not much more progress has been made. As mentioned above I'm getting a little burned out on socks.  This is a pretty twisted stitch pattern but my mental state might be better off with something in garter stitch right now.  Real Education by Charles Murray was a challenging book that deserves to be talked over quite thoroughly among leaders in education.  His thoughts on IQ testing and who should go to college, particularly, are very controversial but I tend to think he may be on to something.

Here's a new acquisition: my knitting buddy Joyce thought of me and passed along this 1900 edition of a Compendium of Dogmatic Theology in Latin.  The binding is falling apart and the only other language that appears in it is German (okay, there are a few Greek phrases too).

Closer examination of the title page revealed the author, H. Hurter, was a Jesuit. (The initials S.J. after the name are a giveaway).  Now, because of Henle Latin, I have a soft spot for the Jesuits.  I think they are the brain trust of the Catholic church the way Reformed theologians are the brain trust of the Protestants.  It's probably only fair to point out, as Steve does, that they were responsible for many of the abuses of the Counter-Reformation.  In any case, I had a hard time finding out where this was actually published (it's volume 2 of a 3 volume set, as it turns out).  I finally Googled "Oeniponte." Oenipons in Latin means "bridge over the Inn" or "Innsbruck."  So it was published in Innsbruck, where the University is the outgrowth of a Jesuit-founded grammar school.  The theological Latin is a little too dense for me to figure out easily.  What I'm mainly curious is, knowing the Higher Criticism that came out of Germany in that era, is this textbook a critical response to it, or part of the onslaught?

The Difficulty of Satire

difficile est saturam non scribere

Juvenal said, "It is difficult not to write satire."  The Romans were a tolerant bunch, and even though they viewed their Emperors as divine, a clever satirist could poke fun, remind them that they were not fully divine until after they died, and (depending on which emperor he chose to poke fun at) most likely live to a ripe old age.  But I'm finding it difficult, this Political Tuesday.  There is a depression that sets in when you are facing the decline and fall of your civilization that blunts the satirical edge.

The jury is deliberating in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial.  Some of the original charges have been thrown out.  Maybe there wasn't enough evidence that the babies he killed were born alive.  If they were dead when born, then Gosnell was just doing what abortionists do, what is perfectly legal, severed heads, baby feet in jars, and all.  The outrage, as far as the media can tell anyway, is that he was not a very good abortionist.  He killed a woman, after all, and let unqualified people practice medicine and administer drugs.  His clinic was filthy, the emergency exit was blocked, and he preyed on the poor and disadvantaged.

Meanwhile, the uptown celebrity abortionists at Planned Parenthood got a visit from their biggest booster: President Obama, marking another dubious first for the chief executive.  Obama praised the largest abortion provider in the world, told them "God bless you," and criticized abortion opponents for wanting to return to the 1950's.  He made no mention of the Gosnell trial; that just isn't done at the country club.

I remember, back in the 1970's and 80's, evangelical churches used to do slide show presentations to educate their congregations about the abortion debate.  Before The Silent Scream, long before the internet, parents would turn to their children and say, "Cover your eyes now.  Don't look at this part."  I wonder, well-intentioned as our instinct to protect children is, whether it is also the explanation for our society's unwillingness to confront evil things head-on.  To call them evil and demand justice.

In other news, The Wall Street Journal has come out with an analysis of the costs of Obamacare to the average individual, and Washington Post reporter Dana Millbank wrote a piece depicting the President as not on top of the real business of governance, despite his well-delivered comedy routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner.  The Boston Marathon bombers and their family knew how to get the most bang out of their welfare buck -- I wonder if you can use food stamps to buy pressure cookers?  15-year-olds will shortly be able to purchase morning-after abortion pills over the counter.  Oh yes, and forgive me, I have only a very hazy awareness of sports news, so I do not quite understand why Tim Tebow is somehow in disgrace and his career is over, while an athlete who came out as gay is somehow so heroic for doing so that President Obama made special mention of how proud he is of him.

As the Roman Empire slid slowly from moral decline into full-on financial and social collapse, and the barbarians came on, the presence of satirists declined, although nobody was looking for them at the time.  People were too busy trying to survive.

Source: google.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Commodus, Roman Emperor in 190 A.D., portraying himself as Hercules.  This portrait was perhaps the 2nd century equivalent of the White House Correspondents' dinner.  So... what happens when the Emperor sides with the barbarians?

Finished Auction Quilt - The Forest of Rhetoric

A finished quilt, donated to the Cedar Tree auction "Belt-Buckle Ball" coming up in a few weeks.  It's called "Silva Rhetoricae - the Forest of Rhetoric," and it has the signature of every single student in the school, K-12.  It's about 66"x78", has a hanging sleeve if you want to display it on the wall, and it's made from scraps and crumbs and backed with a vintage sheet.  I made a similar quilt last year too.  The crumbs technique has made me a much more liberated quilter, and I love the "nothing goes to waste" philosophy behind it.

At midrange you can see some of the variety of blocks, and how completely improvisational they were.  Leftovers from Orca Bay and Easy street, leftovers from Jack's chain, leftovers from a 9-patch and log cabins, and experiments that I didn't want to take further.  That floral green Thimbleberries print I used for the border and binding? It came from an old maternity dress that I deconstructed.

Closeup of the Tardis block I made for the Senior class.  They like Dr. Who.

I made several blocks with trees, either 6" square or 6x12" tall.  They were my uniting theme in the quilt.  Let the bidding war begin!

Grandma keeps cleaning out her crumbs and sending them along to us.  Slowly, I've been sorting them and cutting some of them into squares:

At this rate I have enough for several dozen more crumbs quilts, but not time to make them!

And on the design wall, there's one more scrappy trip-around-the-world block.  I'm not making these very fast, and I'm not sure whether I want to make a full quilt out of them, but they're fun for their own sake.

Time for another weekly Stash Report;

Fabric:

Fabric used this week: .5 yard for binding for auction quilt

Fabric used year to date: 29.5 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 17 yards
Net used for 2013: 12.5 yards

Knitting yarn:

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 5900 yards.
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 1300 yards
Net used for 2013: 4600 yards

Randomday

We continue to be plagued with raccoons.  Smudge has gone into deep hiding and didn't show up for his food today.

Secundus had his friends over for an all-night Chuck-fest.  7 pizzas, Mexican bean dip, a veggie tray, a pan of brownies, copious amounts of carbonated beverages, 3 pounds of bacon and 30 eggs were consumed.

The binding has been stitched down and the Cedar Tree auction signature quilt is now officially finished!  Photos need to be taken still.

I watched about 3 hours of Project Runway while stitching.  Last night the girls watched The Rescuers on my computer but I kept falling asleep with the needle in my hand.

Is it my imagination, or did Patricia, the Native American designer on Project Runway, shrug off criticism from Nina Garcia with, "Nina is so right-wing conservative sometimes" when what she really meant was "Nina is so racist/insensitive to my ethnic group sometimes"?  This strikes me as problematic on a number of fronts.  First of all, I'm pretty sure Nina is not a conservative right-winger, so she would probably take offense at that.  But my problem is with the equivalency drawn between the disparaging "right-wing conservative" and what she really meant, which was almost certainly "racist" or "bigoted."  It should have been edited out of the final program, but the producers apparently felt it made good TV so they left it in, further deepening the divide in whatever is left of our common culture.  Anyway, I still loved watching the Project Runway season finale and {{SPOILER ALERT}} was thrilled to see the local girl win.

Backyard update: Smudge has resurfaced.  After Steve chased off the raccoon he must have returned to his usual hangout under the back deck.  A black cat in a dark recess is visible primarily by his eyes, as you may be able to see in this photo from years back when he was an inside kitty and liked to crawl into my yarn cupboard:

You can also see why he's called Smudge.  I had to doctor the backlighting on this severely even to get that much visible.  Poor Smudge.  He's never been what you might consider smart.  Now he has to live in the wild and compete with the raccoons.

I did a tiny bit of gardening today and swept a bunch of debris off the driveway.  I've been feeling depressed about the state of our yard and garage lately, not to mention the basement.  I did my Caesar's Gallic Wars translation and my Bede's Ecclesiastical History translation, and as has been the case for the last several weeks, I looked at Lucretius' de Rerum Natura and flinched.  After supper (leftover pizza) Steve and I will need to tackle Greek.