Another spring-like day

[nightdog_barks]

Seriously. It was almost 80 degrees here today (26.7 degrees Celsius). I went in the backyard and refilled all the bird feeders, including the thistle socks. I also switched out the small-seed feeder (which holds mostly millet, as opposed to sunflower seeds) from a BIG feeder to a smaller one, because really, most of the birds are way more interested in the black-oil sunflower seeds than they are in the millet. I also put out more dried corn on the cob for the squirrels. While I was doing all this, Layla helped by barking enthusiastically at a hawk circling overhead, and then at a group of four or five huge crows who flew by, cawing loudly and apparently curious to see what we were doing outside.

Finished Finn Murphy's The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road, and, although I liked the beginning, I did not like the book by the end. He may have been saying the right things about race and class in America, but that didn't make him any less of a jerk in my eyes, and I simply could not believe that at least one of his road stories had really happened. After that I read Robert Olen Butler's Tabloid Dreams: Stories, which I liked A LOT. Anyway, I am currently reading Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849, edited by Kenneth L. Holmes, and omg it is FASCINATING. I mean, I worry about stuff like "Oh, should I go to the grocery store today or not," and the women writing these letters and diaries are like, "BORE MY EIGHTH CHILD BY THE RIVER AND THEN WENT BY FLATBOAT DOWN THE COLUMBIA AFTER MY HUSBAND DIED OF FEVER," and it is just holy shit these women were PILLARS OF STRENGTH. This volume is the first in a series published by the University of Nebraska, and I am looking forward to more.

Bought Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken's new novel, and Ben Aaronovitch's Lies Sleeping, both because I felt the need of some Retail Therapy after President Goat-boy's most recent idiotic shenanigans. National emergency my ass. What a dumpster fire. It will take generations to recover from the damage this shitbag and his enablers have done.

I don't even know sometimes, chiclets.

Comments

[srsly_yes]

The dumpster... I'd like one week where I'm not reaching for Alka Seltzer.

[nightdog_barks]

Omg Srsly, it is exhausting. I am so afraid that everything will go sideways and he will be re-elected in 2020. I mean, I don't THINK that will happen, but then I didn't think he'd be where he is in the first damn place, either.

I have taken refuge in HGTV. Honestly. I love watching people renovate houses, and people picking out new homes, and people just generally finding happiness. LOL

[srsly_yes]

Are you watching Bill Maher? He's insisting Trump will not leave the White House when his term is up. I thought that was taking things to the extreme, but imagine if the Supreme Court upholds his "National Emergency" declaration? I wouldn't put it past him to use that excuse to stay in office.

I have taken refuge in HGTV. LOL! I tranquilize with cat and dog videos.

[silverjackal]

I did not even know the next Aaronovitch had been published, so thank you for that! Re: the toughness of our ancestors in general yes. Anyone who tries to argue that women were always these protected creatures has me in splutters of laughter, just as the people who romanticise the past as a simpler time. Simple, aye. When you have to break the ice on the creek with an axe to draw water first thing in the morning, and it takes an hour for the stove (or fire) to warm up enough to cook breakfast with said water, and you're forever chopping wood because there's no such thing as too much wood when the fire must be fed, and it takes all day to roast some meat or do laundry with a washboard, and you're almost always cold and always hungry and there's always more work to do than there are hours of daylight... I know this just from living rough, and I confess I am very fond of modern luxuries such as hot running water, and indoor plumbing, and heating that does not require waking at least three times in the night to stoke the fire. (Our weather here has been beastly cold, making up for the prior lack of winter, and if I relied on wood it would be at least 3-4 nocturnal wakings to keep everything from freezing completely solid. It's currently not too cold -- only about -28C, but we're having what the weather channel is calling a "long term snow event" meaning it started snowing last night and hasn't stopped yet. Romantic "simpler time when women were women and men were men" my posterior...)

[nightdog_barks]

YES. This is something that's hit me right between the eyes, so to speak. Our ancestors had to do EVERYTHING. I was reading just last night about the Belknap family, who lived in the wilds of Iowa (lol) before they decided to head west to Oregon in 1848. With all the sheep shearing and barn raising and cabin-building and crop planting and preserve-making, there was one TINY DETAIL that I noticed:

This is my program: will start out with the New Year. My health is better and I don't spend much time with house work. Will make a muslin cover for the wagon as we will have to double cover so we can keep warm and dry; put the muslin on first and then the heavy linen one for strength. They both have to be sewed real good and strong and I have to spin the thread and sew all these long seams with my fingers, then I have to make a new feather tick for my bed. I will put the feathers of two beds into one tick and sleep on it.

See what Keturah Belknap is doing there? She's making (spinning) thread. THREAD. I mean. You can't just run down the street to Joanne's Fabrics. :DDD

[silverjackal]

Yes -- the making of a feather bed is also no light work either as one must sift the feathers, then split them and remove the quill (to prevent them from stabbing through the fabric and working their way out of the cover). I assisted with making over feather beds as a child, so I know just how awful the work is (sifting the feathers is a choking business, and the adults didn't want to risk me using a knife at that age). I've never soaked or beaten hemp to make fabric, or spun flax, or sewed, but my parents' generation still learned those skills, along with spinning wool, and tanning leather and hides, and the making of glue and soap. This, in spite of the fact that they were more than well enough off that they could afford to buy fabric and thread -- one of my great-grandfathers owned a weaving house, actually. It was still considered good to know, though, so that if there was nothing to buy one could manage for oneself. Thanks to that attitude, and my grandparents' estate I know how to use a scythe, thresh grain, milk a cow, churn butter, and twist hemp into rope, for example. Learning to butcher is really the sole skill I've kept up, but I have an idea, at least, of the work involved in being reasonably self-sufficient. People who romanticise the past never cease to amuse me because I like being able to buy things instead of having to make them, and also prefer to use mechanised means for a number of other tasks.