What if Emily had had a TV?

Day Light Savings Time... What are we saving exactly?

Am I becoming a conspiracy theorist? Perhaps that question speaks for itself...

Anyway, it's about daylight savings time.  Its origins are a bit murky and seem almost casual. As I age unclear reasons for government mandated events stir me into feeling like the powers that be are messing with our equilibrium once again to keep us from paying attention to their foolishness and thievery. 

A bit of history.  Though Benjamin Franklin noted that hitting the hay early and hopping out of it early was the ticket to a healthy and prosperous life, his times were not big on schedules.  Not like the big-business-money-corporations of the 19th century such as trains, along with British bureaucracy and the industrial revolution (which one day just might appear on grammar school time lines as the biggest blackest mark of human kind ever) spread black coal dust around the world and laid to waste bucolic lassitude with serious requirements for schedules!

Oddly though, the actual inventor who proposed DST was a shift working New Zealander amateur entomologist who wanted more time to collect bugs after work. About that same time a powerful builder in England tired of his golf game being interrupted by dusk and his fellow Londoner's wasting beautiful summer days by lying in started to lobby parliament.  Though that builder didn't see DST adapted within his lifetime by 1916 it was becoming a reality in Europe. The first true adapters were Germany as they waged war and needed to save on coal consumption. Many neutral countries in Europe followed suit, with Russia doing so a year later. By 1918 the US had adapted DST seeking also to conserve on coal usage. Similar to today's roiling momentum of the "Snuggie" phenomenon, one thing led to another.

My entire life I blamed the farmers thinking DST was to help out crop production but as it turns out it's harmful to that and it was actually a lovely little bug collector from down under whose idea was adapted by European super powers to facilitate world domination. 

Apparently today in our ever so modern times there are less traffic fatalities during DST but probably most importantly retail sales and sporting events benefit hugely from the lengthened after work hours of day light.

So there you have, our circadian rhythms are disrupted twice a year for the sake of shopping.  Maybe those kids on "The Hills" do understand life way better then me.

Flashback

Is anyone else feeling like it's 1973 again?  Maybe it's just cause I'm turning that corner around 50 and some long stored neuro something has slipped out of hiding in a crease in my cerebelum and is now floating freely around my brain, coloring all my current perceptions.

Think about it- a crapped out economy, wars, blatent adulteration of the constitution for self benefit, greenishness, and even the nakedness is back in a very public way except instead of streaking, people are staying still.

My Granpa Kink was right... everything goes in cycles.

... but will I be thanking me in the months to come?

This holiday season I took full advantage of, as never before, the "Free Gift Message" option for online purchases.  I used this feature with special attention and exceptional flourish on my gifts to me (and I out did my self-giving this year, and though I'll be paying for it until this time next year I truly appreciate my/your thoughtfullness.) 

My favorite was that on my purchase/gift of a long coveted faux shearling, dark chocolate brown, coat from L.L.Bean. Affordable as it came on markdown, I applied the three ten dollar certificates I'd racked up buying other gifts and such satisfying savings without which I would not have permitted myself to purchase the yummy outer garment.  That personal note to me was heartfelt and read like this "Me, You Are The Best! Warmest Regards, Me".

I can't wait to get my gift from me and hoping it is as delicious as I've anticipated over these past few austere years.

La Reunion (French title to provide the flair this deserves TIC)

I hadn't seen him in twenty-five years and he disdainfully noted to me, "You look like everybody else." Thought of all kinds of come backs, later. At the time I just mumbled something and walked away.  Thought he'd been a good friend but once he said that, I knew I'd only been a reflector for him trying to catch a glimpse of himself. He had no idea how hard I'd worked at normal.

Hiatus

So to all my nonexistent readers, I may or may not be writing at this blog during the month of November.  I'm contesting in the NaMoWriMo and expect to be worded out each day in my pursuit of completing my 50k novel.  But who knows, perhaps I'll be inspired to write even more.

I love 

That I live in a place 

By the sea

It feels like I'm living in the Dark Ages (in the darkest sense) but this time around with timely news casts, blogs, newspapers, twitters, communal online sharing, television, radio, and more to provide endless recaps and spotlights shining on the best but mostly the worst of human doings.
Is the world, are people worse now more than ever?  Does it just feel that way because it's communicated so much? 
What would have happened to western civilization if in the Middle Ages they'd gotten daily, hourly blow by blow accounts of the derranged, despotic, dreadful accounts of the grand and minutia of the world they lived in?

A Good Book is Hard to Find... not really

The library has been my friend, and yes I'm nearly in the black now... but there's this one very reasonable hardcover I know I'd wind up overdue and fined over.

Feeling Ill Instead of Relieved...

So layoffs began yet again at work.  This one was a stunner with many creative, hardworking, amenable people getting the axe.  I don't yet feel relieved for being one of those to remain employed; I should as I am but I don't. I feel sickened by this apparently random act of violence.  No explanation, no justification, no information on who met this fate or why.  And none of us can figure out how we'll continue to get the job done.

Does cleaner mean happy?

Saying goodbye to the old washing machine. I remember shopping and paying cash for it and the matching dryer that died earlier this year. Boy that felt great; the buying, not the dying machine part.

I started to thinking about all the clothes that've been swished around in that old machine. Residue from everywhere and everything my son and I had come into contact with in the last decade.  Sounds kind of icky but DNA-wise it's true.
 
Looking forward to the new front loader. I read that they use less water, less electricity, and that the spin cycle takes nearly all the water out.  I'll be able to wash quilts and comforters. Ooo... ah.  

Now that my son's moved out I probably don't need such a big washer but last weekend he came home to do laundry so I want to be prepared for the next visit.

I Only Have Eyes for Uke

So back in the spring I'd decided to learn another instrument and I bought a $10 Uke on ebay. What I'd actually wanted was this $600+ Kamaka. Good thing I didn't drop that much as the washer broke down and some trees need attention before the winter. But the cheapo uke falls out of tune so easily that it makes learning difficult. I'll keep trying though because one day I will make lovely resonating sounds on a Kamaka...now off to practice.

Long Ago All Over Again

This summer a cooled start to the season and fewer tourists. My mind's been conjuring a spacious, calm quality that has felt like memory but not of other people or specific incidents.


I've always enjoyed solitary walks and often wind up at the water's edge. When I find a spot near the sea, where there are no people sounds, I sometimes make a little telescope with my hand, a peep hole like what they say to use when looking at a solar eclipse. I look through it thinking if I'd stood here 10,000 years ago it would've looked just the same.


I've been surprised all this summer by an accompanying sensation of recollection.

The Unintentionally Puzzling Giant Worm

So in Moscow, Idaho people are searching for a giant worm. They swear it exists and they want to find it. It is supposedly an ancient indigenous type, a real western hemisphere worm not like the common earthworm which apparently was an unintended import from Europe perhaps first arriving in a rotten apple on the Mayflower or maybe surviving the Atlantic crossing stuck to a Viking's shoe.


This summer a professor from the university of Idaho is leading a team of graduate students to get a look at a real live giant Palouse worm. The group will spend the summer searching in fields of a university research farm, hoping for a glimpse of the possibly 3 foot long phylum.


The worm's apparent desire for seclusion and peace, evident from the only 4 substantiated sightings since the 1890s and the fact that it lives fifteen feet below the surface of the planet, is not dampening the Idahoian university team's desire or efforts to force it above ground. Three methods are being employed in the hopes of glimpsing, capturing (-which comes first?- ) killing, and disecting the creature - digging, digging and pouring noxious doses of mustard and vinegar down the holes, and shoving 3 foot long metal rods inducting 320 volts into the ground.