Date: 03 Jul 2008 14:12 Subject: Note to pattern sellers Security: Public Mood: perplexed

Anything I actually wore, sewed, or saw on the street is not vintage. Thank you.

This goes double for Retro '90s patterns. (My God, those shoulder pads! You could put out an eye with those things. Well, an eye of a short person, anyway.)

Signed, Not As Young As She Thinks She Is

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Date: 03 Jul 2008 08:54 Subject: Robert Harris, Imperium Security: Public Mood: thoughtful

When Americans think about Rome, they think about the Fall of the Empire and the OMGSEX; these impressions are pretty much based on word of mouth, garbled Suetonius, dim memories of Spartacus and Gladiator, and for older Americans a smidgen of Ben Hur. The founders of the American Republic were much more focused on the Roman Republic and how to duplicate its virtues; when George Washington was called Cincinnatus, everybody knew what that meant.

Imperium tells the story of the dismantling of the Roman Republic, as seen by Cicero's slave Tiro. Tiro was a real person; he is credited with inventing shorthand wrote a life of Cicero now lost. Harris's Tiro is a great viewpoint character; he perceives the events through the machinations of Cicero, and writes from the perspective of an old man. There's quite a lot of "I didn't realize at the time how significant this was", but only a light touch of "Had Cicero but known." Tiro is a great storyteller and the details of everyday bourgeois and aristocratic life in the Republic, which of course Tiro takes for granted, are fascinating.
( Read more... )

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Date: 02 Jul 2008 12:46 Subject: Sola Scriptura Security: Public Mood: ticked

A hole is to dig, a fire is to burn, and a religion is to schism. It's the way of the world. Nonetheless, as a baptized (and very lapsed) Episcopalian, I am sad to see the Anglican community sighing and sinking under the waves.

There are some comedy moments, however. The splinter group Gafcon says in its manifesto, "We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today."

Dudes. If you're going to uphold a text as normative, wouldn't it be nice to read it first? The original articles, from 1562, include some gems.
( theology neep )

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Date: 29 Jun 2008 17:21 Subject: SQUEEEEEE Security: Public Mood: dancy dance dance

I get to go to Costume College. This is a big hairy deal; tickets for this year sold out *at the previous convention*, so that it was impossible for newbies to attend. Now I am!

The poor person whose ticket I bought couldn't afford the newly exorbitant plane fare. The only limited class she'd gotten into was the fan class; even so, I'll be happy to go just for the open classes and the dance class.

Did I mention SQUEEEEE???

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Date: 29 Jun 2008 09:52 Subject: I think I've heard this song before Security: Public Mood: disgusted

"No hay bebés? Keine kinder? Nessun Bambino?" by Russell Shorto in the Sunday New York Times. Paragraph 1: The wee Italian town of Laviano, population 1600 -- but it could hold 3000 -- is not having enough babies. The mayor is offering money to parents. Continuing -- Europe's fertility is waaayyy below the 2.1 replacement rate, down to 1.3 in Italy. Woes! We has no babies! What can we do? [chicken dance]

Paragraph 11: Oh, right, immigration. "The fears on the right are of a continent-wide takeover by third-world hordes [disgusted italics mine] -- mostly Muslims." They say. Not me, they.

Paragraph 12 gets to the meat of it:

Will Europe as we know it just peter out? Will ethnic Greeks and Spaniards become extinct, taking their baklava^* and paella to the grave with them, to be replaced by waves of Muslim immigrants who couldn’t care less about the Acropolis as a majestic representation of Western culture^**? Venice has lost more than half its population since 1950; its residents believe their city is destined to become a Venice-themed attraction. Is the same going to happen to Europe as a whole? Might the United States see its closest ally decay into a real-life Euro Disney

The hordes are coming in. The hordes who don't appreciate our \Anglo-Saxon\ \Aryan\ \Nordic\ European values. We must breed to keep pace!

"“Europeans say to me, How does the U.S. do it in this day and age?” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington." The answer is simple: American population growth is in fact due to immigration and to reproduction by recent immigrants. Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for almost half (1.4 million) of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006. Shorto overlooks this boulder standing in the middle of his argument.

Sounds awfully familiar to me. As usual, the idea that, say, the Turkish Germans are not in fact Germans, that the Pakistani and Jamaican Englishmen are not actually English, that, in short, immigrants and their children aren't the real Europe, is repeated unchallenged.

Immigration poses enormous challenges to the inbound state; the immigrants do have a different culture, a different language, and frequently a different appearance. European countries that think of themselves as ethnically consistent are confronting these challenges for the first time. But an American should know better. It's happened before here; it is happening again. The "Germantowns" and "Little Italies" have become tourist attractions where the locals celebrate what used to be separate cultures; the Yiddish and German and Italian papers have slowly died.

Nativism is a disgraceful point of view for an American; it repeats myths that were attached to the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, and now the Hispanics. They aren't like us. They're dirty. They'll never assimilate. And yet the children of all those immigrations speak English and consider themselves natives.


^* The last ten or twenty times I ate baklava, it was in a "Middle Eastern" restaurant. The last place I bought it was a Persian grocery. My farmer's market has an Egyptian family selling it.

^** Note that the Ottoman Empire ruled Greece for 368 years; arguably the Muslims have as much to remember about Athens as anybody else. Note also that it was the Venetians who actually blew up the Parthenon.

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Date: 28 Jun 2008 10:12 Subject: Do you sew in Pennsylvania? Security: Public Mood: wowed

There's a Singer Featherweight with original cabinet available for $35.00 if you can pick it up yourself.

This is an insanely low price for a classic machine. Even counting tuneup costs at a good sewing machine store, you're saving $200 or more. If straight-stitch only (plus buttonholing with attachments) will work for you, snap this up.

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Date: 28 Jun 2008 09:55 Subject: Three Things You Haven't Done (I hope) Security: Public Mood: vanilla

The meme is:
* Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
* If anybody responds with "I've done that," add another thing.
* Encourage your friends to paste this into their own journal to list the unique things they've done.

I'm finding this one very difficult. I have nothing to compare with sartorias's waltzing in Vienna in a pink marble palace, or debg's brushing George Harrison's hair. I have lived an ordinary life.

Here's my best effort:

• Been asked, in a software interview, about my obscure published short story and my thoughts about infant colic. (I got the job. I also went pseudonymous on the Internet.)
  
• Been referred to as a "bear" on a Swedish trolley.
  
• Made Lady Fettiplace's raspberry jam.
  

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Date: 23 Jun 2008 14:47 Subject: The flist knows all things Security: Public

Does anybody have a favorite book on the Cambridge Four^*? (Kim Philby et al.)

^* Or Five.

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Date: 23 Jun 2008 10:30 Subject: Marionberries Security: Public

Unlike the other berry variants (boysenberries, loganberries), the Marion berry is a full-on blackberry, the result of careful selection within an existing genepool. It's a cross between the olallieberry and another blackberry, and the flavor is intense -- like a blackberry, only more so. It's sweet on the tip of the tongue, sharp on the edges of the tongue, and round on the back of the tongue. Oregon is famous for marionberries; here, they're a fleeting fruit, available for one to two weeks at most.

Yesterday there were marionberries at the market; I snatched up nine boxes and the farmer sprinkled on half of a tenth. "That way I can eat the rest myself." He liked the idea that I was making jam. We made two other trips on the way home --hardware store, Whole Foods -- and I was wiped out.

It didn't matter. Nothing concentrates the mind like soon-to-be-rotting fruit. I took a couple of hours to sack out on the bed, then headed to the kitchen. Unload the dishwasher, reload the dishwasher with jelly jars and dishes, run the dishwasher. Sit down for another hour to let the dishwasher run. Squoosh the berries -- nine little berry boxes yielded a scant six cups of mush. Add sugar by volume, not weight; I prefer the British recipes that specify weight of berry to weight of sugar, which lets you make as much jam as you've got fruit. One of these days I'll weigh the ingredients so that I know what the actual ratio is. As usual, remember to start the boiling water a bit too late, get up, fill the spaghetti pot with hot tap water and boiling water from the electric kettle. Get out my trusty Maslin pan, essential for jam, and begin heating the fruit. My daughter wanders in, is tagged to stir the jam while I get out the lids and boil them, and says "Why do you DO this?" I explain that I like jam, that I like keeping the summer for winter, that I like the process because it makes me happy. She is skeptical -- "I only stirred that for five minutes and it was HOT." It's my obsession, dear.

Stir and stir and stir and stir -- as usual, I think the jam looks glassy when the thermometer says only 116^*. Stir some more. 118. Turn up the pot and stir, stir, stir, 120 oh my God it really looks glassy and it's jelled. Just that fast; one moment it's thick juice and sugar and the next WHAM it's jam. Turn off the heat. Start grabbing jars out of the boiling water with the special tongs, filling them with the special funnel, grabbing the lid with the special magnetic jar-lifter, and wiping the lips with the plain old wet dishtowel from my waist. Then back to the boiling water to seal. The last jar, as usual, is as thick, because it's been waiting in an almost-empty pan.

All that for six half-pints of jam, and totally worth it.

^* Jelling point is 8 degrees above the boiling point of water in your location. I'm at sea level, so 220 it is.

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Date: 20 Jun 2008 09:17 Subject: Moan of lust Security: Public

Bradbury & Bradbury, the distinguished maker of period wallpaper (Arts and Crafts era through Atomic Era), is now doing fabric.

My house is a '60s California ranch with 8' ceilings. Arts and Crafts wallpaper, which I love, would overwhelm it. But fabric....

Stop me before I PayPal again. (amaliedageek, this one's for you.)

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Date: 19 Jun 2008 11:37 Subject: A trip through Paradise Security: Public

For the first time in my life, I really love exercising. This morning my husband reminded me that it was a Spare The Air day, meaning free rides on Caltrain, meaning (potentially) no room in the bike car. I was extremely disappointed. I'd been looking forward to my morning ride a lot. Right now it's two days a week, in honor of Spare The Knees Day, but I treasure them. I was so bummed that I eventually decided to bike anyway, and to lock my bike if necessary. Then I whizzed down the hill, stopping twice to deal with pannier problems. As it happened, the bike car was practically empty; no doubt other bikers were paranoid. We'll see what happens tonight.

I love riding my bike. I love the air whizzing past, and the soft California breeze, and the smells of spicy star jasmine and honeysuckle, and the well-loved bungalows, and the bicycle path. Northern California bikers have the political clout to get serious bicycle paths. Mine is an abandoned railway right-of-way, which is pretty much standard, but it has an enormous overpass that sails over the Central Expressway, the railroad tracks, and Evelyn. An underpass avoids U.S. 101. That cost money. Another overpass, spanning Moffett Boulevard, the only grade-level crossing on the trail, is in the works.

In use, the bicycle path is a 5-mile-long, 50-yard-wide park. I pass and am passed by mothers with babies, joggers, middle-aged Asian women with hats going for a walk, serious bikers in their skin-tight suits, and other bicycle commuters. It's an actively used part of Mountain View; people enjoy being under the trees and next to Stevens Creek, even though the creek is almost dry now. And, of course, given the climate, people will be walking all summer and fall, until the rainy season starts.

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Date: 18 Jun 2008 12:50 Subject: Don't mess with the original Security: Public

Twenty-eight years ago, my husband called his grandmother in Atlanta to get the recipe for her famous fried chicken and biscuits.

"Get a couple of cups of White Lily flour* and pour buttermilk into the middle until it's right; then cut in shortening." For the chicken, the secret was stripping off the skin and then using White Lily for the breading, and very good it is, too. (My husband once got flamed for describing this as "Southern fried chicken"; even though he could testify that it was the recipe of a bona-fide Southern grandmother, that wasn't good enough.)

* Note: self-rising was assumed.

White Lily isn't so much a flour as a way of life. When I lived in Charlotte, biscuit flour came in twenty-pound sacks; bread flour, if you could find it, came in five. And White Lily is the iconic Southern biscuit flour: made from very soft wheat and bleached within an inch of its life. It makes terrible, puffy, gluey, ice-white bread; it makes light, fluffy biscuits. Southern expatriates carry White Lily home in their luggage, or pay luxury prices at the local chichi food stores.

Last year Smucker bought White Lily. What was the first thing they did? Shut down the mill that's been making White Lily since 1883. Because, you know, the brand name is what people buy, not the product. The New York Times did a blind tasting of the old and new flours with two experienced bakers, both of whom recognized the difference immediately.

I hope that this decision will be like New Coke, rescinded in response to consumer protest. I bet it won't. Next time we fly home, we'll have to ask which biscuit flour my mother-in-law has switched to.

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Date: 15 Jun 2008 21:57 Subject: World's Easiest Summer Drink Security: Public

Grab a biggish glass.
Crush a bunch of fresh mint in the bottom.
Squeeze half a lime in the bottom.
Add a couple of ice cubes and swirl to mix.
Fill glass with sparkling mineral water. (Ideally straight from the fridge.)

Sit down, put feet up, say aaaaaaaah.

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Date: 15 Jun 2008 16:38 Subject: Excuse me, I think I'll just cry a little Security: Public

Library stairs (bigger picture sorry, PDF) for sale for a mere $35K.

Damn. If I'd only joined the right two startups or so...

N.B. The stairs aren't that expensive. It's building the library to go around them.

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Date: 15 Jun 2008 09:46 Subject: Well, that's an enlightened 21st-century lookout. Security: Public

The lead anecdote of a New York Times feature article on Russell T. Davies.

RUSSELL T DAVIES ... was once confronted at a wedding by a fellow guest bristling with indignation about a scene in [Doctor Who; the one in which Jack kisses both the Ninth Doctor and Rose.]

Mr. Davies’s first instinct — as a reasonable person, as a happily gay man — was to be relaxed and placatory, he said. But something snapped.

"I was standing there saying, ‘You’re a bad mother, and your children will either grow up to be lesbians, or they will be taken into care because they’ve been badly raised,’ " he recalled in a recent interview near the “Doctor Who” set. He began to chuckle. " ‘You are ignorant, and you’re bringing up your children in ignorance, and that will backfire on you.’ "

Yup. Now that's an insult. You're a bad mother, your children will be taken away from you, or they will be OMGWTF lesbians. By their temper tantrums ye shall know them. Note that this a story he proudly tells on himself.

I've said things like that myself -- "Boy, will they be surprised when little Steve comes out" but never coupled with "and their children should be taken away from them immediately". And I have certainly never said it directly to the parents in question; that would be boorish. Threatening people with "your kid will be gay" buys into the parents' worldview that that is the Worst Thing Ever.

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Date: 14 Jun 2008 19:58 Subject: Oh, *Louis* Security: Public

Watched Kind Hearts and Coronets for the umpty-eth time. I am probably alone in much preferring the performances of the three leads to those of Alec Guinness. Anyway, I love the plot, love the story, and love, love, love Joan Greenwood as the seductive and sinister Sibylla. Sibylla is evil to the core, but in Greenwood's hands she is calculatedly, self-awarely adorable.

Does anybody have a good way to describe Greenwood's way of speaking? I've never heard anything like it. She stresses words oddly, she sings her sentences, and she bites off the ends of consonants.

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Date: 14 Jun 2008 11:08 Subject: Clothing neep Security: Public Mood: educated

I've been sewing and thinking about clothes.

• It is my FATE to pin in gathers. Woooooeeeeeees. In practice, I inflict this on myself. I love big poofy sleeves; I like ease in the upper body; I don't wear the tightly-tailored clothes that are eased into the seams rather than gathered. So be it.
• The 1950's smock I am working on has the sleeve darted into the shoulder rather than gathered. I like it; it's a bit more severe and the sleeve head stands up better.
• Like many experienced seamstresses -- or cooks, for that matter -- I mostly disregard the instructions. I read them to make sure I know what's going on, then I go merrily on my own way. There's one modification I was taught by my mother, and that I use almost every time I sew. If a garment has a continuous seam from the underside of the sleeve down the armpit to the side of the body, I set the sleeve in before sewing this seam, rather than trying to set the sleeve into the armhole. It's much easier to gather and ease a seam when you're working curve-to-flat instead of curve-to-curve. I don't know why the standard instructions always do it the other way.

I've been watching the 1950s/early 1960s The Saint, with Roger Moore; these are the black-and-white episodes early in the run. All the women are, of course, heavily corseted girdled. This produces a monobuttock in the back -- note that Marilyn Monroe was criticized for was having two buttocks that shifted when she walked. It also leads to a very noticeable crease at the waist, where the woman bends. I've noticed this in women who are supposed to be very chic, which is most of the women in the fantasy world of The Saint. It's an interesting illustration of the difference between as-worn and as-designed. In the highest end of fashion, haute couture, enormous amounts of substructure were built into the dress to achieve a smooth line. In the lower income brackets, this wasn't possible; the dress adapted to the lines of the body instead, and the body had a sharp line where the girdle ended.

I think that line was tacitly not-seen, just as the line below a woman's bra (if the woman is not slender) is tacitly not-seen today. It was a part of everyday life; unless a woman wore a bust-to-hip girdle, it was unavoidable.

Now I am off to the bike shop to point out that the derailleur is slipping.

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Date: 13 Jun 2008 15:41 Subject: Etiquette I never troubled my pretty little head about Security: Public

Apparently a lady never pours her own wine. Who knew?

Courtesy of The New Yorker (Christopher Hitchens, famous drunk, is mentioned; ignore that bit.)

"It pains me, on the other hand, to see good wine not being sloshed into the glasses of those who can’t ask for it and want it desperately—frequently, women with nice manners. According to Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Book of Etiquette,” it is the responsibility of the male host or the male guest of honor to keep glasses filled. So, like seconds and sex, women are supposed to play coy even if they want it.^* [italics mine] (The French, unsurprisingly, are really adamant on this point.) Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, says that there’s no specific prohibition on women requesting refills, but that a man commonly attends to a woman’s glass as a courtesy, the way he might pull out her chair."

Huh. My parents never served me wine at home, so I never learned that little refinement. Me, I grab the bottle and pour, or ask for it to be passed. (I knew you had to wait for somebody else to pour your sake, but I never worry about that one either.)

How many of you know this rule? How many of you sit on your hands when your glass goes dry?

^* The person who wrote this drivel is "Lauren Collins"; s/he should take a giant step forward into the 1970s.

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Date: 12 Jun 2008 09:52 Subject: I wasn't expecting that. Security: Public Mood: surprised joy

Holy shit. The Supreme Court ruled that foreigners do indeed have constitutional rights, and the U.S. can't hold them indefinitely in Gitmo without trials.

I am blown away. I thought that with the recent Bush appointees, this was absolutely hopeless. The SF Chronicle writeup refers to "the liberal judges" being in the majority, but their idea of "liberal" includes the guy who wrote the opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who is best characterized as a swing voter rather than a liberal.

But wow. You can't keep people in detention indefinitely. It violates the law of the United States. What a concept.

P.S. "It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years."

Well, of course not. The President doesn't have to follow the law. Checks and balances are irrelevant in wartime.

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Date: 11 Jun 2008 18:27 Subject: Tiny achievements Security: Public Mood: smug

I just removed my bicycle seat and installed a new one, with nobody helping at all.

I feel quite ridiculously empowered. The seat is also much comfier. (Terry Cite X; Terry has a 30-day guarantee that you'll like the ride, so I can swap if necessary.)

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