ThreadingWater

17.mai is Constitution Day in Norway, marking the country’s independence from Sweden. Celebrations begin at sunrise in every town, village and city throughout the country with parades, speeches, picnics and music, often lasting late into the night. Women, men and children dress in their traditional costumes, or bunad, the design of which is based upon one’s region of birth.

The tradition of the bunad arose around the same time as Norway’s independence and emergence as a country in the early 1800’s. Each region of the country was encouraged to incorporate their local needle arts and metalworking traditions into the design of a unique dress costume as a method of fostering a national culture and identification after the country’s long period of occupation by various countries and invaders.

It worked.

The bunad today is unchanged from its original, officially adopted design, thanks in large part to what many Norwegians refer to as “the bunad police,” a group of officials in each region of the country who certify the authenticity of every bunad made. And, not only does one have to have their costume “certified” but the individual themselves must prove that they are entitled to wear a particular region’s bunad which is based on maternal lineage and one’s own place of birth.

The making of one’s bunad is traditionally done entirely by hand, and supervised by the “bunad police” every step of the way. It may take years for a young woman or (increasingly) man to complete their costume. It’s expensive, time consuming and requires considerable skill with a needle and thread.

friends Line and Arnfinn, 17.mai 2004 (Arnfinn made the striking bunad he is wearing)

Once complete, the bunad is worn on 17.mai (of course) and also for other special days and ceremonial events such as weddings.

Gratulerer med dagan! til alle Norge.

I’ve been in a de-cluttering funk lately, sorting and tossing and carting the detritus of “maybe I can use this someday” thinking and hording behavior. This behavior on my part makes Greatest Husband terribly nervous. He’s started to refer jokingly to this phase as “going Polish,” but deep down he trembles with apprehension and scrambles to stay one room ahead of my uncontrolled cyclonic twisting, hunkering down and hiding and hording even more than usual to counteract my forces.

Well, doll, you can relax for the time being. This recently rediscovered treasure from my collection of old cookbooks has stopped me in my tracks.

ooohhhh, this is going to be delicious!

“the machine beats time as well as batter while you supply the brain that makes the cake”

A BRAIN! We haz 1!

And, look! Color photography for inspiration!

More on the actual recipes later. My favorite section of this cookbook is the one that details instructions for entertaining at home without a maid. Just the perfect guide for today’s hard economic times. I mean, maybe you’re like George and Laura, soon to be facing unemployment but still having to entertain all those hangers-on like Condi and Dana and Dick and Lynne. Take heart and consider the:

Buffet Service

The currently popular buffet dinner is another way to manage a maidless dinner. Guests are seated at card tables placed in the living room or other open space, wherever they can be comfortably seated and served.

Sometimes older people, unacquainted with this form of service, become confused and need help. Second helpings, fresh water and butter are brought to the small tables by host, hostess or those assisting.

For more hilarious parties, still on the grown-up side, there are those in which each couple brings one course, the hostess providing the hot one and coffee.

On second thought, this may not work so well in Crawford. While I can totally envision Laura providing the evening’s hot dish, I’m afraid the entire set-up would be way too confusing and not at all hilarious for the guests. You just know that bee-atch Lynne is going to go all high and mighty with her jello salad and toss in some marshmallows to throw Condi off her zero-calorie diet. And, whoa!, if Dick’s been out hunting?? Well, I don’t want to know.

Let’s see . . . there must be something in here that would better suit the Crawford crowd. Oh, yes. Here it is. “The Rumpus Room.”

to be continued.

How else could a long drudge of a day be salvaged?

Somebody rap me upside the head with a skein of sock yarn if I ever get too tired, too cranky, too busy or too cynical to fix a bouquet of blooms for the house.  Ever.

One year ago, the Mother’s Day Project was launched from this site. Since then, another twenty-four women soldiers have died in Iraq.

Please take a moment today to recall their names, and to remember the many thousands of soldiers and civilians who have died in Iraq as a result of our invasion of the country in 2003.

Remember them, and all those who have been left behind - the widows and widowers, the orphaned children, the bereft parents, siblings and other loved ones - and hold them in your heart as you continue to work for peace.

That’s what mothers everywhere want on this day and every day.  We don’t need breakfast in bed, flowers or greeting cards.  We want peace.  We want our children to be safe, well-nourished and happy.  We want our families intact.  Our world intact.

Peace.

Taking a break from indoctrinating the young into the cult of the accordion just to say, “Hillary, if you need to cut expenses (and, the dish is that you DO) might I suggest stiffing the bills you’re gonna get from Terry McAuliffe and Mark Penn?”

May they carry the stink of LOSER all the rest of their miserable days.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the accordion sprite is calling.

I’ve tried. Tried to distance myself from the meaningless minutiae of the Democratic primary race. Tried to keep focused on the big issues like Obama’s and Clinton’s positions on Iraq, the economy, foreign relations. I’ve tried to ignore the negative tone of both campaigns (boiling over in the case of Clinton and seeping into Obama’s from time to time as well.) I’ve unsubscribed from a good many lefty, progressive blogs that I used to read daily because I thought the bloggers and their commenters were becoming petty and, in some cases downright nasty.

I’m not a head-in-the-sand sort of person and my attempt to impose distance was, and is, my way of maintaining a healthy perspective on the events of the day. Besides, which, I lead a fairly complicated life with disparate demands on my time and energy. Don’t we all? I mean, really, if all the time I have for blogging is posting a pretty flower picture, I count on my readers to understand.

However, just in case you (the reader) need an example of what’s bugging me about the lefty blogosphere these days, I have a beautiful example to illustrate my point.

Somewhere along the line, (I don’t remember when or why) I subscribed to an online news and commentary blog by the name of Make Them Accountable, a website with the subtitle, “making politicians and media accountable to ordinary citizens since 2000.” This week I opened one of their emails and found this article about Obama’s supposed “flipping the bird” gesture, complete with second-by-second video frame analysis adnauseum and not one ounce of saving, satirical grace. I encourage you to follow the links until you can play the video for your own eyes. Don’t take my word for it.

So, really. How rabidly devotional to Senator Clinton does one have to be to structure a big “something” out of absolutely nothing? And, how is it that this sort of story gets reported as “make them accountable” news?

In keeping with my attempts to insulate my psyche from this sort of dirtiness, I wrote to “Make Them Accountable” to request removal from their distribution list. Here is what I wrote:

Please remove me from this list. Your story yesterday of Obama “giving the finger to Clinton,” was a joke. I no longer consider Make Them Accountable any more trustworthy than the mainstream media. This kind of journalism is no better than Fox News.

And, here is what I received in return:

How can you believe it’s a coincidence that Obama had exactly the same itch at exactly the same spot, scratched with exactly the same finger, at the exact same spot in the speech, AT TWO DIFFERENT RALLIES?
http://makethemaccountable.com/caro/Comment_080420_BarackObamaHasDisrespectedUsAll.htm

Sure, you’re off the list. I don’t want any blind Kool-Aid drinkers on my mailing list. The last time we had that kind of devotion for a candidate, we got eight years of George Bush.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Nice, huh? This from someone who (according to the Make Them Accountable website) purports to “use every talent I possess and all my energy to try to bring back tolerance, decency, and generosity to the country I love.”

Darling, I propose that you begin by listening to criticism and treating your fellow comrades in the struggle to save our country from another Republican regime by digging a little deeper into your stores of tolerance, decency and generosity.

To my way of thinking, it wouldn’t take very much of any of those qualities to acknowledge that sometimes an itch is just an itch.

The ice has melted and the first blush of color is arriving.

The common belief hereabouts is that spring is unusually late this year. But, is it really? Consider this. Last year’s first ThreadingWater crocus picture was posted on March 26th, three weeks earlier than this year.

Of course, the snow we had four days ago was further validation of our discontent. Today, though, all is forgiven and forgotten under the spell of a purple crocus gazing ball.

My introduction to the poetry of Adrienne Rich occurred during a time when I needed her words in my life as much as I needed money for rent, food for myself and my baby, sleep and time and a job. “The Dream of a Common Language,” was my lifeline then.

As a young mother with an uncertain future, a baby on my hip and a book of poetry in my free hand while I paced the floor at night, Rich’s voice matched the rhythms in my head, resonating with the joy of self discovery one moment, lonely desperation in another. I was not alone when I had Rich’s words in my head, her voice in my heart.

No one lives in this room / without confronting the whiteness of the wall /behind the poems,/ planks of books, /photographs of dead heroines. /Without contemplating last and late /the true nature of poetry. The drive /to connect. The dream of a common language.

from “Origins and History of Consciousness”

Thirty years after first discovering this book of poems, I am still enthralled with how much material in this slim volume remains to be uncovered as if for the first time. Tonight, there is this:

No one ever told us we had to study our lives, / make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history / or music, that we should begin/ with the simple exercises first/ and slowly go on trying / the hard ones, practicing till strength / and accuracy became one with the daring/ to leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggio / or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

from “Transcendental Etude”

Adrienne Rich is coming to my town next week. It will be an honor to sit in her presence and listen to her voice.

Yummmmm. And, let me just say that there’s nothing like a street art and music festival to make a pale-skinned northerner feel as though she’s getting a genuine glimpse of summer - especially when it’s 80 degrees under a cloudless sky.

Leave it to Texas to challenge essential “truthiness”™ by making wieners into winners and cows into losers.

big and blue and excruciatingly bad

The weekend’s biggest accomplishments?

I got drunk on color, talked to strangers in an airport and saved a rabbit’s life with my bare hands.

Who needs religion?

Back in February, I had the opportunity to participate in something called Charity Night at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma, Washington. There, in front of an audience of perhaps 300 knitters, I talked about The Mother’s Day Project, read from letters I have received and showed a five minute video of some of the name swatches gathered from the nearly 180 project participants.

Since I don’t solicit donations for the MDP, I designated two nonprofit groups to receive any donations that audience members felt inclined to give: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (for the important and necessary work they do to collect and analyze statistical information about the Iraq War, the numbers of dead, wounded, missing, etc.) and Heifer International (for their practical gifts of livestock and other domesticated animals to impoverished people and families around the globe to assist them in becoming self reliant and to develop sustainable communities).

I’ve always known that knitters, as a group, are the kind of people I want to hang with. They’re funny, often irreverently so, usually pretty darn smart (’cause we have to do all that math and visual charting stuff, to say nothing of the advanced hand-eye coordination skills which indicates good left/right brain development) and they’re generous.

Actually, generous does not seem an adequate description for what happened on Charity Night.

Nearly $1,000 was collected for my two nonprofit entities, which included more than enough to purchase a “Knitting Basket” from Heifer International, and a total of $6,645 was raised and shared between all of the charitable organizations with representatives on the stage with me that night.

Knitters.

I’m humbled in your presence.