International Literacy Day

Happy International Literacy Day! Celebrate reading! There are many wonderful books and stories available to read free online. Maybe this would be a good day to start one.

World Jump Day

Today is World Jump Day. First held in 2006, the idea was to combat global warming by getting enough people positioned so that when they all jumped simultaneously the Earth's orbit would change. There were, of course, those who wanted to counter the project with a Contra Jump.

For those without a sense of humor, there were actually sites debunking it as if people would've thought it was a serious endeavor.

Sadly, this event seems to have passed into forgotten history. I may jump anyway.

Commenting Issue Solved

I installed Privacy Badger, 

and that's where my issue with leaving comments came from. 

For now, I'm keeping the browser extension, but I have to disable it on each blog I comment on. If that becomes tiresome I'll uninstall it. I'm just glad to have discovered what the problem was and how easy a fix there is. 

Hoorah!

Commenting Issues

4/2/2018 edit: Privacy Badger was the culprit.


Comments I leave on my own blog and on others are disappearing. 

In the meantime, if you have suggestions I'd welcome them.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Meditation

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died on this date in 2008, was an influence on me during my young adult years. He introduced Transcendental Meditation, which appealed to me back in the day and served as an introduction to me to meditation outside the Christian tradition.

Communiquer naturellement avec Dieu - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 

from Bienfaits Meditation on Vimeo.

Here he talks about Transcendental Meditation (1968):

This is an introduction by Bob Roth, explaining what it is, what it isn't, and how to get started:

I went to one of their group introductory sessions decades ago, but the system of meditation taught through this organization has always been more expensive than I was willing or able to commit to. It did spur me to further research into various types of meditation, though, so I credit it as a transforming part of my life.

Nam myoho renge kyo is free:

and I learned about it from The Monkees:

It helps to be open to experiences from a wide variety of sources.

Critical Thinking

Today is International Chess Day. Chess is a game that requires the ability to think critically and logically.

Today is also the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The connection between these two things may not be obvious, but in these days of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who spread crazy tales folks just believe because they "trust the source"... Well, I'd just like to say that yes, people have landed on the moon. I understand confirmation bias and realize that the more evidence that's provided the more people cling to their tin foil hat opinions, but I do wish our culture was more supportive of critical thinking and less willing to accept whatever we're being fed by the talking heads and the raving talk radio loons.

There are free resources online that are useful in learning about logic and critical thinking and in developing skills in those areas. CriticalThinking.org, the University of Michigan, and Wikipedia have good overviews and are good places to start.

Wikihow has some clear steps to take to develop your critical thinking skills:

Method 1 Honing Your Questioning Skills

1 Question your assumptions.
2 Don't take information on authority until you've investigated it yourself.
3 Question things.

Method 2 Adjusting Your Perspective

1 Understand your own biases.
2 Think several moves ahead.
3 Read great books.
4 Put yourself in other peoples' shoes.
5 Set aside at least 30 minutes a day to improve your brain function.

Method 3 Putting It All Together

1 Understand all your options.
2 Surround yourself with people smarter than you.
3 Fail until you succeed.

GlobalDigitalCitizen.org offers a "cheat sheet" of questions to ask to evaluate information:

I'm tired of hearing, "I don't have time to research this, but I trust the source and I do have time to spread it all over Facebook," and "Where there's smoke there's fire," and "Many people say this is true." Think, people! Think!

Home Decorating

I lived in the same house from the time I was born until I went away to college, and my mother continued to live there for long years until she moved into a senior living apartment. She favored Early American style and had furnished the house in appropriate and comfortable furniture. She didn't ever re-decorate beyond removing the wall-paper, repainting, making new curtains, and once having the living room couch and chair re-covered. During my adult life until about 8 years ago I lived in furnished housing with no choice at all in furnishings and decor. Now, at 60, I've been in a home we've owned for several years. Honestly, I'm clueless about what it would mean to "decorate" it. I look at blogs and other sites and find a lot of what I see appealing, but I'm happy with what I've gradually accumulated through the years.

That said, I think some of what I see would be fun to have, keeping in mind that to buy large new furniture at this point in my life wouldn't be good stewardship. This idea of making your home look "well-traveled without ever booking a plane ticket" looks like fun. Their list:

1. Layer Up
2. Pseudo tiles
3. Eastern sculpture
4. Basket art
5. Floor cushions
6. If all else fails… Plants. Lots and lots of plants.

I'd interpret this differently and on a smaller scale, I think.

1. I already do the "layer up" suggestion with pillows and throws.

2. Tiles don't appeal to me.

3. My Eastern pieces (here are a sample)

and 4. my baskets

are smaller for the most part and the baskets are fewer than what they show. I tend to use the baskets individually for practical purposes, and ones I'm not using are stored.

5. Our place is so small there's no room for floor cushions, but

6. boy, oh boy, do I have the plants!

I have a few things that actually came from foreign lands, and I display them on shelves or tables

and walls

The brown wool braided rugs that we used in our little cabin in the woods back in the day don't contribute to the foreign travel look, though. But I like them. They make me think I'm on a woodland vacation with a trail to walk right outside my door. Who needs foreign travel! I took their quiz, and I got "Artful Bohemian" as my home decor personality. I can definitely live with that result.

What I need to do at this point is pare down and distill so that the treasures I have aren't drowned out by the clutter. And dust! I need to dust!

Floor lamps are ugly

and I'm in the midst of a decades-long attempt to choose the least ugly from among them. I've needed floor lamps -no, really, I've needed them- for decades, but I never could find any I didn't think were too ugly for words. The Husband and I finally decided to just do this, and buy the least offensive ones we could find. This is our first (from Pottery Barn):

and this is how it looks here:

The chair was my mother's and now belongs to The Younger Son. The lamp serves well to read by. One lamp down!

Collecting

Gizmodo has a page of "9 Extraordinary Collections of Totally Ordinary Objects", including "A History of the World in 100 Objects" and a Smithsonian exhibit called "Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes, and Curios." I enjoy viewing collections both in person and online. People collect all kinds of fascinating things, and I've known folks who collected shells, buttons, Barbie dolls, teapots, marbles, keys, books, fountain pens, bird sightings, stamps, quilts, Star Wars memorabilia, owls, coins, autographs, bells.... The objects one can collect are as numerous as people who collect them. There seems no end to it.

I don't collect anything, although I still have the rock collection I began as a project for a Girl Scout badge. I do have a few conglomerations of like objects I just somehow ended up with along the way. For example I have a shelf with bells:

I have a few elephants:

I'm gradually getting rid of many items that don't bring me joy, as recommended by Marie Kondo, but the elephants and the bells remain. I don't add more, and I don't consider them a collection, but that's as close as I get.

Having a formal collection, researched as some are, isn't something I have any interest in, but I like looking at what other people are interested in. Just look at these beautiful marbles, the largest private collection of movie cameras, a collection of 1,400 automobiles, this woman's teapot collection, these collections of Pez dispensers, a button museum, an online video collection of obsolete objects, Paul Johnson's collection of 3,479 pencil sharpeners (no duplicates), and this collection of historical maps. Fascinating!

My Terrarium Project

The terrarium (originally Wardian Case) was invented in 1842 by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. His work on the subject is called On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases and can be read online here. It was an excellent way of transporting fragile plants long distances. Now the terrarium makes a delightful miniature garden.

I've made a vivarium or two (or three) in the past for various pets (anoles, hermit crabs, snakes, etc.) but I can't remember ever making a terrarium just for plants. I decided to try one to see how it would turn out. I used a 2 1/2 gallon glass aquarium, figuring I could easily see how the substrate layering process went in a rectangular container.

I bought small aquarium gravel for the bottom drainage layer. On top of an inch of that, I put a layer of coffee filters and 1/2 inch of activated charcoal. I wet down some spaghnum moss and pressed that on top of the charcoal. I put potting soil on top.

I picked up a couple of plants at the pet store labeled "semi-aquatic" (peacock fern -Selaginella willdenowii- and umbrella plant -Spathiphyllum wallisii) and planted them with an asparagus fern and a coral reef sedum.

I researched the plants after I bought them. Yeah, I know, but I figured I could do something with them even if they were unsuitable for the task at hand. The "peacock fern" ought to have been fine in the terrarium, but it quickly wilted and never recovered. The sedum didn't do well, either, and I moved it outside to a dryer location. It did well there for a while but died during the winter. The "umbrella plant" turned out to be nothing but a common peace lily, which soon outgrew the terrarium. I put it in a pot, and it has its first bloom. The asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus "Sprengeri") also got too big, and I've moved it to a pot.

Seeing that I would have to be intentional about finding tiny plants, I was on the lookout and saw a little 2-inch pot at Home Depot that had an unlabeled plant that looked like a fern. I think it's a Maidenhair Fern, and it's doing fine:

I lifted some little wild violets out of the back patio to see how they would do in this space; but oddly, they seemed to get spindly and lean towards the light. I thought they were shade-lovers, so I'm not sure what was going on with them, but I moved them back outside into the flowerbed.

I added a little piece of moss that was between the patio stones. I think the moss might prefer more air movement that it'll ever get here, and some of the moss has died.

At this point I decided that perhaps a little professional advice would be a good thing, so I signed up for a Terrarium Workshop. For $45 I got supplies and help for making one small terrarium with one plant. Moss cost $8 extra, so I skipped the moss. She seemed surprised I'd been able to kill a peacock fern, so I put one of hers in this new jar. It's dying. She did layers just like I had, using gravel, then charcoal, then sphagnum moss , then dirt. She seemed to think I hadn't added enough water to my original planting, and she was generous with the water in this one. I look forward to seeing if it rallies.

I'd like to get a larger tank -much larger- so I could put in larger plants and do some actual arranging.

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit

I'd never heard of this superstition, but apparently you're supposed to say, "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" when you wake up on the first day of each month to bring luck. It's certainly not a Southern thing. I looked it up, and it seems to be more known in the northeast here and in Britain.

The photo at the top of the post is by OZinOH and is a photo of a sculpture called Dancing Hares by British artist Sophie Ryder. It's located in a park in in Dublin, Ohio.

The Demon Tree

I had been wanting a picture of this tree for some time and finally had a chance to get one when The Daughter was with me in the car.

Conversion by blog comment?

To the guy who keeps commenting on my posts to tell me I am doomed and headed for Hell:

You know your comments go straight to my spam filter, right? 

I only see them when I check the spam filter to see if a real comment has been trapped there by mistake. 

This is not a way to win converts to your particular brand of Christianity. 

Just sayin'.

getting it done

I have always liked Chesterton's quote, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” which appeals to me. It means I don't have to agonize over whether or not I'll be good enough before I start.

Now I've heard, "getting it right is better than getting it done." I think I like Chesterton's take on it better. If I wait until I'm sure I'll get it right before I do it, I'll never start!

The Chesterton quote isn't an excuse for doing it badly, but it certainly removes an excuse to procrastinate. I think it assumes you'll do your best, and if that's bad, well -if the thing was worthy of doing at all- at least you tried your best.

More Money Than Sense

If you are willing to pay $2000 for a pair of shoes, then yes, I think you have more money than sense. Brooks Brothers has the pair shown above for the bargain price of $1225. That's over a thousand dollars for a pair of shoes. Wow!

The photo came from the Brooks Brothers site.

Best Car in the Known Universe

I followed this car down Poplar until it pulled into a parking lot.

This made my day!

Hat Attack

I saw the 1st Hat Attack at Style Crone last month (here's today's) and wanted to join in. I took a kajillion photos of me in the hat, but I had trouble getting a good picture of the hat that way. Since this is one of my favorite hats, I wanted to try to do it justice. Here, it's brightening up my patio on a rainy day. It was still overcast, but it wasn't raining at the moment.

I love hats, especially summer straw hats. I've had this one a long time, and look forward to getting it back out every year as the weather warms up. I never spend much on hats, getting most of them at the bottom end of the price range in local department stores. People seem to like seeing them, because I always get comments when I wear them.

The world would be improved a bit, I think, if more people wore hats.

I Used to Be Cool

image from Cafe Press

seen on a bumper sticker on an SUV. I was never cool, being a nerd from way back, but I'm not sure how cool someone who drives an SUV ever could have been. SUV drivers can't even drive, seemingly unable to stay in their own lanes on the road or park in less than 2 parking spaces. So much not cool there, I can't believe any cool was ever there.

Random poor parking:

The pictures were taken in a single, small parking lot over the space of a day and were hardly the only examples.

The Dreaded Swimsuit Search

I haven't had a swimsuit in 7 years. Our last house had a pool, and I bought a couple of suits when we moved there. That was, oh... 14 years ago, maybe. By the time we moved here those suits were losing their structural integrity, and I didn't replace them. There's a pool here, but I still wasn't motivated enough to go through the swimsuit try-on gauntlet. I'm not overweight, but I am extremely short and not in the best of shape, so finding a suit that both fits and looks ok on me is a challenge.

Earlier this summer, The Daughter arranged a little trip, just the 2 of us, and suggested I get out there and shop! So I went to the mall, walked down to Macy's, and found all the size 6 one-piece suits in stock. That late in the season there were 5 of them. I took them into the dressing room, and lo and behold! 2 of them fit and didn't look half bad. And on top of that, they were clearing out their swimwear!

I bought this one:

and this one:

which doesn't show up at the Macy's site, but is here at Michael Kors. Does this model look pitifully thin like she needs to eat more regularly? She does to me. I want to offer her a donut, or maybe half a dozen donuts. And a steak dinner with a loaded baked potato.

I bought a cute little halter dress cover-up while we were on our trip:

I only wore a suit once while we were gone, and that was wading in a cold stream playing with crawfish. But now I have swimsuits. I could actually go to the pool if I wanted to. Hoorah!

Churches Cannot Be Third Spaces

I don't hear it much any more, but I used to hear some church leaders talk about the concept of "third space" and discuss the church as such a place. I'm reminded of that by this recent post at the blog of the Director of the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa here in Memphis. He links to an article that explores the idea of museums as Third Places.

Wikipedia uses urban sociologist Oldenburg's definition of such places as

the heart of a community's social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.

Oldenburg identifies that in modern suburban societies time is primarily spent in isolated first (home) and second (work) places. In contrast, third places offer a neutral public space for a community to connect and establish bonds.

According to this view, a "third place" must have the following characteristics:

Free or inexpensive
Food and drink, while not essential, are important
Highly accessible: proximate for many (walking distance)
Involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there
Welcoming and comfortable
Both new friends and old should be found there.

I think churches (in cases I'm familiar with, anyway) fail at several points:

1) Depending on your definition of "free or inexpensive" churches are not. In some, the push to tithe is enough to make casual attenders or unconnected community visitors uncomfortable.

2) There is limited food and drink, mostly coffee on Sunday mornings and perhaps a community meal on Wednesday evenings.

3) Most church-goers I know do not live nearly close enough to their church to walk, and the people who actually live close enough to walk are from a markedly different socio-economic group than the church's members.

4) This one fits, as church activities always involve people who habitually go there.

5) Welcoming and comfortable? I have to say that churches are almost always cordial to visitors, but if your definition of welcoming involves more than a smile and hello, I'm not sure most of the churches I've been to manage to make people feel like they are truly welcomed into the inner life of the community. And make no mistake, there is an inner circle in any church. Depending on who you happen to overhear, you will be made to feel distinctly uncomfortable. God forbid you sit in any of the regulars' habitual seats, for example.

6) If you have managed to make a place for yourself in a church, then, yes, you will find both new friends and old if you are in a church where new people ever visit.

Wikipedia quotes 8 characteristics that Oldenburg says a "third place" must have. I'll comment on each of these from my own personal experience.

1. Neutral Ground: Occupants of Third Places have little to no obligation to be there. They are not tied down to the area financially, politically, legally, or otherwise and are free to come and go as they please.

Church members actually have a distinct obligation to be there, having almost certainly taken some sort of membership vow. Non-members have no such obligation, but doesn't that mean they don't "belong"? Many churches have "pledge campaigns" during which you make a commitment to give a certain amount of money during the upcoming calender year. Members definitely have an obligation to be there.

2 Leveler: Third Places put no importance on an individuals status in a society. Someone's economic or social status do not matter in a Third Place, allowing for a sense of commonality among its occupants. There are no prerequisites or requirements that would prevent acceptance or participation in the Third Place.

Obviously, this is not true of churches. There are requirements for someone to join a church in almost every church I'm familiar with, and also a method for kicking folks off the roll. Churches try to not give preference to folks' socio-economic status, I know, but many people find that difficult. Many churches have requirements that prevent various types of participation. For example, many around here don't allow women to have any leadership role except with childrens' ministries, many won't let divorced people teach, many won't allow openly gay people to join at all. A church member once told me that she had told a visitor he should go away and come back once he had showered and changed clothes. She didn't think that was too much to ask, but as he was homeless and destitute and she didn't offer him shower facilities or fresh clothes, I'm sure it felt like an insurmountable barrier to him.

3 Conversation is Main Activity: Playful and happy conversation is the main focus of activity in Third Places, although it is not required to be the only activity. The tone of conversation is usually light hearted and humorous; wit and good natured playfulness are highly valued.

There is happy conversation in most churches, but it is never the main focus.

4 Accessibility and Accommodation: Third places must be open and readily accessible to those who occupy them. They must also be accommodating, meaning they provide the wants of their inhabitants, and all occupants feel their needs have been fulfilled.

This may well be true of churches, as folks who don't feel their needs are being met tend to leave.

5 The Regulars: Third Places harbor a number of regulars that help give the space its tone, and help set the mood and characteristics of the area. Regulars to Third Places also attract newcomers, and are there to help someone new to the space feel welcome and accommodated.

Churches definitely have regulars, I'll give them that.

6 A Low Profile: Third Places are characteristically wholesome. The inside of a Third Place is without extravagance or grandiosity, and has a homely feel. Third Places are never snobby or pretentious, and are accepting of all types of individuals, from several different walks of life.

Not a chance.

7 The Mood is Playful: The tone of conversation in Third Places are never marked with tension or hostility. Instead, they have a playful nature, where witty conversation and frivolous banter are not only common, but highly valued.

Again, not a chance.

8 A Home Away From Home: Occupants of Third Places will often have the same feelings of warmth, possession, and belonging as they would in their own homes. They feel a piece of themselves is rooted in the space, and gain spiritual regeneration by spending time there.

This is true of churches. Those who do really belong feel it's a home for them.

As the purpose of churches is to provide worship opportunity, to convert people, to make disciples of them, to aid them on their faith journey, to teach them, to provide opportunities to reach out to do good in the world, and other Christian activities, I'm not sure how possible it is for churches to be third places in the sense described above. I haven't heard it discussed in church venues in a long time, so perhaps it's not considered in church circles any more. I think churches more often function as private clubs for like-minded people than as open spaces for community gathering.

I believe churches could provide third places in their buildings -not be third places, but provide space for them, but I don't personally know of any that do.