MommaLibrarian's Commonplaces

What do you do?

At the Ghandi center in Washington, D.C. there is "a life-sized bronze sculpture of Gandhi sitting at his charkha (or spinning wheel).  It was a daily habit for Gandhi to sit at his charkha to spin yarn as a personal discipline and as an ongoing protest against the foreign monopoly on cloth.  Gandhi, sitting peacefully and attentively spinning yarn, became an iconic image of him"

The government has not prevented us from making our own cloth, toasters, can openers, shoes, whatever and yet we don't.  We would rather save our money so we can buy more rubbish.  Big business would rather expand their bottomline by cutting jobs; they profit most by getting the product they sell without having to get their hands dirty.  How sustainable is it for everyone to spend money buying things while their jobs disappear off-shore?  Why is it cheaper to buy frozen broccoli shipped from China than broccoli grown in this country?

I read labels and avoid imports when I can.  My main feeble revolt is to buy all my clothing second-hand and to only buy what I absolutely need.  What else should I be doing?

dandelion?

That's no dandelion. It's a painted close-up of a slice of human hippocampus. Jessica Palmer at the Bioephemera blog introduced me to the gorgeous artwork of neuroscience grad student and painter Greg Dunn. His images of different neurons are really lovely. And you can buy prints.

From Elizabeth Sears to Boing Boing

 

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how
like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals"

                                                                              Hamlet - Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

Having a distinctive name

Yonge Street and Dundas Street [microform] : the men after whom they were named - Scadding, Henry, 1813-1901
"A paper from the Canadian journal of literature, science and history."
Keywords: Yonge, George, Sir, 1732-1812; Melville, Henry Dundas, Viscount, 1742-1811;

I.—SIR GEORGE YONGE.
Sir George Yonge was the chief representative of an ancient
Devonshire family. He was born in 1732, and sat  in Parliament
for the borough of Honiton from 1754 to 1796. His father, the
fourth baronet, Sir William Yonge, sat for the same place before
him. Sir George was Secretary at War from 1782 to 1794, when
he was succeeded by William Windham. Ho also held the offices of
Vice-Treasurer for Ireland, and Master of the Mint. In 1797 he
became Governor and Commander-in-Chief at the Cape of Good
Hope, succeeding Lord Macartney thex'e. He died at Hampton
Court, September 26, 1812, aet. 80. Sir W, Courthope observes,
in his " Synopsis of the Extinct Baronetage of England," that
he died sine prole, so that the baronetcy became extinct, after
existing since 166l, the time of the Restoration.

In the debates taking place in the House of Commons during the
movement in the American Colonies which resulted in their
independence, Sir George Yonge took a favourable view of the
intentions and wishes of the colonists.

Besides Yonge Street, we have in Ontario another memorial of Sir
George Yonge, in the name of the township of Puslinch, in the county
of Wellington, that being the name of a well-known family seat of
the Yonges near Yealmton, in Devonshire; for although the sub-
division of the wide-spread sept of the Yonges to which Sir George
Yonge belonged, was known strictly as the Yonges of Colyton, yet
it is to be observed that Burke, in his Landed Gentry, gives his
notice of the Yonges of Colyton under the more comprehensive head
of the Yonges of Puslinch.

Pretoria Day, Yonge Street Toronto, looking north of King Street, June 5, 1901
Galbraith Photo
Black and white print
Reference Code: F 1143, S 1244
Archives of Ontario, I0006399

Sharing a name does not mean sharing a heritage of course but it is fun to see the Yonges who stayed behind, in the old country.

makes my stomach churn

 

Patriotic Junk Food

 

They claim it tastes the same. I am not sure if that is a recommendation.

Never quite as good in real life

	"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you" Mr Darcy

I know I should . . .

Get a life.  I find the lives of my children endlessly fascinating.  I want to know what they are doing as it seems so much more intense and active than my own life.  I know they wash dishes, vacuum, do the laundry, sleep and are otherwise engaged in the mundane.  Why do I feel this way?  I am going out to lunch with a cousin to a Chinese restaurant I really love and which I have not visited in several years.  That is exciting!  The weather is crisp, fall-like and I could spend time in the garden, puttering, without having heat stroke.  I made eggplant parmesan in the oven last night and it was yummy.  The book I am reading is not that interesting but it is short and I have lists and lists of books to read next.  It is just that sometimes it feels like . . . and there is nothing else.

60 second vacation

I don't know when the idea of the 60 second vacation was first in fashion.  The idea doesn't seem dated to me but I have known about it for a long time.  I don't always remember it but when I do remember to practice it, this can pull a bad day out of a death spiral.

"Everybody has an ongoing dialogue running in their head all day long. The dialog consists of all the things they are working on, all the things they are afraid of, all of the things that bother them, all the plans and machinations they are in the middle of, etc and wanders all over for hours or even days at a time. Meditation helps break out of that for a few seconds at a time so you can see it for what it all is. Nothing. At least, nothing you should waste hundreds of hours of your life obsessing on."        posted by James Altucher    December 11th, 2010 in his blog The Altucher Confidential: Ideas for a world out of Balance

 

His blog has a bunch of ideas for the short meditation vacations.  In the meantime, here is a picture to get you started.  This is a real place, a glacial lake in Alaska; photographed by my daughters in July, 2011.

Politics in the U.S.A. are. . .

Creative

Absurd

Realistic

Distorted

Vaguely unethical

Criminal

Other

Sometimes I am speechless.

Took my breath away

Porter Yates shares this photo, titled "The Earth is Flat," with the Boing Boing Flickr Pool—and explains:

 

Looking onto Andean fields near Simiatug, Ecuador. My vantage point was from ~ 13,000 ft. The clouds filled the valley below as the sun began to set. I had never seen a sky quite like this.

as common as rain

"our youthful sense of exceptionalism – we are marked from youth by the smell of our blood, the stigmata of parental love. There's all kinds of things we can blame our inevitable crushing realization that we are as common as rain – bad educations, bad luck, bad environments – but really...truly?...we are as common as rain, falling inexorably on trajectories based on the gravity of our own characters."

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin in a review by Ceridwen

... and then we grow up, or, at least most of us do.