8 am
Another snow day! Rather it should be called an ice day since that is what it is. Sheer ice everywhere. I went out with the dog last night to walk around the block and could only do so because I wore my ice cleats on my boots. It is supposed to warm up today, so I am assuming that I will be able to get to work. But I might take the PVTA bus instead of slogging it out with the insight or camperbus.
Yesterday was actually quite lovely. I managed to get out for quite a long walk at Misty Bottom with my friend L and the dogs. She had snowshoes and I slogged along behind her. Frieda was mostly out front, but Tigger spent most of the time right behind L (between us) with his snout catching the full effect of the snow tossed up by the snowshoes. Pretty silly. I also managed to get in a bunch of spinning – the pink stuff. I have 1 more ounce of it to spin, then a few ounces of white angora to ply it with. And a couple of days ago I started knitting up a muff that I had been thinking of. It will be lined with angora and so very warm. Good for things like waiting for a bus. And I rescheduled Temenos to go for TWO nights in 2 weeks. WooooHooooo. I am very excited. And it gives me more time to actually get the stuff I need together. AND at the end of the day I did some fair stuff – I contacted the Girls Scouts and there is at least one cadet troop interested in learning some crafts and helping out at the fair, I made an initial attempt to contact someone about doing a bunny workshop (she is always hard to reach) and – major brainstorm of the day – I called my sister to see if she would like to do a kid’s workshop and she will do two on Sunday! So that felt very satisfying and successful.
Today’s words:
Horn, winepress, good-for-nothing
I kid you not, that last one was actually right there in the dictionary where I put my finger!
Horn. Horny. Blow your horn, little boy blue. A bull’s horn powder horn. Horn of plenty. the man in Parade’s End blowing The Last post which I assume is some sort of tune played for the dead, like Taps.
Winepress? Wow. What to do with that? In the book (I was just reading, can you tell) they are using a cider press to make cider. Winepress makes me think of flousey Italian women stomping around on top of bits vats of grapes. With Lucy (I Love Lucy) in there too – wasn’t there an episode like that. So silly. Wine press. Pressing out the essence of the grapes to ferment into something precious and valuable. Pressing out the red life-force, like the grapes’ blood.
Good-for-nothing. Well that is me. Good for not a whole lot. Reading and making crepes that nobody wants to eat. Lazy, ne’er do well, a bum, a loafer, somebody with no ambitions or drive (that’s me!) kind of the opposite of the winepress whose goal is to squeeze out the essence, ready it for distilling. A horn can herald things – coming of the king, completion of the wine-pressing, banishment of a good-for-nothing. Blowing one’s own horn. Even a good for nothing can do that. Little Boy Blue go blow your horn – but he was a good for nothing, sitting about in the hay rake, shirking his duties. The duties that pileup and overwhelm. The laundry and dishes and shoveling, not to mention the world-saving. Is it enough, while the world ices over, to make crepes (that no one will eat but my own self)?
Is it enough to sort the clothes?
To feed the pets and stack the wood?
Is it enough to shovel snow from the drive?
Scrape the cars clean and read a book?
Is it enough to go to work and do my job,
Come home to eat supper and go to bed?
Or must we all do more?
Must we all find a way to gather and think and figure out what else to do?
Yes. We must gather.
That is the key.
Gather to think, gather to work, gather to find new ways.
It is not enough to sort the laundry,
My laundry.
Even if I wash it by hand, in a big tub by the wood fire.
Even if I hang it out on the line to dry.
Even if I dig the ground and plant the wheat
and turn the crank to make the flour for the crepes
with the eggs from the chickens in my backyard.
Even then it is not enough.
We must gather.
Share the wheat.
Wash the clothes together
not in the river, but together in the tub by the fire.
We must stand together at the clothesline
and hang out the clothes to flap in the sun.
We must gather to think, to work, to save the world.
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