Impossible Read: The Once and Future King

After four months of my Impossible Read project, during which I spent most of those days not reading, I have finished the first book on the list: T. H. White’s 1939 book The Once and Future King. I have an Ace Fantasy edition that was printed, and possibly acquired, in 1996.

As I have stated before, when I began this project I demanded far too much of myself — so much that I got in my own way and stymied any progress at all on reading the book. I wanted not only to read the greatest classic works of all time but also to create a neat, creative, multimedia reading journal for the ages. And that was just too much. (I still want to do it, but I’m now telling myself that I can do all that on the second pass through the reading list.)

Once I got over that issue, it was much easier to make time for reading. And after I got past the second “book” in the novel, “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” I was hooked on the story. Sometimes I stayed up late just to read a few more chapters.

The story begins with the boy Arthur, nicknamed “Wart,” being raised by Sir Ector along Sir Ector’s son Kay. The eccentric Merlyn presents himself as a teacher to both of the boys, but since he is living backwards in time his focus is on training Wart — who he knows will eventually be Arthur, King of England.

Along the way in this first section (“The Sword in the Stone”) we meet Robin Wood (not Robin Hood!), Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and other members of Robin’s band that we remember, or think we remember, from the 1973 Disney movie. I was surprised to see these two very English tales combined in one narrative.

The way this particular version of the King Arthur tale is told, however, soon reminded me of the storytelling structure used in “The Princess Bride” (1987). Though Arthur’s tale is timeless, it’s definitely being told, perhaps as if to children or grandchildren, in 1939. There are references to cricket, to contemporary politics and fashions, and to Nazis. As much as Merlyn cautions Wart to learn to think for himself, the narrator expects the reader to make certain connections between Arthur’s story and contemporary events.

Another curious aspect of this version of the story has to do with how many times the narrator straight-out tells the reader that if they’d like a blow-by-blow retelling they should just read Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Now that I have finished The Once and Future King, a friend is sending me an 480-page edition of the Malory so I can do just that. (Next time around, of course.)

Anyway. In the first section we also meet King Pellinore and view his curiously codependent relationship with the Questing Beast, who is lost and purposeless when she has no one to hunt her. But we don’t just meet characters; we learn the rules of chivalry and tournamenting that we will need to know all through the book.

Each section of the book views the larger story through the lens of a particular character: Arthur; Queen Morgause and her sons; Lancelot; and an omniscient narrator who jumps from view to view and finally settles back in the mind of Arthur. By the end of the book, Arthur is an elderly king who finally understands Merlyn’s reasons for trying to teach him how to think both rationally and on behalf of his entire nation rather than for his own self-interest. He is able to look back on his life and view his actions in context, now seeing where his mistakes have caused harm. The final pages give Arthur, and the reader, hope of a bright future. In fact, the last two words of the story are the label, “THE BEGINNING.”

Before I read this book I was only vaguely familiar with the notion of Camelot. In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), which I have seen several times, it was presented as the home of the Round Table, both a mythic and noble destination and “a silly place.” But it was also used to describe the Kennedy White House. I read hundreds if not thousands of pages about John F. Kennedy when I was a teenager, and came across this reference several times. But since I had neither read the King Arthur story nor watched the movie “Camelot” (1967) by that time, I assumed that it referred to the society of King Arthur and his knights in its glory days. By the time I reached the third book, “The Ill-Made Knight,” I began to see other associations between King Arthur and Kennedy — tragic ones. When I neared the end of “A Candle in the Wind,” the final section, I was reading with a more sober and slightly broken heart.

I mentioned earlier that Merlyn was living backwards in this story, which immediately brought to mind the “Doctor Who” character River Song. She also could not remember when she had last met the Doctor, which would be the first time that he met her. Their relationship was always confused, not the least because the Doctor regenerated two times during her story arc. But thinking about the Camelot connection to the Kennedy administration put me in mind of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, particularly at the end of “The Waters of Mars” (2009), when the Doctor succumbs to pride and begins to see himself as an all-powerful force. It’s a terrifying episode in so many ways, but the final minutes of the episode hint less at the monsters than at the tragedy that lies ahead. And of course, “Doctor Who” is another very English tale.

The Doctor, thinking he has control over destiny.

This week I’ll continue the Impossible Read by starting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon, of which I own a 1984 Del Rey/Ballantine edition. This time, the Arthurian legend will be told from the point of view of the women in the story. After I finish this book, I will close out the segment with three movies: “The Sword in the Stone” (1963), “Camelot,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Huge thanks go to my friend Casey for suggesting that I watch the movies in this order. The idea is that I’ll watch a child’s version of the Arthur legend, then watch a grown-up’s version of the story, then watch a version which turns everything upside down and then blows it all up.

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I added one more typewriter to my collection this weekend, despite the fact that its thrift store label read “DOES NOT WORK.” The label also read “$2.00,” so I was willing to take a chance that it might just turn out to be a parts machine for another collector/restorer. But I’m not sure that will be its fate.

This 1951 Remington-Rand Super-Riter Standard was designed so that its top, side, and back panels would practically pop off for access to the insides for cleaning and adjustments. (They were loose when I bought it; perhaps that convinced the previous owner that it was truly falling apart.) After I brought it home I was able to quickly find and download, for free, both its user manual (“Operating Instructions”) and its 77-page service manual (“Mechanical Instructions”).

Meet “Vincent.”

And after a few minutes of skimming the manuals and fiddling around, I was able to get several things working that hadn’t worked before. The carriage still doesn’t advance when the keys are pressed, but that feels like some kind of mechanical misalignment; something just isn’t catching. I will have to learn more and dig deeper to find and address the mechanical difficulty, so for now I have fastened the panels on more securely, taken some photos, and created an entry in my typewriter inventory.

The typebars are in wonderful shape: this is regular-motion elite type.

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Knitwise, I added a few rows to the Habit-Forming Scarf in the course of the week and weekend. It’s now 22-1/2 inches long. I usually get more knitting done on a Formula One weekend; the next race (Imola) isn’t until next weekend, but Monaco will be held the following week.

I did pull the rest of the yarn from the skein and wind it into a little ball. That reminds me that the next skein is soon to come.

My campus (and community) based yarn community will meet on May 21 for lunch and yarning. Surely by the time the green flag is waved at Monaco, I will have joined the second skein of yarn to the scarf.

Off to a flying stop

Last Monday I kicked off my Impossible Read by beginning my first book, The Once and Future King, in the first minutes of the new year. I hadn’t intended to do so, but when I found myself awake in bed at 11:40 pm it seemed like a low-effort idea to just stay awake for a few more minutes.

The plan backfired slightly when I found it hard to get to sleep after reading one chapter, but that was just because I enjoyed the book so much. After a good night’s morning’s sleep I resumed reading and finished six chapters. I marked all kinds of passages that I particularly enjoyed — twenty-five of them, in fact, including two descriptions of Merlyn that brought to mind the River Song character from Doctor Who.

It was my copious notations that brought the project to a halt. I had stocked up on plenty of Artist’s Loft sketchbooks to use for recording my notes as I read, but two qualities of the sketchbook have proven to be problematic.

The first issue is the thickness of the blank page. I wanted plenty of room to write, draw, and include any kind of scrapbook-y things that I wanted to, but I also didn’t want my writing to be sloppy. So I decided to slip a lined page behind the page I would be writing on. The notebook paper I used for this was barely visible through the thick sketchbook page, so I used a ruler and pen to go over the existing lines and darken them as much as I could. Now I have lines to go by without having lines on my page.

Unfortunately, the available light at home comes from the wrong direction; my hands cast a shadow and I can’t see the lines I’m aiming for. So I took my book and sketchbook to work, thinking that in the better light there I could make my notes neatly. But on this particular week I didn’t have much extra time in the morning before my work day began; I wrote out almost two pages of notes, and that was all I could do this week. I didn’t want to read ahead in the book when I was already so far behind on my notes, playing catch-up.

The second issue is the sheer size of each page. Last year for my reading journal, I used a dot journal with a 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch page. It’s the perfect size to write on at a desk, at a table, or even curled up in a chair. The sketchbook pages measure a little over 8 by 11 inches, and the the book is opened it is a heavy 11 x 17 product — not something you can curl up with at all. Even on a table it takes up quite a lot of room. (Just for fun, I put a blank sketchbook on my kitchen scale. It weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces.)

So I have to work on my logistics. Perhaps electronic notes would be better. Perhaps I should just read the book, then enter all of my notes. Perhaps I should do whatever works and not put quite so much overthinking into the project. I could just annotate the books directly, but I would like to pass them along to new readers when I’m done with them. That’s why I would like to allow my notes to be detailed: they are my lasting record of the project.

So I have some thinking to do before I move ahead.

I have also done some reading in the books I didn’t finish by the end of 2023, and I’m still adding items to last year’s reading journal. (I’m not keeping a reading journal for this year other than what I document for The Impossible Read, but I will be reading other books.) But the end is near: after I write entries for two books I finished and one that I didn’t, I will add lists of Did Not Finish titles and Did Not Start titles and call it a year.

The Did Not Start list might seem to be infinite, but it will consist of books I planned to read, assumed I would read, and printed out mini covers to add to the journal. Here’s one:

I’ll glue in these little covers, which will make space in the list for me to record the dates when I finally do read these books (anything’s possible). So my 2023 reading journal will include what I meant to read as well as what I started and what I finished. Returning to it to add this kind of data might tempt me to review the rest of the pages — and to enjoy the memories of the year I read more than 10,000 pages.

I have no new typewriters to report; I had meant to take the Skyriter out of its shell yesterday and start to give it a cleaning, but I spent much of the weekend sorting paperwork in the dining room. The dining room table was cluttered with this effort until this afternoon, when I was too tired to take on a brand new task. Next weekend should work out better, and I’ll take photos of the process.

Next weekend I’m also planning to do a mini writing retreat for myself and a friend, and I’m spending this week thinking about what kinds of texts and supplies we might need. It’s really going to be a “sit our butts down and just start writing” event, so I’ll have to restrain myself from over-planning. Paper, pen, and coffee should do it.

I don’t know yet which story I’m going to work on, so I’d like to plan that much. But you know what I mean.

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Knitwise, I added a few repeats onto the Thrift Stripe scarf. I’m now at 39 repeats out of 45. That would be doable within the next week, except that I keep occupying myself with activities — like reading — that are incompatible with knitting.

I didn’t start or finish any other knitting, but this week my Facebook friends and I came across a photo of a knitted (crocheted?) Coleus that has us all wanting to cast on.

Maybe I’ll start it on a day when I don’t have anything good to read.

Digging deeper

While you were looking the other way roots have been growing, wings have been stretched, and new connections have been made. Don’t worry, though; I wasn’t looking, either.

Let’s begin with the roots and work our way up. Last week I had a rooting peach seed that was almost large enough to plant in a pot. Other tasks and deadlines intervened and I put off the task until, look at the time, here we are on Sunday afternoon and I should take another look at that seed. I was delighted to discover that the tiny roots had grown through the damp paper towel, just as they had on the video I had watched all those weeks ago to learn about this process.

I gently pulled away the paper towel, but not gently enough to keep from breaking off one of the tiny roots. Oops.

The other five seeds still had a bit of slow action going on, so I tucked them back in for another week.

Now it was time to finally get out the pot and the potting soil and plant the seed. After I rewatched the first video in the peach-seed-germinating series, I watched the second video for the first time. In that video, the gardener re-potted his peach sprout in more soil so it would sit higher up in the pot and get more sun. So I put in a lot of potting soil for such a tiny sprout.

We’ll see what progress it can make in that window by this time next week. If it needs more sun I can take it to work and rest the pot on a sunny windowsill.

This week I added another typewriter to my collection, which totals seven unless we find my Smith-Corona electronic typewriter (“K9”) from the mid-80s. I took it to college with me in the fall of 1985, and it saved me (despite some professorial grumbling over the aesthetics) when my manual typewriter broke a spring halfway through a 20-page English paper in the spring of 1986. A few years later I acquired a Macintosh SE and a DeskJet printer, and now I’m not sure what happened to the electronic typewriter.

Editing with K9 in 1987.

Anyway, I found this Smith-Corona Sterling advertised on Facebook Marketplace marked down from $40 to $35. I made arrangements to pick up the typewriter at the seller’s house after work, but when I arrived she wasn’t there and neither was the typewriter. After some hasty communications between me, the seller, and the seller’s husband, she offered to bring it to my house that night and drop the price a bit more. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, but I agreed. When she got there the price became $30 until she pulled the typewriter out of its case and a piece of tape fell off with $25 written on it (the price she’d put on it, and forgotten about, at a rummage sale).

It’s a wonderful little typewriter, especially at that price, and after I fiddled with the ribbon a bit I saw that it types smoothly. Its serial number places the date of manufacture sometime in 1947. Since it’s very clean, it will be a good typewriter to start with as I learn how to do basic typewriter maintenance and repair. I now have three Smith-Coronas, so that will be a good make to focus on for now.

I also joined two sister Facebook groups: one for collectors of antique typewriters and another for maintenance and repair of antique typewriters. This isn’t a change of career, but since many other folks have gone before me to preserve and digitize so many typewriter manuals, I’ll have something I can read and learn from if I get snowed in this winter. (Because, you know, I don’t have enough books.)

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Knitwise, I frogged the striped scarf that was too wide and cast on again with US7 straight needles. After about 4-5 rows it became rather crowded. I was at a craft store this morning to look for a few other items, so I picked up a set of US7 circular needles while I was there and moved the work over to it when knitting the next row.

This looks more reasonable for a “not too narrow” scarf, and I’ll aim for each stripe to be two or three inches deep.

If I finish the scarf too soon (what does that mean?), I can switch to this book’s patterns to use up some of the scrappier parts of my stash.

My life as a cat

Recently I’ve been catching up on a podcast to which I haven’t listened for over a year. Now that my morning and afternoon commutes have been somewhat lengthened by the lateral journey to Youngest’s high school and back again, I’ve been firing up the Bluetooth speaker (thanks, Sheila!) and listening in for at least thirty minutes a day. The episodes vary in length but average 20-25 minutes each, so I have been clipping through them fairly quickly. I started re-listening about a year further back than I needed to, but it’s been rewarding to hear the episodes again (occasionally hearing [again] the answer to a question I had submitted — which, ironically, which was about what other podcasts I should listen to when I had finally caught up with this one).

This weekend I caught up to where I had left off almost exactly a year ago. A few minutes ago I listened to the last five minutes of an episode I started this morning, which turned out to be largely about, of all things, the philosophy of mathematics and its relationship to Talmud study. And right at the end of the episode, host Xava made the comment, “I can’t live all of the lives that I want to live.”

I may have mentioned one or twice that my house contains the necessary items for living several lives. Since I don’t know yet which life I’ll live, I don’t know yet which items will prove to be necessary and which items I can sell, throw away, or hand off to others. As my offspring make their own decisions, I can reward their decisiveness by letting them raid my stores. Over time, that will help me to narrow my own choices. (Mama can’t go first. That would be rude.)

Do I have enough items to live for a thousand lives before using them up? Not quite. (And would I want to live like The Doctor, outliving everyone I love? No. But I can’t get rid of my Tardis full of time-travel items — no, not yet. Somehow I might find the time to read and watch them all….)

But perhaps, just perhaps, I could narrow my lives down to nine.

There’s a life where I can finally set up my Macseum, creating networks of similarly aged Mac hardware and installing each piece with the optimum operating system. The laser printer and the DeskJet can finally come up from the basement and be used again, and I can write (and print out) stories on everything from a Mac Plus to an iMac or MacBook.

There’s a life where I can learn all the languages I want to learn: Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino; Spanish; American Sign Language; Latin. And why not French and German and Arabic, too, while I’m at it? Japanese? Afrikaans? Sanskrit? No problem! I remember checking out, when I was in about the fourth grade, a library book about the way basic Chinese characters were created. The character for “house” actually looks like a house, if you know what you’re looking for.

There’s a life where I have the time to read all of the books I have accumulated over the years. Fiction, essays, nonfiction — all of them, in any order I want.

There’s a life where I draw, paint, and just plain create all the things that flash through my mind. I take my own photographs, develop my own pictures, and design the house I live in.

There’s a life in which I do nothing but write, with pencils, pens, fountain pens, typewriters, and computers.

There’s a life where I travel the world, using my languages and my art to get around and meet people, discover and tell their stories, and find out who I am.

There’s a life where I cook my way through every cookbook I own, and I master the techniques of Jacques and Julia, of Anthony Bourdain and Bert Greene, of the Top Chefs and the anonymous cooks representing a thousand years of Chinese cuisine. I bake every loaf and cut out every cookie, and there are fresh loaves of challah on every Shabbat.

There’s a life where I’m just the wacky old lady who lives next to the middle school, pointing my finger at the kids who struggle to pedal the ill-fitting hand-me-down bikes of their older siblings. “Come here,” I say. “Let me fix that for you. You can pick it up on your way home.” While they’re in class I check the brakes, adjust the gearing, put the seat at the proper height, fill the tires to the right pressure, and lube the chain. I get to make something better, and they get to have something that works better — something that might bring them freedom rather than frustration.

That sums up eight lives, leaving only one in which to do everything else I’d like to do. Is the ninth life the one in which I knit, crochet, make quilts, rehabilitate owls, foster cats, dogs, horses, and alpacas, research genealogies, and finally learn to play and write music for the piano, guitar, and accordion? When do I study geometry, astronomy, and mathematics? When do I set up my invention lab? When do I meditate and do my yoga? And when can I just be?

I may need to rethink this plan.

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Knitwise, there hasn’t been a stitch of work going on. Knitrino did recently email me about my last chance to purchase a pattern for knitting a smol apatosaurus. It’s tempting, I tell you.

Doing the keyboard shuffle

Last week I returned to the university library the Macbook Air that I had checked out a couple of months ago. I needed to borrow a Macbook for some in-class work for the graduate course; neither my iPhone or my iPad could really do the job. I’m also in a situation where I can only do some of the tasks needed for graduate school on my home Mac because it refuses to perform an incremental operating system update. (I’m not sure why this is so; I asked it politely, several times, and it declined.)

So I checked out some of the University’s own hardware to do the job. The thing is, it’s set up to access the campus networks only when it’s on campus. That helped me stick to my promise of not using my work computer (and work time) to do graduate school work, but it didn’t really help me out at home. So back to the library it went, and my daily bag is now much lighter to carry.

At home, Youngest has been working to make his bedroom more his own place and less like the archive of his older brothers and their cast-offs. This weekend we went out thrifting in search of an HDMI-equipped television that he could use as a computer monitor. By golly, we found one at the first place we looked. (Actually, we found three — one that was laughably small, one that was impressively oversized, and the one we took home, which was Just Right.)

Several weeks ago, Youngest eliminated our need to share the downstairs PC after he discovered a laptop in his closet (cf. archive, above) that was mysteriously able to meet his computing needs. I use the word mysteriously because I purchased this laptop at a campus sale of technology surplus somewhere between 2017 and 2019, and it was considered obsolete at the time. How it does now what he needs it to do is beyond my understanding.

At any rate, now he had a large monitor and the old laptop was serving as the computing power. What he needed now was…a keyboard. He appropriated the gaming keyboard and gaming mouse from the downstairs PC, and informed me this morning. I wasn’t upset because, frankly, the gaming keyboard and mouse gave me fits. They were backlit with colors that changed in a way I never quite understood how to control. The mouse had more programmable functions than I would ever need, and the keyboard was designed in a way that always left me in doubt about which symbol I might get when I used the Shift key (for some reason the designer thought it was cute to put the primary symbols on top and the secondary symbols on the bottom, contrary to everything I had learned since acquiring my first [manual] typewriter in about 1976).

I wasn’t going to shed any tears about “losing” the gaming keyboard. It didn’t take me long to realize that hooked to my iMac was a Dell keyboard and a wireless mouse, and I managed to hook them to the PC without having to consult anyone younger than myself.

What to do for the Mac? Actually, we may have more Mac keyboards in this house than we have anything else, from the Mac Plus keyboard with its phone-jack connection to a handful of Apple Wireless Keyboards. I weighed my many options and decided to re-connect the Qwerkywriter Bluetooth keyboard and an Apple Pro Mouse I had sitting around.

Here’s a picture that I took in 2018 of this keyboard. Another room, another desk, a glass of white wine.

New room, new desk, same wineglass, red wine. Same bamboo computer stand, technically different (but identical) computer.

This mouse (as I confirmed during the course of writing this post) can’t right-click and doesn’t have a scroll wheel. I suppose that, somehow, I’ll manage to get by while proceeding slowly and intentionally. I’ll consider it to be a meditative exercise.

What else did I do this weekend? I started reading a novel, The Bone Orchard by Paul Doiron. (I should really be reading the first book in this series, The Poacher’s Son, but there’s a 6-week wait for the book through my library system.) I did all the laundry and most of the dishes, and I had a terrific Mother’s Day during which I talked to all of my kids and, yes, called my mother.

What’s in store for the week-to-come? Work, a work-related get-together, an appointment at the vet’s, and various driving-around on behalf of the Offspring. I’ll try to make the most of it.

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Knitwise, I acquired two skeins of Lion Brand Thick & Quick in Wine while I was thrifting this weekend. This is discontinued yarn that is one of the colors called for in the Season 18 Doctor Who Scarf I have partially finished (but not worked on since 2011 because, as I may have mentioned, the yarn was discontinued). The colorway I really need to acquire is Terracotta, but maybe these can serve as a bargaining chip in that regard. Ravelry says a full skein weighs 141 grams, and each of these skeins is over 154 grams. Call me. Let’s make a deal.

Pretty as a piano

For a while now, I’ve been accumulating items here and there related to peacocks. At work I have a couple of mugs and greeting cards on display, as well as an embroidered pillow. At home I have another peacock pillow (how I miss you, Pier 1), and a beautiful glass platter/bowl that I finally purchased after passing on it and then stalking TJ Maxx and Home Goods for more than a year.

My friend and Scentsy dealer Amy has tempted me over and over with peacock-themed Scentsy warmers. I can never resist, and this month two rather spectacular pieces were released. I ordered them and they showed up on Friday afternoon, just hours before a line of tornadoes did.

I don’t have a good place to display all of these items together; I’ve been joking that my next house will have a Peacock Room. But when I texted Amy to confirm that the order had safely arrived, she responded right away with, “Did you open the box?”

It seemed ridiculous to say, “No, I will leave these beautiful items in their boxes until that vague, far-off day when I have a new house and I will finally make space to take them out and enjoy them.” So I looked around and thought, I should have my Peacock Room now. But where?

I didn’t have to look far. The top of my piano (as well as the piano bench) was covered with all sorts of things — so many, in fact, that I would have to move several things if I wanted to open the lid and sit down to [feebly attempt to] play.

Before.

Some of these items are books I intend to give away to friends. Some are Mother’s Day crafts my kids made at school over the years. (I’m not giving those away.) And yes, that’s a Doctor Who scarf serving as a runner underneath the craft items. Eventually I got everything cleared off and was able to bring in the Scentsy warmers.

After.

The two glass jars with handles are items I found at Goodwill yesterday when I was looking for peacock art for the wall (I’m still looking, and might have to make something myself). The colors were just perfect. I probably won’t put anything in them, but will just polish them up and clean out the accumulated dust every so often.

What is it about peacocks? I just find them to be beautiful and exotic, even though I’ve had close encounters with them twice within five miles of my house in south central Wisconsin. (People raise everything here. Don’t get me started.) There’s nothing to compare with driving down a two-lane country road, cresting a hill, then slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting a flock of road-crossing peacocks. It’s quite the adrenaline rush.

I can’t plug in the warmers in this location, but that’s okay. I can let the light in and finally enjoy the plumage.

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Knitwise, it was a busy Spring Break and I didn’t pick up the needles until I watched the Australian Grand Prix this afternoon. The race was an event best described as “chaotic,” but I managed to nearly double the depth of the pocket while it was being broadcast (and started, and restarted, and restarted, and restarted, and restarted….). I don’t think it’s deep enough to try knitting on a circular needle — but honestly, that’s probably not worth doing for a couple of reasons.

One, it isn’t hard to knit on the piece this way, it’s just a bit odd. It’s like garter stitch with a gap at each end.

Two, changing from double-pointed needles to a circular needle might change the gauge enough to be noticeable, and I don’t want that.

So I will carry on and try to work in some lunchtime knitting, since the next race isn’t until the last weekend in April. It would be nice to be done with at least the pocket portion by then.

Of course, if I do find myself with some free time in which I can concentrate and have good light, I’ll pick up the Yoga Socks and figure out where I am and what I will need to do to go forward.

Time Travel Product Reviews

Last month I got frustrated with my bulletin journal habits, or lack of them, and decided to abandon this year’s plan of designing each month’s layout by hand as I went along. Actually, I fell off that particular wagon months ago, with the consequence that now I’m not really keeping tracking of anything with much success. I would check to see exactly when that happened, but right now I’m not exactly sure where my 2022 bulletin journal actually is.

At work my Outlook calendar is up to date, and personal deadlines are scribbled on 3×3 Post-It notes and stuck someplace I’m likely to see them before heading home. And the family dry-erase calendar is current.

But I replaced the personal bullet journal with a pre-printed planner from Rhodia, which has pages suitable for fountain pens. And while I was at the Goulet Pens website to buy the planner, I bought a new fountain pen to go with it. There was a matter of a sale, and free ink in Black Cherry, and there we were. You know how it goes.

I must say that I do enjoy the Goulet Pens buying experience. Their website is nice, they have a range of lovely items, and you can buy a nice pen if you have $30 to spend or $1000. They pack everything carefully (they call it “a slightly ridiculous amount of care”), usually include a company-designed sticker and a Dum Dum pop, ship it quickly, and invite your feedback just on the shipping. They also produce a blog and YouTube product review videos, including the Goulet “Pencast.” They’re fun, knowledgeable, and Good People.

After the purchases come the emails. How do you like your new pen? they ask. What did you think of the ink you recently purchased? That all makes sense. But the email I received on November 28 had me puzzled.

It’s a weekly planner for next year. As I write this, it’s December 4. I have opened the planner, and shown off its gorgeous cover color to everyone in the office, but it’s not as if I have any need to write in it yet.

Do people just jump into next year’s planners when they receive them in mid-November? Find the month that starts on the same day of the week, rename all the months, and get going? (June is December, but June has 30 days and December has 31, so that leaves a 24-hour gap until January is January so then WHAT DO WE DO?) Or maybe they write all of next year’s known events in the planner to help pass the days until next year becomes this year? I suppose that I could write in all of the birthdays I plan to observe, but does anyone do that?

Perhaps I could review it as I know it right now. Well, the cover is a lovely shade of peacock blue, which is why I purchased it, and the calendar pages are printed in orange, which wasn’t really a factor because I had no choice. The elastic band, also in peacock blue, does an acceptable job of keeping the planner closed when it isn’t open. The pages are made of nice paper that ought to work well with my fountain pen when it’s time for me to write in it, but I don’t know since it isn’t time yet. Only 27 days to go!

Or I could write the Terse Factual Review that you see so often at Amazon. Item arrived on schedule, in good condition, was exactly as shown on website.

Or I could write a Useless Review: How would I know its not 2023 you morons, ask me after I had a chanse to use it.

On the other hand, I could get creative. I have a degree in being creative, so why not use it?

6/2/25 — finally time to take a breath and thank you for all the features of the Rhodia 2023 planner. It included just enough space to record all the vague references to the Daleks and put the pieces together in time to thwart what would have been a catastrophic invasion of Earth. Thanks, and you’re welcome! —Love, The Doctor. P.S. my love to Clara; whatever you do, don’t look in mirrors until after 2032. I’ll tell you why later.

1964, 1966, 1967, 1969 — this journal goes well with my 42 pound fountain pen. — Mason Williams

24/8/2004. Good book, bad pen. I got red on me! — Edgar Wright

The English version is rather dull. Have you one in Catalan? — Colm Toibin

Whose dates these are I think I know.
Can’t fill them in ’til next year though.
— Robert Frost

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In other writing-related news, WordPress (always eager to innovate) has taken a page from Facebook in the mid-aughts and decided to supply me with a writing prompt of sorts. Is it only me who finds this rather creepy?

WordPress. Dude. Just give me the tools to write and publish. I’m not asking for “inspiration” or questions about my sleep cycle or my biorhythms. Back off.

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Knitwise, I added precisely one set of color repeats to the Vintage Packers scarf. Two more ridges of green, or more ridge of gold. One inch longer and not photo-worthy. Moving along, moving along.

I did find and download a pattern for a pillow cover I could make with the lovely Blue Sky Fibers yarns I rescued last week. I don’t want to knit a snowflake pattern, but at least I know there are patterns out there for pillow covers using Fair Isle patterns. We’re getting there, step by step.

This weekend I had hoped to stash-dive and find some brown yarn suitable for knitting potatoes. Alas, I have not yet found the time. Maybe it’s behind the planner.

Talking of Michelangelo

It’s been a summer of change, with several work-friends in the process of coming and going. Not all of the changes were expected, but of course I hope that all the arrivals and departures have put each person in a better place to live the next stage of their life. Onward and onward, further up and further in! It’s all good. We’ll catch up on Facebook or LinkedIn or Academia.edu someday.

One of the new members of my department noticed a sonic screwdriver in my office, and another one spotted the TARDIS magnet on my car. I’ve been fielding questions ever since about my various geeky interests, which is a different experience for me. (My current acquaintances already know all about my geekery.) I suspect that I will become much less interesting when the semester begins and there are 100-125 students for each of them to get to know.

One of the people who left the campus last year has returned this year. Welcome back, Lori! (When do you want to get together to knit?)

And of course there will be hundreds of new students on campus soon, trying to find their classrooms and their professors and the department offices. May each of them be on their way to a better place.

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Knitwise, I used my Formula One viewing time to regain the momentum on the pink project. During August the series takes three weeks off and calls it the “summer break.” Everyone has to take a vacation and the teams aren’t allowed to develop the technology on the cars. For my part, I tried to use some of the summer break to view (and delete from my DVR) the early practice sessions that I hadn’t been able to watch on the race weekends.

The pink project is great for TV knitting since it’s a one-row wonder. It is getting a bit long, however, and when I have to turn the work it becomes a major effort.

Going into this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix I thought that if I knitted on it during every session I would surely get it to the decrease point. I did try. After the end of the race I folded the work at my halfway marker, and counted. I should have about 34 more rows (17 ridges) to knit before I start the decreases.

Maybe I shouldn’t have counted. Now I know that if I knitted one row a day for a whole month, I still wouldn’t be at the decrease point.

That shouldn’t matter because my goal is to finish the whole project before Thanksgiving. On the other hand that will entail knitting 34 more rows, knitting the second decrease section, binding off, weaving in all of the ends, washing the work, and drying the work. (Because it’s acrylic, I won’t be blocking it.) So all that is going to take a while.

One row a day, and everything will be okay….

The inner dog

Last Friday the day finally came — the day in the spring when our dog Monty gets a complete shave-down and receives all of his necessary annual shots and treatments. As I have previously mentioned, Montmorency Jerome is a rescue dog. Even though he has spent many more years with us than he did at his prior home, some events still upset him. Grooming is one of those events. We tried many different grooming tactics over the years, and what we finally settled on was that once it was warm enough in the spring, we would have the vet sedate him so that the trimming and grooming wouldn’t stress him out. The timing usually works out pretty well.

Monty, February 7.

This year, the morning of the shave-down featured a surprise snowstorm. I’d like to call it freakish, but snow in Wisconsin in late March isn’t exactly unseasonal — it’s just weather that has rather worn out its welcome. (It proceeded to wear out its welcome even more on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Sigh.) The swirling snow did provide some background excitement as I drove Monty the three miles to the vet.

By the time that Monty’s coat becomes this overgrown, he’s ready and willing to hop in the car and have the extra fur removed. (Remember, they knock him out completely.) But also by this time, we forget that Monty is not really a shaggy fellow. We have forgotten the inner dog.

Monty, March 31

The real Monty is small and sleek, and he shivers when he’s cold. And he has been cold all of this long, snowy weekend. He has curled into a tight ball in his dog bed and in the Big Green Chair in the library, and right now he is curled up in a tight ball at my feet. The snow will melt and the weather will become warmer and Monty’s fur will begin to grow out again, and by the time winter comes around again we will have forgotten, again, all about the inner dog.

This weekend has been a good one for music. MiddleSon and I hit the CD jackpot at St. Vinnie’s on the way to the grocery store on Saturday morning, and I picked up a few more albums at Half Price Books when he and I were running around this afternoon. Last night I listened to albums by Tori Amos, Tracy Chapman, and Sheryl Crow. (I couldn’t decide what the listening order should be, so I settled on alphabetical.)

Today I picked up the 1967 debut album by age-15 Janis Ian (on vinyl!), and I had to listen to the second side of the “Mason Williams Listening Matter” before I could put her album on. Boo-freakin’-hoo. This is definitely a “top of the first world” problem. My ears are grateful that I’m filling them with such nice things.

I need more music and words in my head because I’m continuing to write in the songwriting group. (Even though I haven’t cleaned off the desk in my bedroom so that I can work there, I have bought a fabulous new hardcover journal. And some 0.5-mm black pens. And two more bottles of fountain pen ink, to be delivered next week. Hush, this is Serious Writer Stuff™. I totally deserve it.)

I received some enthusiastic feedback for my March song, and I have a pretty complete draft of the lyrics for the April writing prompt (“war”). All that I might have to do is figure out the melody, create a rhythm track in Garage Band, and learn how to strum my guitar. Oh, yeah, and record the vocals after I figure out what they are. No prob, Bob!

Can we write it? Yes, we can!

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Knitwise, I wove in the ends of the turquoise scarf last week. The next steps will be to gently wash it and block it out. It measures about 52 inches, which is long enough to be functional but rather short for one of my scarves. It may be a different length after the washing and the blocking. Do you want me to document those steps in the finishing process? I will be happy to show you what that looks like, if you want to see it.

This afternoon I did manage to acquire four skeins of out-of production yarn at a Goodwill store. Two skeins were Lion Brand Thick & Quick Chenille in the colorway called for in a particular Doctor Who scarf pattern. I suspect that Orange is the color I really need, not having enough in the project bin, but I grabbed the Purple that was available. (Because I could.) The other two skeins were Caron Simply Soft in Victorian Rose, to complete a project that I started when I was visiting my parents as my father was fading. The end result should be a sort of stole that will drape across the foot of my mother’s bed. I started the project, which I made up out of my head, with some yarn that she had on hand. Little did I know that the color wasn’t being produced any more. Now I may (or may not) have enough yarn to complete the project if I can figure out the stitches I used to start it, since apparently I did not write down what I did almost two years ago. (Can we re-create it? Maybe we can…)

And I did pull out (before I went on the shopping trip that led me to Goodwill) two skeins of Red Heart TLC Essentials that I am thinking of combining into a striped variation of the Age of Brass and Steam shawl that you might find on Ravelry. I’ll take a look through my pattern collection to see if there is a more appropriate semi-lace triangle shawl pattern that will show off the colors (Robin Egg [pale blue] and Surf & Turf [the same pale blue, dark chocolate, and caramel]).

There is music, and language, and knitting in my future. Last week (the week after spring break) finished in a flash. This week might go the same way. Maybe I can sing my way to the next weekend.

How firm a foundation

Last week I got into a dispute with one of my closest friends. I will let my philosopher-friends determine whether the nature of the dispute itself was philosophical, as that is not my area of expertise.

The question is, when you want to relearn old knowledge in order to go forward, how far back should you go? My plan is to regress to the point where I’m the least bit shaky on my knowledge and begin again from there – even if it means reviewing some areas with which I’m already familiar. My friend feels that this is going back further than necessary.

In the context of this dispute, the area of knowledge is mathematics. And to establish the parameters a bit more, my ultimate goal is to replace an F on my UW-Whitewater transcript with a much more respectable grade. To do this, I will have to be a registered student taking the class — Calculus I — for a letter grade. Auditing doesn’t count; life experience (ha!) doesn’t count.

How did I get this F?

Let’s back up a bit to my UWW enrollment ten years ago, as a returning adult student pursuing a second BA in Physics when my first degree was in Creative Writing and English Literature. To do physics, one must first do math. And to do math when one hasn’t done math since the fall of 1985, one backs up a bit. In my case, I backed up to the algebra I had been doing in 1981 or 1983. I didn’t by any stretch of the imagination have the same brain I had in 1981 or 1983, or even the fall of 1985, but I worked hard under subpar circumstances and earned an A in the course. In the next course, precalculus, I also earned an A. Then I enrolled in Calculus I in Fall 2012. I was doing well in the course, and despite some struggles when it came to problems involving problems with dual changes in motion (curse you, ladder sliding down a wall!) I had a B average until the part of the semester in which I filed for divorce, moved myself and my children out of state, and was subsequently taken to court for child endangerment. I was literally opening my calculus textbook to study when the doorbell rang and I received a summons. So calculus took a back seat to everything else, and I didn’t finish the last month of the course. My “B” changed into an “I” for Incomplete, and when I didn’t finish the rest of the course requirements, that “I” converted to an “F.” And there it stays, since I did not continue my studies and I have not re-enrolled.

Why does it matter?

I no longer have fantasies of becoming a physicist, but the F still bugs me. I am better than that F. I do understand calculus better than that. That grade doesn’t represent me. Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot of work to erase it.

I do have a plan. (I love having a plan.) In this case, the plan involves going back as far as I think I need to go via Khan Academy to refresh my skills, then taking a UW Extended Campus class in calculus, which will give me six months to do the work instead of just one traditional semester, and then applying the credit to my record to replace the previous grade in the equivalent course. If the credit will not transfer, then I’ll have to enroll on my campus to repeat the course.

Where’s the dispute?

In the Khan Academy classes, I’m going back to pre-algebra concepts like negative numbers, which I learned tried to understand in third or fourth grade and again in middle school. My friend thinks I shouldn’t go back so far, and feels that I am opening the door to getting sidetracked by concepts I don’t need to master. And they have a point. My method is going to take more time and allow for much more possibility of distraction. The longer my path is, the more likely it is that I’m going to allow myself to stray from it. After all, none of this work is truly necessary. I can do my job without passing Calc I. I can be an effective parent without passing Calc I. I can be a good person without ever doing calculus in the rest of my life. But they also think that I can do calculus without starting from basic algebra.

The fact remains that I want to pass Calc I, and I feel that I can’t do that by coming out of nowhere — it’s now been nine years since I worked high-level math on a daily basis. I think that I need a good running start, a firm foundation, and I don’t want to just pass a final exam — I want to truly understand the mathematical work that I’m doing.

The Khan Academy classes are teaching me math in the ways I wish I had learned it back in the day — at a deep intuitive level, where I understand the concepts and I’m not just cranking through formulas without understanding what I’m doing. That’s interesting to me, too, as I am also working on some writing about practical mathematicians who strove to adequately educate future teachers of mathematics.

Who is right?

To go forward, do you stand on the highest peak you’ve ascended, recognizing that you may not remember all the steps that led you there? Or do you rappel downwards to where you can get a foothold, where you can retrace your steps? How do you know when — and how — it’s best for you to go forward?

Does forward progress depend more on your personal motivation or on your network of support? And how supportive is your network if they don’t agree with your plan of learning? If you achieve a goal, does it matter how (or why) you achieved it?

Is one of us right? Is one of us wrong? Do my goals have any meaning? Does it matter?

Another round

After we spent more time gently noting our differences of opinion on the topic, I received an email that began:

The struggles
to figure out the path
are part of the path.

And suddenly we were in a Zen moment where each of us could see the other’s perspective and allow for it. I confessed some fears and anxieties, and I received assurances in return.

Then I admitted that I had taken a Khan Academy assessment the previous night that allowed me to skip over the topics with which I was still familiar. So now I’m starting further back than my friend feels is necessary, but I’m making forward progress at a sustainable pace. It feels like a good compromise.

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Knitwise, I still haven’t been knitting. But I did visit the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival this morning to meet up with a friend. I wore a t-shirt with Daleks on it, plus the first Doctor Who scarf I ever knitted. (If you have never been to a fiber festival you might not realize how appropriate this outfit was.) I got several compliments on the scarf, and one sharp-eyed yarn store owner called out the yarn manufacturer of all the yarn in the scarf. First time anyone’s done that, and I was impressed!

It’s hard to go yarn shopping when you don’t knit and you have plenty of yarn already. I saw a lot of fantastic yarn, but every skein I picked up I put back down again. Eventually it came to me that I won’t get any joy out of starting a new project until I complete a couple of old, unfinished projects. I wonder if I have any of those?