Zatera Ul

We went to the Science Museum and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, fragments from six or seven different texts, plus a lot of stuff to explain the historical context.

What came across differently from the pictures of the scrolls is how tiny most of the writing is. I’d have a hard time writing that small and that well with a modern pen. To retard further light damage, the fragments were displayed under a couple of layers of glass and very minimal lighting.

Just read an article about newborn screening in an old issue of a parenting magazine from last spring. There’s a little steam coming out of my ears now, because the article lays out all the benefits of the newborn screen, but none of the risks, and paints parents who opt out as reckless and ignorant. Never mind that the real problem is THE STATE HEALTH DEPARTMENTS WHO GATHER THE BLOOD SAMPLES FOR RESEARCH AND LONG-TERM STORAGE WITHOUT ADEQUATE PRIVACY PROTECTIONS AND INFORMED CONSENT FROM PARENTS…THEY COULD CHANGE ALL THAT IF THEY WANTED TO, YOU KNOW!!! If my state would actually destroy blood samples (upon request) immediately after testing, instead of their current practice of waiting up to two years to do it, if they even destroy the samples at all, that would make a big difference for me.

I’ve read the Minnesota health department’s newborn screening forms and pamphlets and web pages. Propaganda from top to bottom. If they can’t even be honest in their paperwork, how am I supposed to trust their promises for ethical storage and use of samples and results?!?

Citizen’s Council for Health Care is still the place to go to get informed on this issue. (Apparently Twila Brase is a neighbor of our formerly-near neighbor Mitch.)

We survived our vacation. Spent nearly half of it driving.

We had an interesting experience at Two Rivers Motels and Cabins, in Trout Creek, Michigan. We had stayed there once before, when OLC was a toddler, and had a very positive opinion of it. This time, though, was different. This is what the lady said:

We don’t allow more than two people in a room, because when there’s more than two people, they plug too many things in, and make the fuses blow.

So now their rating is two black marks and a mushroom cloud. The black marks are Unsuitable for Families, and Unsuitable for Moms in Desperate Need of a Bath. The mushroom cloud is a Physics Fail, for grossly overestimating the electromagnetic field fluxes of small children. The mere presence of two small children in a room will not overload any circuits by electromagnetic induction. Thanks so much for the extra hours of driving into Marquette, where everything was booked solid.

We did greatly enjoy Lakenenland, kind of a homegrown sculpture park, on M-28 between Marquette and Munising. We also went to Sea Shell City, later on. Lake Michigan was nice, we got out the beach twice. The rest was visiting with relatives, on a rather rushed schedule because our vacation got sandwiched between some very busy work weeks for MFH. We basically came back all exhausted and sick and cranky.

I just finished reading Radical Homemakers, by Shannon Hayes, and I thought it was mostly good. She lays out how American households transformed from centers of production to centers of consumption, gives the currently ascendant corporatism a sound thrashing, and presents what she has learned from families making the transition back to a home-centered life (including her own family). I particularly found her ideas about interdependence, including leaning on family networks, to be interesting. She is a feminist author, so I couldn’t entirely relate to where she was coming from; I found it amusing how close she ends up to the far-right religious patriarchalists in her conclusions. I feel like this is yet another book that is almost a Christian book, except for her substitution of eco-feminism for Christ. She also didn’t really say much about the role of children in the productive home; having ecologically sustainable home-based lifestyles won’t do us much good if there’s no up-and-coming generation to pass it to.

August is my least favorite month of the year; worse than February, even. In February I’m trapped indoors most of the time, but at least the indoor climate is tolerable. In this 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity weather, I can’t do much indoors or outdoors. Might as well be hibernating.

I’ve sanded the fiddle, and now I’m letting it sit for a few weeks before I finish it, with plain shellac. Apparently some fiddle makers park their fiddles in front of an ultraviolet light for a while before they finish them.

Pete’s Violin Making Site disappeared right around the time that I wanted to read it again. It was a useful resource.

Once again, Target fails to carry the simple, basic, utilitarian items that I want to buy…appliance locks to keep toddlers out of stoves and dishwashers (and toilets, and soon, no doubt, the refrigerator as well). All they had were doorknob covers and cupboard/drawer latches….useless. TLG can’t turn doorknobs yet, and he’s allowed to get into all our lower cabinets.

As you can guess, TLG has been constantly opening the dishwasher and stove and standing on their doors to reach interesting items on the counters. What am I supposed to do, drill holes in them and bolt them shut?! I do not think the management will approve.

I commented on Get Rich Slowly’s post on credit card rewards funneling money from the poor to the rich, but I think teh internets eated it.

What I wrote was that credit card companies are not quasi-governmental entities; they act in their own interests, and we shouldn’t be surprised that social justice ranks low as a priority for them.

Also, I said that credit card rewards are just bait, for both rich and poor. And that while personal responsibility is a good thing, the credit card companies would prefer that you are just responsible enough to keep paying them when you start going under financially.

I’m almost wondering what the next “reform” for our supposed own good is going to be. Mandatory credit cards for everyone? Conveniently implanted in the right hand or the forehead?!

The Douglass Report’s Daily Dose is always entertaining reading. This week:

Find a good tree. When you’ve had enough sun, stand under it — because that’s your safest sunscreen product.

In some ways, summer is harder than winter for me. The days are longer, the prairie sun is too fiercely bright to be outside much, and MFH’s home-from-work time runs late and too close to bedtimes to take an evening walk usually. I start to slow down when the temperature rises above 70 degrees. Last week when it was around ninety I was hardly moving at all.

Today I did get out for a walk. I went to the thrift store and looked at all the shiny statusy things that I had absolutely no interest in buying. They had some size 11 shoes, but too narrow–where am I supposed to put the outer half of each foot?! They even had one pair of “12W” shoes; placed with the men’s shoes because of course no woman would be caught dead with feet that large. Worse, the 12W shoes were only a cruel imitation of a wide width shoe. As in: If that was a wide shoe, then a 12N in their sizing couldn’t have run more than two inches wide…ruler feet. I’m definitely going to have to just make myself some shoes.

My city recently was commended as one of the most livable cities in the U.S., partly for all the walking and biking trails. I found that part ironic because almost no one actually walks for the sake of walking here. Most of the trail use is for Exercise, capital E most definitely intended. A few people go out to walk their dogs. Rarely someone can be seen with a stroller. Very awful rarely, a poorer or younger person will walk to work. Just walking is very gauche around here; everyone drives everywhere. Except us, and we don’t actually walk all that often. So all the nice trails and crosswalks and underpasses and bridges see rather light use.

I also don’t consider a town centered around a big mall (as the surrogate downtown), and a definite lack of antique and surplus stores to be particularly livable. And where are the detached starter homes??

I did notice, last week when I went to pick up the farm share during rush hour, that all the traffic was going from the suburbs into the city; people living in southern Minneapolis driving home from their workplaces in the outer suburbs. Very little traffic going in the other direction.

I’ve been making some definite progress on my fiddle kit lately, and it’s been fun. I’m almost ready to glue the neck on, which is one of the more finicky tasks. My physics machine shop classes paid off; I got the neck to fit into the mortise very nicely. Someday I need to learn how to sharpen chisels properly…I ended up using my detail knife and my “crooked knife” to cut the whole mortise for the neck.

…is how long it now takes TLG to climb up onto the changing table. Yes, we do have climbers around here.