March Light

Nightjar has sent us something special to start the week; busy little pollinators and beautiful March Light.

Spring has definitely arrived here! My opinion is that March Light is best seen when reflecting off the wings of all the busy pollinators, and that is exactly what I tried to capture this month. The weather and the insects cooperated with me. Shiny wings everywhere!

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

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A small Blogversary

The first published photo of Jack on his daily walk. ©voyager, all rights reserved

Woo-Hoo! A year ago today the first Jack’s Walk was published and I can hardly believe that Jack and I have made it through an entire year of blogging. When I proposed the idea to Caine I had 3 goals in mind. The first was to help a friend, the second was to create a place where you could take a deep breath and forget the troubled world for a minute and the third was to not embarrass myself and I’m pretty sure I hit all three marks. Well, there have been a few slip ups, but nothing that really makes me hang my head in shame.

You have no idea how absolutely amazing this is for me. I don’t talk much about it, but I have a condition called fibromyalgia that affects every area of my life. When I was first sick I was mostly confined to bed with generalized pain, stiffness and exhaustion. I was intolerant of light and sound and couldn’t watch TV or listen to the radio. I also couldn’t think straight or concentrate and I lost the ability to read. There were also a host of other symptoms that seemed to change day by day and sometimes hour by hour. Depression set in and I stopped caring. I stayed in that bed in a dark room for years, lost to myself and withdrawn from the world.

Now, briefly, let me tell you about myself before fibromyalgia. I was an RN working in community health as a Case Manager. The job was complex and involved co-ordinating multiple services for complex and continuing care at home. I loved it and I was good at it. Good at talking to people. Good at organizing, multi-tasking and finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I had taken a winding road to becoming a nurse and when it finally happened at the age of 30 I knew I’d finally found my path in life. When I finally found Case Management I knew I had found my home. The work was never the same 2 days in a row and I was given courses in Palliative Care, Geriatric Psychiatry and Wound care. I was curious, I loved learning and, on a more personal level, I was a bookworm. I read 2 or 3 books a week, every week.  If I was on vacation I could read a book a day. Sometimes I read more than one book at a time. Often a fiction and a non-fiction and I moved back and forth without thinking about it. Then, I got sick and it all fell apart.

A few years ago I found a new pain specialist, a young woman with an open mind and a great attitude. She changed my meds around, lowered my narcotics, increased other meds like Lyrica and wrote me a prescription for marijuana. She began injections of lidocaine into my spine and neck. She connected me with therapy in a pool heated to 94 degrees. At her suggestion I got a dog and began walking. That dog was Lucy and it was her love and care that finally got me out of that bed. Slowly and gradually my life began again. Different than before, but good. Very good after so long of very bad.

Those many years in bed I discovered blogs. The first blog I ever read was Pharyngula when it was still over at Science Blogs and I quickly became a fan. Then, when PZ moved over to Freethought Blogs I followed him and discovered a whole set of other great writers whose work I enjoyed. One of those other writers was Caine at Affinity and it quickly became my favourite place to hang out. I lurked for years before I finally had the confidence to comment, but once I did join in I was quickly made to feel welcome by Caine and her commentariat. It was like hanging out with the cool kids. I was never a cool kid, but suddenly there I was communicating with talented writers and artists and they were welcoming to me. I really don’t know what possessed me to offer my help when Caine set out the offer to contribute. I’m not a writer, not an artist, not a photographer and although I play at all those things I wouldn’t define myself by any them.

So when I started blogging I had no idea if I could do it, never mind do it every day. I was worried that I wouldn’t have the stamina or that my brain would sieze up or that I’d run out of ideas. Caine was around though. So was Charly. And so was the entire Affinity community who rooted for me. I had found another home and it was nice. Then Caine died and suddenly everything changed. By then Giliell had joined Charly and I on the blogroll and when we were offerred to carry-on Affinity on our own I had a moment of panic. Suddenly I wasn’t just a contributor, I was part of a 3 person team and things got real, real fast. I only ever considered taking it on because of Giliell and Charly. I knew they were good and I knew I could count on them. The rest of it was like stepping off a building with no safety net. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a struggle. Lots of days it is. My brain still doesn’t work right and I still struggle with overstimulation. I still get exhausted and I still have pain and I still have bad days and bad weeks. Lots of days I blog from bed. Lots of days I struggle to write a sentence, but I keep trying and I keep showing up. This place called Affinity is important to me. You are all important to me. You are all the coolest kids and your talents and willingness to share humble me.

It’s been a year of flying by the seat of my pants and I’m hoping the next year will be a bit easier now that I’ve learned the basics and a few organizational tricks. I have ideas and things I want to accomplish and maybe this next year I’ll find the energy to explore some of that, but even if I don’t Jack’s Walk will stick around. We both thank all of you for sticking around with us.

Jack’s Walk

Melt, dammit! ©voyager, all rights reserved

Sorry to be late posting our walk today, but I spent the afternoon at my dentist’s office waiting for him to squeeze me in. It seems I’ve developed an abscess in a lower tooth that’s going to require a root canal, but first I’ll need to take a course of antibiotics. Ugh. The day itself was a bit grim as well with gloomy, overcast skies and a bitterly cold north wind. It even started to snow a few times, but thankfully only a few brief flakes that didn’t last. I feel like it’s Groundhog Day and winter is stuck on repeat. Again, Ugh.

Full Fish Ahead: Part 2

Things are happening in Avalus’ new aquarium. Let’s join him to see what’s up today.  (Note: The last photo in this post was omitted in error when first published. It has now been reinserted with my apologies to Avalus.)

Part 2 – Life in the Shell

The water in the new tank slowly clears up, the next plants and the filter are underway to my vendor and so it’s time to find a nice leaf lay down and relax.

Corydoras Panda enjoying the safety of a walnut leaf in my other tank. Yes, I have quite some green filament algae. ©Avalus, all rights reserved

In the new tank, we can see algae growing on the wood and producing oxygen. But their reign is short, they will soon be overgrown by sessile filament algae.

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Even More Books…

Well, one more book. I have about twenty knife and swords books in the sights for future purchases, but I am still in the middle of reading the first seven I already have purchased. The flu-like illness that has been bugging me on and off for two weeks is unfortunately not very conducive to reading, especially to reading in a foreign language.

But Marcus was so very, very kind and has sent me this beauty, which I have not seen offered anywhere here. I must say it is a lovely book on first sight and it became a cherished possession instantly.

Now I had not planned on buying a book specifically about japanese knives, because I intend leaving making japanese knives to the Japanese, but there is no denying that they have a reputation of being superb tools so it won’t hurt to know about them. Quite the opposite, I am sure there is a lot of knowledge in this book that will be beneficial to me and I am very much looking forward to reading it.

However this makes me think a little – all the knives that I have made so far and that I intend to make in the future are my own designs and represent my aesthetical preferences as well as my style of using a knife. And whenever I look at works of other knife-makers (which I do not do very often), often I see that everyone develops a distinctive style. For example Bob Loveless has been renown for drop-point small hunting knives, Walter Sorrels sells mostly very pointy and straight, tanto-style all-purpose knives, Stefan Santangelo seems to like knives which have a slight forward angle between the blade and the handle with a little kink in it etc. I have no doubt that all these knives are perfectly functional and comfortable to use. There is no single “correct” knife design.

I find it remarkable how expressive can be a piece of craft that is essentialy just a sharpened sheet of metal with a piece of wood to hold it with, even when looking at just the outline.

Incidentally you can see two things in the last picture. Firstly, my left middle finger is nearly completely healed. There is still slight swelling and an area with tickling-burning sensation when touched, but it gets constantly, albeit very slowly, better. Secondly, in case you are wondering, that is my school pencil-case, about thirty years old by now.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Nature is full of art. This small bunch of desiccated leaves fascinated me today. I thought it looked a bit like a coat of arms, complete with a lion’s head and spear. Jack postulated that it was the Royal Seal of the Faerie Kingdom, but Jack has an active imagination so who knows. What do you see?

YouTube Video: Tod’s Workshop

“You make one knife, you make another, and you never stop.” True words.

Tod Todeschini has put out a very short lovely video promoting his workshop.

I do not think that I will manage to pull it off with making knives for a living, to be honest. As in every endeavor, a bit of luck is required and the competition is tough. So even if I manage to do everything right (which I won’t, I never do), success is not guaranteed.  But I am definitively going to give it a try, because I am more than fed-up with being corporate drone.

And when I will be forced to seek employment again, I will do my best to avoid US owned shareholder companies like the plague they are.

Jack’s Walk

The First Day of Spring ©voyager, all rights reserved

Happy First Day of Spring, everyone. Yesterday was a bit of a melting day around here and early this morning the pond at the park was almost completely open water. By the end of the day I expect any remaining ice will be gone. Best of All? It might be a bit hard to see, but the willow trees are starting to look fuzzy with early buds. The willows are the first trees at the park to get leaves and I could jump up and down with excitement that I can actually see some promise of green. It was quite overcast when Jack and I were out, but the sun is shining now and it’s warm enough to even feel like a fine spring day. I hope all of you are having a fine first of spring day, too.

Teacher’s Corner: All You Need is Love (and other bullshit)

I’m home today, with the Little One having caught a stomach bug and me not being sure if I caught it as well, or was simply feeling sick from having to do the cleaning up and not sleeping all night, so I called in sick.

So I’ve got some time for a post that has been stewing in my mind for a while, on some pretty toxic notions of parenting and raising kids who fail.

One of the ingredients was a tweet on German Twitter where a woman posted that “kids don’t need boundaries, all they need is that you love them enough and they will always behave”. In the further discussion she doubled and trippled down, linking all unwanted behaviours to lack of love. Your kids eats chocolate cake instead of dinner? You don’t love them enough? (Also, healthy eating is overrated, we’ll come back to this) You disagree with this person? It’s because mummy (!) didn’t love you enough. Whatever goes wrong, it’s ultimately the fault of the parents, especially the mothers, who didn’t love their children enough.

Do I have to explain why such an idea is toxic and destroys all healthy parent-child relationships? If the blame for inappropriate behaviour ultimately resides with your lack of love, then you must at all cost prevent that behaviour. This usually means removing al sources of possible conflict, often by fulfilling your child’s every wish and desire. If a temper tantrum  over no ice cream means you don’t love your child, you give them ice cream. Here we come back to what I wrote above, because the person literally said that i should just let the child eat the cake, nutrition is overrated anyway. This is the second coping mechanism of this philosophy: move the goalposts. Everybody who ever parented knows that your kid will still show behaviours that are inappropriate. Even if you obey their every command, they will have temper tantrums because the world does not indeed revolve around them and most of them will still eat sweets, no matter how much you love them. Therefore, the behaviour that was a sign of lack of love a minute ago is redefined as benign.

And as an aside, some people are just damn lucky and have children who hardly need any parenting at all. I know this because I have one. I also have one who needs a lot of parenting. And I don’t love the former more than  the latter. If anything, the latter had 2 years of my love all to herself before her sister was born.

This “philosophy” gets even worse when seen in the context of disabilities like AD(H)S or also kids on the spectrum. Those children will show lots of “inappropriate” behaviour because they often cannot deal with the world, or with themselves, and if parenting of neurotypical and able children is already hard, then  those parents’ lives are in expert mode fro  the start. If their behaviour is no longer a result of their disability but an indictment of your lack of love, then seeking the help you need is twice as hard, especially if an ADHD kid is raised on “no limits or boundaries”.

Linked to this, and therefore my second “ingredient” is the idea of “snowplow parenting”, which is apparently the kind of parents even helicopter parents curl back from in disgust. In the wake of the US college admission scandal, where the only surprising thing was that some people were surprised, the NYT published an article about parents who baby their kids well into adulthood. The results are devastating for the young adults, who are dropping out of college because they cannot cope with the presence of sauce in the cafeteria. But least you think that this is a phenomenon of the American upper class, I know similar complaints from doctors, who have parents accompany their mildly ill adult kids to a doctor’s appointment or even to a job interview. I see it on a smaller scale when parents try to protect their kids from the consequences of their actions (where every consequence we throw at them is ridiculous compared to what the world is going to do. Missing out on some fun because you got detention for being late is nothing compared to losing your job), or parents fretting over their big bulky 12 years old son waiting for 45 minutes after school before some activity starts. Because a meteor could hit him or something.

Now, I don’t doubt that all those parents mean well, that they truly love their children. But they don’t do them good. Especially when the boys, but not only them, grow up, the parents lose all their chances of turning the wheel around. I have parents who are obviously afraid of their sons, who keep doing their bidding so they can avoid the dreaded conflict or the consequences.

Nothing here says “don’t love your children”. Love them, a lot. Tell them often. But don’t mistake helicopter or snowplow parenting for love, consumer goods for love. Give them what they need, and occasionally also what they want.

 

A Spider Puzzle

Avalus has sent us a puzzle today. Somewhere in this photo there’s a spider. Since the spider is hard to find  I’m going to put the photo on the front page. If you’re arachnophobic please skip past this post, but if you’re not can you find the spider? The answer is below the fold. (click for full size)

Where is the Spider? ©Avalus, all rights reserved

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