Free short Stories - New one up

I have a new short story up on my other blog. This story really is very short. In fact it's not quite complete. The idea for it came to me when I was researching runic writing.

My short story doesn't have runes in it. But while paging through books filled with pictures of ancient stone markers with runes carved in them proclaiming that this bridge was built by this person, or this stone was placed in memory of this person's wife, daughter of so and so, the beginnings of a story formed in my mind. (The wonderful picture above comes from beowulf-country.org.)

In my short story, little Neddy Fairborn is far removed from the land of runes, but his ancestor, Bjarn was not - he lived and breathed there, and was up to things perhaps he shouldn't have been . But then, if he wasn't, perhaps there would have been no Neddy...

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

The quote above was penned by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich while writing an article about notable women in American history. I believe it was meant to underline her particular style of getting to the meat of history by looking at the lives of ordinary people and gleaning the rich clues left there for the talented eye to see.

From Wikipedia:

Ulrich's innovative and widely influential approach to history has been described as a tribute to "the silent work of ordinary people" -- an approach that, in her words, aims to "show the interconnection between public events and private experience."

One of my favorite books is written by Ms. Ulrich. It's called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812.

It's a fascinating look at this ordinary woman's life, interpreted deftly by Ulrich with attention to detail and a keen eye toward viewing the mundane not as inconsequential, but as essential stitches in the background of the historical tapestry. Many other historians overlooked Martha Ballard's diary only for the reason that it was an ordinary woman's account of ordinary day-to-day things, nothing of particular value. Well, I am certainly glad that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich recognized the trove of information in this ordinary life. And I'm not the only one to think so - her book won a Pulitzer.

So, although it may be true that well-behaved women seldom make history, they are the ones who live it. Indeed, I think they are the quiet backbone to history.

I'm not advocating quiet lives for women - heavens no! I'm just saying quiet lives shouldn't be ignored. Quiet can be big in its own way.

Thanks, Laurel, for showing us that.

Now read the book - and then go out and misbehave : )

extraneous pictures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes surprise appearance at the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

A quote from today's Cleveland Plain Dealer (the full article can be found here):

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist detractor of Islam and a former member of the Dutch Parliament, is lauded in some quarters and lambasted in others for rejecting her Muslim heritage and condemning the religion's treatment of women."

Apparently it was kept secret that the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards committe had honored her with the prize for best non-fiction book for her memoir Infidel. The secret was kept to protect her and the audience members. When the surprise announcement was made and she walked on stage, the audience gasped and then rose in applause.

A quote from her speech:

"Bigotry is not only a white man's disease. It's a universal disease, and the only way to get rid of it is through self-examination. And there is not self-examination if there is no self."

The Plain Dealer reporter (book editor Karen R. Long) noted that this quote was in reference to "what Hirsi Ali sees as the subjugation of women in the Muslim World."

After her friend and documentary film collaborator, Theo van Gogh was killed by extremists in Amsterdam in 2004 - left with a death threat aimed at her stabbed to his body - Ayann Hirsi Ali has been living in isolation.

Subjugation is sometimes committed in God's name, treated not as subjugation, but as God's will. This sort of treatment is not called what it is, but its name is turned around and lauded as reverential. Those who are subjected to it are deemed so special they have to be taken care of, placed on a pedestal for their own good, for their own protection, along with harsh penalties for stepping off of that pedestal.

That's the excuse given for withholding the respect and dignity with which every person should be able to live their lives, from women. The "reverence" is really an objectification, a thingification, an excuse to treat women badly, in God's name, or just because it feels good.

And if you think it's only to be found in the Muslim world, you are vastly, sadly, sorely mistaken.

Kitten Update - We Have A Name

We've found a name for our kitten.


It's a very appropriate name.

It takes into consideration her temperament and disposition.

It fits quite well.

The name is Freki. In Norse mythology, Freki is one of the monstrous wolves that will take part in the destruction of the world on the day of Ragnarok, which is the Norse equivalent to Armageddon.

Aww. Isn't little Freki sweet? She's practicing.

Get Ready - The Large Hadron Collider Is Firing Up On Wednesday! Rock along with the Large Hadron Rap!

The Large Hadron Collider :

... will be switched on this Wednesday.

Will it be the answer to particle physicist's dreams?

~OR~

Will it bring forth the destruction of the world?

Here's a little something to be jammin' with at your LHC par-tay!

The Large Hadron Rap:



What? You're not having an LHC par-tay? Shame on you! It might be your last chance - for any kind of par-tay...

Our Spider Walk, or, Finding Wolf Spiders at Night

Last night my husband and I went on a Spider Walk lead by a biologist at the University of Akron. It took place at the UA Field Station which is located on the Bath Nature Preserve in Bath, Ohio.

It was lots of fun and very interesting. I only got creeped out when we went into the woods to find a certain kind of spider and our flashlights revealed spiderwebs all over the place! Wherever you turned! Including one of an especially large and bulbous spider (please don't ask me to remember its name) which my husband spotted and the biologists actually collected (along with its suitor) to take back to the lab in order to get silk from it.

While still out in the field, though, I learned something very interesting (and lots of fun!). It was how to find wolf spiders at night. You do it by the glow of their eyes. If you search correctly, you'll see their eyeshine as little green, sparkling diamonds in the grasses. It's true! Try it! Like this:

Wolf spiders can be found at night by using a headlamp to see their eyeshine. Relatively few spiders have eyeshine.

At night, wolf spiders can be collected by taking advantage of their eyeshine. If you hold a flashlight or a headlamp up by your forehead, the light from the flashlight will reflect off of the tapetum located in the eyes of the spider (much as a cat's eyes reflect light).

The picture and quote above are from this page in the Wolf Spider Directory website.

You'll be surprised how many little sparkling green diamonds there are all around you! We learned lots of other interesting things too, about webs and silk and spider behavior and such.

Do I like spiders? No, not really. But it was really fun walking around in the dark looking for webs with flashlights and to have a biologist whose specialty is spiders and spider silk on hand to answer questions. And surprisingly (or maybe not) I had lots of questions. Here are some of the things I learned:

1) There are two goats in Canada which have been genetically engineered to produce spider silk proteins in their milk. They were supposed to help in research that would lead to being able to extract the proteins from their milk and spin them into silk fiber. The company that produced them was sold and the goats are now just hangin' out with nothing to do.

2) Spider silk has antimicrobial properties. That's probably why in olden days some people would put cobwebs on cuts or wounds.

3) Spider silk will contract with surprising force when it gets very wet. Perhaps another reason that it would make a good bandage, the more the wound bleeds, the wetter the silk gets, causing it to contract, perhaps helping to close/cover the wound.

4) Spider silk is ounce for ounce stronger than steel, but you won't find bullet proof vests made out of spider silk. Such a vest would indeed stop a bullet, but only after it had already passed through you. It turns out that spider silk is extremely elastic and stretchable.

5) Spiders can produce lots of different kinds of silk. Most of the sticky kind is wet-sticky, but there is one kind of spider that we saw whose web is sticky in the same way that a gecko's feet are sticky. The silk spun in the web is so fine that the stickiness is caused by Van der Waal's forces. That's attraction at the molecular level!

6) Most spiders live in a world of vibrations. That's how they know what's going on in the world and what kind of prey is in their webs.

7) All spiders produce silk.

Those were some of the interesting things that I learned last night. I had lots of fun. The next thing over at the Field Station will be a Fungus Forage. I'm looking forward to it!

Kitten Update

The little kitten is making itself at home:


She is officially a girl. And we are officially keeping her. Her unofficial name is Monkey because she runs around and climbs on everything. We're thinking of a better name, but nothing seems to stick.

Goldenrod Salve

I cooked up some goldenrod salve using the goldenrod infused oil I made the other day.

On the left is the goldenrod oil right after I made it. It's cloudy with sediment and some moisture.

On the right you can see that, after sitting undisturbed for a few days, the sediment has settled out to the bottom. It's that little strip of lighter stuff right at the bottom of the jar in the picture.

In the picture below, you can see that the oil has cleared:

How To Make Goldenrod Salve

1/2 cup goldenrod infused oil (click here to learn how to make goldenrod infused oil)

1/2 ounce beeswax

30 drops grapefruit seed extract

30-40 drops vitamin E

Heat beeswax in top part of a double boiler over simmering water until wax is melted. Add infused oil. Some of the wax will solidify again, heat until all is melted. Add grapefruit seed extract and vitamin E. Stir.

Remove mixture from heat and pour into sturdy, sterile glass jar or sterile plastic jar. Let stand until mixture has cooled and set. Place lid on jar. You have salve!

The grapefruit seed extract is an antimicrobial agent which will help preserve your salve and help keep it mold and germ free. The vitamin E helps extend the shelf life of the oil, keeping it from going rancid longer. I've used extra virgin olive oil as my oil, and that's high in vitamin E anyway.

This is the first time I've made any kind of salve. I'm not keeping it in the refrigerator - that's why I added the grapefruit seed extract. Hopefully with the grapefruit seed extract it will last for quite a while in my make-up drawer in my bathroom. We'll see.

If you don't want to add the grapefruit seed extract, then it's advisable to keep your salve in the refrigerator and only keep it for a few weeks.

I've already used the salve on my neck and back to help relieve tight muscles. It's not a miracle cream, but it does help ease the knots and the tension.

Bog Walking

On Labor Day my family and I visited three bogs which are close by here in northeast Ohio. The bogs were created when pieces of glaciers broke off as the ice sheets retreated northward 12,000 years ago. Kettle lakes formed from the melting mammoth ice chunks and set in motion all of the conditions necessary to create a bog. Bogs are very acidic due to the large quantities of sphagnum moss which grow in the cool, moist bog environment.

The paths led us through thick vegetation.


We saw lots of beautiful flowers.

And vegetation.

And a few critters.

The scenery was beautiful.

Cranberries grew in two of the bogs.

Arrowroot plants grew among the cranberries. If you click on the picture (or any of them) you'll see it close-up (at least on my computer that's the case):

Here is something interesting, the bogs are the sole places to find the only carnivorous plants that grow in Ohio:



I don't know what this one is called, but it's not very big - those round-ish parts with the sticky, bug-trapping hairs are only about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter:


And there were pitcher plants there too. They fill with water. Bugs get trapped in the water and can't get out because of the fine hairs on the plant which all point back down toward the water. The bugs decompose in the water and the plant absorbs the nutrients:



Here are some pitcher plants nestled with some sphagnum moss and other greenery:


Another shot with pitcher plants, sphagnum moss, and other bog plants:

There were signs of beavers at one of the bogs:

When we were finished searching for the last of the blueberries along the path at our final bog, we walked a mossy carpet back to where we had parked the car.

Some of the things we saw today are at the southernmost reach of their habitat and are not found elsewhere in Ohio. The unique environment has preserved a special little world of plants and animals. We had lots of fun visiting those worlds today.

Sunflowers, Goldenrod Infused Oil, And Other Things

The sunflowers have begun to bloom in my garden! They're so tall, somewhere around 9ft. I had to stand over between the zucchini and the bush beans to snap this picture.


My black-white kitty came out to the garden with me to roll in the dirt path and rub on one of my row-marker sticks.


Today I made some goldenrod infused oil. I did it the down and dirty quick way. I've never made infused oil before, but what seems like acres and acres of goldenrod is about to burst into bloom, so if this doesn't work, believe me, there's plenty more where that came from.

How I Made My Goldenrod Infused Oil

I snipped some of the first goldenrod to bloom and took it right home and put it into two cups of extra-virgin olive oil (just the blooms, but I think some people use the leaves too). I had about three stems of goldenrod. The olive oil was in the top part of a double boiler. I filled the oil up with the fresh goldenrod so that there wasn't any room left, but careful that the goldenrod wasn't heaping out of the oil.

I let the oil/goldenrod sit in the double boiler over gently simmering water for a couple of hours. I made sure the water didn't boil away by adding a little more to it every 20 minutes. I was very careful not to let any water get into the oil/goldenrod. After letting the oil cool a bit, I strained it through cheesecloth into a clean jar. Now I'll let it sit undisturbed for a few days so that the cloudiness can settle out. The moisture from the fresh blossoms will supposedly settle to the bottom by then and I'll be able to siphon off the oil into another jar.

Some people only use dried herbs when infusing oil so that it lessens the risk of the oil getting moldy after a time. Also, another way to infuse the oil is to take your time. Place the herbs in the oil, place a lid on the container, and let it sit in the sun for a few weeks. Strain, and voila! You have infused oil. That's how I'm going to do it with my calendula.

We have a very large apple tree in our back yard which was there when we purchased the house. We have never done the necessary things to ensure bug-free apples, so the apples are always too buggy to eat. Sometimes you can find a few that aren't, and they're a treat, crisp, sweet, and with almost a clovey spice to them. When my daughter took horseback riding lessons, she would often take a few to the horses. They ate them up.

We're considering pruning the tree into shape and doing what it takes to help the apples stay bug free in coming years. I'd better get the canning supplies out!

Sharing Our Corn

Something got into our corn. It knocked down several plants and ate the corn off of the cob. I've heard, or read, somewhere that Native Americans would plant their squash so that it grew underneath their corn plants. It helped keep things like racoons out of the corn. Apparently racoons don't like walking over the prickly squash plants to get to the corn.

Maybe I'll try that next year.

Drying Calendula

Calendula!

I've harvested the first of my calendula. I almost didn't want to cut these pretty blossoms, but lots more are on their way. I'll be hanging my calendula to dry it, and then I'll collect the dried petals to use in making lotions, facial washes, and first-aid preparations (for cuts, burns, and scrapes).

Now that I've taken the picture, I'll move this hanging bunch to a darker room to complete its drying.

I'm leaving some flowers in the garden so that I'll have seed for next year. I love how there are rich yellows, golden oranges, and light and dark centers, sometimes on the same plant!

I don't know why, but this is really exciting for me. I've ordered dried plants and herbs before with which I've made lotions and facial washes, but growing things to use in your own garden is much more fun. And I've never made my own calendula preparations before. I was tempted to buy dried petals last winter, but instead I ordered seeds for the garden, and now my wait is paying off with beautiful blooms.

Woodsy the Kitten

The little kitten from yesterday's post, the one that some people were going to leave to fend for itself in the mountains of Pennsylvania, is once again the feature of today's post.

Yesterday it was not a purry, secure, playful type of kitten. It was a scared, run and hide, get away from me type of kitten. But it has become more secure and sure of its surroundings and today you can see for yourself in this video what kind of a kitten it is.

I'm still referring to the kitten as 'it' because I have no idea what gender it is. Sometimes when they're very little it's not always obvious. And it has no name because we can't keep it. We have to find a nice home for the tiny little thing. Anyone out there in the Cleveland-Akron area who would like to give this almost-Pennsylvania-mountain-woodland kitty a nice, loving home?

Are you sure?

Wild Woodland Kitten

My daughter went camping and came home with this:

It doesn't stay still for long.

My daughter met some people in the mountain woodlands of Pennsylvania while she was camping. They had this kitten with them. They said, "Do you want it? 'Cause we're just gonna leave it here."

Can you imagine? The little thing is barely 8 weeks old, if that. My daughter cannot comprehend such people.

Bloom Day - August!

This is my second-ever bloom day post. Woot! I love looking at other bloom day posts to see what's blooming in other people's gardens the world over. If you would like to see these posts, or if you would like to share what's blooming in your garden, head over to the May Dreams Gardens blog. To share pictures of your garden, leave a link to your blog in the comments section. Or simply follow the links already there to see some truly beautiful pictures from gardens the world over.

The blooms in my garden this August are few. My Rose of Shannon bushes are in bloom:



And this relative of the gladiola that actually likes shade, is adding a bit of color to a sunless spot:



My true gladioli are in bloom, but sadly, the dog tends to knock the top heavy blooms over in his zeal to chase balls. The color of these flowers is striking. I can't take credit for planting them, they were here when we bought the house:



I'm really excited about my calendula - they're finally beginning to bloom! Here's the very first one to open. I ordered the seeds from an Amish farm and they arrived with handwritten instructions for planting and a note saying they hoped I would enjoy my flowers:



Like in my last bloom day post, I have taken a few pictures of the things blooming in the park next to my house. I always enjoy the wildflowers that grow there in the untamed nooks and crannies.

Some of the smaller thistle is still in bloom, although most has gone to seed (which makes the goldfinches happy):



The picture below is of one of my favorite plants to come across. This is pokeweed. I know, it sounds like something you'd want to take the weed-whacker to, but it is honestly one of the most lovely plants to look at. The colors are what make it a treat for the eye. You see the pinks and the greens? The plant has variations of these colors throughout, ranging from delicate, newborn greens and softest pinks, to darker, established greens and rich, deep purples. Pokeweed can grow quite large and the juice from the purple berries can be used to make ink (I believe civil war soldiers often availed themselves of this ink to write letters home). The only part that's edible are the very young leaves, which, if cooked and prepared correctly, can be turned into something called poke sallet. If it's not done the right way, though, it's on the poisonous side (I've never tried it):


The first of the goldenrod has begun to bloom. There is a fallow farmer's field nearby which is now full of goldenrod. In September I will visit the field to see if I can get a picture of the field in bloom.


The Queen Anne's lace and the chicory are still blooming at full force:

And this lovely, purple flower, the name of which I have no idea, has just begun to bloom (edit here ~ thanks to the Nan Ondra over at Gardening Gone Wild, I now know that this is ironweed):

Below is a parting shot of some chicory. The bees were very busy in it this morning: