kmkat and her kneedles

Preemptive police raids in the Twin Cites: get ready for the RNC.

From boingboing.net:

Report: Massive, warrantless* raids on peace protesters in Minneapolis, ahead of RNC.

      Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 30, 2008  9:43 PM 

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com reports that protesters in Minneapolis, where the Republican National Convention will soon begin, have been subjected to massive, pre-emptive police raids. Those arrested include members of Food not Bombs, and a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee," and a group that uses video to protect civil liberties by documenting police activity at first amendment events. Snip:

"They have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

"Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.

"In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so."

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis. Glenn's post includes videos. One of them is embedded here, below, "from the house that had just been raided."

Glenn's Salon item also points to blog posts from the targeted protest groups, including this one from I-Witness. This group previously "videotaped police behavior at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped get charges dismissed against hundreds of protesters who were arrested." The post excerpted below was published while the police raid was happening today:

"The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16. We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don't know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success."

Go read the Salon piece; there is updated coverage.

* * * * *

#1 son was arrested at the 2004 RNC in New York City when he participated in a protest against the School of the Americas/WHINSEC. He was held for over 40 hours at Pier 57, aka Guantanamo on the Hudson. Because he was among the last prisoners released, he was present towards the end when the police opened the facility for inspection by the press -- after covering the entire floor with carpet. During his confinement he slept on the oily, filthy concrete floor, using his shoe as a pillow. He contracted a cough that lasted for months; we can only hope he didn't inhale asbestos, which was shown to have contaminated the facility.

imnsho, the behavior of the police surrounding the RNCs is enough reason in itself to vote for Obama. Apparently the Constitution is just an annoying old meaningless document to the Repubs.

* This is not entirely accurate; the person in the video states that the police had a warrant but didn't show it until the end of that raid.

Today's chuckle. Or fantasy.

* * * * *
We went camping on the North Shore this past week. Pictures soon.

Photoshopping the movies.

From Worth1000.com via BoingBoing.

 

Saving Private Gogh

 

Sweeney Kahlo

 

E.T.

 

Sex and the Venus

 

Reservoir Dogs (A couple of the undercover cops didn't fit in quite as well as the others.)

 

And my favorite of the whole bunch:

Get Smart

Quantum knitting.

When a knitter has one sweater OTN that isn't cooperating, a pair of socks that need contrasting toes because she ran out of yarn, another sweater OTN that has been sitting for nine months because she got distracted, and a single sock that needs a mate, what is the most logical thing for her to do?

Did you say, "Cast on for a new project"? Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

This is some cotton handspun yarn I bought last spring at the Shepherd's Harvest festival in St. Paul. I envisioned it as a scarf to wear with my jean jacket -- the colors cried out to be worn next to slightly faded denim.

[digression] Although I bought the yarn in St. Paul, it is from a local producer, Loretta Pedersen of Blackberry Hills, who lives much closer to me than to the Twin Cities. When I chatted with her at last year's Shepherd's Harvest, I learned that her foster parents were former neighbors of mine on the lake. It's a small, small world around here. [/digression]

On Friday I cast on 32 stitches on a size 9 needle and started knitting garter stitch. I hoped that by using such a large needle for yarn that was lace to fingering weight with an occasional slub that approximated DK, I would get a slightly lacy effect. So far, so good.

As I worked, I remembered seeing somewhere a scarf that had the occasional intentional yo/k2tog, creating random holes in the scarf. It was a cool idea, I thought, so every so often I'd throw a yo/k2tog into the hopper of my garter stitch. It turned out that the holes made by a yo/k2tog were not very noticeable, so I changed to a double yo to create a larger hole. That worked better.

I was doing all this while watching the first episode of The Elegant Universe, a series of three Nova episodes about physicists' pursuit of the Theory of Everything/Grand Unified Theory. The first episode starts with Einstein discovering relativity and moves on to how quantum mechanics replaced the certainty of the Newtonian and Einsteinian theories with uncertainly and probability. They never mentioned Schrödinger's cat, though.

Suddenly I realized that my knitting was echoing what I was watching. In the midst of the certainty of my garter stitch, randomness popped up in the form of the occasional yo/k2tog. This gave me a good chuckle.

After four or five inches of deterministic garter stitch and quantum holes, it became increasingly clear that the whole thing was NOT working as intended. Instead of a whimsical scarf made by an accomplished knitter, it looked like something made by a beginner who couldn't keep track of her stitches or whether the working yarn was supposed to be in front or in back. The variegation of the yarn just compounded the randomness until the knitting was... a mess. So I frogged.

On Saturday, Barbara Walker came to my rescue as she has for countless knitters before me. I found this stitch:

I chose the faggoting variation in the outlined area over the others because it required p2tog as opposed to the ssk and k2tog of variations one and two. If I get to choose the maneuver I will make hundreds (or thousands) of times in the next week or so I'm gonna pick the one that is the easiest on my hands and on my patience.

So I cast on and began faggoting, once again while watching the Nova DVD. This episode focused on string theory and how it may be the theory that unifies Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics' strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism.

Tra la, tra la, knitknitknit, yo, p2tog, yo p2tog, to produce this:

Guess what? String theory!

Amusingly, one of the early problems with string theory was anomalies in the math. Yeah, and I had numerous anomalies in my knitting, too, but unlike the physicists I just ignored them. Those poor schumcks had to keep working on their equations and assumptions until they got rid of the anomalies. Neener, neener. Knitting is easier than theoretical physics.

Incredible story: from today's email.

"In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.

"On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

"He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

"Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Brookfield Zoo with his teenage son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down. The elephant did that several times, then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

"Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed his stupid ass against the railing, killing him instantly.

"Probably wasn't the same elephant."

...and now you too can send this to all those people who send you heart-warming crap.

"Movin' on up / To the east coast..."

Be sure to watch all the way to the end.

Creativity.

This is what I have been doing, except with a highlighter and Excel instead of a fountain pen and a calculator. Oh, and the numbers I am working with are in the thousands, not millions like in the illustration.

We need to cut the 2009 proposed $22 million county budget by $3 million in order to conform with the state-imposed cap on property tax levy increase. So far, I have come up with cuts totaling $1.8 million. And I am not happy with some of the stuff I had to cut. That's life, I guess.

Now I am off to the finance committee meeting. We members have all been sharpening our pencils and scratching our heads in preparation for this meeting. I'm pretty sure we all have come up with many of the same cuts as I did. Let's just hope that the other four members of the committee found ways to cut a different $1.2 million. Creativity: it's not just for creating any more.

New use for exercise equipment.

WIP holder:



I have to force myself to pick up the Summer Chevron. I am at the point where I have to figure out how to go from the slight waist shaping to making it skim over my, er, ample hips. It's the diagonal nature of the knitting that is confounding me. I thought I had it figured out and knit happily for many hours on Saturday, but the resulting bit of garment was most assuredly Not Acceptable. Must frog that bit and try again.

In the meantime I have finished a baby bib and am working on finishing the toes of both halves of a pair of socks. Nothing spurs finishitis like avoidance of something else.

It's August and fall is in the air.

I found it [interesting? ironic?] that our weather began to turn the tiniest bit cooler on August 1. Now, three weeks later, the weather is still lovely and pleasant, but fall is definitely peeking around the corner of the barbecue.

Let's take a look at some of the late summer fauna, 'kay? Cuz I could use some beauty. County budget hearings, while fascinating, are not exactly fun.

Sumac, above, and woodland sunflowers (Helianthus species, I think), below.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea species) looking remarkably non-cone-shaped, probably because it just opened.

Here's a more characteristic one. I imagine the yellow flower asking, "Is it safe to come out yet?" and the purple coneflower replying, "Sure, you can hide under my petals just like this little guy."

Some renegade anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) (it could easily have been my garden it escaped from; I used to grow this back when I had a garden).

Butter-and-eggs (Linaria vulgaris), aka toadflax, and a close relative of the snapdragons in your garden:

I took all the above photos at the intersection of our gravel road and the paved township road, about a half-mile from our house. Now we will proceed to the county government center, 6.7 miles away (I get to charge mileage when I go to meetings, that's how I know).

Here's what always screams "Fall is COMING? Fall is HERE!" to me when I see them -- asters:

Our wild ones vary from white to lavender, even occasionally purple. These are pale lavender, not white, the victim of bad lighting.

These, however, really are white:

The purple thistles that were kind of pretty a month ago all look like this now, masses and clouds of thistledown:

Certain flowers always grow in wetter areas. Joe-Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum):

It can easily grow to be over 6 feet tall, truly a magnificent plant. The seed heads at the right are some kind of sedge, another type of plant found in low-lying areas.

J-P's close relative, boneset:

Boneset's leaves are joined, or clasped around the stem, thusly:

The purple flower in the background behind the white boneset is blue vervain:

Blue vervain is, for no particular reason, a favorite of mine. I used to have it in my garden. 2008 does not seem to be a good year for it, though. That's how it is with wildflowers. One year plants A, D, and V flourish; the next year they are merely average but plants B and F are glorious. Nature; she can be unpredictable.

I noticed this bush today for the first time:

No idea what it is; must research.

Moving on to drier habitat, a slightly edited photo of mullein:

Although composted horse manure is a scrumptious fertilizer for your garden, I sort of figured you didn't want to look at it fresh here. Right? Right. Moving on.

When I paused to take a photo of this tansy that I admire every time I drive by...

this little fellah scolded me for bothering him:

He's about the size of a chickadee. Birders, what is he? Some kind of warbler, perhaps? I don't think I have ever seen this bird before, and it is too early for the migrators to be flying through.

There is interest at ground level, too. Rabbit's-foot clover:

A flourishing forest of ragweed next to the road:

Aaaaa-choo!

We arrive at the government center.

One of the land & water conservation employees planted a prairie in some empty space on the government campus. They burn it annually as necessary, just like nature used to do to the vast prairies of the Midwest. Below, the row of windows behind the trees is the county board room.

Coming soon: an entire post devoted to goldenrod. Please curb your enthusiasm.

Random Sunday.

Matthew wants you to admire his no-longer-new shoes...

...and his new cell phone.

This 19-yo has the same PDA/phone that my accounting firm furnishes to the partners, while his father and I stumble along with our prepaid Tracfones. Huh.

* * * * *

My Mac keyboard went wacky on me last week. It was working fine when I used it in the morning; when I came home that evening a wide swath of keys from the "m" over to the arrow keys and up to the 9 and 0 keys had stopped working. Futz. We dug around here and found an old Dell keyboard; it had sticky keys that needed to be struck HARD to make them work, but it was functional. When Matthew came up for the weekend he sold me his own Mac keyboard for half price. It is tres sweet.

What's so special about that? you ask. Looks just like a keyboard, you say.

Check this out:

Like I said. Tres sweet.

* * * * *

I took Matthew out for lunch yesterday. We went to one of my favorite places, a restaurant overlooking the mill pond in a nearby village.

The Thirsty Otter, it is called; recent new ownership changed the name from The Fox Den. By any name it is really just a small-town bar that added a kitchen and much later added an outdoor deck and even later an outdoor bar. The food is nothing special -- decent burgers, etc. -- but I love that we can eat outside without reservations nor waiting in line nor paying a premium price for the food.

This group was just finishing when we arrived.

The Red Hat Society is alive and well in Polk County. The chapter that meets a bit farther north styles itself the Rowdy Red Hat Mamas.

I am not sure exactly how rowdy they get...

...what with the canes and the need for a strong arm to lean on and all, but I am absolutely sure they have a lot of fun.

* * * * *

A package came in the mail on Friday. From #1 son via Amazon. For my birthday.

He had told me that not everyone might consider it a gift, but that he did and he was pretty sure that I would. (I think the Amazon personnel  left something out of the gift card message -- it does not quite, uh, you know.)

It was a book. By Thomas Pynchon. I tried to read one of his books 35 years ago and it was tooooooo hard.

I am touched by his faith in my intellect.

* * * * *

Matthew has a complaint about his Blackberry keypad.

The characters on the lower half of each key are the one that type without any extra effort; in order to type the character on the upper half of the key you have to hit shift or some other key first. So it would make sense to put the more commonly used characters on the lower half of the keys, right? Please direct your attention to the keys in the right half of the third row. Who uses the dollar sign more than the comma or period? Matthew's theory is that the Blackberry is the phone of choice for drug dealers.

* * * * *

Smokey's best friend from high school is visiting for two weeks. Here they are chuckling over their h.s. yearbook.

John (Yick-Chung) is way smart, a Ph.D. in physics who worked on the Star Wars program. Now he is retired. Last week the two of them went camping north of Grand Marais on the North Shore of Lake Superior. They cooked on the Coleman stove and ate pizza at Sven & Ole's and sat quietly looking at the harbor. We are giving John lessons in how to enjoy life. We are really, really good at that.

Not safe for chocoholics.

From Boing Boing TV, a story of what makes chocolate so good and how one company is trying to make it even better.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3.

Dinner on the deck.

Last Sunday my friends Colleen and Alan invited me over for dinner on her deck to celebrate my birthday.

Dinner was delicious -- pork chops and vegies from the grill, a couple yummy summer salads, and mint chocolate chip ice cream and homemade white chocolate-macadamia nut cookies for dessert. No pictures of the dinner, though; I was too hungry.

But there was wine. Cursing Mama (moose hunter extraordinaire), this one is for you :-)

While we were relaxing on the deck, a bald eagle landed to check out the shallows near her dock.

Does she have the coolest steps down to her shore or what?

Bald eagles are not uncommon around here, but it is always special to see one close up.

One of the most memorable moments of my life* was the evening I was floating with eyes closed on an air mattress in our lake, cooling off after a bike ride. A bald eagle flew slowly over me, a mere ten feet above. The air was so still that the sound of its wings slowly flapping directly overhead was what caused me to open my eyes. I'm glad it decided I was too big to be fair game.

* I suspect I have told this story before. Repeating oneself is an unavoidable hazard of age. Please to pretend politely that you have never read this account before. Thank you for your cooperation.

"In my next life I want to be a well-loved cat."

I read that quote in someone's blog comments last weekend. Truth.

Please ignore the dirty window behind the cat and concentrate instead on how he has arranged himself so the sun isn't shining into his eyes. Thank you.

A little prezzie.

Today is my birthday. In my honor I am sharing some philosophical quotes I found today while stumbling. And now I must go clean a couple bathrooms -- house guest arriving tomorrow.


We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.  ~Francois De La Rochefoucauld


A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.  ~Lee Segall


Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.  ~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland


Believe those who are seeking the truth.  Doubt those who find it.  ~Andre Gide


Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.  ~Aesop


Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.  ~Baba Ram Dass


I am a part of all that I have met.  ~Alfred Lord Tennyson


There's more to the truth than just the facts.  ~Author Unknown


Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day.  ~Polish Proverb


Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.  ~Ludwig Börne


If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?  ~Stanislaw J. Lec


The obscure we see eventually.  The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.  ~Edward R. Murrow

When the student is ready, the master appears.  ~Buddhist Proverb

A gun gives you the body, not the bird.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water.  After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water.  ~Zen Buddhist Proverb

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run.  The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.  ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying.  Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.  ~Charles C. Finn

There are some remedies worse than the disease.  ~Publilius Syrus

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.  ~William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.  ~John L. McClenahan

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book II, chapter 1

One man's quiet is another man's din.  ~Carrie Latet

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.  ~Henri Louis Bergson

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.  ~Ram Dass

Don't miss the donut by looking through the hole.  ~Author Unknown

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.  ~Navajo Proverb

Alice came to a fork in the road.  "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.  ~Russian Proverb

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.  ~Bertrand Russell

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.  ~Roger Miller

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.  ~James Thurber

It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch.  ~Chang Ch'ao

You cannot step into the same river twice.  ~Heraclitus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives

One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full.  And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?"  So I drank the water.  No more problem.  ~Alexander Jodorowsky

If a placebo has an effect, is it any less real than the real thing?  ~Nathaniel LeTonnerre

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place.  ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1872

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.  ~Author Unknown

You can see a lot by just looking.  ~Yogi Berra

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.  ~Leo Rosten

When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

A thousand men can't undress a naked man.  ~Greek Proverb

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.  But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?  ~Maurice Freehill

Eggs cannot be unscrambled.  ~American Proverb

Admiration and familiarity are strangers.  ~George Sand

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two.  We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about "and."  ~Arthur Stanley Eddington

I doubt one could live in the darkness, but one could probably survive.  ~Nathaniel LeTonnerre

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong.  They are conflicts between two rights.  ~Georg Hegel

When a watch goes ill, it is not enough to move the hands; you must set the regulator.  When a man does ill, it is not enough to alter his handiwork, you must regulate his heart.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.  ~John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

You can't fall off the floor.  ~Author Unknown

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.  ~Author Unknown

In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.  ~Robert M. Pirsig

A stumble may prevent a fall.  ~English Proverb

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.  Seek what they sought.  ~Matsuo Basho

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.  ~Leo Rosten

The grass is always greener, etc.

Dale-Harriet from Wisconsin commented in my recent post that showed a snowy scene from late last winter:

"Ever notice you begin to hear little stirrings and sighings from the direction of the stash in about mid-September? I swear my knitting needles begin vibrating as the leaves start turning..."

I replied (more or less: I edited a little for this post):

"For me, it isn't stirrings in the stash, it is stirrings in my fingers. They start to crave the feel of knitting some nice warm cushy slightly stretchy wool yarn. Seriously, I have been *day*dreaming about that every night for several weeks before I go to sleep. It is becoming a bit of a chore to pick up the bamboo Summer Chevron even though I am 3/4 done with it. I yearn to knit a simple worsted weight Faroese shawl or another Noro striped scarf instead of this stupid silky yummy bamboo summer sweater. Go figger."

Anyone else having these cravings?

Eye candy Friday II, the Free Tibet edition.

"None of us are free until ALL of us are free."

Beverly at PoMoGolightly is having a Free Tibet contest on the occasion of the opening of the 2008 Olympics. Remember the Mikhail Bakunin quote above; remind yourself of it as you watch the Games.

PippiKneeSocks created the beautiful yarn pictured above and will give it to the winner of PoMoGollightly's contest. She based the colorway on Tibetan prayer flags. 

Eye candy Friday.

Remember winter? (This was taken March 31, which can easily still be winter in The Great Frozen North.) The frigid season will come again, and if the complaints about the heat that I have been reading all over blog land are any indication, it might feel kinda good. One characteristic of my northern heritage is that round about mid- to late July I start to have the tiniest twinge of longing for cooler weather. Summer is a phantasmagoria that passes in a dream of heat, sweat, tall glasses of iced tea, and beach time. Reality is the rest of the year: cold feet, warm woolens, snuggling under an afghan, snow and ice.

Have a great weekend, and enjoy your summer as long as it lasts!

A knitblogger comes Up North.

I met up with Cathy-Cate of Hither & Yarn last Sunday when she and her husband were in my neck of the woods. She did an excellent job of summarizing our get-together on her blog here so I won't repeat it. Except to put up a few photos. Warning: there is another of those not-suitable-for-work photos at the end.

The very nicely planted pots on the deck of the coffeehouse where we met:

Cathy and her husband Mike:

Mike's standard response to Cathy whipping out her camera for blog photos (we should all be honored that he allowed the above photo to be taken with a minimum of resistance):

We had a great time knitting and chatting and, over dinner later, listening to our husbands trade stories of their Chicago days -- they were from roughly the same neighborhood. Good times!

Of jean jackets, blog decor, and knitblogger meetups.

 

I love having all these buttons on my jean jacket. You can identify most of them; pay special attention to the newest one, upper left in left photo, above. That one came in the mail this week and is the reason I am showing you my collection. The Swiss flag honors my heritage. The American flag is my small attempt to recapture patriotism from the far right. A couple in the second photo honor my short and intermittent career as a librarian.  The ribbon with the battle E is from my short but honorable career in the Naval Reserve; I think everyone gets the ribbon as part of their service, but the E means that my unit got an award for readiness. (During peacetime everything is all about readiness.) I personally contributed little or nothing to deserve this award, merely being in the right place at the right time. The wolf's head reminded me of big ol' Bear, our senior dog. And the D is from my accounting firm.

The only downside of the buttons is that it makes it problematic to wear a handknit scarf. It is way too easy to snag it on the buttons. But I persevere. Cuz I am dedicated like that.

* * * * *

The new look on the blog is because I picked a different Typepad preset theme. I was disgusted with the narrow space allotted to my deathless prose and stunning photographs in the previous one. I'm not in love with the vivid colors of this theme, though; I will probably change it again soon to something less bold. Yeah, I change my computer wallpaper every time the wind blows, too.

* * * * *

I am meeting up with Cathy-Cate this afternoon for some knitting and chatting and giggling and whatnot. I have my camera ready. Yay for the innerwebs and the way it connects us to friendly and like-hobbied folks!

Scarier than goat silk.

   

(from the daily news digest e-mail I get from the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of liberalism) Washington Post, 8/1/2008: Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Officials may also share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, which were issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

I may need to increase my contributions to the ACLU.