https://youtu.be/emYCLsR6KSM

That is the link for my online Poetry Reading.

Will reoccur Tuesdays at 11.

Once, someone asked me if I am a cat or a dog,

and I thought,

what a dumb question,

and now I am certain

I am a dog

and not a cat.

Two main reasons.

I am loyal.

And I like having my head patted

and my hair messed up!

Wag, wag, wag!!!

If you are humoring a friendship with me, and you don't know that I am a miracle, please stop. If you are saying you are my friend but don't know I am a brilliant Poet, why?!

Before disability removal,

stable.

After disability removal,

wobbly.

Before removal,

capable.

After removal,

disabled.

To doctors who think they are doing good by removing people from disability, think again! People generally don't tell doctors everything. Imagine going to see a doctor every 3 months for 20 years. Psychiatrist, general doctor, doesn't matter. Doctor asks, how are you? You don't generally tell everything that ever happened in that period. You learn to just tell minimal details. I am fine thank you. How are you? You have to ask if someone is capable of work to know!

If you don't like someone

but continue talking with them

just to see how long they go,

you are doing something wrong.

If you kind of like someone

but let them talk too much to you

without expressing your needs

you are doing something wrong.

Unless you are a time honored family member

like my poor sweet sister

who thinks she wears the thorns of the devil

but is in the good girl club.

Inferiority complex

you ravenous monster

don't you know how to stop?

Brazen I love you the most.

But Tobin was the best dog.

Not that I'm actively annoyed, but the thing of boundaries seems something most people should improve. On my end, sharing too much, personally, and also my poems, when others don't want to read them. But it is a two way street. Maybe before I should have really heard other people saying tone it back, but now that I am actively toning it back, people had better tell me how much they want me to dial it back, or not, or I am just not going to communicate, and we'll see what happens!

Our Poet Laureate, Tracy K Smith, also likes to share poetry every day.

Every weekday, Tracy K. Smith delivers a different way to see the world – through poetry. Produced in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

It is called "The Slowdown."

It is beautiful and enjoyable to hear.

Check out: https://www.slowdownshow.org/episodes

if need me, see me.

a fairy is born.

Every second I keep to myself,

a relationship strengthens.

George and Maggie

Before Poetry

'76 Toyota

I am taking a hiatus from reaching out to others. I am learning to listen inward this week and will hopefully tone back in the future. I will respond if you have any further communication, in one week. Will still be blogging regularly.

Finally got checksum verification running in a separate job pool from downloads, to better keep bandwidth saturated.

I had to resort to what felt like a bit of a hack, but I can't see a better way to do it. Also, I got stuck for far too long on a STM deadlock bug.

Interestingly, this means that -J1 now has a purpose, it's not the same as no -J option. Instead, it lets one download and also one concurrent checksum of the previous download run at the same time.

It would be nice if -J1 could be the default.. One problem with that is that it needs a unicode locale to work due to a limitation of concurrent-output. Changing the concurrency method based on the locale does not seem like a good idea.

Knowing that I Know

I know that I don’t know a vast amount of things,

how many beats is in the life of a turkey vulture’s wings?

I don’t know how many stars are in a clear night’s sky.

I don’t really know what happens when I die.

I can think I know that, but I can’t know that.

There are a myriad things I do not know,

but I know God,

and God is an Infinite thing to know.

God is larger than the world.

God is whiter than the snow.

/Too Much

Too much,

you are the three batches of new clothes

I ended up with after two friends downloaded.

I want you, too much,

and I need space.

Too much,

you give me such guilt,

for civilization is surely ending

too soon for the children of this Earth,

and too much,

you hang bold and proud and beautiful

in my open closet,

and I only really need about 7 of you,

but I have about 40 now.

Too much,

I have been trying hard not to want you,

to take you in and call you my own.

But how fortunate am I to have two large figured friends

in two weeks in a world lacking community.

Too much

you are a gift

and my therapist said guilt is not my friend.

Too much

I must learn to be thankful for you,

a puzzle I am still wrapping around.

just

because

i

am

not

perfectly

able

doesn't

mean

i'm

entirely

disabled

Got kicked off disability. I can rise above. It takes a miracle and I have always been a miracle.

-

The Space of Not

I found the space of not

When in a deep can

I fell like hell

Into the not

A sister educated me

The can was still around

Then I shot

On out

Catching up

You might wonder why I write.

Sometimes the best thing I can do

is to write a poem.

My poems run ahead of my thoughts

like a school of minnows

jumping in front of a tugboat.

Looking back can help

because by the time I am ready to read the poem,

I might, at last, understand the meaning.

I used to think the universe is so big. How could ANYONE possibly know more than they don't know.

My whole life I have had a very unique opportunity to doubt and not know as much as I want. I have existed in so many free zones of Quakers and nonprofits and education. But until your sermon I never knew. And until your sermon I never thought I might know more than I don't know. I have an affirmed faith experience beginning in me.

I am very grateful for you and the Episcopal Church. It is the Church where I first felt God, in middle school. I never found I was a Quaker as hard as I tried and I would like to be an Epsicopalian and I finally don't mind being a Christian.

From water insecurity to offgrid, solar pumped, gravity flow 1000 gallons of running water.

I enjoy hauling water by hand, which is why doing it for 8 years was not really a problem. But water insecurity is; the spring has been drying up for longer periods in the fall, and the cisterns have barely been large enough to get through.

And if I'm going to add storage, it ought to be above the house, so it can gravity flow. And I have this 100 watt array of 20 year old solar panels sitting unused after my solar upgrade. And a couple of pumps for a pressure tank system that was not working when I moved in. And I stumbled across an odd little flat spot halfway up the hillside. And there's an exposed copper pipe next to the house's retaining wall; email to Africa establishes that it goes down and through the wall and connects into the plumbing.

So I have an old system that doesn't do what I want. Let's hack the system..

(This took a year to research and put together, including learning a lot about plumbing.)

Run a cable from the old solar panels 75 feet over to the spring. Repurpose an old cooler as a pumphouse, to keep the rain off the Shurflow pump, and with the opening facing so it directs noise away from living areas. Add a Shurflow 902-200 linear current booster to control the pump.

Run a temporary pipe up to the logging road, and verify that the pump can just manage to push the water up there.

Sidetrack into a week spent cleaning out and re-sealing the spring's settling tank. This was yak shaving, but it was going to fail. Build a custom ladder because regular ladders are too wide to fit into it. Flashback to my tightest squeezes from caving. Yuurgh.

Install water level sensors in the settling tank, cut a hole for pipe, connect to pumphouse.

Now how to bury 250 feet of PEX pipe a foot deep up a steep hillside covered in rock piles and trees that you don't want to cut down to make way for equipment? Research every possibility, and pick the one that involves a repurposed linemans's tool resembling a medieval axe.

Dig 100 feet of 1 inch wide trench in a single afternoon by hand. Zeno in on the rest of the 300 foot run. Gain ability to bury underground cables without raising a sweat as an accidental superpower. Arms ache for a full month afterwards.

Connect it all up with a temporary water barrel, and it works! Gravity flow yields 30 PSI!

Pressure-test the copper pipe going into the house to make sure it's not leaking behind the retaining wall. Fix all the old leaky plumbing and fixtures in the house.

Clear a 6 foot wide path through the woods up the hill and roll up two 550 gallon Norwesco water tanks. Haul 650 pounds of sand up the hill, by hand, one 5 gallon bucket at a time. Level and prepare two 6 foot diameter pads.

Build a buried manifold with valves turned by water meter key. Include a fire hose outlet just in case.

Begin filling the tanks, unsure how long it will take as the pump balances available sunlight and spring flow.

She was reeling with the feeling... People give her things all the time, but when the old man at the farmer's market insisted she take a small dozen of his eggs, her heart didn't know how to process the emotion. All she had said was, "this is my favorite place to buy eggs when I bring my wallet." Then he motioned to the usual sales person, his apparent daughter, a woman about the age of Martha, who Martha had always liked, and out the woman puled the eggs. "Give her the small ones." He said, but Martha kept saying "oh, no! I can't take your business. You put so much hard work into this and it is your livelihood and you probably just break even." Martha kept saying no, but the old man kept his stance. He would not take no for an answer, and when Martha finally, reluctantly grasped for the bag, she became flooded with a well of emotion, and blurted out "I had just been kicked off of disability. I am so grateful."

The old man looked at Martha and smiled kindly, thinking he was proud of his family and his farm, and he never knew when it would be that something he could give to someone literally saved a person from starving that day. Martha looked to him a well dressed woman with a clean hair cut, and he hoped this bumped her safely from this lost paycheck into whatever she found next. He had faith in God that he was doing the right thing, which was one thing he never questioned. And just maybe God's self looked down approvingly because of what a good hearted person the old man truly was. Even in absence of God, there was no questioning how deeply kind the old man was.

Thanking the family again, Martha stepped down the line of tables to the next farmer, whose eye looked at her in a reserved way and she wondered for a moment what that man thought about her, since he likely had over heard the whole conversation. Martha could feel the rushing emotion like ground water in her soul, and it was getting higher and higher for a while, as she thought over what had just happened in this generous act, and also felt a blush form on her creased face and wondered what she was showing in her expression. Then Martha tried to dial back the feeling, and it amplified, and she almost cried a minute until she breathed in deeply and it calmed a bit.

This was different than the kind friend of hers who always gave her new outfits, who had given her the nice flowery blouse that was currently on her back, and on second glance, the everything she wore from head to toe. No, that friend was probably the most generous person she ever had met up until this farmer family, but somehow her obtuse giving didn't touch what had just happened to her. Part of it was she imagined the old man and his family really needed the sale money more than even Martha who had, as mentioned, just lost her disability, and didn't know what might happen when the final check ran out at the end of the following month. In her rose many different feelings: anger at the doctor who should have looked more deeply at the fact she still was struggling vastly before reporting her healed, embarrassment at the fact that her face was nearing tears, the gut wrenching feeling of thankfulness, and the sense of wonder at the circumstances at hand.

Martha drove home trying to keep steady on the road, to not let the emotion push into her driving ability. In the house, she sat down in an arm chair in her room, leaned back, and just shook her head over and over again, like how can this even be real? I just don't understand? Nodding no at the puzzle of life. She breathed deeply in and out until she felt a bit more herself, then she stood up and began to clean her room. The laundry in the box she kept, but all of the other things of any worth at all, she began carrying out to her yard where she posted a bold sign "free to anyone who needs it." She pulled out her record player onto the porch because she knew some people prefer using those and she generally played music on the computer. She put out new text books, a new comforter set in it's packaging because she hadn't really needed it, a colander because she could just scoop out the pasta with a spoon, all of the things that she really didn't need. I have all I really need, she thought, humming to herself with improved happiness.

For a while she was scrambling up some eggs in the kitchen, just leaving her belongings out for the taking, because she had a gurgle in her stomach. People seemed to be rolling their eyes and thinking her crazy, neighbors laughed and chucked as had carted heavy objects out, walking sidewalk exercisers crossed to the other side, not knowing what to expect. But when Martha was just salting and peppering the eggs, she heard a little bell outside, and "oh my" and "what a great thing" and "this must be a mistake." So she went out on the front porch to see who had noticed her give away. There stood a stranger, a young man holding the colander, with his beat up bicycle propped against the railing. He had an intense look in his eye, a bit confused, and fully joyful.

"You can't really be giving this away? I have been eating only pasta and I don't have a strainer at all. I just moved here and I don't have much to speak of." Martha grinned at him but stayed quiet a minute, and the stranger, stopped in his tracks, and said "oh this must be a joke. Or maybe you meant to write Yard Sale?" "It's absolutely free. I am sure!" Martha was so glad to give away her colander strainer, and a soothing feeling came over her.

I met my friend in a songwriter's workshop. I didn't know how to take the teacher, and probably offended him and the whole class. But she turns to me with her sultry melodic voice saying, "I'm not going to let you go without making a friend today." And she didn't.

She also is a beautiful singer, her voice is something amazing. https://mommamolasses.org

"Sweeter than honey, Momma Molasses sings like a quilt comforts." - Tom Netherland, Bristol Hearold Courier

"Superbly haunting, a poignant anthems to loneliness, heartbreak, hope and the wistful intracacies of life's twists." - David Namerow

"There is power in simplicity, and there is power in sadness. Such power is the backbone of bluegrass, country, and swamp-pop music...Momma Molasses explores the limitations of life with traditional American rhythms, straightforward melodies, and clear, sophisticated lyricism.” - Jonathan Penton,Unlikelystor

Currently based in Bristol, VA. , and originally from the Pines of North Carolina, (just south of the Pedimont in Carthage, NC) Momma Molasses' music is soul stirringly resonate, and smothered in good old fashioned folk sentiment; blending Americana, Old-Time, Alt-Country, Pedimont Blues, Swing, Appalachian, and Bluegrass music into a uniquely timeless sound. Harnessing her rolling contralto voice which scales over homespun finger-picked guitar, her sound is warm, rich, and passionate, with songs that embrace, and captivate listeners.

​ Momma Molasses is the musical project of singer-songwriter Ellen "Ella" Patrick. Growing up with a deep love of music, Patrick began playing stringed instruments at an early age while singing gospel music in church, and learning folk ballads from her parents dusty late 60’s record collection. She spent most of her childhood summers in a Swamp south of her home in Moore County, where she began playing for friends around the campfire, or sneaking out in canoes after dark to sing by herself to the moon. While in college at Warren Wilson, just outside of Asheville, NC Patrick became greatly influenced by Appalachian folk music, and took classes in old-time, murder ballad singing, and bluegrass music.

Three years ago, Patrick decided cook up some songs of her own, with a recipe consisting of equal parts Southern Appalachia, 1940's Country Swing, and 1960's folk revival. With her sweetly stirring voice, Momma Molasses has been likened by listeners to Patsy Cline, "Mother" Maybelle Carter, early (pre-rock n’ roll) Janis Joplin. Now with two years of touring under her belt, and a self released EP, Momma Molasses recently released a new album “Anthems from a Broken Heart”. Chronicling the process of falling “out of love” and into self-respect, the album is a collection fit for those broken by past relationships, aiming to bring a sense of power, self-worth, and clarity from the knowledge that loneliness, heartbreak, and hope all walk hand in hand.

For booking contact: mommamolassesmusic@gmail.com

Ella, you are a revolutionary thinker, a true poet, a doll, and one beauty. I love you! xo

If your hand is empty,

you can take some yarn

or a light switch

to do something with your hand.

If you find that you need a hand

to hold in your hand,

you will always have one

in your other hand.

You are the one who gets to straighten your back

when your posture starts to slack.

You are the one who can tell you you can

when you aren’t quite sure you can.

You are not an island

but it’s good to be a rock

if you can learn to stand tall

someone else might need your hand!

My Massachusetts grandfather was a lead engineer on a number of dams and canal projects including some around here, and also the Panama Canal. Legend has it, since he was very scientific, he would approximate the rate of leaves as they flowed along beside his dug out canoe. So this letter is for my grandfather.

I used to meditate on my front porch. Now I estimate the speed of passing vehicles. A simple formula exists to determine the speed: Speed equals Distance (in miles) divided by time (in hours). Skipping to the end, the speed in mph of a vehicle passing the distance between 3 telephone poles is equal to 170 divided by the number of seconds it takes to pass. (I already converted the answer to mph within the equation, so all you have to do is count the seconds it takes a car to pass between 3 poles, and divide the number you get into 170, and you have the mph.) Now, I don’t expect you to take my word for it, without the proof. So here goes: The distance between 3 poles in an urban area is 250 feet. 250 feet is the same as .0473485 miles. Multiply .0473485 miles times 3,600 because you are going to divide in terms of seconds (60 seconds times 60 minutes), so your final answer will be in hours, and you get 170.

Now everyone knows how to approximate speed of a vehicle passing three telephone poles. The more seconds it takes to pass my front porch, the lower the miles per hour, and visa versa. Next, let’s all work on slowing down as we roll along.

Going to the country to buy once beings,

local meat production exists in my bible.

A patch of piglets I wanted to take home,

my pitchfork digging through manure,

hugging an endangered species, community,

I tell the piggy I’m kidnapping it.

But it’s not a goat.

Then bending over the farmer’s giant cooler

half full of her meat,

less overflowing than usual

because of the chicken slaughter this weekend,

200 broken necks.

The farmer jokes to me she wants to be a vegetarian,

peering over the freezer

asking me what I can cram in my little fridge.

I have mixed views on meat.

In general, a carcinogen,

but local growers get a pass.

There is nothing more ethical or healthy than local food production.

I tell it to the piglet,

swinging my legs into my car,

and leave it unnamed.

(Neopolitan Pig)

When I initially received news that I was getting removed from Social Security Disability, for over a week, my complete reaction was a boost in confidence, utter gladness. I have been doing really well, or up to then I had been, meditating and keeping pretty level, not impulsively doing much, so when I read in the letter that my Doctor said my condition no longer prevents me from doing gainful work. That I "can communicate with others, act in my best interest, and perform ordinary activities." I took this news as glad tidings, concluded that I am better now, and began researching two education oriented jobs in Washington DC, because I was certain I could get either job if I put myself to it.

I am Beautiful Mind. That is the best explanation I have heard of my illness and why I have been able to accomplish (over 12 years) the triumphant achievement of graduating college with a 3.17. The brilliant mathematician featured in the movie A Beautiful Mind has my same diagnosis, which allowed him to achieve great things, but to his death in 2015, this man did live a volatile harrowing existence too. It is not known exactly what illness Nash suffered, according to Psychology Today, and in his lifetime he was said to be schizophrenic, but his condition feels the same as mine, when I think about it. Though my diagnosis is schizoaffective, I do wonder if that is what he would have been called in a different era. Regardless, thinking about his illness seems a good way to explain the severity and diversity of my abilities and inabilities.

About a week after I received the notice from Social Security, I had an awakening moment that a family member says was me being more honest with myself than he had ever seen. I realized that the fact that I have quit over 100 things in the past two decades of my diagnosis, with over 50 of those actions being vocational, means in itself that working enough to survive would for me be an impossible challenge at this point in my life. So my tactic was to write the doctor a 2 page letter with a 2 page list of quitting attached to it, and send it in the mail to him begging he reconsider my sentence.

According to Legal Aid, if a doctor says I am capable and well, I don't stand a chance in hell at continuing with disability, which is why I decided to go about it this way, and beg mercy of the doctor, hoping my life does not unravel in the meantime. When my longest therapist spoke of my condition the biggest word that stood out to me was always "impulse" and it is true I struggle with impulses. They may not be conventional urges, and often are vocational pursuits. In the recent past I have dug on the internet for job openings that often are away from here, which moving and starting a new job is not something I can handle, or I find local opportunities that don't make a bit of sense for me as a person, like working in a gas station (which lasted a week) or driving train workers (which lasted one week.)

I had been going to see the doctor for 15 minutes every 3 months and accidentally presenting a positive veneer because I wanted to improve in my condition and I felt that putting on my nicest clothes that day and acting as polite as possible would possibly earn me improved success. Not one segment of my being wanted my doctor to give me more medicine, so I put the best foot forward I possibly could, not realizing that in positively presenting myself I might be depleting myself of a vital medication, my stability inducing, aptly named "security."

Now, in this blog, for weeks, I have not wanted to bring up much about what is wrong about my moods and thoughts or where they conjoin, my impulses. Just like in with the doctor, I want to present the best possible image of me in this public realm. But truth carries a heavy significance, and I have to honestly express how things are, and the answer is not good.

The very act of seeking employment is an impulse in my life. Maybe for some people this reads as a statement of privilege, but no, I have a true disability and impulse is its key, and I am witnessing effects in my life, my relationships, and my stability. Now I must prove that I am unwell, and I am worried it is contrived, and I have an unstable living arrangement especially when it comes to the long term and I am worried I will not have a home, so I am seeking jobs that all are unrealistic, and then I catch my impulse and cancel applications, again and again.

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has this Universal Basic Income, and how he talks about it makes me think of the grim realities of my own life, that there is a psychological improvement by given by having a token 750 dollars per month in my case, that gives security. I don't agree with Yang on a main aspect of his UBI plan, which is to give all Americans equally 1000 per month, and not offer additional Social Security. It is as if he doesn't understand the necessity of disability for so many of our stability. Zooming in, I don't think most Americans understand the necessity of Disability in achieving stability, especially for people with mental illness.

I want to keep an even keel, I want my family not to have to suffer my trying to work when I am not ready and the mental implications for each person there. I am terrified of losing disability. I know now that it is bad news for me to lose it, that it is necessary for my health in a way like my medicine or therapy. It is not advised that patients quit taking medication when they improve or can pass as normal for 15 minutes every third month, and I wish my doctor understood that, and notified social security that I am not able to work after all.

As it is things look pretty scary.

If you have HBO, I recommend checking out Leonardo DiCaprio's new Climate Change documentary, Ice on Fire. Today you can see it at 3:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, and a few other times: HBO (East) Today, 6:50 PM, HBO (West) Tomorrow, 5:20 PM, HBO2 (East) Tomorrow, 8:20 PM, HBO2 (West) Sun, 6/16, 8:55 AM HBO (East) (all times are EST). Also, if you are like me and have wifi and a computer, you an stream it right now for free. I just watched it this morning and am feeling hopeful and ready to do something about its message. It presents numerous solutions to climate change that go vastly beyond my Environmental Science studying of 15 years ago, so I am glad for the new science. I learned about biochar and marine snow and Tidal Energy in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, about the EMEC converting sea water to electricity, about bionic leaves which create anything from plastics to drugs without releasing CO2, to add to PV solar and wind.

My response to this wonderful film is that there were just four "real people" in the film. I loved the film, and find it necessary and well done, but I have a suggestion for the future filmmakers. We ordinary people need to see more than four non-scientists/hyper-successful innovators in a film like that. (I counted one African American organic gardening spokesperson in Los Angeles, two firemen in California, and one fisherman in New England as my somewhat common people in this film.) What I want is for someone to make a film that inspires the masses to do all that we can in our backyards and small businesses to defeat climate peril. I know it is a generalization and perhaps a bit insulting to say just 4 of these people were "real," but I am saying it out of wanting something better in the next film. I would give the film 5 stars, but this is how the next film could be brilliant and future worthy.

I want to see a film that interview the people in Detroit who are gardening in empty blocks, I want to see a film that shows what the low budget, small scale, ordinary person can do. In "Ice on Fire" DiCaprio states that we all are needed to do our part and save the blue globe, so I suggest somebody makes a documentary chock full of simple ways we can all act to save the world not just the super scientists of the world.

I believe in hope. I believe that there is hope and that it is right to have hope but in writing this entry, my main point is more specific: that there is a spiritual need for people to keep up the ing hope word, the gerund, to actively and ongoingly be hoping. Hope can be a word that can be used to express false hope, hopelessness, and can seem like an empty word to a lot of people, really to everyone if used that way, if thought of that way, if internalized that way.

I woke up just now because I had to use the bathroom, a task that's been completed, for your information. When I was previously in bed, thinking about the possibilities I had, to get up, or not to get up, I quite oddly, but honestly, thought for a minute about the laundry box placed precariously on top of the laundry hamper across the room, and it became for me a symbol for what I can do. I thought to myself and this is where it gets strange "I wonder if I could telepathically cause that hamper to fall. It's already quite precarious." Then only sort of half musing for a moment, I was kind of convinced that I might with my mind alone be capable of inducing the box to fall. I guess I have some odd thoughts on occasion about the power of the mind, and my mind, to do miraculous things, overcoming obstacles, or really doing anything that we feel we need to do.

But then, I actively decided not to use my telekinesis to drop the box, for the serious, honest, true reason that there is no earthly need for the box to fall. It was a random idea. And there are a great many things that do need done. That do need committed minds and bodies working hard to do, like saving humanity from climate peril.

This was for me a spiritual moment, a revelation of importance, because I do think there is a need for humanity to figure out how to hope, and to actively remain hoping for our collective future. On a spiritual level, we can hope and remain hoping. It sets our actions in the right direction for us to use our psychic, mental, and emotional energies not from a point of despair, but to use that worst case scenario and hope against it.

I had been feeling despair, in the past week especially. I started believing in climate change when I first watched Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth. But then it seemed like an obstacle that could be figured out for the better and solved so that humans could retain the important elements of our human civilization that keep us human. Again, I am saying that more important to me than the physical realm (keeping lights on, having refrigeration for our food, or driving cars) is the spiritual realm of humanity (maintaining dignity, honoring our human rights, and hoping).

As long as our physical basic needs are met we don't need a extravagance at all to maintain the spiritual realm of humanity. We do have material needs such as food, water, shelter, and love/community. But we don't need a lot of the things that many of us currently take for granted, and to the extreme. I think simplicity to the extreme is one important step to ensuring that people's hopefulness for the survival of humanity is not a false hope. The main culprit and cause of climate change is two fold: wealthy political/corporate interests are to blame and each of us who live in America or the developed world who use more than our rightful amount of resources need to stop. It's like the fact that Greta Thunberg is an amazing climate activist on a political level, but she also personally is a vegan. We all need to use less.

Actually I am going to say this. I used to dine and hang out at a coffee shop in my town (I don't now because it doesn't make any economic sense anymore.) But there was a friendly staff person there named Dan who I probably am misquoting, but I understood from what he believed that he thought the blame of climate change rests firmly and solely in the hands of corporations and not in regular developed world citizens. I like Dan, but this response is for the large portion of the population who seems to also agree that we individual poor working people don't have a part to do in the climate change problem. But we do. We each have a responsibility to act in civil disobedience if we have to but certainly to commit our lives to changing the dilemma, to live as simply as we can that others may simply live, and certainly to do what Dan already does, to admit there is a problem.

Back to the spiritual, I think we also need to hope if we are not already, and to keep hoping for the common good, so that my teenage nephew and niece live to be older than 40. So that Greta Thunberg lives a good long life. So that I see an older age than 61. May our action, our simplicity, and our recognition of a problem come immediately and let us know we each are needed in solving this crisis.

I have this idea that has been floating around in my head that city curb side trash barrels could easily be cleaned and converted into rain barrels. All that -the city- would need to do is distribute new tops for them with mosquito netting centers. The people would do the work. Of course we'd have to become zero waste at the same time. Just thoughts.

Dear Editor,

A week ago, I started reading reports all over mainstream media that the chances climate change will end civilization by 2050 are a coin toss. The source of this news originates with an Australian think tank, known as "Breakthrough." See https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/papers I saw on a report from The Young Turks, that this is a conservative estimate, and that civilization could collapse due to climate change as soon as six years. But to quote from "Breakthrough": "It's not a technological or a scientific problem. It's a question of humanity's socio-political values. We need a social tipping point that tips our thinking before we reach a tipping point in the climate system." Annihilation is not inevitable, but without immediate, drastic action our hope is grim. The need is for local and global leadership to act. This is a local paper, and I always think personally I have more potential to make impact on a local level, so my question is what can be done locally to ensure fossil fuel divestment as quickly as possible, what can be done locally to stop the true threat of consumer culture, what can be done locally to dismantle the looming net of the military industrial complex, what can be done locally to ensure food and water will exist if civilization crumbles or not, what can be done locally to ensure that the economy provides climate-change-useful jobs so workers are not wasting their time in a dead end zone of casino/consumer waste, what can be done locally so that women will be able to chose what they do with their bodies and not make the population even more unstable in scope? Can our local leaders talk about climate change at all and if they can't what is wrong with them/us? Forty eight individuals are so rich that they have a wealth equal to the poorest half of the world. Our local leaders could do so much good, it wouldn't matter if civilization ended, we could be the one of the areas that survived no matter what. For the past week, since learning of the looming number of 2050 as the conservative estimate for the end of civilization, I have been shocked and dismayed. I don't think a healthy response is to grow distressed or to think too much about the tentative date. We need to mobilize to save our Earth. But for now, I have run out of words...

Finished the refactoring that I had started on Thursday. This was only a partial success, because it didn't result in the speedup to -J that I had hoped for. The slow start with -J turns out to not be caused by concurrency overhead at all, but a bug, rsync and gcrypt special remotes make -J slow.

What was successful is that I got rid of the oldest implementation wart in git-annex, the implicitMessages state. And, I made progress toward separately parallizing checksum verification.

This refactoring is still cooking in the starting branch and will be merged after the next release.

A Biden nomination could very likely mean 4 more years of Trump. Biden is one of those weak, establishment candidates, and hopefully his numbers continue to drop, like they have been. Currently if you add the support for Warren and Sanders their polling numbers are higher than Creepy Joe. Both Warren and Sanders refuse to accept corporate donations, both of them have strong policies and seem very sincere regarding the threat of climate change. Is it too early for them to join forces? Maybe. I don't think Biden holds a chance of winning the presidency, but a Warren/Sanders ticket seems pretty good. Maybe they could bring Yang's Universal Basic Income policy to the table, and get even more votes. No matter what, we have to be sure to not repeat the mistakes that lead to Trump being put in office. I think that both means that for the final vote, progressives should vote for whatever Democrat is left standing, but also that whatever Democrat is standing should not concede, and also that we should stop Biden in his tracks because he is not the right person to win.

The story used to be,

of a stuck woman,

with limited income,

wishing for a change.

Until one day

a coconut landed on her head,

and she stopped waiting

for change to find her.

She woke up realizing

the world is going under water,

and “I’m wallowing in pity

on some of the only dry land.”

She jumped in,

joined an activist collective,

and together they super glued their bodies

to the steps of the capitol building.

She was thrown in jail,

but even in there,

she did not feel

stuck anymore.

Unicode allows you to write any symbol in use in the world, and if one is somehow missing from Unicode, it'll get added in a future version of the specification. Right?

Here's a symbol we all know well: 
Aka, "box with 4 small F's in it".

But that's not the only such symbol, there was a whole class of them in common use in the early 2000's, so common that they were called "tofu" when grouped together.

Modern unicode systems cannot display those historical characters!

Clearly this needs to be fixed with an extension to the Unicode standard. I propose TOFU, a combining character that makes whatever it's combined with be displayed as a font fallback box glyph containing its Unicode code point.

Down load this suggested boat list

Or copy and paste below and edit to suit your needs.

Richard Joslin Experience and education!

• Here’s what I do : I made a laminated list, one copy in truck and one in boat so I never forget things like: (charger cord in boat. drains checked. wheels greased. ratchets tight. lights work. etc)- then:
• Go get your serial number, engine serial, hull and registration # and insurance card/phone and EMERGENCY CONTACTS that are local.
• If you have friends with boats, ask them if you can use them in an emergency if you need a truck/help.. offer to do the same for them and get their # on card) etc all together on BACK of that sheet before laminating: oil concentration (mine’s 50:1). tank capacity. filter/spark plug #;s..etc. )
• Then go buy the engine manual and use YOUTUBE to start learning about annual service, inspecting and lubricating steering and throttle cable.. impeller change. oil change. buy the special tools as you need then (ie lower end oil change hand pump).
• Build a tool bag JUST for the boat (I keep mine in toolbox of truck when boat is stored:
  • Mine has everything from wire cutters to the ratchets id need to tighten the engine and transom bolt.
  • Buy a LARGE box of fuses on Amazon- cheaper. I carry the following: Tools.
  • Spare 2 cycle oil so I don’t have to pay outrageous dock prices if I stay overnight and need gas the next day)
  • 12V Jump Start box $50,
  • spare 5 gallon can( with 2 more in truck), fuses,
• Flashlights (do rechargeable work lights at $20/each),
• starter fluid,
• Hardware for Bimini (easy to drop overboard or behind seats),
• Spare emergency water under seats,
• Plenty of new rope $8,
• 4 spare ratchets $10,
• 12V Test light,
• Wire splices/crimper,
• Set of bungees $5,
• Depth Finder $115,
• home first aid kit (nail clippers scissors,
• matches/lighters,
• Medical:
  • Sunscreen,
  • bug spray,
  • burn spray with lidocaine,
  • tylenol- benadryl-
  • triple anitbiotic-cortisone-
  • travel toothpaste and spare brush-
  • band aids- vet wrap- etc,
• Huge rambo knife for cutting lines in emergency $5,
• cell phone charger pack $20, Spare USB cords for Iphone-USB-C and micro-Usb,
• required coast guard stuff
  • (air horn- life jackets-throwable buoy),
• spare set of spark plugs and wrench to remove them,
• Waterproof bag for Depth finder when stored,, keys, wallet, boat insurance/registration, etc).
• Get a routine for greasing trailer and getting ready to tow.
• PRACTICE launching boat- DONT PREP ON RAMP. get on the dock-get GOOD at backing and launching- then CLEAR the ramp.
• You can prep dock at sea or dock while she parks truck and the next guy can get in….
• Learn your consumption rate for what you normally do- skiing/ full out gives me ~4 hours. Putzin around and I can go 2 days.
• Don’t trust gauge..that’s why the premixed 50:1 5 gallon gas can… Most toons can’t carry enough anchor line/chain to anchor properly (lakes here are 400′ deep, meaning you’re NOT gonna be able to anchor to wait for help if you run outta gas (lesson learned, bought the depth finder the next day).
• PRACTICE handling your toon near dock and training your partner to moor and trailer so you can be quick and stress free. I watched enough videos and had a friend come teach me about how to adjust the carbs/idle speed cause mine was running rough at low idle and would stall and not restart (1 of two carb needle valves was nearly shut).. It’s nerve racking but you will be fine if you learn BEFORE you need it and it will be much less stress and bickering at the dock:)
• Hope this helps!

I have a 2500 line patch on the starting branch that refactors how start messages get displayed. Prerequisite for faster parallel starts. This touched every single command, and quite a few needed non-trivial changes, so it took all day to get it to even compile.

While civilization will almost definitely be ended by 2050 due to climate apocalypse, Biden has chosen that as his date to reduce carbon emissions to zero. Also of note, abortion will be legal, there will be zero Traffic Deaths in Texas, and sex robots will be wide spread.

A long day spent making CommandCleanup actions run in a separate job pool than CommandPerform actions. I don't think this will speed anything up much yet, but it's useful groundwork. Now expensive things that are not the main action of a command can be moved into CommandCleanup and won't delay git-annex moving on to the next file. The main thing I want to move is checksum verification after a transfer. But there are probably other things I have not thought of.

CommandCleanup was always not well distinguised from CommandPerform, and so there was little incentive to put things in it. Now that's changed.

I also noticed that with -J, git-annex takes significantly longer than without to get started, when the first file it needs to process is quite a way down the ls-tree. This must be concurrency overhead. But, when CommandStart is skipping over a file that it doesn't need to process, there is no need to do that bookkeeping. Planning to take some time tomorrow to see if I can refactor CommandStart to avoid that overhead.

Every day 100 Americans are killed with guns. This includes suicides which makes up two thirds of the firearm deaths in the United States. The first leading cause of death in black children and teens is firearms.

One in one million Australians die of gun violence while 30 in one million Americans die from guns. Under the 1996 law, Australia banned certain semi-automatic, self-loading rifles and shotguns, and imposed stricter licensing and registration requirements. Australia's strict gun laws came as reaction to a terrible mass shooting that killed 35 people.

If you believe in firearm ownership, how do you explain that all the developed nations with strong gun legislation have strikingly low gun deaths compared to the lax/ NRA influenced United States?

I know so many friends and even family members who believe in gun ownership, and the ignorance makes my stomach turn. It is a life and death matter and perfectly easy to relinquish firearms for a safe world. A gun ban is the only way.

​I come weeping to these waters
I may be excessive with my impulses,
But I have to be more grateful
I am here with you I will be there
I will not run away or flinch
I will not leave you somewhere
The way I look is so fragile
yet here in my hand
is assurance of eternity.
I try.​

We ate as much as we safely could of our first-year asparagus, have gorged on lettuce and broccoli and kale, and now it's time for the summer crops to begin. An ultra-early last frost means ultra-early cucumber blooms. We should be adding these crunchy fruits to our salads starting next week.

On a broccoli side note --- lowish nitrogen in the soil meant our heads were smaller, but also faster, than usual. Interestingly, we've also seen very few cabbageworms so far this spring. The moths have been quite visible, but seem to prefer the flowering kale at the moment. Could that be because of the lower-nitrogen plants?

Lower cabbageworm pressure means I've been able to leave the broccoli plants in place for side shoots to form. (I usually pull them out after first spring heading because otherwise they become a bad-bug nursery.) The result? Possibly more total pounds of harvest than previously, definitely spread over a longer time span. Despite not planning to preserve excess food this year, I ended up packing away about a gallon of broccoli in the freezer.

On a less pleasant note, our strawberry harvest looks like it will be nonexistent. The berries started, a bird found them, I put bird netting on top...and someone strong and vigorous (probably a squirrel) snuck underneath and worked through the patch like a tornado. Every strawberry of any size was removed, discards were strewn around the garden, and Mark is now working on a berry enclosure to ensure this won't happen again next year.

You win some and you lose some.

Speaking of winning --- wow, the manure! We're stocking up on truckloads of this precious resource, in part because it disappeared midsummer last year but also because the organic matter is full of wood shavings and needs some rotting before it will be putting off much nitrogen for our plants. Our worm bins quickly filled up, so now we're starting a manure pile in the yard.

I'm also laying manure down on beds I don't plan to use in the next several weeks, the time expanded from my initial plan of the next month. Why? Because the tomatoes I set out into one-month-old manure beds turned yellow and required chicken-manure topdressing to save them. Luckily, they've now bounced back and are setting fruit.

In our second year, we're also starting to have a bit of time for prettiness, like this grape trellis Mark made out of a cattle panel and four fence posts.

A few weeks after erecting it, the 18-month-old grape vines are already starting to fill their space. One plant has even begun to bloom!

What's coming up? This is a Prelude raspberry, a new-to-us variety that's supposed to ripen before any other brambles in the patch. It didn't bloom any earlier than my other varieties, but fruits are starting to plump and blush. If the birds don't get them, we might have a replacement to my demolished strawberries!

I've added an ?export and import appendix to the ?external special remote protocol which documents how the protocol might be extended to allow for importing from external special remotes.

Feel this needs more thought. It's complicated by there already being an interface that only supports export, and import needing all the same operations, but with more checks that the content has not been modified behind git-annex's back. Unifying them at the protocol level would be possible, but perhaps more confusing.

I figured it all out just now, as I researched the root of my fever: undercooked chicken livers. Ugh. Children, do not be a dufus. Cook your chicken livers all the way through, and be sure of it! Or better even, go vegetarian!

Little kids toss gravel

why shouldn't I?

We have in our fists

EARTHY

resource necessary

to heal all ails.

Clutch and heave

release chicken livers

bad energy that brought you here.

Don't ever let anyone say you are no longer a child

in the playhouse with the blocks.

We put pass codes so we go slower

from one screen to the other.

That's all.

Those are the puzzles and these are the lego's.

All the problems of the world

a maze we made from our own scratch.

Know the sickness that moans you, know the company that owns you, know the food that grows you, know the horse that brings you home, know the Origin and the Other.

When I die

I will soon

evaporate

high overhead

a cloud

passing gaily

white fluffy

and in that moment

I will be the only boss of me

where ever I float

on some gale

or out to sea.

Kind of surprised it all came together so well today, especially because I noticed another big problem with the design, but I was able to work around that and import/export with preferred content works great.

I did end up limiting import to supported a subset of preferred content expressions. Downloading content that it doesn't yet know if it wants to import seemed too surprising and potentially very expensive.

I was interested, so I took the narcissist personality test at psychcentral. I tried to be honest, though most of the questions I could have made a case for either the right or the left answer. I scored the same narcissism score as some celebrities. Personally, I named my dog Brazen partially because I believe it is a strength to be brash and brave, especially for girls and women. I am proud that I scored high on the chart, because my high scores were only in 2 areas really: Authority and Exhibitionism. I always have been peculiarly proud of my body, but I don't think it is a fault. And I like to be a leader, but I don't think I do because I want to control others or manipulate or exploit. Overall, I think women should lead more and be less ashamed of our bodies. I really didn't think the test was very accurate, and I am unashamed.

The second Rural Action mushroom foray took to the woods amid pollen so severe my black shirt turned gray and my eyes began couldn't quite decide whether to itch or tear up. I don't even get allergies! I can't imagine how the more susceptible felt.

Despite adverse conditions, we collected over twenty species in three short hours. While plucking fungi from the woods, many seemed very similar and I had a sinking suspicion I was bagging the same species over and over. But once we spread them out on the picnic table, differences became clear.

I'm going to focus on the edibles again (although I've included a couple of inedible beauties at the end of this post). First, another turkey-tail lookalike --- violet-toothed polypore. My specimens of both species are old and faded, but you can still see a little purple around the rim of the polypore, the same color that is much more obvious underneath when the fungi are fresh.

Lacking that giveaway, you can distinguish violet-toothed polypores from turkey-tails by peering at the undersides with a hand lens. As the name suggests, the former has teeth while the latter boasts pores.

Next, a new-to-me edible...that I never would have been brave enough to taste on my own. Fawn mushroom (aka deer mushroom or Pluteus cervinus) looks an awful lot like another hundred or so species of brown, gilled mushrooms. But if you peer closer, there are quite a few distinguishing features.

First pay attention to ecology --- fawn mushrooms grow on rotting wood. The gills are free, as you can see in the top photo. And (at least when they get a little age on them) the pink color underneath can be distinctive.

The real clincher, though, is the aroma. Fawn mushrooms smell just like lightning bugs! With that in mind, I was much more willing to cook them up to taste.

Flavor was good but not amazing. Worth eating if you stumble across them, but not worth an earmarked hunt.

A huge thank you to our fearless leader who helped us separate the wheat from the chaff.

Although she didn't appear to consult her library, Martha recommended the books above for mushroom-hunting in southeast Ohio.

And now, eye candy! Orange mycena...

...and my very favorite, the split-gill mushroom.

I wonder what we'll find next month?

Made git annex export --to remote honor the preferred content of the remote. In a nice bit of code reuse, adjustTree was just what I needed to filter unwanted content out of the exported tree.

Then a hard problem: When a tree is exported with some non-preferred content filtered out, importing from the remote generates a tree that is lacking those files, but merging that tree would delete the files from the working tree. Solving that took the rest of the day.

Once, a new friend said to me, "I like your blog, but it's not cool just to start something online and provide zero context about your story." I am not very cool, or interested in being cool, but I want to be kind. So I am going to try to give context to my story in this post.

I decided to start blogging again with the same web address I used to use, because I was starting a new job, and I felt a sense of newness in my social contacts and I wanted to get it down in a public place once again. So, I wanted to use my favorite blog place ever, branchable, and crossed my fingers my webmaster brother would be glad to see my reappearance.

About my life story, I want you to know my life, but I am going to say this. I do my best to summarize different parts of it in my Amazon and Audible publications. For example, My Hojoki, is a book by me, Maggie Hess, that eloquently speaks about my history of mental illness, if I can say that.

If you can, purchase the ten minute long audio book, My Hojoki, and the answers will be right there. Or any of my other numerous books would be good to purchase.

I added dh to debhelper a decade ago, and now Debian is considering making use of dh mandatory. Not being part of Debian anymore, I'm in the position of needing to point out something important about it anyway. So this post is less about pointing in a specific direction as giving a different angle to think about things.

debhelper was intentionally designed as a 100% solution for simplifying building Debian packages. Any package it's used with gets simplified and streamlined and made less a bother to maintain. The way debhelper succeeds at 100% is not by doing everything, but by being usable in little pieces, that build up to a larger, more consistent whole, but that can just as well be used sparingly.

dh was intentionally not designed to be a 100% solution, because it is not a collection of little pieces, but a framework. I first built an 80% solution, which is the canned sequences of commands it runs plus things like dh_auto_build that guess at how to build any software. Then I iterated to get closer to 100%. The main iteration was override targets in the debian/rules file, to let commands be skipped or run out of order or with options. That closed dh's gap by a further 80%.

So, dh is probably somewhere around a 96% solution now. It may have crept closer still to 100%, but it seems likely there is still a gap, because it was never intended to completely close the gap.

Starting at 100% and incrementally approaching 100% are very different design choices. The end results can look very similar, since in both cases it can appear that nearly everyone has settled on doing things in the same way. I feel though, that the underlying difference is important.

PS: It's perhaps worth re-reading the original debhelper email and see how much my original problems with debstd would also apply to dh if its use were mandatory!

I don't know the percent of people who overcome mental illness. I have a feeling, when it comes down to people who were so far gone they had to be hospitalized or were legally disabled, the numbers on complete transformation are lower. I say one of the big reasons I succeeded is that I have supportive people, but they could be better, they could be more aware of the world I live in, they could clue in and believe in my transformation more, they could listen to me more. But overall, I have better support than most, in this lonely world. I lived a whole year of my life, basically just drooling and wondering why it had come to this. That period of my life, after my first psychotic break, I had experienced worst stuff than I ever thought I would in a sudden flip of events. I was so successful in the period preceding this time, some of my family, who lived on the west coast said I was a completely new person. And to some degree I that was completely false, but on the other hand, it was partially right on.

But I am not writing to go into the context of how bad it used to be. I am writing to talk about now, and for the most part, today, I am pretty proud of how things are. My Dad is one person who doesn't see me enough to believe in my change, or he just disbelieves that people can change, and it is very hard to talk with him because of that. Disability deemed me no longer disabled because an actual doctor, a good doctor, said now I am stable and able to hold a job. I am holding a job now at the tutor place I talk about in other entries. But my Dad is like, "you have only been there like one week, just appeal the disability for next week when you quit." Actually, it is worst even than that with my Dad because I am not sure he realizes I have never been fired, and might actually think I used to lose jobs due to messing up and being let go, which is never true. My Dad means the best for me, but I don't think he believes in human change, and his pessimism hurts.
One kind of person I really have appreciated lately are the new people in my life. These people do not see me through the lens of my past, and frankly don't think I should be disabled legally, because I am so so super well. I think it is empowering to be healthy. I am so proud of my health. Mental wellness is work, and I love every step of the way because I love feeling good and am grateful for how happy I am. I don't need cynics bogging me down.

I am a complex person. Recently another person who is a good friend of mine totally discounted the struggle I have been through and the story of my life, saying "I would never in my life use that word for you" about the word "disability." This is a person who knew me since childhood and somehow does not know that I am schizoaffective, and talks about mental illness like it is a personality flaw, and seems to have the same patronizing view towards disability. I wish I had more patience around her and her confusing outlook. I guess if I was a different kind of person I would take her ableism and just educate her with no feelings hurt. But ableism is a kind of bias, like racism or sexism, and with a lot in common with classism. I don't expect a racial minority to educate others on the fact that all races are inherently equal. It wears me out to educate someone about disability, when they seem to be starting from the ground level. So yeah, my support people might be less supportive than they once were, but at least I am less needing.

Mark and I recently attended a showing of Dreaming of a Vetter World, with a Q&A by Donald Vetter afterwards. If you've never heard of him, Vetter is a farmer right up Joel Salatin's alley who uses long crop rotations combined with rotational grazing to improve his soil. After decades of this treatment, Vetter's soil can soak in up to eight inches of rain per hour while his neighbors' conventional fields start ponding and eroding after half an inch in a similar time period.

So what does Vetter do to get such great results? He uses a nine-year rotation, a third of which involves cows and pigs on pasture. We'll start with that part --- the soil-building end of the spectrum. After planting a grass/legume/forb mixture, he utilizes rotational grazing for three years, then he tills the rich greenery in.

Next comes the cash crops --- soybeans in year one, corn in year two, then an Ethiopian land race of barley that his sister company (a small-scale, organic grain-processing operation) bags up to sell as bird seed. After a winter of cover cropping combined with fall and winter grazing, it's back to soybeans for a year followed by a final season of popcorn.

Using this rotation, Vetter has added no off-farm inputs for twenty years and sees annual improvement of his soil. He doesn't even buy animal feed --- the waste seeds from his grainary supplement his livestock's dependency on grass. The result is a beautiful permaculture system that runs smoothly...when combined with a lot of hard work.

Right after I graduated from Berea, something symbolic and supernatural happened to me. Up until now, I only mentioned that it happened to L and R who owned my home at the time. I went to the reservoir to swim by myself which is something I have done a few other times since I am a confident swimmer. I swam out to the middle of the reservoir and tread some water in the center of the water body before starting back to my car. Out of the blue, this thing happened where the waters kept growing in front of me. The expanse between me and the car grew and grew as I paddled forward. It sounds hokey but it wasn't in my head. Maybe it was the Universe sending me a lesson. I don't know. All that I knew then was that I am a talented, skilled swimmer, but I had to break through a parallel universe to make any progress at all. I swam and I swam, but I did not move one inch. I have swum distances before. It was not me being impatient or miscalculating how quickly I could swim. It is like there was a rope tied around my waste holding me in spot in the water. It was like the Universe said to me, graduating will not be your final hurdle in life. Life will have many battles. You have the inner resources you need to fight through this, to get past the parallel universe and onto dry land, but you must fight with all your might. And I clearly did.

I feel I have a magic for tutoring. I still feel it after a few weeks. I quit about 20 jobs because they were not right for me. Not I found a job just perfect and my duty is to treasure it.

I haven't written a lot of criticism about Anonymous LC lately or rewritten the Center into my own creation. This is largely true because I am just doing the best I can in the given role, and making my own thing out of the pre-fabricated wheel of sorts.

For example, today there was the cutest 1st grader I ever saw. She kept petting my fuzzy hat, and I felt like I was a purring cat. She informed me about the serious hard work involved in the first grade. "They put numbers on our tests, and we have to wait 10 days for summer!!!" The hardship in that statement could be laughed at, but in a child's life, it also is very real. We adults understand true joy only through knowing how it feels to fall and to fail. We need to be able to compare the pain with the glee. These concerns raised by this sweet girl are as bad as it might have ever gotten for this girl. I want her to continue to feel the joy she knows which is true and beautiful, and to protect her from the low numbers on her tests.

The other day I had a different girl, a kindergärtner, who seemed like I didn't know what all was going on with her, like there was something she was trying to heal already. A hardship at home maybe, a source of worry. I want to give her a sheltered place to come and learn her letters, a place without worry at all.

There is this awesome high school girl who I get to work with on test prep. I am convinced she is doubling her correct answers on my watch. The college preparatory tests are among the most important tests anyone can take. I am certain this student can place into any college she wants. My fingers are crossed for her!

I keep working on writing with this one high school boy. I am seeing him grow how much he writes and return to edit some of the content. I am proud of him.

I am so glad for this opportunity!

Sometimes I wish I had the email of some wonderful friends from college. Bradly Neiderider. Kenny Madden. All my English majors.

You can always email me!

maggiemargarethess@gmail.com

Mothers can be nerve wracking.

It's a symptom of how much they love you.

The worst it gets, the more they do.

So be sure to tell your mothers

that you love them too!

I feel her paw

weighing down the bed

but I don't know

if she stayed for sure.

I have to rest in faith

that her body is present.

I cannot open my eyes

and bend my neck.

If I move,

the potential kitty will move.

I just listen to the wind

and believe it exists.

Cheers me up every time.

ratty.

Overwhelming.

Shocking.

Scary.

Terrifying.

But I am trying to be positive.