Share Four Somethings is a meme hosted by Overflowing with Thankfulness. I thought I’d try something new and join this year, as a way to look back at some of the things I loved, saw, learned, and ate each month. (I’m replacing “reading” with “seeing,” because I always review my reading in my monthly wrap-up post.) If you’d like to join too, the linkup is the last Saturday of each month.
What I loved: A hike to the nearby Chasseral peak–I never get tired of this view.
I also enjoyed knitting a top with my own handspun yarn, based on a design from a knitting book I’m editing for two colleagues, who are hoping to finally get their life’s work published. I wanted to try out the instructions I’d come up with for them, and I’m pretty pleased with the results.
What I saw: A performance of Volpone by the eighth grade class in my son’s school, adapted from Stefan Zweig’s version of Ben Jonson’s satire. The kids did a great job, especially the ones cast as Volpone and Mosca, but the rapid-fire German was hard for me to follow and it was so hot in the theatre I had to struggle to stay awake. I could only get the main gist of the story (a miser pretends to be ill to try to get gifts out of the rapacious heirs who want him to name them in his will, and is bested in the end by his clever servant), but the details escaped me. Still, a glimpse of some culture at least!
What I ate: I made a quart of fermented daikon, to have some lacto-fermented veggies other than my standard sauerkraut, and it tastes good, but the off-gassing smell is terrible! I put some plastic over the lid to try to keep it from stinking up the fridge, and now I have to remember to eat it.
What I learned: Something about the true history of the Alamo, which interested me because I have an ancestor who fought and died there. However, I knew nothing else about the battle and thought it was about time I did. Reading a book called Forget the Alamo gave a glimpse into not only the historical context of the event — which means acknowledging that it was a fight for the freedom specifically to own slaves — but also the mythmaking that began instantly and continues to this day, in ways that have been sometimes inspiring but more often destructive. It made me think about how powerful and intractable is the human drive to believe only what we want to believe, and resist anything that contradicts our preferred mindset, especially if it means confronting the immoral things we (or those akin to us) have done. Food for thought indeed.
I hope you’ve had a good month! What would you like to share?
I have discovered that you make progress on a novel by writing every day.
Your yarn top is beautiful!
Thanks! It was fun to make.