Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Visions of future schools
He said that all the new universities would consist of only one small room. It would work this way. At the beginning of each semester the entire student body—which would have to number at least five hundred thousand in order to give the computers enough to do—would assemble in a large open space in front of a TV camera. They would be televised and put on videotape. In a separate operation the instructors would also be videotaped, individually. Then two TV sets would be placed in the single room which represented the university. The room would be in a small blockhouse at the edge of a thirty-six-lane freeway; this proximity would help facilitate transmission of electronic equipment. Oh, there might be some banners on the wall and maybe a plaque or two, but aside from these the only things in the room would be the TV sets. At nine o’clock in the morning of the first day of classes, a computer would turn on the two television sets, which would be facing each other. The videotape of the students would then watch the videotape of the instructors. Eventually the system could be refined so that there would be only one university in the whole country.
-Don DeLillo, Americana
Re-branding.
This just seems like such a weird topic for a personal blog – but I am thinking that after eight years of blogging (more than 1300 posts on this blog alone, plus two other blogs) – it might be time for some personal rebranding.
When I started out as Red Cedar in 2003 (first on Livejournal, those early posts have been lost in the interwebs) I was in a pretty different place in my life than I am right now. More serious in some ways, more somber, more earthy – and a lot younger in experience than I feel now. All of that transition has of course been written about here – my thoughts, my moves, my fears and friends’ arrests, my marriage and now my family and home have all graced these pages and looking back I am strangely grateful to have such a complete document of my thirties thus far.
But for the last couple of years I’ve been feeling like “Red Cedar” is a bit too obscure and removed from the image I want to project online. As a result I started “Among the Weeds” last year where I started to document my household exploits – gardening, cooking, and some household sewing, plus I posted a few posts to “Slipperyfish.ca” which consisted of photo-poems. Although I was hoping to provide regular material to each, I’ve found that keeping three blogs up isn’t possible – and what with requirements to keep a reading journal for school in blog format, I’m not expecting to have more blogging hours anytime soon.
So I’m thinking of rolling all three blogs into one and retitling myself Madam Eliza – which is an anagram of my real name – and going with Madam Eliza’s Miss-Adventures. Apparently I can get the domain I want for this, and I would redirect my other domains to the new one so as not to lose readers in the process. I really feel like it’s time to give my blog a more human and energetic face, as well as retract into a single presence in order to ensure daily posting again. I just don’t have the time and energy to build audiences and content for three or four blog-presences – and really, it’s all personal blogging anyway.
I’m not sure anyone out there really cares – but I’m wondering as readers, do any of you have any thoughts on this? Does it matter? Do I have to keep the same online persona forever or is it okay to change? Is Madam Eliza too dorky for words? Let me know if you have any thoughts. I’m impulsive so I might more on this sooner rather than later.
Back to school!
It definitely feels like fall this morning – I’ve switched to wearing greens and browns this week, I popped my umbrella in my purse on the way out the door, the garden is spitting out its last in a furious desire to spread seed – so here we are.
I start Grad School next Wendesday, and for the first time in twelve years I had a back-to-school dream. You know the one I’m sure – showing up for school only to find you aren’t enrolled for the semester, in addition to discovering I had the wrong pre-reading list and so wasn’t at all prepared to start school anyway. It was mercifully brief, a few flashes of confusion and then the dreamscape shifted to something else entirely, but it reminded me just how much new challenges nag at our psyche – that the back to school dream is a script we all know so well.
Outwardly I don’t feel nervous about starting school again – I *have* read most of the reading list over the summer, and I am looking forward to having some intellectual discipline in my life again. I’m also a lot more confident than the last time I started college/university (which for the record, was 17 and a half years ago). The intervening years between then and now have given me a much broader perspective on the world, and a boatload of experiences which give me the surety that I actually have enough mastery of life to earn a Master’s degree. And because the program is exactly what I’m looking for in graduate education – I’m really pretty excited to get started.
But the dream. Is it that school anxieities from childhood are so embedded in us? Or latent imposter syndome just waiting to spring late in the semester giving us an early warning? Or just a nod to the transition from one mode to another – while my professional life is staying the same, I am shifting my intellectual focus towards something entirely new. And I should note also that my lack of graduate degree to date has been the source of some feelings of resentment and inadequacy about my path in the past – so perhaps I am also afraid I won’t resolve this goal for myself even though I’ve taken the first steps by getting into the program.
Despite some of my dreamland misgivings, I take all this as a sign I’m doing the right thing for myself. Challenges are expected to bring some anxiety – and anticipation is a part of the desire quest. So for the first time in twelve years I am back to school and *so* looking forward to it.
Making do.
Like I said late last week – although we stayed home for our last bit of summer holidays – we were sure busy with all the canning, socializing, and whatnot. Today I am back at work and don’t have the wherewithal to write much – so I’m posting here a few photos of the sewing and crocheting I’ve completed since last Saturday. I am missing one photo – a winter beanie that I finished last night – but otherwise I am pleased to show off all that I have gotten done on the textile front in the last few days. My next projects include a scarf to go with the hat, and a brown tartan jumper which I have got all cut out and ready to sew. This week I hope.
I had quite a lot of fabric leftover from the cherry halter, plus a yard of black twill kicking around – so I made a set of four pillows to use in the backyard – where we have some uncomfortable seating! These pillows were super simple to put together and I highly recommend this as a form of using up scraps. Tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew.
On Monday, I finished this denim and cotton dress in the midst of a crazy pouring rainstorm. Sadly, I have no great photos of it, but it is one of my favourite handmade pieces of clothing so far. The pattern was really simple to follow, and I added some ties at the back to give it a little more shape. This dress looks better in real life than in this photo.
I started this cowl a couple weeks ago to use up some leftover cotton (from a shawl project) – I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to wear it until I attached the button – and voila! A perfect piece to fit under a winter coat or over a collarless jacket. This is for fall wear as I would rather have wool in the coldest months…. but it’s super soft and these are some of my favourite colours.
With the fabric leftover from the denim dress, I made this pair of sprocket pillows for the new trailer (photos forthcoming). It’s a bit drab on the inside, what with the brown decor – so I thought these would make a nice start to sprucing up that wood paneling a little.
And finally, this scrap scarf backed in thrifted wool is one of my new favourite things. I have tons of fat quarters and scraps that could be used up this way and I’m thinking this type of scarf would make simple Christmas presents. They take less than an hour to put together – and this looks so fabulous on me! I also am really glad to have found a wearable use for this fabric.
So that’s it! I was noting the B. after finishing the scarf that I finally feel like I’m in a place with sewing where I can visualize stuff in my head and have it turn out the way I thought it would – which is a whole new level of competency. In the last year I’ve learned a lot about structurally making things work using interfacing, top-stitching, and facings which has given me a whole new level of competence when it comes to putting stuff together. Although I’m starting grad school next week, I am hopeful that having Mondays off work will give me the time and space I need to keep building these skills. It seems the longer I am at a job doing the ephemeral (digital development), the more I crave the satisfaction of tactile work.
Sunday Morning Sappho (1)
On first reading, I think the best possible way to encounter Sappho is lying abed on a lazy, late-summer morning and taking the fragments in with as much languor as the scene implies. So beautiful and brief. So desirous and ruined. One pictures Sappho not as a great beauty but as a woman driven by her passions and worried by nightmares. So little focused on the physical, her writing seems to come directly from the place of feeling – and what little survives of her writing stokes our desire to fill in the fragments. Images of the erotic and natural worlds combine in such fragments as:
Eros has shaken my mind,
wind sweeping down the mountain on oaks
and
To what should I compare you, dear bridegroom?
I shall compare you to a slender sapling
Though Sappho is also taken by beautiful crafted things – embroidery, purple silks, perfumes – all difficult to obtain and luxuriated in when they arrive:
Handkerchiefs
purple scented
from Phocaea
expensive gifts
Each description of place, person, and thing evoking a sensuality that still resonates even after two thousand years – as do her fears
When you are dead you will lie forever unremembered
and no one will miss you, for you have not touched the roses
of the Pieriean Muses. Invisible even in the house of Hades,
you will wander among the dim dead, a flitting thing.
which remind us that despite all our wars, ideologies and modern technologies – the human essence remains unchanged over time. And despite the fragmentary nature of Sappho’s remaining work, she reminds us of the full spectrum of passions that we have access to and have always had. Rather than the plasticized sex sold on television 24 hours a day, it is worth remembering that it can (and should) be so:
Eros once more limbslackener makes me shudder
sweetbitter irresistible creeping
Red Cedar 