Author: bflynn

Brenda currently lives in Stoneham MA, but grew up in Mineral WA. She is surrounded by men, with two sons, one husband and two boy cats. She plays trumpet at church, cans farmshare produce and works in software.

Caramel corn

One of my favorite memories of my great grandmother was making caramel corn. This is her recipe, and it’s super crisp. She taught me how to make it – it’s one if the first things I ever cooked, although I haven’t made it in years.

Once, she made a batch and we laid it out to cool. Then we went to break it up with our fingers and save it. Somehow, every single kernel of that batch went to either her mouth or mine. We finished the whole thing. She winked at me and made another batch for everyone else. I still remember that conspiratorial wink.

To Frances Finley, caramel corn maker extraordinaire.

Ethical Internetting

All opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer

It’s hard to be lately what you want to spend your limited horrified energy tackling. But I was listening to a podcast, and it was talking about 2018 predictions. One of the predictions which had come true exactly as stated was that social media had been the primary driver of a genocide. In this case, Facebook and the genocide in Myanmar of the Rohingyas. How can I ethically contribute to making that platform successful – especially given Facebook’s lack of caring about the impact of its platform?

I’d already been uncomfortable with Facebook. There’s the whole Russian election meddling, the emotional experiments, and the fact that it’s both addictive and makes you feel crappy when you’ve had too much of it. I’d quit it if I could. But I can’t. I think that looking at the places where there is no legitimate competition to Facebook raises interesting questions that only regulators can answer. For me, I need to run my church social media presence (Facebook is a big part of that). I have a number of communities which are only collected on Facebook. And there are people I care about where my communication with them only happens there.

Additionally, I have been connecting and posting my thoughts on the internet since there was a public internet. I have been making status updates since they were a .plan on our PINE system. I *like* connecting with people online. I like writing short autobiographical segments. I think that I am perhaps beginning to be a writer whose writings I’d be willing to read, and that’s due almost entirely to my practice in digital media – this somewhat neglected blog being the primary venue, but the short thoughts having their place too. Facebook killed Livejournal, where I did this before. But I cannot find the thing that is killing Facebook. It needs to be widely available to reader, low barrier to entry, access controllable, mobile-friendly or mobile-first, and not a propaganda tool of the Russian government. Ideally I’d control what I read instead of having that algorithmically decided for me. There are a bunch of new entrants and throwbacks (and I’ve tried most of them at some point), but none of them have really delivered. The things that are closest, like Instagram and Twitter, have their own deeply problematic elements. (Instagram is owned by Facebook. Twitter is, well, Twitter.)

I finally decided that the thing that comes closest is… this blog. I’ve been using it for in depth, long form pieces. (And I’ve been having trouble getting those out lately.) My posts average about 1000 words, which takes me about an hour to write depending on how much research I need to do. (I know it doesn’t look like my posts have any research. But sometimes they do.) But what if I mixed it up? What if I kept my long form pieces, but then felt no hesitation in posting a picture and two lines in the interim? Like a bloglet? I know that many fewer people will read my blog than read my Facebook. History says that I’ll have many fewer comments and less interaction. But maybe it will scratch a portion of my itch. And maybe it will help ease a tiny bit of the stranglehold of Facebook if people don’t need to be there to keep up with *me*.

The holidays are a great time for this kind of experimentation. I tend to write a lot during the holidays (it’s one of the things I like to do when I have free time). So I’m going to try creating “bloglets” on this site. They won’t be edited. They may feel random. I may cross post them to FB manually (FB decided to make automated cross posting not possible due to them wanting to make things like this harder). They will also cross post to the soon-to-die Google+, Twitter at fairoriana@, and Tumblr “I sought fit words”. I’ll be posting the kind of stuff I usually post to Facebook/Instagram. (I may keep using Instagram, haven’t decided yet.) I’ll likely still read in Facebook (see also: they have me in a spot I can’t just walk away from). But we’ll see.

#bloglet #experiment

The season of rituals

Ritual has an interesting place in the culture I find myself living in. Rituals, especially shared rituals, are falling aside in this era of individualism. What are our remaining shared rituals? I find myself thinking “Well, there’s Sweet Caroline in the 8th inning…” Many of our oldest, time honored rituals seem to be evolving past recognition (weddings used to be a religious service) or falling away altogether. I myself didn’t watch fireworks this 4th of July, and have eaten Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny’s.

When starting a family, especially when far from your own family, one is confronted with the question of what rituals you’ll create. Will you open presents on Christmas Eve? When do you put up the tree? There are other rituals which simply arise through repetition – like when you realize you’ve thrown a last-minute New Year’s Eve party every year for the last three years. And then there are the rituals that are some sort of strange hybrid, like making up your own holidays and investing them with energy, love and meaning until they become as rich and real to you as any holiday that lives on a pre-printed calendar. (Also, it turns out you can now print your own calendars…)

One tradition that I loved from my family of birth, which I had trouble carrying over to my family in Massachusetts, was the Christmas Tree. Living in the land where Christmas trees grow, we’d always go to Jim Hale’s and tromp around the fields getting increasingly cranky and objecting to each other’s selections of tree. (The fight was actually an acknowledged part of the ritual.) Then we’d get a tree that was too tall and struggle to get it home and into the house. Mom would hide in the kitchen “making cookies” while we wrestled the lights onto the timber, cut about two feet off the bottom with a chainsaw, and argue about the best order of cutting the bindings. Then we’d all gather together and hang the ornaments while listening to Roger Whittaker’s iconic Christmas album. It was always a stressful day, but somehow what began in tumult – with broken icy ground underfoot – ended peacefully, eating warm cookies and debating whether Darcy the Dragon was an ironic anti-capitalist morality play in the warm light of our own Christmas tree. (Assuming no one was still on the roof putting the cut-off top of the tree on top of the ridgeline to at least make it look right from the outside.)

I tried to pull as much of this as possible into my home, but my husband does not love hanging lights (so I can’t disappear to make cookies). There are no cantankerous octagenarians selling Christmas trees around here. And our ceiling is now and always has been a mere 8 feet tall. So over time I’ve learned to change the tradition to match our reality. This year, I decided also to give up my hope of recreating what I thought it should be, and lean into what it was at that moment. So maybe I didn’t have all four of us hanging ornaments and talking about their history and what they meant to us. Maybe I wasn’t making cookies (but Grey was). Maybe I would just do the parts that were important to me, and my family would join me if it was also important to them.

The tree got up in record time, and it was much less stressful than usual. But my husband commented afterwards that although he’d never really loved the ritual of adorning the tree, somehow not being in the scrum of snowflake hanging had hollowed out a little bit of the festive feeling he got looking at the tree. As he and I tread through our fifth decade (and third decade together), we begin to understand more about ourselves. A ritual may not need to be fun or enjoyable to be meaningful.

On the flip side, the last year or two I’ve really wanted to pull the Advent Wreath into our own practice of the holiday. I find it hilarious that in a society so willing to create any Christmas crap you can think of (Santa toilet paper? Zombie gingerbread men ornaments?), it’s actually hard to find something that’s a huge part of the religious practice of Christmas. I looked for years for a home advent wreath that would accept thick pillar candles that could burn the season through. I finally found a five-stand candle holder, and discovered Ikea sells advent candles. Woooo!

But you can’t just go light an advent calendar, willy nilly. It needs, well, a ritual. So over the last year or two a small family ritual has quietly evolved. This year, I’ve been particularly enjoying it. We gather as a family in front of the tree, and we talk a little about the theme of this particular week in Advent. Last week was hope. This week was peace. We dwell a brief moment on those, and what they mean in our lives. Then there’s a small reading. Last weekend was the Magnificat. Today, I asked Grey to read The Peace of Wild Things. We light the candle. (Thane likes that part.) We sing a hymn. (I like that part best.) Last week was “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” (traditional for Advent communion Sunday). This week, I chose “O Come Emmanuel”. And then we are done and return to our evening, the growing line of light fighting against the waning of the sun. It is brief and beautiful.

What are some of your precious rituals? Have you successfully ported rituals from one generation to another? Which ones did you create with intent? Which ones evolved from repetition? Which have you lost forever, and how do you mourn them? What do you wish you had a ritual for – to make deeper and richer?

The children love the angel

The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Barry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Hobbies we have had before

Once upon a time, before I had children, I thought I was busy. I barely had time to watch every baseball game, garden, read books, play video games and do my hobbies. Horrifying! One of my favorite hobbies was making cards.

I’ve always loved writing letters. My correspondence in high school especially was diverse and frequent. I went through stationery at a bulk rate – or would have if it wasn’t my favorite indulgence. I still know where and when and why I got nearly every single piece of stationery in my rather considerable stationery box. After I graduated college and had room and money, I got started in on rubber stamping, which was a thing in the oughts. My expanded resources vastly expanded my rubber stamp (and ink and paper) collection and my skills went from rudimentary to nearly mediocre – where they topped out and remained.

Same desk, pre babies. Where did that awesome Tolkien poster go?

Then I had kids and got a harder job and went onto the session of my church and… well, I think practically every post for the last several months has whined about how busy I am. I got really busy, and rarely had time to stamp anything. Then when my beloved, cold attic retreat was transformed into my glorious, warm and amazing bathroom I packed up all my stamps for the duration of the project into our storage facility and had to content myself with purchased stationery. (Not that I even used that much of that!)

But oh glory! Today we actually cleared out from and vacated our storage unit (I think it may be a first: someone claiming a storage unit would only be temporary and having it only be temporary.) And I got my stamps back. I spent a happy afternoon reintroducing myself to my rather vast collection and setting up my favorite desk and getting ready. And now – bliss! – I have time to spend doing something I feel like doing, and I have my stamps which are exactly what I feel like doing.

Being me, I thought it would be fun to do this together, you and I. OK, basically I narrate a lot of stuff in my head to you, especially when I’m alone. This is how extroverts end up with quiet hobbies.

Step 1: Who should I make a card for?
My grandmother is dead. She was always my best correspondent. I’ve thought a lot of her this week with the fires and unbreathable air in California. I keep forgetting that she’s now beyond all worry. She’s also beyond any card I might send her. I’d be nervous about doing a birthday card for someone because there’s like no way in God’s green earth I’d ever remember to do it again, so I’m careful of the precendents I am setting. So that leaves special events. Two come to mind: a neighbor just had a baby. (OK, like a month ago, but they’ll understand). And I’ll be a guest at Thanksgiving at the excellent table of a fellow stamp-lover. My stamp collections are particularly strong in the “Fall/Thanksgiving/Turkey” and “baby” genres. I’ve always loved the iconography of the former, and I bought many of my stamps while I myself was pregnant. Let’s start with the baby and see how far we get.

Some of my better baby stamps

Step 2: Selecting a stamp
This takes a while. My stamps are tightly stored, which means not amazingly organized. And sometimes you find a stamp in one set that works perfectly for what you want – even if you wouldn’t have thought of it. I usually go through every single stamp I own, finally settling on the one I was thinking of in the first place. This particular baby is little and sweet, and his parents are understandably ga-ga for them. It’s a first. And I wanted something that showed both parents, not just the mom. Finally, the father of this family loves puns. That settles me on the stamp set that concludes with “Congratulations to you and your Somebunny new!”

Step 3: Paper and ink colors
For reasons that totally escape me, this baby doesn’t seem like a pastel-y baby. Looking at the stamp, I’m inspired by the thought of browns and tans. I might do a little watercolor pencil – my absolute favorite stamping technique – on this stamp. Now to look through every piece of paper in my vast collection to likely discover I do not actually own the color I’m envisioning.

Paper and stamps

I have a strong tendency towards bold, bright colors. Some of my favorite cards have ended up in a panoply of color. I remember one year where a friend’s parents invited us to their (DELICIOUS) Thanksgiving table two years in a row. I stamped a card both times as a hostess appreciation. When I gave her the card on the second year she opened it, her face lit up, and she ran away. She returned a few minutes later with the card I’d given her the prior year which she had still pinned up. It was totally different, but used the same stamp. I was caught between mortification (is that like wearing the same dress both times?) and pleasure that she’d enjoyed the card! Both of those cards were *bright*. But happily, it turns out I do have a good number of earth toned papers in the reams I have. I’m going to go with a light tan for the actual card, then use darker brown and patterned paper to make a lighter section with the stamp in in really pop. Time to cut some paper!

Step 4: Cutting

Oh no! My handy dandy trusty rotary cutter isn’t cutting! I wonder if the blades need to be replaced every 20 years or something. Fortunately, I have n+1 paper cutters. This one isn’t nearly as good, but it’ll do.

N+1 Cutters – Leroy was here courtesy of Grey, who probably learned it from Fallout

Drat! The patterned paper doesn’t look like with my first brown. So I try a different brown and it still looks wrong. Gah! So now I have two identically sized pieces of different brown papers. I experiment with layouts and decide I actually like the two browns slightly tiled and will ditch the patterned one altogether. This is a normal part of the process. I admire people who can do this by planning instead of trial, error and the massacre of forests. Still, lesson #1 of this kind of thing is don’t make any permanent decisions until you have all your parts ready. A reject now might actually still end up in the final project.

Nice try. Didn’t work.

I have a large scrap drawer, in which is some nice cream watercolor paper. I cut a piece of that for the actual bunny stamp.

Step 5: Inking

I wonder if I have a brown ink that will match. Hmmmm. If I want to watercolor the stamp, it must be a dye ink (not pigment) too. I have one that I think will do, but all my stamp pads are old and it’s possible they’ve dried out. Guess I’ll find out… but probably starting on my blotter.

Original stamp in the middle

Well, they both ink. But the top color, which I like better, looks pretty dry. Contemplating this conundrum I give it a spritz with my stamp cleaner to hydrate. Great news! It works! I carefully position the stamp over the watercolor paper and get the impression decently centered the first time. Winning! At this stage, we enter the “how much is too much” phase. I like the simplicity of the card so far, but I do really like watercolor paints. What about just a little blue on the edge of the blanket and pink in the ears? Because I’m thinking “out loud” I make an unusually sage decision to try it out on the version on my blotter before the version on the watercolor paper.

Many baby bunnies

I like it pretty well on the blotter. Let’s see how it does on the actual stock.

Great. It looks good. Now I’ll do the inside and back of the card while the water dries.

Step 6: Inside & back – aka where you mess up because you think you’ve finished the hard part
I have a “Created by Brenda” stamp I almost always use, because it’s annoying when you spend an hour on a card and have people think that due to the craftsmanship you bought it in the discount bin at an elementary school craft fair. Unfortunately, this stamp is slightly off center, so I have trouble getting it aligned perfectly. That’s why I start with it. I have two pieces of card stock the right shape for this card. I’d rather find out now that I’ll need to use the other one! I’ll use the same color ink throughout the card.

Somebunny new

Woo! Both internal stamps came out just fine. I notice that the ink I used is bleeding a little on the stamp – that’s not supposed to happen with the dye inks. It’s probably due to my “refreshment” of the pad. I decide to pretend I think it looks artistic.

Step 7: Sticking it all together
I was mystified for a long time about how this all was supposed to stick together. I used glue sticks or spray adhesive, which were messy, smelly and didn’t actually work. What does work? Double sided tape. When I’m stamping I go through yards of this stuff. Time to start making things permanent.

All done!

There! It’s done! It looks almost as nice as a card you could get in 20 seconds in a drug store! Victory is mine!

Now that’s all to be done is to write a nice note and strategically with-hold publication of this blog until after I deliver it.

Oh, and clean up this mess. Oh, and where are my invitation sized envelopes… and what color pen do I have that will go with this card…

PS – one particularly insane year, I hand stamped all my Christmas cards. That would be lunatic enough – but I made each on *unique* which is a degree of lunacy even I have never reattempted. But I do have a lot of Christmas stamps….

Stiff

This weekend we hosted a very successful Mocksgiving. I’ve hosted a “practice” (or mock) Thanksgiving for 19 straight years now, although I’ve truthfully never actually hosted Thanksgiving. Mocksgiving was the last big thing I needed to get through before life slowed down. A brief litany: camping on Labor Day, two 5ks on back to back weekends, my 40th birthday party, Otherworld (which was amazing – highly recommend), Grey’s birthday, my nephew’s death (weighs greatly on my heart through all of this), apple picking, King Richard’s Faire, finishing and furnishing the attic (huge effort – much Ikea), Adam’s birthday, week long trip to Singapore (plus off timezone prep before and follow up afterwards), Thane’s birthday, Halloween, Carnage gaming convention (full weekend Adam), Mocksgiving. All this while working full time (both of us) and raising two kids. Some of these were logistically challenging. Some of these were emotionally very deep and hard. Some of these were physically exhausting. I’m so grateful to be done, and for a coming few weeks that are massively less scheduled.

We’re also getting to the time of year where I can’t run. I’ve been running for three or so years now. I’m very slow – it’s *great* when I beat an 11 minute mile. I’ve switched up my default course, so now I run about 4 miles on a given run (a bit over a 5k) – I don’t want to go longer. My surgically repaired left knee was telling me at the end of the season that pavement isn’t it’s favorite, but this is the only exercise I’ve been able to stick with and be consistent about. But in winter I can’t really run on weekdays when it gets dark out so early, and pretty soon there will be ice and treacherous footing ahead.

But my body just hurts lately. I’m sore and stiff. I’ve been having constant headaches which, yes, are tension headaches in part. But they’re mostly muscular-skeletal. My C1 and C2 like to go in opposite directions and this gives me headaches. I go to my chiropractor, it gets better for about 2 days and then I move wrong and the headaches come back until my next appointment. UGH. I mean granted I’m over 40, but I don’t approve of constant headaches.

So I decided with the upcoming massive free time (are you skeptical that will happen? It won’t be so much, but it will be better.) to spend a few weeks stretching. The best my troublesome back has ever been (I have a really consistent regimen of massage and chiropractic which is extremely effective which is why you’ve never heard me complain of it) has been when I was doing yoga regularly. That was like for 2 months 10 years ago. We’re talking about getting a treadmill in the basement with our massive game of redo-every-room, but that’s still a while a way. So I’m going to give it a shot – 30 minutes a day of yoga. I’m very curious to see if it helps with the headaches and the back issues and the feeling that if I drop I’ll shatter instead of bounce.

We’ll find out!

And heck, maybe with all this free time I’ll also update the ol’ blog more, and finish my novel, and cook more meals from scratch, and catch up on all my church commitments, and do more local history research, and spend more time with my husband, and finally clean out my junk drawer and ….

Yeah. Let’s stick with the yoga.