White Tag 

The white tag that would be on this journal entry, were it a stuffed animal or some such, would say "This site is comprised of at least 50% recycled material."  Don't worry, it's still fresher than last night's leftovers. 
    Here is what I wrote earlier today, during work hours, for inclusion in here tonight: 

        I took a break to fiddle about with the tv some.  I fashioned a UHF antenna by warping the shape of a wire coathanger into a circle, and a VHF antenna by removing the cardboard roll from one of those dry cleaning coathangers.  Each of these are connected to the screws in the back,  insulated from each other with electrical tape.  Yesterday I found that another bit of coathanger makes a good tool to poke in the hole where the "0" button used to be, so I can now attempt channels 02 through 09 and all the "tens".  There is no noticeable improvement in the UHF, but I think that has to do with the soldering wire it's connected with.  The VHF antenna is connected with cannibalized computer cable, and now there are six channels I didn't have before.  Now maybe I can get some news by day and some NBC stuff by night, maybe a little Star Trek.  I do admit I have missed NBC Tuesdays/Thursdays and the Star Trek shows and Babylon5 these past couple years. 
    Damn.  Missed "Voyager."  I did, however take more computer cable and do the UHF the same way as the VHF.  No improvement.  Oh, well. 
        Scott Hamilton is on the Leeza Show!!  (Who is Leeza?  All I know is it says "Leeza" in the corner of the screen.)  Omigod I didn't even know he'd had cancer!  I have always loved Scott, he did this "Hair" routine a few years ago that had me laughing and clapping and cheering right there in my living room. 
    Last night, what got my husband to decide to go to bed, thus freeing me from having to design his site, was a program on the tv about prion infection in the instances of mad cow disease and its variant in humans (you didn't really expect me to try to spell "kroitchfeld-yackobe" did you?).  He found this very frightening, as did I, because the proteins, the prions, do not respond to heat or disinfectant.  They are not alive and therefore unkillable.  They are unaffected by radiation.  But I found them fascinating as well as terrifyng.  They work by changing normal proteins.  Not replication.  Conversion. 
    You know how you can rub a butter knife with a magnet and magnetize it?  Now imagine that the transformation is permanent.  Then imagine that every steel object that knife touches will be thusly changed, and all that they touch, etc.  Then imagine you have a whole kitchen full of nice healthy unmagnetized steel.  Imagine magnetism is lethal.  Somehow one of those magnetized butter knives got into your kitchen...You get the idea.  Prions work the same way. 
    I belong to three different e-mailing lists.  I get something like 150 emails a day, because all three lists happen to be unusually active ones.  Hopefully, having changed the nature of the subscriptions to the digest type, where you get a whole lotta email wrapped up into one message, will do the trick, free me up a bit of time. 
    Someone on one list told of a comforting dream about a dead grandparent, and this is what I replied with: 
        My grandfather, who was inscrutable to me and usually silent, died of cancer when I was a kid.  This was very hard to deal with, and my father went out of his mind, shutting us (his immediate family) out of the funeral proceedings.  That made things even worse. 
        A few months later I was having one of my recurrent dreams: a tornado was coming and nobody paid attention to my urgings to take cover.  Then soemthing very different happened.  Suddenly they got it and we all went out into a garage and got into a car.  We took off in the opposite direction, and then Grandaddy was driving the car.  Magically we outran the tornado, then pulled into a rest area, where he spread a map out on a picnic table.  Red triangles floated above the map, indicating the path of storms.  Green triangles floated also, indicating the path we would take.  He told us to follow the map, and we would be fine, then he was gone. 
        I woke at peace.
    In that same group ran a thread about the breakdown of the close-knit extended family unit, and how wonderful it is in those families where a grandparent lives with their child's family, which then reminded me of my favorite "household" fantasy: 
        It's marvelous to hear all the ideas on the Shangri-La thread.  Over recent years I have looked back at previous generations with envy, as it used to be the norm for several generations to be living in the same home.  It seemed some time back that communal living might come to recapture that, as groups of like-minded people began to cluster and share resources.  It made me sad to watch the practice fall out of favor, but now I'm thrilled to see it on the upswing again, as people form new "extended families" when separated by distance from their biological families (although I see this happening within the same 
    region as family, too). 
        My vision of utopia includes family members and/or close friends living together and offering support, some of which would be the breadwinners and some of which would be the caretakers, according to their talents and preferences, not their gender or age.
    Last week, when the readers of this same list discovered that I'd be going to a party in Charlottesvulle, Virginia, a place that happens to have great emotional significance for some of them, I was asked to make a report of what I thought of the place.  My message: 
        Now, for that long overdue report on Charlottesville.  Oh, by the way, the reason it is long overdue is that my mail has been down since Sunday; how wonderful to have it back! 
        I actually did not get to see that much of the town itself, except for the parts I drove through while getting lost on the way back home Sunday morning, but that part was lovely.  The streets look so pedestrian-friendly, with interesting looking shops that cry out, "Come peek in my window.  It will only take a second."  Lots of brickwork is woven into the sidewalks and streets, and the railroad trestle in the middle of town made me homesick.  Many people were running and jogging, some with dogs.  The predominant sort of vehicle out and about at about noon was the beat-up tiny early compact variety, most of which had two or more youthful occupants. 
        The buildings were what you would expect in a historic town, though generally in better states of restoration than some I have seen. 
        Kappa Mutha Fucka is a peeling mess nestled at the end of a tiny street that otherwise contains only very well maintained homes with carefully manicured lawns.  I find this delightful, heh.  The house is crammed with what the less imaginative would call junk, but what really are cleverly fashioned artistic objects and useful if unaesthetic furnishings.  It is the kind of old house in which modern conveniences don't fit well.  For instance, the shower in the bathroom is an unusual setup, thanks to the original plumbing being located at the "wrong" end of the tub, the end away from the wall, and an invading sloping ceiling doesn't allow the shower curtain to be held very high.  It's the kind of house I love. 
        As for the party, if anyone is interested, accounts can be found at the Gus' site and at Firedrake's site.  I also documented the party, but my host is down.  Once it comes back up, my entry is there for your perusal. 
        It was waaaay fun.  So glad I went.
    Just discovered that the Mayor wrote of the party, too.  Am ecstatic!
    That stuff up there was just the somewhat bettter stuff from one day's email.  Hope you enjoyed your partially-recycled journal entry.  Have a nice day.