Category: Books

Murderbot and Octopuses

It has been months since I got sick with the Wannabe Covid and I’m still flirting with long-hauling. Ugh. My fibromyalgia symptoms seem to be better right now, but I’ve become anemic. Fabulous. No wonder I’m so exhausted! The BLZ (blue-lipped zebra) is running wild lately. I spend my nights listening to Murderbot audio books as I try to fall asleep, and lately I’ve been reading books in the daytime that feature… octopuses. Last week the two things, Murderbot and octopuses, began to overlap in my mind.

I guess I need to set the stage a little here. I’ve been interested in octopuses for some time now, and I’ve been reading science fiction books for most of my life. I’ve heard of octopuses who engaged in antics at the aquarium as they snuck out of their aquarium to catch (and eat) the fish in other tanks. There was a news story about a jail aquarium break by an octopus who returned to the ocean via a floor drain. I loved the octopuses in these books when I read them.

Children of Ruin was especially interesting to me because it raised an interesting question: what is intelligent life, and what would it look like. Can it evolve in species already on Earth, and would we recognize it when we saw it? One of the things that always makes me cranky when reading science fiction is… the aliens always share a lot of attributes with humans, and it is a given that intelligent life would evolve specific cultural and technological attributes that mirror our own. Why. Why would that be? Why do we assume that the only yardstick for self-awareness, communication, and cognitive function has to be exactly what we are? Perhaps that is human-centric hubris, and we should look at the world (and space) with better eyes.

Then I read this book last week and I totally went down the Murderbot/Octopus rabbithole.

Do you know Murderbot? Murderbot is a robot/human cloned-tissue construct (corporate owned, of course) that was designed to serve humans as a security/defense tool. It has a failsafe device installed in its brain to control its behavior called the governor module: Murderbot hacked its governor module and is now a free agent trying to figure out what it wants while consuming massive amounts of media. Murderbot is a person, but it doesn’t want to be human. It is its own self, struggling to find its way and purpose (while killing/maiming the occasional bad human along the way) in a universe of heartless megacorporations who abuse human rights and use constructs as disposable tools.

The Mountain in the Sea explores some of these same issues. The book askes the question: What is a person? There are evil megacorporations who abuse the environment and employ human trafficking in their quest to turn a profit: Murderbot would completely understand this world. Even more, the book askes other important questions: What is required to be considered an intelligent species? Language? Tool use? Community and culture? Self-awareness and obvious problem solving? How do we identify and evaluate these?

The Mountain in the Sea has a robot with a brain that passes the Turing Test. Is it a person? What rights should it have? There is an octopus that probably could also pass the Turing Test if there was an octopus version. There is a soldier who provides security for the scientific research facility who utilizes octopus-like technical interfaces in her work. She also hides behind a robot-like translator so she can avoid interacting with the other humans… if she was Murderbot she’d be watching media. There is a scientist who is driven to build a perfect human-like brain, and a scientist who is driven to understand other brains. There are victims of human trafficking, and it is hard to not ask the question, what are the rights that all persons are entitled to? The Mountain in the Sea kind of had it all (if you are a BioGeek struggling with Wannabe-Covid long haul symptoms), and it was the perfect companion to my nocturnal Murderbot audiobooks.

I engaged in a lot of googling to check out information while reading the book. Yes, octopuses really can change their skin color and texture to immediately blend into the background. They really do build cities. They really do have brains that are completely different from our own, and those arms are somewhat autonomous as they interact with the environment. They use tools. You can check out these sources to learn more about octopuses. Octopus 101 and Octopuses Keep Surprising Us.

Late last week I went on an outing and headed into the book store.

If it had an octopus on the cover it pretty much jumped off the shelf and landed into my basket. The dragon got in there too, somehow, but it lives in water too, right? It probably is self-aware and intelligent, right? It’s the Year of the Dragon, right?

But first, I’m reading all the octopus books.

p.s. The Murderbot Diaries is being adapted by Apple TV+ into a series. Yay! Murderbot would be thrilled to know it is becoming streamable media.

p.p.s. Anemia can be a symptom of Covid long-hauling. Seriously, I just wanted to pull my hair out when I saw this article. I was at the low end of normal when I got sick in October, and now my iron (ferritin) level is half of what it was. Wannabe Covid, I hate your guts!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Weekly Report Caturdate 1/20/24

Hi. I’m Mateo the CoalBear.

Don’t you think that this is good picture of me?

Allright, I have a little bit of smutch on my forehead… I bet you wondered how that got there. I finally got to go outside again this week (!!) and of course I did some serious rolling around! I mean, it had been days and days since the Mother of Cats let me have some fun outside with the bunnies.

Look at this. It is finally above freezing again, and I have some dry spots for my feet. You know that there was rolling around under the patio seat.

It is still too cold to spend a lot of time outside, so the Mother of Cats spent most of the week knitting and reading again. There was some excitement late in the week when a package arrived that had these Meyer lemons and a little stuffed zebra.

Meyer lemons are sweeter than your usual lemon. The Mother of Cats says that they aren’t even real lemons, but whatever. I don’t like the way they smell because I’M A CAT!!

Who would send such a box? Well… the Mother of Cats has a knitworthy niece who lives in a place that almost never snows with this Meyer lemon tree, and it got a little out of control this year. The Mother of Cats has been secretly longing for some of these lemons, but she didn’t want to ask, and out of the blue they arrived this week. With a zebra! She was so happy. There was even crunchy brown paper in the box for us to play with.

Hannah: Lemons? Whatever. If the niece really cared about us, she would have sent some TUNA!!! I also want to mention that the zebra didn’t even smell a little like catnip and obviously wasn’t a toy for ME!!

Just ignore Hannah. She kind of has “center of the universe” syndrome and thinks that everything is about her. I’m almost 3 years old now and I’m grown up enough to understand that chasing bunnies is much more important than silly ol’ tuna. Let’s get back to the knitting and the reading.

It is a little ironic that those lemon things arrived at the same time that the Mother of Cats was reading a book with Orange Tree in the title, don’t you think? The three hats that were finished this week look nice with the lemons (that are really something else that has to do with mandarin oranges and citrons…), and the newest hat that she just started knitting really coordinates will with the book.

Well, that’s all for now. The Mother of Cats has been hunting around on the internet for recipes to make Meyer lemon marmalade and lemon bars, and I think that I should go make a commotion so she will let me outside again. I may even have to meow to get her attention.

Hannah: Outside?! Time to get out of the box!!

This is Mateo, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats: I think that I need to order some jam jars, too. I found this recipe for Meyer lemon marmalade, and then there is this one for lemon bars…

My exceptionally knitworthy niece showing off some mitts I made her years ago. Somewhere, out of view, is the Meyer lemon tree.

You can read the story of those colorful mitts that were made for my niece in this post here. If you are wondering why my niece is so exceptionally knitworthy (the exact language I used was… “never, ever, was there a more knitworthy person than my niece”…) you can read about it in this even earlier post that explains the launch of the color explosion mitts in the picture and why my niece deserves the knitworthy designation for life.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Weekly Report, Caturdate 1/13/24

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Did everyone have a good weekend?

It has been a pretty darn boring week for me. It has been snowing and cold, and the Mother of Cats has NOT been letting me out as much as I would like. I can see the bunnies and those horrid squirrels all running around outside, but do I get to spend time on the deck, belly flat against the wood, slowly creeping up towards the wire, digging in my back claws, dreaming of the rush towards that big fat bunny in the garden… NO. I hardly got any time out at all. The Mother of Cats was full of so many excuses that involved snow, wind, cold… whatever. If the bunny can manage, I’m sure that I’d be fine. To be fair, I guess I should admit that things have been a little extreme lately weather-wise. Check out today’s weather and what the City and County of Denver had to say about it.

The Mother of Cats has been home and staying busy reading and knitting this week. She cleaned up the yarn stash early in the week and I have to admit, there is a lot of yarn. This is what the stash looked like when she was done.

Most of those plastic bins have yarn in them! There are also drawers with all the little fun things that she uses while sewing and knitting (like knitting needles, stitch marker sets, and her pin cushions), but the vast bulk is… yarn.

The Mother of Cats has been making decisions for the new year (she calls them resolutions, but that’s a crazy word. The better phrase would be The Wishful Thinking List, because that’s what it really is), but she seems almost perked up now that she has organized herself for the coming year. She wants to read 50 books, knit 50 hats, plant milkweed in her garden, and maybe convince the jade plant to bloom. That’s it. She has decided that she will only knit and work with yarn from the stash this year.

I mean, look at these sock sets that she found in the stash. She should knit these up before she buys any new yarn, right?!

The Mother of Cats still has some projects that she needs to get finished up with, so she is also working on them for a couple of days each week between the hat knitting. This week she focused on some socks that were started last year, and this evening she got them finished.

These are knitted from the Pressed Flowers Socks pattern. She still has a sweater to get done and Hannah wants her blanket!!

She has also been cranking out the hats and PICC line covers since the start of the year. This is what she has managed so far:

Those hats are DK weight Barleys by Tin Can Knits. She has been knitting them with doubled fingering weight yarn and they are turning out nice.

So, that is all that has been going on around here. (yawn) Maybe I can get Hannah to get up and chase me for a while. Maybe the laser light will come on pretty soon. Maybe I can find one of my chirpy toys. I think that they are all under the bed… what?… don’t you keep your important stuff under the bed?

Or maybe I’ll just take a nap…

This is Mateo, the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

There are some other projects lurking in the wings, but I don’t want to commit to them. I bought another quilt pattern, and I pulled out my little tabletop loom too. Those are just side projects and I really plan to commit to producing hats for the community group that I knit for. Last year there were more than 900 hats donated, and somehow, we have acquired even more requests in the last few months.

All of a sudden, everything that I’m reading and watching has Asian (and publishing or Chinese triads) elements. It was a compete accident: I had put holds on the books in my library months ago, and they arrived in my inbox withing a couple of days of each other. While I was reading Yellowface, The Brothers Sun appeared on Netflix. Synchronicity, right?

These are two really great books, and I really, really enjoyed The Brothers Sun. Thanks to synchronicity, I kind of understood common references (snakeheads, the one-child policy of China, auctions in publishing…) as they popped up in each book or episode of The Brothers Sun. Whew. There were common themes too, such as the relationships between children and their mothers, the struggle to find your own way, racism, the debt we owe to each other and our family, plagiarism, bullying, deaths, you name it, these media sources had it.

Now I’m reading The Maid. Would you believe that there is some bullying and a death already? Of course there is!

I also have to share this picture that was posted on Facebook today of an old newspaper picture of my high school gymnastics team. How fun to see my younger self now that I’m old and walking with a cane. 🙂

The Wannabe Covid Books

Maybe you have caught on to what is going on with me these days. It’s been almost two months since I first became ill with some crazy virus (?) that had all the symptoms of Covid-19 but tested negative the two times that I checked. The doctor that I dragged myself in to see felt that I indeed had covid and proceeded on that assumption in his treatment recommendations. Ugh. I slowly recovered from the initial illness, but I didn’t get better. Fibromyalgia! declared my rheumatologist. We’re treating that and I am getting better (I can now get up and do stuff around the house for a couple of hours at a time. This is huge!) because I can finally read and write again. And knit! I am finally able to knit several times a week now as long as I give myself a recovery day or two each time because all my tendons hate me, evidently. Never mind, this is progress, people!

Anyway, I’m writing again. I have so many blog post ideas that I’ve been mulling over during my down time… fasten your seatbelt, here comes another!!

Hannah is enjoying her box fort while I’m writing this.

Unable to sit up for more than a half hour, and unable to concentrate enough to read, I spent my down time burrowed under the covers, flanked by neglected cats, binge watching online shows and listening to audiobooks. I listened to some really great books during this time! I’ve been mulling over how to talk about them for the last couple of weeks, and I have to admit that my choices and reactions to these books are influenced by my covid/fibromyalgia state when I listened to them.

Kind of an eclectic mix of books, right? There is a kind of nebulous theme going on, though, if you are willing to cut me a lot of slack. Each of these books is about people in a closed and isolated community making sense of their situation, creating workarounds that let them function in spite of formidable obstacles, and emerging in the end with some type of closure.

Tom Lake: It is the lockdown. It is also apple picking season at the family-owned orchard. All three girls in the family have come home, and the mother tells them all the story of her early life as they struggle to get the crop in with limited help from workers because… lockdown. All the drama of their lives is rehashed and worked out as the mother recounts her early years as an actress, her involvement in a summer theater company at Tom Lake (and her involvement with a budding actor who would go on to fame), and the decisions that she made that led her to this life in an apple orchard. This is a book about isolation, choices, values, and ultimately the power of women.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: Wow. Imagine, if you will, a marginalized community called Chicken Hill that is made of intersecting Jewish and Black families. Imagine, if you will, clever strategies to outmaneuver the powers-that-be in order to flourish in a world where you are considered to be a powerless second-class citizen. Imagine characters who will steal your heart, break your heart, and then heal it right up again. Imagine the good guys winning in the end, and the villain of our story getting his just deserts. Imagine a great book. This is it.

The Running Grave: Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are at it again. They’ve taken on a client who has worried concerns about a son living in a non-traditional religious community. Unable to contact the client’s son directly, or to understand what is really happening in this closed society, Robin goes undercover and enters the cult while Cormoran works other aspects of the case from the outside. Oh, boy. This is really, really scary and tense, and absolutely unbelievable and believable at the same time. The beliefs of the cult are frankly outrageous, but at the same time you suspect that it might be possible that something like this actually happens. Closed off from the world, living with the cult in a closed compound, Robin spirals down, pulls herself together, manages to get to the bottom of things, almost dies, escapes, and if you want to know the rest you have to read the book. This was a good one.

Crook Manifesto: I just want to say that I am in utter awe of Colson Whitehead’s command of language. Seriously, I just wanted to copy down all the utterly fabulous mental images that he invoked: perfectly captured, but also peppered with dark humor. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, we are off to early 1970s Harlem to go on adventures with Ray Carney: family man, furniture store owner, former fence, and an upstanding (retired crook) member of his community. The book, like the one before it (Harlem Shuffle), is told in three parts. There’s a story dancing in the background as the reader journeys the three loosely connected parts of the book that involves self-identity, worth, and coming to terms with the past in a way that is meaningful.

Defiance: I’ve been reading this science fiction series for decades now; this is the 22nd book about humans living in a segregated community on an inhabited alien world with one chosen interface/diplomat between the two species, Bren Cameron. This is an intense sociopolitical story that covers a few days in the lives of an isolated group of characters as they attempt to put down a rebellion, ensure the safe resolution of a crisis on a space station overhead, and transition leadership responsibilities during a confusing communications blackout and a concealed agenda by one of the major players. It’s a ride. If you like tricky overthinking about political and social implications with the possibility of violence around every corner, this is the book (and series) for you.

Mateo: I know that Hannah is in this fort somewhere!!

So, there are my books of wannabe Covid. I’m now functioning better with less brain fog and dizziness, but the extreme fatigue and painful muscles/joints goes on. Tonight my right knee has decided that it wants to just lay around and watch shows all day.

Time to look for another good book. And maybe some chocolate. 🙂

Basketball Synchronicity

Like just about every other kid in American, I have spent some time on the basketball court. I’m a wicked guard, not a great shot, and let’s not talk about my free throw statistics. There’s a lot of running around involved; I’m not a fan of running. Basketball never took for me, and as I got older, I was more drawn to softball, gymnastics, and volleyball. Basketball… meh. I don’t follow it, never watch it, and yeah… not really a fan.

But this year basketball has been all around me.

Last winter, fighting a flare, pumping myself up for a trip to the cath lab to check the pressures in the right side of my heart, I started reading The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama. Michelle really made an impact on me; she knits, she understands chronic illness, and she struggled with her height as a kid growing up in Chicago. The tallest girl by far in her class, she was always singled out, at the back in pictures, the anchor when kids lined up, you know… different. There was so much in her book to identify with; I suspect we all have something that made us apart and different as a child, and we all know how hard the middle school years are. She found her way, as we all know, and shines with self-confidence and purpose these days. The book was great, I learned a lot, and I recommend it.

Michelle is 5’11” tall, much taller than me!

Michelle wrote about her older brother Craig in the book, who also attended Princeton University, and out of curiosity I googled him. Oh. Craig Robinson has his own Wikipedia page. He’s a force in the world of basketball and is currently the Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Suddenly the height in the family made sense, and I remembered that President Obama also played basketball. Kind of interesting, huh. Basketball.

I loved Dear Edward, so I bought this book as soon as it came out.

Then I started my next audiobook, Hello Beautiful, while knitting along on the Hannah blanket. This is a book that will stick with you a long time, and I’ve really been unpacking the layers as I think about it even now. Imagine a dysfunctional family that loses a child just as a new baby comes home. Somehow the grief and loss from the death of their little girl is projected onto the little boy (William) growing up, and he is alone, unwanted, at a loss, searching for a family, and quite tall for his age. He finds a family and sense of purpose in basketball. He marries into a family with 4 girls, and just when you think all will be well, the bottom falls out. He is unable to play basketball any longer because of an injury, but he is lost without it. He tried to be the man his wife wants and goes to graduate school where he begins a thesis on the History of Basketball, but he also struggles to understand who he is and what should his life be. There are births, deaths, loss, grief, abandonment, and yearning for family throughout the book… and basketball. William ends up working for the Chicago Bulls basketball organization. Another great book, I learned a lot, and I recommend it.

By the start of this week I was knitting again without my wrist braces (yay!) and I watched a couple of movies online while I stitched along. I’d heard about this new movie called Air that is the story of the development of Nike’s Air Jordan shoes, so I watched that Sunday night while stitching on the Soldotna Crop sweater.

Look at all the progress that I’ve made! I’m coming up on the point where I separate the arms from the body of the sweater.

I thought that this would be a movie about a scrappy little company creating a new shoe. Oh, it is that, but it is soooo much more. It is a story about purpose, finding your way, and basketball. It is about maintaining balance, recognizing your worth, demanding the best, and knowing that a shoe is just a shoe until a person who will be a force for change and a model of excellence, Michael Jordan, puts their foot into it. It is about risking it all in order to make a change. What a good movie! I seriously wanted to have a pair of Air Jordans for myself by the end of the movie, and it was even better because the basketball team involved is the Chicago Bulls in Chicago. William from Hello Beautiful‘s team!

There’s kind of a pattern here, huh? A president and first lady from Chicago. William finding himself again in Chicago at the Chicago Bulls. Nike putting all their marbles into one basket with a new shoe on the foot of a player that they think will be the future of basketball, a player for the Chicago Bulls. Synchronicity. Obviously, I need to watch some basketball…

While I was totally not paying attention, the Denver Nuggets, the NBA team in my area, advanced in the championship series. As it turns out, the game that could win them the championship was last Monday.

So, knitting like crazy, I watched my first basketball game in a couple of decades last Monday. The Denver Nuggets won! The first championship for the franchise ever. Fireworks were going off behind my house as I finished the last round of knitting before separating the arms from the body of the sweater; you know this sweater… it had been ripped and tinked for weeks as I struggled with it. Today I’m knitting away on the body, my wrists are pain free, and I seem to have popped out of the flare.

Basketball. Knitting. Perseverance.

Who knew basketball was so awesome?

I already knew about the knitting!

Mateo: have a wonderful Caturday, everyone!

Knitting Changes

You know, some of the best lessons in life are ones that you didn’t see coming. Years ago, I was a member of a 6th grade instructional team that taught integrated units. The kids were learning about Canada in social studies at that time, and the language arts teacher had them reading Julie of the Wolves. I read the book too even though I was the social studies/science teacher, and one of the lessons really stuck with me. It was advice from Julie’s father to her: if what you are doing doesn’t work, change what you are doing. I am not one to quit easily, but sometimes that isn’t the right attitude.

I’ve been struggling with my treatment plan for months and I finally decided that we needed to do something different. My pulmonologist stopped the medication (Ofev) that I was taking to treat my lung disease (interstitial lung disease) because of side effects and started me on two inhaled medications instead. In the aftermath of this change, every single one of my tendons has decided that it hates my guts. Everything, everything hurts, and my arms are back in braces. I have two canes going so I am never far from one when I walk, and the walker is back out for use in the house. Feeling sorry for myself, I was slow to realize that Hannah had a rash on her tummy, and she was just miserable, licking and cleaning herself so much all the hair was gone and she had open sores.

After eliminating everything that I could think of, I have concluded that Hannah is allergic to the blanket that I’m knitting!

That yarn that makes up the Nectar blanket is made of recycled fibers, and it includes raw silk. If you don’t know raw silk, it has a slight smell because the proteins from the silkworm cocoon are present. I kind of think that the silk is the problem, so I have packed the blanket away for now because Hannah LOVES TO LAY ON IT!!! Hannah got a bath with soothing anti-itch shampoo and the rash is gone and her fur is growing back. Bad yarn, bad!!

It hurt my hands too much to knit on it anyway. The lace is hard to work, and the purl rows are misery. Goodbye, blankie. You are going into time out for now.

I also packed away the yarns for the La Prairie sweater that I wanted (really badly) to knit because it is a cardigan and is knit back and forth (instead of in the round); all those purl rows on the wrong side will kill me. The yarn is now keeping company with the Nectar blanket in time out.

Obviously, I needed to find something that I can knit. What I’ve been knitting (and want to knit) isn’t working, but by golly, there must be something that I can knit on. Something that is only in the round, almost all knit stitches, and easy to pick up and put down again without losing my place.

Behold: Scrunch Socks!!

These socks were a free pattern on Ravelry, and they are just what I needed. There is no ribbing at the top: just stockinette that curls around to form a rolled edge. The purl row is every 9 rounds, so I can manage that. The heel is made with all knit stitches! I’m able to knit with size 1 cable needles because I push them with the back of my hands without using my wrists.

and these socks are… scrunchy!

The socks are slightly oversized so they are easy for me to pull on. I’m slowly making progress and my wrists have improved so much that I’ve transitioned from the hard braces to compression braces on my wrists while I work. I knit outside most mornings with the cats enjoying the birdsong and fresh air, dreaming about the colors to knit a Soldotna Crop sweater in fingering weight yarn.

The cats hang out under my swinging seat while I knit. I think that they are dreaming about catching bunnies…

Soldotna is written to be knit in DK weight yarn, but I think that is too heavy for me to use as a light topper over long-sleeved shirts. I have been messing around looking at other sweaters by this designer that I’ve made that were written for fingering weight, and I think that if I go up a size in the pattern, I can substitute fingering for the DK. Also, fingering is easier to work with while my hands are totally acting like assholes, and stranded knitting is slower knitting and hopefully easier on my hands than my usual speedy pace. Did I mention that there are no purls in this pattern once I’m through the first rows of ribbing?

As usual I am fussing about the colors and the order in which they will be knit. I had completely decided on the first combination (with Mateo in the background) when I decided to play around with a combination that is more colorful by adding in the turquoise multi. Everything depends on the order of the colors in the design; I’m pretty happy with the combination on the right, and I’ve decided that if I don’t like it, I’ll just shop the stash and start over with some other colors. You know, if what you’re doing doesn’t work… The other factor that is causing me to lean towards the more colorful set is that the yarn is a little heavy for fingering, so I have a better chance that it will work in the pattern.

Have I wound the yarn for the sweater yet? Nope. It still seems too exhausting right now, but it is hopefully set out by the umbrella swift in my dining room. Soon, Soldotna, someday soon my wrists and hands will decide to behave themselves and it will be your turn.

Take that scleroderma. You’ve been messing with the wrong knitter!

Notes:

  • Julie of the Wolves is one of the books that gets banned from time to time, but it certainly made an impact with me and my students loved it.
  • My pulmonologist says that there are two other drugs in the pipeline that I may be able to take when they are approved. Yay, science!
  • Hannah was the best girl ever with her bath. She didn’t struggle or even meow while I was washing her tummy and then she let me blow dry her with absolutely no fuss. How about that!
  • The color of the yarn that I am knitting the socks with is… Perfect Miracle. How cool is that? Just the color that I need right now.

Thoughts while knitting to Demon Copperhead

Okay, I don’t get out much. When I have to go to a medical appointment across town it is kind of a big deal. I have to adjust my drugs and diet for a couple of days. My oxygen bottles need to be ready to go. I need to minimize my time out of the house (brain fog becomes a big problem after about 3 hours) so I use my smart phone for everything that I can: check in, payment, and navigation to the medical center. My car, named Stumpy, handles my email along the way, tells me the route, and also gives me weather reports. I love technology!!

Getting ready for an outing.

The last time I went to my rheumatologist’s office I didn’t get into the elevator in time before it closed its door and left. Hey, there are a lot of elevators there and they don’t all go to the floor that I needed. Behind me, I heard the voice of a man who complained loudly about how impossible modern technology is, and he advised me to push the button again and to hope for the best. I pushed the button, and this time when my elevator car arrived, I had sorted things out and managed to get in the right one on time. He joined me and continued to rant about technology, and then suddenly began to vent about “needing our country back” and assured me that it would take a long time, but that we were going to “get the country back.”

Stunned, I looked at him from across the elevator car. He was an older white man in work clothes, someone who looked like he lived in a rural area. I may have backed up a little more. All I could manage to get out was that I had a different opinion from him, and immediately his manner changed, and he became polite. Yeah, right. I saw that rage you’ve got going on under your farm hat…I got out at my stop, got my little ol’ liberal butt out of there, and didn’t look back. How did that segue from frustration with technology to MAGA extremism in a heartbeat?

The incident really hit me because I was reading (well, listening to) Demon Copperhead at the time.

Demon Copperhead (by Barbara Kingsolver) seems to be a modern rendition of David Copperfield set in rural southern Appalachia (Lee County, Virginia) that has packed into it all the horrors of vulnerable populations in one neat package. It was the kind of book that is just horrifying while completely engaging you in the story. Demon is the child of a mother who dies young and is forced to enter the foster system. In placement after placement, he is mistreated and sometimes starved as he is used for labor or a source of income by his foster parents. As I read the book, I became aware of how bad things can be in an at-risk population where the job opportunities are few and far between, resources are limited, and education substandard. These communities, insular and tightly knit, cling to each other to help out and somehow survive as they are preyed upon and abused by corporations and pharmaceutical companies.

In spite of all of this, and even though Demon is betrayed again and again by the people in whose care he is placed, he survives, comes to terms with his history and the people in his life, and shines on as the author of a comic series about his people, the Appalachians. All the events and understandings of his life, the good and bad, come to life in his comic series called RedNeck, that shines a light on the people of his community.

This book is just amazing, and it really made me learn new things and start thinking about the world around me in new ways as I knitted along listening. Towards the end of the book, Demon mulls about the differences between people who live on the land, relying on each other, and the people in cities who scramble for money since money is needed for everything. From the perspective of advanced technology and more money, city people look down on land people as unsophisticated and ignorant, when in truth people should be more important than things. Conversely, it is also easy to feel intimidated and overwhelmed in unfamiliar situations; a modern high tech city (or medical center) certainly can be that to people who don’t have weekly trash pickup, sidewalks, or, yes, elevators. Suddenly I was back in the elevator in the Kaiser building, looking at a frumpy man who was furious about technology and the loss of his country.

This is me a few years ago, deep in a flare, clinging to my beloved cat, and living my best little scleroderma life. It was at about this time that my pulmonologist referred me to palliative care.

I’ve always been a fairly reflective person, but lately I’ve had more time than usual to think about things. I know people who are consumed by money and who hunger for expensive possessions. Some of these people want expensive things as status symbols, and there really isn’t enough money to make them happy. I recently ghosted someone who thought that I envied and resented their inheritance. I no longer correspond with a family member who told me that they would have more things if they hadn’t had children. My tax preparer last year exclaimed, in a shocked tone of voice, that I hadn’t made any money at all last year!

Well, yeah. After you have been referred to palliative care you just don’t worry about money anymore; I have everything that I need, and why would I want more? My prognosis has improved since then, but the lesson remained. Demon’s thoughts about the divisions between the people of the land and people who live in cities based on economies remain with me. In a way, the division between the healthy and the chronically ill is similar. The divisions between different ethnic and religious groups. The divisions between gun owners and those of us who want gun regulation. How many of these divisions are rooted in the underlying social/economic structures glimpsed in Demon Copperhead? I guess you could say that this book was life changing. I’m knitting to a new book these days, but the reflections rooted in Demon Copperhead go on.

Yesterday Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize!!

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Carrying Light

You know, I think that synchronicity is a real thing; you just have to pay attention to what is going on around you. Sometimes, if you take notice, the world hands you just what you need at that moment.

Scleroderma has been kicking my butt lately. Having improved dramatically over the summer and sailing through my heart/lung testing last fall, my doctors were pretty upbeat when I reported worsening symptoms while visiting them in late winter. They ordered some testing, but they were also very reassuring.

A week ago I arrived at a Kaiser facility bright and early for a routine echocardiogram and 6-minute walk test. The echocardiogram did not go well (usually they don’t hurt, and what was up with having to pause so I could pant a little to catch my breath…) and I was in the red zone (the pulse oximeter starts glowing red if your oxygen drops below 90%) after a minute of walking. The test was halted after 3 minutes, and the concerned nurse walked me out to the elevator.

Ugh. Not good, little BLZ, not good. Refusing to overreact, I went to my favorite yarn store on my way home, bought some great yarn, and then hit Starbucks by my house. It was a bright, blue day and I headed out to the deck to knit.

I took this picture of Hannah. Look at that bright, blue sky!

Do you know the quote by Elizabeth Zimmerman that goes “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.”? Yep. That is a quote to live by! I cast on a new hexagon for my blanket and started knitting. I felt myself settle inside, my breathing steadied, I began to process what had happened, and my anxiety faded away. Scleroderma is a monster, and by the time I was casting off the hexagon, I was ready to once again face it down.

This post had appeared in my knitting group on Facebook from Michelle Obama a few days before:

Well, look at that: Michelle Obama is a knitter! Yay! It looks like she also knows about the Zen of knitting and the ability it has to bring calm and purpose to a simple activity while you reflect upon and process problems large and small. I knitted every night to finish my teaching days. I knit in hospitals. I knit in meetings. I knit just about everywhere I can, and I especially knit to deal with the rolling shitshow that is my chronic illness. I went and bought Michelle’s book.

Thursday morning the results from the echocardiogram were posted and a couple of hours later my cardiologist called me. I was knitting and ready for the call.

For the first time the words stage 3 heart failure were used in the discussion with my doctor. My pulmonary pressure is higher than ever before and there is more fluid around my heart. It is not clear if my symptoms are caused by worsening pulmonary hypertension or pericarditis, but the only way to sort this out is to go back into the cath lab and directly measure the pressures with a right heart catherization. It may be both. I will need a different treatment regimen. An emergency referral was put in and tomorrow I’m heading back to the hospital for the procedure. This is what happened the last time I did this.

My pulmonologist, who works closely with my cardiologist and rheumatologist, saw me on Friday for a lung function test and office visit. My lungs are hanging in there, but my ability to diffuse oxygen into my bloodstream has dropped significantly. I told him about the upcoming trip to the cath lab, and he started checking those test results. I’m not going to lie, it is a little alarming when your doctor says, “No, no, this is not good. I am not happy with this at all.” More testing has been ordered. He emailed the other doctors on the team to start the discussion about what changes should be made with my meds.

I took this picture of my new Goldwing sweater in his office the day that I met him. If you are going to scary appointments, armor yourself in your favorite knits!

This weekend I started reading The Light We Carry and was amazed that it starts with… knitting. Serendipity strikes!! Michelle Obama began knitting at the start of the pandemic as she struggled with the lockdown: grief, isolation, loss, and everything else that happened in that time. It became an important vehicle for processing, recovery, and perspective for her. The daughter of a father with MS, she is very aware of disability and how it absolutely impacts how someone like me can view myself and the rest of the world. She talked about using tools such as the cane that her father needed to empower ourselves to deal with what comes our way. Her book appears to be a toolbox of different strategies to cope with the challenges in life.

For the first time since all this started happening last week, I cried. This book is absolutely, positively, what I needed to read right now as I pack my bag for the hospital and prepare for what is coming my way in the upcoming days and weeks. It’s like someone could see right into my heart and lit a light for me. I will carry that light along with its warmth and glow tomorrow as I join my doctor and the pit crew in the cath lab. Whatever happens, I am positive, I will glow, and my light will shine.

So, Michelle, whatever can I show off as a favorite knit? Every single item that I cast off my needles has left me with a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and fed my creative needs. Knitting helps me cope with adversity, plan my day, and work through problems. Knitting delivers calm in a time of crisis. Knitting allows me to deal with an unpredictable autoimmune disease that delivers an uncertain future. Knitting connects me to all the knitters in the past and provides gifts for others as I pay forward. It is essential for my being and a vehicle to connect with others.

Here are some things I’m really pleased with: Goldenfern, a knitted copy of a beloved (and lost) cat, baby booties gifted to a neighbor knitted from a pattern handed down through 4 generations of my family, the hats and PICC line covers that are donated to Kaiser infusion centers in my area, and Mando (and Grogu) mitts for a knitworthy niece.

Tomorrow I’m wearing arm warmers and knitted socks into the cath lab. Take that, scleroderma.

Behold, I carry my (knitted) light with me!

Did you wonder what a BLZ is? That’s me, the Blue-Lipped Zebra!

Two Books Set in Colorado: Action, Adventure, Suspense, and Cognitive Dissonance

Okay, here I am, still pretty much in lockdown because of Covid, reading an action/adventure/post-apocalypse book with serious science connections set in a small mountain town of Colorado. The town in question, Ouray, is not one that I have been to (it’s on the other side of the state… you have to travel on a seriously challenging mountain road to get there… it is famously beautiful, however), but I have bought online yarn from an indie dyer in Ouray. Beautiful, set deep in a canyon surrounded by steep mountains, this is the setting for the book Wayward.

Do I want to tell you the whole plot of this book? No, I do not! Here it is in a nutshell: there is an outbreak of a fungal disease that kills almost everyone. It came from bats. An AI interferes in the course of events by targeting a select number of brilliant individuals who are brought to Ouray to become the seed of humanity’s recovery. There are crazy right-wing militias, evangelical leaders hunting for a flock, a self-proclaimed president, tiny nanomachines that live inside of humans, A Good Boy dog named Gumball, a rock and roll legend who provides lyrics on demand when needed, and tons of suspense/action/adventure. There are also a few moments of outrageousness that are beyond the bounds of credibility, but it is a book, right?

Still, there was that scene where two central characters are camping inside a ring of birch trees, their bark glowing in the moonlight. Right. We don’t have birch trees here in Colorado. We have aspen trees, people, not birch. I also choked on my morning latte when one of the characters described his caribou hunt in Colorado… we do have Caribou coffee here, and caribou (well, reindeer) at the Denver Zoo, but no one comes here to hunt caribou in the wild because this isn’t freaking Alaska, people. I just hate when books/authors mess stuff up, which I know is ridiculous when reading a book about a fungal pandemic, a crazy nanomachine-based AI, and other fictional craziness. It still was a pretty good book in a Stephen King, The Last of Us kind of way.

So, I was really hopeful when I started another book set in Colorado. A murder mystery thriller with lots of social and political overtones. Perfect! Here’s the cover:

See that cover art? We’re up in the mountains in kind of a small town. Maybe an old mining town, I tell myself. Clearly the mountains as I can see the ski runs on the mountain in the foreground, and the upper peaks are above treeline, so those peaks are above 12,000 feet in elevation. I settled in to read a great murder mystery set in a mountain town.

Okay, this is a good story, but for me the whole thing was a hot mess. The story is not set in the mountains, but in the foothills south of Denver. Like, exactly where I used to live, drive around and hike. The immediate cognitive dissonance was just jarring as the community of Blackwater Fall was well described in the book as about 20 miles south of Denver with a view of the Lockheed Martin complex to the north and Chatfield Reservoir down below.

I used to go hike the Carpenter Peak trail each summer in Roxborough State Park. It’s a longish day hike, and I would set out mid-morning with my backpack and a hiking pole up the trail, mentally preparing myself to face down mountain lions as I started up the trail. Yep, this is mountain lion country and there is a warning sign as you cross the creek and step foot on the trail. Make noise, try to look big, don’t run, and if attacked, fight back, says the sign. Yep. That’s why I take the hiking pole. I would finally arrive at Carpenter Peak in the early afternoon to eat my lunch among the red rocks at the summit. Golden eagles soared in the wind below me, Chatfield reservoir gleamed to the northeast below me on the plains, and to the north was the Martin Lockheed complex exactly as described in the book. To the west of the peak is a view of endless rolling hills covered with conifers that merge with the true mountains of the continental divide in the distance. The trail to the peak forks right at the end where you can decide to hike the Colorado Trail or turn right for the summit; I always wistfully thought that I would someday to the Colorado Trail, but the view from the peak was what I always settled for in these hikes.

Yeah. There was no town in sight, no falls, no church, no school for the rich and privileged kids of the community, and the rich details of the book kept crashing into reality for me.

Our main character is Anaya Rahman, a Denver police detective who works in a unit that works to ensure justice in marginalized communities. Anaya is of Syrian descent and Muslin, and she struggles with no longer wearing her hijab. She is smart, compassionate, and dedicated to her work. She is sent to Blackwater Falls to solve the horrific murder of a teenager; killed and hung onto the door of a church in an artistic display. Oh, boy. The victim is a Syrian refugee and there is lots going on in this community. Hate and bigotry is everywhere. There is a meat packing plant with Somali workers who want to unionize. There is a high-tech aerospace company creating defensive infrastructure for the southern border. There is an exclusive school filled with entitled rich (white) kids. The FBI is running some type of operation that Anaya’s boss is involved in, and did I mention the motorcycle gang of thugs connected to the far-right church? Violence, bigoty, worker’s rights, the stresses of assimilating new cultures into an existing community, corruption, and you name it, it is here.

For me this book was a hot mess. First off, why is a Denver police detective working a crime scene in Douglas County? Shouldn’t the state be involved if the local sheriff and that force can’t handle the job? Then there was the scene of the crime: everything that can be found wrong in America was crammed into this community put down in a location where I know it can’t exist. My mind keeps careening off into speculation as she describes events in the book. Anaya and her boss drive along Titan Road on their way to interview someone… I’m thinking to myself… wow, that’s the road that was built to haul out the Titan missiles built at that Lockheed Martin plant in the foothills south of Denver when it was Martin Marietta. The victim camps at Marina Point in the Chatfield State Park, and I think… no way could a teenager without a car get there, and it is a crappy campground for tent campers… The meat packing plant full of Somali workers should be located in a town up north of Denver. You know, where the actual meat packing plants are located. The town of Blackwater Falls with its history, waterway, church, and economically divided communities could be something like Louviers, Colorado if you lumped in communities in the area to the east. (Louviers is really cool. It was a company town laid out by Du Pont when dynamite was produced there…) That exclusive school is actually north of there, but you get why I was constantly falling apart while reading the book. She actually called Denver a COW TOWN!!! (Okay, there was a cattle drive down some streets of Denver this month as part of the National Western Stock Show, and there was that steer that had high tea at the Brown Palace in Denver, but still… it like it’s okay for you to call your little brother names, but if someone else does… violence!!)

Cognitive dissonance overload. Maybe a little outrage, too.

Did I mention that I used to teach Somali and Syrian refugee students and I was pretty upset at moments for what those characters in the book were putting up with? I loved those students, and I hated the bigotry that was being portrayed in the book. It seemed so extreme and overblown.

The book really was okay, but the cognitive dissonance and distress about the extreme depictions of, well, corruption, violence, and bigoted views just did me in.

Inaya solves the crime and gets her man, but there are some loose strings hanging that I’m presuming will be picked up in later books in this series.

I’m just going to let them hang.

Hasta la ByeBye, 2022: These were the Books

I read a lot of books in 2022: Goodreads says that I read 43. I had planned on completing 50 books, but there was a period in the winter when my brain fog was too bad to read. Not nice, scleroderma, not nice! Anyway, I am back up and reading at a steady clip again, and I’ve been mulling over what were the best books of 2022 for me. You know, the books that you enthusiastically give a 5 star rating to and then you head off to Amazon to see what else this author has written. Anyway, after thinking it over, here are the books that I liked the best:

I just loved, loved, loved these books. I think that I posted about some of them during the year:

I’ve noticed that there are some threads of commonality between these books. Animals as integral characters in the story, people connected over space and time with each other, learning one’s worth and being true to yourself, being brave in the face of adversity, friendship and love, and finally, the power of science. Altogether, a pretty good year of reading.

I literally am unable to pick my personal best book of the year from these favorites, but I have to admit that the one that I thought about the most (so much that I wrote an entire post about it) would be Lessons in Chemistry. I seriously liked Remarkably Bright Creatures for the entertainment value, and I still think about the things that I learned in The Song of the Cell.

Well, that was 2022.

Happy New Year, everyone.