Has it really been a week since I last posted?!

[capri0mni]

First. Cute overload of the day, or week, or month, or until the next time I squeal out loud at an image on my screen: Linked Tails (photo of three harvest mice siblings perched on a branch, holding tails the way humans hold hands)

Second. Re: Feeling ... not so much left out as pushed out of Valentine's Day (it's the only holiday I can think of that puts people in a second class based on relationship status, and for those of us who have been historically and culturally discouraged from thinking about having relationships, well... yeah. And being the sort who doesn't like feeling left out and bitter, I spent yesterday trying to think of a positive alternative way to frame it -- or a new one (my old fall back of it bringing a shot of bright color into the grey depths of winter doesn't work as well in Virginia as it did in New York).

This is what I came up with: For the Romans, it was a fertility fest celebrating the founding of Rome, and the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the she-wolf... According to the Christian story (aiui) Saint Valentine became associated with lovers because at one point, married men were exempt from the army, so the Saint would perform marriages as an act of civil disobedience. So I propose that we singletons of that bent use the day to celebrate conscientious objection and other "loving" acts of social change... (hey, "pinko" is already a color associated with it!)

Third. Working on a YouTube video of my "harvest" poem... which is why I haven't been talking here much (which is why I was researching mice to draw).

Fourth. Still need to schedule an inspection of my central heating/AC

Fifth. Need to schedule repairs to the van (may be the transmission). :-/

Sixth. After 30 or so years, This Old House is finally doing a series on wheelchair-accessible design. My feelings, they are mixed. On the one hand: yay! On the other hand, it's still being framed as "Something we should do for our elderly family members." (And again, disability = elderly, rather than disability = everybody). Also, it's a two-storey house and the downstairs is being converted into a self-contained, one-storey, living space with the upstairs being renovated for future live-in help if needed... And once again, I'm thinking that that would probably have been the better option for me to adapt my New York home instead of moving down here...

Seventh: OMG! Asteroids! Meteorite! Eek!

Comments

[megaptera]

I never liked VD (lol) when I was single and I still don't care for it now that I'm married. It has nothing to do with bad relationships, just... an unneeded commercial holiday, and as you said, puts non-single people on a pedestal. And also vaguely hints that we should only do really nice things for people we like on one day of the year.

PBS... if they're suffering for donations it's because they think all their viewers are the aging children of aging-er parents, and they all have money to do stuff like this. What? Young people with disabilities watch this? Who knew.

[capri0mni]

I kind of liked the day when I was a kid, if only for the reason that a couple days prior, teachers would break out construction paper, scissors and glue, and just let us go at it. ... And, in terms of graphic design, hearts are pretty cool -- so many possibilities. But even back in that day, the dime-store bought cards many kids bought made me o_O at the hyper-sexualized Betty Boop type characters... And that was even before I was really aware of sexual implications.

Re: PBS -- I don't mind if they have narrow views of their viewers, but it's the general culture's blind spot that young people with disabilities even exist... And 21 years after the ADA, they're still playing the "golly gee! Universal design is such a new-fangled idea, we don't know what to make of it!" tone... But a large part of that, I think, is that the host of the show is kind of like the companion in Doctor Who -- there as a surrogate for the clueless in the audience. (The house concept before this was "Scandinavian Modern," and the tone was equally clueless-enthusiastic).

BTW: Hello you! do any asteroid-spotting tonight?

[megaptera]

When they get a younger host to take over maybe they'll get it. It could just be that guy who's a stick in the mud. I'm not denying the cultural blind spot, I just think PBS could do way better very easily. :P Some of their programming is really great, and some is just... like newspaper comics that aren't funny anymore but that people complain about if they get taken out of the paper.

No asteroid here, it's cloudy. :P Not like it was a naked-eye object anyways. Hubby once did a video of an asteroid flyby, much larger and farther off than this one. He wanted to try again tonight but we just don't have the sky. We're more preoccupied with watching the situation in Russia unfold. (Completely different rock coming from a different space-direction, interestingly enough.)

[capri0mni]

(Completely different rock coming from a different space-direction, interestingly enough)

I know! I heard about it on the BBC program in the wee hours of this morning as I was drifting to sleep...

If I didn't know better, I'd say the asteroid belt was punking us...

---
Actually, the current host of This old house is fairly young (younger than I am)... And they're very good about being up to date on the tech side: syncing up the houses' heating and lighting with folks' smartphones, building green, and all that jazz, so...

Belated, but heartfelt;

[dharma_slut]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
All my base
Are belong to you.
<3

I'm going to look for that MOH episode.

Re: Belated, but heartfelt;

[capri0mni]

Well, each house projects take several episodes... I looked through my archive, and I couldn't find it with a quick scan of my journal archive, but a few years ago (?), they had an episode where they were renovating a house, and "Improved" it by removing a wheelchair ramp that the previous owners had built, and replacing them with stairs.... because the ramp was "ugly" and jarred with the historic look they wanted for the house.

...And the show I'd watched just before that was about how black artists have been discriminated against by being kept out of art galleries. The irony of the juxtaposition made me want to scream or weep... one or the other.

<3 thank you for your verse E>

[raze]

... huh. I could have sworn I replied to this, but apparently, I did not. Thoughts!

- Mice are one of the cutest lifeforms on the planet, not that my high opinion of them wasn't already blatantly apparent from peppering them into my fiction.

- There is a lot to be said about ableism and Valentine's Day and I'm sure nothing you haven't already contemplated at length. What I will say is, I dig your use of it as the celebration of civil disobedience. I was just reading on Saint Valentine the other day and it was pretty fascinating stuff, and also a story that seemed unworthy of celebrating in chocolate and flowers (particularly since the lion's share of commercially available chocolate and cut flowers are the fruits of slave labor and/or workers' rights abuses...).

- Looking forward to seeing the poem in video!

- WRT repairs, let me know if you need any reminders/gentle nudges on that front. I know it can be hard to get the ball rolling while depressed.

[capri0mni]

wrt repairs: Thanks. Part of it is that I need to nudge the people owning the Mountain property for mortgage, so I can afford repairs to both things... and they're dealing with medical debt... and they're long, long-time family friends. So that compounds the depression reaction... I'll give them to the end of the week, and then, send an email..

Meeses, glorious, cute meeses! *Squee!*

Valentine's day: there are several aspects of the holiday as it used to be celebrated that's a lot more subversive than today's version: such as the reason we call them "valentines" (Though you may have read this in reading the history). Used to be, at the time of the midwinter fair, unattached young women would put their names in a bowl, and unattached young men would pull a name out, blindly, and that would be the person they'd hook up with for the duration of the festivities... The Church frowned on this, because it encouraged casual sex, and wages of sin, etc. so they said that the names of saints should be pulled, and that would be the saint you prayed to, or meditated on... And folks said: okay, then! these are our "valentines"! ;-)