just on the border of your waking mind...

last entry was... about a month ago. sorry.

i didn't mean to let this slip into nothing, but i've been on away trips for work a bunch, recently. pretty much there's no local work, so i've been spending large parts of my week living out of hotels in various out-of-the-way places, and the rest of the week trying to make it up to Asher and HD. Fortunately, my bosses are being very accepting of the limitations of my family situation. i really don't feel like i can go away monday through friday and leave HD to take care of Asher by himself the whole week; or, more so, leave Asher without his mother for the whole week. if it were just a week or two, sure - but this is week after week, probably until Christmas. no can do.

(the downside: yes, they're being very accepting and only sending me out for part of the week, with usually another day in the lab... but i'm only getting 4 days a week, on average. *sigh* plus, i've really been cashing in my favors left and right, these last couple years. soon i'll have to accept the reality of my job and either get promoted or spend april-december living out of hotels while me family carries on without me.)

furthermore, i haven't forgotten about purp's meme of a month-and-a-half ago; i will respond to it. i just have a lot i want to say, and i can't quite seem to get it all in the right order in my head. it's percolating still: give it time.

this one's a question for my Christian friends, or for those who aren't Christian but feel they have some knowledge of the spiritual world. for the last few days, i've had a strong sense that something important has happened, which could of course be within my personal life but could maybe be in a broader sense, so i figured i'd ask the world at large: have y'all picked up on anything different, in the somewhat esoteric sense, recently?

one of my favorite pharses is "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" (it is, of course, pronounced "crick" in this, never "creek", as i'm sure you're all aware). the meaning of the phrase should be self-evident - that the speaker intends to whatever he or she said before, unless God or nature intervene. to anyone that's ever lived in a rural location, especially in the Eastern half of the US where it's quite possible that there's a creek under every road from you to civilization, the "creek don't rise" makes total sense.

except, apparently, to some. a handful of people, in a presumed push for greater esotericism, link it to a Creek uprising in the early 1800s. problems i have with this: nobody cites _anything_ to back it up; the pronunciation's generally different (while the Creek were called Creek by the Anglo-americans because they lived near creeks, I've never heard them called "Crick", though I'll grant the pronunciation could have morphed over 200 years), and proponents of this theory generally assume the phrase is primarily a Southern one... which i don't think it is. rural does not equate to southern.

and i will draw your attention to the similarity of the phrase "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" to "come hell or high water", essentially the opposite side of the same coin. on the one hand if God and nature are agreeable, something shall happen... on the other, it still will, even if they aren't.

they both appear in print about the same time, but are both described as being old idioms by the time they show up in print, so no help there. but clearly they're related.

i'd submit to you all, that even if Benjamin Hawkins really did write, as a few people have said (with nothing to cite!!), "...God willing and the Creek don't rise", it's entirely possible that he was riffing on an older, well-known phrase and actually making a pun (they did that in those days, y'know). you need more evidence to support a Creek-uprising etymology, when it's such an implausible explanation and a perfectly reasonable one is ready at hand.

Gloria

The whole world is full of glory:

Here is the glory of created things,
the earth and the sky,
the sun and the moon,
the stars and the vast expanses:

Here is the fellowship
with all that was created,
the air and the wind,
cloud and rain,
sunshine and snow:

All life like the bubbling of a flowing river
and the dark currents of the depths of the sea
is full of glory.

The white waves of the breath of peace
on the mountains,
and the light striding
in the distances of the sea.

The explosion of the dawn wood-pigeons
and the fire of the sunset doves,
sheep and cattle at their grazing,
the joy of countless creeping things
as they blossom,
spider and ant
of nimble disposition
proclaim the riches of goodness.

To curse life is to err.

The meadows and the yellow corn,
the slopes of the grape clusters,
the sweetness of the apple tree’s fruit:

The provision on the tray
of the warm comely seasons
a part of each hard beginning:

The discretion that insists on respect
for all our partners
–all the creatures of our day
and our life in the world for ever.

Every land, every language,
became bread and wine:

Every labour,
railway stations,
bus stops
at the beginning of journeys,
every aviation:

Every art
under its own fig tree -
the vision of a man and a maid.

Lest treating
the misunderstanding between man
and his world, becomes
a giving way to meaninglessness:

And perchance we shall see the dancing
in the halls of the atoms
and the meddling with their temperament
as an art of the soul.

The coal in the bowels of the vale,
the clear water of the valleys
and the energy of machines’ atmosphere:

The secret of fresh airs –
old meanings a cold well:

The delicate breeze
like the sun on the seagull’s belly
awakening wings.

All beneficiaries
(unless we spit the original terror of sin on it all)
resounded the Gloria of praise

a friend of mine, that i went to highschool with, was buried today.

i'm really having some trouble wrapping my head around that fact.

i went to the viewing hours last night, to pay my respects and to offer my condolences to family (what can you even say? what is there, that can be said as you go down the receiving line, that even begins to cover it? and then, to look in his mother's eyes, and see everything i recognize in myself except multiplied by maybe a billion... and words fail completely. it's just too much.), and the line to get into the funeral home was about an hour and a half long... with more people still coming. though i hadn't seen him in several years, i will remember him always as a brilliant, vibrant, wonderful individual. the world is a lesser place without him in it.

sorting through the jumble of emotions is tiring. there's grief, of course, because he is no longer here, but also a curious sense that i'm not entitled to that grief - we hadn't talked in years, so i suppose that means we weren't close, i guess. but then, i also just don't talk to people much - i'm not good at staying in touch. and from that, i have a bit of regret tinged with a little guilt - i should have stayed in touch, should have made better use of the time we had. there's the stubborn reminder, also, that somehow this - even this, which seems so beyond the pale - will be turned to good in God's plan. i certainly can't see how, yet - i'm still too far in disbelief and pain - but somehow this loss must work out better.

at least, though, i'd like to think he's at peace now. i'm sure prayers, both for him and his family, would be appreciated.

RIP Scott.

Income-Based Repayment, for everybody out there in a sinking student-loan ship like myself, may be a lifevest. Better yet, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan might just save my skin entirely, especially if the infamous they manages to do something about that pesky taxing-me-on-the-amount-forgiven-in-2017 issue, which could very well sink me at the end, anyway.

Side note: While eligibility for the loan forgiveness thing pretty much comes down to working for a nonprofit, it's sort of nice to see archaeology called "public service", even if it's a spurious artifact of the bureaucracy...

At any rate, I post these things as a PSA, because there are certainly others in similar shoes who could profit from this knowledge. Good luck!!

Any y'all read The Pheonix Requiem? This is my new obsession, and I'm rather thoroughly hooked. Especially on Jonas, but who wouldn't be?

If you haven't read it, I suggest you start. The art is gorgeous, the setting is intriguing, the story complex, and the characters compelling. It's all drama and romance against a backdrop of fantasy Victorian setting, plus women ride caribou, which is so exruciatingly pretty I can't stand it.

At any rate, I spent a single evening reading through the 400+ pages of archive, and then I've spent the remaining days re-reading it with HD and thinking about what is not yet clear in the story....

( cut for long and speculative and a bit spoilery )

there are too many cool and interesting things happening next weekend. namely: i'm going camping with HD, the munchkin, and my brother's family - these plans are set and cannot be changed - and, at the same time, the NY Faerie Festival is happening practically in my backyard, with a freakin' masquerade ball in downtown Bingo. seriously. if i had only known.

le sigh.

it's our intention to be in Sterling for July 18th, though, so at least we'll be getting in on some of the festival goodness. plus, that's midsummer fantasy weekend, so there will be fair folk - i'd personally rather wait a weekend and do pirates, or the 4th for children's weekend, but the chance to do the fair with friends is always welcome and the 18th works for them.

because i got into a discussion about what sign my moon was in (VL was right, it was an earth sign... i was evidently thinking of venus, which is in aquarius)... at any rate, i used here to calculate it.

( cut for long )

my greatgrandmother was born Blennie Elizabeth Bolles.

it didn't occur to me until this morning that "Blennie" is a really unusual name. a quick google search turns up a large number of fish, but not so many people. so where did she get the name "Blennie"?

luckily, my brother - master of all things genealogical - had already answered this question. she was Blennie in honor of her aunt, who had passed away a few years prior. her aunt was Blendenna, nicknamed "Blennie". this, as it turns out from a quick google search, was not so uncommon at all. "Blendenna", "Blendena", "Blendina"; all seem to be popular names for a few generations (great-grandma Blennie was born 1875, died of tuberculosis in 1913; her aunt Blendenna was born 1845, died 1873).

but this begs a question.... where did this name go??

it's not in any babyname book or website i've seen, i can't find any meaning for it, and it's like it just dropped off the face of the earth sometime in the 1930s, with the exception of a couple of Blendinas who apparently are on classmates or facebook, maybe?

(i'm currently creating a page on babynamewizard.com for Blendenna, and maybe Blennie. i think these names deserve some form of recognition, if only on one babyname site. but, y'know, they certainly existed.)

the best i can figure, maybe they're related, etymologically, to "Blandine", or maybe "Belinda"? i also can't help but feel like it's connected to "Blonden/Blondin", an equally lost name, or perhaps is a real straightforward English place name one the order of "from the fair pasture"? or how about it's from german "blenden", and we're going for "blinding, dazzling"?

actually, come to think of it, "blinding, dazzling" makes the most sense. there's also an old english "blendan" for blinding, and it's got a good, solid girl-name logic. i'm gonna go with that.