Single Entity

I am awesome. I had: a skirt pattern. I wanted: a skirt pattern, with pockets. What I did: totally bs really nice looking (and functional!) pockets onto the pattern without pockets. Yeah, it was a really basic skirt pattern, but it WORKED!!!!

That is all.

Oh, as a post script, I hope you all are thankful for the fact that I am *not* posting every sewing project I do here. You would be overwhelmed. It it sometimes a tough battle. I think "I want to talk about sewing, and fabric!", but instead I search out a topic of more general amusement than my latest sewing project.

That is really all.

The following may be one of my new favorite poems. I'm not sure, but I keep returning to it out of interest. It's by Robert Hass, from his collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. It is the first poem in the collection, which is part of the reason I find it so interesting, along with its brevity and layers of complexity.

Iowa, January

In the long winter nights, a farmer's dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrows.

Another thing I particularly like is the title of the last poem in the collection: September, Inverness. The mirroring just makes me happy.

I wanted to ramble about sewing. Because, truthfully, right now I would really like to be sewing something for myself. In fact, I probably would be sewing now if Walmart had any decent fabric for clothes. But they don't. And I have so far managed to resist the temptation of buying fabric online. Although not very well. And I just got my bank statement, and I have about a hundred more dollars than I thought I had....so I might get some fabric to make a dress. We'll see.

This is the dress I want to make. The pattern is mine, and I have fabric at home to make it -- big purple flowers with yellow spots on a black and white ground. I would make the version on the right. I call it the "Nancy Drew Dress." And -- get this -- it has POCKETS! I also want to make one of these dresses. And...maybe these shorts. I have finished all the projects that I brought back to school with me after break, so now I can only haunt the fabric and pattern websites. And haunt I do!

Fact: I just got done reorganizing my bookshelf, and I was extremely close to giving all you readers a list of what was on said bookshelf. Be glad I didn't. There are about 15 books per shelf, six shelves.

Instead, I'm going to ramble about something that I meant to ramble about a long time ago.

On February 27th, 1949, a spark in a fireplace in the oldest building on my campus turned into an inferno, killing nine students and becoming the worst tragedy in the campus' history. Years worth of accumulated dust in an old, boarded up chimney allowed the fire to spread quickly between the ceiling of one story and the floor of the next, in a building that housed almost one-quarter of the students. It was the wee hours of a Sunday morning, after a dance; all the girls had returned to the lent rooms of faculty and other chaperones. None were reported missing, though campus legend says that there were girls illicitly in the building, who died that night, and that the college denies their existence to keep down the scandal.


The 1827 building, Old Kenyon, was truly gutted, but it was rebuilt in just over a year -- completed for the opening of the '50-'51 school year, fully modernized, of course. The original stones from the building were so thick that the contractor numbered each stone, cut it in half, and used each half to rebuild the north and south walls! (The photo above is looking at the north wall -- note the figures silhouetted against the flames at the bottom edge.)

There are reports of selfless bravery that night, of students going into the building repeatedly to find and rescue incapacitated comrades, exposing themselves to third degree burns to pull one more person out of the flames. One student on the third floor hung onto the iron fire ladder, four feet from the window, and caught fellow students as they leapt toward him, so they could then descend the ladder in safety. The president of the college himself went into the building to search for his students.

After the fire, six students were missing. Two had died leaping from the third floor, with all stairwells full of flame, and the last victim died at the local hospital from his burns. The nearby woods were combed for evidence of the six missing boys, in the hopes that they had survived the jump from the third floor. Fragments of bone were found in the rubble of the building, corresponding to where each had lived. It is believed that they died of smoke inhalation before even waking up. Most of the victims lived on the second or third floor of center section of the building, where they had the least warning and were trapped the soonest, asthe fire started in a first floor lounge of the center section. One set of parents refused to believe that the remains found belonged to their son, and refused to take them. He is now buried in the campus cemetary.

There are reports of ghosts in the building, only seen from the knees up, as the foundation was raised 18 inches during rebuilding (from the floor below you can see thier feet dangling from the ceiling). Some have reported being shaken awake, with voices yelling about a fire.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, which seemed to go woefully unnoticed by the student population, though the alumni bulliten and other publications commemerated it, which is why I have gathered all these reports to file here.

In Memory:
Ernest Ahwajee
Edward Hyman Brout
Albert John Lewis
Martin Elliott Mangel
Jack Boland McDonald
Marc Spencer Peck
George Leon Pincus
Stephen Mahlon Shepard
Colin Macrae Woodworth

Sources:
The Special Collections Page: there is usually a video of the fire on this page, though it seems to not be working right now.
Student Documentary: This was chilling, and touching. Be warned, the editing is occassionally heavy, and the video begins to play when the page is opened. The volume is rather variable as well. Watch it anyway.
Alumni Bulliten: A look back, after 60 years.
Alumni Bulliten: Another look back.
Ghost Stories: Scroll down about half way.
More Ghosts
Memories of the Fire
A Nurse's Tale: an account by a girl who visited for the dance that night, and served as a nurse to many of the injured, including one of the boys who died at the hospital
The Victims

Please read this blog post on the dangers of being a woman in may parts of the world, or the article he links to, about young women in Mexico brought into the drug cartel and used.

The world is not a safe place, and it is especially not that way for women. Biological facts mean that women are more at risk for rape than men, and not only from the obvious emotional, physical, and psychological trauma. For instance, if a woman were to contract an STD from the result of such an attack, the effects will be far greater than those on a man, and yet she is far less likely to have any symptoms -- many STD's are asymptomatic in up to 80% of women (I'm sorry, I no longer have the psych book with the exact statistics).

If you're still not convinced that the world is dangerous, read this NYTimes article about skateboarding in Afghanistan. The article in its entirety is quite thought-provoking, but what struck me most were these lines:

But for Hadisa, a 10-year-old girl from a conservative family, skateboarding has not been accepted. She said two older brothers beat her with wires for skating with poorer children in September. Several friends said they had seen blood flowing from her leg.

“I’m not upset with my brothers for beating me,” Hadisa whispered on a recent day when she did not skate because her oldest brother was nearby. “They have the right.”

Beaten. With wires. Please, take a moment and truly try and imagine that.

Now, as many of my female friends are planning to go abroad next year in Europe, this worries me all the more. Not so much the above notes on Afghanistan, as I don't know of anyone going to the Middle East (and if I hear that any of them happen to have such a plan, it will instigate a whole new rant), but the idea that things like this don't happen to good girls, to people in first-world countries, or even simply to you. It's not true.

I'm not saying that every girl will be raped, but truthfully, the statistics are against us. I have many good female friends. If nine of us are all hanging out together, statistics say that two or three of us will be sexually assaulted in our lifetimes.

Now, I know that most rape is acquaintance rape (aka date rape). I know that it happens, and it happens frequently, and most women never talk about it. It can be more traumatic, in fact, than stranger rape, because it is less widely accepted, and the woman in question is more likely to be told she was asking for it or that it wasn't rape. Keeping that in mind, I trust my friends to be smart, and be careful about who they hang out with, and how much alcohol they drink, and what situations they put themselves in.

But there are people out there who will attack someone they don't know, and it doesn't have to be related to sex. This article from England makes my blood run cold. If you don't want to read the whole article, here is the most important point:

When he [the rapist] was caught five days later he admitted his guilt and claimed he did it so he would end up in jail.

‘When I was on the railway station I thought I should rape this lady in order to get a place to eat and sleep and learn the English language,’ he told a psychologist.

My thoughts on this are very similar to those expressed here, namely that prison systems should be set up so as to NOT make prison a desired destination. A judge is contemplating giving this man life in prison, and yet the only time the rapist seemed particularly upset was when he was told he would departed at the end of the prison sentence -- when he was kicked out of free housing, board, and education. Now, I'm all for reform programs and education, especially for youth, but it should never, ever be enough that going to prison is a good thing. In fact, my opinion would be to castrate the man, but it is admitted that I am far less liberal than many of my friends, and perhaps many of you who may read this blog.

Okay, now that you all have sat through my rant, a few funny or interesting links to alleviate it.
- an awesome article about ballet tutus.
- a blog entry about Japanese archery.
- Yes, I've linked to this man's blog a lot in this post. It's cause he's very interesting. You should read. I mean, here's how he describes himself:

The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!

- And perhaps best of all, another article out of England about letting college-age kids sleep with their boyfriend/girlfriend when visiting home. Very funny, especially for this particular gem, from the father writing the article:

I find it quite endearing, when he comes to stay and disappears at the end of the night to the spare room, although I know he’s not going to stay in there very long.

How do I know? Because I am a man, and what would I have done in the same circumstances? There’s a tacit understanding between males.

Ah yes, the male understanding. It reminds me of this Questionable Content comic. I am assured that this system is itself "far too ambiguous" and that the real thing would go down more like this. Also, for the ladies, I have first-hand accounts that the last panel of this comic is firmly grounded in truth.

(Also, thank you to Geoff for hunting down the individual panels.)

So, again, I'm just jotting down a short little blurb about stuff that I really want to do. Right now, that is sew something. This has been a trend for about, oh, two months. I got desperate enought that I said, "shit, I'll just handsew something!" This would have stopped about a week in, in all likelihood. Instead, I have been sequining fabric for a skirt, which will be put together as soon as I get home. I really love the feeling of wearing things that I've made, and I really have a hankering to make that JPeterman dress that Jules posted the other day (the short-sleeve cotton one), if only I could find a pattern.

The other things I want to make:
http://www.voguepatterns.com/item/V2903.htm??tab=list/vintage_vogue&page=all
-This dress, the green version, but without the sleeves.
http://www.simplicity.com/dv1_v4.cfm?design=2843
-Something inspired by the red plaid or brown outfits (a bit more adult though).
http://www.simplicity.com/dv1_v4.cfm?design=4032
-The purple coat (it's made of fleece, how cool is that!?)
http://www.simplicity.com/dv1_v4.cfm?design=4032
-Also maybe this dress. The one in the real picture. I have cranberry colored wool that is begging to be made into a jumper-dress.
http://www.simplicity.com/dv1_v4.cfm?design=4072
-And this dress. I have a combination of white polka dots on black ground, white kitty faces on black ground, and turquoise geometric rondel things with black.

I'm going to stop there, before this becomes much more time consuming than I expected.

I am recently obsessed with Doctor Who. I love it. It's thought provoking, funny, and it's made me cry. Those of you who know me personally (and that's most of you) know that me crying...is not common. Particularly from things meant for entertainment. (Fact: The only book to ever make me cry is All Creatures Great and Small.)

I think what I really like is that there are constsant moral dilemnas. Life isn't morally clear, and neither is this show. Even better, The Doctor's set of morals are completely different from the human characters', which makes sense, as he is an alien. It's really about people, and how they relate to each other.

I also really like that there are things that carry through the whole season, trends that lead up to the season finale. The first season, they point this out. The second season, I think I've found it. Also, there are episodes that are just epic. Like, I have already watched some of them more than once because of the sheer epic awesomeness.

In some ways, it reminds me of Firefly. Like, this is how Firefly should have gone -- four seasons in and a dedicated fanbase. (Granted, Doctor Who is the longest running sci-fi series on television, if not the longest running series all around. 1963-89, and then 2005-now.)

So, that's my babble. Sorry for the long break between posts; spending Thanksgiving break with no computer access does that. Hope y'all had a good holiday!