I’ll Catch The Replay

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Part of me is fascinated by space travel and the absolute heroes of NASA who have made it possible. This admiration exists despite my having absolutely no math or science skills of my own.

I happily mugged for the camera in front of the space shuttle Discovery in Washington DC a few years ago. I enjoyed touring the boyhood home of Ohio’s own John Glenn and devoured the book “Hidden Figures” about the brilliant women who calculated the math needed to get us to the moon for the first time.

And I sometimes stand outside my rural home late at night, gazing up at the stars and wondering what it would be like to be in space, to gaze down at this planet, and see how small we really are in this grand universe.

It’s all fascinating.

But I didn’t watch the launch of Artemis II on Wednesday.

I’m a young Gen X-er and suspect there are more than a few of us who passed on the opportunity to see history made.

That’s because I was eight years old when they wheeled televisions into classrooms across America for school kids to see Christa McAuliffe become the first teacher to go into space. It was a proud day for us all.

But it was confusing. What’s with all the smoke and fire? What did we just see? “Is it supposed to do that?” I heard a classmate ask just before a teacher swooped in to turn off the television.

Did this event traumatize me for life? I don’t think so. Still, it’s weeks like this when I think to myself “I’ll just catch the replay later.”

Discomfort

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Yesterday I finished reading a novel that was both captivating and stomach turning. Maybe it’s the mood I’m in right now but I wasn’t prepared for the rawness of this story. The book is called “The Song Of The Blue Bottle Tree” by India Hanford.

The author weaves together the stories of multiple people in 1967 including a snake handling preacher who abuses and molests women and girls in his life, a Vietnam veteran who comes home fighting a different kind of war, and a woman whose story is rich and unpredictable.

I liked the book but there were times the abuse theme was too much to absorb. Luckily, I didn’t dwell long in this oppressive world because the story was so well told I didn’t want to put the book down and it ended quickly.

When I told my fella all this, he asked if I was glad to have read it.

My answer was this:

Literature is not always meant to be comfortable.

If you are always completely comfortable with what you’re reading, it’s time to try some new books. Yes, we read to entertain ourselves but we ought to also be reading to expand our minds and learn about something that is different than the world we know.

The world does not owe us comfort. This applies to books and movies, to jobs or teachers that push us further than we wish to go, to the historic record that we don’t like, and the contemporary events that drive us to change the channel when the news comes on.

I have been thinking some about solo hikes and road trip adventures. These things didn’t always come easy but I did them anyway and am better for it.

Discomfort is where the growth begins. Trust me. I have experience in this area.

I know people who read just one genre and watch only certain kinds of tv shows. They vacation in the same place year after year and stick to the same blandly scripted series of safe choices.

I hope to never be that person.

Let’s all vow to try new things when we can, to open our minds to the things that make us think, and to refuse to accept comfort when we can instead choose growth.

Silent Sunday: Hocking Hills State Park

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Silent Sunday: Look Up

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Grandma Core

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The first time I heard the phrase “Grandma Core” was in a thrift store while sifting through a box of forties era recipe pamphlets, Someone had written the phase with a smiley face on a scrap of paper and taped it to the box.

That was a few years ago and I was a little taken aback to learn there was an actual name for my style and living intentions. And I was a little annoyed that it has a strangely ambiguous connotation that some might interpret as negative. You now often hear it referred to as the more palatable “Cottage Core.”

Lately, I’m hearing these phrases everywhere as social media influencers claiming to be deinfluencers tell us about a better way to live than with fast food, fast fashion and lots of junk from the store. It’s an aesthetic but it’s more than that.

They show us their thrifted finds, clotheslines, and bowls full of cherries on a window sill. They show us doilies on side tables with handmade baskets used to disguise tv remotes and charging cables. They show us the bread they baked and their farmers market bounty.

It’s quiet and slower. There’s no tv over the fireplace. Instead, there’s a vintage painting and with thrifted brass candlesticks. There’s no harsh light or rushing.

If the internet were scratch and sniff, these videos would smell of apples simmering in cast iron, rising yeast, and of freshly laundered towels.

This grandma or cottage core concept fits well with my attempts at embracing analog living.

Soft sheets, textured throws, a cozy corner to read, something bubbling on the stove top or baking in the oven. Feeding the birds, soft light, knick knacks, a bowl of hot popcorn, a quiet hobby, meals on the porch. Thrifting for things that were made to last, using what you have, cooking instead of ordering, fixing instead of replacing.

I enjoy this slower pace of life.

I have built a lovely, quiet little life for myself – a grandma core life if you will. Soon I’ll have more energy and time to be out adventuring. In fact, White Lightening goes for an oil change and tire rotation this week. I’m already thinking about day trips and am excited to be out exploring again soon.

But I’m also grateful to have this quiet, lovely home to come back to after a long day of adventuring.

Grandma core? Cottage core? Analog living? You can call it anything you like but I think it’s pretty fabulous.

Spring Chores

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We have passed the mid point of March which means spring will soon be here. In southern Ohio, this season used to stretch on for a couple of months. Now it’s more like three weeks of moderate temperatures before giving way to humidity and heat.

It occurred to me this weekend that I have a boatload of outdoor work I want to get done before summer moves in. Incidentally, it is mostly the same stuff I wanted done last year.

There’s a big patch of poison ivy and weeds surrounding a tree stump in my front yard that desperately needs addressed. The house needs power washed. There’s a shed needing cleaned out. The back porch needs a good scrub. There’s a lot of flower bed work too.

This would be a great time to take care of that shed and the junk piled up around it but I’m lacking the motivation and time to get outside and tackle it.

This doesn’t bode well for the rest of that list.

Meanwhile, we received snow last night. It was eighty degree just a few days ago. Maybe next weekend.

What’s on your spring list? It would be good to get our chores done now so we are free to adventure later.