Monthly Archives: January 2016

Ten on Tuesday

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I don’t have the time to do a “Ten on Tuesday” EVERY Tuesday, but today is a snow day so I’ll play along.  Today’s task is to identify Ten Interesting Things About My Community.  I had some generous assistance from several websites (thank you Wikipedia and Google Image)!

  1.  I have a “Gettysburg Address”!  Although I’ll include greater Adams County, PA, as part of my community, the county seat where I live is plenty famous.Lincoln
  2. As a person who doesn’t really like apples, I am friggin’ SURROUNDED by them (quite literally).   The 4th largest apple producer in the country, Adams County is home to more than 35 varieties of the fruit in 20,000 acres of orchard.  I actually know some Motts.
  3. We are home to the Majestic Theater, the “grandest small-town theater in America!” Under the direction of Jeffrey Gabel, it was fully renovated in 2005.  The earlier version gained notoriety when President Dwight D. Eisenhower and First Lady, Mamie (who were residents of Gettysburg) would attend performances there, often with world leaders as their guests.
  4. Many places are tourist meccas.  Our tourists are the kind who like to dress up in wool clothing and parade around on the 4th of July (beat THAT, Martha’s Vineyard!)
Battle of Gettysburg

Battle of Gettysburg

5. Because of that “civil” war (I hardly call a war that took the lives of a million people civil, although it is also known by other names, depending upon which side one’s people were on) my town boasts a lot of ghosts.  It is quite the booming industry here, in fact.  My own son took visitors on ghost tours.  The company he worked for sent the tour guides out with stud finders, which, when turned on and pointed at a ghost, would make unusual optical disturbances.  (Stud finders also do that when pointed at yogurt shops and living basset hounds, but what do I know!)

6.  Adams county was named after President John Adams, whose cousin, Samuel Adams, inspired a line of beer.    People in Adams County love their beer.

7.  They also love their cult films.  Jean Stapleton (of All in the Family fame) and her husband William Putch lived in nearby Franklin County and ran a summer stock theater that still exists (Totem Pole Playhouse).  Their son,  John Putch , produced, wrote, and directed a trilogy of films centered on a stretch of the Lincoln highway in south central Pennsylvania: Route 30.

8.  The entire county only has five high schools, although there are three institutions of higher learning: Harrisburg Area Community College, Gettysburg College, and the Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary.

9.  The closest Indian restaurant is 40 minutes north of here.  We cherish our little Thai restaurant and endeavor to keep it open by eating there as frequently as possible.  The grocery store sells sushi (but note that it is grocery store sushi!).

10.  We host lots and lots of small town, community events all year round: the Halloween parade, New Year’s Eve on the square, Salsa night on the Square, First Friday events in town, concerts at the college and seminary, classic movie night at the Majestic in the summer…  I poke a little fun at this town on occasion, but I really love living here.

 

“Out-ing” myself

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Over the winter break I endeavored to work on a project that had been on my to-do list for more years than I care to count: cleaning out my home office.  Over dinner one night a few weeks earlier I was chatting with several friends who primarily work from home.  They were astounded to learn that I typically work from my local grocery store food court when I have an entire room in my home called an “office”!  “It isn’t functional,” I revealed.

Giant foodcourt Giant waterbottle

And that was quite true.  Never a fan of vertical filing and possessing just enough of the hoarding gene to be of danger to myself and others, I had moved all my “officey” things into the room when we moved into the house and promptly put blinders on and ignored the entire space.  I won’t tell you how long we’ve lived here…

Because the good news is I have finally started to tackle it.  Only an hour a day, usually 3 or 4 days a week, I have started to chip away at the dusty remnants of my Ph.D. program (who needs 17 drafts of her dissertation when she has one that passed) and appliance service manuals for items we have long ago hauled away!

As to the title of this post, I am not really “outing” myself as a reluctant hoarder…but rather as an activist for women’s causes, in general, and reproductive rights, in particular.  In one corner of the room I had stored over a dozen protest signs and posters that I figured could be useful in the future:

NOW and PP posters NOW and PP posters2

But I realized that these are vintage posters and I do not “collect” things like this.  For the next protest rally I participate in there are sure to be new logos, new slogans, new chants.  I can thank these posters for the joy they brought me and recycle them next week.  I put them here as a permanent reminder of my values and my new-found decision to get rid of what I do not really need.

 

Unraveling

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I stumbled upon two online essays/articles today devoted to unraveling: a haunting and lovely essay by new author Stephanie Danler (for mature audiences only) and a Wall Street Journal article featuring folk who like to untangle crazy messes of yarn (I admit to being one of those folk).  I might have been attracted to the pieces because of:

Unraveled

As I’ve posted elsewhere I am starting the new year off by clearing the deck and starting on a stash-busting extravaganza of epic proportions!  Hyperbole be damned!  I vow not to purchase any new yarn this year (possible exceptions might be made for Brooks Farm at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and some Plucky that I might not be able to resist).  As I inch toward the starting line I decided I needed to make decisions about projects that had been unfinished for sometime and really needed to be unraveled.

One, the brownish/bluish underneath everything was yarn given to me by a person suffering grave, un-medicated mental illness.  Her dual diagnoses would make any trained person shudder and she has made many in my circle vulnerable at their places of employment because of her harrassment.  I realized that I really, really, REALLY dislike this yarn.  But someone else might love it so I’ve unraveled the pair of socks it was once going to become and will lovingly hand it over to another person with no experience of the kharma it carries.

The light green (a Brooks Farm exemplar) was once going to be a baby sweater for the baby I hope to one day have in my life (not from me…that ship has sailed).  I have a sweater phobia (seaming the sleeves seems to be the “issue”) and I thought that making a wee version would help me overcome this affliction.  It did not.  RRRRRRIP!

And the persimmon…such a lovely yarn from Anzula that I purchased on a trip to Fresno, CA last summer.  It simply did not look good when knitted into a banana leaf scarf.  Ghastly, actually.  There is another purpose for this delight.

As a child I loved to unknot necklace chains.  One had to be very Zen and focused to make it work.  Because I do not feel very “Zen and focused” in most of my life I find it a delight when I need to turn that on to untangle yarn.

And ready, set, go…as soon as I finish Shannon’s socks (we’re at the toe of both now) and complete the seaming of my log cabin afghan (I’m more than 50% done)!