Jennifer Saylor, Freelance Writer

Looks like there might be a dual-hemisphere knitalong among me (representing the Northern Hemisphere) and Heather (guest-knitting from the Southern Hemisphere in Cochabamba, Bolivia) and our knitting friends and family this June. (A “knitalong,” BTW, is when a loosely connected group of people all work on knitting the same pattern in the same general timeframe.)

Anyone have any ideas for a project that is good for a fairly new knitter, fun to do in warm weather and only takes a month or so to complete? Leave a comment if you do!

Anyone can join in — just send email, leave a comment or check back in with the blog.

You MUST reside in either the Northern or Southern hemisphere to participate.

And this is the email I just sent her.

“Eightball” is my nickname for her husband, and the “internet cafe across the street” is in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she is flying this Saturday, there to work as a health clinic volunteer for the next two months.

Hey you! A final word to say I hope you have an amazing two whole months in Bolivia! I will check in on Eightball and the dogs.

You are so brave to do this. I admire you so much. I can’t wait to hear your stories because I have a feeling they will inspire me to someday be as brave as you are already. I’m the one that needed a push; you were already plenty brave enough.

The next time you think of yourself as ordinary or insignificant, imagine yourself flying into Bolivia by yourself for two months, not yet fluent in the language, never having been there before, armed only with chick lit and a deck of Blue Ridge Parkway playing cards.

What will I do without my knitting buddy for two months? (We should have a knit-a-long, and knit the same thing together on two different continents!)

You are amazing. I hope you have the time of your life.

Email me when you can from the internet cafe across the street!

“Let us risk the wildest places/Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.”

- Mary Oliver

Here is Heather’s new blog (it’s also in my sidebar), Chicken Lips. Expect posts and pics from Bolivia soon.

I turned in my last final today, a little late because I had sorely underestimated how much more work it still needed. A quick vet for clarity had turned into a partial rewrite. I raced to the college and across the lawns and landscaping to good old Zageir, home of the Poli Sci People.

“Can I turn in my exam seven minutes late?” I asked Dr. Sabo, who was hanging out in his office with a student.

“I won’t look at my watch!” he said. He thanked me as I walked away.

While the horrid stereotype of the hyperliberal blowhard in love with his/her own opinions and intellectual prowess is alive and well in higher education, that kind of professor is the minority. I find that the vast majority of college professors (at least the ones I encounter as someone who is picky about her professors) are intelligent and helpful people driven by a desire to impart information they find exciting, powerful and useful. The best teachers combine helpfulness and nerdiness *, two of the qualities I cherish and admiore most in the world.

* which I define as the quality of taking deep pleasure in working towards expertise in an academic area; the technical cousin is geekiness

Anyway.

I walked back to my car under the hot springtime sun, through the grass and past the brilliant orange of the flame azaleas and over the dusty drifts of oak pollen. As I started up the hill to the commuter parking lot, it hit me.

“Oh my god. I’m done,” I said.

Then I kept walking on into my day.

The lovely feeling of finishing is a bit diminished when you come right off of finals into work and a week-long technical project. I’m hoping it’s really just delayed, and sometime next week I will realize that this semester is done and gone, done and gone. No more lectures, papers, tests or quizzes for at least a month, more if I skip summer school.

Back to work. Someone please pass the peace of mind and feelings of significant intellectual accomplishment.

Over a fine dinner of fish tacos at the French Broad Taqueria my friend Katie came up with the ultimate Asheville bumper sticker for our social strata. Are y’all ready?:

I CAUGHT THE CLAP AT AMAZING SAVINGS

(AND I STILL WENT BACK!) *

* You will not fully perceive the hilarity of this statement if you don’t live in Asheville or shop at good ol’ AS, the best discount hippie grocery in the history of the world. Also, the appreciation of this statement is improved by the consumption of a few glasses of sangria and/or the punchiness conferred by the study-drunk, braindead final days of senior exams.

Semester’s almost over y’all. I’ll pick up a big technical assignment on Friday and consider myself launched out of school mode and briefly into my summer mode of work and river trips. Thanks for sticking with this blog during an extended spell of low activity and lots of personal posts.

I took my Media, Ethics and Society exam this morning at  11:30 and I think I did just fine.

Then I spent an hour brushing up the eight-page take-home final exam for my International Law class, printed it out, walked across the grassy quad to the Zageir building where the poli sci people live, and slipped it under Dr. Gibney’s door.

Then I drove over to Rosie’s and we sat on her fine front porch. Her BF Greg told us about the developing lineup for this summer’s Laugh Your Asheville Off comedy festival, and I got invited to the boozy blast that is Greg’s 30th birthday party this Saturday. BYOB, pot luck and camping.

We sat in the sun on a perfect spring day, the nearly cloudless blue-and-gold-green kind that tempts you with a coming summer that feels like it’s already here in all its sweaty splendor.

God I love the South.

I drove to my local polling place and voted — really voted, my primary presidential pick actually matters this time! As always, I saw my five-star nerd of a former calculus professor. He volunteers like clockwork to work at the polls for every election because he is as civic-minded and political as they come. (He still remains, without a doubt, the person mentioned most often in this blog. Do you remember those days?)

I drove home and waved to my neighbor, out walking her dachsund in the sun. Now a quick lunch of cottage cheese and lentil soup, and back to the work of finals and freelancing.

Exams left: One take-home, one in class tomorrow.

Days left in the spring 2008 semester: TWO.

Got a candidate you strongly support? Consider volunteering in your own neighborhood handing out campaign material. I find it’s a strangely fun and effective way to be closer to the people and places in your neighborhood, as well as give more than just your vote to a candidate you believe in.

I’m writing this grassroots guide to neighborhood outreach efforts literally just after walking in the door from volunteering for Cecil Bothwell, a friend and county commissioner candidate.

I just spent the afternoon walking around green and lovely Best Asheville on a perfect and breezy spring day. I smelled the odor of stargazer lilies on the wind. I heard the rustle of a high wind through hundred-year old neighborhood trees, when the air around me was still but the treetops danced. I noted how startling and pleasing the rich gold-green of an arborvitae is next to a hot pink azalea in riotous bloom.

I peeked in the front door of a house filled with people just getting ready to start an acoustic Sunday night jam.

It wasn’t just neighborhood activism I did today. It was meeting my neighbors and learning more about my neighborhood. In past efforts I’ve met George, a retired WWII veteran with yappy dogs and a little garden plot of ornamental gourds — on my mantel I still have the one he gave me. This time around, I met tattooed Daniel and his tiny toy chihuahua, Edie, who is so small he has to sit with her outside so no neighborhood hawk flies off with her.

Edie, he said, weighs about 2 1/2 pounds, about 1/3 the weight of my smallest cat (who is indeed very small, even for a cat).

I also met Margie, another retiree, and her half-wild Maine Coon cat whom she says would just as soon bite you as be nice to you, but she cares for him anyway.

Just based on a few fine afternoons of putting out info and meeting neighbors, here are my guidelines on neighborhood activism and how to deepen your roots in the place where you are planted — all in the name of volunteering for the candidate of your choice:

• Volunteer on your street and in your neighborhood.
• Bring water, sunglasses and some Scotch tape to tape material to doors where the screen door handle won’t hold door-hangers.
• Walk facing traffic and cross streets carefully. Don’t walk in the middle of the road just because you’re in a residential area.
• It’s OK to go alone. If you meet someone and talk to them, it’s less like you’re ganging up on them. I think I look less scary and more open to neighborly conversation when it’s just me.
• Beware of bad scripts, even from PACs you like enough to volunteer for. If I see someone in the yard or on the front porch of a home on my list, I never ask who they are voting for or try to push my candidate.

I just ask if they want any information on whatever race my candidate is in and if they do, hand my material over. I figure I’m more likely to persuade someone by being a neighborly person who pets your dog and is glad to meet you than trying to sell you on my beliefs. If I’m being conflated with my candidate, I’d prefer to be remembered as friendly and polite, not pushy. You’re buying into a candidate, not me, though I welcome the chance to give you some cues about the choice I’ve made in the race.

• Be respectful of property and don’t walk through grassy yards when there’s a walk or pathway through the grass.
• In hot weather, time your effort to avoid the worst of the day’s heat. Early evening is perfect in springtime. So is anytime that’s a good time for a good long daylight walk around the neighborhood.
• Pre-plan your route so you know the best, shortest route to do what you need to get done. Walking around the neighborhood in the hot sun putting out door-hangers is surprisingly tiring, and can take a few hours.
• Wait until just a few days before election day to hand out material. Most people don’t vote early but on the day-of, so having your information fresh in voters’ minds is probably, IMO, better than putting out door-hangers two weeks before election day, when people are less likely to have the election in mind.

I never expected to enjoy neighborhood volunteerism as much as I do. It seems the houses around my house actually have people in them, who have stories and hopes and hobbies and pets and interests just like I do. I was surprised to find that political volunteering in the neighborhood was a great way to meet the people at the other end of the street that you don’t know, even though you drive my their homes twice a day and live your life a two-minute walk away. I feel more connected to my neighborhood now. I better understand what I was part of all along.

I’ve met my neighbors this way, seen some lovely homes and gardens, gotten some great landscaping ideas and petted some cute cats and dogs. I’ve had fun, gotten fresh air and exercise, and felt not only civic-minded and like I contributed something valuable to my vision of what’s right for my community and country, but also, unexpectedly, became closer to the people and places of my own neighborhood. (A vote’s such a little thing. Neighborhood outreach is a good way to increase not only your contribution, but your power as a change agent.)

I view both halves of the experience as equally valuable.

If you ever go on a political walkabout in your own neighborhood, let me know if your experience is as pleasant and rewarding as mine.

The last regular day of the semester was Tuesday and here I am, listening to Napster (test-driving a freak folk compilation called Folk Off) and getting ready to start a day of website writing and take-home exams. And coloring my prematurely graying hair, now showing close to an inch of silvery roots.

I can’t help but think it isn’t just the passsing of ordinary time but the passing (in more than one sense) of five long and taxing years of adult study that seems to have significantly altered my black-to-silver ratio. From what I can see of the roots, I seem to be working on salt-and-pepper temples and an honest-to-god silver streak just left of the center of my forehead.

My favorite thing anyone ever said about the late thirties is from my friend Randee (constantly mentioned here in the blog) who calls that time of life the old age of childhood.

Which is just how it feels from behind the wheel.

I can feel some real blog entries blooming inside me like flowers, but for today, with take-home final exams to work on, websites to write and evening plans, I’ll keep it simple with some ordinary life updates.

*******

Anyone else tried the new Google desktop? I like it so far, and love my weather updates that I set to include not only Asheville weather but temps and humidity in Chennai, Denpasar (Bali), Port Said (Egypt), Kuala Lumpur and brave Heather’s destination in barely a week from today, Cochabamba, Bolivia.

I love comparing the weather from all over the world!

Denpasar and KL are humid as hell (to this native of the famously clement mountain environs of Western North Carolina) and Chennai is hot as a biscuit. Cochabamba, meanwhile, is in the same time zone as WNC and also in the highlands, and has very similar temperature and weather to Asheville, though so far it seems to be more humid.

Right now in parts of Denpasar it’s storming, 76 degrees F and 98% humidity… Chennai is 90 degrees F at about 9:30 at night.

*******

I’m nearly done with Season 3 of Lost. LOVE it! (Minor spoilers ahead.)

It’s wonderfully cast with a very talented group of actors largely perfect for the role they play, and while the dialogue can be embarrassing at times, the overall story arc is extremely compelling, with an achingly expert slow reveal.

For the entire first year, the show is just about surviving on the island, with some very weird intimations that this is no ordinary tropical paradise. Season Two is spent slowly approaching a real encounter with the mysterious Others. Season Three (my favorite), where it all could have fallen apart, is about some answers at last about who the Others really are and what’s really going on on the island.

I can understand viewer problems with the tangled plot, but it just seems to me that the writers are merely employing the writerly trick of never giving the viewer an answer without posing another question. Crumb by crumb through the story arc. Apparently co-creator J.J. Abrams is big on creating mystery, on leaving questions unanswered and working the viewer’s mind into a froth of suspense.

You know how endings are never as good as the heady race of the thick of the plot? (No ending ever can be. I can count on one hand the books I’ve read that followed a breathless middle with a deeply satisfying ending. Something about human brains love the middle, and are never satisfied with the end.) Abrams exploits that human way of processing information, making you chase after him, begging for answers, always wanting more.

The refreshing and praiseworthy surprise of Season 3 is that the Others are as compelling as the original castaways, and their addition just makes the show that much richer and better. Plus the show constantly explores the main characters’ backstory, so Lost really happens on three levels, all of which work: the castaways in the present, the Others in the present, and everybody’s backstories (of which Locke’s is the most consistently compelling IMO — a great role, great writing, great actor, well-deserved Emmys all around).

Lost is great, and I am bummed I’m nearly done with the Season 3 discs.

On to Eddie Izzard and The Riches!

*******

Since I started knitting I am much more comfortable taking in a movie in the evening, which used to feel a little like a selfish waste of time. No matter how educational my DVD of choice, sitting still and doing nothing productive for two hours always made me feel guilty, even as I recognized my right to (and need for) a little daily rest and relaxation.

But now that I knit, that feeling is banished, for any movie is an opportunity to multi-task. My typical evening now includes either Lost or a documentary/Frontline DVD and a knitting project, and I sit and rest and take in stories and information without guilt.

And after a few years of knitting, I am at last making my first sweater. I picked Jared Flood’s lovely cobblestone sweater in an alpaca blend in a muted blue/green/brown.

(image from Flood’s website, Brooklyn Tweed)

It’s for a friend’s birthday and it’s coming right along, with the first sleeve 90% done. Now that I attempt what I always thought of as the Knitter’s Pinnacle, the sweater, I see that a relatively simple and unfussy sweater like this is actually easier than a lot of things I have already made.

Lace hats are smaller and faster but harder, as are socks, which are fiddly and require things like toe shaping, reinforced heels, short rows, kitchener stitch…all manner of greater challenges than the endless simple stockinette stitch of the typical sweater like this.

As I am a TV knitter, I welcome the simplicity of the pattern. And as I am a profoundly practical person, I welcome the usefulness of the everyday garment that is a good woolen sweater. I hope birthday boy will like it — it is a lovely color, a good soft wool and a handsome pattern.

*******

The rest of my month has included so far a leaky toilet, a fixed toilet that began leaking again in an unrelated way, a busted water pipe, a $130 water bill (for a household of one), tons and tons of homecooked Indian food, homemade double-chocolate raspberry muffins (I think I came within a hair of making them TOO chocolately; I had to eat a lot of them to be sure), and a gorgeous Appalachian spring that is this year completely untouched by frost.

My Japanese maple made it through last year’s freak 17-degree hard April frost at spring’s vulnerable and emergent peak, and has made a complete comeback though it lost all its limbs (it’s growing new ones!). As is more usual this time of year, the days are warm and pleasant, the nights are cool and restorative, and the earth is afire with green, green, green. What a world.

Pics of the garden and the sweater to come, and even some real blog entries, as my life decompresses out of college mode and I briefly become an ordinary freelance writer again.

Attention Asheville May 6 Democratic Primary Voters: some local Dems are posting info to help us all shake out a vote in the upcoming primary. That ballot is gigantic. My own personal tip/trick? I print a sample ballot and fill it out, bringing it with me to the polls as a cheat sheet.

First, local journalist/county commission candidate Cecil Bothwell has gathered a list of candidates endorsed by “generally progressive groups in the county and state.”

Second, local political uberblogger and generally principled and intelligent liberal activist Gordon Smith has posted his own voting choices at his group blog, Scrutiny Hooligans. My own choices match his almost exactly, one exception being David Young (no way — I definitely prefer Cowell). Scroll down the entry to read comments from local people including former city council member Bryan Freeborn.

Here’s my own list so far:

President - Barack Obama
Senate - Jim Neal
Governor - Bev Perdue
Lt. Governor - Dan Besse
Auditor - Beth Wood
Commissioner of Insurance - Wayne Goodwin
Commissioner of Labor - Robin Anderson
Superintendent - June St. Clair Atkinson
Treasurer - Janet Cowell
County Commissioner - Holly Jones, Cecil Bothwell (Keith Thomson, K. Ray Bailey) *
Appeals Court Judge - James A. Wynn
Appeals Court Judge - Kristin Ruth

* I am casting only two of my allotted four county commissioner votes in order to help my challenger candidate of choice, Cecil Bothwell, have a better chance of beating out the competition from the other challengers. The candidates in parentheses are the ones for whom I would also vote if I were not voting strategically and using all four of my allotted county commission votes.

BTW, in no way do I endorse voting for someone because someone “told” you to in a blog. What I do strongly endorse is public political discourse of the kind you see in Gordon’s comments, where smart people who want to do more than just make a mark on a ballot share information to make the most educated choice.

Voting is our single most important right, because without it none of the others are secure. As with so many of our rights, exercising this one isn’t easy. I’ve heard people say, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about the candidates or the issues. You still need to get out to the polls.” I disagree. If you don’t know why you’re choosing a specific person or position, all you’re doing is showing up and making a random mark. That’s not voting.

- Cheryl Dietrich

Number of regular class days left in the semester: three

Number of five-page final term papers due before then: one

Number of quizzes this week: four

Number of expensive Sigg steel thermoses lost this week: one

Number of take-home exams to finish this week: one (International Mass Communication)

Number of take-home exams to finish next week: two (American Politics, International Law)

Number of in-class exams to take next week: two (Latin I; Media, Ethics and Society)

Number of credit hours I have left until graduation with a B.A. Mass Comm and Poli Sci minor: 41(three full-time semesters)

Minimum credit hours it takes to receive an undergraduate degree: 120

Number of times I have made North Indian lentil soup in the last week: three

Day of last exam (official end of spring semester 2008): May 8

I cooked up another fine North Indian meal for lunch; homemade chutney is my new obsession. If you are in the market for a new recipe, leave a comment and I will send you an amazing spicy North Indian vegetarian lentil soup recipe that takes zero prep and is ready in about 40 minutes. It’s my new favorite soup EVER — even the cookbook author (Madhur Jaffrey) says she eats this a few times a week, it’s so simple and delicious.

The sole drawback is it really needs red lentils (not the regular U.S. grocery store kind) and it doesn’t hurt to have some ghee and asafoetida on hand (though you can skip and substitute, and red lentils are the only thing that may require an extra trip).

(Not my soup — someone else’s. Mine’s good though!)