Dryope

The Rambling Return

Okay, I've tried to stay away but I just can't.  ;)

I've added some new things to my blog: I have a list of goals below (on the left) and a wishlist of things I want for birthday and Christmas (or just 'cause you love me) somewhere else on here.  I decided the Amazon wishlist was a bit specific, and some people may want a list that allows for more creativity. 

After all, I'll be  just knitting you stuff.  You are hard to buy for!  So if you want something specific, let me know now, or else you're getting a pair of socks.  I mean it.  I may even knit you underwear if I really want to make the point. 

Okay, the upshot of all this blather about gifts is I've realized Christmas Shopping Season is upon me.  This is because, ever since I became the giftbuyer for a couple (my husband sometimes forgets when Christmas is or does an Oscar-winning facsimilie of it), I've begun shopping in September.  (Actually, this year I started in June.  But I get pathological about it in September.)  This is because there is little worse in modern capitalist demoracies than being at the mall in mid-December and having to make a split decision on whether to get them the electric back massager from Brookstone or the courderoy lapel pin from Ann Taylor. 

I think you see my point.

So I scour the ads all year for ideas, and then sit down with them in September and start ordering online. But I've noticed that that's still REALLY EXPENSIVE.  And then I'm never sure if anyone LIKES WHAT I GET THEM.  But this is because they give me ZERO INPUT either before I get the gift or after I've given it.  How can I learn and improve, people, if you don't help me?

But this dovetails nicely with my new plan of being a Master Knitter.  No, not the lazy ass rules the Knitting Guild Association has (scroll to the bottom to "Master Handknitting Program").  I don't want to make Aran sweater or a Fair Isle sweater of my own design--I want to make both, and every other kind of sweater, too (detailed in Knitting the Old Way--thanks, Dee!).  I want to make socks the flat way and toe-up, and with toes.  I want to go through the Barbara Walker cannon and get brioche stitch cold (ton pull arrive, Joanna!).  I want to make a cable vest, a Russian lace stole, a Shetland shawl.  Doing a sweater, a book report, and some swatches for a stupid pin and paying $300 for the privilege seems like a waste of money better put to yarn. 

Which brings me to my next item: I'm not going to grad school yet.  My application wasn't so much rejected as swept from the table: after lots of meetings with people at GW, all saying, yes apply for part-time starting in the Spring semester, they decided AFTER I SUBMITTED MY APPLICATION to eliminate Spring admissions.  You'd think they'd have waited TIL THE NEXT ROUND OF ADMISSIONS to implement a new policy. (Applications were due Sept. 1 and the meeting was last week, apparently.) I'd reconsider going there, but that smacks of biting my nose to spite my face--these jerks aren't the jerks I'm looking for.  It's just academic committee nonsense, and the main guy I do want to take classes with wasn't at the meeting (He had left early before the vote and hadn't thought it would affect my application.  Oh, well.).

The main problem is that they want only full-time students from now on.  Very frustrating, especially as it's traditionally a COMMUTER SCHOOL for government people, for Bob's sake.  They're worried doctoral students are finishing too slowly because they're part time...but I have half the work done because I already have a related MA from there.....argh. So frustrating.

So now I have money problems.  If I plan to be a full-time student next fall, then I'd better make some money to make sure all my loans and debts are paid off: credit cards, car, and the piddly $3K undergrad loan--and then there's the mortgage I still have to keep paying.  At least this way I can apply for a fellowship.

The other problem is that I was thinking of getting a new job...and now I wonder if that's possible.  If I'm interested in money, I can't switch to a more interesting job that pays less...and why would I go there just to leave after a year anyway? 

So I'm a bit tormented.  Any advice?  I'll knit you something for it. ;)

Inara, Anatolian goddess

<p>I wonder where the character concept of Inara originated...the text below gives a clue--for her name, her role, and for the common misinterpretation of her work in the show (my emphasis):</p> <p>&quot;The Anatolian myth of the <strong>Goddess Inara</strong> revealed that once a man slept with the Goddess (presumably the high priestess), he might never again sleep with another woman, for fear that he would transfer the sacred powers of the Goddess to her.&quot; (148)</p> <p>&quot;The sacred sexual customs of the female religion offer us another of the apparent ties between the worship of the [goddess] as it was known in Sumer, Babyylon, Anatolia, Greece, Carthage, Sicily, Cyprus, and&nbsp; even in Canaan.&nbsp; Women who made love in the temples were known in their own language as 'sacred women,' 'the undefiled.' <strong>Their Akkadian name of <em>qadishtu</em> is literally translated as 'sanctified women' or 'holy women.' Yet the sexual customs in even the most acadmic studies of the past two centures are repeatedly referred to as 'temple prostitutes' or 'ritual prostitutes.' </strong>The use of the word 'prostitute' as a translation for <em>qadishtu</em> not only negates the sanctity of that which was held sacred, but suggests, by the inferences and social implications of the word, an ethnocentric subjectivity on the part of the writer.&nbsp; It leads the reader to a misinterpretation of the religious beliefs and social structure of the period.&nbsp; It seems to me that the word 'prostitute' entirely distorts the very meaning of the ancient customs which the writer is supposedly explaining.&quot; (157)</p> <p>From When God Was a Woman, by Merlin Stone (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: NY, 1978).</p>