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Miscellanea!

If you like wire, I’ve got wire today! If you like dogs, I have dogs today! And if you like a bit of anarchy, I have that too. In other words, I have a lot of small topics, none enough to make a full blog post.

Let’s start with Ms. Nilla. It looks as if she has a Forever Family! They are driving up from Florida to come meet her. She’s had a day running around in the snow, which tires out a young woman. Isn’t she sweet, asleep on the futon? Some wonderful folks are driving in from out of state to visit Ms. Nilla, and if they all like each other, Nilla will have a wonderful life with a lovely family.

Meanwhile, a bit of wireworking; I had fun with fibulae. Here’s a heart fibula made to the tutorial created by the talented and thoughtful JewlieBeads. I also made a sterling silver fibula for a friend who loves purple. Making both the bead and the fibula were fun.

Finally, a bit of real world anarchy. At work, my dean needs faculty to post our office hours on or near our office doors. This is a requirement. It is perfectly reasonable. However, the building rules state that one cannot tape or pin anything to the doors or walls. Now, a close inspection reveals these directives to be mutually incompatible. Hence my solution. For some reason hanging pictures seems to not be a problem for the building maintenance officer. So I got a bland picture in a light plastic frame from a friend who is decluttering. It hangs on the wall; my office hours are taped to it. It is light enough to be hung from the ceiling tracks with fishing line should pictures eventually be a problem. Hence I can NOT tape anything to my door or the walls and I can still fulfill my obligations. Mind you, I fully support keeping the walls nice and neat, preserving the paint, and reducing maintenance costs. However, then the building manager needs to come up with a solution for the office-hour and student information dilemma. Until then? I will remain my cooperatively anarchichal self.

First off, Ms. Nilla is a flat-out wonderful dog. She has solved her housebreaking issues, and has proven herself non destructive, polite, sweet, loving, and relatively quiet. The min pin in the yard kitty corner to ours can get her going, but then I think that min pin has a potty mouth.

Nilla loves to play ball, and she will politely give you the ball back. She pulls a bit on leash, but settles down pretty fast. She is quite good with others in the dog park. At first she stuck close to me; the Chamblee dog park covers over an acre, and has a lot of other dogs in it. Once we did a circuit of it, slowly, as I have come down with another nasty cold, Nilla started to play. The only spat I saw her in was with Maddie, a friend’s Golden. Maddie is very alpha and dislikes other alpha bitches, and is also under a bit of stress right now. I am happy to say that Nilla didn’t start anything. In fact, in the pics below you can see her in several dog scrums, happily sniffing. Check out Nilla and the teacup Yorkie!

Yesterday I took Nilla to our dog-friendly Ace Hardware, and to Pet Supermarket. In both places she behaved like an angel, and she approved thoroughly of the Girl Scouts who were selling cookies. She especially liked it that tweeny girls thought she was BEAUTIFUL and wanted to pet her instead of selling cookies. BTW, I dropped her leash by accident, and still she came right back when called. She did the same in the dog park, too.

Nilla in pack

Chase!

Look at her leap!

leap!

No, Nilla doesn’t like people at all ….

Nilla love

Nillalove2

Nillalove3

Nillalove4

Nillainpack

Nilla with the teacup Yorkie, Romeo. That was Romeo’s Hooman that Nilla was loving on earlier.

Nillaromeo

Pack play!

Nillapack

When we came home, I took cold meds and went right to sleep, and Nilla settled by my bed. After a while, i lay down on the couch and slept some more, waking up to find Nilla’s head nestled on my shoulder under my chin, and Justin lying on my feet. Speaking of Mr. Justin Wigglebutt, he had fun at the dog park, too. You can see him in several of the pack pictures above, but this series was special. He wasn’t eating up the attention or going goofy with pleasure, no sir, not Justin! :P

Love

love2

love3

love four

Broom 2, Justin 0

When I was a teenager, my sister brought home a strange, thin, matted dog named Sheila. When we got her brushed out, she became a beautiful Afghan Hound. However, she hated to be brushed; she had lived most of her life chained outside and did not want to bother with grooming–she just wanted to roam, trash pick, and come in to a warm soft nest. The poor thing quickly became FunnyLookin’ — said with love.

One day Mou found her rooting in the trash, and skited her away with the broom. After that, Funny was nervous about the broom, of course, and we would say that the broom ha d “tooken” Funny Lookin’. Of course, today I’d never use a broom like that. This was well before Cesar Millen and work on using body language to train a dog in an authoritative but less frightening way, or even LEAVE IT! training. Justin knows that LEAVE IT is pretty much my all purpose command for “drop what you have/move away from it”. I thought I was confusing him by using the same command with different purposes, but our local training guru (who runs a dog training company) uses it as an all purpose command, too, and recommends it, so …

Anyway, fast forward from the late seventies and early eighties to today.

Justin, my Labrakita, has a long, sinuous, fluffy tail. He wags it from side to side, but when he is really happy it turns into a propeller tail, moving in wide circles. One day I heard a loud crash!, a yelp, and the sound of scrabbling toenails, and then Justin was running headlong into me. In the kitchen I found that he had knocked the broom over, and it had fallen and scared him. He would not come near the broom after that. I joked that I hadn’t needed to spend megabucks on a fence and an invisible fence; all I needed to do to keep Justin ins the yard was to wire brooms to the 4′ chainlink fence!

Finally I was able to get Justin to pass the broom, though he would shrink away and look sidelong at it. Apparently last night he did not see where I had put it. I had propped it on the box my new kitchen vanity came in (that’s another long story) so it would be at hand for sweeping this morning. Poor Justin; he knocked it over again. This time, no matter how I coaxed him, he would not come near me while I was anywhere near the broom. Poor guy, that really was my fault. I need to remember to put it completely away or make sure the Evil Broom is secure! On the other hand, if I ever need to keep Justin out of a room, I don’t need to use a baby gate–I can merely lean the broom across the doorway.

Broom, 2; Justin, 0.

I just got a new foster dog, Nilla. Nilla is a sweetheart of a dog.

Ms. Nilla

You can see her Adopt-a-Golden page by clicking on her picture.

Nilla is young and playful, as you can see in the video below. She’s around 18 months old, and very healthy. Nilla has pale blonde fur, thick and lustrous, and weighs around 60 pounds. The vets at the Buckhead Animal Clinic think she is about at her full weight and growth, though she might go to 65 pounds. They also think she is an English Creme Golden, possibly purebred, which makes her face look a bit like a GP. (The vet’s exact phrasing, when I asked whether she thought Nilla was purebred, was, “Well, you never can tell for sure. She sure looks like a Golden to me.”)

Nilla is good tempered, and I can take food away from her. She respects Justin’s eating–though woe betide him if he so much as raises his nose from his bowl before he is finished! Nilla has basic commands–she knows her name, and knows SIT and OFF. I haven’t had time to do much else, as Tuesday and Wednesdays are my long 9AM-11PM work days. Nilla shows no sign of being dangerous to cats, though she is fascinated by Molly Squeak and wants to know what that wonderful-smelling thing with the enticing squeak is!

Nilla seems to be housebroken, but she has had an accident or two. They were small and likely caused by the change in routine. So far she hasn’t had the run of the house, because I have been gone so long; I have confined her to the hallway, spare room, and study, and so far she has not shown herself to be destructive in any way. She likes squeaky toys–I left plenty for her–but she prefers to play with other dogs. She is definitely more dominant than Justin (not hard!), and is working hard, but completely politely, to establish her position. That’s also being the new gal on the block, and as with other fosters, I suspect she will sort things out in time. I suspect also she won’t last long enough — there are already people interested in her! This girl will get a good Forever Home very soon, I think.

Right now the only “negative” I see with Nilla is that she is a little jumpy (heh, so is Justin), but bouncing her off with my body gave her the scoop FAST. So I can say that Nilla is smart and observant as well, and she is desperately looking for a Hooman to call her own. She is going to make a completely fantastic dog for someone!

Check out Nilla and Justin playing:

Nilla and Justin Playing Chase

Alas, our early music concert had to be canceled due to weather–I can drive in the light snow, but Atlantans can’t.

But there is a silver lining. Check out Justin Wigglebutt, my Labrakita, playing in the snow!

Shawl Pins

Recently a colleague who knits has been asking for shawl pins. The Universe works in strange ways, because just after I talked with J., Molten Muse posted a tutorial for shawl pins on Lampwork, Etc. Well, I had a couple of beads, and thought I would try it. Here’s the first one I did:

Here’s the second, a little shorter:

If this is what J is interested in, cool! I can definitely make her some.

From my Real Job

I don’t often talk here on this blog about my RL job, which is teaching history, among other subjects, to adult students returning to school. But last night was special. Last night we got very little done in my Crusades class. I spent a good part of the class showing the students how to put together a story from what they had read; as usual they were reading for facts, not connecting the ideas to an argument, and therefore feeling very, very lost. Part of the time they also prepared for a “TV NEWS’ style exercise in whcih one group compared the Second Crusade to the First, and another compared the Third tot he Second–not just events, but politics, motivation, purpose, etc. Most of my class time, however, was spent attending an authors’ reading from our new journal, Regeneration! A Journal of Creative Writing.

Regeneration! was a project generated by our adult students, and is the first journal in the country, we think, to emerge from an adult program. Some of the writing is raw, but all of it is impressive — and a lot of it packs a serious wallop. I saw my initially skeptical students start nodding their heads, some even crying. For our students to have discovered this kind of voice is truly powerful. These are people who have been told all their lives that they are stupid, or ordinary, or powerless. cut.”>

But here is their journal.

VARIATIONS on a HACKNEYED THEME:
Nature gets me once a month.
Husband gets me when he wants.
But Thursday mornings, I belong to Marcus.
Dreadful roar and hullabaloo!
Husband crackling, bristling, snorting:
Every manner of insult retorting,
Classifying my intentions
To ignore society’s conventions
among those same which, only latterly,
Motivated Lady Chatterley … (Karen Lacey; read the rest!)

WHO’S GOING TO TELL?

Who’s going to tell me
the joyous news today?
They proved my son is innocent
by testing DNA.

Who’s going to tell him
everyone was wrong?
I will go tell him myself
and change the flowers on his stone …

By Michael Ragland. Read the rest in Regeneration! A Journal of Creative Writing.

I had a set of beads that I loved, but which languished unbought in my display, show after show. People were drawn to them, would pick them up and fondle them, would put them down slowly and regretfully–but never bought them. I was beginning to think that they were in fact made of chopped liver. This Friday, though, my colleague SJ saw them and fell head over heels in love, and so now I have my answer: they were waiting patiently for her, sending out subtle “I’m untouchable” vibes to everyone else while they waited for her birthday to come around. She’s had a particularly hard week, so I was so glad she found colours that made her heart sing.

And SJ made a beautiful necklace out of them, and loves them! I am so happy. You can see it here. It always makes me so happy–and humble!– when someone makes something pretty out of beads I have created. Thanks, SJ — you are such a sweetie!

People who work at home know that one of the biggest challenges comes from people who cannot understand that the teleworker cannot drop anything at a moment’s notice and visit a friend or relative. Because housework does have a certain degree of flexibility (though the idea that it is somehow not “real work” is wrongheaded in the extreme), the concept that anyone who does paid work at home actually has productivity quotas and fixed deadlines, and can’t be interrupted, seems impossible for many people to grasp.

I think some of it stems from the way work-at-home is popularly imagined, as consisting of “setting your own hours”, which to many seems to entail the work hours of Emerald City: “We get up at noon and start to work at one; take an hour for lunch and then at two we’re done, jolly good fun!” The perceptual problem is doubled when the work is artistic in nature. No matter how many times Stephen King publishes about his disciplined work hours, or artists write about the long hours, all people see is the latte break at two, and generalize from that to the artist’s entire day.

One problem with this perception that people who work at home, particularly those engaging in “art,” really do little or nothing is that art–rather like housework–is denigrated as a serious pursuit. Particularly if the art in question is craft in nature, it becomes something that “anyone” can do, and–again like housework–people feel that it is low-cost or even free. There is an added and fairly explicit set of gender stereotypes at play, as well. “Real artists”–often male–work in “serious studios” and can command large fees. “Crafters” are stereotypically female, working “for love,” with far less value being put on their work.

And these stereotypes carry over into the realm of pay. Over at Position: Relative there is a superb post, which takes articulate and pointed umbrage at the idea that artists, graphic designers, and (by extension) crafters should donate their work “for exposure” or just “for the joy of it” :

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on [C]raigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

The article is dead on target. Initially, I had some mildly snarky comments about the gendering implicit in this paragraph; neurosurgeons and mechanics do not have to be male. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that in some ways the famous, highly paid artists are often implicitly, though not at all accurately, popularly gendered as male, as are (still!) the highly-paid professions, despite a wealth of women doctors, lawyers, and other specialists. The lower-paid professions and artists are often gendered ‘female. How often does one hear men being referred to as “crafters”? In woodworking, yes (highly masculinized area, by the way), but not as much in other areas. In terms of the article’s comments on hiring a student, the one place where I would feel comfortable is in asking a student in an IT class to help on a website–IF the student was doing so as part of a class assignment. Even so, that student would get to use my website as part of his or her portfolio whether I used the site or not, and if the the student chose to withdraw permission for me to use his or her work, that would be acceptable.

Read the entire article, and if you are planning to buy beads, hire a graphic designer, ask for web services, have a chapbook made, or need any other artistic services, think about it long and hard. Crafters and artists, think about what your services and your skills are worth.

*Picture is a still from the 1939 MGM film, The Wizard of Oz.

I got a call this morning of a type that truly annoys me.  Someone called me, and when I answered, “Hello?” asked, without preamble, “How are you today?”  It was a male voice that I did not recognize.  After a startled moment, I said frostily, “May I ask who is calling?”  The man gave his first name only.  I replied, “I’m afraid I don’t know you.  May I ask your business?”  Finally the caller admitted that he was making cold calls from a list, trying to interest people in a new or used car–was I interested?  “No, thank you,” I said flatly. After requesting to be removed from his call list (he claimed that my number was on a list of numbers that had done business with his car sales company before, to which I replied that it must have been the previous owner of the number, and many years ago, as I did not recognize the business), we hung up.

Throughout the conversation the caller seemed off balance, as if he had expected the call to go another way.  He even suggested that I was not being friendly and cooperative.  No, I wasn’t, but I was being polite.  If you are a total stranger, and I know neither you nor your voice, and I can neither see you nor assess your purpose, why should I initiate a personal relationship with you merely because you have called me? I think people who do that think I will answer “Fine, and you?” reflexively, which sets up the expectation of a connection, and thus makes not listening to their sales pitch awkward. Sorry, guy. That approach may work with many people, but not with me.

The approach sometimes seems to assume that we are all sistren and brethren who only lack an introduction that can be remedied by the phone call; while we are all equal humans and on many levels *are* all sistren and brethren, the reality of the world is that I can’t see you and so you may be the local rapist for all I know. You may be a wonderful warm human being that I would be proud to know, but in a large city with personal crime on the rise, I also need to be wary.

I wonder if the caller had ever been trained in basic telephone etiquette? Did he not read the Richard Scarry books about manners as a child, or (if old enough) read them to his child?   I was raised to use the following conventions for making contact over the phone with people I don’t know, and I expect others to be similarly polite to me: “Hello, my name is X from [Insert either rescue group or university]. May I please speak with Ms. So and So?” Sometimes one adds [Short business], such as “I’m so and so’s foster; may I please speak with … ” or “I’m returning your call about Class #, may I please speak with … ?”  It may be formal, but it establishes who I am, how the person might know me (and how I got their number), and why they might want to listen to me.  Mind you, if I am calling a friend, all bets are off–but a cold call is not the same as calling a friend, and should not be treated as such.  But even when I am calling someone I know, but am not on a good-friends basis with, I identify myself.  “Hi, [Person X], this is [my name]; I’m calling about X / retuning your call, do you have a minute?”

Maybe I am a dinosaur, but I appreciate those people with lovely telephone manners!  If someone is trying to make a sale, phone manners are even more critical.  I am much more likely to listen to you if you are polite.  In the worst case scenario I will say “Thank you, but no thank you,” leaving you free to move on to your next call with dispatch.  If you display poor telephone etiquette, however, I will not only not purchase from you or donate to your cause, but I will boycott you for a year.

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