Ten on Tuesday

Today's Ten on Tuesday is ten things I'm thankful for, and since I'm already covering that ground on Thursdays, Carole suggested that Thankful Thursdays participants do ten people we'd like to invite to dinner instead.

Well, I got to thinking about that, and all the people who first came to mind were at the center of various historical riddles and turning points. I'm therefore putting a slight twist on my list. I'm assuming, of course, that I have the power to bring these people back to life and to communicate freely with them. I've put these in chronological order, and each question assumes actual history up until that point. (To try to build one hypothetical on the next would boggle the mind. We can't even predict the weather more than a couple of days out, for heaven's sake, because the variables multiply with every hour.)

I could spin some of these out for pages, if not chapters, but since it's late I'll just do the 10,000-foot view.

Ten Historical Riddles and What-ifs

1. In the early Christian church there was a dispute between St. Peter, who thought that Christians were subject to the Jewish law, and St. Paul, who thought that they were not. What if St. Peter had won that argument? Would Christianity have spread as fast and as far?
   
2. What if Leonardo da Vinci had invented a motorized airplane? We know about da Vinci's experiments, and there's speculation that he did indeed fly, but what if he'd made general air travel possible almost 500 years early? Would he have started an industrial revolution? Would the explorers of the New World have come by plane? Would we be out of oil by now?
   
   Of all the people on this list, da Vinci is the one I'd most like to have dinner with, again assuming that we could communicate. He was truly amazing, the original Renaissance man.
   
3. What if Columbus hadn't gotten financing from Ferdinand and Isabella? Who would have discovered the New World, and when? Would we celebrate Balboa Day or Magellan Day? (If so, could we do it in the summer?) (Incidentally, you know how we learned in school that Columbus's contemporaries thought he'd sail right off the edge of the earth and never be heard from again? Not true: they all knew the world was round, but Columbus thought it was smaller than his detractors did, so that he could get to India faster by sailing west instead of east. He was wrong, and he and his crew would have died of hunger and thirst long before reaching his destination if a continent hadn't luckily been in the way.)
   
4. My first thought on contemplating the dinner question was to invite Arthur, Prince of Wales, and/or Catherine of Aragon, just so I could ask them, "So, how's married life treating you?" This question, specifically whether they were in fact married in every sense of the word, became contentious when Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine, and he claimed that she lied about never having consummated her marriage to Arthur. They were married for only six months before Arthur died, possibly of sweating sickness; Catherine got sick too, but she survived. (Sweating sickness is a great historical medical mystery in itself, but I digress.) There's no way to know the truth, of course, but when I came to think about it I realized the two great what-ifs here: what if Arthur had lived? What kind of ruler would he have been? In the Philippa Gregory novel The Constant Princess Arthur is presented as a wise and careful planner who wants to do what's best for England; as far as I can tell there's no real historical evidence either way, but if he'd lived his brother would have gone into the church, and there would have been no Mary and no Elizabeth, and England might still be Catholic. Alternatively, what if both Arthur and Catherine had died? Henry VIII would have become king, but he would have had to marry someone else, probably a younger woman who might have borne him sons. Again, no Mary, and probably no Elizabeth, although it's possible that he might still have ended up with Anne Boleyn and his subsequent four wives.
   
5. What if Mozart had lived longer? I don't know that the grand sweep of history would have been much affected, but I have to put this one in. Mozart was still learning, still highly creative, right up until his death. Can you imagine him and Beethoven having each other to play off of for 20 or 30 years? We'd have some amazing music, that much is for sure.
   
6. What if the South had won at Gettysburg? A lot of historical accounts have it that Lee massively botched his strategy and didn't give clear commands, and that if he'd had it together he'd have had a good chance of winning. Would the South have gone on to win the Civil War? And what then? I've seen a couple of essays advancing the idea that this would have been a good thing, that slavery would have gradually withered away anyway, and that the Union would have been reconstituted sometime in the early 1900s. I'm not so sure; I think this takes far too rosy a view of the South.
   
7. What if we'd foiled the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? I think it would depend on what losses the Japanese suffered in the hypothetical battle. The Japanese had already been at war with China and expanding their influence elsewhere in the Pacific; we might have left them to their own devices, at least for a while. Since the actual Pearl Harbor led Hitler to declare war on the US, the course of the war in Europe would have changed as well.
   
8. What if General Devers had crossed the Rhine at Strasbourg in November 1944? I read about this in the NYT just the other day: Eisenhower decided to be cautious and didn't let him cross. If Devers had successfully crossed and routed the Germans, as some historians then and now have thought likely, the war in Europe might have been over months earlier. The eastern and western European blocs might not have formed either.
   
9. What if Al Gore had been acknowledged the winner of Florida in the 2000 presidential election? (I think he did win, or should have won, certainly if they hadn't had those confusing ballots, but I know opinions differ on this. Work with me here.) Would 9/11 still have happened? If it had, what would President Gore have done? Would he have invaded Iraq as President Bush did?
   
10. What if we'd foiled the 9/11 plot? There would have been no war in Afghanistan and probably none in Iraq either, although by some accounts President Bush would have taken any excuse to make war on Iraq. (I really hope I'm around in 20 years or so to see what history makes of Bush then. I suspect that it will still think better of him than I do, but we'll have to wait and see.)

Simple

Lately I've been rereading The Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel. Grant first made the criticism about The Mammoth Hunters, but it still holds true: the Cro-Magnon people in the books seem like suburban yuppies with a strange predilection for living in caves. They (and Roxie's comment yesterday) do make me think about some of the luxuries I take for granted. In keeping with the holiday I plan to devote extra time to them this week.

So today I am thankful for:

• Clean running water. Have you ever considered how heavy water is? A short hike with a water bottle is enough to convince me that hauling my own would be way too much work.
  
• Water heaters. I've lived without hot showers for a week or two. You'll never get me to vacation anywhere that doesn't have them.
  
• And, of course, the modern flush toilet. Thomas Crapper (yes, really), we owe you.

Exactly What I Miss

As the days get shorter and colder I am truly grateful for the simple things: food, clothing, a warm place to sleep, more than everything I need, being able to give something back. I'm looking forward to spinning a rainbow, knitting a garden full of the color that's fled from the landscape.


More than anything else, I miss the light.

Elvish Sighting

My husband is at it again.

What?

Oh. So it is.



How's that?

Eye Candy Friday

For some reason lost in time, a few of the pictures I took with the new(er) camera ended up on Grant's laptop rather than mine, and I spent some time today while he was working uploading them to Flickr where I can get my grubby little paws on them whenever I want.

I didn't remember taking some of the pictures, including this one. Sometimes amnesia is a wonderful thing.

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for cats.


Callie tries to blend in.


Achilles is a mighty hunter.


Fluffy knows how to kick back.

Yarncat

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Things I Wish I Knew How To Do

1. Cure poverty, disease, and humanity's inhumanity. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, starting with my son. This one goes without saying. I wish I could do it; I wish anyone or everyone could do it. Since I know no one can, I do a little here and there, and I usually keep my mind on more mundane things...
   
2. Sew. On a sewing machine. Make it go whirrrrrr and purrrrrr and tacktacktacktacktack and, ten minutes later, have a high-fashion wedding gown. I know it's just a matter of practice, it's like any other motor skill — well, maybe not to wedding-gown level — but whenever I sit down at a sewing machine it makes a fool of me.
   
3. Sing. I totally love to sing, and I can barely carry a simple melody.
   
4. Dance. Or any other athletic endeavor, for that matter. I was born a klutz, and if I practice an athletic skill a lot, I can advance to beginner level.
   
5. Speak in public, without my words in front of me, and without having rehearsed them 50 times. I'm a professional writer because I'm too slow verbally ever to get the words right.
   
6. Fly. All right, so this one's not so mundane. I used to dream I could fly all the time.
   
7. Keep my house clean. Well, I could, but it would involve getting rid of stuff, and I'm a born pack rat. So are my husband and my daughter.
   
8. Travel. China, India, Australia, every country in Europe, a million tiny islands.
   
9. Learn every language there is or ever was. At least all the ones we know enough about.
   
10. Travel back in time. Really far back. Meet Mohammed, Caesar, Hatshepsut, the First Knitter. (The languages would come in handy.)

Imaginary Knitting

For a knitblogger I've been a bit short on knitting content recently. (Although I did show you my Pine Street Inn squares, and I would like to mention that my fundraising page is still accepting donations.)There's the seekrit project that I'm working on right now, and there's the seekrit FO that will emerge from limbo soon, but not yet. The next sock swap hasn't gotten underway yet, and I think I may have reached my limit of Red Scarf scarves.

So what's left? I am reduced to talking about knitting I haven't actually started yet. One such item is a pair of fingerless mitts for Miss B. As you can see, I have the perfect yarn for Ms. Purple-and-Green (who btw seems to have a mild case of flu or some similar virus at the moment: wish us luck), so it's just a matter of coming up with a pattern. Yes, I know there are some lovely ones on Ravelry, some of them free, even, but you know how I am. It will be something with cables, of course, you know about that too, but they can't be too fancy since the color variation in the yarn is already pretty busy. (Not to mention that there's other holiday knitting on my list.)

Double, double, toil and trouble...

Watch the Birdie

No knitting I can talk about. No interesting stories to tell, no deep philosophical insights. (You don't really come here for those, do you?) See the bird? Pretty bird. Watch the birdie.

Saturday Sky

Miss B's soccer team played their final fall game at home today. At the start of the season each team is assigned a home field, and hers got the high school's recently installed artificial turf. This seemed like a good thing — no uneven grass, no funny bounces — until we realized that unlike grass, artificial turf doesn't mind getting tromped on in the rain, of which there was an abundance today. The last game is always followed by a party, and the hosts of last spring's pool party were kind enough to host again. Grant suggested another pool party since the kids were already soaking wet, but he was overruled.

In honor of good sports and not having to make sure she gives me her uniform to wash again until next spring, I give you a September sunset over their practice field, prettier and much drier.

Eye Candy Friday

About 20 years ago Grant took up bonsai as a hobby. He didn't get all that far with it, but during his first flush of enthusiasm a friend with a mature female Japanese maple in her front yard gave him half a dozen or so of its (her?) babies to work with. The lone survivor of his fiendish experiments, then maybe a foot high, moved with us to our current house. Our first summer here was extremely dry, and we didn't water until it was almost too late for the grass, not to mention several of the plants in the landscaped area where we'd planted the maple. All of its leaves had curled up and turned brown. That fall Grant saw me covering its roots with leaves and grass clippings and asked, "What are you doing? It's dead."
"Probably," I said, "but just in case."


Reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated.


See the brown leaves under and around it? Miss B and I raked today — and raked, and raked, and raked. The real eye candy for me — nearly all the leaves having now fallen off the Japanese maple, not to mention the &#$*^!! oaks in and around our front yard — is being able to see the grass again, but I can't show you that, because by the time we finished it was dark.

I'll tell you one thing: if I raked leaves for two hours every day I'd be in much better shape. I'd also be clinically insane, but at least the grounds of the asylum would look good.

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...


bountiful harvests...


kisses...


having my camera when I want it. (Biggest sundog I've ever seen.)

The Old-Fashioned Way

Last winter at SPA Miss B tried a Ladybug in Amy's booth. "Oh, Mom, I really like this wheel," she said, clearly about to give me the sad-puppy face.

Whereupon Amy, may her name be praised, looked my daughter straight in the eye and said, "Start saving."

Which she did. I pay her a discounted family rate of $5 an hour to babysit her brother and $1 to clean a litterbox, and after months of saving diligently and only rarely buying a little something she was getting pretty close as Rhinebeck approached. It was clear that she wouldn't quite make it, but I arranged with Amy to pick up the wheel there anyway, because it's a long time between Rhinebeck and SPA, and I hate to pay for shipping if I don't have to. So I brought the Ladybug home to Miss B, but until tonight it was not entirely hers. Wednesday night is both choral rehearsal night for Grant and knitting night for me. On my return from knitting I went straight to the spreadsheet where I've been tracking Miss B's earnings, updated it, and, lo and behold, she was not only paid up but $11 to the good.

May we have a round of applause for Miss B and her hard-earned wheel?

And another one for Amy, without whom it would probably never have occurred to either of us that it could be done?