Knit Sisters

Happy New Year everyone! A bit belatedly, I know, but you are now talking to someone with two completed dissertation chapters and a third in gestation, but who is now, I’m afraid, officially a “fallen-away blogger.”

Better blogging times are coming, Lord, we just don’t know quite when…

Meanwhile, my university welcomed me to 2008 with some warm, fuzzy, and deeply American news: they would be cutting off my health insurance, in spite of the fact that I am now, and have been for the past five and a half years, a graduate student in good standing at Berkeley who has always been judged by my department to be making what they call “good progress” (towards what exactly is a larger philosophical question that shall not be addressed here).

The precise details of this health insurance debacle are, as all things with this “industry,” byzantine, maddening, and very difficult to convey. I shall attempt, nonetheless, to summarize: in order to finish a Ph.D. at Berkeley in any field that requires research away from campus (and that would be, ahem, many), a student will—for bureaucratic purposes and to save her department big, big cashola—be placed on what is called “withdrawn” status for two semesters while she is away. During this time, she has to buy her health insurance through the university as a separate fee, which costs her approximately $3000 for the year.

Since her stipend is somewhere between $15,000 and $18,000 per year (pre-tax), this poses a serious financial “challenge,” but one that can be surmounted by eating nails for a couple of months and never turning the heat above 50 degrees.

So far, so good!

You with me? Now, right before the student gets her Ph.D., she spends ANOTHER semester on what is called “filing fee” status, another bureaucratic category into which she is placed, like it or not. Under this status, she is also required to buy her own health insurance.

Here’s where things go off the rails. The insurance company that “serves” the university has made a rule that a student may only buy into health insurance through the university for two semesters. But this is in the extremely fine print, of course.

Those of you keeping score at home may have already realized that to finish the program the student has to buy health insurance for three semesters.

Folks, with “service” like this, who needs enemies?

I noticed this rule on January 14th, one day before my health insurance from last semester ran out. So I gave the folks out in California a friendly call to investigate.

Me: So I read this rule about the two semesters on your website and I’m calling because I wondered if I was reading that right.

Insurance Elf: Yes, you are.

Me: Well, that’s funny because my program—and I’m guessing many others—puts a girl on this kind of status for THREE semesters, not two.

Insurance Elf: Well, I’m sorry, but we have been enforcing the two semester rule.

Me: May I ask why?

Insurance Elf: We did a study and we discovered that the group of students who buy insurance while they are on withdrawn or filing fee status is small, but it is a high claims group. We needed to minimize our losses.

Me: (Pause to take in the wildly inhumane magnitude of this statement and to tear out a chunk of my own hair) So what do you suggest I do for health insurance then, Insurance Elf?

Insurance Elf: There are plenty of outside plans you can buy as an individual.

Me: Dude, I have researched those “plans” in the past. They have terms like, say, $2000 deductibles. You take a financially marginal person and give her insurance with a $2000 deductible and you have given her nothing but disaster insurance. There isn’t any “health care” about it. That’s just insurance so that you won’t have to eat mealworms and live in a refrigerator box for the rest of your life if you fall on the ice and break your arm. You can’t go to the doctor unless it is clearly a matter of your imminent death. You got mild asthma? Go home and f*cking gasp, little friend.

Insurance Elf: Well, we do enforce the two semester rule.

Me: I think you’ll burn in hell for this.

Actually, I didn’t tell the Insurance Elf she’d burn in hell. But I think she will.

So at the moment I have the disaster-only insurance. There is a chance that the insurance elves will make an exception in my case, but while they deliberate, I have to have some kind of coverage. (Revisit specter of a lifelong diet of mealworms and a refrigerator box home.) And the coverage can’t lapse or the health “care” industry will shaft me on the old pre-existing condition clause.

Now, without boring you with all the ins-and-outs of this matter, I can assure you that one way or another this will be resolved by February 15th such that I can have usable health insurance. But only because I am married. That is, either Berkeley will relent, or I can get onto Alex’s insurance.

So this isn’t really about me, even though my situation is all, all, all wrong.

This is about a broken, inhumane, indecent health “care” system that has been turned over to rapacious businessmen who prey on people who need medical attention and take decisions about health, healing, and well-being out of the hands of doctors and nurses and place it into the hands of people who only want to make a buck.

This is wrong. It’s wrong that companies are “minimizing losses” by making it impossible in practice for people to go to the doctor when they are sick or to get their medical care covered if they do. It’s wrong that we have so many people who are completely uninsured and so many who are underinsured and therefore in constant danger of financial ruin.

It’s wrong in a country where we have so much money and so many resources that we would allow this to go on. If ever a thing were immoral, this is.

I’ve been in such a toot about this that I have contacted all the major Democratic presidential candidates to offer my services to help them sort out this health care nightmare. I have told them that I will get my Ph.D. in December and will be available—just in time!—in January.

Unaccountably, none of them have had their people get back to me.

Everybody must be at lunch.

Or on the phone. Arguing with their insurance companies.

Last week we here in the Midwest had our own bad storm, but instead of snow, what we got was ice.  It was bad, bad, bad.

Here are my pictures of the aftermath.

                                                              This gives you a good idea of the amount of ice that was on every branch and twig.

                                   The ice weighing down the trees.

                                   The half of a tree that came down on my roof.

                                     A side view.

                                                          The tree split right at the base.

                                      The pine tree in my side yard weighted down by ice.

                                                         The elm in my back yard.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, full of joy and happiness and free from ice.

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that in my blog-absence, I have nearly finished another chapter of my dissertation. And if you are not pleased, I gotta tell you: I am.

Looks like we’re on track to have a mighty white Christmas here in the Commonwealth:

Photographic evidence, in case you think I’m just whistling Dixie. This is my backyard. And no, that apple tree does not fork right where it comes out of the ground. Normally.

Ain’t no way, no how all that snow is gonna melt in four days. We are just walled in, people. We’ve had three big snowfalls in the last week. Lord help us, this is getting to be like Antarctica in the winter, but with about 45 extra minutes of sunlight a day. And praise be for small sunlight favors!

You know how the “Polar Powers That Be” give a girl an extensive battery of mental health testing before she winters over in Antarctica, to make sure she is robust and fit enough not to go stark raving mad midway through the long, dark, cold winter ordeal and start shooting up blameless Adélie penguins while waving around a bottle of Sailor Jerry spiced rum and screaming about how global warming is a liberal conspiracy?

Yeah, well, I’m going to recommend to the Governor of the Commonwealth that the same battery of tests be given to anyone who wants to live in Massachusetts. Especially if they are coming most recently from California.

Shelley stalks snow birds in the japonica. All is merry and bright for the large predator.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I am a lady and I have crossed my paws to prove it.

I’ve actually done tons of knitting, but it is all a holiday secret, so I’m afraid no photos are forthcoming.

In lieu, I give you the Balerstein Christmas tree…

…complete with a dog rummaging through the packages in hopes of finding a pig ear or a large bone.

Happy winter holidays, everyone—and I mean whatever you may choose to celebrate to ward off the bleakness of December, even if it’s just the fact that you have a decent snow shovel, a huge pile of wool, and a working furnace. Stay warm, jingle your bells, and, of course, good luck with your own cadre of difficult people!

This is, after all, a time for family to gather ’round.

Maybe it was the comforting and creative turkey recipes you all sent, or perhaps it was five straight days rest (okay, there was that madcap codeine run to Harvard Square yesterday, but that is a nutty story of narcotics hi-jinks for another day), but I am thrilled, thrilled (!) to report that I was able to walk the dog for her usual three miles this morning.

And I am still awake to talk about it!

She, however, is fast asleep.

Don’t wake me, monkey.

You might think I’m kind of making a lot of a case of bronchitis, and I suppose it would appear that way if you didn’t know that seven years ago when I still lived in NYC, I came down with a case of bronchitis at the end of October, but I kept going to work, to the gym, to Halloween parties…I just kept up my usual schedule, albeit while hacking and coughing up alveoli everywhere I went. By November 2nd, I couldn’t walk around the block. From then until early December, I did not leave my apartment.

By this I mean I did not even go down the hall.

Long story short, the virus caused lung inflammation, I lost half my lung capacity, at the worst of it I could not raise my arms above my head because that movement compressed my lungs too much for me to breathe, and a good day was when I could sit up in bed for an hour or two. I didn’t resume anything resembling a normal schedule for six months. As ailments go, the excruciatingly slow progress of this was maddeningly like something out of the 19th century, except that I was not sent to “take the waters” for six months. Which was a shame.

At the time, the pulmonologist gave me a two-year horizon for full recovery and I have minor, but apparently permanent lung damage.

What was my mistake? I didn’t respect the virus. I didn’t understand that I was dealing with the Godfather of Viruses. By the time I got the picture, the Godfather of Viruses was saying, “You come here and ask me to leave you alone, but you don’t show respect, you don’t show friendship.”

That’s when you know you’re gonna get whacked.

I haven’t had bronchitis in the intervening seven years (thanks be to God!) and this virus seems far less virulent than the one I had in 2000, but then again, I know now. I respect the virus, children. I don’t push my luck. I don’t go out in public coughing and hacking and flipping off the virus in a whole variety of ways that makes it very, very angry. Because I know what happens.

You end up as a character in The Magic Mountain.

So that’s why bronchitis is a big, ole, hairy deal Chez Mad Dog. That’s why we’re hunkering down and knitting The Sick Socks and doing crossword puzzles.

I’m also making the Superior Ruffled Pullover, which looks like this so far:

If you don’t knit, this yarn will make you want to learn. 70% cashmere, 30% silk. Superior. Ask for it at your LYS.

And I’m slowly re-entering the world. But this time, I’m showing respect.

Today is Sarah’s birthday, so if you can leave her a birthday greeting in the comments, I’d be much obliged.

I’m feeling more than a little sad because Sarah (and my parents) were supposed to be here today—and earlier this week for Thanksgiving—but low-grade tragedy struck when both Alex and I got a bad case of viral bronchitis and were deemed “unsuited to host and roast” by the medical authorities.

It’s no joke, dudes. There is something powerful wrong with my monkeys.

Even more tragically, our last foray into the outer world involved buying a 16-lb. turkey in anticipation of a feast which never happened. In the event, we actually cooked the bird lest it go bad, producing—since neither of us has any appetite whatsoever—nearly 16 lbs. of leftovers.

If you have any great recipes for leftover turkey, bring ‘em on!

In knitting news, I have finished Rogue (remember Rogue, from, oh, a year and a half ago or so?), but I am waiting to model her on the blog until such time as I feel more spry. In spite of our bronchial woes, I am delighted with the sweater, which is all the more special because my sister spun the yarn for it.

This is big bananas, people. Stay tuned for photos.

And did I mention that this sweater fits and is attractive? Unlike, ahem, some creations.

Meanwhile, I have been knitting what we officially refer to as The Sick Socks:

This is about all I can handle right now. Trekking. Stockinette. Watching the colors change. Fun for the feeble-minded.

Oh, and since we’re discussing socks, I also made an elegant pair for Nasser from a lovely charcoal grey skein of Alpaca Sox, but he came and got them before I could snap a photo and whisked them away to London where he is wearing them today to do a reading in a friend’s wedding. I am quite honored to know that one of my creations is a world traveller and the chosen sock for a special occasion.

Here in the Commonwealth, meanwhile, we’ve got bronchitis and a frozen birdbath. So much to be thankful for!

Some of you have expressed concern that the blog posts have been mighty scarce these past few weeks. Thank you for you notes, all of you. There is an explanation for this: Sarah is very involved with some family issues that are consuming of her time and energy and I am increasingly in what I call Dissertation Mole Mode.

What this means is that on all days when my lungs aren’t kicking me to the curb, I get up very early, walk the dog, and then for the next seven to eight hours, I employ the secret strategy used by successful writers everywhere.

I put my butt in a chair.

And I write. This is very satisfying work, but I have to admit that at the end of it, I am not generally inclined to write more. Even about knitting. And life. In fact, at the end of the day, I got nothing left. Nothing left for nothing. Everything else has gotten pared back to get this sucker done—social life, knitting, blogging… I have gone to ground; I am the Dissertation Mole.

So bear with us. We’ll do what we can in the meantime.

For all of our American readers, we hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

And now, about those turkey recipes… Whaddya got for me?

Last week, my sister and I were having a discussion about difficult people. You know the kind we’re talking about. Everyone has had experiences with these types—someone in your family or at work who is irrational and combative, who likes to keep everyone else on the defensive or a little on edge, who throws obstacles in the way what should be the simplest transactions or tasks, who attempts to drive wedges between people and play one person off against another, who is vicious and wantonly cruel, but if called out on his or her behavior will claim that he or she has no idea what you are talking about and that you must be crazy or pathologically oversensitive.

You know the type. You probably have one in your family or office. A person you cannot easily get away from, a person of untrammelled malevolence, someone who makes your days long and fills your nights with dreams of homicide. You know the type?

One of our grandmothers—God rest her mean, twisted little soul—was a
Difficult Person, so we are well acquainted with the territory. Well acquainted.

But as a result, we are also less patient with this type of individual when we encounter her elsewhere because we know from long and bloody experience that nothing satisfactory is going to come of interactions with a irredeemably Difficult Person. Nothing. We learned this lesson as children.

And they can never take that away from us!

Sarah and I were discussing difficult people not only because we were nostalgic for the Golden Days of Yore when Grandma was still alive and could spoil an entire holiday with one exquisitely-timed vicious remark over turkey and cranberry sauce, but also because I—as is inevitable in this imperfect life of ours—had once again encountered a Difficult Person.

My patience and tolerance sorely tested, I was casting about for ways to cope. Then I remembered the lessons of the “Wisdom” column in Yoga Journal. Admittedly, I used to cast the hairy eyeball on the “Wisdom” column because I had come to regard it as—in the immortal words of one of the great philosophic minds in the Western tradition—”windy, New Age horseshit.”

But upon further reflection, I realized that at core, once you (ahem) cleaned out the stable, you really were left with some of the basic lessons I learned in Sunday School. Love your enemy as yourself. Bless those who curse you.

There was in fact a recent “Wisdom” column on the power of blessings, a power, the article claimed, that we all have within us and that would bring us, in return, abundant blessings. But there was one catch: you had to bestow sincere blessings on people you did not like. A Difficult Person, for instance.

A very deep, Sunday-schooled part of me found this mysteriously compelling. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could bless this Difficult Person and create a magical nimbus of positive energy and love around our interactions? Instead of, for instance, thinking of ways that the Difficult Person might come to be poisoned with untraceable chemicals and the killer never apprehended by the authorities?

So I set out to become a blesser of the Difficult Person. I’m a morning person by temperament and I start every day by walking my dog, an activity I greatly enjoy at a time of the day I greatly enjoy. What could be a better daily backdrop in which to bless the Difficult Person? The day is new and fresh, anything is possible, I have a steaming hot cup of decaf coffee laced with high-fiber soymilk (The Breakfast of Middle-Aged Champions!), and I am parading about my neighborhood with an overexuberant yellow dog. People, it doesn’t get any better than this!

Thus I set about the sacred task of bestowing blessings upon the Difficult Person. On Monday, I offered this blessing: “Difficult Person, may you be blessed with joy, wisdom, and the love that all of us deserve.”

Not bad, I thought, and certainly in the right spirit, but a little generic.

So on Tuesday, I refined my blessing: “Difficult Person, may you see that the road on which you have been travelling is the road of hatred, not of love, and the road of hatred is full of stones and home to scorpions. May you turn down the road of love at the very next intersection. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.”

And then on Wednesday: “Difficult Person, may you find the right blend of psychotherapy and psychotropic medications to transform you from a monster into a half-way reasonable person.”

Clearly, I had a long journey ahead on the road to enlightenment and ennoblement.

With my program of blessings degenerating quickly, I decided to take a new tack. An earlier “Wisdom” column specifically about dealing with difficult people had suggested that you invite the Difficult Person into your special “Heart Space” (I can only hope that we are meant to understand this as a metaphorical or imaginary space…otherwise, blech…) and once you envision yourself with the Difficult Person within the imaginary of your “Heart Space,” you extend feelings of warmth, compassion, and understanding toward the Difficult Person, inspiring healing, trust, and mutual compassion.

So I invited the Difficult Person into my imaginary Heart Space and I was sitting there with the Difficult Person, exuding imaginary warmth, compassion, and understanding, when I noticed that there were a couple of violent-looking heavies standing at the door to my Heart Space. Since they were guarding the only entrance or exit, I immediately recognized them as the hired muscle of my Heart Space, a pair of spiritual bouncers, if you will.

Though I knew it was wrong, I stopped exuding compassion and motioned toward the heavies. “See those guys?” I said to the Difficult Person. “Maybe they can help you understand that in my Heart Space, it’s my way or the highway.”

Perhaps this was not what I was supposed to glean from this visualization exercise. Perhaps Yoga Journal will learn of my indefensible Heart Space interaction with the Difficult Person and drop me from their subscriber list.

But I think my expulsion from the Garden of New Age Wisdom, should it come to that, would be worth it. Already I find that I feel better about the Difficult Person than I have in months.

There are probably many reasons to come to Eugene, Oregon in the fall, but this is not the least of them:

What I need to emphasize is that this is simply a representative tree. There are hundreds of trees like this. I can’t get over it.

If you get under the tree when the light is coming through the leaves, it looks like this:

I never tire of fall leaves, and this is why.

The University of Oregon makes its home here and it has a lovely campus:

The youth of today soaking up sun. And no doubt knowledge.

Downtown Eugene is also home to a remarkable yarn shop:

Soft Horizons Fibre.

The sheer amount of stock in this shop is remarkable. I’m almost glad Sean didn’t see it, because even for me, a minor, part-time employee of Woolcott, the envy was difficult to manage. Soft Horizons occupies an ENTIRE VICTORIAN HOUSE! The ENTIRE first floor—must have been five large rooms—is devoted to beautiful yarns, every kind of needle and tool you can imagine, knitting books, fleeces, and spinning wheels. Floor to ceiling fiber goodness and more Ashfords than you could shake a stick at.

As I was browsing this shop, I had an ugly realization. Back in Cambridge, we are selling yarn out of a closet.

I hasten to add that it is a very nicely appointed closet, we do an excellent job with our space, and we have many, many beautiful yarns. To paraphrase one of our profoundest philosophers of the modern battlefield—whose name I have actively repressed—we are going to war with the army we have.

I showed great restraint, inspired more by the already bulging suitcase I am travelling with than any genuine yarn asceticism:

Alpaca Sox in a colorway I could not pass up and Bryson Rosewood needles, the latter purchased both because they are so pleasing to the touch and because Bryson is a Eugene company. Supporting local industry and all that.

So if you are in Eugene, make sure you stop in to Soft Horizons. Here’s the info:

And now, I gotta catch a plane. Reporting from Boston again next week…

What a great week!

I’ve been to Texas and to Oregon in a whirlwind trip and here’s what’s gone down: two fascinating interviews that will contribute beautifully to my dissertation; the discovery of a marvelous yarn store in Eugene, OR (more on that in my next post…); fall color in Eugene that would have you halfway convinced that this is heaven (photographic evidence will be produced in a forthcoming edition); gorgeous East Texas countryside, complete with grazing cattle and horses (alas, no photos…I was zipping by in my Jeep…yes, a Jeep); and ample opportunity to purchase firearms!

And then this!:

On 7th Avenue in Eugene…Harvey’s Magic Emporium!

This one’s for you, Harve! I like to think there’ll be a magic emporium in your future.

Of course, there’s a downside. Yeah. I’ll show you the life of the mind: it’s very low budget and it looks basically like this:

La Quinta Inn interior. Anywheresville, U.S.A. Tell you what it isn’t—it isn’t the Ritz Carlton.

My knitting hangs out with Mr. Coffee, vintage 1976.

That’s the academic profession, a little frayed around the edges, a little proud of being frowsy, unstylish, and even ascetic. This ethos gets on my nerves a bit, the way it can seem so self-conscious and masochistic. It sure ain’t investment banking.

But then again, it’s hard to put a dollar value on the luxury represented by being able to think your own thoughts and to spend all your time on a project you chose and you find fascinating. It really doesn’t get any better than that. It’s the intellectual Ritz Carlton! No kidding. (It’s just that the room service is virtually nonexistent.) I try to remind myself of this wondrous fact periodically, especially when I’m experiencing various mild forms of deprivation. You gotta keep the celebration going, you know?

And the crummy hotels? Well. I’ve got a good imagination. I just close my eyes and I’m at the Ritz.

A brief note from Eugene, Oregon—a lovely place, though rather overcast—where I am conducting an oral history as part of my dissertation research.

There will be photos and updates very soon about my week on the road, which has included stops in Houston and College Station, Texas, and now Eugene, but with the first game of the World Series set to begin shortly, it seems only fair to point out that I have won my sock yarn bet with Laura.

Granted, this occurred last Sunday night, but it seemed in poor taste to mention it until the immediate sting of the Indians loss had worn off.

So, Laura? Pony up?

Oh, and, I’ll say this just this once, but if you bring it up later, I’m going to vehemently deny it: “Go Sox!”