vocab review: "movement"

The word "movement" has been getting a lot of play lately, what with Occupy, for example, and for those closer in to me, in the yoga world, by Sianna Sherman's Manifesto Movement of May.  I've been sitting here in my house grumbling to myself about how I think this poor word, movement, is being sorely misused, like it's getting the Hot Topic treatment and becoming available in every mall, rendered utterly meaningless and sadly, woefully powerless.

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Bibliomania

Earlier this year, inspired by other members of From Left to Write, the online bloggers bookclub I'd recently joined, I signed up for GoodReads.com.  I thought it might make it easier to keep my annual list of books read, something I've been doing for years, first in my annual Moleskine journal, then (now) in a sidebar and a dedicated page on this blog.  I also really liked that you could set a reading goal for the year.

I might have gone a little overboard.

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You are who you say you are

In the weird enchantment that is my life, goofy things happen.  Like last week, the day that Rebecca invited me over to tend bees and also possibly have lunch with Sacheen Littlefeather.  Who, I asked?  She said, Google her, you'll remember.  So naturally I did.  I Googled and then sat for a few hours doing "research," which is another way of saying that I rock-hopped around the interwebz and indulged in a documentary streamed to my laptop courtesy of Netflix.  

This is Sacheen Littlefeather.  In 1973, Marlon Brando asked Sacheen to take the stage at the Oscars and refuse his award for Best Actor in The Godfather, to call attention to the treatment of Native Americans in the movies and at the siege then underway at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

That's right: I had lunch with a woman who made history.

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habit owns me

The other day, after much hemming and hawing, inventorying and calculating, I pressed Submit on an online order of over $200 in beekeeping supplies.  None of what was ordered was unnecessary -- we'll use every single bit of it, especially now that it's highly likely we'll be bringing home Hive #4, an all-time high for us.  We shopped smart, compared prices, but when it came down to it, traded $200 for supplies the habit requires.  I am delighted but also have this persistent thought:  

Damn, that's some expensive honey.

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more goodies from the hive: lip balm

Probably the Grape Nuts commercial from my youth has affected me more deeply than I'd like to admit ("Many parts are edible").  And stories about native peoples and farmers and pioneers who wasted not any part of an animal they'd killed, using every bit for some purpose.  So when I fell on this recipe for lip balm that uses beeswax and honey -- two items we have in abundance around these parts -- this County Mouse had to have a go.

Giving credit where credit is due, recipe is courtesy of www.honey.com -- Honey-Kissed Lip Balm. 

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