There’s a lot of stuff going through my head right now as I’m playing Mah Jong Titans on Windows vista (64-bit, because I need all that extra processing power to play a solitaire game, you know).

I’m thinking of the MLK observance that was held at my company this morning; how I wasn’t going to go because I had a lot of work to do and a meeting was scheduled right in the middle of it anyway, but then I heard the singing… the sound of a powerful black gospel voice. I went out to the atrium and lurked near the elevators pretending I was just on my way to somewhere else while I was really watching and listening to the singer (who turned out to be just one of a whole little choir) and I found that she was actually white, not black, and there were only three or four other singers in the little choir who were actually black, well, then…. what was I to think? What did the African-Americans think? I sneaked back to my desk, successfully avoiding all the cookies and cupcakes and bagels, and listened to them from there.

Then I was thinking that the reason I really don’t know what to write about in this blog much any more is probably because I don’t focus so much on material making like I used to, and since Happy Holler became Stormy Squalor and I moved away a couple of years ago, I don’t feel so much like exposing my secret world to the universe, even though it is wonderful and shiny and adorable in all its facets. I thought of a few funny things I’d heard recently and might pass along to my readers, but then realized that I mostly read them on other knitters’ blogs, and so maybe it would sound a lot more like plagiarism than actual amusing content.

Then I considered all the terrible flooding that has occurred in Washington in the last week or so, and the fact that more flood warnings are in effect through Friday night. Last year I was talking to a co-worker at a different company after the time when Chehalis had so much flooding that even the cows drowned. I told him I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose everything you own in a flood, only then I realized that actually I could imagine it, since it had happened to me as a child. Every time I think of May  1968, the picture that sticks in my head is my stepmother’s underwear, of a substantial size and former white-ness, strewn among the trees and bushes after the floodwaters had receded. And the fact that our beautiful little piano, brand new, was gone, as was our brand new black and white television set. But we survived.  In the present,  I lost my game of Mah Jong Titans and started a new one.

 And as I played the new game I remembered the NPR article this morning on the radio about autistic kids and how they have to be coached to have normal conversational responses, and I wondered whether autism can be selective, because there are some people with whom it is impossible for me to have a conversation. They say something, and I simply cannot come up with anything to say in return. Then a completely different person will come up and say something and suddenly I am loquacious, witty and verbose. I feel like there must be some element in the first person’s aura that blocks conversational synapses in my system. And then I lost again.

Third time is a charm, they say, and I began once again to match the silly little tiles to each other, unblocking others so that they can be matched and removed from the stack that is called the “turtle”. This reminded me of the turtles in the parking garage, though I mostly refer to them as speed bumps. They are not so nice but I do appreciate them when I am the pedestrian and not the automobile driver. Also, someone has painted pictures of windows, some stained glass, some with a fanciful view, at various intervals along the dull gray concrete walls of the parking garage, and these always make me smile. I don’t often park there since I walk most of the time, but when I do I appreciate the fact that the parking is free and that the spaces are wide enough to accommodate more than just a Smart car or Mini Cooper and allow you to open your door all the way. And then I won my game.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I can’t think of anything to say. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to picture that person who doesn’t inspire speaker’s block in me, the one to whom I respond with something approaching interesting conversation, and I will be able to spill forth onto the screen something wonderful and worth reading. Maybe.

After all my enthusiasm for the book, Jacquard’s Web was ultimately a disappointment. 

Though the truth that modern computers (unlike their human ancestors) descended from textile technology is fascinating, the narrative  in this book is sophomoric and unengaging.  I would much rather read a dry and boring, yet accurate and unembellished textbook than to suffer the attempts of an author who, firstly, fails to write in an engaging literary fashion; secondly, is obviously unable to comprehend the subject about which he writes and thirdly, shows an appalling lack of knowledge regarding the history of the age in which his story is set.  To illustrate the last point, he tells us of how Spitalfields in London became a center for English silk weavers just like its French counterpart in Lyon.  What he doesn’t understand, or at least failed to acknowledge, is that these silk weavers were actually French refugees.  They were Huguenots who settled near London after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had previously granted them the right to worship as Protestants without fear of persecution.

After giving up on the book, I consulted other sources with regard to Charles Babbage (he who used Jacquard’s idea of punch cards to evolve his own idea of an analytical engine, one of which was never built in his own lifetime).  Babbage seems to have been the first stereotype of a computer nerd, with no apparent gift of personality but with infinite obsessive qualities which caused him to, among other things, complain incessantly about organ grinder music in the streets.  This led the London Times to write in his obituary:

“He died at his residence in Dorset-street, Marylebone, at the close of last week, at an age, [in] spite of organ-grinding persecutors, little short of 80 years.” 

The obituary goes on with dripping sarcasm and ill-hidden innuendo, to describe the man’s long life and near-achievements.

Many of my technical colleagues have expressed their belief that the programming language Ada was somehow connected with Babbage, but few have realized that Ada Lovelace, though indeed a friend of Babbage,  was in fact the daughter of Lord Byron, that poet of  tragic young death and, incidentally, perpetrator of an incestual relationship with his younger half-sister, for whom Ada was named.  Scandalous!

But I digress.  In France, Jacquard was compelled by his own poverty to create a way for a handloom to produce more than an inch of intricate silk brocade per day.  Silk brocade was coveted and paid for by royalty, and Jacquard, as a supporter of the elite,  was on the wrong side of the revolution. When he realized which side was winning he conveniently changed his allegiance.  Luckily, this little fact was not discovered and later, when the famous loom had been invented,  Napoleon (a lover of fine rich silken clothing) paraded him about as a model citizen.  My cynical self wonders if Jacquard would have been as happy about “donating” his invention to France if he had not been somewhat fearful about being found to have fought on the “wrong” side earlier.

Babbage, by contrast, was born with the proverbial silver spoon lodged firmly between his gums; his motivation for producing his steam-powered cogwheel-laden “Difference Engine” and later the “Analytical Engine” was sheerly for fun, entertainment, egotism and perhaps the possibility of future fame.  Of the two, I vastly prefer Jacquard.

Meanwhile, back in the present, I am knitting away on the Curve of Pursuit. In this, the good honest Irish yarn from  Blackwater Abbey  in colors “navy” and “haw” seem to follow each other around a descending spiral, an effect achieved by short rows in miles and miles of garter stitch.  Luckily there is a new book in the background, The Voyage of A Summer Sun.  And it is good.