sewing denim
this fine silk thread and these tiny needles….flow through denim like butter. the needles require enormous FOCUS to thread… this silk or a single strand of embroidery thread….. but as you go, you get better and better at it. it also was discipline for small stitches, which i needed. I'd never hesitate stitching denim with these. and look forward to the repair.
that night i began the blog….made my way through Blogspot setup …..needed a name. typed in windthread just because. i loved wind and i loved thread. the thread is on the move.
" The Yana have probably been in Northern California for three or four thousand years. " pause. sit with this sentence.
" The Yana have probably been in Northern California for three or four thousand years. There are those who would double this figure, but in the present state of knowledge three thousand years as a minimum is a tentative conservative figure.
In 1850 ten or more years before Ishi's birth, the Yana occupied some 2,000 to 2,400 square miles of land recognized as their own; they and their Indian neighbors distinguished four linguistic territorial and cultural groups . In the little nation of two or three thousand people life was as it always had been. By 1872, 22 years later when Ishi was perhaps 10 years old there were no Southern Yana left and only some twenty or thirty alive. As for the 4th group, the Yahi, they were believed to have been entirely exterminated also, and so they were, except for a handful, Ishi among them. This death of a whole people came after the fiercest fighting and most uncompromising resistance that the intruders were to meet anywhere on the west coast."
excerpt from Nasty Women Writers. com Theresa C. Dintino Oct. 10, 2023 where she quotes Stringing Together the Bone Beads of History Theodora Kroeber this gifted from the thread link yesterday from LaceLady.
so…..i am feeling things anew, this hill, these trees, these rocks and boulders, this sky, all beings that have come to be here over time, over three or four thousand years
and the thread moves. in my own small time…. last week i was talking to Alyssia about Ursula LeGuin….Ursula K. LeGuin and i find now that she is the daughter of Theodora Kroeber. K is for Kroeber. and CatherinE notes the connection between the pic above and yurt making , her blog, and that led me to remembering Jude's workshop of Contemporary Boro…..to the Boro Noragi maybe i can make a noragi from this cloth? thread pulses.
having been caught unprepared when the temperatures got so cold, december, i used what i had for Minnow's bed insulation. It had been just all folded and doing nothing in the back room. so now, is a denim and literal mud cloth futon (less) cover. Can hang out here for the next week of Rain Days and when all's said and done i'll hose it hard before i take it to Alyssia's washing machine. or maybe should go to a laundromat? It needs some repairs and i think finally, a hemming. i really don't have anything it would be "for", but that's a whole lot of handstitching to just say goodbye to? thinking about setting up the tent i bought late last summer for Kid's sleep overs…..maybe for that? like a ground cover for the air mattresses ?
more toward fence line above area of Big Meadow. The time it takes for Earth to form the floor of a Forest. Years. Hundreds of them. Years for the trees to grow, years for them to mature and fall. Years to decompose, be incorporated into the earth beneath. How many human beings have walked here? This is the land of Ishi. Maybe even this very Hill at some moment as he made his way.
as i sat there, thinking these things, i remembered. sometime in the 60's i read the book. Ishi, Last of his Tribe Theodora Kroeber 1964 Have thought sometimes since here. Julian's school…..Ishi Middle School
in the 1840's approximately 400 Yahi people existed in California. Total Yana people estimated at 1,500.
1849 the Gold Rush begins
Ishi is born in 1860
1865 the Massacre of Yani people begins. 74 killed.
1866 Three Knolls Massecre. 40 killed. Dry Camp Massacre. 33 killed.
1871 Kingsley Cave / Morgan Valley Massacre 30 killed.
1870 – 1911 Period of Concealment a remnant band of 5-20 individuals of Yahi hide in the Mill Creek area of California, what is now Lassen National Forest which consists of 7 counties, Tehama where Mill Creek is but includes Butte where this Hill is.
November 10, 1908 a surveying party surprises a band of 4. Ishi escapes and hides.
October 1910 T.T. Waterman leads an expedition to Mill Creek in attempt to find. No contact made but they find "incontrovertible evidence of their existence in the wild state".
August 29, 1911 after the death of his family and other remaining Yahi, Ishi was cornered by dogs outside the town of Oroville.
Maybe he sat. Like i do. Looking out. Looking down. deciding.
Lassen National Forest…. named after pioneer Peter Lassen who mined, ranched, and promoted the area to emigrant parties in the 1850's.
Chronology Nancy Rokafellar USCF
for the most part, this is how it is. GREEN. more than ever before. Many of the grasses i had become familiar with are not so much. Others are More. Different wild plants have taken center stage while others that were in profusion are not. These last days the Goats, for the first time EVER, have not come for morning hay. I call them, they don't come. They're gone….off….here and there….they Browse. On Their Own. they WANT what's Out There. A different year. WAY more Rain. Things are happening. i am trying to notice without knowing. without needing to Know.
and the Friends, the morning Lizards, Uno and Dos continue to come. i get to Jack's gate, lean into the Sun and call out to them…..Friends! Hello! and after some moments……Ta DA…..there! One then Two we continue.
its been so long warm Sun
pause again breathe again
door open, only screen door only long sleeve cotton shirt. Only. Only SUN. only pause only breathe
"it is the heart……..speaking out loud in the clear air" David Whyte
i like to think the Universe says Metta for me
sometimes in the face of things, i can fall into a place where i think Metta is weak. that its words are naive, childlike simplicity But sitting, breathing, i think….is it not what ALL living beings would hope for?, Safety, happiness, strong enough body to carry you along, freedom from suffering, however your circumstance defines that
i would be like her. Present. in
any moment.
i had ZERO memory of this card.
i have gotten into the habit of keeping this collection of index cards on the Table. like now, there's usually 20 some of them. I write all manner of things. words i constantly can't remember and are on the tip of my tongue, driving me nuts, like IDIOM which i just now had to riffle through them to remember…..recipes or suggestions for foods, a spicy peanut sauce, where things are in town, how to empty the waste water thingys just stuff i forget that i dont want to forget and yesterday, i took the rubberband off and looked for something, i don't remember what in this moment, but
here this was. ????? How perfect. how perfect i was looking for something else and found This.
windthread 