Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 39

Okay, What About This?

The Nashville Plot: Dynamite the City, Terrorize the Country, Thwart the Civil Rights Movement

Then maybe with one of the color images of the Hattie Cotton bombing, since those are so rarely seen?

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from the Metro Archives

Sunflower Afghan

Is this the most beautiful thing ever or what?

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The pattern was delightful. Just the right amount of hard, but done in a way that really made sense to me, so I enjoyed it every step of the way.

Vacation Brain

I’m going on vacation next week, mainly to libraries, but, hey, for me, that sounds like Heaven. But it’s meant that I’ve spent this week being scattered and busy, trying to make sure that everything is okay for me to leave.

And I’ve been fixing some yarn. And by fixing, I mean untangling in a nightmare scenario.

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And I got some yarn so tangled up in my ball winder that I just had to cut it and have two balls.

Which, ha ha.

Something’s Not Right

Say you went searching for stories about “Jack and Diane.” All kinds of stories. You might get the John Mellencamp song. You might get a story about a president and a singer. Or a president and a princess, maybe? People might just have made up stories where the characters were named Jack and Diane. They might tell you real stories about folks they know with those names.

But say you came across two stories about Jack and Diane and in both stories a guy shows up and beats them both with a chair. In one story, the guy’s name is Ricky. In the other story, the guy’s name is Richie. Your first question might be “Is this story real?” and say it is. Say you find corroboration in the local papers that this happened or at least, that people were talking about it happening and believed it had happened recently. So, yeah, there’s still a chance the story was made up, but it’s more “real” than most urban legends.

Then say you look at the stories in the papers more closely and, damn, you realize one story takes place in one city and the other story takes place in a city a half an hour away. Is this Richard dick (ha) just going around terrorizing people with the same names? Or maybe, to make this analogy work, people with the same jobs?

Yeah, let’s say that’s it. You get two stories about a mechanic and a nurse terrorized by this Ricky/Richie dude. You can somewhat verify them. They take place in two towns near each other. What do you put the chances of Ricky/Richie being a real person at? At this point, I’m like 80% sure Ricky/Richie is a real person.

But let’s say you look even more closely at those newspaper accounts and you see that those stories took place 100 years apart.

Is Ricky/Richie still real? If he’s made up, how do you explain the similarities of the stories? What if you know someone whose dad was the nurse in the second story? Someone who can say “That happened to my dad.” Someone who genuinely doesn’t seem to know of the first story.

How are both stories seemingly describing the same dude?

I don’t have a good explanation for it, but I’m going to be back on the Something’s Not Right podcast this October wondering the fuck about it. Or the analogous situation.

Done In

Y’all, dyeing with the kids, round one, about did me in! And they stole my Kool-aid. Well, I mean, they also used it to dye with, but I had enough to use with my niece next weekend and now I don’t. And so I’m pretty sure they took some home to try to talk their mom into making it for them.

Which, ha ha, is pretty awesome.

So, I have yarn hanging everywhere to dry, but no good pictures of it, yet.

And the Butcher is going to dog-sit for me, so I can go to Birmingham and spend a short amount of time in their library looking at stuff. So, now I have to make a plan for what I absolutely need to see. And also make time to go down and take a look at Fred Shuttlesworth’s church, since it plays such a key role in my book.

In Which I Accidentally Make the Most Beautiful Yarn I Have Ever Seen

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Well, I don’t really understand how that turned out so beautiful, but I’m glad it did. I’m going to probably have to do something to help the yarn in the back, which is… less attractive.

Dreams

One drawback to finally having someone in power at work to come over and say “Yes, you can do this,” “Why are you doing this in this stupid hard way?” “Okay, let’s make some decisions,” is that, since this is not how things have been working, my brain is trying to process how to deal with it all.

And all week I’ve been having these really vivid dreams about work. Like vivid enough that sometimes, in my waking life, I’m like “Oh, shit, I completely forgot I needed to write a children’s book for dogs by this afternoon,” and then I’m like “wait, that makes no sense.” And I realize that was dream work stress. Not real work stress.

Anyway, this week has been interesting and fun and also very stressful. Obviously.

Indigo!

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This is the color I got from the indigo dye vat. She said I could come back and dye it darker if I wanted and I was like “No, are you kidding? This is the most beautiful blue I have ever seen.” It’s almost the exact same color as the black bean yarn, which… in fairness… I also thought was the most beautiful color I had ever seen.

I need to go to Birmingham. I have to figure out the dog situation. Like, can I do a research trip in a day? Can I not get bogged down in interesting details that don’t pertain to my question? Or do I need to do it in two days? In which case, who’s going to watch the dog?

Also, right now the book is called “Busy Looking the Other Way: Why Nashville’s Integration Era Bombings Remain Unsolved,” but I’m entertaining “The Rise of the Confederate Underground: Some subtitle I haven’t come up with yet.” The Rise of the Confederate Underground is better, isn’t it?

Half-Poppies

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I got my first three half-poppies in place. Just nine more to go. But I’m about to be hugely busy, so I don’t know if I will get this done any time soon. I am looking forward to seeing how the border goes. It’s just been a really lovely thing to work on. And I’m excited to see how it looks after being washed and laid flat to dry.

And my friend’s mother-in-law has an indigo dye-pot going! So tonight I’m going to take a skein to her house and learn about indigo dying. Basically all I know about it is that it’s magic and you do not want any oxygen in the mix (so I’ll have soaked my yarn for 24 hours before heading up there with it).

And this weekend the step-niece and step-nephew are going to dye their yarns for their afghans. And next week, baby nephew turns one! Already!

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Look, he’s already got that world-weary look of a guy who’s about to start a story about back in the day. He remembers what it was like before teeth. He’s out here working hard, standing up, saying “dog,” and kids today, they just lay around, waving their hands. They’re not even waving their hands AT anyone. They don’t know about “hi.”

Poor baby nephew.

Weird

So, get this. Our work day starts at 8:30. Not 9. But my old boss had us working from 9 to 5.

It’s weird. It’s not important. We’re not in trouble or anything for it. We just have to start coming in at the correct time.

But I’m fascinated by the psychology behind it. Were we supposed to be less concerned about other people not coming in until 10 or just coming in in the afternoon because we, too, were all flouting the rules? But don’t you have to know you’re flouting the rules for that to work?