Five questions from @julian
Dec. 4th, 2024 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaThanks for the great questions, julian! If anyone would like some questions, let me know in comments. You can also give me a question or topic for a December post.
1) What's the most useful utensil or dish you have?
Behold the silicone spurtle! A friend gave me two of these at different times, and they're great for mixing up batter and then getting every last bit out of the bowl. Or getting the tail end of nut butter out of the jar. Or stirring coconut milk being heated on the stove. Plus, isn't that a delightful word? ("Most useful" that's more interesting than, say, the knife I always use to chop vegetables, or the frying pan I always make stir-fry in.)
2) When you were a kid, did you do Best Friends? If so, who was one of them?
When I was five or six, I had a best friend who lived nearby named Mary Devine. She didn't go to my school, and I don't remember how we met or much about her as a person. We ran around outside together. I remember that her mom Joyce was an artist and Mary lived with her dad Mike because her parents were divorced. I slept over at her house once, and woke up terrified because I couldn't move my legs. Turned out her cat was sleeping on them.
3) What's a good way to learn to listen to yourself?
I bet you have some thoughts! For a short answer, I will say, a good way to learn to listen to yourself is to sit with a kind, warm person who listens to you generously, and also models listening to themselves.
There's also that epiphany that listening to yourself is valid and important. I remember a long phone conversation with a friend some 25 years ago where I was complaining that various people weren't listening to me, and she said I might need to listen to myself. It was an "Oh!" moment.
4) Someone gives you $10M to start a foundation which you're going to run for at least the first year. (The original question I stole this from was $1 million, but I like to think $10 million would make it self-perpetuating.) What does the foundation do?
I've been saying that Universal Basic Income would go a long way to solve society's problems, so something with that. Unfortunately it takes a government taxing the rich and distributing the money to really make it go, so I'm not sure what $10M could do. Maybe help immigrants who just got here with very little get started. Also I don't know squat about running foundations (well, I know enough to know it's hard), so some of that money would go toward paying someone who does have those skills.
Wait, I would give the money to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. They're already organized to do good things with the money.
5) Do you wear jewelry? What kinds of things do you wear, if you do? What's a favorite? If you don't, do you do anything else to adorn yourself, when you want to feel adorned?
I do wear jewelry, intermittently, mostly silver with semi-precious stones like turquoise or eilat stone. I have a necklace I love by Scott Macdonald, a small smooth gray Columbia Gorge river stone backed with silver, topped with a silver twig and a little bird standing on it. Kind of like these earrings.
I got it at Art in the Pearl in 2018. I went at the end of the festival and did a quick walk-through, not expecting to find anything to buy. I paused at Scott's booth, drawn to this necklace, but the chain was too long, and it's built in to the piece. He very kindly shortened the necklace chain several times until it was just right. Not only do I have a necklace which is the perfect length for me, but it carries the sense of his capable hands retwisting the wires at the clasp with presence and patience.
julian! If anyone would like some questions, let me know in comments. You can also give me a question or topic for a December post.1) What's the most useful utensil or dish you have?
Behold the silicone spurtle! A friend gave me two of these at different times, and they're great for mixing up batter and then getting every last bit out of the bowl. Or getting the tail end of nut butter out of the jar. Or stirring coconut milk being heated on the stove. Plus, isn't that a delightful word? ("Most useful" that's more interesting than, say, the knife I always use to chop vegetables, or the frying pan I always make stir-fry in.)
2) When you were a kid, did you do Best Friends? If so, who was one of them?
When I was five or six, I had a best friend who lived nearby named Mary Devine. She didn't go to my school, and I don't remember how we met or much about her as a person. We ran around outside together. I remember that her mom Joyce was an artist and Mary lived with her dad Mike because her parents were divorced. I slept over at her house once, and woke up terrified because I couldn't move my legs. Turned out her cat was sleeping on them.
3) What's a good way to learn to listen to yourself?
I bet you have some thoughts! For a short answer, I will say, a good way to learn to listen to yourself is to sit with a kind, warm person who listens to you generously, and also models listening to themselves.
There's also that epiphany that listening to yourself is valid and important. I remember a long phone conversation with a friend some 25 years ago where I was complaining that various people weren't listening to me, and she said I might need to listen to myself. It was an "Oh!" moment.
4) Someone gives you $10M to start a foundation which you're going to run for at least the first year. (The original question I stole this from was $1 million, but I like to think $10 million would make it self-perpetuating.) What does the foundation do?
I've been saying that Universal Basic Income would go a long way to solve society's problems, so something with that. Unfortunately it takes a government taxing the rich and distributing the money to really make it go, so I'm not sure what $10M could do. Maybe help immigrants who just got here with very little get started. Also I don't know squat about running foundations (well, I know enough to know it's hard), so some of that money would go toward paying someone who does have those skills.
Wait, I would give the money to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. They're already organized to do good things with the money.
5) Do you wear jewelry? What kinds of things do you wear, if you do? What's a favorite? If you don't, do you do anything else to adorn yourself, when you want to feel adorned?
I do wear jewelry, intermittently, mostly silver with semi-precious stones like turquoise or eilat stone. I have a necklace I love by Scott Macdonald, a small smooth gray Columbia Gorge river stone backed with silver, topped with a silver twig and a little bird standing on it. Kind of like these earrings.
I got it at Art in the Pearl in 2018. I went at the end of the festival and did a quick walk-through, not expecting to find anything to buy. I paused at Scott's booth, drawn to this necklace, but the chain was too long, and it's built in to the piece. He very kindly shortened the necklace chain several times until it was just right. Not only do I have a necklace which is the perfect length for me, but it carries the sense of his capable hands retwisting the wires at the clasp with presence and patience.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-05 05:03 am (UTC)"I bet you have some thoughts!"
Well, sure, but I collect good answers to this one, and that is, indeed, one of them.
"...but it carries the sense of his capable hands retwisting the wires at the clasp with presence and patience."
Well. And isn't that a gift, all on its own?
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Date: 2024-12-05 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-05 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-06 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-06 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-06 02:52 am (UTC)