Generalismo

I have been an enthusiastic makeup wearer in the past. I would watch all sorts of tutorials on youtube, and I have way more makeup than I use that I’ve accumulated over time. Then suddenly I came to realize that I didn’t enjoy seeing makeup on almost anyone that I saw in real life. There are a few people who come to mind as “tastefully” made up, but I am sorry to admit mostly I just don’t like the way people look with makeup on, especially foundation. If you want it on your face, that’s all very well and fine, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to doing so as of late.

People have left comments at youtube - presumably because my face is generally pretty broken out and blotchy - asking why I don’t wear any coverup. It’s ok; I don’t mind the comments. However, just as I don’t expect you to ditch the makeup for me, don’t expect me to start wearing it for you

The reason I write this note is because I saw three sisters the other day - two had black rimmed eyes that reminded me a little of Avril Lavigne, and the other one didn’t appear to have any makeup on at all. After I got “used” to the black eyes, they looked normal enough, but on first glance they looked kind of strange. Foreign. I felt like saying “You know what, you don’t need to wear that, you girls are beautiful!” But when I thought I looked great in makeup, that wouldn’t have changed my opinion much. I just would have thought there was a stick in the mud trying to make me less beautiful.

Soo…I’m not telling all of y’all to not wear makeup. If you really are aware of what you’re doing, and you want to do it anyhow, then I guess that’s you And it is possible that your makeup is perfectly tasteful and it’s possible, even, that no one would realize that you’re wearing it. And who knows, I might pull out the eyeliner one of these days for fun. And the purple eyeshadow

It seems as if makeup is grasping for something that we feel isn’t there. Beauty. When I take out all my makeup stuff to make a face, I generally have an idea of what I’m aiming for, and that’s to look beautiful - like beautiful women in magazines with long eyelashes and clear skin. But putting on makeup to be beautiful isn’t like missing the bullseye - it’s shooting at the wrong target. If you shoot at the right target and you happen to have a little mascara on, well, I guess you’re beautiful despite the makeup

One more thing - a turning point for me was watching a video on youtube of a Ford Model at a shoot and she said “Oh, I only wear makeup for shoots. In real life, no makeup.” (And she had a cute little foreign accent!). Then I started wondering if makeup is really just for the stage, or video, or film, or anywhere that you are not yourself.

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Isn’t that what my posts always are!

Today I did more exercise than I have in a while. I expect to be really sore tomorrow all over

I finished The Old Curiosity Shop, by Dickens, The Children of Húrin, by Tolkien, and started Hot Water by Wodehouse. I can heartily recommend The Old Curiosity Shop. The Children of Húrin was not as pleasant as I thought it would be, and a lot of the genealogy was confusing to me. The names are difficult to remember, and I found myself feeling like I was reading a history written for the natives of a land that was completely foreign to me. It was very unlike The Hobbit or LOTR to me.

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Today I started getting nasty comments on a particular video, Yodeling Lesson 2 With Bonnie, in larger quantities than has been normal. Then for some reason this morning I kept getting emails saying people had subscribed. I thought, Wait, um, no, that couldn’t be, could it? So I checked the youtube page and yup, the video had been featured sometime earlier today. Crazy stuff! I never expected that. But anyhow, since I update you guys on all that youtube stuff I do anyhow, I thought I’d let you know. It’s still there as of this moment at the bottom of the featured video list on the youtube homepage.

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I’ve been working on trying to learn some HTML. It’s been fun Frustrating, of course. But not all things that have their hard sides are that bad In fact, hard things tend to be more rewarding.  But that’s provided that you don’t despair midway and give up.  And if it’s a process in which you see little to no results  in a reasonable amount of time, it can be utterly discouraging. But generally, unless you’re doing it the wrong way, you begin to see results.

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Today we’re planning on picking blueberries with some friends and then going to climb a little mountain around here. Here are two views from the mountain when we hiked it last, a few months ago.

That last picture is the view of Mount Monadnock from the peak of the mountain we’re climbing today. I believe Monadnock is one of the most climbed mountains in the country.

From Wikipedia, I have no idea if this is accurate (I have heard it many times before though):

Mount Monadnock is often described as the most hiked mountain in the United States as well as the second most hiked mountain in the world, with 125,000 hikers yearly,^[4] behind only Mount Fuji in Japan, with about 200,000 yearly hikers.

4. Baldwin, Henry I. (1989). Monadnock Guide 4th edition
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Last night I went to play with a community band that I have not played with in a long time - they asked my sister to fill in for someone and invited me along too. As usual, I had fun in the trumpet section And I wore my grandmother’s dress. It was the first time I’ve wore any of her old clothes, I think, and I really liked it It was interesting to imagine how she was when she wore that dress - maybe she was just a little older than me. I miss her, and I can still feel her hug when she came to visit, or we would go sleep at her house Pleasant memories! I wonder if those will just continue to fade, or since I have visited them so many times they will have permanent residence in my head.

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Youtube has a neat thing called Insight - it gives you all kinds of neat info about your videos. According to Insight:

• 40 percent of my viewers are female and are largely in the 0-17 age group
• 60 percent of my viewers are male, and are in the 45-64 age group
• the how-to yodel video is currently the most viewed per day video
• Most countries are viewing Learn To Yodel the most - but Germany watches Bluegrass Runs more than yodeling
• collectively all of my videos generate about 800 hits per day

I think it’s funny that there’s such a difference between the male and female viewing population as far as age goes.

The good thing about music teaching videos is that people come back (I assume) to watch what they’re learning over again and that makes the hits go up Ok, so that’s it on boring data

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I skyped with a friend the other day and it was so cool. He helped me out with some guitar stuff and I’m psyched to play again I have been doing so without a timer When it hurts, I’m trying to just back off until it doesn’t anymore, and not just stop entirely. Hopefully this works.

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What would love do? When people are annoying, what would love do? When you feel taken advantage of, what would love do? When you feel insulted, what would love do?

It’s very interesting to think of that in practical terms - what would love do when cut off on the highway? What would love do when someone is rude with foul language? What would love do when someone takes something that belongs to you? What would love do if you were slapped in the face?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.

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Schedule:

• Day One: Arrive home at 6pm from a week away
• Day Two: Leave home packed for weekend at 10am; sing twice
• Day Three: Spend morning at a lake, sing at night (Alton Bay)
• Day Four: Sing at a church in the morning, get home Sunday night

I am so sunburned! I guess my tan “wore off” since I haven’t been in the garden much or working outside. I’m near the end of Day Three now (spent the morning at the lake), so our trip is almost over! And then we go to NY next weekend. (EDIT: No, I’m not! I didn’t realize we have two weeks off, then some singing, THEN New York.) But I’m not thinking about that yet (The mistake I just made is what I get for not thinking about that yet!)

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Is it better to be a pessimist and be pleasantly surprised sometimes, or to be an optimist and deal with disappointment?

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Someone gave me a nice little camera! I’ve been taking plenty of pictures, but the problem is that my computer doesn’t read the card and the USB cable I had that worked in our other camera is just the slightest hair too big. I’m not sure if it’s a specialized cable, or what. I’ll have to buy either a card reader or the right cable, and then I should have pictures to post

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Today I played volleyball. After I was out there for a while my throat started itching so bad, and my eyes started to water. It was so bad I could hardly talk. And then I went inside and it subsided almost immediately. Do allergies do that? It didn’t come back when I went out there a few minutes later.

I’m not in a very bloggy mood right now. I’m supposed to be somewhere else

I am so thankful for a bed to sleep in, though, and thankful for kind friends And for everything God has made. The moon has been very pink-red when it first comes on the horizon and it’s absolutely beautiful. Isn’t God wonderful and amazing!

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Here are some pictures from the weekend! We went fishing Friday night and I accidentally caught this one in its side!

Carol with the mountain We saw it from the rest stop on the way up to Northern Maine. It’d be fun to climb that someday!

I really like this picture of Carol.

I thought the cloud was kind of neat, and Carol made it look the size of my hand

What the road looked like.

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This summer seems to have just turned into a flurry of weekend events. Maine, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire. Wow. We do have a lot of New states here. What’s they do with the old ones?

This weekend we sang up near New Brunswick - close enough to see Canada from the outdoor stage at the festival we performed at. We were able to spend a little time this morning with friends in Maine, then we got home in time to have an hour before we had to go and run the sound system for a band concert - the Army Reserve Band and a community band. Time enough to grab supper! And catch up with a few messages online.

Do they have a name for the type of people who seem to fluctuate wildly between being sublimely happy and wretchedly torn? Oh wow. Now that I put it like that, I don’t quite seem to fit that. Well, maybe it’s normal to have slight highs and lows Whether you are on a high or a low, it usually feels as if you have always felt that way. Feel good, and and the bad times are forgotten. Feel bad, and the good times were never there.

Over the weekend we went fishing, I learned how to gut fish, and played volleyball. And missed some friends who were at a fitting for a wedding when we came to visit! (Ha! If you are reading this, girls, you know who you are. And you couldn’t help it, AND congrats on the wedding ) But enough of using a blog to get personal messages across Pictures should be coming soon, I’ll have to see what I can do about that tomorrow.

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My hands have had it I make a lot of excuses about my guitar playing these days. Mostly it’s just that my hands bother me. And they do. But it’s not without exacerbation from computer use. And the accordion is adding to it as well. I really want to be able to make music, not be a computer addict.

Am I turning over a new leaf? I doubt it. But I have turned to having audio discussions online rather than IM conversations. It’s easier on me, even though it might impede the other party’s ability to multitask. I cleaned my room while we discussed the principle of turning the other cheek, and the right or wrongness of revolting against the government. Two incredibly weighty topics. Feel free to leave your opinion, or start a discussion with me on those topics.

It’s really been fun this past month for me. I say that with just a hint of sarcasm, but mostly it’s true. I’ve enjoyed so many conversations with my sister, with friends, and the rest of my family.

How fun is it to be forced out of your comfort zone with arrows honed to strike to the heart of well-intentioned but weakly -believed ideas? It’s interesting, to say the least, to find that some of your long-held beliefs are very weakly supported by logic, and not even supported by God’s Word. It’s also interesting to note that finding theology in Truth is not a one-stop service. All of it is there, of course, for us to consume. But we cannot consume the whole thing in one bite. Will opinions change? Yes. Will God’s Word change? No. Is there a possibility that we have made a mistake on an issue? Yes. Will we be willing to humble ourselves to make the change necessary as indicated by God’s Word?

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