Unraveled Wednesday: 7/10/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a mixed bag of making. There were several more potholders, one more bright one for me, and two in neutrals for a housewarming gift.

There was also a return to knitting on my Hitch On the Move. It's progressing, but I've still got quite a ways to go. I guess you have to actually work on a project in order to finish it, but my interest in knitting has waned as the temperatures have risen. 

Reading was a bit of a bust this week also. I looked forward to The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan and was happy to get it from the library. It was a much-hyped book, but I realized I was going to have trouble when I had to make myself read it. The Cliffs begins well enough telling the story of Jane Flanagan. Growing up in Maine, she came upon a deserted house, perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Jane eventually becomes a historian and gets a job as an archivist at Harvard. But then due to her alcoholism and inappropriate behavior, she loses her job and husband in one fell swoop. Jane returns to Maine to clear out her deceased mother's home, and she connects with Genevieve Richards, a wealthy woman who’s bought the old house and bulldozed much of its history so she can put in a pool. This is where I think the book starts to go off the rails. The author tries to do far too much, including lecturing the reader about the history of the Native Americans of New Hampshire and Maine, the theft of their artifacts, culture, traditions, and the injustices they were forced to suffer, the history of the white explorers and settlers of the region, the Shaker community, and spirits of the dead who haunt their former homes. And let's not forget the effects of alcoholism on the alcoholic herself and all of those around her.

All of these topics were related but the author did not make the connections in any interesting ways and the book just became tedious with too many characters, timelines, and points of view. It felt like Sullivan had done extensive research but then threw it all together into one book. Sadly, it was a meandering, chaotic, two-star book that left me feeling glad to finish and move on to hopefully much better reading.

I've read How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking three times, but this time I was focused specifically on what Jordan Ellenberg had to say about math, probability, polls, and voting. We're in the midst of some pretty awful political upheaval, and I need to find a way to think about it calmly and preserve my sanity. Some quotes I want to remember:

"There is a good reason to bet on "X" (candidate), but we don’t know for sure. There are so many people, especially pundits on TV, saying: “Now look, this is what’s going to happen.” And then somebody else says, “No, this is going to happen.” That’s a very different perspective to have on the future: to believe that a clear answer exists, if only we’re clever enough to see it."

"Feelings are for the same thing that math is for. They’re both for guiding your decisions and helping you select actions and helping you understand things. Relevant to your decision making is how strongly you feel about the outcome. So, yes, probabilities are about feelings."

"A good mental-health question to ask yourself is: What am I actually gaining from trying to figure this out now? Our epistemic situation when we know the outcome of the election will be the exact same no matter how hard we think about it right now. Our stress affects nothing."

This is perhaps easier said than done, but this at least provides a framework for me to deal with this cataclysm in a way that's slightly better for my mental health.

What are you making and reading this week?