There but for the grace of...?

I tell you, weird stuff is happening lately. Both in the knitting world and to me personally. Because I'm a self-centered person, I'll start with the "me" part.

Last Tuesday a huge storm blew through town. A single, powerful bolt of lightning turned this...




Into this.




You might not get the full impact of the difference, so let me show you what else the lightning hit.



Introducing a section of my boiler.

Ex-boiler, rather.

As best as I can figure, the lightning hit the well cap (artfully tucked in the center of my hollyhocks, located about three feet from where I probably would've been sitting at the time) and traveled down into the basement (directly under where I would've been sitting), where it connected with the boiler. Which got so hot that the iron turned white, the controls melted, huge burn marks lined either side of the casing, and the manual sitting on top of it turned to ashes.

Yet somehow, by the grace of I don't know who or what, the house was spared any further damage.

The place has an eery smell of melted electrical wiring, the cat needs serious therapy, and I've just been forced to spend a heck of a lot of money to replace something that should've lasted me 30 years... but that's ok. I'm grateful that nothing worse happened.

However, if anyone can tell me a story of a culture, tradition, or superstition in which being struck by lightning is a good thing, by all means share it here. I could use a little reassurance.

The other weirdness happened in the knitting world. Last week word spread like wildfire that a prominent yarn company had just been accused of selling a cashmere yarn with no cashmere. The company issued its response, lawyers were brought in, vendors notified and reassured...

I know enough to understand that this is a potentially HUGE issue to be worked out among the yarn companies, their mills, their suppliers, their lawyers, and their wholesale customers. That it's not my battle, and that my energy would be better spent doing other things. Like calming the cat, who still jumps at the slightest sound. I know that this kind of brouhaha is happening now because the market is tightening, people are feeling the pinch, and they're starting to snipe at each other. We knew the tightening would come, it's nothing to worry about, but it is bringing to light some unpleasant behavior.

But the dispute is best left there. An ugly issue not to be dragged out into the street and poked with giant sticks.

And yet that's precisely what a few people did in the forums this week. It was a replay of something I've seen again and again. A conversation about heresay, gounded in few incomplete facts, that quickly becomes a fight between kids in the schoolyard.

"Oh yeah? Well you're a giant poop head."
"Well you're a stupid head!"
"How dare you call my friend a poop head?!"
"I've been here longer than you so I can say whatever I want."
"Oh yeah well I have more posts than you and we don't like people like you so just leave."
"Name-calling is not ok here, so take your dumb stupid head and go elsewhere! Stupid head!"
"Nya nya, I'm not leaving! I'm right and you're wrong so there!"

(At which point a crowd gathers, kids murmur "ooooh....", and a dutiful student goes running for the teacher. Which would be me.)

Only these are all grown adults. I presume they weren't raised by monkeys, so they should've known better. But they did it anyway.

What makes this dispute different from the others? Nothing. Which I find extremely disheartening. It's like we aren't evolving as a species. We just keep hitting the same wall without jumping over it.

Or maybe this is just a case of too much energy out there in the world right now, and not enough healthy places for it to go? Like that lightning bolt that found its way into my boiler. I'll stick to that theory, because I'd like to maintain a certain degree of optimism.

And finally, I send eternal gratitude to Stephanie for putting into words what it's really like to be a writer. Brilliantly put, and oh so true. Thank you Stephanie!