MDS&W 2014

Last week was I was busy with family stuff – the usual necessary busyness. Although I did have a chance to see the original Japanese version of Godzilla (1954), digitally remastered, 40 minutes longer and much darker in mood than the U.S. version, with new subtitles rather than dubbed, and without Raymond Burr.



It's not a Great Movie, but it's got an indefinable something, enough to spawn 27 sequels, including the upcoming one. Japanese critics panned the original, but Japanese audiences who had lived through war, evacuations, the firebombing of Tokyo and other cities, two A-bombs, U.S. occupation, censorship, and fears about H-bomb tests thronged to see it and often were moved to tears. There are numerous references in the movie to the Bikini Atoll H-bomb test in March 1954, which among other horrors dropped radioactive fallout that contaminated the hapless Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru [Lucky Dragon 5], its crew, and its catch of tuna. By the time the boat returned to port, the men were dying of radiation sickness yet the atomic tuna was sold; a panicked recall did not account for all of the fish. Some 400,000 people attended the September funeral of the first crewman to die; Godzilla premiered in November. One can only imagine what it was like.



I also had a chance to make a very quick turn around the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, enough to see that the crowd looked bigger, more prosperous, and happier than last year, which I take as a sign the economy in general is also bigger, more prosperous, and happier. Although festival organizers would seem to be feeling a continuing pinch – admittance is still free, but for the second year they were asking for freewill donations (which I happily gave). The weather was shaping to be a challenge – there was heavy rain and flooding in Howard County just days before the festival – but all was well in hand by festival time and the grounds were only slightly more squishy than usual. I was preoccupied though, which may have led to a certain monotony in my fairings, at least colorwise.

2014 T-shirts, donor button, and Fiber Optic Yarns Paintbox Gradient, Foot Notes in Wild Thyme Gradient.

Hm. I picked up more Fiber Optic Yarns Foot Notes for my May Sockdown! sock, Camino de Santiago. By a wonderful synchronicity, the colorway is Once In a Lifetime. I do hope to make the pilgrimage one day.



All the comings and goings and toings and froings left me rather tuckered out, not unlike these sheep. It's surprising how fatiguing attending to serious stuff and having fun, and the constrast between them, can be.



There are a few more fairings, but I really am tired, so they'll be revealed when the time comes.