Crocheting Friendship

Sometimes I dream about the shows I've been watching or the books I've been reading before I go to sleep. I've even been known to dream that I'm still working after coming home from a late shift, the beep of the drive thru permeating my soul. But I've never dreamed a crochet pattern before.

Last night I was trying to figure out a shell stitch for a mermaid tail I'm planning to make for a Christmas present for my daughter. I kept consulting the pattern, one of the first chart-style patterns I've ever used. Instead of writing out the words, the author of the pattern draws a picture. This is especially useful if you're planning on using a pattern from the other side of the Atlantic; a double crochet in the US is called a treble crochet in the UK, and a US single crochet is a UK double crochet. (Who knows what they call a single crochet over there... and where slip stitches come into it.) This particular pattern was from across the pond, so instead of trying to figure out as I read, I used the picture, with its ovals, plus signs, and Orthodox crosses.

As I worked, I feverishly tried to make sense of what I was seeing; to make the picture into a tangible thing with yarn. I had to understand the symbols on the page, translate them from "someone else"-ish into "me"-ish. I had to make the pattern my own. I worked hard at this until my eyes were drooping. I set the yarn and the three rows or so onto my bedside table.

And the pattern entered my dreams.

I was still seeing a crochet pattern, only I knew that it wasn't a pattern for a mermaid tail. It was a person. It was a person in crochet pattern form, and I was struggling to understand it. Why had it been written that particular way, and was there anything I could do to change it, to help it, to make it better? I tried to understand it while trying to remember that because it wasn't me that I shouldn't place the same expectations on it that I had for myself. It was a different person, with different experiences in life, and it didn't see the world the way I did. I wondered if we would understand each other better if there was a way for me to show it how I saw the world, so it could understand my point of view, and if I could see the reasons why it saw the world the way it did, if that would help me understand why it did the things it did.

It was a weird dream.

Maybe what I should take from it is that getting to know someone new is like trying to read a crochet pattern. First you have to figure out the style of writing used by the person who wrote it, and only then will the information it's trying to convey make sense. Like we don't realize that we're all speaking different languages. It sounds like the same words we speak, but we don't have the same experiences as the person speaking the words, so we can't know what those words really mean to them.

The statement "the dog died today" could mean many different things depending on who said it, who heard it, and the dog in question. Maybe both people hated the dog because it stole their dessert every day and then pooped on their beds. Maybe the dog was their best friend from childhood and had suffered a long illness. Maybe the dog had just turned up on their doorstep a day earlier smelling like it had been rolling in week-dead goose.

Every situation, every word, every interaction is different for every person participating in it. We have to translate if we want to understand. And sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. Sometimes we want to give up.

But if we don't try to understand, we'll never know. If we put in the effort, the time, if we're willing to learn and see the world through someone else's eyes, then we may end up with something beautiful.

A mermaid tail.

Or a friend.

First Impression: 750 Words

Yesterday I found this fun website called 750 words. It's a free writing tool to help writers set and keep writing goals, and sharpen their skills by practicing them every day. It's got a function that keeps track of how many words you're typing as you type them, and saves your work every couple of seconds. After you're done you never have to look at your writing again, so lots of people use it to journal and get bad feelings out by writing them down.

I have a lot of trouble free writing. I never saw the point. To me, if you're going to write something, you should take a little time and think about what you want to say before getting it down. I like to edit as little as possible. I was the one always getting in trouble during English class because I'd glare at the clock during free writing instead of putting a pencil to the page. "I don't know what I want to write!" I'd protest to my frowning teacher. "Then write THAT!" she'd reply. My glare would grow deeper, because I knew in my heart that writing "I don't know what to write" is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME, and of my writing talent. If you're going to write, write something interesting.

Anyway.

What makes 750 Words even more fun is that when you're finished, it shows you all kinds of stats about your words: how long it took you to get them down, how many breaks you took during that time, and how many words you typed per minute. Then, it shoves eight or nine pie charts in your face, showing you the main feelings of your writing. Yesterday I wrote about a game I'm playing called Neko Atsume (Kitty Collector), and mostly whined about the money mechanics, so my stats for that day say that I was mostly "self-involved." Well, yeah, but it wasn't a bad thing. There was also a chart that informed me that I spent most of my words on the subject of money. I didn't need a colorful pie chart to tell me that, but it's pretty, and I like the font. There are a few bar charts near the bottom of the page that I'm not sure about yet, but since today I'm writing about something completely different, I'm hoping that I'll be able to puzzle them out when I look at my stats from THIS piece.

I had so much fun with the site yesterday that I told my very-busy-doing-National-Novel-Writing-Month writing partner about it so that she could check it out if she wanted to. I don't like to recommend things to people unless I know they're not going to come back to me and say "hey, this thing you told me to check out is crap; why did you tell me about it?"

So that's why I was so disappointed this morning, when I was poking around on the site and saw a teeeeeny tiny bar at the top that said something along the lines of "you're enjoying your 30 day free trial of 750 words!" And I was like... "Um, I'm WHAT?"

Usually when a site makes you pay to use it, they won't let you sign up for any kind of free trial without giving them the goods so that they can start charging you the second your month ticks over. But there was NOTHING about paying after a certain time, or paying at all, when I signed up. Just name, email address, password, make sure your password is right. No check box for a terms of service, making sure I knew what I was getting into, nothing.

I was really looking forward to using the website to get back into the habit of writing every day, since it was super easy for me to fall out of it. And based on some of the things that other users are saying, it's a really fun way to do it... and it gets addicting. "We hook you with the free Flamingo Badge, and you'll be paying us five bucks a month for the Super Squirrel Badge!"

I guess I'll stay... I mean, I do have 30 days. I really enjoyed taking days off of writing, though, and just relaxing on the weekends, back when I was posting every weekday on my blog. If I'm going to pay to write, I'd feel bad taking a day off to relax, even if I needed one.

Also, there's no italics. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT ITALICS. (Apparently caps lock will have to do.)

I mean, how fun is that?! (Answer: SUPER FUN!!!)

Reddit for Writing Prompts

“What’s everyone doing on this fine Tuesday?” she tweeted to her followers.

“I’m probably going to head over to tumblr and find a writing prompt,” I tweeted back.

“There’s a Reddit for Writing Prompts, too! If that helps!” she replied.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that around for future reference,” I assured her.

What is even
happening here

Then I googled “Reddit for Writing Prompts”

Then I googled “seriously how do I even use reddit”

I generally tend to stay away from stuff online that will take a week and a half to learn how to navigate. And I’m even more apprehensive about reddit, which I only ever hear bad things about. It’s as though the entire website is holding a sign that says “abandon hope all ye who enter; here there be trolls.”

It’s even more intimidating because I know there’s a reddit for, like, everything. Cows? Probably. Chick Fil A? Most likely. Sandwiches? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Also I have no idea what’s going on with any of the millions of arrows all over the place. Am I supposed to use them to like/not like certain posts? There are too many, and I am afraid I will be overwhelmed by reddit's cascades of arrows.

Even though I’m weirded out by the confusing website and convinced half the people who use the site will be jerks to me, once I calm down enough to actually look at some of the writing prompts, it’s actually pretty cool. There are some good ideas, and not just for original fiction. Today I saw a suggestion for a Harry Potter/House M.D. fanfiction crossover, and another for a Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares/Breaking Bad fanfiction crossover. There were several ideas for “last person on earth” stories, and a few for scenarios involving characters being at the gates of heaven. The most interesting prompt was “A time traveller from the 1930s travels to modern day in his time machine and wonders why his invention never caught on.” But my favorite was “You are part of a powerful order of mages. Some control fire, others, water. You however... Have the power of bread. That's right, you're a bread mage. Tell me about your day.”

So even though I’ll probably never sign up and actually learn how to use reddit, I might head over to the writing prompts if I ever need an idea, or just a laugh.

Catmobile

Bringing a brand new kitten into your home is an experience. It has lots of energy, and if you go to the trouble of training it, it might do what you say.

Adopting an older cat is another kind of experience entirely. That cat is set in its ways. It's probably not going to play with that feather on the end of a stick unless it feels like it. It may not even want to sit on your lap and purr, unless it's an incredibly inconvenient time for you. If you try to train it, it's going to look at you like, "What are you doing? I'm the one doing the training here."

It's the same thing with cars. Buy a brand new one and it will go 0 to 60 in however many seconds that the salesman promised it would. And the air conditioner will run. And the power windows will work when you want them to. And you won't have to let it run for at least ten minutes before it will let you use the windshield wipers.

Adopting an 18+ year old car is different. It might not want to sit on your lap and purr unless it wants to, and you're just going to have to learn its eccentricities, and learn to love them. That thing is set in its ways, and you're going to have to live with them. So have a good time turning the air conditioner on and off until it decides it wants to cool the vehicle.

Welcome to the family, Maurice.

Zither

Sometimes we say things we don’t mean. I’m not referring to words spoken in anger, but rather colloquialisms. Certain phrases that would mean one thing to a non-native speaker mean something completely different to someone who knows the story behind them. This is why, when I took Chinese a couple of years ago, our teacher would occasionally hand us all a story to learn about the meaning behind a Chinese phrase.

One day we read about a learned scholar and musician traveling alone along a country road. He was a rather conceited man, and jumped at every chance to display his superiority to others, whether it was by besting them in debate or by demonstrating his considerable musical skills. It had been some time since he had met anyone on his journey, and when you’re the sort of person who is better than everyone else, it’s hard to go a long time without showing off. There happened to be some cows in a nearby field, and since the scholar tended to consider other people on the same level as the beasts he was passing, he decided they would do. He’d show them. There was no way those cows could fail to be impressed by his skills. He unstrapped the zither he was carrying on his back, sat down in front of the lovely stringed instrument, and began to play beautifully. The cows, to his annoyance, continued chewing their cud and grazing on the occasional bit of grass. The scholar continued playing, getting more and more annoyed that his exquisite work was going unappreciated. What the scholar did not understand is that he was wasting his time; cows don’t understand music.

The Chinese phrase, 对牛弹琴 or “playing zither to a cow” is the equivalent of the English phrase “howling at the moon” or “don’t cast your pearls before swine.” Basically, you shouldn't put a huge effort into doing something that you know means nothing, since you’re just wasting your time and ability.

But perhaps what the scholar should have tried was some jazz. Cows apparently like that quite a bit.

Obligatory “When the saints come marching in” joke goes here

The Dancing Snipe Conundrum

It all started with a silly viral video. This viral video:

Not much to see. A cute bird strutting to the beat of some Daft Punk coming out of the windows of a nearby car. That was not what began the conundrum, however. It was the explanation that accompanied the video, a claim that the bird in question was, in fact, a snipe.

My first reaction was to scoff, “snipes aren’t real!”

My second was to search just to make sure.

A sparse wikipedia article did not do much to confirm or deny the theory. Of the three small sections it contained, one was dedicated to my own knowledge of the mythical bird: snipe hunting.

Snipe hunting was a huge joke for those who were in on it and an embarrassing memory for those who were not. “Dude, you’ve never heard of snipe hunting? We should go this weekend!” The “experienced” hunters would give the first-timers a bag with which to catch the elusive prey, and take them out into the night, claiming excitedly to see the birds and attempting to chase them into the waiting hands and bag of the unenlightened hunter. Bruised, scratched, and empty-handed, the discouraged hunter returned home with his friends, who finally revealed, laughing, that there never was any snipe, and the whole thing was just to make him look foolish.

The wikipedia article even claimed that the word “sniper” was given to military sharp shooters because the unusual flight path of the bird makes it very hard to hit.

Despite finding a link to a reputable-looking bird watcher website which had many pictures and videos of its own, I still felt that the internet was trying to trick me. I was determined not to be left standing in the middle of a field in the dark, holding a bag while the entire internet laughed at the fact that I’d bought into the idea of a fictitious bird.

The only thing left for me to do was to contact the finest ornithologist-without-an-ornithology degree in the world: my grandmother. I left her a long phone message about my confusion, and went for information at the next best source.

“I think they’re real,” said my mother.

“I want Grandma and one of her books!” I complained. “I won’t believe it until I see the book or Grandma tells me.”

“I’ve got one of her books,” my mother said, and soon reappeared with The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, which was all the more trustworthy because its red plastic cover was attempting to escape the rest of the book.

“Common Snipe,” the index reported, “pgs 214, 446, 822.” Page 214 held a lovely color photo of the bird I’d already seen in the videos I’d watched. Page 822 revealed that the snipe is still considered a game bird, legal to hunt. Page 446 was the one I would have accepted as Grandma’s truth, for it held a map of the bird’s habitat, and added, “it stays well hidden in ground cover, flushes abruptly, and zigzags sharply in flight.”

Well, fine. I guess a snipe is a real thing. But you’re not going to catch me hunting it with a bag or a gun. But if I ever see one, I’ll definitely crank the radio so that we can dance together.

The Writing on the Wall

“I love a good spring cleaning,” my aunt told me, the memory of past springs and hope for future cleanings sparkling in her eyes. “I get my husband to help me carry all the rugs downstairs to be washed, and then I sweep and vacuum everything and wipe down all the walls.”

“You clean the walls?” I asked, skeptical.

“It makes the house feel so much cleaner!” she insisted.

When I got up today, the early morning sun was filtering across my kitchen floor. It was a lovely and inspiring scene, and filled me with determination. It also showed me that I needed to sweep the floor.

I figured that while I was sweeping, I might as well give the counters a good scrub. And then it’s not much of a stretch to go from wiping down the counters to testing the wall-cleaning theory.

I scrubbed, still skeptical, and then looked at the paper towel when I was finished.

I guess the writing on the wall says I’m ready for some spring cleaning.

Pi

This morning I asked my phone if there were any computers currently calculating pi. It pulled up a couple of different articles from August of 2010 about two men who built a computer for that express purpose. It took three months for their machine to find the five trillionth digit.

I think pi is a metaphor for the universe. We think we can see pretty clearly what it is, but when we take the time to look a little harder and learn a little more, the possibilities for discovery are vast, and vastly expanding.

Happy Pi Day!

Hesitance

I’m old enough to remember hand writing papers for high school. Sometimes I typed them up and printed them, but I didn’t start doing that exclusively until college. Today, I hardly write anything on paper, since the place I need it to be is on the computer anyway.

I use Google Drive to store my documents. All of them. Hardly any of my writing is stored on my computer’s hard drive, and the reason is simple: I don’t trust it.

Those three heartbeats worth of blind panic when you’re not daring to breathe as though that would bring back your lost file is not a moment that I enjoy living through. I’ve lost plenty of homework and personal writing work because the computer I was working on decided to die forever.

That Vader-esque “NOOOOOOO” feeling is not pleasant, nor is the look on the professor’s face when you’re asking for an extension to re-write what your computer lost, the one that is trying to decide whether the bags under your eyes are there because you waited until the last minute (and let’s face it, you did) or if they are truly evidence of your frustration with the faith which you put in your computer.

So my reluctance to use a writing program that stores things on my hard drive instead of my computer is understandable. I’ve heard that Scrivener is a really great program. It certainly looks interesting, with its vows to organize everything from various projects and its zillions of folders, but I’m still hesitant.

One thing I know I can’t do with Scrivener is easily share something online. And I can’t work on a problem sentence in the same document at the same time as my writing partner. Those are things I can do in with Google Drive.

I’m happy with the way I work. Learning a whole new software program seems like a lot of work for who knows how much gain. And what if my computer dies and loses all of everything? There’s no ‘undo’ button for a crashed hard drive.

I’m not sure about Scrivener yet. We’ll see… I’ll reserve judgement for when I’m done with this 80 page tutorial.

TableTop: Cards Against Humanity

“The main reason I created #Tabletop was to make more gamers. I love it when I see families playing together.” @wilw, April 6, 2013

I’ve seen a lot of advertisements recently for board games. “Have family time with your kids! Play a board game!” they shout. It’s probably just Hasbro trying not to go broke, but it could be that in this world of handheld computers, with everyone paying attention to their smartphones instead of the smart people sitting with them on the couch, a family game night is a great way to reconnect with the people that you love to spend time with.

There are tons of games out there to play with your kids, your friends, or your extended family. Some are a huge production that take hours and hours to set up before you can play, and others need only the players to have a willingness to be silly. Sometimes just watching the game is as fun as playing it; if that sort of thing appeals to you, you’ll want to look into TableTop.

Dungeons & Dragons takes too much time to prep and doesn’t have enough monster-bashing? Try Munchkin, in which you can “Kill the Monsters, Steal the Treasure, Stab Your Buddy.” I’ve played both D&D and Munchkin, and enjoyed both. D&D often has more story and less stabbing, while Munchkin has less story and more stabbing, but they’re both in the same genre, and if you’re pressed for time, Munchkin is the way to go. (If you’d rather have both the story and the stabbing, there’s luckily a Munchkin pen & paper RPG made by Steve Jackson Games! I walked in on my regular gaming group playing it once and was astonished to find that they’d never played the card version. Needless to say, we remedied that immediately.)

My husband and I loved watching the TableTop episode that featured Say Anything. It reminded us of a game we play every holiday season with his family, especially the copious laughter and the Star Trek references. (The line, “I think the most confusing thing ever is magnets. Also: juggalos” made me laugh so hard that we had to pause the show and wait for me to stop rolling on the floor before we could finish watching the episode.)

If you’ve never heard of Apples to Apples, I would suggest you acquaint yourself. It’s completely simple and tons of fun. Green cards have words that the red cards can be used to describe, and each person takes a turn choosing which of the red cards everyone else handed in matches the green card the best. It’s fun to laugh at the different random, off the wall things that other players say, and my favorite Apples to Apples quote is from a game I played with my brother and several of our friends in 2005(ish): “Marriage is nothing compared to rust.” I can’t even remember who was judging or what the green card said, just that “marriage” lost out to “rust.” Apples to Apples is an innocent game that can become rather rude depending on your mood and the people you’re playing with.

Cards Against Humanity, however, starts out that way. A co-worker described it to me recently as “Apples to Apples for horrible people.” And that’s not far off from the motto on the CaH website. Cards Against Humanity is free, and last night some friends of mine and I decided to give it a try. Teaming up a Skype voice call with Vassal (“a game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games and card games,”) allowed us to play together, even though we were all in different places, trying to keep the volume of our laughter down so that we wouldn’t wake our kids.

I definitely stole this picture from wwdn.

There isn’t a Cards Against Humanity episode of TableTop, perhaps because it’s a show that a lot of people let their children watch, and it can get out of hand very quickly on the “not suitable for those under X” scales. But Wil Wheaton enjoys it, and if you meet him at a convention and bring along a blank card, he’ll make a custom one for you. He often posts pictures of the CaH combinations he’s seen or created on the various social networks he uses and on his blog.

If you’re a horrible person, I recommend Cards Against Humanity. If you’re not a horrible person and like to watch hilarious (and/or nerdy) people play games, I recommend TableTop. If you don’t like to watch or read about board games, then please disregard all of the above.

Internet Inspiriation

Crafters, since the ancient days, have formed groups and cabals and societies. We have shared recipes, patterns, and materials, and have encouraged one another while providing ideas for new things to craft.

Before the internet, there were meetings and craft circles, books and magazines.

Now, we have everything we could want at our fingertips. Craft websites have tons of free ideas, forums to share tips and ask for feedback, and even times for offline meetings to discuss projects with other crafters in real life (as it was in the beginning).

(c) Ravelry LLC

Ravelry is an amazing online group of knitters and crocheters. On Ravelry you can buy and sell patterns, make friends and join groups, and recieve the kind of fuzzy warm feelings that only hanging out with other people who love their craft as much as you do can give.

(c) 2013 Etsy, Inc

Etsy is a lovely website for selling vintage goods, handmade goods, and craft supplies. You can sell your creations or buy those of others. Or, if you’ve got ten hours or so and a credit card with a high limit, you can buy every single thing. The work of the sellers on Etsy is remarkable: it’s intricate, exquisite, and breathtaking. You can buy art for your walls, custom shoes for your feet, or an engagement ring for your betrothed.

(c) 2013 Pinterest

Pinterest is a website for everything. I have not signed up or spent much time on it myself, but I have heard many harrowing tales of its capability to suck out your soul, and when you emerge from it, you may find that a week has passed and you don’t remember anything but sleep, eat, and Pinterest.

I have come to the realization that I probably need to join. Sometimes Pinterest will let you look at cool craft ideas, and sometimes it bars you and holds out its hand for your username and password. I want to be able to be inspired by ideas that brides have for photo booth props, but at the same time I’d rather keep my soul intact.

My mother said, “Honey, I’m sure it’s not that bad. You can keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed by a website.” But she hasn’t heard the urban legends that I have. I’m scared.

The internet is a wonderful new tool used by crafters everywhere. Scrapbooking websites and blogs, the facebook pages of famous chefs, and crafting communities all over the internet are inspiring, aiding, and sharing wonderful ideas for crafters today, just as crafters have always done.

I’m off to join Pinterest. If I never return, at least you will know what happened to me. You’ll be able to warn others to beware.

Away Uniforms

There is a lot of stuff to learn when you start actually paying attention to a sport like professional football. Players’ names, their positions and the teams they play for, and which teams are generally going to score the most points. One of the things that makes watching the NFL so interesting is that all of these things can change at any time (yes, even the player’s names, especially when they’re the type that doesn’t want anyone to forget the number on their jersey).

Once you make the effort to learn all of these things, it’s hard to focus on anything else on a Sunday (or Monday or Thursday, depending on the week). And when there’s nothing but football on TV all day, your kids start to take an interest.

Usually, the home team wears darker uniforms, and the away team wears lighter uniforms. Tonight when the Texans play in San Diego, they’ll be wearing white uniforms with blue and red trim, while the Chargers will wear their blue jerseys with white and yellow.

It’s different in Dallas, though, and I was confused about the arrangement while watching the Giants play there in dark blue. “What do the Cowboys wear when they're away?” I asked my husband.

My three year old had the obvious response, gesturing over her head as she answered: “cowboy hats!”

Practice Makes Perfect Legibility

Technological Disaster

Disaster has struck.

On Saturday I forgot to charge my phone, so that night while I was at work, it ran out of battery and shut down. Ever since then, it thinks that running out of battery and shutting down is a thing it has to do every night. As much as I hate to admit it, it... might be time.

It’s always a terrible choice, deciding whether to put down a pet. But you know it’s time when they’re so old they can’t get up to play with a ball, or so sick they can’t roll over anymore. That time between their obvious discomfort and your unwillingness to part with their company is the worst. But at least there’s nothing forcing you to get a new ferret after your old ferret has departed this world. Unless you have an absolute need to have your toes gnawed affectionately.

In today’s technology saturated world, our need for portable communication devices continues to increase. It seems like everybody’s got a phone, an MP3 player, a camera, and a tablet. And then they need a portable wifi hub to connect all of those things to the cloud. We feel like we need these things to be connected to the world.

Twenty years ago, you didn’t need any of those things. A computer was something people primarily used for work, and those people were usually computer scientists or engineers. Teenagers had walkmans to play their favorite audio tapes while they went rollerblading. Cameras used film. And if your car broke down in the middle of nowhere at night, you were stuck sleeping in the backseat or walking to the nearest farmhouse to call a tow truck. The world has changed. Now, one device can do all the things that four used to. And we rely on it. No sense in disturbing the folks half a mile up the road when you can call a tow truck from the driver’s seat of your car.

I guess I could always get a "new" version
of my phone, the Alias 2 from
Overseas Electronics.

I got my phone in February of 2010, so it’s 410 years old, in phone years. (That’s a decade per month.) I have known people who have barely gotten used to their old phone before tossing it away and getting a newer model. I could never understand that. If it works, why not use it until you have to get a new one? Tossing out a perfectly good phone always seemed like a waste to me.

Aside from the fact that I’m used to my phone’s quirky ways and don’t want a change, I got my phone right on the edge of the industry switching to touch screens. Mine is one of the last without one. Today, the industry is right on the edge of switching to full touch screens and nothing else. If I want a phone with buttons, I’ve pretty much got to get one today or resign myself to using T9 word to text in the future.

I know that whatever phone I decide to get, I will get used to. I will learn its ways and it will learn mine, and we will be a perfect fit.

Until disaster strikes in three years and I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new era of technology... again.

Thursday in History: Ciudades de Santiago

Cali is the third largest city in the South American country of Colombia. It is southwest of the capitol, Bogotá, and was founded in 1536 by Sebastián de Belalcázar, a Spanish conquistador.

Another Spanish conquistador, Francisco de Orellana, founded Guayaquil, which is now the most heavily populated city in Ecuador, in 1538. Guayaquil is located on the coast, southwest of Ecuador’s capitol, Quito.

Venezuela’s capitol, Caracas, was founded in 1567. Don Diego de Losada laid its foundations, and the words he said over those first stones were “I take possession of this land in the name of God and King.”

It is obvious what all of these places have in common: they are all in former Spanish colonies, all of them founded by conquistadores. There’s something else that binds them. Cali is Santiago de Cali. Guayaquil’s formal name is Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayauil. Santiago de León de Caracas is the full name of Venezuela’s capitol.

On this day in history in 1536, 1538, and 1567, major cities were founded in the New World by the men who were conquering it. They were all named after the patron saint of Spain, Saint James, whose feast day was being celebrated on the day they were established.

Happy St. James day, everyone. And happy birthday, ciudades de Santiago.

___________

All images from Google Maps.