The other day Margene had a contest asking everyone to reveal a little secret about themselves. (I think the contest is still going on, by the way.) I revealed this:
My secret is that I’ve been probed by aliens and I have the anal fissures to prove it. Ann says she has a cream to help me, but honestly, how can we believe her, er, I mean him?
Dudes. My ass has been mighty twitchy lately and I think I’ve discovered why!!! The aliens are sending messages in the form of CROP CIRCLES! [Click for bigger photographs.]
I am FREAKED! As some of you may know, I live in the swamps. My apartment looks over a beautiful field of reeds leading into the Hackensack River. We get gorgeous sunsets. One of my favorite things in the world is watching a storm roll across the swamps. All of the many windows in my apartment face over these swamps and I can get lost staring out the window. If I didn’t have these swamps, I can guarantee I would’ve looked for a new place to live a long time ago. My view is one of the few things I’ll miss when we do eventually leave.
You can understand, then, why I was horrified to see that the reeds had somehow been mowed over or destroyed or cut in such a way as to write out SURRENDER CARA! I tried to find some comparison pictures of what it looked like BEFORE the aliens came and ruined it:
I’m not sure if you can tell from those pictures what a lush wonderful landscape I’ve been enjoying over the past 15 years. Now I’ve got this catastrophe:
I spent the day calling many high ranking officials in my local government and the NJ Meadowlands Commission and no one knows what the hell I’m talking about. One guy at the Meadowlands Commission actually said the words: Crop Circles. I laughed and said that IF I was crazy, which I mostly certainly am not, that is EXACTLY how I would describe it. I senthim the pictures and hope he’ll get back to me soon. My worst fear is that someone is going to build something – which I find really hard to believe – I think it’s all protected land – and that my glorious view will be gone and I’ll have to move ASAP. I refuse to live here without my view.
Thanks for all the suggestions on the Katharine Hepburn Cardigan. I understand what a lot of you are saying about how knits stretch and ease and all that stuff. I don’t want a fitted sweater. I don’t like fitted sweaters. While I have been blessed with a lovely girly figure, I don’t like to call attention to it and I can guarantee that if I make the sweater at 40.5″ I will be uncomfortable. It might look fabulous to you, but I won’t feel good. The fact that the designers/editors thought it was okay to have 5.5″ jump between sizes is preposterous to me. The last two sweaters I’ve made have been the 43″ size and the 44″ size – and I’m quite happy with both of those sweaters. Last night I cast on my modified pattern – probably around 44″ – and my plan is to knit the 40.5″ shoulders and sleeves. I’m not done tweaking yet, so we’ll see. Oh and I decided to do the thing in pieces instead of the body in one piece. I was all set to do it in one piece and I had a lengthy discussion with Ann about structure and whether it would work without a real seam (we decided it would because we’d have two cables and two purl stitches where the seam would be) and I cut and pasted and photocopied the pattern and calculated the number of stitches needed: 309. It was then I decided pieces would be best. There was no way I was casting on 309 stitches. It would take me FOREVER to knit and I would get bored and it would get tedious. So pieces it is. And this way I can figure out the sizing if it needs to change much more easily.
Okay. Off to wait for the Mother Ship.
PS – Heather is running a drive to provide books to kids in South Africa. You can donate money and/or books and there is YARN to be had! Heather has INCREDIBLY offered up yarn to everyone who donates at least $20. The girl is NUTS! Please go visit to learn more about this very worthy cause. Literacy is EVERYTHING.
If you don’t want crop circles near you, just start planting some GM crops. I’ve heard that aliens reject them:
http://www.arsepoetica.com/blog/2007/03/aliens_reject_g_1.html
If they build something (how could they!?) maybe they’ll find Jimmy. Could it be some sort of wind or that the grasses are dying off? Strange indeed.
Oh and the contest is ongoing…I’d love to hear more secrets. 😉
That could be the beginning of a salt marsh restoration. The area that comprises the Meadowlands isn’t all protected, but a lot of it is mitigated or restored. Judging by your pictures, they’ve cleared away the invasive Phragmites and have begun to regrade the site. I’ll cross my fingers that it’s for a restoration and not a new mall, car dealership or Xanadu.
I don’t blame you for being upset. I have a teenie little lawn & if that gets cut, everyone knows who and when. It is rather strange that no-one can figure out who cut all those reeds down! Have fun with the new sweater!
That is just plain creepy. Even worse that nobody seems to know what you’re talking about. I mean, you’re crazy, but not THAT crazy. 🙂
Too bad you weren’t there with your camera to get pictures of the aliens. (Smiles and backs away slowly.)
My morning and evening commuter trains goes through the Meadowlands swamps(my train tracks are closer to Newark than to Meadowlands/Secaucus area). Sunsets are indedd fabulous and I love seeing those long legged white birds that look like they belong in the Everglades. Hopefully the reeds will grow back.
It’s possible that they are trying to attract more wildlife. Studies have shown that a mixture of open water and Typhus (cattail) stands attract more waterfowl than all Typhus or all water.
So your view may improve with more species coming to visit the marsh!
I was SO scared that we were going to see pictures of your booty. I’m ashamed to say I read this post anyway! And then I got confused. Wait- that’s not a booty!
That’s all I’m going to say, because less is more, and sometimes less is more better.
Having been born and lived in NJ most of my life (the past 16 have been spent in MD) and listening to the ongoing onslaught of negative sterotypes of my home state (like for the past 16 years in MD!!) it was refreshing to read the words: “beautiful field of reeds leading into the Hackensack River.” and “We get gorgeous sunsets.” It made me happy. Thanks.
looks like a prescribed burn to me. They do them all the time here to the protected prairelands. Prairies used to burn naturally once in awhile, but now they can’t afford to have that happen, so when overgrowth happens, every few years or so, the city does a prescribed, controlled burn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn
That’s weird that no one you spoke with knew anything about it. It looks much like a lagoon area near my house, which has now been graded, scraped, and flattened into what I was also afraid was going to be a building site. I did finally read in the paper that it’s a “wetland restoration.” I’m still unclear on how destroying all of the reeds and grass and tractoring over everything is going to restore its beauty, but for now I’ll trust them and at least be relieved that it’s not going to be an office building. I hope that your mystery is also something that will eventually improve the swamps!
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I know that area well. I used to live in Union, NJ and passed by it nearly every day. I hope it’s not more construction!
Sorry about your view Cara! That stinks!! I know those swamps well since I’ve taken many train rides through them. I commuted by train to NYC for 8 years and the reeds were the highlight of the trip. I have always thought about how I could capture them in a painting. Their colors are sublime – no matter what time of year, but I particularly liked them on a grey day. Let’s hope they cut them for the sake of the wetlands and that there will be spectacular regrowth this spring. Certain plants require being cut back from time to time in order to continue stong growth and to produce abundant seed. Developing those wetlands would be a crime!
Restoration would be fine. Devastation would be…well, devastating. Why can’t we stop building where we’re not built up yet?
My in-laws live in Oradell and my MIL is constantly jogging on a footpath near the Hackensack River–it is truly beautiful. I agree that NJ gets ragged on too much by cretins who haven’t really seen how beautiful parts of it can be.
Welll….? Aliens is the most interesting explanation! Do you know what usually grows there? It was probably harvested. Folks used to feed “salt hay” to their livestock, but dh suggests maybe it is being used for bales of industrial hay to keep things like erosion in check.
Cara, have you tried the Hackensack Riverkeepers?
Hackensack Riverkeeper, Inc.
231 Main Street
Hackensack, NJ 07601-7304
201-968-0808
201-968-0336 fax
Kathleen (from the other side of the swamp)
Someday, love will find you,
break those chains that bind you.
One night will remind you-
how we touched and went our separate ways.
Wow looks like the mother ship has landed and they want you. I hope that they will leave you and your butt alone. =)
Wait. Are you saying that the crop circles look like your arse? Or vice versa?
(I’m so confused. TIme for my aluminum foil beanie.)
You crack me up! You knit in pieces what is patterned to be knit as one, and you knit in one piece a pattern meant to be done seperately! I know their is a method to your “madness”, and that it will work for you, it just cracks me up! I still think you’re a genius for knitting the CPH in one piece, and I’m glad you inspired me to do mine that way. I don’t think I’ll ever want to do a sweater in pieces again.
Ah, the Meadowlands….such good memories. Makes me almost miss the Turnpike too. We need smellovision to fully appreciate the experience! LOL!
how eerie!! i bet it’s because of all the wind. but that’s so strange! I hope they’re not building on it either, i cannot take driving by that new Meadowlands high rise development… so sad! Save the swamps!
Totally off topic here sorry:
I wanted to let you know I saw Bridge to Terabithia last night. The book is one of my all time favorites. I’ve read it at least 10 times since I first read it in elementary school. At least in my mind, they they did a really great job on the movie. The only part that is anything like the preview is the last 5 minutes. I completely understand you take on not wanting to ruin it for yourself by not seeing the movie though. I was the same way until a friend recommended it.
HELP! Cable/increase counting!
I am working on my sleeves— for CPH – a first classic sweater for me. I am knitting both sleeves at once- and have to track both my cabling and my increases…. I currently have 2 counters out- one for cable one for counting rows for increases… then I have to count the increases themselves…I am sure I am making this harder than it needs to be— but how did YOU do it???
thnx- ts in mi
If you find out what the heck is going on there, please do let us know. I take the train through that stretch every day and noted the crop circles yesterday myself. I’m curious as to what is happening there, not to mention that big pile of dirt on the other side of the river.
Crop circles next to the Hackensack River? My Mom was born on their farm in Lodi, lived in Hackensack and then Bogota. Alien encounters in the area during the 20-40’s when she lived there would explain a lot…..