Juneteenth

Considering the kerfuffle over the Juneteenth celebrations last weekend, I thought I'd put in my $0.02.

The day is a fitting celebration for the end of slavery.  Every American should celebrate that occasion regardless of race.  It is a piece of American history and our national heritage.

However, it should not be a holiday that is marked by a paid day off for federal government employees.  That isn't a comment about the holiday's importance or relevance.  It is a comment about how federal employees get ten paid holidays; several of which are not holidays for most private employers.  That should not be increased to eleven.  Nor am I interested in displacing a currently established federal holiday.

Our nation celebrates a great many holidays (both secular and religious) without giving federal employees the day off.  We can and should celebrate this one as well.

Frankendann Rises

 As suggested a couple weeks ago, typing remains a bit difficult.  It is getting better.

The short version is that we were hosting a couple of dogs; one of whom decided that climbing a four-foot chain-link fence was an appropriate activity.  I disagreed and hauled her butt back off of the fence before she could leap into the neighbor's yard.

One of the ligaments or tendons in my left wrist thought that such an action was unwise.  I won the battle with the dog, but the wrist won the war.

I had reconstructive surgery a few weeks back.

So my summer will be consumed with a series of casts, braces, and exercises developed by the horned-one for his amusement.  I hope to get the pin removed in a couple of weeks.  The doc has assured me that the removal is very easy.  I'll feel a bit like Frankenstein in the meantime.

And here's the cause of all the trouble.  She's gone home now.  She's a very nice puppy...except for a few minutes last winter when she became just a bit too focused on climbing fences.

A Quilting Family

I recently learned that I am not the first person in my family to take up quilting.  My grandmother, Isabel Cramer (Maybee) Stark, made quilts.  Two of them to be precise.

Grandma Stark sewed a lot.  She made curtains for lots of family members when they bought new homes.  She made clothes for my mom[1] until mom started school.  Grandma Stark also made clothes for her cousin, Charlotte Ann.

I used to spend a week or two each summer with my Grandma and Grandpa.  They took me to see Star Wars; my pick, not theirs.  One summer I discovered her embroidery floss.  She let me make my own patches for my denim jacket.  It was remarkably fun doing something from scratch.

I did 4H one year to learn about embroidery.  Fast-forward a few decades and I have completed roughly 30 quilts.

One of my aunts revealed that Grandma had also quilted.  Her first quilt is on display in my aunt and uncle's home and it will eventually find its way to one of my cousins.

The pattern is known as Mariner's Compass.  I've only completed one quilt using that pattern and I'm unlikely to return to it as it is very time/labor-intensive.  Lots of custom cutting for the pieces.  I had the benefit of some modern triangles to help with cutting each of the various pieces.  Making the same pieces using a ruler and custom measurements would be much harder.

Isabel Stark - Bicentennial Project - Click to embiggen

Parenthetically, that headboard and side table were in the room that was my aunt's for many years.  It was good to see those magnificent pieces of carpentry again.

My aunt sent along the following that has been lightly edited for privacy purposes.

Mom made the quilt in 1976 and deemed it her Bicentennial Project.

She used a large white cotton sheet and appliquéd the stars onto the sheet. Looking it over and holding it up to the light, I can see two machined seams putting the backing together. It was a bedspread, and there is no batting inside.

It looks to me like she probably machine stitched the edges to the backing and then folded the edging over onto the front white sheet, and that is hand-stitched.

I remember her saying that a traditional quilt should be done by hand. All of the stars and the appliqué are done by hand as is the quilting. 

Of course….I have no idea when the long arm machines started to be produced.

Mom only made one other quilt. It was after she finished this one. The second quilt was commissioned by a friend for her mother and the commission went to the church. It was not a formal pattern and was made of many fabrics in a diagonal across the piece. The friend, a professional pottery artist, said at the time that Mom’s sense of color and design was phenomenal in that she never had any formal training.

Compass - Click to embiggen

As described, Grandma created the compasses from pieces and then sewed them onto a flat sheet.  This is a process known as applique.

Compass center detail - Click to embiggen

 

The center medallions were also added via applique.

Compass detail - Click to embiggen

Here is a detail from one of the compass sections.  

Accent strips - click to embiggen

The additional accents are just strips that are gradually shifted to cross over one another.  They also do a weaving pattern over the medallions located between the compasses.

Back and binding - click to embiggen

Grandma Stark had a great sense of style and color.  I hope that my quilts continue that tradition.  Unfortunately, the Compass I made for my dad hasn't survived very well.  The colors on the Michigan State fabric ran.

[1]My mom would victimize my brother and me by making our clothes while we were young.  There are photos.  There are photos!  I cast very few aspersions towards my Grandma, but setting this example for my mom is one thing we all could have lived without.

Interesting News - 6/14/2021

I am not against the idea that black lives matter

I am not against opposing fascism

I am not against teaching true history in schools

I am not against a holiday celebrating the end of slavery

I AM against people using these things as a Trojan horse to push radical ideology

— Leonydus Johnson (leave/me/alone) (@LeonydusJohnson) June 18, 2021

The bottom line for me is that the crowd would not have been in DC on January 6th were it not for the lies about the vote and lies about then-Vice President Pence's ability to alter the counting of the electoral votes.  The larger...and one might correctly point out mostly peaceful...crowd provided cover for those elements that wanted to engage in violence in an attempt to stop the just process of counting the electoral votes.  If President Trump and his allies had been telling the truth, then the crowd of protesters would have been much smaller and would not have been able to provide that sort of cover for those bent on mayhem.  That being said, I do think it is useful to understand how they got into the Capitol building.  I think it was largely incompetence on the part of Capitol hill police, but who knows.

This sort of thing drives me a bit nuts.  If we were talking about one of Donald Trump's progeny, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...would be consumed in near apoplectic rage declaiming the entire enterprise as thinly veiled corruption.  But it is Joe Biden's son, so our media "betters" cannot be bothered.

The latest in the saga of the real Lady A; vocalist Anita White.  The woke crowd continues their pattern of using their position of privilege to abuse minorities in the cause of appearing moral.

The Babylon Bee has won against The New York Times.  Great news for those in favor of free speech and fact.

Is the tide turning against Cancel Culture?  Probably not...yet.  But I trust that people like Kevin Hart and Charles Barkley will help lead the way out of that wilderness.

According to climate change theory, an increase in global temperatures should cause an increase in extreme weather. May is the month with the most tornados.  Yet not only was May 2021 pretty quiet, but almost all of the low tornado months on record have also come in the last 20 years.  Maybe...follow me on this...the dominant theories are subject to a significant level of uncertainty that should cause us to be reasonably cautious about accepting the climate models used to express those theories.

Continuing with the climate change trend, one theory is that humanity is the driving factor in the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The Wuhan/Covid pandemic of 2020 caused a significant reduction in global travel as well as local travel.  Yet the trend of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has not altered one iota.  Maybe human activities aren't quite as influential as some folks suggest.

Recently, the socialist news agency Propublica presented a report on the taxes paid by a couple of the wealthiest Americans.  They attempted to calculate an effective tax rate.  Unsurprisingly, they utterly failed.  The tax rate is based on one's income, not on one's total wealth.

Here are (one - two) a couple of good articles on race and racial issues in America from Quillette.  Read the whole thing.

An attorney with the ACLU claims that liberals are leaving First Amendment free speech behind.  I disagree with his assessment that these are liberals.  Being a liberal requires being open-minded and tolerant.  The people the attorney is referencing are either leftists or potential future American Chekas.  They neither understand nor desire to be open-minded or tolerant of anything that disagrees with their theology ideology.

One last item for the week is a look back at how the feds were interested in Hunter Biden's fiscal issues back in 2016.  Hunter neglected to pay his taxes - I mean a LOT of unpaid taxes.  Something that would invite the full-court press from the IRS if it were a normal citizen.  But Hunter has connections.  Naturally, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...are disinterested in this wealthy American that can't be bothered to pay his fair share.  Nor are they interested in the appearance of impropriety surrounding his finances.