Monday, January 31, 2022
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Modular magic
Studio ROOF has designed some great, fun modular art pieces.
Buy them on Amazon and find Stuio ROOF on Instagram. I like the flowers the best.
Busy, sewing hands are happy hands
Who is mentally competent?
After reading The Thread Catcher and looking at how active all the guilters blogs are on her sidebar, I am starting to think it is the quilters are the sanest, busiest folks making through these rough times!
Found this, maybe I will get Mason and I on the sewing machine!
Saturday, January 29, 2022
I was not political
I am not a political person. I followed politics. I was not thrilled with Bush Jr. or Sr. but I did not feel unsafe in America when they were in power. David and I were completely against the Iraq war and thought it was a load of propaganda, but I never posted any descent against it. We talked about it at night during the news and that was about it. Again, I did not think Bush was out to destroy the United States.
I only became vocally political when trump descended from his golden escalator and commanded that all Mexicans were rapist and drug dealers (okay, maybe a few were good people) and Muslims were banned from America.
I knew who trump was. I had followed his "Obama was not born in this country" but completely poo-pooed it as bullshit. I assumed that no one would pay any attention to this loud-mouth, boastful, lying third-rate television personality. It all seemed ridiculous until I finally got on Twitter and saw that right-wingers were agreeing with him. The "birther movement" had spawned an entire section of our country to doubt that our chosen President was legitimate. David and I spoke of this often, that the election of a smart, thoughtful African American president was going to have a backlash, and it did.
My father and his family have always been very conservative and always complaining about how Obama (or Clinton or Carter) were going to take their guns away from them. I know I have talked about this on this blog before. But I grew up hearing this bullshit my entire life. I also grew up hearing how the Mexicans were taking over Dallas politics and how bad "gays" were. As a dutiful daughter, I ignored it and went on. But after awhile, I just could not and started pushing back about how they still had their guns and even many more of them. Asking why did they even need all of those guns? That I did not know what kind of world they lived in but David and I never felt like we needed guns to protect us or our house. I feel sorry for them, the world they must believe they live in to need all of those guns to protect themselves. I was at their house many times, and they did NOT need guns to protect them either. I consider him and my sister the typical trump supporter, uninformed on world news, overly religious while being hypocrites. Just sayin', I don't speak to them anymore.
So 5 years of complete chaos and gaslighting, we arrive at Covid pandemic that half of our country is denying even exist. Blaming Gates and Fauci, calling for Fauci to be arrested? I am tired of pointing out the stupidity of fake fox news, the anti-vax, anti-masks, anti-whatever right-wingers. Frankly, I am exhausted of listening to all the ridiculousness.
People are saying "they are done with Covid" but guess what, Covid is not done with this world. There were 3,769 deaths yesterday, totaling 882K dead Americans so far! What are they missing that seems so obvious to the rest of us? And now the Truckers Freedom Convoy in Canada, right-wing tweeting the spread to Germany, Italy, Australia? What is so hard to understand that if you are crossing state lines with Covid, that could be a major source of spread?
From CBC: Standoff over science
Some of the protesters carried Canadian flags, while others held placards that urged people to "Think for Yourself," a slogan used in anti-vaccine circles. Some demonstrators were seen flying the Patriotes flag, an ode to the Lower Canada rebellions of 1837-38, when French-speaking settlers from present-day Quebec fought against British colonial rule.
"I've never done anything like this in my life. I'm 53 years old and this is the hill I'm going to die on. Do not tell me I have to put something in my body," Lorraine Commodore, a convoy supporter, told CBC News on Saturday.
Commodore said she was fired from her job as a dental hygienist because she wouldn't get vaccinated. She said she wants this protest to bring an end to mandates that cost her and others like her their jobs.
She said her mother-in-law died in hospital and it was difficult for the family to visit her in the last days of her life because of COVID-19 restrictions on visitors. "Open the hospitals, they're public. This needs to end today."
Her husband, Mike, said he's distrustful of the shots — skepticism that cost him his job as a community living nurse."
The insurrection on Jan 6th, the inability to hold trump and the republicans accountable. I have a horrible feeling that trump will be back in power 2024. Or someone just as odious as he is.
I am probably going to get off of Facebook. I am tired of posting important stories going on in our country that are completely out of the norm. I do not want to become like my friends who don't want to pay attention to the decline, possibly demise of our democracy, choose to focus on the other "other things going on in the world". If this is NOT the time to focus on the death of our democracy, then when is? After it is gone? Trampled to death by the likes of trump, mitch, jim jordon, marjorie, boebert?
I just want to cry. I have the same sick feeling I did last Jan 6th watching them at the Capitol.
Interesting list of deaths:
Honoring Officers Killed in 2021. Remember the trooper who quit and told Inslee to "kiss his ass"? He died of Covid.
Sorry, I just had to get all this off my chest.
The new fence looks fantastic. The kids are all dressed with a very loud karaoke microphone. Can I come to your house? ;)
LATER: After watching a few of the trump cult interviewed at the cult rally in Conroe, Tcxas, I got even more depressed thinking about how many mentally ill people are American citizens believing trump is still president. It is astounding. I was trying to find an explanation for this mass mental illness, found this.
“People are not okay”: The mental health impact of the Trump era (from Jan 2021) His presidency is over, but the trauma isn’t.
The problems Trump brought to light — racism, xenophobia, and transphobia, to name just a few — certainly didn’t start with him. But from the moment he announced his campaign in a speech maligning Mexican people as rapists, he made such attitudes more explicit than ever before within the bounds of traditional party politics.
His rhetoric helped embolden a wave of hate crimes across the country targeting Muslim Americans, immigrants, and a number of other groups he had demonized. Meanwhile, his constant all-caps tweeting, his preference for staff who enabled rather than checked his worst impulses, and his return to campaign-style rallies shortly after his election all led to a relentless news environment that subjected Americans to the president’s disjointed and frequently abusive thoughts multiple times per day. In the first three years of his presidency, Trump tweeted more than 11,000 times — 5,889 of those tweets, according to the New York Times, “attacked someone or something.”
While Trump was able to energize a core of supporters with his mix of bravado, defiance, and racism, for many others, his presidency was, quite simply, scary. In the American Psychological Association’s 2016 “Stress in America” survey, 63 percent of Americans said the future of the country was a “significant source of stress,” and 56 percent said they were stressed out by the current political climate. In the 2018 version of the survey, those numbers went up to 69 percent and 62 percent, respectively.
Friday, January 28, 2022
Takei Takeo
Takeo Takei (武井 武雄, 25 June 1894 – 7 February 1983) was a Japanese painter best known for his illustrations for children.
Takeo Takei is among Japan's most influential children's illustrators of the twentieth century. He was one of the first to create high-quality illustrations for children and was an early advocate of making artwork that respected and nurtured a child's imagination.
Illustrations by Takei Takeo (1894–1983) for a 1928 Japanese edition of Pinocchio. Found via 50 Watts Books.
Bright and shiny
I find this so fun. The smoothness and color of the latex. I can tell you I would get so claustrophobic in that latex body suit. Russian performance artist Sasha Frolova.
"The sculptures of Russian artist Sasha Frolova are kind of eccentric: small and gigantic figures are made of brightly coloured latex and cause sensation in public space. Even more eccentric are her live performances. In 2014 she won the title of the Alternative Miss World with her hands down and was congratulated on this by a fellow British artist Andrew Logan, who holds Sasha’s works in great esteem! Sasha is also a performer artist who tours the world with her pop-art and electronic music project known as AQUAAEROBIKA. She and supporting dancers are dressed in fancy latex-outfits and sing electropop music. Sasha Frolova has the finger on the pulse and excites audience of all ages."
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Symbols
With my back out, I watched TV all day yesterday with a heating pad. I landed upon Dan Brown's The Lost Symbols series on Peacock TV. (Looks like any season later will be canceled).
When I watch these "puzzle" shows, I get so intrigued by all the little details. Like National Treasure and the references to Freemasons and historical artifacts, I get all wrapped up in it.
"A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences. All communication (and data processing) is achieved through the use of symbols.
Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas, or visual images and are used to convey other ideas and beliefs. For example, a red octagon is a common symbol for "STOP"; on maps, blue lines often represent rivers; and a red rose often symbolizes love and compassion. Numerals are symbols for numbers; letters of an alphabet may be symbols for certain phonemes; and personal names are symbols representing individuals. The variable 'x', in a mathematical equation, may symbolize the position of a particle in space."
Symbols, I mean, they are on everything, everywhere. Roman letterforms, logos, alphabet, livestock brands, Egyptian hieroglyphic, cave paintings. They explain history to us in pictogram form, give us directions, it is fascinating! Just something to think about and roll around in my big, empty brain.
Monday, January 24, 2022
The money pit
I have been working and worrying days trying to get ready for the fence guys to get here today. Everything had to be moved away from the fence ... tons of old wood, I ended up moving most of that yesterday ... hence, I can hardly move my back is so sore. Then I cut down more than half of my climbing hydrangea. I planted that so many years ago with the promise that a trellis would be added to accommodate it and that never happened. So it grew huge and took over the fence. I won't mention any names WHO made me that promise. The purpose of the hydrangea was to hide our trash cans from the neighbors view from their back porch. Anyway, I still may need to cut it completely down, will find out when the fencing guys get here in the 27th. Oh, and they are building a trellis into that part of the fence now ;) Maybe I will plant a new one?
In the meantime, we have NO FENCE with four dogs. They fashioned a temp chicken-wire sort of thing on the newly installed post. Should be fun.
I sawzalled my Snowball Bush Viburnum, the Privet (I call it a Texas Bush) that has grown out of control. It smells so heavenly and reminds me of my childhood, but grew out of control. So after sawing my way through the backyard, it is a complete mess. Between that, the kids toys everywhere and Murphy turning the entire backyard into a mud pool, I fear it will never be back to normal. I love Murphy, but he is too big of a dog to live here.
It cost around $8,500 for two sides of fence. Matt had built the other last year when it fell down. He still needs to add the trellis for the clematis that did NOT bounce back after being severely trimmed. I had about 10 fencing companies out for a couple of months giving me estimates. They were anywhere from 12k-8k. I really don't know how people afford to own and repair houses. Last summer it was 12k for a new torch down roof. And I still have a long list to check off of my repair list.
Our plumber retired years ago. You know, we just had his number memorized and I would call and say "Hey, Bill, so and so has gone out can you make time for me?" ... He worked on our house for years. And then I did not have anyone, didn't even know of any local plumbers, so I called around today and got some quotes, prices, hourly rates. Man, I went into the wrong business, plumbers make a killing these days. The first hour is $250 and $220 every hour after that, $85 for the first 15 minutes. We have a toilet that keeps running and running and now we have to "jiggle it" to get it to stop. I paid an ungodly water bill one month and replacing that toilet is high on my list. Apparently you can not get a certain replacement part for this toilet (it isn't that old), planned obsolescence. AND the kitchen faucet is close to falling out of the counter, and the soap dispenser "dispensing end" has been disabled.
The family room TV just went yesterday morning. The day of all the big football games and David ran out to Best Buy and got another. I have never seen him make a purchase and get it home so quickly. We cleaned where the old one was and reinstalled, re-attached all of those confusing cable cords, and the port cable connectors for who knows what ... RGB and HDMI ... whatever all of that is. We got it back up and running before David's beloved Chief's game was on.
It was also our baby-sitting day. Mason is in school most of the day so it is just Noah. She is very funny, she likes to pack her backpack for "school" and then comes in the family room and says "Hi, Teacher" and I have to respond, "hello student". I managed to get clothes on her but that only last about 2 hours then she was naked again, trying to go outside to say hello to the workman.
The one thing making me happy tonight is the promise of a something good on HBO, The Gilded Age.
And life goes on in the crazy Miller household, time for wine.
