52 Photos Project: Red, White, Blue

Given what week it is, what day tomorrow is, I guess I should not have been surprised by the topic over at 52 Photos Project this week: Red, White, Blue.  I am not sure I was surprised exactly, just resigned.    I am just the tiniest bit sick of red, white & blue.  I mean, they are ubiquitous.  Try, just try going somewhere, anywhere without seeing them any time of the year & last week, this week & for the rest of the month...well.

So here is my photo.  Since the topic contained the option "or", I decided to go with blue, & blue is the color of that little dog bed there.  You could make an argument for the little dog being a red dachshund, but you would be wrong; she shows every sign of being a dapple (although very likely a red dapple), including the two different color eyes...which are hard to see because I had to adjust for red-eye.  More RED!

More than that, though, this little girl is blue.  She is here while her family is on vacation & she is a little bit sad.  It is hard to communicate to a dog that this is a temporary thing & since she has been abandoned before (I came to have her because she had been left at the library-not a completely strange thing to do as the local librarian operates a small pet rescue & this is well known in the neighborhood; well known to the librarian is that I am crazy for dachshunds in general & minis in particular).  At that time, this little girl had sparkle-purple painted toenails, a sweet disposition, terrible teeth & some stomach lumps.  She could have made a 24/7 permanent home with us, but her new mommy, her currently on vacation mommy, fell in love with her during book club & the rest was history. 

She is back here for an extended visit while her family is away & she is missing them something awful.  Our own mini-dachshund has been missing her friend & is doing her best to be welcoming.  They spend a lot of daytime sitting close to each other on the couch & nighttime snuggled up against us in bed & even though she is putting on a good face, what this girl really wants is to go home.  I have seen enough abandoned dogs to know the signs; they mourn.  & while we are happy to have her (& boy am I glad she could come here instead of a more conventional boarder), she will be thrilled when her family comes home.  On a bittersweet note, she will probably miss her new dachshund friend, so here we are, back to BLUE again.

The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables

When it comes to saints, patronages run the gamut: places, professions, illness (usually against, unlike professions & places), but today's man has a new one on me:  alliteration. 

For everyone who went "wait, what?", let me clarify:  Benno, an eleventh century politically savvy bishop...or canon, there is some confusion, is patron saint of

• anglers (there is a whole story about locking up his church & throwing away the key & then the key being recovered from a fish & if that all sounds like something we have covered before that is because we HAVE, but that was a different guy),
• weavers (he was big in Meissen & once upon a time weaving was big in Meissen -it was big everywhere- & I am guessing that is the connection although I accept there may not be one, especially since Meissen was really famous for porcelain & Benno is not the patron of porcelain workers who don't seem to have one, although patrons of potters abound),
  
• & alliteration.

Benno famously played both sides against the middle in a pre-Martin Luther era church reformation (Martin Luther reviled him.  Specifically.  By name).  The only thing Benno seems to have not flip-flopped on was simony.  Don't feel bad, I had to look it up too:  the sacrilegious vice of purchasing ecclesiastical offices and benefices to which spiritual jurisdiction is attached.  What it isn't is the selling of those offices, for which I could not find a word-no emigration/immigration symmetry here.  

Benno took vows & broke them, pledged to support a pope, then the anti-pope & then back to another not-anti-pope.  This guy was first & foremost a politician & probably lucky not to be living in an age where your old speeches have been recorded & can be played back against you.

Benno pretty much only comes up when someone is in a reform the reformers kind of mood (which is more often tan you might think OR less often than it should be, depending a upon
 your perspective.  That's the thing about reform: there is never enough until there is too much.

But who cares about reform, I want to know about the whole alliteration thing!  He must have been quite the public speaker, maybe his speeches were full of catchy phrases & jingles, you know (or maybe you don't), politicians' stump speeches aren't want they used to be).  It seems to me thought that is ought to be fairly easy (& harmless) to pay homage to Benno on today his day: just stare into the mirror & go at it.  May I suggest "she sells seashells by the seashore". 

Rabbit factory

I should start by saying we put Janie to sleep just after noon yesterday.  She had gone steadily downhill since Wednesday, had stopped eating & early Saturday morning could no longer drink water. 

Four days beforehand, the two of us, me & Janie, were walking around the front yard at not-quite dusk.  A wild rabbit sat not five feet away from me, clearly aware I was there.  It hopped around I circles but made no move to leave.  Janie was so out of it she didn't even see it.  At first. 

When she did see the rabbit, she began to tremble all over.  Instead of bouncing over to & then after it, she began to slowly follow while the rabbit continued to make lazy circles.  They did this for maybe 20 minutes, maybe more.  The whole time Janie's body was tense & her nose was wrinkled & sniffing.  Eventually, the rabbit lost interest & hopped away home; Janie stood & watched it go & then we went inside. 

There is a particularly fecund rabbit population within our borders.  I mean fecund reproductively, not intellectually; these are quite the laziest most foolish rabbits I have ever even heard of.  I have a few theories & right at the top is that damn donkey.  People keep donkeys for a lot of reasons, but the most common is they will protect what they perceive as theirs.  Other equines range over large area & will probably return to particular places but they don't really care about those places.  Donkeys care. Many years ago there was a very high strung mare here temporarily & two dogs from up the road had a good time chasing her away from the fence, snapping at her nose & hooves.  Until. 

Until one day they crossed under the fence to run that mare around the pasture until she dropped.  It didn't work out that way; what horses run from, donkeys run towards & while I suspect the donkey did not give a shit about the mare, she was in his pasture & fell under his protection. There have been other dogs since then, but none that got so distracted they forgot whose yard they were in.  Donkeys are those mean old men who hold your kickball hostage...& try to kill you when you sneak in to retrieve it. 

As far as our donkey is concerned, those ridiculous rabbits are his & woe betide the fox, coyote, raccoon who thought he might have a quick snack.  As a result we are breeding a particular not-safety conscious leporidae.

Janie did catch a rabbit once, many years ago.  She reached over its back & grabbed it by the scruff of the neck.  Unfortunately (OKay, fortunately) her front legs did not reach the ground so every time the rabbit hopped, it levered her whole front end off the ground & up on her spindly hind legs.  Eventually Janie let go & that rabbit also just hopped away. 

Today's word: Bildungsromans

I am not saying I never saw the word bildungsromans before.  I am sure I had.  I probably once had the definition right there at the tip of my brain.  But there I was in the library's digital catalog putting a book my mother had recommended (Tell the Wolves I'm Home) on hold.  As I was clicking through I travelled across the "Subject" section & there it was:  Teenage girls -- fiction, Loss (Psychology) --fiction, Friendship -- fiction, AIDS (Disease) -- fiction, Uncles -- fiction, Bildungsroman, Love stories.

First, let me say Spoiler Alert. Yep, I should have said it at the top, but I didn't.  & naturally, I clicked it.  Turns out there are >1k titles in our local library with that specific subject.  Even more interesting there is one (1) book with the additional subject of Bildungsromans American, one (1)  Bildungsromans -- Comic book etc, two (2) Bildungsromans -- England -- Yorkshire -- Drama, three (3) Bildungsromans -- Mississippi & a handful of other singles doubles & triples.  Oh & one (1) Bildungswesen. 

So the word itself: it means a coming of age story.  I wonder there were only just over one thousand as so many many many stories are, at some level, coming of age stories.  

The eleventh commandment

I have said before I usually have a few books going, on the bedside table, in the sewing room, etc.  A few weeks ago, I started Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis & (brace yourself, I'm about to be petty)  I mostly enjoyed it.  I got a little tired of the quiptastic tone (I know, the Sam Cooke title was more than a clue), but I understand it can be hard to keep that much material & there is A LOT of material, interesting while you build the background & then get down to comparing & contrasting & just plain reviewing.  I said I was being petty & I meant it.

Anyhow it was playing away while I reconciled bird traps & I was one or two discs from the finish line when suddenly I learned something!  I learned that Santoria, a religion about which I know very little except they share my fascination with saints, I learned that Santoria has ELEVEN commandments.  The Moses ten + one.  & according to Don't Know Much the eleventh commandment is a "prohibition against cannibalism".  Way to turn it up to eleven, Santoria!

I am about to do a complete about face on ten commandment displays at court houses.  I am usually against, as I think they send a divisive message- imagine being a christian seeking justice in a courtroom where there is a giant stone tribute to The Five Pillars of Islam; I think you might worry the law might be interpreted to favor a muslim.  Also, I have never been entirely sure why people think the ten commandments & court houses are such a great match, what with so many of the Moses ten not being laws, as in no one is going to jail for failing to keep the Sabbath, but they might go to jail for beating their kids which is by-the-way not a problem according to the ten commandments. What with the big ten insisting we should honor our parents, you could make an argument for the ten commandments condoning you beating your kids.

But this behind me now because if you will commit to including this eleventh commandment I will sign your petition.  For many reasons, not the least of which is it is likely to offend the person who wants the ten commandments displayed in the first place, but also because I think cannibalism is at the route of a lot of crimes.  No, no I don't mean Hannibal Lechter cannibalism, I mean the desire to consume our fellow man...& his goods.  & by consume I also mean subsume. 

& I think I will stop there, making subsume my word for the day.  & maybe go listen to some Sublime.  Just in time for Passover.  & Easter.  But just a skosh late for the Spring Equinox.  Funny how they all line up, though.

A day for dentists

One of the first things I loved about Saint Apollonia was her name.  I cannot help it, I am delighted when saints have completely not christian names.  I know, I know your name is one thing over which you have almost no control, what with your parent generally choosing it, often before you hit the ground.  Unsurprising, the parents who choose a feminization of the greek god of the sun (& healing & prophecy & poerty & so on)  to name their daughter were themselves not christian.

So, Apollonia.  Martyred because she refused to renounce her (new) religion, which is a popular one among the saints; a sizeable sub-group are the volunteers.  Generally they are women who, when faced with that fate-worse-than-death option opt for death.  In Apollonia's case, it came after what had to be a pretty rough time.  Among other things, her persecutors removed all her teeth, a method of torture that has given me the creeps since Marathon Man.  Finally, when told she was about to be burned to death, she jumped into the flames.  Bringing us to a very large set of saints martyred by fire. 

& given that, it should be completely unsurprising that fire is not one of her symbols. She is not shown in front of a wall of fire or with flames curling around her feet or any other fire themed pose (OKay, OKay she is sometimes standing with a burning pyre off in the background, but I am really talking about what is in the clos-up).  Instead, she is often portrayed holding a tooth in dental pliers.   In an unusual twist, her relics often are teeth which I find, well, odd.

For those who don't know, saintly relics are what was left of the body (the one that had to remain inviolate for a long long long time after death for you to start down that road to sainthood).  These relics are kept in reliquaries (def:  a container for relics).  Usually they are bones, sometimes some hair, sometimes some cloth but Apollonia's are often teeth.  Which would mean that after her teeth were removed someone collected & saved them expecting them to be valuable.  Which I find odd.  Even if you were going to save them à la the opening of Cloud Atlas, how would you know which ones were hers?

Whatever.  If you start getting curious along those lines, the whole business just falls apart.  Back to the woman herself.  Kinda.  Apollonia is the patroness of lots of places. Towns, churches, & at least one train station.  & of course dentists.

A name by any other nom de guerre

So last weekend while I was not watching the superbowl I came across yet another name generator.  I remember the old days when you had to plug in the info yourself.  Yes, I know these things are sometimes more than a little insensitive but humor is pain so suck it up.

For example my drag queen name is my own first pet's name & my mothers maiden name. Which would technically make it Andrew McVey which is awkward for reasons only people who really know me know (Andrew was a big black tomcat who used to sleep in my crib, yes it only gets worse).  So I usually say it is Gus McVey; Gus was a smaller gray cat that I actually remember.  I have relatives, (by marriage, okay I might be married to one of them) a brother & sister who could claim Penny & Petey Hauptmann.  Can't you just see that up in lights over some vaudeville theatre?  Appropriate as it happens, the whole vaudeville vibe, I mean.  I also have a friend who would be Princess Gail (& no, she has never met my sister, although this is one of the few that actually works).  & another that trumps mine:  Magoo Doyle.  I even like to think about what my friends are doing to their kids & yes, I mean you mother of the future drag queen Doxy Brennan.  Maybe she could perform with her brother Junie Brennan.  Oh wait, I forgot about the guinea pigs.  & the cat.  It's an à la carte process.

My niece (Osiris O'Brien- winning drag queen names run in my family), recently uncovered the formula for your zombie survival team:  the last band/musician you listened to, the hero of the last video game you played & the hero of the last movie you watched.  Mine were X (same as one of my brothers, I know right?) which segued to the Pogues so it can go either way.  The Sims as it has been a very long time since I played a video game.  Because I am a grown-up.  Also Sudoku doesn't really have characters.  & Sherlock Holmes.  My only hope is outrunning these punks, drunks & cannon fodder.  & Sherlock Holmes.   Osiris gathered together Cher Lloyd, Greg from Hay Day & Elle Woods.  Yup, she's toast.

But you don't have to do all the work any more, now you can use an on-line name generator.  I would wrestle under the name Flighty Callgirl, which seems heavy handed no-pun-intended.  Practice witchcraft as Brigid Toadcackler. 

& last but not least, if I were an animal abusing, pro-football quarterback trying to cover up my treatment for genital herpes so I cold go on to infect groupies with impunity I might call myself
Brigitte Vanuatu. 

Saint in cake

I had no idea there even was a Saint David until I saw him being not-so-much lauded on CakeWrecks.  It is not that I thought there wasn't a Saint David, why wouldn't there be?  There are two Saint Pelagias from Antioch for crissakes.  But aside from Valentine through Patrick to Nicholas, you just don't see many saint cakes & I kind of got to wondering.  So, after seeing his cake wrecked, I went cruising for David.  It did not take long to find an interesting angle.

It seems in addition to being the patron of Wales (not whales, no matter what other sites might say, altho' in another 25 years he WILL be patron saint of whales because that does seem to be how many of the patronages happen), David is also the patron saint of: Pembrokeshire, a specific bit of Wales-kind of like across the pond, anyone from the US is a yankee, but in the south only someone from north of the Mason Dixon is a yankee, & then in the north, only if you are from the northeast are you a yankee, get to the northeast & yankees are people from New England, then if you actually go to New England they will tell you yankees are people from New York, NOT part of New England, because New York was originally (& I use that term loosely), New Amsterdam.  Finally, it turns out Jans & Kees are kind of a dutch version of Smith & Jones.


Where was I?  Oh, right, Pembrokeshire, a specific county in Wales.  So David is the patron saint of Wales & then in Wales, he is the patron saint of Pembrokeshire.  He is also patron saint of poets, which kind of interested me because there are surprisingly few patron saints of poets.  Well, I was surprised anyhow.  I kind of think of the whole saintly gig with traveling balladeers & troubadours & such.  This poet patronage thing is almost certainly a collision with another saint, specifically King David, who wrote the Psalms & was canonized way-later (& I am sure would be appalled if he knew) is probably who was meant to be David, patron of poets but it all got scrambled & now they both are.

Our David is also listed as patron saint of doves.  Which made me hope against hope that there is somewhere a patron saint of flamingos.  I will keep my eyes peeled.

Finally David is the patron saint of vegetarians.  In fact, he is not alone.  There is even another patron saint of vegetarianism who apparently did not like the smell of roasting meat, but back to David.  I cannot find the reference to how or why he got hooked up with vegetarianism (how hard did I look? not very), but I did discover that his birth was almost certainly the result of a rape.

I have no idea what kind of cake you should have for Saint David's Day.  The BBC website has a lot of recipes for roasted lamb & chicken (odd that), but the only cake was Welsh cake which seems kind of lame, like serving green beer just because it's Saint Patrick's Day.

Joy in December 2011

The last block swap of the year can be tricky.  People want winter holiday things but by the time you get them back, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa et al. will more or less be over.  Also, it can be challenging coming up with something that works for all of those.  So here's hoping JOY works; this year we will be making our first ever word blocks.

I picked JOY because it only has three letters...& because it seems like it ought to be universal, regardless of what holiday you do or do not observe.  Finally, it could work for any time of year.

You may need as few as one fabric (but probably more, depending on how you want to make your letters), & that first fabric should read-as-solid or at least any pattern on it should not make it hard to read the letters J, O, & Y as this will be the background fabric.  As for your letters, you can use different fabric for each letter OR all the same OR no fabric at all if you embroider them.  You can piece the letters (my example is below, also numerous examples in the book Word Play Quilts which is my new addiction) or you can applique them or embroider them (probably the only way you would use just the one background fabric) by hand or with an embroidery machine.

Instead of finished dimensions I am going to give you more-like guidelines: the block should be no smaller than 6.5" x 6.5" unfinished (being sure to keep ALL the text WELL inside of 6.25") or it might be longer, & maybe even a bit taller, but try to keep it close to 6.5" if you can.  That being the case, the height of the letters probably should not be more than 5.5" (to keep it at at least 1/2" from the top & bottom edges), but the lengths will be variable.  In other words most-if-not-all of the blocks will not be square or even uniform, leaving you with a block that is 6.5" x 6.5" OR ~6.5" x  >6.5". I know, it sounds odd, but I have seen irregular word blocks work.

This means you will probably want to add blocks of the holiday or not-holiday of your own choosing, size-up the smaller blocks with snazzy borders or whatever in your own quilt top.  When you make your own quilt, you might decide you want to add some words of your own (for myself, I am thinking of making PEACE in different languages & a few might find their way over to my JOY quilt). You could also expand your own JOY blocks with prefixes & suffixes to ENJOY or JOYFUL or JOY in other languages or JOY in phrases such as JOY TO THE WORLD or maybe even JOY phrases in other languages such as JOYEUX NOEL.

So, to be clear, the block you send will be 6.5" unfinished/6" finished by not less than 6.5" unfinished/6" finished & will say JOY... or Joy ...or joy.

Because there are slews of different ways to do this, I am offering my own work as an example only.  I lifted it more-or-less straight from Word Play Quilts (which I own & I highly recommend as one of the few quilting books you will always wish you did own; I even requested my library by it which they did & it has been checked out ever since).  If you cannot bring yourself to buy yet another quilt book for yourself, you can find free examples on-line here &  here & here & here & many, many, many more.

I began with the J.  Keeping in mind the entire block should be no taller than 6.5" unfinished & all the text no taller than 5.5" finished, I started with two 4.5" x 1.5" pieces of fabric, one background & one letter fabric. To that, I added a 1.5" piece of the letter fabric across the bottom & a 1.5" strip of the back ground fabric to the right.  To keep all the letters more or less the same size, I then began my O.

The O is almost too easy:  two sets of two strips of letter fabric, one of them 1"5 x 5.5" & the other 1.5" square,  & a piece of back ground fabric for the center 1.5" x

Finally the Y.  The base was also easy-peasy 1.5" wide of letter with a strip of the background fabric on either side.  The top of the Y was harder, but I just sort of whacked around until I had this one.Yes, yes the Y in the first photo is not the Y in the following photos; it looked shtumpik so I put that one aside & made another in the exact same way, I just cut it down to size later.

Because it will all be bordered by straight cuts of the background fabric, I did not worry for a moment about the bias edges, but as it happens I did not have any.  All of my strips were 1.5" (including the kerns or the spaces between the letters) & all of my letters 5.5" tall.  I added a strip to top & bottom once the letters were all together.  Again, this is how I made my JOY; you can make yours as you please, so long as it is 6.5" tall & not less than 6.5" wide, keeping all text more or less within the 6" of the center (so that even with a generous 1/4" seam allowance no one needs to worry their letters will get cut off.).

As always, blocks are due (not postmarked by but due) the last Saturday of the swap month:  Saturday, December 31st.  Blocks will be swapped on the following Sunday (yes, New Years Day) & mailed back on or before the next Wednesday.  The easiest way to join is to log into Facebook & search for the Quilt Block Swap Group.  If you do not want to join Facebook, leave a message here with your e-mail information & I will send you the address for swapping.

It's okay to be Takei

Maybe you know (maybe you don't) but June is National Gay & Lesbian Pride Month.  & completely without irony it is also the traditional month for getting married.  & National Candy Month. & National Dairy Month.  As you also may know (& again, maybe you don't) late last month Tennessee passed a law (A LAW) making any discussion regarding homosexuality off limits for elementary & middle school students. 

More than one person has asked "should they really have that conversation with students that young, anyhow"? But this ruling does more than clamp down on a health & sex education class that was not taking place.  This means when homosexuality comes up in the course of a student's life, & since currently almost 15k foster children nationwide are in gay homes & not less than 300K children- again nationwide- have a gay parent, chances are good it IS going to be relevant even in Tennessee; it is off limits.  When it comes up in current events, say when the next politician is on the news explaining they were just friends (or my favorite how he happened to hire a guy who only advertises on a rentboy website to not help him with his luggage because of his bad back), the teacher is to ignore any story no matter how far reaching & talk about something else.  If asked what does that mean, the answer is "I am not allowed to say."

Pretending something does not exist & banning talk in the classroom is how Tenneessee traditional alters the transfer of information (think Scopes Monkey Trial). 
 
But it turns out a traveler across space & time has a solution.  This is how it goes: when you might say "gay", say "Takei" (which rhymes with gay; I had no idea-ay).  Then let whomever is policing your vocabulary infer what you mean from context clues, if they don't have their hands full with other problems in their school, say sexual predators or domestic violence or bullying or drugs.  It is so bend-over-backwards absurd that it does take some of the pressure off.  At least until the Tennessee legislature rises up & bans Star Trek in the classroom. Or until they grow up, whichever comes first.  Given that it has been almost 100 years since the Scopes Monkey Trail, I would not hold me breathe on that one.


Just for fun, I went looking for other things banned in Tennessee, just to see what's up.  In Tennessee it is illegal to possess synthetic herbs that provides the same high as pot.    You cannot produce porn in the state but you can possess it (so, careful where you point that camera; don't worry about the dirty pictures though).  & apparently it is illegal to be an illegal alien in Tennessee.  Seems a duplication of effort to me but whatever.  Tennessee did manage to lift another local ban on bringing handguns to local parks.  Also, apparently Jack Daniels had been playing fast & loose with some obscure law since the 1930s & they are trying to fix that.  Leaving us with this memorable quote:

 "Today, if a 13-year-old started making whiskey, they'd chop up his still, send him to reform school and arrest his parents," Niceley said. "That's our biggest problem today - overregulation."

On the other hand if today a teacher were to say maybe you shouldn't pick on that other student because you think he acts gay, is gay, his parents are gay, his parents might be gay, his parents are not gay but the 13 year old cooking up whiskey in his spare time cannot think of anything else to hit him with well it is not overregulation to stop that conversation, it is just good common sense...in Tennessee anyhow.

What would Anita do?

As we s*l*o*w*l*y come up on the end of Florida's gay adoption ban (& yes, I do consider this one of the silver linings of our tanked economy; it is hard to justify spending $100,000s defending a policy that is just not going to to stand up at the next judicial tier no matter how moral you might think it is), I thought it would be a good time to take a little look at today's birthday girl:  Anita Bryant.

Anita's parents divorced when she was quite small, & Anita was sent to live with her maternal grandparents.  I don't know if it was a happy childhood, but it looks like a successful one:  she began her musical career with their encouragement, she graduated high school, was crowned Miss Oklahoma 1958 & made it to the final four in the Miss America Pageant.   Shortly after this she made the Billboard charts with one of my favorite songs (although I do prefer the Beatles version & even better Miss Peggy Lee; what can I say, I just love The Music Man).  She also got a college scholarship but I cannot see that she attended or graduated (it can be hard to find this information about those pre-Google days in the time I am prepared to look for it, which is almost none).  In 1960 she married a Miami disc jockey & they had four children...& twenty years together.

All that time Anita was singing, wedding, birthing, she was also preaching, kinda.  I confess "preacher" is a lot like "imam" to me.  Anyone with the inclination seems able to break into the biz; I am very unclear as to the qualifications (although I am fairly certain the position does NOT come with health insurance).  Anyway, Ms. Bryant declared a fatwa on anything she saw as a threat to her vision of family.

One of her early targets was......divorce.  & then she got one.  Let me go on record as saying I am a HUGE fan of divorce.  As A says, divorce means all those people who cannot stand the sight of each other can get away without killing each other.  Neither of us has ever been divorced...so far (I also say the same thing about rape; I haven't been...so far). 

Which means I really am happy for Anita's divorce.  If she would go through with it despite the disapproval of some of her followers, she must have really needed it.  What is damn shame is she never stopped to think if she was wrong about this, what else might she have been wrong about?  Because it was her group that reversed local laws protecting homosexuals in Miami & went on to inspire (& bankroll) similar movements across the country.  & while her movement had a far reaching impact, it also reached around & impacted her.  The divorce, yes, but her wholesome spokesperson career was over.  It turns out homosexuals drink as much orange juice as anyone & homo-phobes won't buy orange juice just because Anita Bryant is on the poster, especially a divorced Anita Bryant.  & a handful (her description) of protesters getting coverage outside of her other venues helped the invitations to those venues dry up. 

So she picked herself up, dusted herself off (after a flirtation with prescription drug abuse) & looked for a niche within her niche (divorced, jonesing homo-phobes!) & opened a theater where those who wanted to could hear her sing & minister.  Alas, her flock was only getting smaller, as evidenced by the extremely low attendance at her performances, until finally even the most devoted were completely cashed out & broke & then Anita left town...to rise again-again.

More recently Anita Bryant was singing the national anthem at the 2011 Oklahoma Gubernatorial Inaugural Ball.  Which brings us to what would Anita do?  From here, it looks like she would count on almost everything old being new again & what isn't old/new being overlooked.  What it seems she won't be doing is considering there might be more to the human condition than forgiveness for only the transgression she has made.  Happy Birthday Anita.  You remain for me a shining example of how a bright & pretty cover can disguise a shallow, spiteful story....but only for so long.

Credit: Free images from acobox.com

The old sexagon is the new...

I laughed out loud when I read the original sexagon post over at Lansey Brothers.  The gist- kinda- is how the sexagon has gone out of vogue; the word, not the shape.  It has been replaced with "hexagon" & the much more cumbersome "six sided polygon".  For those of you asking yourselves "this is coming up here why?", the sexagon is actually better known to quilters everywhere as the unit that makes up the Grandmother's Flower Garden.

Just to be clear, we are talking about an actual six-sided shape, not the six person sexual position/act, although now I really want everyone to start calling that a Grandmother's Flower Garden.  Whenever it might come up in conversation.  Whenever that might be.

So..the sexagon quilt.  I have been quilting for a while now, but I have never made one of those.  I have made the odd blossom now & then to add to something else. but to commit to a full-size sexagon...I just don't have that kind of time.  Also,  I am just not that into all those little pieces that all need to fit together.   Still it's a useful skill so here we go:

As with all handwork, your first sexagon is probably the hardest.  The first tricky part is making sure all six sides (& each angle) is exactly equal to every other side (& angle).  But since we are talking about fabric sexagons, there is some wiggle room.  More than you can imagine, actually.

Begin by getting yourself a sexagon.  Lansey Brothers have oh-so-conveniently provided one right in their sexagon post.  Click it, print it, cut it out.  It's a nice big one & for a beginner, the big ones are just so much easier to work with.  Trace it onto something a bit more stable (I like to use those card stock campaign thingeys we get swamped with every November).  Cut out as many of these as you will need pieces for your sexagon quilt.  To make a single flower, you will need seven, although you could certainly keep going until you run out of steam.

If you are like me, you will print a second sexagon, pencil in a slightly larger sexagon around the first (say 3/8ths of an inch).  This is your fabric template, so you can cut the fabric large enough to fold a bit over the edges.  I should note that you can actually buy these; you can buy the masters to make your own templates or you can just buy the templates.  But what if you just don't take to sexagons?  Then you will have them, just sitting there & you will find yourself saying things like "I thought I would really like sexagons, but alas they are not for me".

Match one fabric sexagon to one recycled junk mail sexagon, centering the smaller on the wrong-side of the larger.  There is no wrong side to the smaller, cardstock sexagon.  Somehow attach the two; some people use fabric glue stick, but I prefer teeny-eeny torn off pieces of painter's tape.  Start basting.

If you are having trouble seeing the potential of the sexagon in quilting, take a cruise on over to The Great Hexagon Quilt-Along.  & if you can get them to change it to The Great Sexagon Quilt-Along, you would be well on the way to bringing the sexagon back into the lexicon.  If you cannot see yourself going whole hog for a sexagon quilt, this site here has some other fine suggestions (& better directions than mine).  I cannot see myself making a whole one, but was delighted when I got another blue&yellow basket in the mail, this one with sexagon flowers.
 
In absolutely-true, double entendre news, my mother-in-law drops broad hints that she would like a sexagon/grandmother's flower garden quilt whenever we see one.  There is a really big one at Dudley Farm.  Maybe if they had billed themselves as the Home of the Sexagon Quilt they could have boosted attendance.  Maybe not.

Hearts-a-mailing

On Wednesday the 2nd the mailing list for the Block Lotto winners was sent.  I know S***** felt bad about the delay (usually it goes out right after the drawing, which happened the last day of February), the reason for which seems to be a lone winner who was slow to reply with her info (& I am guessing was difficult to reach).  Having recently gone through similar gyrations  on the Facebook Quilt Block Swap Group, I feel her pain.

RANT ALERT: not once but TWICE the same meshugeneh signed up for a limited-space swap in the Fb QBSG, missed the first deadline, said "Oops, so sorry I forgot, but I am on track for the next one", confirmed she was on track for the next one until the week before that deadline when she disappeared, & stayed disappeared until she got the notice I was booting her from the group.  That's when I got a message that she had a recently dead relative.  I'm not saying she didn't; I just don't know how you can be on track seven days before the deadline & then have nothing done seven days after.  Flood, fire that would make more sense.  & before someone gets excited & posts to tell me how hard it is to get even completed quilt blocks into the mail when such a thing happens, keep in mind blocks need to be in the mail almost a week in advance to make the deadline & she posted she was on-track three days before that.

Sooooo, back to Block Lotto:  some new rules are in place & I cannot find a single scrap of one that looks unreasonable.  Reading between the lines, though, it looks like she has been getting some behind-the-scenes flak.  One of the disadvantages of running a digital group, where you never get to see & know most of the individuals in the group is it is hard not to interpret criticisms as from the whole group instead of recognizing there are one or two fringers with nothing better to do with their time.  For a long time I had a criticism from a long-gone swapper taped to my refrigerator; the gist was that I was not a christian & unworthy (I distinctly remember the word "unworthy") of receiving her quilt blocks...or her participation...?  It is a bit hazy, the print-out tore over a year ago & I took it down.  I do distinctly remember what she why she complained:  our swap is send five blocks get five others back.  She sent three for which she 1) expected five back, 2) was not happy with the three she got & 3) wanted her original three back.

After that, when anyone complained (& there were not ill-will complaints: mostly blocks that did not meet the requirements slipping thru, & once a person only received four blocks instead of five while I had zero unaccounted for blocks to explain this & no one else coming forward with six instead of five- it turned out to be static cling & the fifth was found among the four), it was hard not to hear that same unreasonable whinging message & lump these in with them, which might have been the death of the group.  So I kept it taped up as a reminder that one crazy-bitch-meany does not equal all crazy-bitch-meanies.  It sounds goofy, but it helped. 

What was this post about again?  Oh right, I mailed my heart lotto blocks earlier today.  Congrats winners!

Seeing red

Once my block lotto blocks were posted, I went cherching the next month's assignment & it was Oh Dear all in red.  There is no good way to put this:  I am not a big fan of red.  Whenever I have a red white & blue assignment I somehow squeak by with blue & white & the littlest bit of red around the edges.

This is not a new aversion; it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin or even Nancy Reagan before her.  I just do not much care for red. Way back, before there was a Useless Ranch blog, way back in ?2006?, Fons & Porters published a Bingo Block that required five different red fabrics in any of several categories.  Most people went to their scrap bags (they only needed 2.5" squares);  I had to buy four fat quarters.  I owned one novelty fabric that could be fussy cut to mostly red in such a small square & nothing else.  No red.

Since that time I tried to expand my world to include red, but it did not take.  I own some red fabric & I never seem to cut into it.  I pushed myself to deal with red in one of our FB swap blocks this year (another 2.5"square commitment) & I am dragging my feet making more than I needed for the instruction-pictures.  Starting with that small red block (it's a log cabin so you know, red in the center) is a hurdle I cannot seem to get over.

Rereading what I have just typed, I recognize I sound like a crazy person.  I am thinking an all-red block would probably be good for me because this aversion is...uhmmmm...extreme.  Emotionally unwell extreme.  So of course I will make at least one.  After all, if I cannot bear even the remote chance of winning, I can always donate it.

// this particular lotto was inspired by the upcoming exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum.  It is not often I am sorry I no longer leave in that NYC-Boston corridor, but this is one I would have liked to see despite the color.  & my sneak-peak arrived earlier today & I kinda like it, red & all.

The saints' diet

Right about now is when everyone's New Years resolution to lose weight pretty much tanks.  So I thought how about a saint known for her inedia?  Yeah, I had to look it up the first time too.  Inedia is the ability to subsist without taking nourishment except the holy communion for long periods of time.  Obviously inedia alone is not enough, you need other qualities like visions.  A stigmata doesn't hurt either. & yesterday's saint is the total package.  Yea, I'm a day late with this one...so sue me.

Anne Catherine Emmerich was born in 1774 in the Holy Roman Empire.  That was the country: the Holy Roman Empire.  She already has an anachronistic-seeming thing going, right?  Well, I had to look that one up, too & it turns out that the Holy Roman Empire was an actual place until 1806, although it had been getting steadily smaller for a while by then.  So we have a person who lived much more recently than I usually like to see in my saints, in a country that sounds like something out of the Middle Ages, which it kind of was. 

As she became an adult, she job hopped; probably not her fault.  I am guessing that as the empire broke down long-term opportunities in the serf-line were probably also limited.  Finally she was admitted to a convent, only to see it closed down by the King of Westphalia.  Not sacked, not burned, she was not martyred by being raped/killed/held hostage.  They just closed it down.  She then asked to join the Poor Clares, but not having any money, they couldn't afford to take her.

& so she continues, as a shepherdess, a seamstress, etc., all the while having "a feeling of disgust and repugnance when in the neighbourhood of old pagan cemeteries, whereas she was attracted to the sacred remains of the saints as steel by the magnet".  She also took to sleeping on a cross (well planks on the ground in the form of a cross, which made me laugh out loud because of that oh-so-picturesque Southern expression:  get down off of that cross honey, somebody needs the wood).

The food-weirdness seems to have been there almost from the beginning.  It began with giving away the best of her food to the poor.  Then when there were no poor (no poor?!?), she would leave it as an offering.  It wasn't long before 1) she caught the attention of a poet, who began writing about her & 2)she ruined her digestive system.

That first one there is the next anachronism.  Relying on poets for publicity had gone out of vogue everywhere by the late 18th century, except in the Holy Roman Empire it would seem.  Actually, that isn't true.  Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, et al wrote buckets of political poetry, but it just doesn't seem quite the same. 

As for the second, it began to get hard to hold down a job (starving, uneducated did anyone NOT see that one coming). By the time the stigmata kicked in & the ecstasies began taking up more & more of her time, she finally qualified for care in one of those religious institutions she was too well off for before.  That donut hole has been around for a long time.  For another decade or so she subsisted entirely on communion wine & wafers.  If the visions had not come first, I would think that explained them right there.  She lingered in this state for uhmmmm twelve or so years.  If she had lived two hundred years later, she could have had her own reality show & sponsored the Celebrity Saint Diet.

Ferns & the saint

I was mostly just looking to see who there might be around February 14th who was not Saint Valentine & what caught my eye was the man of today: Aedan of Ferns.  Ferns.  In January.

Okay, ferns it is.  Also, Aedan meets so many of my favorite saint requirements.  Very little documentation (or so I thought). Died of natural causes.  Hermit, although it turns out he founded 30 or so churches; I just love the project management hermits, don't you?

First it turns out not to be ferns but Ferns, a cathedral, diocese & all-round happening place in greater Dublin.  Naturally Aedan of Ferns is the patron saint of Ferns.  But before he was Aedan of Ferns he was Aedan, son of tribal chieftans.  Then he was Aedan, local guy with reputation for "sanctity".  I put that in quotes because that is the word the calendar uses:  sanctity.   Before sanctity was a metal band, it meant having the quality of being holy.  I am always curious how a person goes about exhibiting this quality to such a degree that he gets a reputation, but alas that is barely covered.  The only thing I could find was that he founded all those churches as he had to keep moving...to get away from his followers.  Which in my book does make him a little bit holy.  The first one is in his birthplace, the last one in Ferns, where he died on January 31, 632.

Mostly Aedan seems to have had the ordinary saint/chieftain's son life.  He was a student/hostage to a local king.  He got a reputation for being holy.  & there is a back-story that his family could not take him to be baptized as an infant because of rising water & he magically floated across the water.  It didn't say but I am guessing he floated back once it was over.  Or maybe that is how he came to be a hostage.

That's it except more detail on the career, church-founding stuff.  Aedan of Ferns gave us Ferns (& a slew of other churches) & more recently the name Aidan, which has been in the top 100 for almost 10 years now, although I think Sex In the City might have just as much to do with that as our man of the day.  Also Aidan Quinn probably didn't hurt.

Force: to compel, constrain or oblige

At the end of last year, V** gave me a gift of narcissus bulbs & a tall, narrow pot with planting material.  For the first time in years, I am forcing.

When we lived in New Joisey, I covered our dining room window & patio doors with plants- anything to obscure the parking lot & the scenic overlook of Route 46.  In winter, I scoured the garden section of the hardware stores for bulbs of any kind to add any kind of color to the truly colorless, slushy view.

Forcing bulbs is no complex art, but it does require at least some cold.  I think this is why I got out of the habit when we moved to Texas.  I could hardly remember to put the bulbs in the refrigerator & on the rare occasion I remembered that step, I could not seem to remember to take them out again.  By the time I rediscovered them, they had sprouted, dried & died.  Also, there was the reality that no matter how polluted it is, being in the tropics gives Houston the illusion of healthy greenery.  The winter months were not the same gray.

Winter is not such a gray affair here either.  Still when we got home last month, I immediately opened up the kit & was pleased to see the bulbs were already pushing bleached white stems, even in the complete dark of the packaging.  I planted them fast,  covered them during the day for the first week or so to give the roots some catch up time & now every day is a new stage.  The rest of winter is likely to be mostly-mild enough that I can get another set chilled just sitting a week or so in the garage & will not have to be without flowers for the next few months.

I forgot how much I liked them.  When we walk in&out the back door, they have just enough scent to be pleasant.  The flowers are delicate & clean & best of all, they have a natural sparkle:

A thorough birching

I have been bogged down on the Betulaceae for quite a while now.  Not like the Anacardiaceae but still, there is a lot of birch out there.  As a result of all that birch out there, there is a lot of birch in the herbarium wood collection.

Birch trees are the first trees about which I have a specific childhood memory.  There were a few paper birches in the yard of my family's home & the temptation to peel those white strips all the way around could be overwhelming.  I remember brushing the palm of my hand over the frayed edges that had naturally peeled away hoping & hoping not to roll them away just a little bit further.  I remember being told that to do so, all the way around would kill the tree & I wanted so badly to do it anyway.

As it happens paper birches are indeed on the decline; deer & paper manufacturers do not share my conflict of spirit.  This tree was once considered an almost aggressive weed tree (I am quite sure we had them because the white trunks were at least something to look at when all the leaves were gone).  Where you chopped down one birch, three more would grow.  Unless you paved over the entire grove or  drained the adjacent wetland.  As I recall, the birches in our yard preferred lower land & wet feet.

Later in life,  I learned of that other famous birch, John Birch.  For no good reason I seem to get the man confused with another man, John Stuart Mill, which is just, well bizarre.  They are both named John....& so are a gazillion other people past& present that I am able to keep separate from either of them.  This confusion is why I am always Always ALWAYS caught off guard when the John Birch Society does something well, fairly typical for themselves. Most recently it was they have groused about the lack of documentation (their word) that "Clean, safe water is a right for all Americans"  while also biotching because full-on access to guns is  indeed a right of all Americans & they have the documentation.  If only the framers of the Constitution had thought to say "oh by the way, water that is not poisoned, that's good too".  It might help you understand how confused I make myself if I provide John Stuart Mill's most famous quote:  Although it is not true all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

Which finally brings us to today's word: birching.  Once upon a time it meant a sound whipping, often with a birch whip, hence the "birch" in "birching".  You don't hear that one much any more.  Birching in schools (I am guessing I first encountered this word somewhere along the way with Laura Ingalls Wilder) has gone out of fashion...& I do mean fashion.  Whether it will come back or not I cannot say.   Having been on the receiving end of a particular teacher's targeted malice I would hope not, but having seen first hand what passes for self-discipline (& how one unregulated frosh can incite the whole class) I wonder if there are other options.  So there you are, three old words to use in new (old) ways.

"You Are Out"

First, let me say my Project Runway viewing has been quite spotty the last few seasons.  I am never good with programs that need to be watched in order.  I think this stems from the olden days when I traveled just-a-bit & could never figure out which time zone I was in & what channel the program I wanted to watch was on & if you do not know where you are, WHEN you are, what you are is kind of screwed when it comes to getting episodes in order.  So:  I have never seen a single episode of Survivor, The Amazing Race, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc.

Still somehow I usually know who is who.  Once a week/month give-or-take I get allergy shots & then I have to hang around for 45 minutes & since I am not interested in planning my Florida Wedding & I know I look like a fool fighting with the kids for the puzzles in Scholastic, I read a lot of People.  & US Weekly.  & so forth.  It turns out that really is as close as I want to get to many of these programs, even now when I do know where/when I am.

All that being said, I used to make an effort for Project Runway.  & then I stopped, no reason, really just got busy & couldn't figure out who was who & never really jumped back in.  The last thing I remember thinking was I wish that little upstart would stop saying "fierce".  Flash forward to the middle of last month when I learned there was a Project Runway game for Wii.  Well.  That was something.  Yes, they go on to say it is kind of "meh" BUT I have paid that much to get into movies that made me sick to my stomach & not in an intellectual way.  As for what they say it takes to make it good:  alcohol & friends with no personal boundaries, that I have.

The last time we Wiied, A***** & A (he really is a good sport) boxed while me & M****** worked our way through a family size bottle of Pinot Grigio.  After several close rounds, A***** won, A said he was robbed (good sport, not great sport) & A***** went out & bought her own Wii.

Yesterday, my poor husband had to be in Tampa (we will make him play next time), so it was just us three.  & the dog, all of the dogs, of course but there is the one...  Have I told the story of Farley-Boy during Wii?  He gets very excited & would run around barking except he is quite elderly so he stands there shifting from foot to foot barking & if you get close enough, he bites you in the tush.  It adds an unexpected element to Wii tennis  Also, now when I invite people over to Wii, I have to ask if they have had their shots.

Last night, we popped the champagne (it was left over from C*****'s 21st b.day toast) & opened the door to my new addiction: Project Runway for Wii.  Everything the Fug Girls said is absolutely true.  But they left out how much fun being complete fools with a high tech version of paper dolls can be, because it was too much fun.  & not just because of the champagne.  A got home in time to take some very incriminating pictures & A***** took the disc home for the rest of the week to work on her skills.

Be careful what you wish for

I admit I do love to collect old adages, whether or not I believe in their truthiness.  I am quite sure I was still in middle school when I saw the flawed premise in "it is always in the last place you look".  & as for "if it's not one thing, it's another" well, duh.

There are a few I do come close to believing though.   "A penny saved is a penny earned" is still mostly solid, so long as you do not consider a penny in the stock market to be a penny saved, but shocking number of people DO think of the market as a big piggy bank.  & while it is not true that "you cannot cheat an honest man", it is a helluva a lot easier to cheat a dishonest one.

Which brings me to a long time favorite:  "Be careful what you wish for (because you just might get it)".   I am genetically related to a person who wished long & loud & hard that his children would just all go away.  & none of us have spoken to him for years; some of us are closing in on the end of the third decade of not speaking to him.  I have no idea how this worked out for him, but I for one am very happy with his wish fulfillment.

"Be careful what you wish for"  is also good business-planning advice.  I remember when it was possible to be in another room, far away from the television & not be able to tell from the jump in volume when the program had cut to commercial.  People who remember him fondly mostly remember Ronald Reagan for his pro-humanitarian activities: negotiating with Iranian hostage-takers, trading arms for drugs in Latin America, & busting the air traffic controllers union right here at home.  You could also remember him as the guy who removed any volume regulation from the segue between programs & their sponsors.  I am sure the advertisers thought this was all their wishes rolled into one --- until it turned out the blast was so obnoxious that people who had never used a remote control before learned how to work that mute button.  Nowadays, even the technologically delayed (hi Mom) routinely record their programs & speed through those commercials like they were never there.

There are other collective wishes that backfired big-time.  One of my favorites is the increase in anal sex among teenage girls who identify themselves as christian & want to  stay "technical virgins" until marriage.  Bill Maher calls this thinking outside the box.  I admit that christians often have me flummoxed but I think I am safe in saying that they never expected to have to include anal penetration on list of what exactly constitutes sex with their abstinence directive.  As one Catholic friend expressed it " I just cannot picture Father standing up at CCD & saying " 'this mean up-ay the utt-bay' although I would pay to see it ".  She was speaking in a different context, but I think it still holds.

Another favorite that really needs a footnote is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease".  I once worked with a programmer who waited until a project was at a particularly delicate stage (timewise, skillwise) & then started tossing out new demands.  I admit I was very aggravated to have to give in (which I did, completely without grace) & he made a big show of telling the entire staff meeting that it was the squeaky wheel etc.  When things flattened out a bit & I had some breathing space, I made a big show of introducing him to the new wheel.  He somehow never saw the next step in the squeaky wheel gets the grease ... until the driver is in a position to deal with the squeaky wheel, permanently.  If that old wheel wanted back on the wagon, well, he would have to work long & hard (& cheap) to convince me he is worth replacing a perfectly good, brand new wheel that is not squeaking.  I think that metaphor has just completely run its course.

Of course I like to keep my eyes open/ears up for the next "be careful what you wish for" moment.  I am seeing it in the Tea Party movement: we want to make a lot of noise & garner some attention to our causes which are...looking more & more like just a list of complaints without much in the way of suggestions, frankly.  They got the publicity wish & now experiencing the maybe we should have thought this thru some more follow-up.   I also see the wish part in parents first "I cannot wait until this baby is OUT OF ME & I don't have to carry this weight around" (every new mom I know has said this at least once).  As for the dads:  "I hope he starts walking soon" or "she'll be so much more interesting when she can talk".  

I think another big one is right around the corner though.  I know a lot of people who usually tread the straight & middle have shrugged their shoulders over Arizona's decision to further marginalize their undocumented workers (setting aside the anxiety they are causing people who might look undocumented but have every right to be here).  Not to take a giant leap over human right violations, etc., I wonder what Joe Q. Moderate is going to do when there is a fraction of who there used to be to harvest & processing his food.  & that fraction expects to be paid minimum wage, by the hour, not pennies for piecework.  I am quite certain, the guy who sneaks across the border to live in horrible conditions just to send money back to his family a few months a year is a much less expensive & much more reliable worker than the guy who will likely be replacing him.  Because there is one demographic for whom this law is likely to be very very good:  parolees.