Against the Wind

Quentin came in the door this evening just as I’d recovered my iPhone from the bowels of the big honking bag Tania sent me for my birthday. “Playing with your new toy, Grandma?”

It’s not so new anymore. But we play a lot! I can now return to trying to get my “other computer” going. It gets frustrating, and I’ve got my toy to play with.

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Saturday I was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness, for a while. I tried writing about it… and did, on my toy. Mailed it to myself. (Ok, I’ve got myself as a constant companion and friend now.) I thought I was going to find it… no such luck. Anyway, as I loped and moped around the house, I was suddenly inspired, INSPIRED, I tell ya! I’ve got the best plan for the next round of the round robin EVER. I’m still surprised at what a wonderful idea I had. So I’m hoping to get working on it over labor day. This is cool beyond cool. I’ve had that piece up on the design wall forever, and suddenly, I just KNEW what it needed. Since that lost lonely Saturday, I’ve not had a lot of free time, but honestly, I enjoyed the spot of hours, once I slogged through the “what am I going to do to kill this gift?” feeling.

And a photo from D.C.

This one hardly needs any explanation. The monuments up and down the mall and all the people out looking at them…just amazing.

It’s a warm day again in Slidell. The tropical summer weather is back. It was drippy and hot when I went out to take Tooter’s for her morning constitutional. Mimi’s intended, raised in the true tropics, was raised bathing morning and evening. Well, the last couple days I’ve done that too. So if I send a photo with my skin falling off in great hunks, you know what’s up!

I’ve steered clear of politics mostly of late, or felt like I have. I haven’t blogged much actually. That could be how I steered clear. But Megan’s discussion on the Atlantic blog of what we don’t discuss (the r-word) is worth considering. The first paragraph follows.

One way or another, we are going to ration care, if you use “ration” to mean “allocate inherently scarce goods”. But neither side of the health care debate likes to talk about this. They prefer to minimize the problem–the opponents by saying “they can go to the emergency room!”, the proponents by discussing all the speculative ways that we might be able to save money by cutting treatments that don’t do any good, or the infamous “waste, fraud, and abuse” that politicians always promise they are going to use to save money. Somehow, that money never makes its way to the budget’s bottom line in any significant amount. And reading about how salt guidelines came to be, or any of the various histories of bygone treatments from lobotomies to prophylactic tonsillectomies, illustrates how dramatically the establishment of real-world treatment guidelines can diverge from the sober, white-coated Solons of the technocratic ideal.

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Travelogue alert! Quentin and I got off of the train in D.C. and in honor of our limited time in the city, my son-in-law and his father met us to let us hit the ground running. Our first day was monument day. The camera did it’s thing… I’ve way too many good photos. The monuments in D. C. point to a secular religion, they’ve been built with a nod to ancient temples, drawing the eye and the mind upward in wonder, memorializing the men who built this nation. All the white marble and the green of the swamplands of the Potomac, the hills of Virginia in summer are Kodak perfect. I’ve a photo of a massive building, I think across from the capitol building that I’ve no idea what is. It would be nice if it were judicial, as most of my photos are Capitol and White House. But I think it’s congressional offices. Amazing amounts of people milling about the capitol, tourists and the powerful, and those drawn like iron filings to a magnet seeking the powerful.

In the “crypt” under the dome of the capitol and in the old congressional chambers off to the side of the dome, there is a collection of statuary, bronze and marble statues, two great men from every state. Sadly the best Louisiana could do were Huey Long and E. B. White a Supreme Court Justice. The populist Huey Long is not my idea of a man whose memory I am happy to have memorialized. (I need to move to Mississipp or Tejas!)

These are Benton, from Missouri, and Henry Clay of Kentucky. A quote from each, and a one sentence biog.

Benton: Benton left Kentucky to go to Missouri territory and become a six term senator from Missouri.

“General Jackson was a very great man, sir. I shot him, sir.” (When asked if he knew Andrew Jackson)

Henry Clay: Representative and Senator from Kentucky, known as a great compromiser.

“I am glad to learn that there exists a prospect of doing something towards turnpiking in Kentucky. I shall be very happy to co-operate with you in an object so worthy of the utmost exertions.” (from a letter to Adam Beatty 1818)

It has been a while since I tried to write a blog. Or so it feels. I’ve collected quite a few links, but I’ll spare you.

The interesting things that have passed my scope today include my bridge partner’s fun on a jury. She was on a DUI case, and none of the attorneys thought to ask the potential jurors about former DUI offenses. She ended up on a 11 -1 hung jury. One of the jurors just couldn’t convict. So she spent three days in deliberations as the lead juror with a man who had made his mind up, and was not to be affected by facts. What a lovely chance to see human nature at its best. But such is our system. A pain in the ass type can still hang a jury.

Meanwhile Cuz Sara is featured in her love at first and second sight story in the KC Star. She asks at what point they become “obnoxious?” Heck I love a good story. The link only has a few more days of life, but I enjoyed it. Hope you get to pull it up. And for the record she’s still quite attractive. No justice!

One last science story… I’ve still got student papers to grade, but not going to finish tonight. I just get too cranky if I push it. The appendix is not just a vestigial organ? Well, whatever it’s functions I’ve done pretty well without one for lo these 47 years since my appendix and I parted company in the wee hours of a night long ago.

From our travels, amongst all the secular monuments, you could miss this…I don’t recall even seeing it. St. Joseph Cathedral. But I like the photo. On my own time, I might have gone in.

I’m scurrying about like the White Rabbit. “I’m late, I’m late.” But tonight, I’m heading to bed early. I’ll get reaccustomed to teaching a class every day. If I have five classes I don’t pretend to have the amount of prep time I do here, so I want to hold myself to “higher” standards. But a lot of teaching is not what I do, but what happens in student’s heads. I know this and need to relax and enjoy the show more. I’ll get there. Maybe.

In a real school (University of CA, Berkley) Brad DeLong has posted his opening assignments for his students of economics. They are all variations of “where was your family in thus and such a period.” I can’t find the links to the essay writing assignments, but they looked like interesting essay assignments. But the one about your family’s history from 1945 - 1970 struck me funny. I’ve lived almost all of that. Yup, it’s official. I’m older than dirt.

So here’s a photo documenting that I did go on a train trip with the Q-man. He enjoyed the upper berth most of the way to D.C. and from NYC to Slidell. He quickly christened the spot as the “man shelf” and made himself at home.

He was a great travel mate. He was easily entertained, and I’m thinking we made some nice memories for him. Anyway, I have some treasured memories. The man shelf is right up in there.

The magic hour arrived just as the train stopped in Atlanta. Amtrak does move right on down the rail line. The new continuous rails are smooth to ride. We made some memories.

Jet trails…a symbol of our civilization.

Planes trains and automobiles. The life blood of the city.

For my birthday present, I got myself an iPhone. So a lot of the photos I took were taken on that. Quentin did a walk through of the train, so I will make another stab at posting his video on google. The phone photos just don’t hold a candle to the photos I take with the good camera. So I’ll not post those photos.

This post is going to be a bit like a quilt? I’ve started on three or four different blocks of thought, and am now thinking this will be my only chance to blog today, so I’ll try some form of organization.

Deb just sent me the funniest tale from the depths of her quilting scraps. She’s decided to clean that area of her life up a bit. Everywhere I look there’s some bit of my life that needs some serious cleaning up. But I’d rather do what I’d rather do. Now it’s blog a bit.

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August vacations

This from my Mother’s last “published” book. The postcards are probably fictionalized from Grandma’s diaries or journals. Speaking of clean up… I need to find the ftp file Dana left for me of unfinished book 5.

POSTCARDS FROM MOTHER DURING THEIR CALIFORNIA TRIP
…
Wed Aug. 18, 1948
Kingman, Ariz.

Dear Doris,

We left Syracuse at 5:50 Tues. and ate breakfast at Lamar, Colo., had lunch on Raton Pass–we all enjoyed that–and reached the King’s Rest in Albuquerque at 5:40. I fixed supper in the cabin. We enjoyed being there. This morning we were on the road at 6:00 and ate breakfast at Ville de Cubero, very slow service. Nice cafe, but too many guests and insufficient help. Gallup is 1000 miles from home. We had to take the old road to your lunch spot in the tall pines east of Flagstaff. We looked longingly at the dilapidated campe at Williams as we drove by. We reached Kingman at 6:45 Mtn Time and stayed in the Wal-a-Pai Court. 491 miles. The girls went out to get hamburgers. Love, Mother
___________

By 1948, the summer road trippers have not only restaurants, and motels, they’ve got established favorites from years up and down the same road to California. It’s a very different trip from the trip to Shreveport in 1923, with baby Doris. My blast from the past, taking my grandson on the train to NYC this past summer was the lap of luxury!

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Now a bit of quilting. Quoth Janet of Sotc (Sisters of the Cloth) “As ye sew, ye shall rip.” I sent off the second to last round, and heaved a great sigh of relief. I cut out a snail’s trail block out of some of my many scraps. In haste, I didn’t align all four different fabrics I was using. So, there are some triangles missing corners or 1/4 inch short on one side. But I got something together, and I like it. So I considered I might make a bunch of 6 in “snail trails” for the border of the last quilt.

THEN I went to the mailbox. Great ZOT! What came in the mail is amazing. But it’s not about snail trails! I hope to hang it up to look at it before I go to bed. More like, I’ll get it up before Monday. It’s a design challenge. I got into this as a design challenge. I’m up to my eyeballs in one now. And this as school starts. I’ll go GREYER over this.

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Need a daily dose of guilt? No. Ok, how about just looking at a well made short… a prize winner.

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Etymology? This snip of Lewis Carroll is just for pleasure. A link at the end goes into the use of “jam.”

‘I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!’ the Queen said. ‘Twopence a week, and jam every other day.’

Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, ‘I don’t want you to hire ME - and I don’t care for jam.’

‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.

‘Well, I don’t want any TO-DAY, at any rate.’

‘You couldn’t have it if you DID want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.’

‘It MUST come sometimes to “jam to-day,”‘ Alice objected.

‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every OTHER day: to-day isn’t any OTHER day, you know.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’

Fascinating site if you want to kill a few more minutes.

I clipped this just because it doesn’t much conform to the “Stupid Sara Palin” meme. From facebook.

Last a photo. Or maybe not… I’m now burning a CD before moving to the next memory chip. One day I need to start cataloging all my 6000+ photos. Sounds like Deb’s scrap pile in the making!

Probably the last of the Bible School photos. This taken on my birthday. We celebrated later and I know there are some flower photos of the bouquet the girls gave me.

I noticed in the church foyer Sunday a print of this photo. The Banner Elk youth.

My quilting is down to the last long seam. It’ll wait for in the morning because when I try it tired, I just have to rip and redo. My lesson planning for tomorrow is done, at least sort of. I’m doing what I did last year, just following the text. I always feel like I could do better but don’t care to spend the time reinventing the wheel to smooth out the rough patches.

I’m thinking of Sara tonight. It’s a tough go to let that last child head out to college. It’s a threshold you don’t really want to cross. But the paradox of raising kids is that if you do it right they leave and don’t much need you anymore. If you can find a mother who didn’t feel abandoned and a bit lost–she needs to be stuffed and mounted, because that’s a rare one! So Sara, if you read this, know that several of us have been there fairly recently. The particulars are different from house to house, but it’s big change. Trust me here, in a few months you’ll look back and wonder how you did all that you did. Or you’ll have channelled the energy into fifteen or so new projects that you couldn’t get around to earlier. But as they pack off… oh the bittersweet taste. Bless you through the changes.

Jackie, a step grandchild by marriage of … I’m old, I’ve lost the name…. Carol Jo’s mother…a shirttail cousin found this blog by googling mother’s name. And she reminded me of all the writing mother left, so I’ll copy a little bit tonight and call it a blog.

August 17, Monday (1924)

From Grandma’ Brewster’s diary: “In the afternoon we leave Sedan (Ks) and go as far as Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Go to see Uncle Frank Jones and Aunt Belle. Then to the park where we put up the tent by the car and made camp. The children enjoy playing around the camp.

Mother further explains that Uncle Frank was Grandpa Brewster’s Uncle. His mother was Agnes Jones before marriage.

The trip was a little run to Shreveport to visit faculty friends, the Mechlins. In this day with interstate highways, I can consider trying to go from Winfield (near Sedan) to Slidell in the opposite corner of Lousiana from Shreveport in a single very long day. Then it took leaving Lawrence on Saturday, arrive in Shreveport on the following Thursday. Wednesday the diary notes, “The last 40 miles of road today was full of stumps and very poor. Only a trail.” They traveled with two small children over rough roads, camping because there were no motels on the road really, and considered it a vacation.

Things change. I’m liking living in this time, for the conveniences.

Every day for four days, VBS started with a little puppet show. The volunteers that brought us the VBS were almost all boys and the campers were mostly boys. As A would say, “they’re all so precious.” I can’t begin to get the accent right, but the sentiment is perfect even without the accent!

VBS is what made me a true believer in miracles. I’m always way short on faith and trust, but the Good Lord comes through with some amazing miracles working around my reluctance.

This afternoon, in the quiet of my empty house, I was hearing echos of a conversation overheard while shop hopping yesterday I think. Some people in Mandeville were talking about someone who had decided since moving to the country to raise chickens. Just like I decided to raise worms! I killed my worms in short order, though I think I’d do better on a second go ’round. Anyway, they were laughing about how the poor neophyte farmer was incredulous that a hen house attracts snakes. “And she thinks those eggs are going to look like they do in the grocery, without the poop, strawbits and blood on them… there’s a fun learning curve about to hit.” A told me as we drove all over south Louisiana about her neighbor who also decided to go chickens that he’d decided to give away the rooster, because the vile beast woke him up every morning. But somehow his hens haven’t ever started laying. Wonder what’s up with that?

We have our vegtables clean and lined up in the grocery, and our meat on trays that catch the blood, and easily forget that there’s a lot of handling to get our food, even the less processed stuff to us. Anyway, I heard about the Farmer’s Market in New Orleans East, in the Vietnamese community… very early on Saturday morning. Wonder if I could line up Marianne for that adventure? I gather it’s over by 9am, so you gotta get up jumping if you want to check it out.

Tomorrow is mail date for the Round Robins. I can’t wait to get this one off, but I keep procrastinating finishing it. I foresee working late tomorrow and getting it off a day late, but I might get organized tonight and finish. I really don’t have but a few hours of work. I just can’t seem to force myself to sit and get it done. I have had a long chat with myself about the source of all my procrastination. It’s fear. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m afraid it’s going to be stupid, awkward, not right. But if I’d done it earlier, I’d have a chance to rectify that. Now I just have to do what I can with the hours left, and let it go. No fancy corner stones, no fancy nuttin this time. But I have some interesting ideas for the next and last phase.

Back to the sewing machine.

Two day shop hop in south Louisiana has me jumping. Very light blogging through this fun. But I’m wanting to post some images.

This is the focus of the back of the sanctuary at FPC Slidell.

It’s a huge window, not as ornate as many, but full of symbols of important Christian concepts. I would like to study church history more. I haven’t yet relocated the book I took with me to NYC that I’ve been enjoying. 500 - 1000 AD are some particularly fertile years. If you look at church history as the hebrew people saw their history, as a reflection of how well they were doing in maintaining the relationship with God, that span that saw the rise of the Mohamedans, the Crusades and the first major rift, the fault line of the Eastern and Western churches, there’s a lot to be said about how the church faltered in its position as “state religion.”

“Some boast in horses and chariots, but all my power is in the name of the Lord.” (Paraphrase of Psalm 20:about 9)

To the bath and off to look at fabrics and ideas for quilt tops.

NPR promises a story on twitter art. Something like bumper sticker wisdom, it’s not a complete contradiction in terms, but it’s close.

So my attempt at brevity–I held human bones today. Light, very white. I hope Tara has a moment now and again to share her med school adventure.

Photo later. Keep Linda and family in prayer.