Monday, December 31, 2018

Thank You, Mr. Trump

This tumultuous year ends with the Dow down in a record(The Dow fell 5.6%. The S&P 500 was down 6.2% and the Nasdaq fell 4%. It was the worst year for stocks since 2008). Trump likes records. He is always either making stuff up, "Highest pay raise the military has every gotten," or he is flat out lying, "Biggest crowd at an inauguration ever." How does anyone know the difference between making stuff up and flat out lying? Sometimes he uses numbers and sometimes he uses his gut.

For the troops in Iraq he just made stuff up out of whole cloth. Anyone who has ever been in the military, been married to someone in the military, had a child in the military, or been a child of someone in the military knows that pay raises are more automatic than by design. Besides that, Trump cannot, despite his own braggadocio, give pay raises to anyone unless it comes out of his own pocket (which with this guy it never will). Any rise in pay has to be voted on by the same group of tired old men who have made government the spectacle it currently is. Beyond that, a 10% pay raise is preposterous. Unless the troops listening to him were completely clueless, even they knew that was a flat out, bald faced lie.

Another lie that Trump's team is spreading is that Melania is the first first lady to visit a war zone. I know that many people are brain dead as far as history goes, but there are multiple photographs and even movie reels of Eleanor Roosevelt visiting troops all over the world in what were far more dangerous situations than Melania came close to. Eleanor was only one of many wives to visit the troops. Eleanor visited them far more often than Trump seems likely to and in far more dangerous conditions, although he seemed freaked out by traveling with lights out. Didn't do him any good--plane spotters recognized his plane.

I have finished the piecing and layering of the current project but because it is so outside my comfort zone I hesitate to have my husband take any pictures yet. It has a tentative name of "Taormina" because it reminds me of seaside Italian towns with its colors of sand, sea, waves, and flowers. But I am not going to expose it to public view yet. I did machine quilt a little bit today--as I expected my trapezius muscles are very tense and I already know I have to figure out how not to catch my basting threads.

My husband has already gotten his hormone antagonist shots. His radiation therapy begins in about six weeks. In the meantime, we bought a different house because of multiple factors including our dog dying and not having enough room for our art. We originally thought that we would be able to remodel the spring house to accommodate the art; then we thought that we would remodel the house to accommodate the art; then we loathed and feared our neighbors in equal amounts to make either of those choices seem ridiculous. So we will be moving again but within the same state this time.  The new project was a very fancy stable, carriage house for a huge estate that was converted fairly quickly in to a private home. It is from 1901 so quite modern compared to our current nearly 300 year old house.

For us 2018 cannot be gone soon enough. If we hadn't had bad luck this year we wouldn't have had any luck at all. I even told my husband I wasn't making o-zoni since it was pretty clear that faint hopes never did have a chance in 2018. One of our sons is carrying on the tradition in SLC however. That's probably because he is getting married this year.

So thank you, Mr. Trump. Your sheer incompetence has left crops rotting in the fields, the Dow ending at an historical low, our allies abandoning us for more reliable partners, but also with a Democrat controlled House and more women than ever before representing Americans.

Happy New Year everyone--it all looks like up from here on the ground.
   

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Merry Christmas!

This has been a tough year but the spirit of Christmas always lightens the load. Merry Christmas to everyone and happy quilting in the coming year.

Monday, December 24, 2018

A Long Time Ago

My first "crush" was oddly enough on Dwight Eisenhower. While he was the president for two terms, he famously warned the nation about the dangerous alliance of the military industrial complex. Now that Trump has named Patrick Shanahan as the Acting Secretary of Defense in a remarkable show of pique, that danger becomes even more evident. Shanahan was never in the military. Now that isn't necessarily a prerequisite for heading up the Defense Department; his primary if not only expertise comes from working at Boeing where he started after getting two masters degrees from MIT--one in engineering and one in business.

So what does he bring to the table that is of value to defending the country? It's got to be that he knows how to make money out of weapons systems.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Making Danish and Pie

This morning has been devoted to baking or preparing to bake. My husband helped with baking an apple pie. He always peels and slices while I make the pie crust. He laughed because last night our youngest son, the professional chef, called to ask for the flour to fat ratio of the pie crust. I also started the process of making Danish. (Perhaps it isn't capitalized when it's pastry.) This is the first Christmas in a long time that I haven't had a young person helping with the dough.

My husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer about two weeks ago. After a series of scans and consultations, he has started the process of treatment that ultimately leads to five weeks of daily radiation therapy. So far there are no known metastases as all the scans were clear. His older brother died of an aggressive form of prostate cancer several years ago but that does not seem to be the type he has. Fingers crossed everyone is right.

I am working on a paper pieced quilt that I hope to machine quilt. The arm issues about which I wrote in my last entry make hand quilting more painful and since this is a pieced quilt I thought I would try machine sewing. I will let you know how all that works out.

Friday, December 14, 2018

Banana Republic

Trump has done many things that seem inexplicable and repulsive to me but his comments about the HuaWei executive arrested in Vancouver now top the list. He said he would be happy to use her as a bargaining chip in his ongoing economic tit for tat with China.

What?!!! Since when is the United States not a "rule of law" country?  If the telecom company was guilty of breaking the law, then the law should be allowed to proceed. Canada is a rule of law country as well so if Trump makes weird and unwarranted threats they will have no reason to extradite her to our country. While we may not have always lived up to our ideals, I hope we haven't become a rogue nation under the orange dotard.