Questions Need to Be Asked and Answered

George Floyd's death at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis sparked protests around the country. There is not any doubt at all that some bad actors are involved in those protests, but neither is there doubt that the police are included in those bad actors.

https://apnews.com/6407d8c1bc281101589eee5f584d49c9

Who targets journalists? Video evidence and follow up evidence from those injured is clear. The first violation of the constitution was the arrest of a CNN team in Minneapolis. They weren't harmed but that is immaterial given that the First Amendment guarantees a free press. But the police weren't done. It is not just the Minneapolis police but they are the ones who are on video targeting journalists. A correspondent from Canadian Broadcast was blinded by a rubber bullet. The video of that event showed the journalist distant from the protesters but still fired on by the police. When will those people be charged with crimes?

Who gives those orders? Where is the police chief? Where is the mayor? Who is responsible for attacks on the news? Who gave the orders and what were they?


The First Amendment guarantees a number of ideas including a free press. They are all equal as far as the Constitution considers them. So if you want your religion to be free from government intervention, you should fight just as fervently for your press to be free from government intervention. I don't think the Founding Fathers ever considered that people would be shooting journalists. Far from being the enemy of the people, the press exposes harm to the people. That applies even to weird sites that promote conspiracies, or sites that join with the deranged to point fingers at the press as long as they identify as journalists rather than private citizens or companies

I lived through the riots of the 60s and the brutality of the Chicago convention. This is demonstrably worse and we are in deep trouble as a country; as a culture; as a democracy; or even as so many conservatives insist is the correct nomenclature, a democratic republic.Trump sits in the White House tweeting racist and incendiary ideas, quoting some of the worst actors from the 60s, pretending that he didn't mean what he clearly meant. Please give him grace and understanding so that he can help the country heal.

George Floyd Matters

Anyone who has seen the video of George Floyd being killed by police should be appalled. But what will happen next is the defenders of the brutality will blame George Floyd for his own death. They will defend the police because George Floyd's entire life will be examined. I am not defending Floyd for any wrongs that he committed. I have never even had a traffic ticket so committing any kind of illegal activity is foreign to me. The police murdered George Floyd. The police murdered George Floyd because they can.

George Floyd's life matters and George Floyd's death matters more. It is immaterial that George Floyd may have committed a crime that day leading to the police at the scene. It is immaterial because George Floyd did not have his constitutional right to a day in court; George Floyd did not have his constitutional right to a trial; George Floyd, not resisting in any way, did not have his constitutional right to defend himself in court against the accusation against him.

When can we all agree that our legal system, including our police, need to pay attention to the curbs and balances that are supposed to support our system? George Floyd was murdered. The video is readily available. It isn't a matter of opinion. We should not and must not condone lynching and that is what happened to George Floyd, complete with an audience and a video.That this lynching was done by the police should cause everyone to rise up in protest.

Minnesota Nice? Not bloody likely.

Always Remember

This is the weekend that we dedicate to honoring our dead. It  started in the US after the Civil War principally in the Confederate states as a way to honor their fallen soldiers. Many people soon realized that giving the honor only to Confederate soldiers was a problem for reasons that should be obvious so it changed from Decoration Day and then changed again to Memorial Day and then changed again when federal holidays changed so that people could have longer weekends. If I seem to be a little disengaged it's because the holidays shouldn't simply be holidays or the start of summer or any of the frivolous sales that may have now fallen by the wayside.

Decoration Day wasn't initially just for Confederate dead but was a pretty common practice in the South to go to cemeteries and clean up the graves of their ancestors and decorate with the new spring flowers, etc. The whole military purpose was a later usurpation of the original but there were obviously plenty of dead soldiers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and as they got older and died off the whole veneration part of the ritual became a bigger deal, politically and socially.

I really don't want to get down in the weeds here about how it started and how it evolved. I am definitely not of the bumper sticker crowd or the flag waving crowd. Is everyone who died a hero? That is unlikely and improbable but all military dead whether they were heroes or not, were someone's sons or daughters and deserve remembrance all the time, not just on one day. My mother, who has been dead herself for 30 years, always mourned her first boyfriend, Henry, who left Flushing, NY, to join the RAF and ended up dying of pneumonia in the early days of WWII because his plane was shot down and he ended up in the English Channel from which he was rescued but then died in hospital. Was Henry a hero? I guess that depends on the definition but Henry certainly deserves respect. My mother left the comfort of a reasonably good life to go to the south Pacific and serve in the Red Cross. Back in those days no one thought of those women as heroes though they certainly risked their lives in multiple ways helping the men who fought. Were they heroes?
 
Trump decided to play golf this weekend. I understand that he intends to go to Baltimore on Memorial Day even though the mayor of Baltimore has asked him not to. I am pretty sure that the golf is the more important part of Trump's weekend just as I am sure that Trump has gone to Camp David two weekends in a row to tune up his golf game. And yes, there is no golf "course" at Camp David, but there is a delightful hole designed by Bobby Jones that includes four tee locations, perfect for Trump to tune up before hitting his own course, once again at taxpayers' expense as the Secret Service must travel with him. No one in Trump's family, past or present and probably future, has ever served in any country's military let alone the country he lives in now.

Remember your own family members.Think of the sacrifices they made and then think of Trump playing golf on your dime.

100,000 Americans dead of Covid19 on Trump's watch. Please remember.

Inside Scoop

Okay, I have nothing against Michael Jordan or the film, The Last Dance, that so many people are talking about that is about him but I guarantee I have inside information about how he got so sick when he came to Utah to play the Jazz and it had nothing to do with pizza. At the time my youngest son was dating the mayor of Park City's daughter. Despite being from different worlds in more ways than one, they were a hot item for quite a while. My son went up to Park City to see the young woman despite being as sick as a dog. It was an unusually nice day for that time of year in Park City and the young woman asked my son if he wanted to go play some golf.

So they were playing golf in PC when whom should they run into at the course but Jordan. As everyone knows, Jordan is a total golf nut so the nice weather was an incentive for him as well. The two groups met on one of the fairways and my son, though he was very definitely sick with a very nasty virus, shook Jordan's hand enthusiastically, no doubt spreading all of his nasty germs all over. When it was reported that Jordan had gotten sick, everyone in my family sort of laughed because our son had come home to tell us of his encounter and to say that he hoped Jordan caught what he had since he wanted the Jazz to win.

Oddly enough, my husband went to the game, the guest of one of SLC's bankers, so he was able to watch in person one of the more dramatic performances of anyone's athletic careers. There was no pizza involved.   

Having Fun

I have been making the Delectable Pathways quilt from many decades ago. I used the applique strips' designs as the basis for a quilt I made also years ago but mine were borders with corners rather than strips (Go to Quilt Gallery 2 on the Pages section of the blog and scroll down and you will find that quilt). I finished the mountains last week and sewed those strips together and today I finished the applique on one of those strips but that still leaves a bunch of handwork because there are embroidery accents up and down the strip plus your own incentive to add more--more birds, bugs, embroidery, etc. It has been fun since I haven't been working in more earth tones for a while now. I find the designers' method of changing the strips interesting because it reminds me of half-drop knitting.

What has Trump been doing? He's been praising himself, firing people, and accusing Obama of crimes. He's been calling people names and taking hydroxychloroquine. We have more than 92,000 deaths in the US and Trump wants to take a victory lap, claiming that his actions alone saved many more lives. Any thinking person knows that is utter nonsense but unfortunately, as Adlai Stevenson noted in the 50s, the number of thinking persons is much smaller than the number of reactive persons.

Enjoy Memorial Day but do so with caution and care for others. My father is buried in Ft. Sam Houston cemetery in San Antonio so I know he will get a flag. He wasn't much in to flag waving, found it jingo behavior but he will still get a flag. My brother-in-law whose name is on the Viet Nam wall will get a flag as well though he is buried in a churchyard in Massachusetts. He was big in to jingo behavior so that's okay.

And by the way, humans have never developed "herd immunity" to any corona virus; not to common colds, not to flu, not to any of the corona viruses. This one seems to be even more pernicious in that having antibodies to the virus being tested for does not seem to grant all people relief from acquiring the virus again. That indicates that this virus mutates faster than previous corona viruses which is not good news for anyone. That also means that even developing a vaccine will only provide a brief window of relief after which a new vaccine will be needed. Welcome to the brave new world.  

When Does A Death Count?

All sorts of conservative voices are claiming that the death count for the Covid19 is inflated because so many of the dead had underlying issues. Having reached a certain age I can promise everyone that underlying issues follow you from your earliest years and many will plague you as you age. But does that mean that dying from Covid19 while also having "underlying" issues doesn't count as a viral death?

My husband and I are both senior citizens and we both have underlying issues. He has recently recovered from treatment for prostate cancer, previously had cardiac ablations for atrial fibrillation, had spinal surgery more than a decade ago but regardless he is still vigorous and healthy, neither obese nor out of shape. If he caught the virus and died, it would be the virus that killed him. He never smoked and never drank and was still rock climbing in Yosemite two years ago. He was a tennis player in his youth and continues to stay active.

I was a competitive swimmer for most of my life until I had surgery on my cervical spine. The neurosurgeon cautioned me about continuing competition because as he put it, I don't have a governor on my engine. But I have hypertension and asthma even though I, like my husband, am neither obese nor sedentary. If I catch the virus and die it will be the virus that kills me.

Everyone dies eventually. Given that fact, the twisted reasoning of the conservative voices means that there are no virus deaths at all since everyone would die anyway. But Alex Azar blames comorbidity for the vast number of deaths in the US. Comorbidity is if you have two or more serious health issues such as asthma and hypertension in addition to the virus. Azar says that if Americans simply took better care of themselves they would be all right. While I agree that too many Americans have poor diets and too many Americans have poor habits, it is also true that too many Americans cannot afford medical care and too many Americans live in food deserts. Absent the virus they might die younger than they should but the pandemic means the virus can still be the cause.

And on the subject of comorbidity, Azar needs to look closer at the White House. Trump is obese, becoming morbidly so; Trump takes statins for high cholesterol. Mike Pompeo is obese but his other underlying conditions are not disclosed as are Trump's. Bill Barr is obese. Trump is older than the other two men which is another factor involved in the death rates.

The whole notion of blaming people for dying because it affects Trump's re-election prospects is disgusting.    

Do You Get It Yet?

“And don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world,” (Trump) added. “But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”

Trump said the news media had refused to report his “common sense” explanation for the country’s high case numbers.

 Starting with the fact that as a percentage of population the US is 26th in the world in testing,  Trump outdid himself with those comments. Just follow that logic and you see that if you never have a pregnancy test you can't possible be pregnant. If you don't test for lead paint or asbestos in your house you will never have health issues from those substances. What he calls common sense the rest of us call sheer stupidity.

Scientific Illiteracy II

"...to me it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools," Trump said.

Okey dokey, Trump thinks it's all right for you to send your children out into the world; into school buses; crowded classrooms; filled with sneezing, coughing, spitting children in contradiction to what the nation's top epidemiologist recommends. Now a new poll released today showed that 86% of Republican voters trust Trump over Fauci, trust even his understanding of science over Fauci's.

Does that trust hold when Trump puts your children at risk? Keep in mind that children don't go to school without adults. Keep in mind that the virus travels wherever people travel. Keep in mind that children do die from this. Keep in mind that the children's parents die at higher rates.

Do you have your will in order? Who is going to take care of your children if you are hospitalized or die? Do you have all your ducks in a row to send your children out with the complete understanding that going back to school could risk your entire family dying?

Trump finds Fauci's response unacceptable but it is the response of a trained scientist, a physician who knows the facts and isn't looking for your vote.

Will you sacrifice your children to Trump's grandiose view of himself?

Scientific Illiteracy

There is a word for being bad with math, innumeracy, but to the best of my knowledge there is not a word for being bad with science. But watching the PBS newshour tonight and listening to politicians from both sides of the aisle scream about testing made me reflect on all the misinformation and hysteria that happens when people don't think logically about any situation.

Yes, we need more testing for the virus but testing alone is not the answer to any question let alone the question of whether businesses can open. Oddly enough, it was Stephen Colbert's diss of Trump that brought that home to me. Colbert made fun of Trump for his riff on Katie Miller's positive diagnosis of Covid-19, a riff that Colbert said was the stupidest remark by a public official in history. Yes, Trump's statement was convoluted and irrational when he said that Miller was negative and then all of a sudden she was positive and that's why testing was silly.

But in an equally odd and convoluted way, Trump was right. His complaint, if I understand the gist of it, was that the tests can only show a moment in time when a person goes from being not infected to being infected. That is clearly true. So what needs to change?

The point of the testing has never been to identify who is positive for the virus even though that is what most people believe. Yes, it is important to identify those who have been exposed, but more important is to slow the spread. The way you do that is through contact tracing. The game plan needs to move toward who has been in contact with an infected person and where that exposure occurred. Unfortunately most health systems have been so overwhelmed with cases that they haven't been diligent in the contact tracing.

The US actually has a pretty good system for contact tracing because of venereal diseases and HIV/AIDS. We need to put that network into high gear if we want to open our economy and our schools.

So Trump was right that there is a problem with the tests if they go from negative to positive overnight. If that's all you are looking for then you are doing less than half of the job necessary. It isn't that Katie Miller is positive; it's that she was in the WH and in the residence and who did she acquire the virus from, and to whom could she have spread it.

All the best projections say that 70% of the US population will get the virus. Given our pre-existing conditions including simply being old, my husband and I will probably die from Covid-19 despite our faithful adherence to social distancing and masks. If Katie Miller doesn't know how she got it, all of us are at risk.

Happy Mother's Day

I live thousands of miles away from my sons now which is totally fine. I mean my youngest is over 40 now so it isn't as though they need their mother except when they forget a recipe or something. That's what email is for. I have a friend who still has a child at home, in high school if high school were open, who left town for the weekend with her husband so she could leave her brood including her two Australian shepherds at home because being quarantined when everyone came home for quarantine has gotten old.

If you are a mother you understand that feeling. I never abused a child or a pet but I certainly screamed at some plants that they needed to just die because I had too much to deal with that did make noise. Besides my husband being in the military when we first had children, he also left us when he pursued job opportunities, often leaving me to handle simple things such as selling the house or handling three teenaged boys.

I am not complaining but I know I am describing lots of peoples lives. Now that everyone is cooped up together it's like having a house full of toddlers again. Not for me although my husband has been known to be childish.

So I hope everyone has a good Mother's Day with appropriate attention and care given by all. Rarely do we reach that perfect family moment, but those times when we do are very nice.

If you and yours are healthy, just smile. 

So Much Has Changed

I taught myself how to quilt decades go. I never took a quilting class but I am one of those weird people who think that if you can learn how to do something, it's probably in a book somewhere. I already knew how to sew. By the time I started quilting I had been making my own clothes and my boys' clothes and even some of my husband's clothes. My mother in law sent me some Ultra Suede when it first came out because she wanted me to make my husband an Ultra Suede blazer. This is funny on multiple different levels because my husband was definitely not Dapper Dan. He didn't care what he looked like and he certainly didn't care if what he wore was the current style. My father in law was the Dapper Dan who had a closet full of expensive clothes and followed style trends even into his dotage. He was the only person I ever knew who owned his own morning suit and he had several sets of formal clothes complete with all of the cufflinks and other accoutrements. Our youngest son even had one of his grandfather's tuxedos altered and restyled for his wedding a year ago and it still looked great. I think he had to purchase a dress shirt though because his neck and his arms are not the same size as his grandfather's. I didn't make my father in law an Ultra Suede sportcoat but I did make him a Norfolk jacket in a nice tweed and I did knit him some very nice sweaters.

Anyway, I resurrected  an old pattern for my current project now that Fuss 'N Feathers is done (see What?). This pattern was published in 1998 and the instructions begin with, "Trace around the patterns below..." Not only is that not how anyone does this anymore (although there are probably some who do), but there weren't even numbers to make anything easier. There were no indications of what finished size was intended or how to quick piece or how to cut to avoid bias on edges. So I measured everything that was given in the pattern and figured out how to quick piece the half-square triangle pieces integral to the Delectable Mountains and did some experimenting to make sure my measurements were correct.

But those initial issues are done and I am nearly done with the piecing part of the pattern and will be able to move on to the applique part. I am still trying to use fabric I already own as much as possible so this one has a variety of old fabrics in primarily blues and browns but the applique will be a wider variety of colors though still delving into the stash.

The changes in instructions made me wonder how I ever learned how to make a quilt in the first place. Did we really mark everything with a pencil and measure before cutting with regular scissors? That's seems so labor intensive now that I can't believe I did that with young boys in the house.

Think About This

The Trump administration announced today that the Covid19 task force will be disbanded by Memorial Day, just short of the end of the month.  The thrust of that announcement is that election season is beginning and Trump misses his rallies, not that he thinks the danger is past. Even the new press secretary touted the audience share numbers rather than death numbers or infection numbers so there certainly is no doubt as to where this administration puts its focus.

But, all of the reopening in various states certainly doesn't mean that any danger of infection for you, for me, for your children, for your grandchildren is over. As infectious disease expert Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine and global health at Emory University, described it, it's like having a "peeing section in the swimming pool". No one expects the pee to stay in the peeing section, nor should you expect Covid19 to stay in Florida, Georgia, or any of the other benighted states or municipalities that have loosened restrictions.

Sure, eventually the virus will have swept completely through the world picking off the low hanging fruit as it goes. But there is no reliable way to determine which person is the lowest hanging fruit. A reasonably young Broadway star is still in a coma after having his leg amputated due to Covid19 but Tom Hanks is fine. Boris Johnson, PM of Great Britain, survived with massive intervention but a five year old died. All of those examples happened when there were already some heavy-duty restrictions on movement and activity so just imagine what happens when Trump says that his re-election is more important than your health. The Trump administration is not noted for its focus but neither is it noted for its compassion.

Can I pee in your pool?

What?

A Trump advisor named Bryan Lanza said that the economy, "... was sidelined by a bunch of unelected scientists." Yeah, that makes sense since so many of the elected officials are experts on health or the economy or, well, anything.A pork processor in Missouri took precautions before going back to business as usual by testing nearly 1500 of the workers there, all of whom were asymptomatic at the time of the tests. Of that 1500 or so workers, 372 tested positive for Covid-19. Of course Trump has already declared that meat packers are essential businesses and that the federal government will shield them from lawsuits and liability in the event that their workers spread the virus throughout the plants and get sick or even die. So it's those pesky scientists who weren't elected to anything who are the problem, not the virus that doesn't care if you understand the economy or the science. Can't fault that impeccable logic.

On a much brighter note in more ways than one, I finished Fuss 'N Feathers yesterday. It's 48 inches square, with quilting every half inch. So I am following my tradition of listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony that finishes with Beethoven's nod to Schiller's An die Freude (Ode to Joy). Nice way to finish any project and particularly fitting on this beautiful spring day.

Funny

We are newcomers to our neighborhood having moved in the middle of last November. We have met our adjacent neighbors and two other couples very briefly on the street, primarily because those two couples have dogs and we really like dogs so we always pet the friendly ones. Or we did before the virus and the social distancing. In any case we certainly don't know everyone and between the virus and inclement weather folks weren't really out and about much before the last couple of weeks so there are clearly people we don't know.

But you can still imagine our surprise when this afternoon while my husband was doing some weeding in our new vegetable garden and I was chatting with him when we heard a noise. We turned around and there was this elderly Chinese couple standing in our front yard about 15 feet from where we were snapping photographs of our large weathered iron sculpture that we had mounted on a very large tree stump with bolts a couple of weeks ago. While we like the sculpture a lot it is simply rusted iron. It's lovely and a friend of ours made it and we are very proud of it but it doesn't have much value except to us. Other neighbors have complimented us on it and even passers-by have praised it, but this was definitely different.

I waved, said hello, but all the old couple did was turn around and walk the forty feet or so back to the street all the while snapping photos of the sculpture, the house, and the new vegetable garden--another feature that lots of folks have commented on positively. I suppose people like what we have done with the place but it isn't a public space. As the old saying goes, "There's none so queer as folks."

New Verse, Same as the First

Kayleigh McEnany gave a press briefing today, her first official briefing as the new White House press secretary during which  McEnany promised that she'd "never lie". This is the same woman who said multiple times that Trump never lies. Her reasoning behind that astonishing claim is that Trump does not have an intent to deceive when he speaks. This is sort of camouflaged lawyer speak (depends on what your definition of "is" is) for mens rea--an intention of wrongdoing when committing a crime. It doesn't matter how McEnany represents Trump, he does lie and he does so not just on a daily basis but practically on an hourly basis. So pull my other leg, ma'am. I am not buying what you are selling.

On a different note, I did finish the quilting on Fuss 'N Feathers, got it trimmed and made enough French double bias binding to go around the sides. I have some gardening to get to tomorrow but I will certainly get some of the sewing done tomorrow as well. That means that I should be done with the quilt by Sunday afternoon. It didn't really start off as a Christmas quilt and the various bits and pieces aren't necessarily Christmas but all of the fabrics except the bright red are Christmas themed from a long time ago. I honestly don't know why but for some reason the quilt makes me think of Heidi. Once the photos get posted you can make up your own mind.

Addendum: The Trump administration is blocking Anthony Fauci from testifying to Congress. Neither you nor I know the full story behind this, regardless of the spin, but each of us has an idea.

Donny One Note is singing again tonight.