Redecorating

All new occupants of the White House do some redecorating. Jacqueline Kennedy started the modern trend when she decided to get her New York friends to unearth American and French furniture treasures from the Met and the Smithsonian and bring them back to the White House. It was very elegant and very expensive. Other presidents and first ladies continued the trend, sometimes with either startling or bland results.

But nothing can be as startling as the installation of the new revolving door. Priebus resigned as chief of staff last Thursday after the new communications director Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci was named. Marine Corps general, John Kelly, was named the new chief of staff and started his first day on the job today by booting The Mooch out the door, saying that he showed no discipline. I don't think he will be successful at disciplining Trump. It's been a long time since military high school for the Donald. Even Brit Hume, the very conservative Fox news political analyst, called Trump Sir Tweetsalot.

I did finish the Lilies and Ferns block. I think this one is my husband's favorite.

Click Bait

BuzzFeed has a ten question quiz online that purports to guide you to your best destination to live. I took it and got directed to Stockholm, Sweden. My husband took it and got Los Angeles, California. It would be hard to pick two more different locales. We are planning a relocation but there is no way I would ever go to Los Angeles. There are problems and stumbling blocks in any choice, including that we do have our menagerie. That means we need a house, not an apartment, and probably some land as well although there are plenty of dogs in cities. Since we don't need jobs some paths are easier. The consulting work my husband does to fill his time and keep his brain active is almost entirely online and the school district for which I score essays will miss me far more than I will miss them.   

What A Week

Well it's still Friday so the week isn't over but given all the kerfuffles in Congress and the White House this week it seems even longer.

The good news is that the "skinny repeal" TrumpDoesn'tCare health bill died with a classic thumb gesture from John McCain. Now that doesn't mean that all is well and everyone will get insurance and care since Trump has already announced that he is going to stop paying the money to insurance companies that was in the first ACA and that has been under litigation brought up by Republicans for a long time. If that happens disaster will follow quickly but Trump doesn't care.

As for the other news--where to start? Scaramucci's arrival as communications director instigated the resignation of Sean Spicer who now walks around with a smile on his face. Scaramucci named Reince Priebus as the senior leaker at the White House and described him as a paranoid schizophrenic 24 hours before Trump kicked Priebus to the curb at approximately 4:30 EDT today. Trump named John Kelly, the current DHS secretary, to be the new chief of staff at the WH so he also has to find a new DHS secretary. I don't imagine that search will be easy unless he goes for Giuliani or Gingrich, both men who want power in the worst way and I mean that literally. Sources indicate that Bannon is only holding on by his fingertips as is Jeff Sessions. But if Trump cans Sessions Congress will go completely nuts.

I am nearly done with the Lilies and Ferns block and will post pictures soon. We are getting our first tomatoes now, making summer seem better even though we have had 22 record setting hot days just in July. Some of the records have been for the high during the day (100 plus F) and some have been record high lows (70--74F) in the morning. Two days ago we had two inches of rain in one hour and then thunderstorms for the next 48 hours. With all the rain and the heat we have much higher humidity than is usual for the high desert--good for fire suppression but hard to bear.

Potty Mouth

While I can appreciate the occasional crude expletive, I see no point in making obscenity two-thirds of a statement. I know that Trump's crude remarks to Billy Bush were described as locker room jests, reasonable people know they were no such thing. Using language effectively and in more subtle ways will always have staying power. That's why we remember some of Churchill's bons mots while Trump's kindergarten phrasing will disappear.

That's why I share the theme of a description about Anthony Scaramucci from The Guardian. Paraphrasing that writer--he described Scaramucci's press conference yesterday as akin to watching a drunken frat party before the projectile vomiting starts.

Very Funny

Naturally there was consternation in many quarters about Trump's tweet yesterday that no transgendered person could serve in any capacity in the United States military. Besides the questionable rationale behind the tweet, and the insult to anyone who is willing to serve the country, there was no prior discussion of the decision.

So when the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Joseph F. Dunford, heard about the tweet and then was interviewed about how this would proceed, he did his duty. Not surprising, right? He told the media that nothing at all is going to change in the US military at this point because the chain of command does not begin with a tweet. Semper Fi! 

Not Entirely Sure

Trump seems to have gone further off the reservation in the last couple of days. Of course his business model was always chaos and confusion so the current distractions may just be to move attention from this bright shiny object to that bright shiny object but the last two days have been even more fraught with distress if one is concerned about the country.


Trump's tweets about Jeff Sessions are abominable and that comes from someone who finds Jeff Sessions deplorable. When the fellow in charge chooses his underlings, he owes them a modicum of respect, not public humiliation. When Trump told his followers that he was going to drain the swamp, I doubt they thought he meant the people he chose himself. Sean Spicer tried to make Trump look the way Trump wanted to look. He lied mightily from the very first day but he still didn't get to meet the Pope. That's cruel.


The transgender ban for the military is notable because he only did it for what he perceived as personal advantage. He wants money to build his wall along the southern border so he upended the Obama directive hoping to get that done. Of course zillions of people have already pointed out that the Defense Department spends ten times as much money on Viagra as it does on sex reassignment surgery.

Then in the Senate, those folks can't get enough votes to pass anything. Even the tie vote to bring the TrumpDoesn'tCare  discussion to the floor had to be broken by Mike Pence but that didn't get them much further because they have already defeated several other iterations.  As I wrote before, one thing insurance companies hate is uncertainty. The reason they do all the research and build all the actuarial tables is so they can know what to expect. This turmoil destroys their research and harms their customers. None of these people voting use this kind of insurance so they probably don't even realize the harm they do their constituents.  

Bereft

Twenty year old Erin C. died yesterday at 6 am. While this is a private tragedy, the circumstances of her death, and my friend's death, and the upcoming open heart surgery of another friend should be a wake-up call to everyone. All of these people had the common cold that caused their hearts to become enlarged and flabby. That is scientific evidence confirmed by their doctors not alarmist information.

What I want more people to understand is that the common cold can kill you if you let it. All of those I know personally, ignored their illness, putting achievement and jobs ahead of their own bodies. It is beyond tragic that these bright young minds were obliterated.

Outrageous

The Senate plans to take a procedural vote tomorrow about whether to proceed to the floor with something to do with your health care. My statement is vague because the reports from Washington are vague. Some of the senators seem to think they are just going to vote to proceed with the same repeal vote from 2015, one that they already voted on but which they knew Obama would veto. In other words a pretty safe vote because it satisfied their angry voters but since those same voters wouldn't lose health care because of the veto no one would be either dead or irate. If they vote for that again tomorrow and get the right numbers, millions will lose their health care. Other senators said that the vote would be for a new repeal bill although no one seems to know what the language is.

Despite the confusion, Blake Farenthold, Republican from Texas said that the people he is angriest with are women from the northeast and that if they had been men from South Texas he would take the Aaron Burr route on them. Of course duels with pistols have been illegal for a very long time but this moron even made it into a misogynist comment as well. I am embarrassed to write that I used to babysit for Blake Farenthold many decades ago. His mother, Frances Farenthold, was a Democrat, a lawyer, a very strong woman who was also a friend of my late mother's. They played bridge together frequently and respected each other mightily. Sissy (Frances's nickname and the one most people use) is still alive and if she weren't 90 years old she would probably put him over her knee.

If you lose your insurance and your healthcare after the actions taken tomorrow, you cannot blame Obama, a Democrat, or probably even those "women from the northeast". You can blame Trump, Republicans, and yourself if you voted for any of those people. If you voted for Blake Farenthold you can really blame yourself for very bad judgment.

On A Much Lighter Note

Tomorrow is Pioneer Day here in Utah, celebrating the entrance into the valley of Brigham Young and his small group. The larger group came later but I don't know if anyone has taken note of the day of their arrival. Anyway, as you might imagine, those of us who are not Mormons don't take the day as seriously as the dominant religion does. My son works in a bar owned by Ty Burrell of Modern Family fame that runs a charity event called Pie and Beer Day. Various cooks from local restaurants make pies to auction off with the proceeds going to designated charities in the city. The beer gets sold, the crowd gets a little more rowdy, and the bids on the pies go up.

My son, who is the executive chef of the food side of the bar, got picked to bake this year. He doesn't usually make pies. The bar makes a killer bread pudding but they don't have an oven--don't ask, even the explanation doesn't make much sense. So he had to talk one of his buddies who works in a catering firm to let him use their kitchen to make his pies. Because he doesn't make pies often, he doesn't have a big repertoire but he does make buttermilk pie, both at home and at his previous cooking gig. He called yesterday to check on the ratio of fat to flour in my pie crust because everyone thinks mine is the best. My husband got all enthusiastic about buttermilk pie so I am making one for him to serve with macerated blueberries. It's a very old-fashioned pie but very nice in the summer time with fresh fruit.

Hard Decision

My husband's friend and his wife have decided to remove life support from their daughter as all tests indicate no brain activity following the post-operative stroke. This is a tragic event with many cautionary tales.

Hug your children today, no matter how old they are.

Basket And Bird Block Finished

The classic red basket of Baltimore Album quilts involves a lot of bias strips that you place into what mimics a silver bread basket like the one my mother used to have. This block also has a bird within the flowers in the basket, another common notion in album quilts though I doubt that birds were put in baskets of flowers even if they were stuffed birds. Those were more likely to be placed in glass cloches to keep the dust  and the insects at bay and displayed in the living room or ladies parlor.

This still needs to be trimmed prior to having the dogtooth border sewn on. I changed the colors on the butterfly to make it closer to ones I see around my neighborhood.

H2B Visas

News Item: "Mar-a-Lago Club is seeking to hire 15 housekeepers, 20 cooks and 35 servers."

We are always told that employers hire illegal immigrants or non-citizens for jobs that Americans refuse to do. We are given examples such as working in a chicken processing plant or picking strawberries in the blazing sun but the above jobs are at a resort where they even have a daycare center for the employees. So why does Trump want H2B visas for these 70 places? Employers hire H2B workers to do temporary non-agricultural jobs but these jobs are not temporary unless the club plans to fire them and ask for 70 more in the near future. Housekeepers, cooks, and servers are staff at the resort, not caterers. I would be willing to bet that there are more than 70 folks who are residents of Palm Beach County who would like to work at those jobs and who are qualified to do so.

What's up, Donald?

New Fave

There is a fairly new restaurant chain in SF that is definitely worth going to. It hasn't been open that long and already has two more locations to handle all the business. It's called Souvla and as you can tell from the name it is Greek food. A simple concept with a limited menu of gyros and salads and frozen yogurt the impeccable quality of the food and the care in the production makes it a go to place. My husband and I have even joked about opening up a franchise in Utah which is of course beyond silly. They have chicken, pork, and lamb as well as vegetarian gyros. Everything is super fresh. You can watch the chickens turning on the spit and the lamb is real lamb not the chopped and formed norm of most Greek diners. Although it wouldn't work in a Utah joint, the SF sites serve alcohol including retsina. Very casual and informal but worth standing in line for.

One of the standouts for us is their Greek yogurt served with your choice of topping from honey and lavender to sour cherry syrup. We liked the sour cherry syrup so much that I ordered some online. The brand I got is called Esalat and has a simple ingredient list of sour cherries, sugar, water, and ascorbic acid unlike the other one available that had the unpronounceable ingredient list that makes you wonder if you are getting a food product or a beauty aid. Anyway, our syrup  came yesterday and we had some with vanilla ice cream. Delicious.

Life Support

More evidence that Donald Trump does not understand the impact of his statements arose today. He was angry that the Republican Senate couldn't even come together to bring the TrumpCaresLittle bill to a vote so he turned to his favorite communication--140 characters (apparently his attention span is too small for the regular policy statements of presidents). He has the nerve to blame the failure of the bill on Democrats even though the clear evidence points to both Republican members of Congress and the Senate and to the American public who overwhelmingly loathed the proposed bill.

So what is his current plan? Certainly not to go to the Capitol to talk to both sides about what is best for Americans. Certainly not to behave in a presidential manner. No. His plan is to force the failure of all insurance markets by refusing to pay already agreed support. It isn't clear to the logical voter how this will help Americans. Millions of people will lose their insurance overnight, thus losing access to their doctors for their illnesses. No one can blame doctors or insurance companies since this falls completely in Trump's ample lap. Of course he doesn't think so--he thinks he can blame someone else as he has done throughout his entire career. 

In the meantime, Jr. has been enjoying even more attention from lawyers and the press. Luckily, because Jr. released his own emails, this can't be called "fake news". It is all too real and points to relationships between the Trumps and various Russians, including money launderers using NYC real estate to hide their proceeds.

What a guy, what a swell guy.

Buy America

Trump kicked off his buy America campaign without making any moves to punish companies that produce goods sold in America in other countries. That includes all of Ivanka's goods.

So what does "Buy America" mean to Trump? I would be happy to buy American and buy local but I don't want that pushed by someone who has no clue what made in America means. He wants to punish Chinese steel production without having a plan or idea about what bringing back steel production means to places like Pittsburgh.

At the same time, the administration has announced that they are bringing in 15,000 Mexicans to do work in the United States. I guess that makes it "Buy American" if it happens here, right?

Is This Transparency?

Okay, so besides the obvious conclusion that Donald Trump was incredibly crass in his remarks to Brigitte Macron, no one can say that they were unexpected or out of character. But keeping in mind that Trump promised to have a very transparent administration, what does it say about that same administration when it tries everything possible to hide information including deflecting by sending out obnoxious and irrelevant tweets? So the information that Natalia Veselnitskaya was in the United States on a visa related to her defense of a Trump associate against the charge of money laundering is hidden and she smiles coyly during questioning. The information that Rinat Akhmetshin was in the Trump Tower room with Don Jr., ostensibly acting as a translator, had to be pulled out like rotten teeth. And Trump who is famous as a micro-manager says he knew absolutely nothing about the meeting that included his son, his son-in-law, his campaign manager, those two named Russians and at least three other unnamed persons . We know Trump is of German Scottish extraction but we didn't know he was the model for Sergeant Schultz.

Yet and still Republicans are at nearly 90% approval rating for Trump, so my question ends up being, "What has he done for you?" There were more jobs created in the last five months of Obama's administration  than in the first five months of Trump's. There are literally hundreds of jobs that have not been filled in government offices that are Trump's responsibility to fill for the smooth working of the people's government. The current iteration of the health law that McConnell says he will call the vote on next week will mean that anyone with a pre-existing condition (Without the language of the bill no one knows just what qualifies as a pre-existing condition. Prior to the ACA simply being female was counted as a pre-existing condition.), will not be able to afford insurance at all and will therefore have little chance of receiving care. Betsy DeVos says that young women who are raped at their colleges are just as guilty as the young men who rape them so both should be punished equally. The appalling list goes on but Republicans sit around with grins on their faces because people like me are angry.

Be Very Careful

I knew many women who refused to learn how to type because of fears that they would end up as secretaries. That is women around my age (66) since these days most young people male and female are pretty adept at "keyboarding". Not me, though. I liked learning how to type because it was a small muscle skill and because I always like to learn new skills. I earned money in college (back in the dark ages) typing other students' papers which turned out to be a pretty nifty way of learning new information without taking the class. I learned more than I wanted to know about how a rabbit's olfactory system works by typing a psychology paper on the topic.

Anyway, I have all manner of skills that I simply picked up along the way in my life--some from absolute necessity but most simply for the challenge. Unfortunately that includes mudding drywall. We used to own a 10,000 square foot monstrosity that was in dire need of attention. So I can hang drywall as well but the men in my life like to do that part of the job. No one wants to be the mudder. We are doing a fairly minor remodel on a bathroom to make it a double sink Jack and Jill bath. That involves moving a door from one place to another and building a wall where the original door hung. And naturally, since my house is over 100 years old, the old walls were lath and plaster and since the house was built quick and cheap back around 1910 none of the walls are terribly square. So my task is to mud in the new drywall that fills the space where the door was, but there are significant gaps caused by the uneven nature of the wall. What I really dislike about mudding is the "hurry up and wait" nature of the beast. You can't just slap mud on the wall and expect to end up with a wall that is smooth and doesn't crack. So I have finished the very first step but there will be several more before the wall is done.

Be careful what you learn. Be careful who knows what your skill set is.

The shape shifting nature of Trump Jr.'s statements over the last two days and the twists and reversals that White House spokespeople have been making are endlessly fascinating. Jr. said he isn't the only person who ever sought out dope on an opponent. Yeah, G. Gordon Liddy comes to mind.

And The Cat Came Back

Trump's behavior and statements both during and after his G-20 trip are a clear indication of his idiocy. He kowtowed before Putin, he collaborated with demagogues, he ceded his place at the table to his daughter, ...the list goes on. When he proclaims strong support for Western values, he isn't talking about "give me your tired, your poor...", etc. He is talking about rightwing Christianity and strong man government. What a buffoon. The values that he espouses are not even the values that the founding fathers espoused. They are rather the values of oppression and intolerance. Hell, he even promised to work on a joint cyber-security setup with Putin to prohibit election tampering. What kind of sense does that make?

My Wooly Bear

This is my cat Max whose kitty portrait is on the front of this blog. For some reason he likes to sleep on his back with all four paws in the air. We call him Wooly Bear when he does that after the caterpillars that invade south Texas. I love him but everyone else in the family calls him a thug.

Hot, Hot, Hot

All I can say is that at least I don't live in Arizona. Here in Salt Lake City we have had several days in a row of 100 plus temperatures. We set a record yesterday at 105F and it is over 100 again today with several more days of this heat predicted. I know that older people are supposed to love the heat, but my husband and I both prefer colder weather. He has been checking the weather in Edinburgh every day, telling me that it is light rain and 57 or something like that. It is so hot here that even my dogs don't want to go outside.

The other major issue is fire danger. Huge fires are burning all over Utah and other parts of the west but that doesn't stop people from setting off firecrackers. We just had the 4th of July resulting in 70 firecracker started fires, but the even bigger celebration here is the 24th of July. That's the date in history when Brigham Young supposedly looked down at the valley and said, "This is the place." Even more fireworks and parades and hoopla but it's the fireworks that are the problem. We live right by one of the local canyons with dry grass up and down the slopes and plenty of dry timber for fuel.

Funny And Sad

NPR tweeted the entire text of the Declaration of Independence yesterday--140 characters at a time. Some people were irritated because they kept getting alerts every few seconds but the laughable part was the morons, all on the right wing and all good little Trumpettes, who accused NPR of disseminating propaganda and opined that it was good that they would lose funding. Luckily their names were attached to their idiotic tweets.

www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article159682299.html

Something Different And Delicious

There is a lovely small restaurant in the Embarcadero Center called Boulette's Larder. A couple of years ago my husband and I had breakfast there. The breakfast menu is extremely limited but what I ordered became one of our very favorite breakfasts and it is very simple. First get the best crusty bread available. This can be whole wheat or sourdough or white but a nice crust is important. Then get some good plain goat cheese and some eggs. Finally get a bottle of lemon flavored olive oil. I use Sciabica's but there are others available. Toast the bread, either butter it or leave it plain. Put some goat cheese on a plate and drizzle it with the olive oil. Scramble the eggs lightly and put that on the plate. Enjoy in any combination of bites--bread and cheese, bread and eggs, eggs and cheese and oil, etc.  Yum. 

Pay Attention

Once again I am compelled to defend the press, even Breitbart. The whole point in having freedom of the press, clearly outlined in the First Amendment, is that information that those in power don't like is specifically the information that is protected. Plenty of Americans believe that the first amendment protects their own speech, but what it does is protect against government interference in speech or press. What that means is that freedom of the press or freedom of speech don't apply to what I write, or what I delete from my own blog. They do apply to the president implying violence against the news, they do apply to the president encouraging blackouts of a variety of news sources, they do apply to only selecting certain  questions from the press pool. We all need the press to cover the government. The government doesn't have to like it.

There is no guarantee that anonymous ramblings from the fat kid in the basement (Trump's own words) will be tolerated.

Have a Wonderful 4th!

When my sons were small they called tomorrow's holiday the forfel July. Although we are not big flag wavers, nor are we at all into fireworks, we treasure the history of this country. Members of both families have been wearing the uniform of the United States since the Revolution. Both of our fathers won Bronze Stars for actions during WWII.  Any assault on the true values that this country is built on dismays and enrages us.

Resist! We are better than Trump.

                       This is part of my small collection of American folk art. Sort of like needlepoint on a mesh background with star shaped pearl buttons. I purchased it locally but that doesn't mean it comes from Utah.

Interest At Last

Some of you may have been following my travails with the boxes of goods from my husband's mother. I say they are my travails because he is a wonderful man and a great husband but wouldn't know a mess unless he fell over it or couldn't find some particular thing that he wanted. I can't claim to be a great housekeeper but I know the perils of old cardboard and old paper.

Anyway, I sent an email to the head of the Asian Studies program at our local university. Initially I was disappointed because I got an auto-reply but she forwarded my email to the fellow who is the Japanese history specialist in the department. My husband's grandfather was famous in Japan very early in the 20th century and became equally well-known here for a time as he was an accomplished author. Anyway, we have all of his journals, some of his notebooks, all of his publications, and all the books that he wrote. Clearly most of this stuff just isn't available anywhere and some is entirely unique. For a scholar to have primary sources is always important so if we can arrange to donate the collection to the local university someone will benefit. I doubt that we will even get a tax deduction as assessing value puts a burden on the university but the goal has always been to put the journals and books into a collection where it will be used.

By the way, when did it become acceptable for adults to exclaim, "Well she did it first!" Not only is that what Trump does on a daily basis, with reprehensible language and insults, but his supporters use that language to excuse this 70 year old man who acts like a 2 year old. I remember car trips with my older two boys with behavior and excuses like that, but  they were three and two.  

Really Finished the Epergne

I spent the last couple of hours putting in the embroidery touches on the fruits on the epergne. Most of these are remarkably subtle but of course the watermelon seeds are not. I like this watermelon. I like the fabrics and the colors and even the texture of the watermelon since it has that white rim around the fruit that has a fold lifting it slightly above the "fruit". I am not as crazy about the pineapple. The original instructions do not call for any embroidery but I think it needs some. I added a few touches to the block including the handles on the epergne but I think I will add some stem stiching to put in segments on the pineapple.

Finished The Epergne

I finished the applique of the epergne block today. It was complicated because the layers weren't predictable. Sometimes the piece was on top of another piece but then a different area was below the same piece. So there were many parts that were the "hurry up and wait" variety. I think my watermelon turned out particularly well but I haven't done any of the embroidery yet so no pictures. I changed the block in a few ways as well but it is substantially as drawn.

After less than six months of a four year term, Trump is even irritating his own party members let alone the rest of us. Even more important is that he is irritating all other leaders in the world. Most people now describe Chancellor Angela Merkel as the leader of the free world. So far Trump doesn't seem disturbed by that. He even turned over control of the military to the various heads of service, an act that defies history and the Constitution. There really is a good reason not to have the military in charge of military missions. Even my father, a career Army officer, warned against military control of the military. It's simply a bad idea.

Trumpettes are still trumpeting though. Apparently they have no long view nor any background. As Trump said during his campaign, he likes his voters stupid. That has been the Republican party mantra for at least 30 years.

I'm Not The Only One

As I wrote before, even folks whose political leanings are dissimilar to mine are wishing that Trump would just shut up. I don't even mean about a specific topic but in general. A broad swath of Republican senators felt Trump's Twitter feed over the last two days was reprehensible and then he capped that on Friday by proclaiming that the Senate should just repeal the ACA without replacing it. Naturally, since they are still in the swamp over what they should do about healthcare, they didn't appreciate Trump making their job vastly more difficult. I always feel that twinge of guilt when I am overcome with Schadenfreude, don't you?