I Am Here

Honest, I'm not stitching it crooked. It's just gotten to be so wide! You can see the left edge at the top of the picture and the right edge at the bottom. I'm trying to decide if I want to roll it up or down to find another edge. I know you completists think I should finish the middle that I started, but I'm a person who wants to find out where the outer limits are. On canvas. No Dora the Explora here. 


My iPod touch is  no longer accepting head phones. I still listen while I stitch, so does Adrian. I've found a very ingenious way of draping the charger cable around my neck so the ipod's speaker is close to my ear. At least Adrian can't hear it in his room. Of course, when I'm walking around it goes into my bra. What a handy holder. I'm going to the Apple store tomorrow to see if they will give me a new one. Sigh. 


Adrian has had to hear a mystery that was very silly, Live Wire by Harlan Corben, and for non-fiction, Merchants of Doubt.  PALAC discussed the Doubt book. I think that would have been interesting. Seems like a lot of the same PR guys and scientist cum political hacks were involved with some of our worst cover-ups or media campaigns to obfuscate the truth about scientific facts. You know, like, smoking being harmful, second-hand smoke being harmful, Star Wars as produced by Ronald Reagan, holes in the ozone layer, acid rain. And I'm only half way through the book. You know where this is heading - global warming. The characters have changed a bit over time because they were getting old. Some started with the government during WWII.  But the principle remains the same.


Another PALAC group that I'm sorry I missed was Thinking, Fast and Slow. One of my friends said it was so hard to keep some of the attendees on track. There must be a different kind of thinking where you are constantly following the wrong thread. 

Good Friends

 Tom, John, Per and I used to have lunch together. First in the great executive dining room, then  in the cafeteria. We replaced Per with John's wife Donna for a breakfast last Sunday. So much fun. I usually get to see Donna when she is worrying about John's banjos and other musical equipment. On Saturday, we just got to talk and enjoy each other. Great company. We will do this again soon.

I am learning that I can do all sorts of fun things with the photo App on my iPod. This is Ansel (black and white) with an old-fashioned frame. I think it's pretty, without all that color. My dancers have legs. You can see the right edge now. I'm trying to move on to the left side,but whenever I pull out a color, I think about where it can go in in the middle and right. Much fun.


Done with LBJ. Looking forward to the next installment in 5 or 10 years. I've also read a mystery, The Chalk Girl. A better follow-up to LBJ than Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took the Dog. Man that's a draggy book. The Chalk Girl was never boring. Audible just had a book sale, so I am totally stocked with mysteries. That's a good thing because I'm also finding the Ivan Doig book Dancing at the Rascal Fair to be kinda draggy too. He is supposed to be the new Stegner. I can see why. He writes about Montana. Novel writers about Montana will always be compared to Stegner, I guess. Even though it's draggy, this is a good book to stitch by. My dancers seem to be never ending as does the book.

Wahoo!

We just got a new Hyundai Elantra 2013! It is very nice, doesn't have too many bells and whistles, just a few dials and buttons that I have to learn. It was North America's car of the year for 2012. How can that be? It was made in Korea. Great mileage, great safety according to those who rate greatness (other than Hyundai.)  It is roomier than our Altima was. Even ACN has to pull up the driver's seat when he's driving. I rode in the back seat on our test drive, just to check it out.  It I had a lot of leg room behind the passenger and I could get out without too much grunting (thank goodness.)  Finally, I found a piece of a torn up check I wrote for the Altima back on 9/1/00. That car cost $1000 more, 12 years ago! Very nice, indeed.

 ACN got a new parking permit for the car. "No, ma'am,

 it has no outstanding tickets, we just drove it off the lot." So much fun to say.

Wow, even her torso is almost filled in. It grows by leaps AND bounds, one little stitch at a time.


Almost done with LBJ. Poor Adrian, he has to listen to my going on about the book on a regular basis. This is what I know to be true, both LBJ and RFK were complex characters. They both had goodness so good that it stuns you. Bobby's love and care of his own family and Jack's and his extreme levelheadedness that got us through the Cuban Missile Crises; Lyndon's true concern for poor people and people of color and his ability to get legislation through Congress (God, we need that now.)  But they both had huge, mean devils inside them. Bobby never forgave what he thought was an insult, Lyndon was duplicitous, lying, underhanded, etc. for no damn good reason at all (to hide deficiencies, wrong-doing, illegal money-making schemes.) OK, maybe there was a reason, but there shouldn't have been. And he was wheedling to those in power and rude to those he had power over. 


When we were getting the car today, there was a lot of time to look at magazines. One had an article about "strange bedfellows" which included DDE and LBJ after the JFK assassination. "I need you more now than I have ever needed you before."  Sweet. So sweet he said it to everyone, especially everyone who could, indeed, be better for him if they were being helpful rather than confrontational. But still. What a piece of work of God is man. More true of him than anyone I've ever read about. Oh, except Steve Jobs.

Happy Birthday, Karen

Have I ever mentioned that nobody has a better sister than me? She magically gets younger than me every year. This year we have been to two book festivals with Peter in tow. That is a first. He didn't know how much fun they are. Luckily, he is a pleasure to be with, so this addition is not a subtraction. They both walk my feet off, easy to do, as we go to panel after panel of interesting speakers. Karen and I have been going to The Times Festival of Books for years. We used to focus mostly on mysteries. We did a bit of that in Tucson too. We learned that the best panels were done by non-fiction writers. So this year at the FOB, we went primarily to non-fiction panels. That just happens to be Peter's favorite. 

Today Peter's favorite favorite is celebrating her birthday. Non-fiction, nobody would find her a mystery. 

Detail of layers for silhouettes,

maroon, then brown, then black 

I love the fire under his armpit 

At last his torso is done