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Friday Links
1. A friend shared this and then I learned about Haroumi Hosono, which is definitely worth your time.
Surprisingly, the comments on the page are also pretty worthwhile. (“This is like waking up at 3am because you are hungry. So you head to the kitchen, and find out a giant insect already sticking some marmalade between two slices of bread. The insect offers the sandwich to you, as a sign of respect. You take a bite out of it, and start crying tears of joy. It’s a beautiful sandwich, and the winter is coming to an end”)
2. For your flashback moment, here’s a description of Pizza Hut back in the 80s. I remember all of it–the salad bar, the red glass votives, the single arcade game, the dimness–but I think it was Godfather’s pizza in our area? I do remember that, like the author, a meal there was “special.” (If you read enough books, a teacher took you to lunch there with the other bookworms.)
Happy Birthday, Margaret Sanger
The woman who brought birth control to the US was born today in 1879. From The Writer’s Almanac today:
In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1946 became Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She also funded research to create a contraceptive pill. She said, “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” She died in 1966, at age 87, a year after the landmark Supreme Court decision Griswold vs. Connecticut finally made birth control legal for married couples.
Just…think about the date of that Supreme Court decision for a minute, and then be grateful to Margaret and every other progressive movement of the last 52 years.
In Concert
A friend had an extra ticket to Renee Fleming’s opening with the Utah Symphony tonight, so I get to see her live for the first time! Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs are on the program, some of my absolute favorites. Here’s “September” from the cycle:
September (Hermann Hesse)
The garden mourns.
The flowers fill with cold rain.
Summer shivers
in the chill of its dying domain.
Yet summer smiles, enraptured
by the garden’s dreamy aphasia
as gold, drop by drop, falls
from the tall acacia.
With a final glance at the roses–
too weak to care, it longs for peace–
then, with darkness wherever it gazes,
summer slips into sleep.
(Translation via )
In college, the professor focused more on how these were Strauss’ swan song, finished when he was 85–but Strauss was 68 when Hitler came to power; he lived through the war and political maneuvering. You can hear so much relief in the music that it’s all over.
Tuesday Project Roundup: SERGER!
Here’s the result of me getting to know my serger last weekend: two projects in four days, one of those in an AFTERNOON. Damn, that thing is fast.
First up, Hudson Pants from True Bias. That designer’s Emerson Pants were my pants breakthrough so I thought her other pattern would have a similar fit. It’s designed for knits (and I have plans to make some knit versions since I have a SERGER now) but she has a good tutorial on using wovens, too.
Fabric is a Kaufman Chambray Union, which has a nice sheen and a good weight. (Tip: you can get a lot of the Fabric.com inventory on Amazon, since they’re the same company, and then you can get it in time for a long weekend of sewing and not wait five days for the other side of Fabric.com to tell you something’s out of stock and ship the rest of your order.)
Next up was a Driftless Cardigan from Grainline Studio, since I really wanted to try out the SERGER with knits. This is a sweater knit from JoAnn (see Fabric.com order issues above) and it was a little more slippery than I wanted, but it worked to test out the pattern.
This pattern’s been released for a while but I’ve ignored it, since it doesn’t really look like much on the hanger. But there are some great details–a high/low hem, inset pockets–and it’s got that good Grainline fit. It took me seeing it on a human to realize that it is an ideal male-gaze-eschewing layer.
I didn’t do a really great job constructing this, but I did get it done in about three hours, which blows my mind. My Bernina could handle knits but it sewed a stretch stitch at a snails pace and its “mock overlock” just didn’t look as nice inside. Even rushing through this and not stabilizing bands or cuffs (or even really pressing it), it looks a hundred times more professional inside than anything else I’ve made.
Verdict: How did I live without a SERGER and why did I wait so long to buy one?
Happy Times
Friday Links
1. Well here’s something to think about, from an article about When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron:
To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior. We catch ourselves one zillion times as once again, whether we like it or not, we harden into resentment, bitterness, righteous indignation — harden in any way, even into a sense of relief, a sense of inspiration.
2. The hurricanes, the earthquakes, the imminent threat of nuclear war–it feels a little like the end times. I wish it could be like this instead:
Thursday Poem
This appeared on The Writer’s Almanac last week and I thought, “Sally and my mom came from the same place.”
Where I Come From
by Sally Fisher
We didn’t say fireflies
but lightning bugs.
We didn’t say carousel
but merry-go-round.
Not seesaw,
teeter-totter
not lollipop,
sucker.
We didn’t say pasta, but
spaghetti, macaroni, noodles:
the three kinds.
We didn’t get angry:
we got mad.
And we never felt depressed
dismayed, disappointed
disheartened, discouraged
disillusioned or anything,
even unhappy:
just sad.
Relevant
As we see what this “demonic clown car of an administration” does next, this think piece from Harvard Business Review seems apt: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
“…because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.”
HMMMMM.
Also, call or write your elected officials. I’ve plugged 5Calls and Resistbot here before. (Resistbot is my fav, just due to the open office setup at work, and I can tell you it gets attention–I’ve gotten written replies to letters I’ve sent with the service.