Bustin’ Out the Crown: Version 3

The 1st version was too tight and not tall enough, so, like Goldilocks, I sought a better version.

The band started as 6 stitches high. I changed that to 8.

I changed the length of the band (which goes around the head) from 66 rows to 78 rows. The total number of rows must be divisible by 6 because the shell motif that is worked around the band takes 6 stitches to complete.

So now I need a care label to sew in the back inside band. I’ve used the ones that I’ve bought in Michael’s craft store, but I want to order some custom ones online. Any suggestions?

Flowers for Evelyn

I realized earlier this year while doing some genealogy research that this would be the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birthday. It seemed like the best way to remember that occasion would be to send some flowers in memoriam to the church where I grew up. A few people there still remember her.

I coordinated this long-distance with the folks at the church office and the florist. My friend Walter, the church organist, sent me the program by email.

Here’s a photo taken by Walter. I took the liberty of lightening it.

BigBroSteve took the flowers to the cemetery after the service was over.

It was the easiest thing ever to order these for the church. It makes me wonder why I haven’t done it before, but I hate to try new things and to make phone calls.

There you go, Mom! Happy birthday! Sorry I’m late!

St. John AME Church

There’s a little church that I pass every day, twice a day. It is a historically black cemetery, and some of the folks in my neighborhood go there.

I was poking around findagrave and saw that there was no memorial to this church. This was several months ago, and yesterday I searched findagrave in a different way. I searched all the churches in a particular zip code, and found that St. John had been entered as Saint John. It was clearly the same church.

A volunteer had made 162 individual memorials, and none of the memorials had gravestone photos. You know what this means.

This is also the home church of Clementa Pinckney, a senior pastor and state senator who was killed along with 8 others in the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal in Charleston, SC, on the evening of June 17, 2015.

The church recently created a memorial to Rev. Pinckney there on the grounds. I’ll include that at some point.

This is a large graveyard. This church was started in 1865.

While looking at the findagrave memorials, I found one for Willie Fickling. Mama Florrie’s sister Eula married a Willie Fickling, but I’ve never been able to find anything about him. Eula is buried at Bethel where Mama Florrie is buried, and I would like to jump out there and say that Eula’s husband Willie Fickling is the same Willie Fickling that is buried at St. John’s. Is it?

Another mystery.

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2629085

Take a look. Bloom (and blog) where you are planted.

Some Days You Have to Bust Out the Crown

I’m not talking about liquor, although perhaps that is where some of your brains immediately went.

I’m not even talking about Royal Crown Cola, which would actually be more my speed.

No, I’m talking about the NEW IMPROVED crownage!

My niece sent this link:

https://www.crochetforyoublog.com/2018/10/crochet-crown-earwarmer/

Which means that I made a quick trip to Walmart at lunchtime. New hook, new sparkly yarn.

The needle was a notch too small so the crown is a notch too tight. I actually followed the directions and learned some new skills. BL means back loop, confirmed by cousin Melissa, plus another technique that is easy but tedious.

The cute little baby children at work say to MAKE THEM SELL THEM. You can immediately see that they are equating my labor with that of a sweatshop. I swear, I am old enough to be the grandmother of these coworkers. They can’t write cursive or use an Excel spreadsheet. They don’t know where a stamp goes on an envelope. They don’t know that you have to dial a “1” on a landline before a long distance number because they only use cell phones.

I might need to wear my crown every day.

Thinking About Political Things

I took a course in political science in college during the first go-round, back in the seventies. I don’t remember the name of the instructor. I have no clue what grade I made. I remember one thing. Well, two, if you count that there was a cute guy that sat behind me. The instructor said that Democrats started policies, and Republicans didn’t.

I have had zero interest in politics until I met Sugar. I’d never had time for politics. I was working and exhausted and raising children and trying to maintain a home life with a man who was slipping further and further into mental illness. I had the luxury of being a white middle class woman.

I’ve become more and more interested in political dynamics over the last 15 years. I was slightly interested in high school and college, but never to the extent that I was outspoken. The politics of my life seemed to show that if you were popular, you got elected. I wasn’t a popular sort.

I’m not here to state anything that you probably don’t know. I’ve followed the disturbing trend that showed more and more white males abuse their white maleness.

The turning point for me was the election in Alabama between Roy Moore and Doug Jones for Jeff Sessions’s vacated Senate seat. I wouldn’t have known anything about Roy Moore except for the fact that I was reading Mark Childress’s book “Georgia Bottoms”, and Moore was mentioned in it in a not-so-flattering light.

On Election Night I watched the race online, and screenshot the end.

You have a pretty good idea that I am not a fan of President 45. This statement is a far cry from my former self who made comments like “I support the President”, no matter who the president was.

So there it is. I don’t want my family in the years to come to say that they didn’t know who I was or what I believed.

My daughter called me yesterday morning after her morning devotional to ask a question: what shows love to you? My short version is that love means action.

Words mean nothing if not accompanied by action. Sometimes actions begin with words. But action is the manifestation of love. You can give me a pair of diamond earrings or a diamond necklace for Christmas so that you can tell your family what you bought for me, then not allow me to wear those things because I could “lose them”, because they are actually too valuable for a person like me to wear, and continue to act like you are the only person of value in your world, and those are not actions of love. You know the difference.

Actions have consequences. And my words here today are that I will act to resist the politicians and the people that are harmful to the earth and everything in her best interest.

45 flew to France for the centennial ceremony for the ending of WWI, but he decided to cancel going to the ceremony because it was raining. My grandfather was in France in 1918. I am ashamed that 45 shamed himself and our country on the world stage yet again. Actions. They mean love. Trump only has love for himself.