At least it isn’t 65 years. Yet.

I’ve been working in textiles for a while now, specifically, completely hand-made art quilts, with the main attraction being hand embroidery. Anyone who hand embroiders knows how time intensive it can be. For a while now, I’ve been so damn busy, I have not had time to work on the current project, the Tree Quilt. That ends up being a bit depressing, because I’d like to just be able to work on it and get finished. 65 years ago, a woman started an embroidery art piece, and has now finished it at age 90.

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Click for full size image. 90-year-old Priscilla Faulks stands by “My Jesus,” her 65-year embroidery project now displayed at Victoria’s Restaurant in Trotwood.

TROTWOOD — During the two years Cincinnati native Priscilla Faulks studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy, her medium was painting and her favored subjects were nature and portraits. But, after returning to her grandmother’s house at 25 in 1950, she was inspired to start a life-sized Jesus — which she finally completed in January, just a few weeks after her 90th birthday.

Now, the framed embroidered “My Jesus” is on display at Victoria’s Restaurant at West Third and Union Road in Trotwood.

“I wasn’t religious, but my grandmother, who raised me, was a highly Christian woman, and I was living with her when I was inspired to draw Jesus,” Faulks said. “Grandmother had saved government potato sacks from the Depression, and I asked her to sew them together to make me a large canvas that we tacked to the wall.

“I drew the Jesus, and she was elated. Both she and my mother were seamstresses, and they taught me. I made all my own doll clothes. I decided to use embroidery on the piece.”

Faulks began the work, then got married and had two children. She rolled up her Jesus and worked on it when she had time. Her first husband, injured in WWII, eventually died of his injuries, and she returned to school at Wilberforce until she re-married and had two more children. She was widowed a second time two years ago.

Hired as secretary for McLin Funeral Home by then-Ohio House Rep. C.J. McLin, “I’d take Jesus to work, and when I wasn’t busy, I’d work on him,” she said. “At night, I worked on him to relax, then roll him up and put him away. The more I worked, the more I wanted to finish him.”

Finally, on Jan. 5, she completed “My Jesus,” and approached various places to have it displayed, but was told that, at 4-feet-by-6-feet, it was too large for most spaces.

[…]

Faulks is thrilled that her Jesus is finally finished and now has a space where it’s appreciated, with an accompanying explanation of her long-term project.

“I’m happy, elated and relieved,” she said. “It took so long, just one stitch in, one stitch out, for 65 years.”

That is a seriously impressive piece of work. I think I better get back to work. I don’t have 65 years.

Full story here.

Lego Nostalgia.

At least for us older people.

LEGO designers have developed a new flashback kit, an advanced model that replicates many of the iconic elements of a vintage 1960 Volkswagen Beetle. Built using 1,167 pieces, the bright blue replica has several operational features, including a pop-up hood and truck, flip-down seats, and a removable roof to peep the steering wheel and other accessories found inside.

Designers made sure not to leave out any detail, including a model of the original 4-cylinder air-cooled engine, fuel tank, rounded mudguards, interchangeable license plates, and tiny window decals. On the roof of the vehicle, LEGO also added a rack that fits a tiny surfboard and cooler containing ice and bottled drinks. In total, the new kit is 15 centimeters high, 29 centimeters long, and 12 centimeters wide. The kit becomes available to the public on July 17.

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I would have much preferred a shiny, bright red beetle, but you can’t everything. I’ll probably still have to indulge in this.

Via Colossal Art.

Sen. Murray Sinclair Speaks Out.

Justice Murray Sinclair, who served as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiry into residential schools, opened up on the Senate floor about his openly gay daughter in a tribute to victims of the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. ADRIAN WYLD/CANADIAN PRESS FILES.

Justice Murray Sinclair, who served as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiry into residential schools, opened up on the Senate floor about his openly gay daughter in a tribute to victims of the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
ADRIAN WYLD/CANADIAN PRESS FILES.

Then Sinclair got up and spoke.

Hon. Murray Sinclair: Honourable senators, shortly after midnight on Saturday night, our openly gay daughter sat and laughed with us, as my wife and I and her sisters sang her Happy Birthday, badly I might add, as all families do, but with huge amounts of love. She turned 33 on Sunday, June 12.

At almost the same moment, an American filled with hate for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, queer and two-spirit people carried his legally purchased machine gun and pistol into a bar in Orlando, Florida, and started killing everyone he could.

Eventually, over a period of three hours, he hunted down all those he could find in the bar and killed 49 young men and women, whose only reason for being targeted was that they were celebrating Pride month and were openly gay.

Much has been made of the shooter’s connection to Islamic terrorism and his ability to purchase, own and carry guns, despite his history of mental disturbance and violence. American politicians and others will line up in one camp or the other to denounce those who they say caused this to happen, whether close at hand or remote. The number of political footballs this event presents for use is significant. You need only look at the headlines today to get a flavor of that.

But yesterday and today, I thought only of the 49 mothers and fathers whose hearts are broken and whose lives have been torn asunder, and I think every day of the fact that I could have been and could be one of them. I think of the dozens of brothers and sisters born into the victims’ families, whose anger and tears may never end, and I think of the fact that my other children could be among them also.

Society’s dislike and disrespect for those who are gay and transgendered has been a part of Western thinking for many generations. The enhancement and recognition of their right to be who they are and their right to public protection of those rights does not sit well with far too many people, the shooter in this case being representative of that.

When my daughter spoke to us as a young teenager of her recognition of who she was, we stood beside her and gave her every assurance of our love and of her right to be open about what she was.

What my wife and I could not bring ourselves to discuss with her, or between ourselves, at that moment was that she had just enhanced her risk of danger. She was already living a life of enhanced danger just by being female. That danger was increased by the fact that she was in a higher at-risk group because she was an indigenous woman.

We told her about the fact that among Indigenous people, being a two-spirit was traditionally a position of respect and honor. Ceremonies, we have been taught, are enhanced if done by or with two-spirit people present, for it is believed that they embody the strengths and spirits of both man and woman and bring a special healing power and medicine to every special event.

She has brought great respect to our family. We are said to be blessed by having her as a daughter because she is two-spirit, and we feel so. We adopted another two-spirit daughter into our family as well, whose partner just gave birth to our newest grandson. He will be raised by two-spirit parents.

As parents of two-spirits, we want to protect our children from the bullying, the offensive comments, the disparaging remarks and the physical and verbal abuses that every member of the LGBTQ2S experiences. We have learned to shield them and to heal them when our shields prove insufficient.

What we fear the most is that someone will murder them just for being gay. The belief that such an event could occur would be enough for many to discourage their children from coming out, and it would also discourage the children themselves.

So in our moment of silence, I thought of the parents. We as a society have all lost something as a civilized people in this act of mass murder, but they have lost more than we can ever know.

Thank you, Senator Sinclair, for speaking up. Thank you for your message of inclusion and love.

Via ICTMN.

Reggae on the Oregon Rez.

Left to right: Benny Pezzano, Michael Sorensen, Kenny Lewis, Scott Guasco and Michael Lennon are Sol Seed. (Photo: Athena Delene)

Left to right: Benny Pezzano, Michael Sorensen, Kenny Lewis, Scott Guasco and Michael Lennon are Sol Seed. (Photo: Athena Delene)

Many bands in mainstream rock have a connection to Native communities through one of their musicians. The Band’s Robbie Robertson, Testament’s Charles Billy and the many contributions of Jesse Ed Davis to various groups are some examples. Sol Seed—a reggae-fusion band out of Eugene, Oregon—has a relationship with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through its guitarist, Kenny Sequoia Lewis.

Through Lewis, Sol Seed – only two years old at the time – found itself performing at the 2012 Native American Music Awards at the invitation of Grand Ronde flute player Jan Michael Looking Wolf.

“I think it was one of those moments that validated what we were doing,” said band member Benny Pezzano. “Something was written in the stars for all of us together.”

Lewis played as a studio musician for Looking Wolf’s album Breaking Free. For Lewis, the Nammy experience showed him the depth of genres within Native American music.

[…]

Performing with Looking Wolf created for him a “smoother experience” that he would take to Sol Seed. Now with six years of experience as a band, member Pezzano says Sol Seed has a message of “universal love, universal acceptance and reaching across cultural or national boundaries.”

“Live music is one of the best medicines for anyone,” Pezzano said. “It’s right up there with laughter. Someone once told me that reggae music is what positive feelings sound like. Most importantly, it brings everyone together.”

Sol Seed spends its time between touring nationally and regionally in the northwest. Growing up in Medford, Oregon Lewis says he enjoys playing at the Grand Ronde reservation for their youth.

“It’s really cool to see the smiles light up on their faces,” Lewis said. “I get to connect with them because I’m the only tribal member in Sol Seed. It’s a huge honor for me. I really enjoy it.”

To find out more about Sol Seed and their music, go to www.solseedmusic.com. They can also be found on Facebook, Reverbnation and Soundcloud.

Via ICTMN.

Grateful Dead Tribute Album Could Break HIV Fundraising Records.

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Day of the Dead, is a love letter to the Grateful Dead, curated by The National rockers Aaron and Bryce Dessner. A tribute to the eclectic and iconic band from the era of psychedelic music, the album took four years to collect and compile.

Featuring over sixty artists from a variety of musical backgrounds, (including Mumford & Sons, Wilco, Courtney Barnett, and The National) the set reinterprets the songs and sounds of the Dead for a whole new generation.

A project of Red Hot, the international organization dedicated to fighting HIV  through pop culture, Day of the Dead,  is expected to break the organization’s previous fundraising records.

The 5-hour, 59-track album features artists from Mumford & Sons to Wilco, and Courtney Barnett to The National. Full Story Here.

The Robertson Theory.

pat-robertson-accuses-gays-of-using-organized-thrustx750Naturally, Pat Robertson has weighed in on the Orlando Massacre, after possibly 5 minutes of figuring out how to blame everyone he hates.

“The left is having a dilemma of major proportions and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves,” he said.

Earlier in the program, Robertson explained “the dilemma of the liberals”

“We’re looking at a favored group by the left, the homosexuals, and that in Islam is punishable by death or imprisonment or some sanction, so what are the left going to do? How are they going to describe it? And they don’t know quite what to do now. The fact that this Islamic gentleman opens fire in a gay nightclub and kills almost 50 homosexuals, that says something and tells the fact that Islam is against homosexuality, so the liberals are going to be scrambling to find some rationale. I think they’re going to have a hard time doing it.”

I don’t think there’s so much as an iota of surprise in any of that rhetoric, it’s yet another iteration of the same bigot hash that has been served up for years now. At this point, I was continuing to read the article, when the ol’ brain came to a screeching halt upon reading this:

Claims this offensive and grandiose might immediately seem laughable and dismissable to America’s informed and educated populations, but the fact is that there are a lot of poor, uneducated, and gullible people in this country — Donald Trump, after all, was voted as the Republican candidate.

Emphasis mine. This has got to stop. Stop, stop, stop. The majority of people who support Trump are not poor (a great many of them are filthy rich), they are not uneducated or undereducated, and while there might be a fair amount of gullible minds there, those are all over the fucking place, and a propensity for gullibility is probably more likely to strike those who have a great deal of money to burn. At any rate, poor does not equate to stupid and gullible. A lot of poor people manage to do a damn good job educating themselves in spite of the broken system called public education in uStates. If you want to talk about the people who support Trump, looking at all those Christians who follow people like Robertson and other preachers of hate is a good place to start. Another one is those who suffer from an excess of jingoism and a bad case of gun fetishism. More of them are simply bigots, always glad to add yet another group to their ever expanding capacity to hate. A lack of education can be corrected. A case of ignorance can be corrected, and easily so. When it comes to those following and supporting people like Robertson and Trump, we are not talking about those things. We are talking about calculated hate, a laser-focused bigotry that these believers want to lie over the land like a bloody lash. Don’t blame the poor. It’s past time they stop being a handy target whenever someone is searching for a scathing line to express their upset and disgust with those who wallow in hate.

Full story here.

Jackson, Mississippi Stands Up.

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LGBT residents of Jackson, Miss., now have citywide protection from discrimination in housing, employment, and public services.

Jackson’s new ant-discrimination ordinance was passed by a unanimous vote of the City Council Tuesday evening, The Clarion-Ledger reports. Mississippi’s capital and largest city made a loud statement to Republican Gov. Phil Bryant and other state leaders who in April passed one of the nation’s most egregious anti-LGBT laws.

[…]

Regardless, Jackson’s new ordidance is a huge step forward for one of the most conservative states in the nation. Whether there will be a statewide backlash — like what occurred when Charlotte, N.C., passed a now-defunct nondiscrimination ordinance — should be known soon.

“I think that this City Council along with the mayor have said repeatedly that Jackson is not a place that will tolerate discrimination of any kind,” Councilman Tyrone Hendrix (pictured, above) told The Clarion Ledger. “Tonight’s vote was just more evidence of our sentiments.”

Full Story at the Advocate.

Spot the Bird!

From Crimson Clupeidae, beautiful desert. In the first shot, you’ll definitely need to click for full size. “Can you find (and identify) the bird here?” (I found the bird right away, and my guess is Roadrunner.)

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And a beautiful shot of the sun behind a saguaro.

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© Crimson Clupeidae. All rights reserved.

A Change of Heart.

https://youtu.be/MU_ZP2j74bY

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Lt. Governor Spencer Cox addressed a vigil held Monday night to honor the victims and survivors of the mass shooting in Orlando. Here is a transcript of his remarks:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for being here tonight on this very solemn and somber occasion. I begin with an admission and an apology. First, I recognize fully that I am a balding, youngish, middle-aged straight, white, male, Republican, politician… with all of the expectations and privileges that come with those labels. I am probably not who you expected to hear from today.

I’m here because, yesterday morning, 49 Americans were brutally murdered. And it made me sad. And it made me angry. And it made me confused. I’m here because those 49 people were gay. I’m here because it shouldn’t matter. But I’m here because it does. I am not here to tell you that I know exactly what you are going through. I am not here to tell you that I feel your pain. I don’t pretend to know the depths of what you are feeling right now. But I do know what it feels like to be scared. And I do know what it feels like to be sad. And I do know what it feels like to be rejected. And, more importantly, I know what it feels like to be loved.

I grew up in a small town and went to a small rural high school. There were some kids in my class that were different. Sometimes I wasn’t kind to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know now that they were gay. I will forever regret not treating them with the kindness, dignity and respect — the love — that they deserved. For that, I sincerely and humbly apologize.

Over the intervening years, my heart has changed. It has changed because of you. It has changed because I have gotten to know many of you. You have been patient with me. You helped me learn the right letters of the alphabet in the right order even though you keep adding new ones. You have been kind to me. Jim Dabakis even told me I dressed nice once, even though I know he was lying. You have treated me with the kindness, dignity, and respect — the love — that I very often did NOT deserve. And it has made me love you.

But now we are here. We are here because 49 beautiful, amazing people are gone. These are not just statistics. These were individuals. These are human beings. They each have a story. They each had dreams, goals, talents, friends, family. They are you and they are me. And one night they went out to relax, to laugh, to connect, to forget, to remember. And in a few minutes of chaos and terror, they were gone.

[Read more…]