Locally

Charges have been dropped against State Police Officer Ryan Londregan, who fatally shot black man Ricky Cobb II, as Cobb was driving away from an arrest while Londregan and another officer were leaning into the car.

I happened to be going into the Government Center for jury duty on a day that Londregan had a hearing, and I saw some of his supporters setting up in the atrium, but I didn't realize what they were there for until later.  There were also counter-protesters angrily shouting slogans like "No justice, no peace!" for a while.  

The atrium you can see in the picture in the article extends up the entire height of the building between the two towers of offices and courtrooms, and the protesting was very audible even on the top floor, which is where the jury office is now.  It used to be in the basement under the street that the building straddles.

I was surprised that protesting was being allowed inside the building.  There is a large paved space outdoors on the north side.

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Closer to home, it is yard sale/estate sale/spring clean-up season, with two especially interesting finds.  The first is a pair of pliers used by cobblers, which incorporates a small, square hammer head, so leather can be pulled taut and nailed at the same time.  One of the handles is bent, so I'm going to have to figure out how to straighten it.  The other item looks a lot like a golf club, but it has a ridged horizontal metal blade, and is apparently an old-fashioned weed-whacker.  It has been very handy, as we have been getting a lot of rain and the weeds have been growing at high speed.

That took long enough

I'm on sabbatical, and working as hard as ever.  I discovered that circumstances are no longer hindering me from doing housework at a fast pace:  "Housercize".

I finally figured out how to semi-stabilize the cabinet of my spare sewing machine.  The cabinet is large and nice, but its support structure was absurdly inadequate.  The legs insert into the cabinet, and are supposed to be steadied by laminated wood arcs, connected by a wood rail.  The layers had begun to separate after years of being stored in a barn, and wouldn't hold the pegs from the legs.  At one point, the whole thing collapsed.  I shoved the legs under it horizontally so the plywood protecting the sewing machine compartment wouldn't be crushed, and left it that way for months, while thinking vaguely of making a pair of short bookshelves to support the cabinet at the ends.

I eventually noticed, in my excavations in the garage, that an oak chair back I had saved from a broken roadside freebie would be just about the right size to replace the underframe.  It turned out to be exactly the right size, more exactly-right than needed because the legs have lots of wobble in them.  I had no trouble in drilling peg holes into the sides of the chair back.

The worst of it was having to set it all back up.  I enlisted two of the sturdier children to lift the cabinet while I connected everything together.  It is still wobbly, but it will do until I find or make the right little bookshelves.

Another project is a computer chair mat, using leather scraps from the surplus store.  These scraps are very thick leather in several different colors, and I bought two boxes' worth.  I am following the same modular-width/free-length design as I did in my last quilt, for efficient re-use of materials.  Three pattern pieces, for width only:  full-strip-width, half-strip-width, quarter-strip-width.  The problem of how to connect them is yet to be solved.

I also covered another chair seat with utility leather.  The first one I did went from a suede-y dull green to a very polished brown after a few months of use.  It shows some scratches.

Accordion and cardboard

Before Christmas, we were doing some post-dentist shopping at a new-to-us thrift store.  They had two vintage accordions in the store.  I was able to go back to the store in January with Christmas money and some savings.  The brown accordion I was thinking of buying was no longer there, but the other one was.  So now I have a pearly-blue accordion, in good-enough condition.  It is both easy and challenging to play.  Previous musical experience with piano and school band is helping, along with a couple of beginner videos.

My husband around that time brought home very large cardboard boxes from work; enough for each of the children to have one of their own.  It was hard to traverse the living room for a while.  Some of the cardboard became cardboard armor and airplanes and rockets.  The armorer has developed some rather advanced techniques for making helmets and workable elbow joints.

We also made an excursion to the Axman Surplus store.  Some of the kids wanted motors, one wanted plastic clips, and I was pleased to find that they still had some airline china, as I wanted a couple of mini-plates.

I was reluctantly beginning to sew new cushion covers for our glider rocker when several of its joints came unglued and I found that a bushing? was missing.  I found the bushing later, and for now we are enjoying having some extra space in the living room.

George MacDonald's Lilith

John C. Wright reviews Lilith also, after previously writing two posts about MacDonald's Phantastes. 

Lilith is indeed a very difficult book to understand--I've only read it two or three times, and I no longer own a copy--but at the same time the Lilith character is astonishingly modern in her pride and violence, and one of MacDonald's core messages that runs throughout his writings--obedience to God--is made very clear.

Most of the book is set within a highly-symbolic metaphysical landscape.  Within this landscape are a number of scenes that seem to be intended to express spiritual truths.  One scene that has stuck with me ever since reading the book is a never-ending furious battle between two factions, both of which claim they are on the side of Truth.  This battle has no effect at all on the rest of that world.  The protagonist does not engage in it, goes off on a foolish crusade of his own, and eventually has to simply obey instructions about one small rock, which when properly placed brings a great deal of healing.

My understanding of the Lona character is that she appeared to be about fifteen years old, which in MacDonald's time was sometimes considered a marriageable age.  The two very similar white leopards are also difficult to sort out.  One is Lilith, and I believe the other is the daughter of Adam and Eve who also appeared as the masked lady at the house.

For the Little Ones and the Bags, it is helpful to consider The Princess and Curdie, where Curdie is given the gift of being able to discern a person's moral nature.  A wicked person's hand feels to him like the foot of the beast they are morally descending toward; Curdie's good mother's work-hardened hands feel human, and soft and lovely.  MacDonald was showing how a person could descend into brutishness and a very thorough spiritual dullness. 

Not irrelevant

There were a couple of points here in notes on a book about vagabondage that related to sabbaticals; one about negotiating for a sabbatical from work in order to have extended time for travel, and another about making work almost completely subordinate to one's travel-oriented lifestyle.

The Biblical pattern is Six On, One Off, with an extra One Year Off every 50th year.  As I pointed out in my book on sabbatical rest, Israel's 70-year exile in Babylon was to make up for the sabbatical and jubilee years they had failed to observe over the centuries.  

Addendum to The Fall of Minneapolis

Earlier post here.  [Edit:  I have added to it a bit.]

Derek Chauvin's wife Kellie entered (and won) the Mrs. Minnesota America pageant in 2018 with the encouragement of her friend and earlier Mrs. Minnesota Andrea Bennett Xiong, whose husband was Tou Ger Xiong, Twin Cities Hmong celebrity.

It has been reported that Tou Ger Xiong was kidnapped, stabbed a dozen times, and thrown down a hill in Columbia; multiple Minnesota Congresspersons have issued statements.

It's very odd that this came only a few weeks after Derek Chauvin was stabbed in prison.

Christmas stuffed

Every year I start to get the house into reasonably-decluttered order in the fall...and then the holidays hit.

This year, I had the idea of filling up the Christmas decoration boxes with regular decor and other stuff, once the Christmas decorations were up.

It's only two small boxes, and within a few minutes I had found enough items to fill them both.  This was not just swapping regular displays for Christmas decor, but also making some areas downright austere to compensate for ornamental elaboration elsewhere.  

There were a couple of small items that I just put up on the Christmas tree.  A few days ago, I moved a wall hanging to the undecorated back entry, to make room for my Christmas sign.

Another idea I had was to put a tray on top of our toaster oven.  We don't use it often for toasting, but it always has lots of smaller things on top of it because we have very little counter space.  Now it can be cleared off and used much more easily.

Similarly, I put a tray on top of the painted crate we hold to hold tea and teacups, which will make it much easier to plug in the toaster oven when we want to use it.