a little red hen

With Yarn from Her Sheep: Nan Kennedy Comes to Knitty City

"Baby You Look Beautiful in Wool" by Paddy Mills is the background music for this post.  I just learned about the song, on my way to talk about the imminent arrival in New York City of Nanney Kennedy, Maine shepherd, yarn producer, designer. 

The last time I saw Nan was at Rhinebeck, the New York Sheep and Wool Festival.  She was surrounded as always by her beautiful yarn--what you'll see when you click on the song link.  My photo here is my own small collection of her Seacolor yarns from the past three years.  For some reason I keep looking at them, changing ideas.  This fall I think it will become a vest--designed in Nanney's kind of style--dark purple will be one side of a front, green the other and the blue green at the left, the back.  Maybe pink for trim and pockets.

For beautiful pictures of her yarn and her farm, Meadowcroft, her farm there is a brand new book, SHEAR SPIRIT. It marks a departure in yarn books with its focus on farms and the people who live the rural life--raise sheep-- from Maine to Oregon. The photos are by Gale Zucker, text, Joan Tapper.  Yes, it does have patterns.

It is not quite the same as being with Nanney who comes to my local and favorite yarn store, Knitty City next Monday, May 5, direct from showing her wares at America's biggest yarn event,  Maryland Sheep and Wool.  There, wandering around while Ron was taking a spinning class, is where I first encountered Nanney.   She was unlike many of the vendors.  Her yarns were arranged more artfullyand her signature "sea and sun-washed yarns" drew me in.   And there was her extra-large personality and sense of humor.   She thought the Condom Amulets would benefit from photos of women wearing them in unexpected settings.  The result:  Nanney modeling Lisa Daehlin's Knit Wire Bracelet surrounded by her beautiful fibers.

She is also the person connected to Ron's hat-knitting.  In 2006, Nan introduced us to Medomak Camp in Washington, Maine where Ron fell under the design spell of Bill Huntington who teaches there again this year.  While at the Knit Retreat, we visited Nan's farm and sheep--did some natural dyeing with her.

If you're in the City next week, please join Nan and her yarn at Knitty City, 208 West 79th Street, from 5 to 7 p.m. Gale Zucker's coming too to tell about how she selected those 20 fiber farms in the book.   Ron and I will be there, Lisa Daehlin, and Kay Gardiner of Mason-Dixon Knitting--among others.  More to come...

Public Housing That Worked, a new book

A comprehensive history of America's largest and most successful public housing program.

Top:  View of the Panorama of the City of New York, with NCHA (New York City Housing Authority) properties in red.  Courtesy of the Queens Museum of Art.  Bottom:  NYCHA tenant garden program at the Lafayette Houses, Courtesy of La Guardia Archive/NYCHA Photograph Collection.

Jacket design: John Hubbard.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Congratulations to our son, father of Roxie,  on his fourth book. 

Sex Ed in the Big City...just in case

An urgent letter from a Health Educator with New York City's Planned Parenthood: 

Did you know that NYC public schools do not require
sex education at all? And when we don't tell kids the facts, this is what they tell each other.

You can stop yourself from getting pregnant if you:

- Jump up and down after sex
- Take a bath in Epsom salts
- Drink a Tropical Fantasy (a Brooklyn-based soda) or hot Malta
(a carbonated malt beverage)

If you are as appalled as I am that these kinds of misconceptions are alive and well among middle and high school students, please remind our Chancellor of Education that our students need comprehensive sex education.  We have the distinction of one of the highest teenage pregnancy and STD rates in the U.S.

If you live in New York City, add your voice to mine.  Knitting Condom Amulets is helpful but not enough.  The goal is 20,000 letters to be hand-delivered by May 1st.   Here's the link to a letter prepared by NYC Planned Parenthood.

["MAW, Most Arresting Woman and Hen Pink Conspire" illustration contributed by blogger M.E. Carew of  Xtreme English]

UPDATE 4/25/08:  Rachel at Women's Health News has a good summary of the goings-on at this week's hearing in Congres--House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform-- on the subject that is none of their business, "Abstinence-Only and Sex Education." 

"Living in rome now...fiddling tuneful"

"Unfair," you say.  Yes, I do indeed live in New York City, read New York Times:

Whitney Museum to Receive $131 Million Gift

Leonard A. Lauder, the cosmetics executive and chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said on Tuesday that his art foundation would give the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney’s 77-year...

Or, I could live nearby, read The Philadelphia Inquirer-- on the very same day Pennsylvania's "blue collar white males" (worried about jobs and gun ownership) voted for the more prosperous Democratic candidate:

Museum of Art Seals Eakins Deal

By Edward Sozanski, Inquirer Art Critic

"The emotionally charged saga of Thomas Eakins' iconic painting The Gross Clinic ended on a positive note yesterday when the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced that it had raised the last chunk of money needed to keep the 19th-century masterpiece in Philadelphia."

"Chunk" in its entirety = $68 million.

Wasn't it just yesterday some sense of local urgency led Las Vegas to announce a plan to build a second city for  $6 billion.

Rome not so bad when you can read it all in American English.  Same language, our screwed-up country where the food banks are having trouble keeping supplied.  Feels like the Rome of the past.  For a memory of who we once were, send a check to your local version of CITY HARVEST.  They will be  grateful for two digit amounts.

UPDATE 4/25/08: Link from the blog at Bill Moyer's Journal (PBS)  provides way to map your local food bank.  "Hunger in America" was a powerful report broadcast earlier this month and can be heard HERE; there's also a vodcast, new word for me.

She Perseverates: Elderblogger and Knitter

I really, really wanted to do this.  Get this black survey badge onto the lefthand column. 

Oh, I spent a lot of time at it.  Had tried this sort of thing  with my award for blogging and the important red one.  Even with step-by-step instructions from Ronni Bennett, who developed the survey, I could not make it happen.  And I think important data will emerge from it.  The results, a window into who we are and how we relate to this technology, will appear at her site, Time Goes By.    

Creative, be creative, my nudging voice said.  My solutions as a late-bloomer in blogland, are two choices for viewers of a little red hen.  Readers of elderblogs as well as elderbloggers themselves are urged to click on this link ELDERBLOG SURVEY: May One deadline. If you put it off till closer to the deadline--though I'd appreciate if you did it now--scroll to the "Websites" section in the left hand column and click on the same words to get to the survey.   Please tell Ronni that I sent you.

Perseveration [continuation of something... usually to an exceptional degree or beyond a desired point] I know well.  Following knitting patterns also offers me endless opportunities. 

Because the instructions for this adorable sweater were not, the chicken is off to the side rather than in the middle.  I began a creative solution by knitting small yellow eggs that I planned to sew under the hen's rump-- right where Roxie holds the bagel.

"Never mind," my son said, "We'll take it as is."  So, Marianne, at Busha Full of Grace (younger Elderblogger who I hope will do the survey) here's what I finished before the left hand break.  I'm onto another garment, slowed down by repetitve stress in right hand. 

And yet,  I perseverate--with blogging and knitting--to the distress of the hand therapist who is not a devotee of either one.    

A Little Red Hen to Obama and Clinton #1

Somebody had to do it...why not US? 

I was pleased with an email from Women'sEnews  that the my question of Clinton and Obama had been added to this list for their upcoming forum in Pennsylvania.  Rita Jensen, Editor-in-Chief of this online service, will be asking representatives of the Democratic candidates this list of questions their readers have submitted.

You will not be surprised that mine was about Aging.  Why, I asked, are older women not visible on either of the candidates' websites.  I point out that John Edwards' campaign site listed an 11-point, "Declaration of Independence for Older Americans" with specific concerns addressed-- affordable prescription drugs and Social Security among them.

Check out the entire list.  Is there another you'd like to ask?

Wednesday's dreadful ABC-TV "debate" with Obama and Clinton has had some encouraging fallout.  GoozNews.com alerted me to a letter by angry journalists (Merrill Goozner among them) on The Nation's website.  They let the network know what a travesty the program was.  You can send a letter to The Nation on your ideas about a "meaningful presidential debate."

All of us need to be shaping the questions and complaining to the media about what we are not hearing.  I believe it's called substantive issues.  In "Road Map to Defeat," Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times --

"The issues still favor the Democrats....Instead of capitalizing on the political advantages...the Democrats, with their increasingly small-minded approach are squandering them...It's not too late [but] The GOP's fondest wish is tht the Democrats keep doing what they're doing."

 

   

Miscellany from the Slower Lane

And then, the next message from my body:  a tooth had to be removed.  No pain, only new space and the promise of a "cantilevered" replacement by my excellent dentist.  Now that was a word that brought back memories of places I'd seen in the 1960s.

Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, architects favored this in homes I saw in New Mexico when I lived there.  Los Alamos had a number of cantilevered balconies over living rooms.

I try to imagine the interior of my mouth with a connection to Wright's famous Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.  There's a misty memory of a visit to it shortly after it was built.  Though I wonder if this is actual memory or the result of seeing many photos, reading descriptions.   

Anyway, those blue-green eggs seem cantilevered here.  There are 12 of them in a bowl in my dentist's kitchen.  Laid by his very own chickens.  How come? In response to my question about what was okay to eat that night, he said something soft.  "Eggs," Ron added, "We have one or two." 

Neil our dentist is also Ron's nephew, lives near his office in Princeton, New Jersey.  "Eggs...I'll give you some."  And that is how I carefully carried back to Manhattan, one dozen freshly laid eggs, scrambled three.  Neil felt more accomplished, I sensed, for moving along the produce than removing my tooth.

Two days later, the cast came off my hand.  I could knit again with two fingers on left hand; the black band is a Velcro tape.  There was great temptation to remove it to knit and type more easily.  A mistake, the hand therapist told me.  She also made a splint to use when I went outside to protect myself in public.  Subway and bus travel, take-out delivery bikes, pedestrian life is pretty dicey these days as reported in this this Sunday's New York Times.

I find myself not wanting to go much of anywhere.  But I had been looking forward to the Take Back the Night March tonight at Barnard College, know how important it is for the wider community of women to join in--my community.  The synchronicity of Ron--who walks more easily daily--also experiencing new limits has an impact too.  Being in our seventies is a change from our sixties.

I needed to develop better balance and lose a little weight, I've started working with a trainer who is a neighbor.  The gym is just one building away from mine but it's hard to get motivated to do the work in between our weekly sessions.  Before my accident, I'd begun visiting the treadmill, got over some of my reluctance to engage with it.  Even though my infirmity is very minor, I feel a shift in self-perception.  Who am I as my body ages?

She Turns 40...

Rachel, Oberlin, Ohio, 1968... today's her 40th birthday.

Ron and I send a long distance toast to her in Portland, Oregon. We are very proud of our first child who survived many family adventures in her early years including the arrival of a little brother before she was two.

Energetic, athletic, competitive, and loving, she has put it all together.  Rachel continues the family traditions.  She asks hard questions.  Her commitment to social justice flows through her personal and business life.

For a special present, besides a contribution to a cause she supports, we thought to send her and husband to a fancy hotel for a weekend alone.  Turned out, we learned from her spouse, she'd rather go camping-- and take the two kids.

Here's to you, Rachel, our feminist daughter, always true to yourself. 

Visitors from Baltimore and Beyond

Judy Lombardi called one night from Baltimore, "We're coming in this weekend.  Can we see you Sunday brunch?  My friend Heidi from London--I've told you about her--I'd like to bring along, maybe her kids will be with her.  Talk to Carol about people she wants to invite."

Talking with Carol I learn that a couple she knows are making a move to New York similar to ours twelve years ago.  Except he's already retired, spouse still working.

Sunday morning, Judy on cell phone.  "In Soho, on the way.  Where should we get food?"  Judy and Carol had never been to Zabar's, definitely the place.  Always a treat to have Judy in the kitchen.  I remember her making spaghetti and sauce at our house in Baltimore.  The tomatoes used were ones she and Ron grew--twenty-eight plants?--in the backyard.

Heidi brought the cerise-colored tulips behind Judy's head and her two children.  I thought they were going to be little, but was wrong.  They were amazingly mature post-teens.   Because she used to do work about HIV/AIDS, Heidi was interested in the Condom Amulets.  I showed them the ones still with me and not lounging on the wall at Knitty City.  Gave the three of them New York City's 2007 condoms.  I have to move theses along because they are dated; the 2008 model has a musical video

Carol is a dedicated bird-watcher and as she looked out our window was rewarded by a visit from a sparrow hawk who enjoys the plentiful community of pidgeons in the neighborhood.  She has been a longtime vigiler in Baltimore with Women in Black, a worldwide peace network.  We spoke about our frustration, how we were once in the minority.  But even with the majority of Americans  believing the U.S. should be out of Iraq nothing changes the administration's position.

Susan and Jamie, the recent NYC arrivals, brought a delicious flan she had made.  One of my favorite desserts.  We talked about how joining The Transition Network and one of its peer groups might be a useful way to get integrated into the City.  As she began to look at Clara Parkes' The Knitter's Book of Yarn sitting on the coffee table, we found a pattern we both liked.  "Baby Soft Cardigan" is the one I'd like to make for Zoe in Portland from bright green yarn Ron has spun.

All in all  a perfect afternoon for us semi-homebounds and covered all the bases of our concerns.  I told Judy how her advice to get a Canon digital camera like hers (SD850) has been a fine addtion to my life in images.  Ron even spoke Yiddish with Heidi who  originally migrated to England from Germany.  Her children, also fluent in German, could understand him but were surprised by the relationship of the languages.

Elderblogs, A Bigger Footprint?

The other day Rosie the Riveter, this iconic World War II poster, turned into a very  engaging tee-shirt looked at me frm the window of the one and only neighborhood store that sells clothes, Liberty House.

How many of us as little girls puzzled over Rosie's image back in the 1940s?  Ronni Bennett could only have been a toddler then but something had started in late 19th century America--women taking snapshots with their own cameras, riding bicycles--to offer smart, creative women an alternative to domestic gooddesshood.  For Ronni, there was the rebellious, hard working, somewhat quirky for her time Aunt Edith.

Ronni showed us once again her place in that lineage  in an interview with New York City's leading public radio host, Brian Lehrer.  Except this was television.  Brian, public intellectual/social justice guru, also has a weekly show on CUNY-TV .  Yesterday ElderBlogging was a generous segment in his program on "Social Networking."  

Picture on left is not Ronni's response to intro, "Grandma's not nodding off, she's logging on."  Shame on Brian, so politically aware--just like my pet peeve, not your grandmother's knitting."

Undiverted from this opportunity to spread the gospel, Ronni smiled.  She spoke about words she favors to describe us, "the neutral word is 'old'...not 'elderly' which implies frail."  Most favored, of course is "elder."

The fearless leader of the notion, she clarified that elderblogs are personal, "not a one-way street." The value of blogs is a chance to show what aging really looks like," her tag line at Time Goes By,  We talk to one another about what engages us as elders.  She covered a lot of territory; listen for yourself HERE.   New York City lost when there was no job for her in the ageist marketplace here.

Portland, Maine, was the winner when Ronni moved there two years ago. We elders know how to land on our feet, thank you.  She ended the interview with a nod to the influence of boomers, those folks a little younger and often unsettled by aging, "They are going to change things a lot, " she said and noted there's a place on her site for "Honorary Elderbloggers, those not yet 50 years old."

Using that model, a new group forming at NYC NOW (National Organization for Women) decided to expand our boundaries with the name "Boomer and Senior Women's Network."  Like Ronni, I'm not fond of the "s-word" but that was in place before we began.  More important is what we're working on--ways to become better advocates for ourselves and other older women around health issues, particularly in how we relate to doctors.

We meet at 2:30 p.m., second and fourth Thursday of the month, in the NOW office in Manhattan.  Join us, add your ideas.  Contact me through the address on my About page for more information.  Once again, Rosie and Ronni remind us, We Can Do It!